Harry Kane Striker becomes

England’s all-time top scorer

 Sport page 44

Friday
24 March 2023
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‘We are our

own biggest fans’
Boygenius  Film & Music G2

Councils spend £500m on

Guardian analysis of tens of thou-
sands of public contracts and
inspection records reveals.
The findings expose “a broken
care system”, said Sarah McClin-
ton, president of the Association of

beds in worst care homes Directors of Adult Social Services,

Exclusive
Robert Booth
Michael Goodier
Taxpayers have spent close to half
a billion pounds buying beds in the
worst care homes in England in the
past four years, driving profits for
private investors while residents
suffer unsafe treatment, a Guardian
investigation has revealed. In what
one family branded “a robbery of
taxpayers’ money” and Labour said
was “scandalous”, about £480m
is estimated to have been spent on
“inadequate” care homes – many
rated unsafe and in special meas-
ures, meaning they are threatened
with closure.
They are often staffed by untrained
agency workers ignoring residents’
needs and failing to deliver proper
nutrition and medicines in dirty and
dangerous properties.
Billions more in public cash has
been spent on homes rated “requires
improvement”, many operated by
chains delivering large returns for
overseas shareholders and creditors.
In all, councils have spent an esti-
mated £7.5bn to put people in poor
quality care homes since 2019, a
whose members commission coun-
cil-funded care.
The Relatives & Residents Asso-
ciation (RRA) said state payments
to the worst homes were “propping
up substandard care” and “failing
‘Labour will not the taxpayer”.
In 2022, one pound in every five
tolerate providers spent by English local authori-
who put private ties buying residential elderly care
is estimated to have been paid for
profit before care’ a home in the poorest categories.
In the east Midlands that rose to
almost a third of all public money
Liz Kendall spent last year – more than
12 
Shadow care minister £200m. The findings will

‘Pretty
emotional’
Applause
Athletics
for Nicola
Sturgeon as
she leaves
bans trans
her final first
minister’s
questions in
women
the Scottish
parliament
PHOTOGRAPH:
from sport
JANE BARLOW/PA

Sean Ingle
Chief sports reporter

World Athletics has voted to ban

transgender women from elite female
competitions if they have undergone
male puberty, a decision the govern-
ing body said was taken to “protect
the future of the female category”.
Speaking after the ruling, which
comes into effect on 31 March, the
World Athletics president, Sebas-
tian Coe, accepted that the decision
would be contentious but said his
sport had been guided by the “over-
arching principle” of fairness, as well
as the science around physical perfor-
mance and male advantage.
“Decisions are always difficult
when they involve conflicting needs
and rights between different groups,

Just 1% of
of fraud and error occurred during Business and Trade (DBT) and cited but we continue to take the view
Peter Walker the initial run of the grant scheme by the NAO, showed that only £11.4m that we must maintain fairness for
Political correspondent launched in March 2020, which did of that has been recovered. female athletes above all other con-

£1bn Covid Just 1% of the estimated £1.1bn lost

from the government’s Covid busi-
not require prepayment checks, the
National Audit Office (NAO) said in its
report on the rushed-through efforts.
The report sets out the sheer speed
at which the eight separate grant
schemes for businesses, admin-
siderations,” he said. “We believe
the integrity of the female category
in athletics is paramount.”

fraud losses ness support programme in England

due to fraud and error has been recov-
ered, the public spending watchdog
The total of £1.1bn lost in grants
amounted to just under 5% of the total
for the scheme, according to business
istered by local authorities, were
developed and launched, noting that
the business department was only
Lord Coe said that he would set up
a working group that would consult
transgender athletes and review any

recovered has said in a report urging ministers to

learn lessons from the scheme.
department statistics. The latest fig-
ures of retrieved money, collated by
asked by the Treasury in late Febru-
ary to examine how such a
fresh research that emerged. “We’re
not saying no for ever,”
•••

8  2 
The “overwhelming majority” the newly renamed Department for system might work. he said.
 • The Guardian Friday 24 March 2023

Inside 24/03/23 News

Four sections
every day
 Transgender it said. “The scientific evidence base
News and Sport participation on trans people in sport is developing
has been a but is far from conclusive.”
growing and The move was welcomed by the
V&A à la mode contentious campaign group Fair Play for Women.
issue for sports “It is the right thing for women and
Coco Chanel to get her authorities in girls, in line with all the scientific evi-
first retrospective at a recent years dence and common sense,” it said.
major British museum PHOTOGRAPH: “We now expect to see national fed-
GETTY IMAGES erations follow the lead given to them
Page 9
by World Athletics, to restore the
talent pathway for girls and young
women, and to reinstate fair sport for
Journal Outside G2 women of all ages.”
Opinions and ideas World Athletics also announced
that all athletes with a difference in
 Here is a scandal on sex development (DSD) would be
barred from competing internation-
the scale of HS2. This ally in all events unless they reduced
time it’s all about water their testosterone to 2.5 nanomoles
George Monbiot per litre for a minimum of six months.
Page 1 Until now athletes with a DSD,
who include former Olympic wom-
en’s champion Caster Semenya and
G2 Centre pullout Christine Mboma, the silver medal-

Transgender women excluded from

list in the 200m at the Tokyo Games,
Features and arts have been allowed to compete with-
out medication except in events
Don’t look down ranging from 400m to a mile.
On the centenary of Safety
Last!, why Harold Lloyd’s
female events by World Athletics In 2019 the court of arbitration for
sport ruled that 46 XY 5-ARD individ-
uals, whose testosterone is affected,
movie is a timeless classic such as Semenya, “enjoy a signifi-
Page 4  Continued from page 1 for such a policy, with athletes and a National Collegiate Athletic Asso- cant sporting advantage … over 46
federations making it clear they ciation female title in 2022. XX competitors without such DSD”.
Sports have been increasingly wanted to prioritise fairness for World Athletics’ decision is likely The six-month rule would means
Save up to 27% struggling with the issue of transgen- female sport over inclusion. to be opposed by LGBTQ+ groups athletes missing this summer’s World
with a subscription der participation in recent years,
notably when the New Zealand
“We entered into a consultation
some months ago because we wanted
such as Stonewall. Speaking last
month they urged sports to be as
Championships in Budapest.
“We have been prepared to take
to the Guardian weightlifter Laurel Hubbard quali- to provoke debate,” he said. “It was inclusive as possible. “The trans pop- these issues head on,” added Coe.
fied for the Tokyo Olympics having really important that we heard from ulation may be small, but they have “In the past they would have been
and the Observer transitioned in her 30s. all our stakeholders, including the every right to participate in sports allowed to drift or be kicked into the
Visit theguardian. Since Tokyo, most sports have
allowed trans women to compete if
athletes, the coaches and member
federations. And my goodness, we
and enjoy the many physical, mental
and community benefits of sports,”
long grass.
“That is not the nature of my
com/paper-subs they lowered their testosterone to heard from them.” leadership and it is certainly not the
5 nanomoles per litre for 12 months. Athletics becomes the latest instincts of my council.”
Weather But emerging science showing sport to ban transgender women ‘We must maintain In another statement, Coe said
transgender women retain an advan- from female sport, following World fairness for female that Russian athletes would remain
Page 36 tage in strength, endurance, power Rugby in 2020 and World Swimming barred from track and field “for
and lung capacity after suppressing and the Rugby Football League last athletes above all’ the foreseeable future” because of
testosterone had led World Athletics year. Swimming’s decision came the country’s invasion of Ukraine –
Quick crossword in January to propose a lower testos- shortly after Lia Thomas, who had despite the International Olympic
Back of G2 terone limit for at least 24 months. been a moderate college swimmer Sebastian Coe Committee exploring a pathway for
Coe said there was “little support” as a male competitor in the US, won World Athletics president Russian and Belarusian athletes.
Cartoon
Journal, page 4
Reject a guilty verdict over
should make it absolutely clear that you will come to the conclusion that
he doesn’t agree with it,” they added. I’ve given.”
Cryptic crossword At the end of the hearing on However, it is understood that it is
Back of Journal Partygate, allies tell Johnson Wednesday, Johnson declined to give
the committee any guarantee that he
not Johnson’s position that he would
not accept a sanction if one were rec-
would accept their conclusions. ommended by the committee and
Contact Asked if he would accept the backed by the House of Commons.
For missing sections call 0800 839 100.
his peerage by Johnson after serv- characterisation of the inquiry as a Rishi Sunak has indicated that he
For individual departments, call the Guardian Pippa Crerar ing under him at London’s City Hall, “witch-hunt or a kangaroo court”, would give Tory MPs a free vote.
switchboard: 020 3353 2000. Political editor said he had seen “nothing” in the he said that he would “deprecate the One friend of Johnson’s said the
For the Readers’ editor (corrections &  clarifications
on specific editorial content), call 020 3353 4736 evidence that demonstrated he had terms” but added: “I will wait to see former prime minister was not pre-
between 10am and 1pm UK time Monday to Friday Boris Johnson should refuse to accept knowingly misled parliament. how you proceed with the evidence judging the outcome. “We’re very
excluding public holidays, or email
guardian.readers@theguardian.com.
the outcome of the privileges com- “I personally think he set out that you have. I will study your conclu- much looking forward to reading
Letters for publication should be sent to guardian. mittee investigation if it concludes there’s no way he knowingly misled sions from the evidence … I believe if the committee’s findings. When they
letters@theguardian.com or the address on the that he intentionally misled the Com- parliament and therefore the com- you study this evidence impartially, arrive we will study them,” they said.
letters page.
mons over the Partygate scandal, his mittee should be exonerating him,” He is expected to be sent the findings
NEWSPAPERS allies have said. he told ITV’s Good Morning Britain two weeks before they are published.
SUPPORT
RECYCLING
The recycled paper
Some of the former prime minis- show. “I don’t see why he should His lawyers are planning to write
ter’s supporters believe he should accept the findings of a politically to the committee after the Commons
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reject the cross-party group’s find-
ings if they decide, based on written
evidence and a fractious three-and-
a-half-hour evidence session on
Wednesday, that he broke strict par-
liamentary rules.
MPs on the committee denounced
his “flimsy” explanations and sug-
gested he had wrongly interpreted
the Covid guidance, heightening the
expectation that they will sanction
Johnson for “recklessly” misleading
the Commons.
However, the Conservative peer
Stephen Greenhalgh, who was given
charged committee if they haven’t got session to encourage them to publish
the evidence to prove that he know- all the evidence they have relied upon
ingly misled parliament.” during the inquiry that has not yet
Another ally, a senior Tory MP, been put into the public domain. The
suggested the committee would committee has so far refused to do
“upset” the backbenches if it recom- so, saying they have a responsibility
mended a sanction for Johnson that to protect the identity of witnesses.
could ultimately lead to him facing Johnson’s team will query how
a byelection. “Boris wouldn’t have dependent the inquiry was on evi-
much choice but to accept it, but he dence accumulated during Sue Gray’s
investigation, and other points,
 Boris Johnson leaves his home in including on the assurances he says
London yesterday. One friend said he was given by senior civil servants
the former prime minister was not that the lockdown gatherings were
pre-judging the inquiry’s findings within the rules.
Friday 24 March 2023 The Guardian
What’s in a name? Ben Jonson volume may
contain Shakespeare sonnet signed ‘Cygnus’
Dalya Alberge
An almost unknown sonnet printed
in the playbook of a 1603 play by
Ben Jonson could be a “lost” work
by William Shakespeare, accord-
ing to two leading scholars. Beyond
“compelling” stylistic evidence, the
sonnet – titled “To the deserving
Author” – is signed by the mysterious
pseudonym “Cygnus”, the mythical
figure who was turned into a swan
– evoking Jonson’s own tribute to
Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon
as the “Sweet Swan of Avon”.
Dr Chris Laoutaris, an associate
professor of Shakespeare and early
modern drama at the Shakespeare
Institute, University of Birmingham,
said: “This is how Jonson referred
to him in his long poem in honour
of the playwright in the first folio
mourning Shakespeare’s ‘flight’ as
the swan, whose living presence shall
BBC abandons latest series of
Top Gear after Flintoff crash
Harry Taylor
The BBC has said it will not resume
filming the latest series of Top Gear
after its co-presenter and former
England cricket captain Andrew
“Freddie” Flintoff was injured in a
crash last year.
The BBC said there will be a health
and safety review on the motoring
•••
News
never again grace England’s stages.”
The sonnet is within the playbook of
Jonson’s Sejanus His Fall, a tragic play
set in ancient Rome, in which Shake-
speare had acted. It shares a page with
a ditty by Hugh Holland, who ded-
icated a commemorative verse to
Shakespeare in the first folio.
Laoutaris said that while both
sonnets paid tribute to Jonson, they
were “very different”. For example,
Holland addresses Jonson with the
more formal “you” throughout,
whereas Cygnus uses the informal
“thou”, the form favoured by Shake-
speare in his sonnets. “It’s tantalising.
There are so many parallels with
Shakespeare’s style it must surely
make even the most hardened scep-
tic pause and think.”
Initially intrigued, he had
contacted Dr Martin Wiggins, a
leading expert on Renaissance
drama, saying: “I’ve got this hunch
it’s written by Shakespeare, but I can’t
find anybody who’s ever said it was.
▲ Freddie Flintoff suffered facial
injuries and broken ribs in the crash
To the deserving Author
When I respect thy argument, I see
An image of those times: but when I view
The wit, the workmanship, so rich, so true,
The times themselves do seem retrieved to me.
And as Sejanus, in thy tragedy,
Falleth from Caesar’s grace; even so the crew
Of common playwrights, whom opinion blew
Big with false greatness, are disgraced by thee.
Thus, in one Tragedy, thou makest twain:
And, since fair works of Justice fit the part
Of tragic writers, Muses do ordain
That all Tragedians, Masters of their Art,
Who shall hereafter follow on this tract,
In writing well, thy tragedy shall act.
CYGNUS.
show, which has been running in its
current iteration for 21 years.
In a statement, the broadcaster
said it had finished an investigation
into an accident at the Top Gear test
track at Dunsfold Park aerodrome in
Surrey in December.
Flintoff, who joined the show as a
host in 2019, was airlifted to hospital
on 13 December after his open-topped
three-wheel Morgan Super 3 car
flipped and slid along the track when
he was driving at high speed. He suf-
fered facial injuries and broken ribs.
An investigation by the Health
and Safety Executive found no evi-
dence of serious failings, the Daily
Mail reported.
▲ The sonnet
is within the
playbook
Sejanus His
Fall by Ben
Jonson, above
– a tragic play
set in ancient
Rome in which
Shakespeare,
left, acted
PHOTOGRAPHS:
UNIVERSAL HISTORY
ARCHIVE/GETTY;
NATIONAL PORTRAIT
GALLERY, LONDON
Filming of the show was halted and
has not restarted since. The 45-year-
old, who has also presented cricket
programmes on the BBC, could be
quitting as a co-presenter, accord-
ing to the Times, as he does not feel
he can continue to play his “dare-
devil” role.
The BBC said it had apologised
to Flintoff, and the accident had
affected the team who produce the
show. “Under the circumstances,
we feel it would be inappropriate
to resume making series 34 of Top
Gear at this time,” a spokesperson
said. “We understand this will be
disappointing for fans, but it is the
right thing to do, and we’ll make a
3
Do you know anybody who has? He
said: ‘Yes, me’.”
He discovered that Wiggins, as
chief compiler of the monumental
British Drama 1533–1642: A Cata-
logue, had raised the theory in a single
sentence within thousands of pages:
“Cygnus (perhaps a pseudonym for
Hugh Holland … or perhaps the Swan
of Avon).” Wiggins said: “I’m cer-
tainly open to the possibility that it
could be by Shakespeare.”
This year marks the 400th anni-
versary of the first folio of 36 plays,
published in 1623, seven years after
Shakespeare’s death. “The issue of
whether or not Shakespeare was
involved with his own book is the
million dollar question,” Laoutaris
said. “This sonnet gives clues to
him having been linked to figures
involved with its publication while
he was alive. There’s no previous firm
evidence to date that Shakespeare
knew Holland.”
He will present the evidence in
a forthcoming book, titled Shake-
speare’s Book: The Intertwined Lives
Behind the First Folio, to be published
by HarperCollins on 30 March.
He argues that the Cygnus sonnet is
theatrical in nature and makes more
sense if it was written by a dramatist:
“Holland wasn’t. He was a poet and
translator. The sonnet praises Jonson
and his writing of this play. This is a
tragedy for tragedians whose talents,
meagre by comparison, have been
undermined by Jonson’s greatness,
making a double tragedy out of
Jonson’s play: ‘Thus, in one Tragedy,
thou makest twain [that is, two]’.”
Scholars had previously believed
that this sonnet was also written
by Holland because his own work,
Pancharis, issued in 1603, included
a Jonson poem that referred to him
as a swan.
But Laoutaris said the Cygnus
sonnet appeared to contain features
more redolent of Shakespeare’s style:
“The more one reads this enigmatic
poem, the more ‘Shakespearean’
it appears.”
judgment about how best to con-
tinue later this year.”
In 2019 Flintoff crashed at 125mph
while travelling in a three-wheeled
cycle car, but managed to walk away
from the scene. Thirteen years earlier,
former presenter Richard Hammond
was left in a coma after crashing at
the Elvington airfield in York in a
jet-powered Vampire dragster while
travelling at 288mph.
Top Gear appeared to have found
its rhythm again with Flintoff and his
co-presenters, Chris Harris and Paddy
McGuinness, rebuilding ratings to its
highest point since the departures
of Jeremy Clarkson, Hammond and
James May.

4 News
TikTok chief grilled in Congress over data
privacy as app faces complete ban in US
Kari Paul San Francisco
Johana Bhuiyan New York
The chief executive of TikTok was
forced to defend the company’s
relationship with China and its pro-
tection of its youngest users in testy
evidence to Congress yesterday as
the app faced a push for its entire ban
in the US.
Shou Zi Chew’s appearance, the
first by a TikTok chief executive, rep-
resents a big test for him, since he has
remained largely out of the spotlight.
US legislators have long had con-
cerns over Beijing’s control of the
TikTok app, concerns that Chew
repeatedly tried to rebut, saying: “Let
me state this unequivocally – Byte-
Dance is not an agent of China or any
other country.”
But Chew’s independence claims
were undermined by a Wall Street
Journal story published hours earlier
saying China would strongly oppose
any forced sale of the company.
Responding for the first time to
Joe Biden’s threat of a national ban
unless ByteDance, TikTok’s Beijing
based parent, sold its shares, Chi-
na’s commerce ministry said such a
move would involve exporting tech-
nology and so have to be approved by
the Chinese government.
National security concerns have
already prompted the US, Canada
▲ TikTok’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, defends the video-hosting app in Washington over accusations it fails to protect young users PHOTOGRAPH: TASOS KATOPODIS/GETTY
• The Guardian Friday 24 March 2023
Low profile chief
From Facebook intern to the Washington crosshairs
The TikTok chief executive, Shou
Zi Chew, says the most gruelling
experience of his life was a five-day
survival course in the jungles of
Borneo when he was a conscript in
Singapore’s army.
The 40-year-old Singaporean,
whose trans-global academic
and business career has rapidly
propelled him to the top job at
one of the world’s biggest tech
companies, will need to display
some of that mettle as he battles
to ensure the corporate survival of
the controversial but immensely
popular social video app.
Chew came from a relatively
modest background. His father
worked in construction and his
mother in bookkeeping. At the
age of 12, after getting high marks
in a national exam, he entered an
elite high school, where he added
fluency in Mandarin to his native
English. Following that military
service – Chew stays as a reservist
officer in the Singaporean army
until he is 50 – he obtained a
bachelor’s degree in economics
from University College London.
He stayed on in the UK capital,
becoming a banker at Goldman
Sachs for two years, investment
experience that would eventually
lead him to meet Zhang Yiming,
the founder of TikTok’s parent,
ByteDance, when the latter was
developing the company in a
crammed apartment in Beijing’s
university district.
In 2010 Chew gained his MBA
from Harvard business school,
where he got his first experience
of life in the tech sector with an
internship at Facebook while the
social networking company was
still in startup mode before going
public in 2012.
It was also where he met his
Taiwanese-American future wife,
Vivian Kao, with whom he has two
children. Chew – whose TikTok
profile was created in February
2022 and who has just 23 posts on
it, including videos of him at the
Super Bowl and meeting celebrities
– does not allow his children to use
the app. He said last November
they were too young.
After business school Chew
joined the venture capital firm DST,
founded by the Israeli-Russian IT
billionaire Yuri Milner, where his
Mandarin qualified him to be its
China-focused partner.
This led him to make
his pivotal visit to Zhang’s
ByteDance, in 2012, before the
team created TikTok, leading
Chew and his partners to invest in
the startup the following year.
In 2021 Zhang persuaded Chew
to join ByteDance as its first chief
financial officer. Two months
later he was elevated to chief
executive following the abrupt
departure of Kevin Mayer after
just three months, as the Trump
administration attempted to force
a sale of TikTok’s US assets.
Chew’s rise to the top of the
tech industry put him on to
Fortune’s 40 under 40 list in 2021.
The low-profile CEO is now
embarking on a media offensive
as part of TikTok’s wider efforts
to galvanise support to avert a
ban in the US and other countries.
“This could take TikTok away
from all 150 million of you,” he
said in a post to US TikTok users.
Mark Sweney and
Johana Bhuiyan
and UK to ban TikTok from all gov-
ernment devices.
Yesterday the Westminster gov-
ernment went one step further,
prohibiting “all parliamentary
devices and the wider parliamentary
network” from using the app, citing
the need for cybersecurity.
Chew’s testimony in Washington
yesterday got off to an intense start,
with members of the House energy
and commerce committee grilling
him on his connection to ByteDance
executives, whom, they said, had ties
to the Chinese Communist party.
US politicians asked how regularly
Chew was in contact with them, and
questioned whether the company’s
proposed solution, named Project
Texas, to move all the app’s US data
to domestic servers, would be suffi-
cient protection against Chinese laws
requiring companies to make user
records accessible to the government.
Chew also faced intense ques-
tioning over the platform’s impact
on mental health, particularly of its
young users. The Republican con-
gressman Gus Bilirakis shared the
story of Chase Nasca, a 16-year-old
who killed himself a year ago by step-
ping in front of a train. His parents,
who have sued TikTok claiming it
“targeted” Chase with unsolicited
suicide-related content, were pre-
sent and grew emotional as Bilirakis
told their son’s story.
Congresswoman Nanette Barragán
asked Chew about reports which said
he did not let his own children use
the app. Chew said his children were
not on TikTok because in Singapore,
where they lived, there was no ver-
sion for users under the age of 13,
unlike in the US.
Chew said that under Project Texas
all data on American users, backed up
to servers outside the US, would be
deleted by the end of this year.
Some legislators suggested the
project was too large an undertaking
and would not sufficiently address
data privacy concerns soon enough.
At one point the US representative
Tony Cárdenas, a Democrat, asked
Chew outright if TikTok was a Chi-
nese company. Chew responded
that TikTok was global in nature, not
available in mainland China, and had
its HQ in Singapore and Los Angeles.
Neal Dunn, a Republican, asked
with similar bluntness if ByteDance
had “spied on American citizens”.
Chew said: “Spying is not the right
way to describe it.”
The hearing comes three years
after TikTok was first targeted for-
mally by the Trump administration,
in 2020, via an executive order pro-
hibiting US companies from doing
business with ByteDance.
Biden revoked that order in June
2021 under the stipulation that the
US committee on foreign investment
conducted a review of the company.
When that stalled, Biden demanded
that TikTok sold its Chinese-owned
shares or faced a US ban.
This bipartisan nature of the back-
lash was remarked upon during the
hearing, with Cárdenas saying Chew
had been “one of the few members to
unite this committee”.
TikTok has battled legislative
headwinds since its meteoric rise
began in 2018. Today, a majority of
teens in the US say they use TikTok
– with 67% of people aged 13 to 17 say-
ing they have used the app, the Pew
Research Centre finds.
Friday 24 March 2023 The Guardian
dian
Encore!
tage
Taylor Swift sets stage
for marathon gigs
Page 11
Government rarely granting
bathing water status at sites
in England, analysis shows
Sandra Laville
Environment correspondent
Most applications for bathing water
status to clean up rivers and coastal
waters in England have been rejected
by the government in the past 14
months, according to data from the
Liberal Democrats.
Across the country, local groups
have been working for months to
create bathing water areas, where
the Environment Agency is forced
to undertake more rigorous testing
for faecal bacteria.
Grassroots groups are particularly
focusing on inland waters, in a push
to stop the discharge of raw sewage by
water companies and force a clean-up
of English rivers, all of which fail tests
for chemical and biological pollution.
But new data shows that in the past
14 months only two areas have been
granted bathing water status out of
21 applications, according to a writ-
ten parliamentary answer to Tim
Farron, the Liberal Democrats’ envi-
ronment spokesperson. Four areas
•
Menopause
M 5
V
Vorderman hits out at
e
equalities ministers
P
Page 17
are currently out to consultation for
bathing water status.
The government refused to pro-
vide the Guardian with a list of the
rivers and coastal areas where bath-
ing water status has been turned
down since January 2022.
It has publicly backed the concept
of creating bathing waters, with a jun-
ior environment minister, Rebecca
Pow, making a high-profile visit to
Oxford last year after part of the river
was granted bathing status.
But Farron said the scale of rejec-
tions showed the system was a mess.
“The Conservative government’s
attempt to protect bathing water is
nothing less than a cruel joke,” he
said. “Ministers are rejecting almost
every application made by local com-
munities and swimming groups.”
There are currently 600 bathing
water sites in England and Wales, the
vast majority in coastal waters.
Farron said that even when a site
achieved bathing status, water com-
panies were allowed to fill it with
sewage dumps. Data showed there
had been 340m hours of sewage spills
in bathing waters – 52,653 separate
incidents – in the past two years. He
said all raw sewage discharges into
bathing waters should stop.
“Thérèse Coffey [the environment
secretary] should apologise to every
community turned down for bath-
ing water status. Instead of rejection,
ministers should work with the com-
munity to ensure the site is granted
the status,” said Farron. “People are
being left to swim in filth and the
companies responsible get away
with it.”
Among the waterways rejected are
three parts of the Wharfe in Yorkshire,
Coniston Water in the Lake District,
‘Thérèse Coffey
should apologise …
people are being
left to swim in filth’
Tim Farron
Liberal Democrats
▲ Coniston Water in the Lake District
was one of a large majority of areas
in England refused bathing status
PHOTOGRAPH: SOPHIE MACKLEY/GETTY IMAGES
the Kent at Staveley in Cumbria, the
Tyne at Wylam, and part of the Deben
in Woodbridge – which is in Coffey’s
constituency. Campaigners have
attacked the lack of transparency in
the process and submitted freedom
of information requests to find out
why rivers have been turned down.
But the requests have been refused
by the Department for Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs. In a commu-
nication to local groups, it said: “Due
to the fact that you are requesting this
information as an interested party,
and that elements of your request do
not amount to a valid request made
under these regimes, we feel it would
be best handled under general cor-
respondence … As such the Bathing
Water team will be in touch directly
in relation to a reply.”
Ruth Leach, of Save the Deben,
said she felt sure her request had
failed on the number of people
required to be visiting to swim. “They
just ask about ‘bathers’, they don’t
take into account the huge surge in
people using the water since Covid
on paddleboards, in kayaks and also
swimmers. They need to recognise
that there are massive number of
people using the river now.”
The four areas where consultation
on the status is taking place are a sec-
tion of the Deben at Waldringfield,
Suffolk; Sykes Lane bathing beach
and Whitwell Creek at Rutland Water;
and Firestone Bay in Plymouth.
Doctors step
up pay row
with four-day
strike action
Denis Campbell
Health policy editor
Junior doctors have intensified their
pay dispute with the government by
calling a four-day strike that NHS
leaders fear will force them to can-
cel up to 250,000 appointments.
The British Medical Association
blamed ministers for the strike and
said they had not put forward “any
credible offer” in response to its claim
for a 35% pay rise for trainee doctors
in England.
The 96-hour stoppage will start
just after the Easter bank holiday
weekend and run from 06.59am on
Tuesday 11 April to 06.59am on Sat-
urday 15 April, affecting every NHS
hospital in England.
Hospital officials said the unprec-
edented duration of the strike would
imperil patients’ safety and urged
junior doctors to “reflect” on the wis-
dom of their planned action.
“The government has dragged its
feet at every opportunity. It has not
made any credible offer and is refus-
ing to accept that there is any case
for pay restoration, describing our
central ask as ‘unrealistic’ and ‘unaf-
fordable’,” said Dr Robert Laurenson
and Dr Vivek Trevedi, the co-chairs of
the BMA’s junior doctors committee.
The main doctors’ union called
the strike after talks with Steve Bar-
clay, the health secretary, broke down
without progress. There is a growing
acrimony, with both sides accusing
the other of being unreasonable.
The BMA is seeking a 35% pay rise
for junior doctors, whose salaries
have fallen in value in real terms by
26% since 2008/09 – a demand Bar-
clay says is “unreasonable”.
In a reference to the failed talks,
Laurenson and Trevedi added: “Even
yesterday they continued to add new
unacceptable preconditions to talks
instead of getting on and trying to
find a resolution.
“The situation is entirely of the
government’s own making. We are
not going to stop until we are paid
what we are worth.”
Dr Naru Narayanan, the president
of the Hospital Consultants and Spe-
cialists Association, the other medical
trade union, also blamed minsters for
the 96-hour stoppage, which HCSA
members will join.
He said ministers had “seen fit to
ignore the overwhelming support
among junior doctors for this dispute,
driven by year after year of real-terms
pay cuts”.
The Department of Health and
Social Care (DHSC) said that “fur-
ther strikes will risk patient safety
and cause further disruption”.
 • The Guardian Friday 24 March 2023

6 National
National
xSubjectxxxx
Politics

‘No clever work going on’:

The figures highlight the
disparities between Britain’s income
tax rates and its relatively low rates of
CGT. The prime minister’s overall tax
rate for the last three years was 22%,

Starmer releases tax roughly equivalent to what a nurse

would pay in income tax.
Dan Neidle, the founder of Tax
Policy Associates, said: “This is about

returns day after Sunak

Kiran Stacey
Political correspondent
Keir Starmer has released his tax
returns for the past two years,
showing that he earned little outside
his parliamentary income except for
a windfall when his sister sold the
family home that Starmer helped
her to buy.
The Labour leader released a
summary of his past two years of tax
payments yesterday, a day after the
prime minister, Rishi Sunak, released
three years of his. But whereas
Sunak’s summary showed that he
earned millions from a US-based
investment fund, Starmer’s income
came almost entirely from his salary
as an MP and leader of the opposition.
Over the two years, Starmer earned
a total of almost £275,000, just under
£22,000 of which came from book
royalties in 2020-21. He also gained
just under £100,000 when his sister
sold a property that he had helped her
to buy for her family to live in. In total,
he paid £118,580 in income tax and
capital gains tax on these earnings.
The Labour leader also announced
elected prime minister at the next
election, saying: “I’m very happy to
be – and will be – in the same position
as everybody else in this country.”
Tom McPhail, a pensions expert
at the financial consultancy the
Lang Cat, said Starmer’s decision
could cost him tens of thousands of
pounds before his retirement in extra
tax payments.
Sarah Coles, head of personal
finance at Hargreaves Lansdown,
said: “There’s nothing out of the
ordinary about this tax statement.
 The Labour
leader, Keir
Starmer, earned
little outside his
parliamentary
salary except for
a windfall when
his sister sold
the family home
he helped her to
buy, plus book
royalties
PHOTOGRAPH:
NATHAN STIRK/
GETTY IMAGES
It doesn’t look as though there’s
any clever work going on to ensure
he makes money as a capital gain
rather than as income, it’s just the
kind of tax statement you’d expect
from someone with relatively
straightforward tax affairs – albeit
one who is on a fairly chunky salary.”
Meanwhile, the Guardian revealed
that Sunak had benefited from more
than £300,000 in tax savings over
the past three years as a result of a
capital gains tax (CGT) cut that his
party introduced in 2016, for which
he voted and spoke in favour.
whether it is fair for people holding
investments to pay about half the rate
of people getting income through
their salary. It is hard to see how it
can be.”
A No 10 source said of the PM’s bill:
“The tax return shows that a consid-
erable amount of capital gains tax is
being paid.”
Sunak’s tax affairs came to
prominence last summer, when it
emerged his wife, Akshata Murty,
had saved millions on her UK tax bill
by claiming non-dom status while her
husband was chancellor. Murty gave
up her non-dom status last year.
The prime minister had promised
for months to release his tax
returns, eventually deciding to
release a three-page summary of
them on Wednesday, in the middle
of the testimony by the former PM
Boris Johnson to a parliamentary
committee investigating Partygate.
The timing of the release triggered
accusations that the prime minister
was shying away from scrutiny. The
fact that the vast majority of his earn-
ings came in the form of capital gains
has refocused attention on the Con-
servative party’s policies on capital
gains tax.
Defending the timing of the
release, the prime minister’s
spokesperson said: “There was a
number of bits of work to finalise and
make this as transparent and easy to

yesterday that he would give up
the tax-exempt status he enjoys
on contributions to his pension
from his time as director of public
£118,580
The Conservative government
cut the top rate of CGT from 28%
to 20% that year, which Sunak
The amount in income and capital welcomed, saying it would help boost
access as possible. The returns were
published once that was ready.”
But Starmer said Sunak’s returns
highlighted the unfairness of the

Defending
prosecutions. gains taxes that the Labour leader investment in British business. The UK tax regime, where capital gains
Starmer had been accused of paid over the past two years tax records released on Wednesday are taxed at a much lower rate than
hypocrisy for taking advantage of show that he benefited heavily from income.

22% the record

the special status of the DPP pension
while also promising to tax others
who contribute more than £1m to
their pension pot over a lifetime.
But he said yesterday he would
forgo his tax exemption if he were
Crime Labour leader pledges to halve violence
against women and restore public confidence
Jessica Elgot
Deputy political editor
Keir Starmer has vowed to halve
incidents of violence against women
and girls within a decade, including
having dedicated “rape courts” and
domestic violence experts taking 999
calls.
Setting out one of Labour’s core
missions on crime, Starmer said it
was the “unfinished business in my
life’s work to deliver justice” and said
Conservative attacks on him for being
a human rights lawyer “only shows
how far they’ve fallen, and how little
they understand working people”.
Launching the second of his
five “missions” in Stoke-on-Trent,
the Labour leader said he wanted
to “imagine a society where vio-
lence against women is stamped
Sunak’s overall tax rate in the past
three years. He saved £300,000 in
capital gains tax due to a Tory cut
out everywhere”. He said his gov-
ernment would also never dismiss
crime as “low level” – suggesting that
even apparently minor issues, such
as repeatedly smoking cannabis near
children’s windows, had a devastat-
ing effect on people’s lives.
He said complacency and austerity
had led to plunging confidence in
the police, adding “crime becomes
decriminalised” when there is no one
to follow up reports.
Starmer set out four key targets on
crime for Labour in government, to:
• Restore public confidence in the
police and criminal justice system to
its highest ever level.
• Halve knife crime incidents,
including with an enhanced police
presence outside schools.
• Drastically improve statistics for
the proportion of crimes solved by
the police.
that decision, given how much of his
earnings came from capital gains on a
US-based investment fund. The fund
gave him a taxable gain of £1.6m in
2021-22 and a total of £3.8m over three
years, the records show.
• Drive down violence against
women and improve conviction rates.
Starmer’s speech was followed
by a roundtable with current and
former senior police officers and vic-
tims’ representatives, including Mina
Smallman, whose daughters Bibaa
Henry and Nicole Smallman were
murdered and pictures of their bodies
shared by police on WhatsApp.
Smallman said it was urgent that
the targets on halving violence and
standards for policing were put into a
new law, so any party in government
was bound by them.
But she also criticised Starmer and
Rishi Sunak’s conduct during prime
minister’s questions, discussing
the report by Louise Casey into the
Metropolitan police failings.
“Yesterday if I’d have been the
speaker, I would have taken you all
into the naughty room, you and the
“There is a wider point about
choices here,” he said. “The choices
they have made on tax and the tax
system are obvious. They always go
after working people – just look at the
last 12 months.”
prime minister and said ‘Look, this is
not about point scoring. This is about
people’s lives.’”
At the sessions, senior police offic-
ers urged Starmer to press the case
for prevention of violence against
women, with one former police chief
saying it should be treated as seri-
ously as stopping terrorism.
In his earlier speech, Starmer
said it was “working people who
pay the heaviest price” when anti-
social behaviour was rife and there
was complacency from the govern-
ment because “their kids don’t go to
the same schools, nobody fly-tips on
their streets. The threat of violence
doesn’t stalk their communities.”
Starmer said there were clear and
stark inequalities when it came to
tackling crime, which he had seen
first-hand as the director of public
prosecutions.
“As chief prosecutor, the more and
more case files I read, the more and
more I could see those ugly inequali-
ties at work. It’s unfinished business
in my life’s work to deliver justice for
working people.”
Rowdy final
questions for
Sturgeon at
Holyrood
Severin Carrell
Scotland editor
Nicola Sturgeon endured a series of
attacks on her record when she faced
opposition leaders during a rowdy
and heated final parliamentary ses-
sion as first minister yesterday.
With Sturgeon stepping down in
five days, the hope that she might
enjoy a dignified final session as first
minister was dashed when the Scot-
tish Conservative leader, Douglas
Ross, accused her party of repeat-
edly lying to the media.
Their exchanges overshadowed a
more reflective statement from Stur-
geon marking her departure next
Tuesday, after which all four oppo-
sition leaders paid tribute to her eight
years as first minister and Scottish
Friday 24 March 2023 The Guardian
National party leader, singling out her
leadership during the Covid crisis.
Speaking to reporters after leav-
ing the chamber for the last time
as first minister, having conducted
first minister’s questions 286 times,
Sturgeon admitted she had felt
“pretty emotional” during her vale-
dictory speech. “I possibly struggled
a bit more than I hoped I would, to not
shed a few tears in there,” she said.
She said she was leaving with
regrets. “Show me a human being
or a politician or a government min-
ister that doesn’t have regrets and
I show you somebody that’s not
properly human.” Failing to deliver
▲ Nicola Sturgeon debuts as first minister in 2014, and, right, attends her last
FMQs yesterday, when she was praised for her leadership in the Covid crisis
•
▼ Sturgeon speaks to the press after
her valedictory speech, during which
she said she felt ‘pretty emotional’
PHOTOGRAPH: PETER SUMMERS/GETTY
independence as first minister was
significant, she said. “I would love
to have been the leader who took
Scotland to independence. For me,
obtaining independence is much
more important than the person who
leads us there and I have no doubt
Scotland will become independent.”
Ross opened first minister’s
questions by accusing Sturgeon’s
colleagues in the SNP of lying repeat-
edly about a 30% fall in the party’s
membership – a deception he implied
Sturgeon’s husband, Peter Murrell,
the SNP’s former chief executive,
was linked to. Murrell quit last week-
end, throwing the party’s leadership
contest into chaos. Ross’s language
provoked uproar from SNP MSPs and
repeated warnings from Holyrood’s
presiding officer, Alison Johnstone,
that he was breaching parliamentary
rules. “We do not use the word ‘lie’ in
this chamber,” she said.
Sturgeon retorted that the SNP
was still Scotland’s largest party by
far, urging Ross to reveal the Scottish
Tories’ membership figure.
Ross said she was “treating the
Scottish public like idiots” through
such an “embarrassing defence”.
No one would be gullible enough,
he added, to believe Sturgeon did
not know of the membership slump.
During a tit-for-tat exchange over
her failures and successes, where
Ross pointed to Scotland’s record
drug deaths, record A&E waiting
times, and huge cost overruns with
a ferries contract, Sturgeon asserted
that Scotland had delivered a social
security agency paying £20 weekly
for every deprived child, a national
investment bank, the UK’s most pro-
gressive income tax regime and its
best performing A&E departments.
The SNP had also won eight suc-
cessive elections in Scotland since
she became party leader, she said.
“I am proud of the record of govern-
ment that I have led through some of
the toughest times Scotland has faced
in recent history,” she said.
She said that after Boris Johnston’s
faltering defence on Tuesday over
Partygate, Ross was in no position to
be “lecturing people about honesty”.
7
Sketch
John Crace
First minister struggles
to contain her emotions
at the close of a career
that many would kill for
S
ome rage at the dying of the light. Boris
Johnson is howling into the wind. Crying
out for meaning, begging for attention.
Anything but to be forgotten. But his time
is up. All that remains for him is life on the
after-dinner speaking circuit. A job he hates
almost as much as he hates himself for doing it. He
despises the people – the little people – to whom he is
obliged to talk. Most of whom only listen with one ear
open at best. He is the amuse-bouche entertainer who
has backed himself into a narcissistic cul-de-sac.
Others, though, leave the political stage at a time
of their own choosing. On their own terms. Just over
a month ago, Nicola Sturgeon surprised even her
closest allies by announcing she was standing down
as leader of the SNP. Some bits of her resignation
statement didn’t quite make sense. She claimed her
party was in good health and never nearer to achieving
independence. In which case why walk away now? But
the other, more personal stuff felt real. She had had
enough. Her entire adult life devoted to politics. She
just wasn’t feeling it. She wanted more Nicola time.
That time has almost come. Yesterday Sturgeon
took her 286th and final first minister’s questions
in the Scottish parliament. Of her three possible
successors only the frontrunner, Humza Yousaf, was
in attendance. He kept a low profile: this was Nicola’s
day. Kate Forbes is on maternity leave. Ash Regan was
nowhere to be seen. There again, she always has been
an outlier. Disliked almost as much
inside the SNP as she is outside it.
South of the border Sturgeon looked as if she was
she appears more struggling to contain her emotions.
This was quite a moment. A
significant. Especially tectonic shift in Scottish politics.
when compared Nicola might not be regarded
so highly inside Scotland as
with Cameron, May, she often is outside. The Scots
are less tolerant of the SNP’s
Johnson and Truss shortcomings in government.
South of the border, she appears
more significant. Especially when
compared with David Cameron,
Theresa May, Johnson and Liz Truss. And even her
opponents have to admit that hers is a rare political
career that isn’t ending in abject failure. Most leaders
would kill to win eight elections on the bounce.
The Tory leader, Douglas Ross, appeared hellbent
on living down to the occasion. Not even an
acknowledgment of an adversary who had achieved
far more than he ever would. Just a straight attack on
Sturgeon and the SNP for lying about losing 30,000
members. Repeating the claims that Forbes and
Regan had been making at the leadership hustings.
That the SNP leadership had become mediocre and
incompetent. Just what Nicola needed on her last day.
Sturgeon looked a bit peeved and went on the attack
herself. How many members did the Scottish Tories
have? Could you fit them all into a small room? And
how many elections had he won? And which Dougie
were we seeing today? The one who had backed Rishi
Sunak? The one who had backed Truss? The one who
had backed Johnson? Or the one who had flip-flopped
between the three? Such a man of principle.
Only a few Tories applauded Ross’s speech. Too
much even for them. The SNP just sat stony-faced as
attention switched to other speakers. Once they were
finished, Sturgeon picked up her files, concentrated on
keeping her emotions in check and headed for the exit.
She’s going to be a tough act to follow.

8 National
Just 1% of
£1bn Covid
fraud losses
recovered
 Continued from page 1
The first version began from 11 March,
with a second on 17 March. As early
as 19 April, the report says, local
authorities had made 484,000 pay-
ments totalling £6bn, more than 50%
of the total handed out in what was
the biggest such support programme
beyond the furlough scheme.
Matters were not helped by a
lack of any shared contingency plan
between local and national govern-
ment on how to support businesses in
the event of an emergency, the NAO
said, with councils generally only
hearing about new schemes when
they were announced publicly. By
then they were already dealing with
queries from local businesses.
One result of the rapid timetable
was the wave of fraud and error. Later
versions of the grants used prepay-
ment checks and had more accurate
local information about businesses.
• The Guardian Friday 24 March 2023
The report calls for the DBT and
Treasury, working with councils, to
draw up formal contingency plans
by the end of this year about similar
financial support if there is a future
national emergency, using the les-
sons of the Covid scheme.
Gareth Davies, the head of the
NAO, said that the business depart-
ment and local government “deserve
credit for working quickly to set up
and distribute grants to businesses”,
but warned that the full impact of
the fraud and error still remained
unclear.
“The government does not yet
know the impact of these grants – in
▼ Amy and Sam Whitmore add to
the Covid memorial wall in memory
of their mother and grandmother
PHOTOGRAPH: HENRY NICHOLLS/REUTERS
terms of maintaining jobs or how
much support might have been given
to businesses which did not need
it. Without such an assessment, an
overall judgement about the value
for money of the schemes remains
open,” he said.
“The government’s experience of
working at speed with local author-
ities to channel financial support
during the pandemic offers impor-
tant lessons should similar crises
occur. The new [DBT] can now use
these lessons to improve contingency
planning and to build government
resilience for responding to future
national emergencies.”
French strikers
won’t roll out red
carpet for King
Charles in Paris
Associated Press
Paris
Striking workers in France are refus-
ing to provide red carpets for King
Charles’s first overseas trip as mon-
arch amid protests over rises to the
pension age.
The CGT union announced this
week that its members at Mobilier
National, the institution in charge
of providing flags, red carpets and
furniture for public buildings, would
not help prepare a reception for the
king on his arrival in Paris on Sunday.
“We ask our administration to
inform the services concerned that
we will not provide furnishings, red
carpets or flags,” the CGT said.
The Élysée Palace, the French
president’s residence, has said non-
striking workers would set up the
necessary accoutrements for the trip.
The king is scheduled to make the
trip, from Sunday to Wednesday, as
the UK and France seek to rebuild ties
that were frayed by Brexit. However,
anger over Emmanuel Macron forcing
through a raise in the pension age to
64 without a parliamentary vote, for
which he has been accused of behav-
ing like a king, is clouding what was
meant to be a show of friendship
between the two countries.
“It’s very bad timing. Normally
the French would welcome a Brit-
ish king. But in this moment, people
protesting are on high alert for any
sign of privilege and wealth,” said the
Paris-based writer Stephen Clarke,
the author of Elizabeth II, Queen of
Laughs. “They’re planning on going
to Versailles. It does not look good.
This seems very 1789.”
Months in the making, Charles’s
trip with Camilla, the Queen Consort,
includes a visit to the Musée d’Orsay,
a wreath-laying ceremony at the Arc
de Triomphe and a lavish dinner at
the former royal residence Versailles
– a symbol of royal excess before the
French Revolution.
But with piles of uncollected
rubbish lining the French capital’s
boulevards, critics say the optics
could not be worse.
“Unbelievable! We are going to
have Emmanuel Macron, the Repub-
lican monarch, welcoming King
Charles III in Versailles … while the
people in the street are demonstrat-
ing,” Sandrine Rousseau, a Green MP,
told the French channel BFM TV.
Rousseau said King Charles should
cancel his visit.
Friday 24 March 2023 The Guardian •

National 9

V&A ‘scoured Key witness is

‘a woman
international scorned’, says
man on trial for
collections’ murder of girl, 9
for Chanel
retrospective
Josh Halliday
North of England correspondent

The man accused of murdering nine-

Jess Cartner-Morley
A pink tweed two-piece worn by
the actor Lauren Bacall on holiday
in Biarritz in 1959 and a minimalist
black silk trouser suit in which the
fashion editor Diana Vreeland enter-
tained at home in New York will be
among the outfits on display in Lon-
don in the autumn.
The exhibition Gabrielle Chanel:
Fashion Manifesto opens at the V&A
in September, the first Chanel retro-
spective to be staged by a major
British museum. The show has been
expanded from versions staged in
Paris and Melbourne. Of the 200 out-
fits on display, 122 are new additions.
The curator, Oriole Cullen, who
also masterminded the V&A’s most
recent fashion blockbuster, Chris-
tian Dior: Designer of Dreams, said
the team had “scoured international
collections for never seen before
pieces, some over 100 years old”.
The new additions include vintage
pieces from the personal wardrobe
of the midcentury supermodel Anne
Gunning, which were donated to the
V&A by her family after her death in
1990. Coco Chanel was an admirer of
Gunning’s beauty.
The seven looks bequeathed by
Gunning include a 1954 burgundy
tweed skirt suit with navy revere
collar and cuffs, complete with the
bow-trimmed navy sweater supplied
as an accompanying layer, and a 1956
black lace strapless evening gown.
Tristram Hunt, the director of
the V&A, praised Chanel for having
“paved the way for a new feminine
elegance, drafting a framework for
fashion that continues to influence
how women dress today”.
The show will span the seven dec-
ades of Chanel’s career. The oldest
exhibit will be a sailor-collar blouse
in oatmeal raw silk jersey from 1916,
avant garde in its radical simplicity;
 Mme Jose-
Maria Sert
wearing a long
white sequin
dress by Chanel
in 1936
PHOTOGRAPH: ANDRE
DURST/CONDÉ NAST/
SHUTTERSTOCK
▼ From left,
Chanel outfits
from 1935, 1926,
1964 and 1932;
200 outfits will
be on display at
the V&A show
the newest, a pale pink lamé dress
from her final collection in 1971. ”
The exhibition will highlight how
the designer’s love of Britain and
British countryside pursuits played
a key role in the origin story of the
Chanel tweed suit. Over the course
of a lengthy affair with the Duke of
Westminster, the designer also fell in
love with the Scottish tweeds that she
borrowed from his wardrobe.
On returning to her atelier in Paris,
she fused British tweed with French
elegance to dream up her classic boxy
skirt suits, a look Vogue described
in 1964 as “the world’s prettiest
uniform”.
Early tickets for the exhibition, which
opens on 16 September, are on sale,
with more set to be released in June
year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel has told a
court he is in custody “for something
I have not done” and branded a key
witness “a woman scorned”.
Thomas Cashman, 34, insisted
he had “nothing whatsoever” to do
with Olivia’s murder and that it was
a “blatant lie” to claim he is the killer.
Cashman is accused of fatally
shooting the schoolgirl when he
allegedly chased a convicted drug
dealer, Joseph Nee, into her family
home and opened fire in Dovecot,
Liverpool, last August.
The jury was yesterday shown
images of Cashman being driven
around the area in the hours before
the shooting, in what the crown says
is evidence of him “scoping out”
the attack. The defendant, who has
admitted being a “high-level” canna-
bis dealer, said he was just “driving
round, seeing people, collecting
money”.
Giving evidence for a third day at
Manchester crown court, Cashman
said: “I was dealing drugs. I hold my
hands up. I’m a drug dealer. I’m not
a bad drug dealer who sells class A
drugs. I don’t do anything bad.”
Cashman denied he was “getting
in the murder frame of mind” when
he went home for only eight minutes
at 8.22pm, before the fatal shooting
at about 10pm on 22 August last year.
The prosecutor, David McLachlan
KC, played footage of a man running
after another to the sound of screams
and three gunshots and asked Cash-
man: “That’s you, isn’t it?”
The defendant replied: “No, it’s
not me … No, I did not kill a little girl.”
McLachlan asked about the evi-
dence of a woman who alleges that
Cashman visited her home immedi-
ately after the shooting and that she
heard him say he had “done Joey” –
a reference to Nee.
Cashman denied going to the
woman’s house on the night of the
shooting, calling her evidence “a
total lie, a blatant lie”. He branded his
accuser, a key prosecution witness
who cannot be named, a “woman
scorned” and said: “This goes to
show the lengths a woman who’s got

Braverman’s migrant remarks politics,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today

disgraceful, says Albanian PM
Alexandra Topping
The Albanian prime minister has
criticised the home secretary, Suella
Braverman, calling the singling out
of migrants from his country a “dis-
graceful” moment for British politics.
Edi Rama, who is in Britain for talks
with Rishi Sunak, said Braverman’s
comments last year about “Albanian
criminals” crossing the Channel in
small boats could themselves be con-
sidered a crime.
“Unfortunately, we have seen
ourselves and our community being
singled out in this country for pur-
poses of politics. It has been a very,
very disgraceful moment for British
programme. Braverman’s remarks
were a “low point”, he said, adding
that the political will to overcome the
souring of relations remained.
“What has been [said] by mem-
bers of the cabinet, starting with the
home secretary, [is] the singling out
of our community, which is not some-
thing you do in our civilisation, and
is something that does not represent
Britain at all,” he said. “We will always
refuse to have this mix between some
criminals and the Albanians as such
because giving to the crime an ethnic
seal is itself a crime.”
Braverman angered many Albani-
ans with her comments about their
citizens in parliament last October. “If
something in for someone would go
to. This is how low they go to.”
The trial continues.
Labour were in charge they would be
allowing all the Albanian criminals to
come to this country, they would be
allowing all the small boats to come to
the UK, they would open our borders
and totally undermine the trust of the
British people in controlling our sov-
ereignty,” she told MPs.
The home secretary has also
been accused of using inflamma-
tory language when she said the
south coast of England was facing ▲ Olivia Pratt-Korbel was shot dead
an “invasion” of asylum seekers. at her home in Liverpool last year

10
Boy, 15, ‘thrown to
floor and handcuffed’
by private security
Alexandra Topping
Nadeem Badshah
The mother of a 15-year-old black
boy detained by civilian security
staff while shopping for shampoo in
Chichester has said he was thrown to
the floor and handcuffed after joking
about being followed.
The former Downing Street aide
Kirsty Buchanan called for a national
review of the use of private security
staff, saying her child had been tar-
geted because of his race.
Buchanan told the Guardian her
son had not been shoplifting in the
Superdrug store and had been con-
fronted by “aggressive” security staff,
known as rangers. “They grabbed his
arm, threw him on the floor, sat on
him and tied his hands with plastic
handcuffs,” she said.
Superdrug alleged that “female
staff were also assaulted” during
• The Guardian Friday 24 March 2023
National
the incident. But Buchanan stressed
her son had not been arrested for an
assault on a shopworker and that at
the time of that alleged incident he
was incapacitated on the floor. The
rangers “pulled his arms up and my
son was screaming that it hurt”, she
said. “A friend then came to his aid
and tried to get the rangers off my
child, who was clearly distressed
and in pain.”
Sussex police said a 15-year-old
boy from Worthing and a 16-year-
old boy from Chichester had been
arrested by police on suspicion of
assault and released on bail.
Buchanan, a former lobby jour-
nalist and adviser to Theresa May,
whose father was a former police
superintendent, also called for an
investigation into the handling of
the incident by Sussex police.
“When Sussex police arrived, it was
my son, and the other boy who came
to his aid, who were arrested, even
▲ Civilian ‘rangers’ hold down and
handcuff the 15-year-old while he
was shopping in a Chichester store
PHOTOGRAPH: TWITTER/@KIRSTYBUCHANAN4
‘My son was arrested,
even though he had
been subjected to an
unprovoked assault’
Kirsty Buchanan
Former No 10 aide
though my son had been subjected
to an unprovoked assault,” she said.
She added Sussex police had a
policy of not detaining minors, but
she had not known his whereabouts
for an hour and a half after learning
about the incident. She said her
son was not interviewed by police
until 11pm on Wednesday, and was
released on bail at 1.15am yesterday.
A 15-second video of the incident,
posted by Buchanan on Twitter,
appeared to show the boy being held
down and handcuffed.
Buchanan tweeted: “This is my
15-year-old black son who was
followed while he shopped for
shampoo by two council workers
called Rangers. He was assaulted by
them, then sat on and handcuffed by
them. When @sussex_police arrived,
guess who they arrested?”
Civilian security staff known as
rangers are employed by the Chich-
ester business improvement district
(Bid), which works in partnership
with the city council.
A Chichester district council
spokesperson said on Wednesday
that no district council staff were
involved in the incident.
They said the council had no
oversight of any vetting procedure
of rangers. Asked if the council
was concerned by the incident, the
spokesperson said it was awaiting the
outcome of the police investigation.
“Keeping our local area, residents and
visitors safe is a key priority for us.”
Sussex police said officers were
called to the store after reports of an
altercation, and found the 15-year-
old detained in handcuffs, who was
then arrested on suspicion of assault.
A second teenager was arrested
on suspicion of assault, possession
of cannabis, and using threatening,
abusive or insulting words or
behaviour to cause harassment,
alarm or distress, they said. Both
teenagers have been released on bail
“with strict conditions” until 24 June.
Chichester Bid said it was
cooperating with police alongside
its security provider Blayde Security,
and was taking the matter “very
seriously”.
Friday 24 March 2023 The Guardian
Encore!
How Taylor
Swift has
set the
stage for
marathon
music gigs
Dave Simpson
G
et ready to double
the babysitter’s shift:
pop concerts are
getting longer. Taylor
Swift sings and plays
for more than three
hours a night during her Eras tour
of the US, but she’s not the only
one: the Cure, already fond of long
gigs, performed 88 songs over
three nights at Wembley Arena last
December, averaging just under
three hours a show.
Other acts putting in long stints
on stage include the K-pop stars
Ateez (two and a half hours) and the bang – or band – for your buck.
Aussie psych-rockers King Gizzard
& the Lizard Wizard, who will
play a three-hour marathon at the
Hollywood Bowl in June.
Lengthy shows are not new. The
Grateful Dead played five-hour sets
in the 70s and Bruce Springsteen’s
live sets are legendary – the longest,
in Helsinki in 2012, lasted four
hours, six minutes.
Newer artists have also shifted
towards longer shows to showcase
increasingly large back catalogues.
Swift’s 44-song Eras set list is
taken from 10 albums – 17 years of
music. King Gizzard & the Lizard
Wizard’s 23 LPs since 2010 provide
a songbook that could never be
represented in a gig of 120 minutes.
“Playing long shows felt like
a challenge and a way of digging
deeper into the discography,”
said the band’s frontman, Stu
Council boss to step down after
felling of 110 trees in Plymouth
PA Media
A council leader who has been
embroiled in a row after ordering
the felling of more than 100 trees is
to resign.
Richard Bingley, the leader of
Plymouth city council, plans to step
down next week as leader of the
Conservative group and head of the
•
National
Mackenzie, whose recent set lists
have been taken from a dozen of
their albums. “We’ve done a bunch
of marathon shows now and our
fans seem to dig it.”
Another aspect is value for
money. With controversy over
rocketing ticket prices (about which
the Cure’s Robert Smith has been
very vocal) amid the cost of living
crisis, there seems to be a collective
recognition of the need for lots of
“I go to a lot of shows, and seeing
a longer one feels more worth the
money,” said Charlotte Giese, 28, a
Chicago-based compliance analyst,
who watched Swift’s Eras tour last
week in Glendale, Arizona. “I flew
from Chicago, paid
p id $144
pa $14
44 (£117) for
The Cure’s Robert Smith
performs for three hours
authority. He signed an executive
decision that resulted in 110 trees
being cut down in Armada Way last
week to make way for a £12m city cen-
tre regeneration scheme.
Campaigners against the project
won a court injunction to stop fur-
ther trees being felled and a judicial
review is to be heard in the high court.
Bingley told the Plymouth Herald:
“I’ve always said I’m not a full-time
politician, I don’t seek to be. I’m just
my ticket and parking and wouldn’t
change a thing,” she said. “I got
three hours plus of Taylor Swift and
a great set of opening acts.” The
support act in Glendale was Gayle
and Paramore who, along with
Beabadoobee, Phoebe Bridgers, Girl
in Red, Muna, Haim, Gracie Abrams
and Owenn, are being rotated as the
opening act.
Lengthy shows go against
prevailing wisdom that the internet
has lessened attention span:
TikTok, YouTube and other social
media are geared to short formats.
However, the desire for more
enduring cultural experiences
clearly remains, among devoted
fans at least. Giese said she
found Swift’s three-hour set
“enrapturing” but said the more
casual fans were “bored and sitting
on their phones for chunks of time.
Which sucks because there are
thousands who would have loved
to have been there as opposed to
someone who has gone because
they like a couple of songs.”
Even for the hardcore fan, such
marathons are not for the faint-
hearted. “They’re definitely a
mental and physical endurance
test,” said Giese. “I drifted off a
bit myself at around the two-hour
mark, but I needed a sit break.”
Despite his own band’s epic
an individual who is passionate and
ambitious for Plymouth.
“If others feel they can run our glo-
rious Ocean City better, then that’s
great with me. Over to you, I say.”
In a statement, the campaign group
Save the Trees of Armada Way, which
applied for the injunction, called on
the council to abandon its case to lift
it after Bingley’s resignation.
It said: “We are not surprised to
hear of [his] resignation given the
outrage over the decision he made
to cut down our trees last week. We
hope, in light of this news, the coun-
cil will see sense and save taxpayers’
money by abandoning their attempts
to discharge our injunction.”
▲ Taylor Swift at Glendale last week
on her Eras tour. She is drawing from
10 albums for the 44-song set list
PHOTOGRAPH: GETTY/TAS RIGHTS MANAGEMENT
shows, Mackenzie said that when
he goes to gigs “80-90 minutes is
plenty. At 60 minutes I’m already
thinking about other stuff. But
I guess our fans have got longer
attention spans than me.”
For the artists, long shows
are creatively and physically
demanding. No performer wants
fans nodding off. “We’re still
learning to construct longer
shows,” said Mackenzie. “We’re
averaging two hours every night,
but I’d like to stretch that further if
our fans will put up with it and our
bodies will handle it.”
Perhaps tours such as Swift’s will
drive demand for longer sets and
maybe trigger a set list endurance
race as artists vie to play longer
than each other. Drake has alluded
to an Eras-type career retrospective
with artwork for his summer US
tour, while Beyoncé has enough
material to make this summer’s
world tour set list longer than her
32-song outing in 2018.
Giese hopes so: “My Beyoncé
ticket cost about $50 more
than Taylor. So I’m hoping for
a marathon.”
Luke Pollard, the Labour MP for
Plymouth Sutton and Devonport,
said: “Richard Bingley was left with
no option but to resign after his dis-
astrous handling of the Armada Way
trees scandal.
“Felling over 100 trees without
proper public consultation was an
act of environmental vandalism.
“The sole responsibility lies with
Bingley for ordering the chainsaws
in and the Tory council for signing
it off.”
Plymouth city council said the
project, which would involve the
planting of 169 semi-mature trees,
would “transform this tired and
dated city centre route”.
11
Meat bacteria
causing half a
million UTIs a
year in the US,
study suggests
Sophie Kevany
Meat bacteria are the likely cause
of more than half a million urinary
tract infections (UTIs) in the US every
year, a study has found, with one of
its authors warning that deaths from
UTI-driven bloodstream infections
could be on the rise.
Of the 6m-8m UTIs caused by E coli
bacteria in the US every year, the
study found that between 480,000
and 640,000 could be linked to
strains known as FZECs (food-borne
zoonotic E coli).
Women are far more likely than
men to suffer from UTIs. The British
Society for Antimicrobial Chemo-
therapy (BSAC) estimates that about
half of all women in Britain will have
at least one UTI in their lifetime.
“People are carrying the strain
of E coli that causes the UTI in their
gut, so the bacteria have travelled
from the anus [into the urinary tract
to cause the infection],” said Lance
Price, one of the study’s authors and
a professor specialising in antibiotic
resistance at the George Washington
University’s Milken Institute school
of public health in Washington DC.
“Our question was: how did the
E coli that caused the UTI get into
the gut in the first place?” Whether
the food-borne E coli were found on
plant or meat products, their source
was generally livestock, Price added.
UTIs are often considered no more
than a painful annoyance, but Price
said the bladder could act as a gate-
way to the bloodstream for E coli.
In the US, E coli bloodstream infec-
tions kill between 36,000 and 40,000
people a year. In Britain, the BSAC
describes UTIs as “the leading source
of bacterial bloodstream infections”.
Price warned that as E coli became
resistant to more antibiotics, the
number of people dying from blood-
stream infections could rise.
Working in Flagstaff, Arizona,
Price and his team spent a year match-
ing the UTI-causing E coli found in
patients at the town’s hospital to that
of E coli in turkey, chicken and pork
products sold in the area. The Flag-
staff study showed that 8% of the
UTIs were caused by E coli from local
meat samples. That, said Price, trans-
lated into a national figure in the US of
480,000 to 640,000 UTIs caused by
E coli originating from those meats.
▲ E coli in patients matched that in
turkey, chicken and pork products

12
Councils in
England spend
£500m on
places in failing
homes given
lowest rating
by inspectors
 Continued from page 1
pile pressure on the government to
deliver wholesale reform to “fix social
care” as promised when Boris John-
son became prime minister. The 2019
Conservative manifesto promised to
“urgently” seek cross-party consen-
sus to legislate for long-term reform,
but Rishi Sunak’s government in
October postponed an overhaul of
charging until 2025.
Liz Kendall, Labour’s shadow care
minister said: “These scandalous fig-
ures reveal the shocking exposure of
taxpayer funds to inadequate care
thanks to 13 years of Tory failure to
reform social care. Labour will not
tolerate poor quality providers that
put private profit before quality care.”
In Britain, 380,000 people live
in care homes, more than a third
funded by taxpayers. That number
is projected to rise by 30,000 by the
end of the decade, and care homes
face increasingly complex needs as
dementia affects more people.
The Guardian’s estimates are based
on council contracts with care home
71%
Proportion of residents in the
poorest quality care homes whose
care is funded by councils
• The Guardian Friday 24 March 2023
National
Care homes
providers in England, provided by
Oxygen Finance, cross-referenced
with numbers of residents in homes
rated “inadequate” or “requires
improvement” by the CQC. The
investigation found that last year:
• Liverpool city council paid £1.5m
for places at an “inadequate” home
where stains encrusted furniture,
walls and floors, fire doors were
defective, and addictive controlled
drugs weren’t signed out prop-
erly. CQC inspectors found that it
was “not safe” with “significant
staff shortages”.
• Derbyshire county council spent
£1m with a home where assaults went
uninvestigated, doses of medicines
were missed, and there were not
enough trained staff, the CQC found.
• A home where under-trained work-
ers were seen yanking people out of
their seats by their waistbands, one
resident was “frightened to look at
staff ”, and care was “humiliating”
received £1.3m from Portsmouth
council.
“Decades of chronic underfunding
have meant that thousands of older
people are forced to ‘make do’ with
poor quality care, falling well below
the standards we would expect for
our loved ones,” said McClinton.
Poor people who cannot pay their
own way suffer most, with 71% of
residents in “inadequate” homes
council-funded, official data shows.
Helen Wildbore, director of the RRA,
said the system was “failing the peo-
ple it exists to support, putting their
dignity and safety at risk”.
She added: “It is failing their fam-
ilies, who face an uphill battle to
ensure basic needs are met. It is fail-
ing the workers, expected to provide
care without adequate training. We
demand a better system – tomorrow
any one of us could need it.”
While councils try to avoid plac-
ing people in care homes rated
inadequate, “because of the lack
of capacity that isn’t always possi-
ble”, McClinton said. Councils are
also reluctant to move people out of
the worst homes in case it results in
the provider collapsing, worsening a
▲ In Britain,
380,000 people
live in care
homes, more
than a third
funded by
taxpayers
PHOTOGRAPHS:
RAWPIXEL LTD/
ISTOCKPHOTO;
DEAN MITCHELL;
CORBIS
capacity crisis that is causing conges-
tion on hospital wards.
Government grants do not allow
councils to pay providers enough
to increase wages above an average
£9.50 an hour to attract more staff to
fill at least 165,000 vacancies, coun-
cils say.
Ministers are poised to deliver a
plan to boost the sector’s workforce,
but are not expected to promise the
billions in extra funding experts such
as the economist Sir Andrew Dilnot,
thinktanks such as the Health Foun-
dation and MPs on the health and
social care select committee say is
urgently needed.
The Local Government Associa-
tion has warned of a £13bn annual
shortfall in funding to meet rising
care costs and increasing demand
from an ageing population. The most
recent settlement from the chancel-
lor, Jeremy Hunt, was an additional
£7.5bn over two years. When Hunt
used to chair the Commons health
select committee, he said at least
£7bn a year more was needed “as a
starting point”.
A spokesperson for the Depart-
ment of Health and Social Care said:
“Nobody should receive substandard
care, and we expect local authorities
and the CQC to hold failing providers
to account.” Councils should spend
the latest funding increase “to ensure
everybody who needs it is able to
receive the highest quality care in
their community”.
The problem also affects NHS-
funded social care. One woman,
whose grandfather is in a “requires
improvement” care home in the
north-east costing £1,000 a week,
said: “I don’t know what the money
is going on because it is not the
residents.”
She said: “His room was dirty,
smelled of pee, the bedding and
towels were dirty and ragged. One
member of staff was sacked for
the way they treated my grandad.
They dragged him out of bed and
wouldn’t listen when he said no. He
was assaulted by another resident
with Alzheimer’s who had been left
Friday 24 March 2023 The Guardian •
to wander the corridors. It has been
‘Decades of chronic devastating to watch his life end this
way. I’m heartbroken.”
underfunding have Some councils won’t place people
meant thousands in “inadequate” homes, but have to
deal with quality collapsing when
making do with people have already been installed.
poor quality care’ A spokesperson for Derbyshire
county council said it managed con-
cerns about care “robustly” and
made plans for affected care homes
Sarah McClinton to “urgently” respond. It can suspend
President, ADASS new placements until improvements
are made, but “often there is nowhere
locally that is a suitable alternative or
that has vacancies”.
Matthew Winnington, the cab-
Councils in England spent nearly inet member for health, wellbeing
£2bn on poor quality care homes and social care at Portsmouth city
last year council, said: “We do not place in
Estimated spending by rating, 2022
care homes rated as inadequate, but
• Inadequate • Requires improvement
we do see ratings change. In these
£m 100 200 300
cases we always try to work with
South-east providers, in cooperation with the
North-west regulator, to support improvements,
East of England alongside an active assessment of risk
London to individuals.”
East Midlands Liverpool city council said it did
South-west
place people in “inadequate” homes
where there had been “improvement
West Midlands
since inspection and serious issues
Yorks & Humber
are being addressed by the provider”.
North-east “Some parts of its market are
presently not supplying the quality
Source: Guardian analysis of Oxygen Finance,
council spending returns, CQC care directory of services we would like to see,” a
and CQC inspection reports spokesperson said.
‘It was so undignified’
Families’ horror at lack of
care and filthy conditions
Robert Booth
Social affairs correspondent
A
fter watching his
girlfriend suffer in a
dementia home so
poor it faced possible
closure, Donald
Hedges reached a
simple conclusion: “It’s a robbery
of taxpayers’ money.”
In common with about a quarter
of a million people in England,
the state paid for Lilian Williams’
care. She lived in the privately
owned Forest Edge care home in
Southampton.
“It was terrible in there,” Hedges
said Williams used to tell him. “She
used to lose her temper with me
and say things like: ‘How would
you like to be in this dump?’”
Williams, 78, a former nurse,
eventually fell and broke her
hip. She is now in a different
home but Forest Edge was bleak.
Last September, Care Quality
Commission (CQC) inspectors
found a urine-soaked mattress
left for days, dirty bathrooms
and broken tables. There weren’t
enough staff, none had completed
their basic care certificate training,
people were left unattended for too
long and there were unwitnessed
falls. Staff tried to confine people to
their chairs using tables.
The inspectors rated the 32-bed
home “inadequate”, “not safe”,
“not effective” and “not well
led”. Another visit in late January
reported some improvements
in response to warnings, but it
remained “inadequate”.
Yet the home’s owners, John
and Linda Hughes, have been
profiting handsomely. Williams’
care was paid for by Southampton
city council, but the Hughes’s
company also received £1.2m from
Hampshire county council to look
after people in the last two years.
Over a similar period the pair
withdrew £652,435 in dividends,
loans and salary, according to
company accounts. These do not
appear to be rewards for good care.
In September 2022 inspectors
heard a person with dementia
crying out from their room: “I want
to get out. I want to go home.” But
staff repeatedly ignored them.
Family visits were often blocked
and residents were seen wringing
their hands and pacing – signs of
unmet needs or untreated pain.
Linda Hughes said the CQC
inspection report “was not a true
reflection of Forest Edge”. She
said the regulator and Hampshire
county council had since visited
“with very positive outcomes on
all issues raised”. Asked about the
owners’ withdrawals of cash, she
said she had “no reason to dispute
your figures”. During Covid the
home had grown “old and tired”,
but upgrades were under way, she
said. “We are very proud of our
home and confident that we will
achieve our ‘good’ rating back in
the next few months.”
Southampton council said when
concerns were raised about a care
home “our aim is to support the
provider to raise the standards of
care and management and to work
with residents to ensure they are in
the most appropriate setting”.
Hampshire county council said
its quality improvement team had
been working with Forest Edge “to
address the failures”.
A spokesperson said that when
it came to moving people out of
▲ Lilian Williams, who lived in the
‘inadequate’ Forest Edge care home
13
 John O’Brien lived in the Silvanna
Court care home, which was rated
‘requires improvement’ by the CQC.
He died in February, aged 79
homes, “continuity of care and
familiarity with an environment”
were important considerations.
The council “will always take
action when alerted to cases of
abuse or harm”, they said.
Forest Edge is not unique. It
is one of hundreds of England’s
worst-rated care homes that is
funded at least in part by hundreds
of millions of pounds coming
from central government grants
and council tax revenues. In
England care homes with the worst
ratings have a significantly greater
proportion of residents being
funded by the state. Conversely, the
best places are much more likely
to be occupied by people who can
afford to pay their own way. The
crisis in England’s care homes bites
deepest on the poorest people.
Social services directors report
little choice in where to send people
as a workforce and funding crises
combine with an ageing population
to leave them struggling to find
enough care home beds. The NHS
and Steve Barclay, the secretary of
state of state for health and social
care, meanwhile, increase the
pressure to discharge people from
hospitals into care homes.
Julie Jenkins has seen the
consequences of poor care with her
father, John O’Brien, whose stay at
Silvanna Court in Essex was paid
for by the county council until his
death, aged 79, in February.
Silvanna Court is operated by
Runwood Homes, a chain owned
by the multimillionaire property
developer Gordon Sanders, but it
is rated “requires improvement”,
and Jenkins’s daughter described
elements of his care as “utterly
disgusting” and “Dickensian”.
On 4 February O’Brien was taken
to hospital in an ambulance after
falling unconscious and suffering
breathing difficulties. His daughter
saw his trousers were filthy and
that he was soaked in urine.
Once admitted to hospital, she
said, the nurse was shocked at his
condition and moved to tears. His
incontinence pad had disintegrated
and it appeared he had not been
changed for 48 hours.
“It was so undignified,” Jenkins
said. “It’s my dad. It’s wrong.”
She understands that Essex
county council (ECC) has been
investigating conditions at Silvanna
Court. The council said it did not
comment on individual cases.
“ECC takes all safeguarding
concerns extremely seriously and it
has an established process in place
to deal with such matters,” it said.
According to council spending
records compiled by Oxygen
Finance and shared with the
Guardian, Essex county council
spent £31.6m on contracts with
Runwood in 2022. Its owner paid
himself at least £21m in five years.
O’Brien’s experience was “raised
as a safeguarding matter with
Essex county council at the time,
in line with the local policy,” a
spokesperson for Runwood said,
adding”: “The safeguarding case
remains open and no outcome has
been issued.”
Friday 24 March 2023 The Guardian
Nigerian politician guilty of plot to
traffic man to Britain for his kidney
Matthew Weaver
A senior Nigerian politician, his wife
and a doctor have been convicted of
organ trafficking, in the first verdict
of its kind under the Modern Slav-
ery Act.
After a six-week trial at the Old
Bailey, Ike Ekweremadu, 60, a for-
mer deputy president of the Nigerian
senate, his wife Beatrice, 56, and Dr
Obinna Obeta, 51, were found guilty
of facilitating the travel of a young
man to Britain with a view to his
exploitation. They criminally con-
spired to bring the 21-year-old Lagos
street trader to London to exploit him
for his kidney, the jury found.
The man, who cannot be named
for legal reasons, had been offered
an illegal reward to become a donor
for the senator’s daughter after kid-
ney disease forced her to drop out of
a master’s degree in film at Newcas-
tle University, the court heard. Sonia
Ekweremadu was found not guilty.
She cried in court as her parents were
sent down from the dock.
In February 2022 the man was
falsely presented to a private renal
unit at the Royal Free hospital in
London as Sonia’s cousin in a failed
attempt to persuade medical staff
to carry out an £80,000 transplant.
For a fee, a medical secretary at the
hospital acted as an Igbo translator
between the man and the doctors to
help try to convince them he was an
altruistic donor, the court heard.
The prosecutor, Hugh Davies KC,
told the court the Ekweremadus
and Obeta had treated the man and
other potential donors as “disposable
Organ trade
Trial exposes
alarming
level of
exploitation
Matthew Weaver
T
he UK’s first organ
trafficking trial has
exposed alarming
vulnerabilities to
an illegal trade that
makes up 10% of
transplants worldwide.
The case has highlighted
how poverty can tempt some
into selling their body parts to
those willing to exploit a global
shortage of organs for donation.
•
National
assets – spare parts for reward”. He
said they entered an “emotionally
cold commercial transaction” with
the man.
The behaviour of Ekweremadu,
a successful lawyer and founder of
an anti-poverty charity who helped
draw up Nigeria’s laws against organ
trafficking, showed “entitlement, dis-
honesty and hypocrisy”, Davies told
the jury.
He said Ekweremadu, who owns
several properties and had a staff of
80, “agreed to reward someone for a
kidney for his daughter – somebody
The court heard that doctors at
a private renal unit at the Royal
Free hospital in London and the
regulators, the Human Tissue
Authority (HTA), were fooled by Dr
Obinna Obeta into approving his
kidney transplant in July 2021.
Obeta paid a 27-year-old street
trader from Lagos for his kidney – a
practice that is almost universally
outlawed. The operation was
approved on the flimsy basis of a
forged Nigerian court document
falsely identifying the man as
Obeta’s cousin and therefore an
altruistic and legal donor. To help
conceal the lie, Obeta also paid a
medical secretary at the hospital,
Evelyn Agbasonu, who acted as an
Igbo translator between the donor
and the clinicians.
The operation was a success,
but it left Obeta £27,000 in debt.
Unable to work in the UK on
his medical visa, Obeta turned
to a powerful family headed
by Ike Ekweremadu, a former
president of the Nigerian senate
and an ally of the former leader
Goodluck Jonathan. Obeta knew
that the senator’s daughter, Sonia
Ekweremadu, suffered kidney
failure. For a fee, Obeta agreed
to find Sonia a kidney donor and
found another Lagos street trader
as a suitable candidate.
At the time the 21-year-old was
making £6 a day selling phone
▲ Sonia Ekweremadu poses for a
photo with her prospective donor
‘We’re clinicians not
the FBI or CIA. We
have no means to
investigate people’
Dr Peter Dupont
Nephrologist
 Dr Obinna
Obeta.
WhatsApp
messages
shown to the ▼ Ike and
court revealed Beatrice
he charged Ekweremadu.
Ekweremadu an The politician
‘agent fee’ and was the founder
‘donor fee’ of of an anti-
about £8,000 poverty charity
and helped draw
up Nigeria’s
laws against
organ trafficking
chargers from a wheelbarrow.
Incriminating WhatsApp messages
to Ike Ekweremadu revealed that
Obeta’s bill included a “donor fee”
of 3.5m naira or £6,200.
Ekweremadu agreed to pay
and arrange the donor’s passport,
visa and travel to London. The
Ekweremadus pretended the man
was Sonia’s cousin and an altruistic
donor. The address on his visa,
which Ekweremadu sponsored,
was listed as the politician’s home
address. The man was controlled
at all stages by Obeta and the
Ekweremadus.
In February 2022 he was
presented to the Royal Free’s
private rental unit as Sonia’s
cousin and a willing donor for
the £80,000 private operation.
Agbasonu again acted as an Igbo
interpreter between the donor and
the clinicians. She asked for £1,500
to “coach” the donor and offer
“relevant interpretation”.
The transplant was declined
by Dr Peter Dupont because the
potential donor did not appear
to understand the medical
implications of the operation. The
doctor also had his doubts that he
15
in circumstances of poverty and from
whom he distanced himself and
made no inquiries, and with whom,
for his own political protection, he
wanted no direct contact”.
Davies added: “What he agreed to
do was not simply expedient in the
clinical interests of his daughter,
Sonia, it was exploitation … It is no
defence to say he acted out of love
for his daughter. Her clinical needs
cannot come at the expense of the
exploitation of somebody in poverty.”
Ekweremadu, who denied the
charge, told the court he was the
victim of a scam. Obeta, who also
denied the charge, claimed the man
was not offered a reward for his kid-
ney and was acting altruistically.
Beatrice denied any knowledge of
the alleged conspiracy. Sonia did not
give evidence.
WhatsApp messages showed to the
court revealed Obeta charged Ekw-
eremadu 4.5m naira (about £8,000)
made up of an “agent fee” and a
“donor fee”.
Ekweremadu and Obeta admitted
falsely claiming the man was Sonia’s
cousin in his visa application and in
documents presented to the hospital.
Davies said Ekweremadu ignored
medical advice to find a donor for
his daughter among genuine fam-
ily members. He said: “At no point
in time was there ever any intention
for a family member close, medium
or distant to do what could be paid
for from a pool of donors.”
The judge, Mr Justice Jeremy John-
son, will pass sentence on 5 May.
The chief crown prosecutor,
Joanne Jakymec, said: “This was a
horrific plot to exploit a vulnerable
victim by trafficking him to the UK
for the purpose of transplanting his
kidney.
“The convicted defendants
showed utter disregard for the vic-
tim’s welfare, health and wellbeing
and used their considerable influence
to a high degree of control through-
out, with the victim having limited
understanding of what was really
going on here.”
was related to Sonia, but he and a
colleague did not raise the alarm.
Dupont told the court: “We’re
clinicians; we’re not the FBI or
the CIA. We have no means to
investigate people.”
It was not until the man fled
to the police in May 2022 that the
plot was discovered.
As the prosecutor, Hugh
Davies, said: “If there’s a lesson to
be learned – those clinicians need
to set the index of suspicion for
safeguarding somewhat lower.” In
what Davies said was a “sinister
development”, the man only
fled to the police over fears he
was being lined up for another
donation, after being measured
up by Dr Chris Agbo, an NHS
consultant kidney specialist who
ran a health tourism business.
In a statement the Royal Free
said: “National guidance for
the clinical assessment of living
donor transplantation, which
applies to both our NHS and
private patients, was followed in
this case and a decision taken not
to go ahead with the procedure.”
The hospital did not comment
on Obeta’s transplant.

16
Clinical
research
Does the pill
increase the
risk of breast
cancer?
Andrew Gregory
Health editor
The use of any type of hormonal
contraceptive may increase the risk
of breast cancer, research from the
University of Oxford has suggested.
Although experts have stressed
this should not discourage people
from taking the pill, the findings
have prompted questions. So how
concerned should people be?
Why was this study done?
It has been well known for
decades that use of combined
• The Guardian Friday 24 March 2023
National
oral contraceptives is associated
with a small increase in breast
cancer risk. But until now there
has been limited data about
the effect of progestogen-only
contraceptives, the use of which
has increased substantially over
the past decade.
In 2020, there were almost as
many prescriptions in England
for oral progestogen-only
contraceptives as for combined
oral contraceptives. Given the
increasing use of progestogen-only
contraceptives, it is important
to understand how their use is
associated with breast cancer risk.
What did the researchers find?
They studied 9,498 women aged
under 50 diagnosed with breast
cancer between 1996 and 2017 to
assess the relationship between a
woman’s recent use of hormonal
contraceptives and their risk of
breast cancer. They also looked at
18,171 healthy women, who acted
as study controls.
Current or recent use of
hormonal contraceptives was
associated with a similarly
increased risk of breast cancer
regardless of whether the
preparation last used was oral
combined, oral progestogen-
only, injectable progestogen,
progestogen implant, or
progestogen intrauterine device.
▲ Breast cancer rates for women on
hormonal contraceptives in their
20s-30s are very low, said the study
20%
Relative increase of breast cancer
risk associated with combined oral
or progestogen-only contraceptives
265
Extra breast cancer cases per
100,000 women aged 35-39 using
combined oral or progestogen-only
The findings suggest that there is
a relative increase of about 20% to
30% in breast cancer risk associated
with current or recent use of either
combined oral or progestogen-only
contraceptives.
What does that mean in
practical terms?
In numerical terms, for every
100,000 women aged 16 to 20
who use progestogen-only or oral
combined contraception there
are an extra eight cases of breast
cancer. For those aged 35 to 39,
there will be about 265 extra cases
in 100,000.
“These findings suggest that
current or recent use of all types of
progestogen-only contraceptives
is associated with a slight increase
in breast cancer risk, similar to that
associated with use of combined
oral contraceptives,” says Kirstin
Pirie, who led the study.
Were there any limitations
to the study?
Yes. The lack of complete
information on a woman’s
prescription history meant
this study was unable to assess
the long-term associations of
contraceptive use on breast cancer
risk, although this should not have
unduly affected the findings.
“It also didn’t factor in whether
a family history of the disease
contributed to their level of risk,”
says Dr Kotryna Temcinaite, head
of research communications at
Breast Cancer Now. “So further
work is needed to help us fully
understand the impact of using
this type of contraception.”
How concerned should people be?
“I don’t really see that there’s
any indication here to say that
women need to necessarily change
what they’re doing,” says Gillian
Reeves, professor of statistical
epidemiology and director of
the cancer epidemiology unit at
Oxford.
“Yes, there is an increase here,
and yes, nobody wants to hear
that something that they’re taking
is going to increase their risk for
breast cancer by 25%.”
But she stressed that when
women are normally taking
hormonal contraceptives, in their
20s and 30s, the rates of breast
cancer are very, very low.
“Breast cancer is rare in young
women,” adds Temcinaite.
“A slight increase in risk during
the time a woman uses hormonal
contraceptive means only a small
number of extra cases of the
disease are diagnosed.”
And for both types of
contraceptives, if you stop using
them, the added risk of breast
cancer reduces over time, she said.
Friday 24 March 2023 The Guardian
Vorderman criticises ‘disgraceful’
behaviour of equalities ministers
Alexandra Topping
Carol Vorderman has hit out at the
“disgraceful” behaviour of govern-
ment equalities ministers, whom
she accused of ignoring the needs of
menopausal women.
The TV personality said she had
been blocked by the minister for
women, Maria Caulfield, on Twitter
after saying that Caulfield “couldn’t
be bothered to turn up” for questions
by a select committee examining the
menopause. Vorderman had accused
Caulfield of “lying” about providing
alternative dates to the women and
equalities committee a week earlier.
The committee said the minister
was invited to attend a session on
the menopause on Wednesday, and
sent her a letter expressing their dis-
appointment they could not get an
answer. They said the only received
a response from the minister on the
dates she was available after the let-
ter was posted on Twitter.
Caulfield in turn tweeted that she
had been “abused” by the presenter.
•
National
▲ Carol Vorderman, pictured, clashed with Maria Caulfield on Twitter
“I am not a punch bag and if you
post misleading information about
me you will be blocked,” she wrote.
“Either you want a meaningful dis-
cussion on Twitter or you just want
to abuse me. You can’t do both.”
The leader of the house, Penny
Mordaunt, defended Caulfield in the
Before the session Caulfield had
posted tweets, which were later
deleted, saying she had sent alter-
native dates a week earlier. This was
contested by committee members.
During the evidence session, Vor-
derman, a patron of the campaign
group Menopause Mandate, also crit-
icised the equalities minister, Kemi
Badenoch, who, in a bad-tempered
exchange during a committee hearing
in March, said the committee mem-
ber Carolyn Harris was “speaking
from a leftwing perspective” by call-
PHOTOGRAPH: KEN MCKAY/ITV/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
ing for a pilot on menopause leave.
Vorderman said Badenoch had
been “patronising” and “insulting”
during a discussion about whether
the menopause should be a protected
characteristic, in which the minister
had compared the request to others
made by carers, single people or those
who had ginger hair or were short.
She said: “These are the two
women in government who are
meant to be representing the female
population. I was disgusted to be
perfectly honest, by both of them,
absolutely disgusted.”
The journalist Mariella Frostrup
Commons, saying she had not been also gave evidence alongside Karen
able to attend the session because she Arthur, the founder of Menopause
had a previous engagement, meeting Whilst Black, and the documen-
women who have a painful condi- tary maker Kate Muir. She described
tion, and had offered the committee the acute shortage of hormone
other dates to attend. She said it was replacement therapy products as an
“shocking” that people had been indication “of a dismal kind of pic-
encouraged to “troll” the minister. ture altogether around menopause”.
17
MPs highlight
lack of diversity
in Stem subjects
Sally Weale
Education correspondent
Children and young people from
black Caribbean backgrounds are
“acutely” underrepresented in the
study of maths, science and technol-
ogy in England at all education levels,
according to a report by MPs.
Fewer black Caribbean students
study triple science than students of
any other background, the report by
the Commons science and technol-
ogy committee says.
It highlights the lack of diversity
in the teaching workforce, pointing
out that an additional 15,655 black
teachers would be needed in order
to bring teacher diversity in line with
that of pupils.
The report also looks at female
underrepresentation in Stem subjects
(science, technology, engineering
and maths). Young women still make
up only 13% of computing A-level
students in England and 23% of phys-
ics students.
The Department for Education was
approached for comment.

18
Ofsted chief ‘deeply sorry’
over death of headteacher
after watchdog’s inspection
Richard Adams
Education editor
Amanda Spielman, the chief inspec-
tor of schools in England, said she was
“deeply sorry” over the death of the
headteacher Ruth Perry, and backed
“legitimate” debate over how Ofsted
inspects schools in the future.
But Spielman rejected calls by local
authorities and school leaders to sus-
pend inspections, defending them as
necessary to help schools improve.
She said: “Ruth Perry’s death was a
tragedy. Our thoughts remain with
Ruth’s family, friends and the school
community at Caversham primary.
I am deeply sorry for their loss. Ahead
of the coroner’s inquest, it would not
be right to say too much. But I will say
that the news of Ruth’s death was met
with great sadness at Ofsted.”
Inspectors visited Perry’s primary
school in Berkshire last year, and told
her it would be downgraded to Ofst-
ed’s lowest ranking because of gaps
in the safeguarding administration.
• The Guardian Friday 24 March 2023
National
▲ Caversham primary headteacher
Ruth Perry, who died in January
Perry’s sister, Julia Waters, said her
family was in no doubt she had taken
her own life in January as a “direct
result” of the pressure of the inspec-
tion, which demoted the school from
outstanding to inadequate.
Other heads plan to stage protests
during inspections, including allow-
ing teachers to wear black armbands
and display photographs of Perry.
Yesterday the National Educa-
tion Union delivered a petition with
52,000 signatures to the Department
for Education, calling for an over-
haul of school inspection. Niamh
Sweeney, the NEU’s deputy general
secretary, said: “It is clearly absurd
that the whole of school life is con-
densed into a single-word judgment.”
Perry’s family has called for an
urgent review of Ofsted, calling its
inspection regime “fatally flawed”.
One headteacher initially threatened
to bar inspectors from entering her
school last week, while others have
stripped logos and inspection grades
from their school publications.
Spielman said: “The sad news
about Ruth has led to an understand-
able outpouring of grief and anger
from many people in education.
There have been suggestions about
refusing to cooperate with inspec-
tions, and union calls to halt them
entirely. I don’t believe that stopping
or preventing inspections would be
in children’s best interests. Our aim
is to raise standards, so that all chil-
dren get a great education.”
Paul Whiteman, the general sec-
retary of the National Association
of Head Teachers, said the refusal
to temporarily suspend inspections
was “a terrible mistake”, describ-
ing Ofsted’s response as “tin-eared”
and lacking in concern for the well-
being of school leaders. “Ofsted has
completely underestimated the
strength of feeling amongst educa-
tional professionals. The warm words
and sympathy they have expressed
are welcome, but they are simply
not enough.”
Man charged
with attempted
murders after
two set alight
Jessica Murray
Midlands correspondent
A man was charged with two counts
of attempted murder yesterday after
two men were set alight in Birming-
ham and London, West Midlands
police said.
Mohammed Abbkr, 28, from Edg-
baston, in Birmingham, is alleged to
have followed the two victims as they
walked home from mosques, sprayed
a substance over them and set them
on fire in two separate incidents.
He appeared at Birmingham mag-
istrates court yesterday morning,
where he was remanded in custody
until the next hearing on 20 April.
Mohammed Rayaz, 70, was set on
fire as he walked home from Dudley
Road mosque in Birmingham at about
7pm on Monday. He remains in hos-
pital with severe burns to his hands
and face. Abbkr was arrested near the
mosque on Tuesday and later arrested
on suspicion of the same offence in
relation to 82-year-old Hashi Odowa
who suffered severe burns to his face
and arms near an Islamic centre in
Ealing, west London.
Officers continue to appeal for
CCTV, doorbell footage or other
video that could help the investiga-
tion. West Midlands police confirmed
counter-terrorism officers were
involved in the investigation but said
they could not speculate on a motive
for the attacks.
Shahbon Hussain, a friend of the
Rayaz family, said family mem-
bers came running out of the house
when they heard him screaming and
a neighbour threw water over him.
“The family are traumatised by what
happened,” he said.
The incident in Ealing occurred at
about 8pm on 27 February. Police said
the suspect engaged Odowa in con-
versation as they left West London
Islamic Centre before allegedly dous-
ing him in a liquid and setting him
alight using a lighter. Police said the
suspect then walked away.
▲ Mohammed Rayaz, 70, remains in
hospital with severe burns to his face
Friday 24 March 2023 The Guardian
RAF strikes
killed 29
civilians in
Iraq and Syria
in two years,
analysis
suggests
Dan Sabbagh
Defence and security editor
Twenty-nine civilians are feared to
have been killed in nine RAF air-
strikes in Iraq and Syria between 2016
and 2018, 10 more than previous esti-
mates, and far higher than the single
non-combatant fatality accepted by
the UK, according to analysis.
In the worst incident, 12 civilians
were accepted as likely to have been
killed in Raqqa, Syria, in 2017 by a US
strike, while research points to an
RAF drone strike killing at least four
members of the same family in Abu
Kamal, Syria, in 2016, according to
•
National
on-the-ground reports. The report’s
authors, the London-based charity
Action on Armed Violence (AOAV),
says the analysis showed the RAF had
“major questions to answer” about
the conduct of the war against Islamic
State (IS). The MoD insisted there was
“no evidence” of civilian casualties.
Earlier this week, a Guardian inves-
tigation identified six RAF airstrikes
in Mosul, Iraq, that killed civilians
during the same period as that cov-
ered by the analysis. The latest data
also examined British bombing in
Syria as part of Operation Shader, the
UK contribution to the war against
IS that began nearly nine years ago.
RAF Typhoons launched an attack
▼ An RAF Typhoon leaves Cyprus on
a sortie in 2015 as part of Operation
Shader against Islamic State
PHOTOGRAPH: MATT CARDY/GETTY IMAGES
on 13 August 2017, purportedly
against enemy fighters operating
mortars. Syrian media reported up
to 12 civilians killed – a figure subse-
quently accepted by the US Central
Command, which has overall respon-
sibility for the campaign against IS.
US Central Command released a
statement, acknowledging dozens
of civilian casualties, mostly from US
strikes, but also referenced the attack
1
The UK has officially only accepted
the RAF killed one civilian in Iraq
and Syria between 2016 and 2018
on Raqqa by date. “Regrettably, 12
civilians were unintentionally killed
and six were unintentionally injured
as a result of the blast,” it stated.
The RAF claims to have only
caused a single civilian fatality in the
fight against IS – during the bombing
of a “group of terrorists” in a vehicle
in March 2018 in Syria’s Euphrates
Valley. However, concerns about that
assertion have lingered for several
years after US admissions and other
leaks. The US says 1,437 civilians
have been “unintentionally killed”
in 35,000 airstrikes.
MPs voted for RAF participation
in strikes against targets in Iraq in
2014 and Syria in 2015, with jets and
drones having flown more than 5,500
combat missions and fired more than
4,300 missiles.
Dr Iain Overton, executive director
of AOAV, said delayed or incomplete
reporting made it hard for independ-
ent groups to assess the impact of
RAF strikes. But, he said, the research
showed “there are some major ques-
tions that the RAF should answer in
relation to civilian harm from its air-
strike missions, questions that all too
often are ignored and rejected”.
An MoD spokesperson said: “The
UK always minimises the risk of civil-
ian casualties through our rigorous
processes and carefully examines a
range of evidence to do this, includ-
ing comprehensive analysis of the
mission data for every strike.”
19
King to hand out
Maundy money
in York service
PA Media
The king is to deliver Maundy money
for the first time as a monarch when
he carries out the ancient ritual in
York next month.
Charles and Camilla, the Queen
Consort, will attend the royal Maundy
service at York Minister on 6 April. He
will present 74 men and 74 women
with specially minted silver coins to
the value of 74p – signifying Charles’s
age – to thank the pensioners for their
service in local communities.
Last year, Charles, as the Prince of
Wales, stepped in to carry out the cus-
tom for the first time, acting on the
late Queen’s behalf after she experi-
enced mobility problems.
The Royal Maundy is an ancient
ceremony that originated in the com-
mandment Christ gave after washing
the feet of his disciples at the Last
Supper, before Good Friday.
Recipients are selected from
Church of England dioceses across
the country, and Anglican and ecu-
menical partners around the UK.
 SILICON VALLEY BANK UK LIMITED MANDATORY REDUCTION AND SHARE TRANSFER INSTRUMENT
The Silicon Valley Bank UK Limited Mandatory Reduction and Share Transfer Instrument 2023
Made --13 March 2023
Coming into force -- 7.00 a.m. 13 March 2023
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MANDATORY REDUCTION: SHARE TRANSFER AND REDUCTION AND CANCELLATION
OF CAPITAL INSTRUMENTS
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GOVERNANCE
Memorandum and Articles of Association
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PART 4
MISCELLANEOUS
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The Governor and Company of the Bank of England
Friday 24 March 2023 The Guardian
‘I’m being punished again’
Man fights to be with son after
‘unlawful’ exclusion from UK
Emily Dugan
Ankara
I
t is raining heavily as
Siyabonga Twala trudges
down the steep pavement
that leads from the British
embassy in Ankara. In a soft
Cheshire accent, he says:
“I don’t mind when it rains, it feels
like home, like.” For almost three
months walking around Turkey’s
capital has been the only way to
keep his mind and body busy while
wondering if he will ever go home
to his British son and family.
Twala’s purgatory began in
Istanbul on 30 December when he
was barred from boarding a flight
to Manchester. He was on his way
back from a holiday to South Africa
with his son, Mason, eight, and
his parents and siblings. The trip
was the first time Twala, 34, had
returned to South Africa since his
family left Durban for Chester when
he was 15.
He had been given indefinite
leave to remain in the UK in 2010.
But the Home Office barred him
from re-entering Britain because of
a conviction in 2018 for cannabis
•
National
possession with intent to supply.
He had no previous criminal record
and served four months of a nine-
month sentence – lower than the
12-month threshold that triggers
automatic deportation.
His case reveals the impact of
the “hostile environment” and the
way it can interact with a justice
system that is much more likely to
send black men to prison for drug
offences. Last year Rishi Sunak
pledged to double deportations of
people convicted of crimes who did
not have citizenship. Many of the
people treated as foreigners have
lived in Britain since childhood and
 Twala in a
Turkish market.
He left South
Africa to live
in Britain at
the age of 15
and was given
indefinite leave
to remain in
the UK in 2010
the policy raises ethical questions
about the effect on British children
whose parents have committed
minor offences.
This week Twala’s lawyer is
submitting fresh evidence to the
Home Office, hoping officials show
clemency. His Turkish visitor’s
visa also runs out this week. “It’s
felt overwhelming, as if I’m being
punished again and again and
again,” Twala says.
When Twala called a Home
Office helpline from Istanbul he
was told they might be able to
help as he was travelling with his
British son. But by the time he got
▼ Siyabonga Twala, who has been
stranded in Turkey since the Home
Office barred his return to the UK
PHOTOGRAPH: TUNAHAN TURHAN/THE GUARDIAN
an appointment at the embassy
Mason had already returned to the
UK with Twala’s parents. At the
embassy the guards would not let
him in. Without a British passport,
they said, his appointment had
been invalidated. “I just had this
sinking feeling … It felt like my life
had ended,” he says.
His lawyer, Nick Hughes, says his
exclusion from the UK is unlawful.
“Exclusion is only for serious
criminality. It’s for behaviour that
encourages or incites terrorism,
for example. It doesn’t apply to
an individual who served four
and a half months of a nine-
month sentence for possession of
cannabis. It’s such a minor offence
with a low risk of harm to the public
to apply such a serious policy to.”
Turkey feels foreign to Twala,
but so does South Africa now.
Stopping in a cafe next to Ankara’s
main square to warm up with a cup
of Turkish black tea, he describes
how he still has nightmares about
his early childhood in a rough
township north of Durban. When
Twala’s father left Durban 20 years
ago to join the NHS as a nurse he
“was working purely to get us out
of there”, Twala recalls. Two years
later the rest of the family joined
him in Chester.
The Twalas no longer have close
family in South Africa and when
they visited in December it was
as tourists. The thought of trying
to build a life there as an outsider
terrifies Twala. “People can tell by
your accent [you’re not local] and
You just become a bit of a target.”
Twala was given a deportation
order when he was released from
prison. His relationship with
Mason’s mother broke down not
21
‘Twala’s exclusion
is unlawful – that’s
only for serious
criminality, not for
a [short] sentence for
cannabis possession’
Nick Hughes
Lawyer for Twala
long after. He qualified as a heavy
goods vehicle driver on leaving
jail and found a steady job. He had
weekends with Mason. When the
family court formalised his role
over this care for Mason, in 2021,
a fresh application to overturn
his deportation was made that
was outstanding when he left
on holiday in December. He says
he had assumed this had been
resolved by a family court order
giving permission for the trip.
Last month the immigration
minister, Robert Jenrick, told
Twala’s MP he was blocked from
returning as he was “considered to
have departed the UK voluntarily”.
Jenrick said the Home Office was
considering his case.
Twala’s family says Mason is
distressed by his father’s absence.
Twala says: “My mum has noticed
a big change in his behaviour.
He’s crying at night and … he’s
been falling asleep in the daytime.
He’s always asking me about my
situation. I’m trying to shield him
… until I hear from the Home Office.
I’ve said, something’s going on so
Daddy might not be coming back
for a little while, but I’m going to
fight as far as I can to be with you.”
The Labour MP Diane Abbott,
who has campaigned on behalf
of Windrush victims, said his
situation demonstrated the
devastating impact of government
policies. “This case is an example
of the hostile environment at its
worst. No consideration given to
the relatively minor nature of the
offence, that Twala has spent most
of his life in Britain, that he has a
British child. And who thinks that
he would have been treated like
this if he was white?”
Twala says the night he was
caught with cannabis in his car he
turned down the chance of a lawyer
at Chester police station as he
wanted to confess. The sentencing
guidelines for possession of a class
B drug with intent to supply begin
with a fine or community order.
This was a first offence for Twala
but he was jailed.
The chances of a black offender
in the UK receiving an immediate
custodial sentence for a drug
offence are 40% higher than for a
white offender, according to the
Sentencing Council.
Like many people with residency
in Britain, Twala never applied for
citizenship due to the prohibitive
cost. In 2015, when he first became
eligible, he had a young son to
support, and fees exceeded £1,000.
A Home Office spokesperson
said: “Foreign national offenders
who exploit our system and
commit crimes here in the UK
will face the full force of the law,
including deportation.”
 • The Guardian Friday 24 March 2023

22
Eyewitness
Friday 24 March 2023 The Guardian •

▼ Surakarta, Indonesia 23
Tarawih prayers on the first evening
of Ramadan at the city’s newly built
Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque
PHOTOGRAPH: ANTARA FOTO/REUTERS

24
Millions protest over
Macron’s pension age
rise, say French unions
Kim Willsher
Paris
Emmanuel Macron felt the full force
of French anger yesterday as demon-
strators gathered to protest against
the pension age being raised from
62 to 64. Unions claimed 3.5 million
people turned out across the coun-
try, while the authorities suggested
the figure was just under 1.1 million.
In Paris, union leaders claimed a
record 800,000 people took part in a
mostly peaceful march through the
city – the police gave the figure as
119,000 – to demand the government
drop the fiercely contested change.
However, the national day of
action was marred by outbreaks of
violence and vandalism. In the south-
western city of Bordeaux, the front
door of the city hall was set on fire
while in Paris police and groups of
protesters clashed late into the night.
In the capital, the official dem-
onstration, made up of a large
cross-section of French society
– young, old, professional, unem-
ployed – set off from Place de la
Bastille in the early afternoon and
made its way to Place de l’Opéra along
the Grands Boulevards.
French union members were
flanked by their own stewards to
ensure their security. The crowd was
angry with the government and pres-
ident, but the mood was also festive
and motivated by a show of solidarity.
Prosecutor accuses Republicans
of meddling in Trump inquiry
Martin Pengelly
New York
The Manhattan district attorney,
Alvin Bragg, yesterday accused
Republicans in the US Congress of
interfering in his investigation of
Donald Trump over hush money paid
to the adult film star Stormy Daniels.
A letter from House Republicans
demanding testimony and docu-
ments relating to the investigation
“only came after Donald Trump cre-
ated a false expectation that he would
be arrested … and his lawyers repeat-
edly urged you to intervene”, Bragg
wrote in a letter of his own.
Such circumstances, he said, did
not represent “a legitimate basis
for congressional inquiry”. Bragg
•••
The atmosphere was soured by
a group of young people called cas-
seurs (smashers), dressed in black and
wearing masks, who had positioned
themselves at the head of the march
and destroyed bus shelters, adver-
tising hoardings, shop windows, the
front of a McDonald’s, and newspa-
per kiosks, leaving a trail of glass and
piles of burning bins in their wake.
They also pulled up grilles around
trees and broke up paving stones,
which they then threw at police.
The worst clashes took place in
Place de l’Opéra and later at Place de
la Bastille where police attempted to
disperse them with teargas.
Elsewhere, a woman reportedly
had part of her hand blown off by a
teargas grenade in the city of Rouen,
where between 14,800 and 23,000
protesters gathered, according to fig-
ures from police and unions. There
published his letter as it became clear
another day would pass without an
indictment of the former US president
for offences relating to the $130,000
(£105,000) payment made in 2016
and potentially including falsifica-
tion of business records, tax fraud
and campaign finance violations.
The grand jury for the case is not
due to meet again until Monday. Last
weekend, amid reports a charge was
imminent, Trump said he expected
to be arrested the next Tuesday. That
day he was not arrested but his aides
said he wanted to be seen in hand-
cuffs and that he had said that if he
were shot while being arraigned that
might help him get re-elected.
Trump is in extensive legal jeop-
ardy as he runs for the Republican
presidential nomination in 2024. An
were large protests in Marseille, Lyon,
Besançon, Rennes and Arles, as well
as other French towns and cities.
Even before the president’s cen-
trist government pushed the pension
changes through parliament last
Thursday, using a constitutional
measure that avoided a vote, record
numbers had taken to the streets.
On Monday, Macron’s administra-
tion narrowly survived a vote of no
confidence – by nine votes – but the
way the law was passed inflamed the
public mood.
Police were braced for a massive
turnout yesterday. Along the route
in Paris, banks and businesses were
boarded up early in the morning and
vanloads of police and gendarmes
were stationed along roads.
Many of the protesters said they
had been galvanised by Macron’s
appearance on television on
 The front door
of Bordeaux’s
town hall was
set alight as a
protest turned
violent last night
PHOTOGRAPH: UGO
AMEZ/SIPA/REX/
SHUTTERSTOCK
indictment is also thought likely in
Georgia, over his election subversion
efforts in the state.
Additionally Trump faces federal
investigations of his election subver-
sion and his retention of classified
records, a New York civil suit over his
business practices, and a defamation
suit arising from an allegation of rape
by the writer E Jean Carroll.
Trump denies all wrongdoing and
claims to be the victim of political
witch-hunts mounted by Black prose-
cutors whom he says are racist. Bragg
▲ The district attorney Alvin Bragg,
who is investigating Donald Trump
The Guardian Friday 24 March 2023
 A street march in Lyon yesterday,
just one of many demonstrations
in cities and towns across France
PHOTOGRAPH: REYNAUD JULIEN/SHUTTERSTOCK
Wednesday in which he said the pro-
tests were “legitimate” but would not
lead to a U-turn on the law, which not
only raises the official retirement age
but requires workers to make con-
tributions to the pension system for
longer. Female protesters said the
new legislation was a double punish-
ment for those who had taken time
out of their careers to raise children
and who were more likely to have
low-paid and menial jobs.
“Everyone is angry. Everyone
thinks this law is unfair, but it par-
ticularly penalises women who are
expected to produce future gener-
ations of the nation, and then find
they are punished for doing so,” said
Marie, 46, a social worker.
Juliette, 51, a teacher, said: “They
want to raise it to 64 today. Will it be
66, 67, 68 tomorrow? Are we to work
until we collapse and are carted off
to the crematorium?”
Many protesters accused the pres-
ident of showing “contempt and
arrogance” for those opposed to the
changes, which were a keystone of
his re-election campaign last year.
Yesterday evening, the interior
minister, Gérald Darmanin, said the
majority of the 103 people arrested
in Paris were “mostly young” and
were known members of “ultra left”
groups. The authorities said more
than 120 police and gendarmes had
been injured. There were no figures
for the number of protesters hurt.
In his 30-minute televised inter-
view on Wednesday, Macron ruled
out the dissolution of parliament, a
reshuffle of his centrist government
and the resignation of his prime
minister, Élisabeth Borne, as the
opposition has demanded.
He said his only regret was “that
I have not succeeded in convinc-
ing people of the necessity of this
reform”.
Spanish PM
is the first Black Manhattan DA and
only the fourth man to fill the post
on a permanent basis since the sec-
ond world war.
The payment to Daniels was to discuss
made by Trump’s lawyer at the time,
Michael Cohen. It was discovered in
2018. Cohen went to jail, in part over Ukraine with
the payment, and turned on Trump.
Bragg’s investigation of what
members of his team have termed a
Xi on visit
“zombie case” has not run smoothly.
Republicans in Congress accused him
of acting politically while neglecting
to China
his city’s crime. They also repeatedly
called him “Soros-backed”, a refer-
ence to donations by the progressive
financier George Soros, a target for Sam Jones
antisemitic invective on the US right. Madrid
Norm Eisen , a former White
House ethics tsar, now a Brookings Spain’s prime minister, Pedro
Institution senior fellow, called the Sánchez, will visit China next week
Republican letter “a transparent to meet President Xi Jinping, where
effort to interfere with the investi- he is expected to stress it will be up to
gation of Trump in New York”, with Ukraine to decide on the foundations
“no legitimate congressional pur- of any peace agreement with Russia.
pose” and “contrary to law”. News of Sánchez’s visit emerged
Friday 24 March 2023 The Guardian
‘Day of disruption’
First judicial change
passes into Israel law
Page 28
on Wednesday evening as Xi – who is
trying to position himself as a medi-
ator in the war between Russia and
Ukraine – wrapped up a symbolic,
two-day trip to Moscow.
Speaking to reporters in Brussels
yesterday as he attended an EU sum-
mit, Sánchez described China as a
“top-tier global actor” and thanked
Xi for the invitation to celebrate the
50th anniversary of Spain and China’s
diplomatic relations.
But he said their meeting would
also “obviously” include discussions
about the “global crisis” caused by
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“I think it’s important to know
firsthand what his position is on
peace in Ukraine, and to tell him
that it is the Ukrainians themselves
who will lay down the conditions for
the beginning of this peace, when it
arrives,” he said.
“Second, the most important – the
most fundamental – thing is to pre-
serve an international rule-based
order, which depends on respecting
•••
Whale meat again?
Japan tries to rebrand
dish via influencers
Page 29
the UN charter. One of those fun-
damental principles is respecting
territorial integrity – in this case the
territorial integrity of Ukraine, which
is being violated by President Putin.”
Sánchez also noted the importance
of Spain being recognised as a possi-
ble diplomatic interlocutor during
what he termed “such a complicated
moment in geopolitical difficulties”.
Spain takes over the EU’s rotating
presidency in July, and Sánchez has
been keen to portray his nation as an
important player on the world stage
and a staunch Nato ally of Ukraine.
A Chinese foreign ministry spokes-
person said yesterday: “China and
Spain enjoy a sustained, sound and
stable development of relations.
The two leaders maintain good
communication.”
In the official joint statement from
the meeting of Vladimir Putin and Xi
on 21 March, the leaders said: “The
Russian side welcomes China’s will-
ingness to play a positive role for the
political and diplomatic settlement
Zelenskiy’s appeal to EU
Volodymyr Zelenskiy renewed his
call for more long-range weapons
from the west, as he addressed EU
leaders meeting in Brussels.
The Ukrainian president was
speaking to the EU summit via
video link, from a moving train in
Ukraine, where he recounted news
from the frontline. On Wednesday,
Zelenskiy visited frontline military
positions near the besieged city of
Bakhmut, where he met Ukrainian
serviceman and held a moment of
silence for those killed in the war.
His account of the “devastating”
scenes was said to be emotional.
According to an EU source, he
warned of five factors that could
prolong the war, including delays
in the delivery of long-range
missiles, lack of modern aircraft
and weaknesses in western
sanctions. Jennifer Rankin
of the Ukraine crisis and welcomes
the constructive proposals set forth
in China’s position on the political
settlement of the Ukraine crisis.”
On 24 February, exactly a year
after Russia launched its invasion
of Ukraine, Xi published a 12-point
position paper purportedly aimed at
offering a way forward for the crisis
in Ukraine.
The paper said the international
community should “create condi-
tions and platforms” for negotiations
to resume, and said China would con-
tinue to “play a constructive role in
this regard”.
It did not offer specific steps but
included strong language oppos-
ing the “threat or use” of nuclear
weapons.
The plan, however, received a cool
reception from western leaders who
argued that Beijing did not have the
international credibility to act as a
mediator in the conflict.
Additional reporting AP
25
Gandhi to
appeal against
verdict in Modi
defamation
Amrit Dhillon
Delhi
A court in India has found the oppo-
sition leader, Rahul Gandhi, guilty of
defamation for a remark implying the
country’s prime minister, Narendra
Modi, was a criminal.
Yesterday, Gandhi, 52, was sen-
tenced to two years in prison but
was granted bail after his lawyers
announced their intention to appeal.
The case stemmed from a remark
made during the 2019 election cam-
paign in which Gandhi, the leading
face of the Congress party, had asked
why “all thieves have Modi as [their]
common surname”.
Modi’s government has been
widely accused of using the law to tar-
get and silence critics, and the case,
in his home state of Gujarat, is one
of several lodged against Gandhi in
recent years.
Gandhi’s lawyer, BM Mangukiya,
told reporters outside the court his
client had not meant to insult anyone.
“When the magistrate asked Gandhi
what he had to say in his defence, the
Congress leader said he was fighting
to expose corruption in the country.
His comments were not meant to hurt
or insult any community.”
Gandhi was greeted by support-
ers when he arrived at court for the
verdict. He faces at least two other
defamation cases elsewhere.
The Congress party’s leader, Man-
ish Tiwari, who is also a supreme
court lawyer and has argued for the
country’s defamation laws to be
decriminalised because they in effect
restrict free speech, said he was sur-
prised by the verdict. “I have yet to
see the judgment but two years is the
maximum sentence possible and I
would like to see why the court gave
it. The remedy now lies with a higher
court,” he said.
Apart from granting bail, the court
also suspended the sentence for one
month to allow Gandhi to appeal.
But according to Indian law, any MP
stands instantly and automatically
disqualified on receiving a two-year
prison sentence. It’s not yet clear how
Gandhi and the Congress party will
handle the sentence.
▲ The opposition leader Rahul
Gandhi was sentenced to two years

26
Australians urged to back plan
to give Indigenous people a say
Josh Butler
Canberra
Australians will be asked to recog-
nise the first peoples of the nation
in a referendum this year, after the
prime minister, Anthony Albanese,
published the final wording of a con-
stitutional amendment.
In an emotional press conference,
featuring personal reflections from
the Indigenous Australians minister,
Linda Burney and other Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander community
leaders, Albanese wiped away tears
as he implored voters and the oppo-
sition to back the referendum. “This
is a modest request. I say to Australia,
don’t miss it,” he said.
The amendment, in a new chapter
in the constitution, would establish
a body known as the Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Voice. The advi-
sory body would be able to make
representations to the parliament
and the “executive government”.
After two days of negotiations
in Canberra, Albanese and the
• The Guardian Friday 24 March 2023
World
government accepted the strong
advice of its working group of Indig-
enous leaders to retain the advisory
body’s power to advise the executive
government, including the cabi-
net and the public service, despite
concerns raised by a small number
of conservative critics who fear it
smacks of “co-governance”.
In a press conference in Canberra
alongside Burney and the attor-
ney general, Mark Dreyfus, as well
as Indigenous Labor MPs, Albanese
became emotional at several points,
choking back tears. Several other
members of the group also wiped
tears and embraced one another.
“I want to thank sincerely all the
members of the working group and
all who have engaged with them,”
Albanese said. “For many, this
moment has been a very long time
in the making.”
The legislation will be introduced
to parliament next Thursday and be
sent to a parliamentary committee
for inquiry. Albanese said there was
no circumstance in which the gov-
ernment would back down on its
plan to hold a referendum in the final
three months of the year. “You only
win when you run on the field and
engage,” Albanese said.
The amendment is near-identical
to that suggested by Albanese at the
Garma Indigenous festival last year.
Advice from the working group said
the reference to executive govern-
ment should be retained, but one
small change clarifies that the par-
liament has “broad scope” to make
laws relating to the Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Voice.
The working group said the advi-
sory body would be “an unflinching
▲ An emotional Anthony Albanese
addresses the news conference
source of advice” to parliament and
decision-makers.
The details of the new body, such
as how many members it has and Sleeping
how they will be chosen, will be
decided after a successful referen-
dum. The working group released a
cuties
Children
broad set of principles, including that are taught
its membership would be chosen by the correct
Indigenous people in a way that suits
local communities, it would be repre- posture for
sentative on geographic and gender falling asleep
measures, it would be accountable on World
and transparent, work alongside
existing organisations, and not run Sleep Day at
any programmes or have veto power. a kindergarten
Langton, who co-designed a 2019 in the city of
report outlining a “voice” to par-
liament under the former coalition
Shijiazhuang,
government, denied claims from in China.
critics that the advisory body would
not improve the lives of Indigenous
people. “We’re here to draw a line in
the sand and say, this has to change.
People’s lives have to improve,” she
said. “We know from the evidence
that what improves people’s lives is
when they get a say. And that’s what
this is about.”
Albanese acknowledged the chal-
lenge of referendums succeeding in
Australia, with only eight of 44 since
federation being successful. “If you
were just about positioning on poli-
tics as usual, I might not do this. But
the people here can’t wait,” he said,
referring to the Indigenous leaders PHOTOGRAPH: REX/
gathered behind him. SHUTTERSTOCK
Friday 24 March 2023 The Guardian •

27

Man ‘lost zest for A video deposition from a neuro-

life’ after Paltrow
ski crash, says
brain expert
Associated Press
The daughter of the man who is suing
Gwyneth Paltrow over a 2016 ski
crash said seeing her father’s condi-
tion in the months after the incident
was like a “slap in the face”.
Polly Sanderson-Grasham, one of
76-year-old Terry Sanderson’s two
daughters, testified yesterday during
the third day of the trial in Park City,
the Utah ski resort where Sanderson
accuses Paltrow of skiing so reck-
lessly in the 2016 incident that she
crashed into him, breaking his ribs
and leaving him with brain injuries.
As the trial took on an increasingly
personal tone Polly Sanderson-
Grasham said that following the
crash, her father was unable to “see
the forest for the trees” and got “lost
in the minutiae” of things. She said
seeing the state of her father at his
granddaughter’s graduation around
three months after the ski crash had
been like a “slap in the face”.
psychologist who treated Sanderson
was the first to be shown yesterday.
Dr Alina Fong cast aspersions on the
testimony of medical experts hired
by Paltrow’s legal team and argued
she was better suited to speak
about Sanderson’s post-concussion
symptoms.
“A lot of the experts are opining,”
Fong said. “I feel like I’m the best
judge of what happened to him.”
Fong said that when she saw
Sanderson less than a year after the
accident, he had lost his love for life.
He was often dejected and crying,
she said. Under her care, Fong added,
Sanderson worked tirelessly to reha-
bilitate post-concussion symptoms
including pain, headaches and mood
shifts. Sanderson is suing Paltrow for
$300,000. In a counterclaim, Paltrow
is seeking $1 and attorney fees.
Additional reporting PA Media
▲ Gwyneth Paltrow is being sued
over the ski crash at a Utah resort

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28
Scores arrested in Israeli
protests as parliament
passes judicial changes
Bethan McKernan
Jerusalem
Israel’s two-month-old protest move-
ment took to the streets for a “day of
disruption” as the parliament passed
the first part of the hardline govern-
ment’s controversial judicial changes
into law.
The legislation, designed to protect
the position of the prime minister,
Benjamin Netanyahu, was approved
early yesterday, after a heated all-
night debate, by 61 votes to 47 – the
minimum majority required.
Yesterday evening, Netanyahu
made a televised address to the
nation in which he called for unity,
pledging to protect civil rights and
democracy.
“Until now, my hands were bound.
Now, I am getting involved,” he said,
referring to a now obsolete decision
from the attorney general’s office
banning him from involvement in
the judicial overhaul on the grounds
• The Guardian Friday 24 March 2023
World
of potential conflict of interest given
his ongoing corruption trial.
The prime minister’s remarks
came at the end of a dramatic day in
Israel, in which the societal, constitu-
tional and political crises the judicial
overhaul has triggered were clearly
on show.
According to the first part of the
proposals passed yesterday, Israel’s
attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara,
is in effect no longer capable of declar-
ing Netanyahu unfit for office, even if
she believes he is attempting to use
the judicial overhaul to overturn his
criminal charges. The prime minister
denies all the allegations against him.
Israel’s newly elected government,
made up of far-right and religious par-
ties, introduced the amendment last
month after the Baharav-Miara deci-
sion, fearing the attorney general may
declare Netanyahu “incapacitated”.
Commenting on the passing of the
“incapacitation bill”, the opposition
chairperson, Yair Lapid, said: “Like
thieves in the night, the coalition
has now ratified a contemptible and
corrupt personal piece of legislation
against a ludicrous rumour.”
Speculation that Netanyahu might
be announcing a pause in the legis-
lative process in his evening address
‘The coalition has
ratified a corrupt
and contemptible
piece of legislation’
Yair Lapid
Israeli opposition leader
▼ Protesters dressed as Israeli pilots
demonstrate against the judicial
changes in Tel Aviv yesterday
PHOTOGRAPH: JACK GUEZ/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
yesterday was quickly put to rest after
the defence minister, Yoav Gallant,
was summoned to the prime minis-
ter’s private residence in Jerusalem
beforehand and dissuaded from mak-
ing a public statement calling on the
government to freeze the overhaul.
While Israeli media have reported
that Netanyahu – taken aback by the
scale of the opposition to the plans –
is open to compromise, he appears
to be hostage to his coalition’s junior
far-right partners, who have threat-
ened to bring down the government
if their demands are not met.
The two architects of the changes –
the Likud party justice minister, Yariv
Levin, and extremist MK Simcha
Rothman, who chairs the Knesset’s
law and justice committee – have
vowed to pass the most important
elements of the far-reaching propos-
als before the Knesset breaks up next
week for the Passover holiday.
Critics, however, have raised fears
of democratic backsliding, with sig-
nificant pressure coming from the
hi-tech sector, the military and Isra-
el’s US allies. Palestinian citizens of
Israel, as well as those living under
military rule in the occupied terri-
tories, have long questioned Israel’s
democratic character.
Demonstrations against the pro-
posals began in January in Tel Aviv,
evolving into the biggest protest
movement in Israel’s history. Gather-
ings drawing hundreds of thousands
of people have taken place in every
Israeli city. Several additional “days
of disruption” have blocked major
motorways and resulted in clashes
in which police have used mounted
officers, stun grenades and water can-
non to disperse protesters.
The protests appear to be grow-
ing more intense. Yesterday, at least
75 people across the country were
arrested, including 18 who police
said sprayed red paint and blocked an
entrance to a police station in south-
ern Tel Aviv, and one person who
allegedly used a flagpole to hit Avi
Dichter, a minister and senior mem-
ber of Netanyahu’s Likud party, in an
incident near Ben Gurion airport.
Friday 24 March 2023 The Guardian
‘Keep an open mind’
Japan tries to put
whale meat back on
the tourist menu
Justin McCurry
Osaka
T
he anticipation is
building in the private,
tatami-mat room at
Murasaki, a restaurant
in Osaka. At one end sit
a handful of Japanese
journalists; at the other, executives
from the country’s biggest whaling
company and officials from the
travel industry.
In the middle, six influencers
from Thailand, France, Russia
and South Korea take their
places around a hori-zataku table
and wait for the first of several
courses devoted to Japan’s most
controversial cuisine: whale meat.
Over the next two hours they
will eat dishes – simmered, grilled,
deep-fried and raw as sashimi –
made from the mammal’s jaw,
stomach, ribs, tail, cheek and back,
although it appears they have
been spared another cetacean
delicacy: the penis. By the end of
the banquet, their hosts hope they
will take the industry’s message to
their followers: that after decades
of hiding in the culinary shadows,
whale meat is delicious, and eating
it a socially acceptable part of the
tourist itinerary.
The evening began with a pep
talk from Hideki Tokoro, chief
executive of Kyodo Senpaku,
Japan’s biggest whaling company,
who claimed that hunting whales,
which consume the equivalent of
4% of their body weight every day,
helped protect the marine food
chain. “We need to control the
whale population to protect the
ecosystem,” Tokoro said. “It’s about
being responsible consumers.”
Kyodo Senpaku is trying to
change the negative narrative
surrounding whale meat, including
engaging with those it once
viewed with suspicion. “Times
have changed and we want to be
absolutely transparent … that
includes talking openly with the
international media,” a company
spokesperson, Konomu Kubo, told
the Guardian, which declined offers
of food and drink at the event.
Japan’s whaling industry has
failed to convince domestic
consumers to make whale meat a
regular part of their diet. Once a
staple source of protein during food
shortages after the second world
war, consumption declined from
the 1970s as pork, chicken and beef
became more affordable.
Masa, the event’s host, asked the
participants – some of whom were
eating the dish for the first time –
•
World
to “keep an open mind”. As staff
brought out plates of deep-fried
kushiage with a dipping sauce, he
spoke glowingly of whale meat’s
nutritional benefits.
“It’s lower in calories and higher
in protein than chicken,” Masa said,
while acknowledging there was
a resistance to eating “unusual”
foods in countries where they are
not a part of the regular diet.
The event was part of a public
relations campaign by the whaling
industry, four years after Japan’s
whalers left the Southern Ocean
to focus on hunting cetaceans
in coastal waters, where Kyodo
Senpaku catches 25 sei whales and
187 Bryde’s whales a year.
For decades, Japan’s “scientific”
whaling programme was
synonymous with confrontations
with activists on the high seas,
rancorous meetings of the
International Whaling Commission
[IWC], and criticism from Australia
and other anti-whaling nations.
Now, though, whale meat is
being touted as a tourist attraction,
with suppliers and restaurants
working in tandem with the Japan
Travel Bureau to win over sceptical
visitors in anticipation of a sharp
rise in tourism after the lifting of
Covid-19 travel restrictions.
In January, Kyodo Senpaku
caused anger among animal rights
campaigners when it started selling
whale meat from vending machines
in an effort to boost consumption,
with as many as 100 sites planned
29
 The Murasaki, over the next five years. The Whale
an Osaka and Dolphin Conservation group
restaurant that described the venture as a “chilling
specialises in marketing move” designed to
whale meat “protect a failing industry” that
PHOTOGRAPHS:
JUSTIN MCCURRY/
THE GUARDIAN
received more than 5bn yen (£32m)
in subsidies from the Japanese
government in 2020. “Past efforts
to increase consumption have
▼ Social media
influencers from
France, Russia,
included putting the meat into
school lunches,” the group said.
“But lack of demand has meant that
Thailand and it ends up in dog food.”
South Korea
try a variety
of whale meat
As he studied the second
course – a kaiseki-style selection
that included cheek meat in sake
delicacies lees and tailfin in plum sauce –
Amine Habes, a French YouTuber,
conceded that not all of his
compatriots could stomach the
thought of eating whale meat.
“It’s part of Japanese culture, so
I understand why it’s eaten here,
and personally I respect that and
want to try it. But it’s controversial
in France. Not everyone is open-
minded about it.”
A plate of sashimi – slivers of
white and red meat taken from
the lower jaw and tail – arrived
with instructions from the head
chef to wait until it had melted
slightly before eating it with soy
sauce and grated ginger. “It tasted
a little like raw beef,” said Sasha,
a Russian influencer.
Tokoro blamed low domestic
demand on the controversy
surrounding Japan’s now-
abandoned expeditions to
the Antarctic. “You don’t find
whale meat in many Japanese
supermarkets because they
came under a lot of pressure
from powerful anti-whaling
campaigners,” he said. “Now
those groups aren’t as active … so
we’re trying to change perceptions
of whale meat and get more
supermarkets to sell it.”
In 2014, the international court
of justice ordered a halt to the
expeditions after concluding
the hunts were not, as Japan had
claimed, for scientific research.
Five years later, Japan pulled
out of the IWC and announced it
would end the Antarctic hunts,
but resume whaling in its coastal
waters. Now, Japanese whalers
 The tasting ▼ A poster at are permitted to catch about 200
menu included the Murasaki whales in the country’s exclusive
whale jaw, restaurant economic zone, though some
stomach, ribs, shows the many concede that they are struggling
tail and cheek, cuts of whale to survive, partly owing to lack
but spared the meat along of demand among Japanese
influencers with the consumers who prefer to get their
one cetacean multitude of protein elsewhere.
delicacy: uses for almost Pimprapa Uematsu, a blogger
the penis every body part and YouTuber from Thailand, said
she would encourage her followers
to try whale meat and have a
“special experience” during their
visit to Japan. “We also eat things
in Thailand that other people don’t
eat … you have to be open-minded.”
As they prepared to leave, the
diners, armed with gift bags of jerky
and canned whale meat, wondered
how they would describe their
culinary adventure online.
Mehdi Fliss, a travel blogger
from France, said: “I’m trying to
be objective and want to tell my
followers that they should see
the issue through other people’s
eyes. As long as I deal with the
facts, I think it will be OK. But
I’m definitely prepared for some
negative feedback.”
How your £90 can feed people who are going hungry
Friday 24 March 2023 The Guardian
After Bolsonaro,
Lula aims to show
China that Brazil
is ‘back to normal’
Tom Phillips
Rio de Janeiro
One of them wants the world to
know his country is battling its way
back to its former glory after three
years of zero-Covid lockdowns and
a long and humiliating history of
foreign exploitation.
The other wants to signal his
country is bouncing back from four
chaotic years under a far-right pop-
ulist who took a sledgehammer to its
place in the world.
The two revival-seeking politi-
cians – China’s leader, Xi Jinping,
and the Brazilian president, Luiz
Inácio Lula da Silva – will meet in
Beijing next week during a high-pro-
file tour that is part of Lula’s efforts
to repair his country’s overseas
reputation after Jair Bolsonaro’s era
of antagonism and isolation.
Lula’s 26-31 March visit – on which
he will take scores of the most power-
ful figures in Brazilian politics,
industry and agribusiness – comes
hot on the heels of trips to the US and
Argentina, Brazil’s most important
trade partners after China.
The political scientist Cláudio
•
World
Couto said those trips were designed
to emphasise how sensible, stable
government had returned to South
America’s biggest economy after
four topsy-turvy years during which
Bolsonaro insulted and alienated
allies from Paris to Beijing.
“The top message is that Brazil is
back to normal,” Couto said, recalling
the repeated anti-China attacks from
Bolsonaro and his allies.
Margaret Myers, a specialist in
China-Latin America relations from
the Wilson Center thinktank in Wash-
ington, said she suspected Beijing
would be delighted at the return
of Lula, an affable pragmatist who
made two state visits there during his
first presidency, from 2003-11. Myers
recalls chummy photographs of Lula
and China’s then leader, Hu Jintao,
splashed over Chinese magazine
covers. “There was this sort of love
affair with Lula that I’d never really
seen – certainly not with any other
Latin American presidents and few
others,” she said.
“So this will be [viewed as] a bit of a
homecoming … and an effort to dem-
onstrate that this relationship is not
only alive and well but thriving … He
will be met with a lot of excitement.”
Thriving ties with Beijing are
crucial to Brazil’s 77-year-old
leader, who managed to bankroll
transformational social programmes
during his first stint in power in part
thanks to China’s insatiable appetite
for commodities such as soy beans
and iron ore.
The visit will also bolster Xi’s
campaign to position himself as
a global statesman and would-be
peacemaker determined to stamp
China’s mark on world affairs from
eastern Europe to the Middle East and
Latin America.
“They are useful to one another,”
the international relations professor
Matias Spektor said of Lula and Xi.
“In Lula’s case, it helps [send a
message] to a domestic audience, to
other South American countries and
the US that Brazil is back. And from Xi
Jinping’s point of view it also shows
that even in a region like Latin Amer-
ica China has leverage.”
The scale of Lula’s visit will be
less thrilling to Washington given
the dismal state of US-China ties
and what analysts call the Brazilian’s
underwhelming call on Joe Biden in
the White House last month.
“It was a very frustrating visit,”
said Spektor, a visiting scholar at
Princeton University.
Despite hopes that Biden and
▲ The visit will boost Xi Jinping’s
push to be seen as a global statesman
▼ Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva shakes
hands with Hu Jintao during their
meeting in Beijing in 2009
PHOTOGRAPH: JASON LEE/GETTY IMAGES
Lula would bond over the battles
against climate change and polit-
ical extremism, Spektor said the
Brazilian delegation had been disap-
pointed by the level of funds offered
to help combat Amazon deforesta-
tion, which soared under Bolsonaro.
The lack of US enthusiasm for
Lula’s offer to help broker peace
between Moscow and Kyiv also irked
the Brazilians.
“The Brazilian side was so
dissatisfied with what it got from
the American side that Lula took the
decision to meet Biden’s enemies in
the Democratic party [Bernie Sanders
and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] before
meeting Biden himself,” Spektor said.
Lula’s trip to Beijing and Shang-
hai – which China’s foreign ministry
claims “will open up new prospects
in China-Brazil relations” – is set to be
a far more extravagant affair.
“Lula is giving enormous political
importance to this trip – much more
than the trip to the US … Even if he
isn’t trying to send a message [to the
US], he ends up sending one,” said
Spektor, who added that believed
Brazil’s strategy was to play the
world’s two largest economies
against each other.
Lula has insisted he is not taking
sides in the conflict between Wash-
ington and Beijing. “I’m not going to
get into a cold war with anyone,” Lula
said last month, claiming he wanted
“splendid” relationships with both.
But Spektor said that by undertak-
ing a high-profile tour of China after
such a lacklustre visit to the US, Lula
risked signalling to Washington that
he was aligning himself with Beijing.
“This wouldn’t be correct. This
isn’t the intention of Lula’s govern-
ment,” Spektor said. “But there is the
risk that this is how it will be inter-
preted in Washington.”
31
DeSantis forced
to retreat over
his ‘territorial
dispute’ remark
on Ukraine war
Martin Pengelly
New York
Ron DeSantis has reversed his position
on Ukraine after facing widespread
criticism for calling the Russian
invasion a “territorial dispute”.
Speaking to Fox Nation, DeSantis,
the governor of Florida and a prob-
able contender for the Republican
presidential nomination, said his
“territorial dispute” remark had been
“mischaracterised”.
“Obviously, Russia invaded – that
was wrong,” he said. “They invaded
Crimea and took that in 2014 – that
was wrong.” DeSantis also called
Vladimir Putin a “war criminal”.
The international criminal court
(ICC) has issued a warrant for the
Russian president’s arrest. Although
the US is not a member of the ICC,
President Biden has said the move
was justified.
DeSantis said: “I don’t know about
that route, but I do think that he
[Putin] should be held accountable.”
Although he has not declared a
run for the presidency, DeSantis is
the only close challenger to Don-
ald Trump in polling and is widely
expected to enter the race this spring.
He made his “territorial dispute”
remark in an answer to the Fox News
host Tucker Carlson. The remark
aligned DeSantis with Trump but
prompted fierce criticism across
the political spectrum. Reed Galen,
a Republican strategist turned
anti-Trump campaigner, said on
Wednesday, : “DeSantis is a conven-
tional politician. They’re polling like
mad and found his Ukraine position
is unpopular with general election
Republicans. Also, donors hate it.”
DeSantis has also been criticised
for favouring media outlets owned
by Rupert Murdoch. Fox Nation and
the New York Post, which published
excerpts of the interview, are Mur-
doch properties.
On his “territorial dispute” remark,
DeSantis said: “What I’m referring to
is where the fighting is going on now,
which is that eastern border region [of
the] Donbas, and then Crimea, and
you have a situation where Russia has
had that. I don’t think legitimately,
but they had. There’s a lot of ethnic
Russians there. So that’s some diffi-
cult fighting, and that’s what I was
referring to.
“And so it wasn’t that I thought
Russia had a right to that, and so if
I should have made that more clear,
I could have done it. But I think the
larger point is, OK, Russia is not show-
ing the ability to take over Ukraine, to
topple the government or certainly to
threaten Nato. That’s a good thing.
“I just don’t think that’s a suffi-
cient interest for us to escalate more
involvement. I would not want to see
American troops involved there. But
the idea that I think somehow Rus-
sia was justified – that’s nonsense.”

32
Bank of England raises interest rate for
11th time in row after jump in inflation
Richard Partington
Economics correspondent
The Bank of England has raised inter-
est rates by a quarter of a percentage
point to 4.25% in response to higher
than expected UK inflation and signs
that Britain’s economy is holding up
better than feared.
In a fortnight of heightened unease
in global financial markets, the Bank’s
monetary policy committee (MPC)
voted by a majority of seven to two
to increase the base rate for the 11th
time in a row.
It came after an unexpected jump
in the UK inflation rate in February
to 10.4%, up from 10.1% in January,
fuelled by food prices increasing
at the fastest pace in 45 years. The
Bank’s official inflation target is 2%.
Q&A
What the
rise means
for your
finances
Rupert Jones
The Bank of England has yet
again raised interest rates, this
time by 0.25 percentage points,
taking the base rate to 4.25% in
the 11th rise since December 2021.
So what does this mean for your
finances?
How will it affect
mortgage payments?
Yesterday’s move is yet another
blow for the approximately 2.2
million people on a variable-rate
mortgage, whose monthly bills
have been ratcheted up.
Roughly half of those are
either on a base-rate tracker or
discounted-rate deal. The other
half pay their lender’s standard
variable rate (SVR).
A tracker directly follows the
base rate, so your payments will
almost certainly soon reflect
the full rise. On one now at 5%,
the rate would rise to 5.25%,
adding £21 a month to a £150,000
• The Guardian Friday 24 March 2023
The pound rose against the dollar
as financial markets moved to antici-
pate one more quarter-point increase
at the MPC’s next meeting, in May.
However, economists said a 12th and
final rate increase to 4.5% hung in the
balance amid signs inflation would
fall sharply over the coming months.
Rates have now risen by 4.15 per-
centage points since December 2021,
the most aggressive tightening of UK
monetary policy for decades.
Andrew Bailey, the Bank’s gover-
nor, said there were signs the price
spiral was “peaking”, telling broad-
casters: “But of course it’s far too
high. We think it’s going to come
down sharply, really from the early
summer onwards. But we haven’t
seen that happen yet.”
In an upbeat assessment, the Bank
said it was no longer forecasting a
repayment mortgage with 20 years
remaining, moving the monthly
payment from £990 to £1,011.
As recently as last June, the
person in this example would have
been paying £776 a month – so their
home loan bill has jumped by 30%
in nine months.
SVRs change at the lender’s
discretion, but most will go up,
though not necessarily by the full
0.25 points. Some lenders may take
some time to announce their plans.
The average SVR has now gone
above 7% for the first time since
October 2008, according to the
data provider Moneyfacts, so most
people on one should probably
switch to something cheaper.
What about new mortgages?
It’s been a rollercoaster time for
anyone looking for a new fixed-rate
mortgage. New fixes had already
been getting more expensive after
interest rates started their upwards
journey, but they really shot up
after Kwasi Kwarteng’s disastrous
mini-budget last September. By
late October, the average new two-
year fixed loan had hit 6.65%.
Since then, lenders have
been gradually reducing the
cost of their new fixed rates. As
a result, the average new two-
year fix stood at stood at 5.3%
yesterday, according to the website
Moneyfactscompare.co.uk.
However, there are best-buy
deals available that are quite a bit
cheaper than that, particularly for
those with a lot of equity in their
property or able to stump up a
sizeable deposit. Yesterday, new
two-year fixes for those looking
to remortgage could be picked up
from 4.26% from Lloyds, which
was also offering five-year fixes
technical recession, in which the
economy shrinks for two consecutive
quarters. UK GDP was now probably
on track to grow slightly in the second
quarter of the year, after a previously
forecast 0.4% drop in activity.
“Back at the beginning of Febru-
ary, we were really on a bit of a knife
edge as to whether there would be
a recession. Certainly we thought
the economy would be quite stag-
nant,” Bailey said. “It’s not off to the
races, let’s be clear. But I’m a bit more
optimistic.”
Central banks on both sides of the
Atlantic have pushed ahead with rate
increases despite the collapse of Sil-
icon Valley Bank, and the rescue of
Credit Suisse. The US Federal Reserve
raised its benchmark interest rate on
Wednesday by a quarter of a percent-
age point to a range of 4.75% to 5%.
starting at 3.89%. Halifax, HSBC
and NatWest also had five-year
fixes priced at just below 4%.
Mark Harris, the chief executive
of the mortgage broker SPF Private
Clients, said borrowers might be
tempted to wait for rates to fall
further, “but there is a danger
that they might not, and trying
to predict interest rates can be a
dangerous game”.
What if I’m already struggling
with payments?
The most recent UK Finance
data shows there were 75,170
homeowner mortgages in arrears
in the final three months of 2022,
which was up 1% on the previous
three-month period.
On home repossessions, how
good or bad things are depends
on whose data you look at and
how you interpret it. UK Finance
said 500 homeowner mortgaged
properties were taken into
possession in the fourth quarter
of 2022, which it added was down
29% on the previous quarter.
However, the most recent
Ministry of Justice figures for
England and Wales showed a
marked increase in mortgage
repossessions, with 733 in October
to December last year – up 134% on
the same quarter in 2021, it said.
However, comparisons with past
periods are tricky as there was a
ban on home repossessions for a
time during the pandemic. There
were only 10 repossessions from
April 2020 to March 2021.
It is worth remembering that
repossessions topped 9,000 in the
first three months of 2009, in the
aftermath of the 2007-08 financial
crash, so things are very different
now. Commentators have said that
the 2008 financial crisis, adding that
he was confident the banks in the UK
were in a much stronger position than
15 years ago.
Economists have said the turmoil
in the global banking system has the
potential to further weigh on the UK
economy, reducing the need for fur-
ther interest rate rises at a time when
headline inflation is already expected
The Bank of England said it was to fall sharply.
closely monitoring the economic Two of the MPC’s external mem-
effect of the turbulence in the bank- bers, Silvana Tenreyro and Swati
ing industry, adding that it would Dhingra, voted against the rate rise,
issue a full assessment in its next saying higher borrowing costs were
update on the economy in May. weighing on the economy in a way
Bailey said he did not believe the that could bring forward the point at
global economy was facing a repeat of which rate cuts would be required.
David Blanchflower, a former
4.25%
member of the MPC, said the rise was
a “disastrous error” that could con-
tribute to a recession.
The new base rate yesterday, with “If you look at the Bank’s own fore-
economists divided over whether casts, with what I’ve just said is [a]
a 12th rise was likely or desirable huge tightening in financial condi-
tions around the world, they should
10.4%
be cutting rates,” he told the BBC.
“So this is a big incoherence. And
the problem is going to be, the data is
The annual UK inflation rate in going to actually swamp them, and I
February, a surprise jump of think what you’re going to see is rapid
0.3 points from January’s figure U-turns.”
 Fortuneswell,
in Dorset.
Another rise in
interest rates
will have an
impact on the
housing market
PHOTOGRAPH:
GRAHAM HUNT /
ALAMY LIVE NEWS
‘Trying
to predict
interest
rates
can be a
dangerous
game’
Mark Harri
SPF Private
Clients
Friday 24 March 2023 The Guardian
FTSE 100 All share
-67.24 - 31.80
7499.60 4090.90
The rate change comes amid signs
that the acceleration in wage growth
since the end of the Covid pandemic
has come to a halt in recent months,
despite continuing labour shortages
in several sectors of the economy.
The Bank said measures taken by
the chancellor in last week’s spring
budget could put a brake on short-
term inflation. The extension of the
energy price cap at £2,500 for an aver-
age household bill is expected to
lower inflation by about one percent-
age point, while freezing fuel duty
would contribute a further third of a
percentage point drop. There has also
been a sharp drop in global energy
prices over recent months, and the
impact of the initial surge in prices
after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a
year ago will soon drop out of the
annual inflation figures.
“Assuming these trends continue
then we think a pause [in rate hikes]
in May is likely,” said James Smith,
an economist at the Dutch bank
ING. “That’s also partly dependent
on banking sector stability and like
its peers overseas, the BoE will keep
reiterating that it has separate tools
that are better suited to maintaining
financial stability.”
•
Dow Indl Nikkei 225 £/€ £/$
+139.11 - 47.00 1.1315 1.2322
32169.22 27419.61 -0.0019 +0.0091
Analysis inflation show it declining rapidly
this year, mostly in response to
Phillip Inman a dramatic fall in energy costs.
While wholesale gas prices are
expected to be double the pre-
Slowing wage
pandemic level next year, they will
have fallen back from the fivefold
increase in 2022.
Strong wages growth, which
growth and gas for more than a year has been the
central bank’s main worry, began
to wane in November and has been
prices signal largely flat ever since. By next
spring the consumer prices index
will be below the 2% target level.
this is the limit On this most forecasters agree.
So why carry on raising rates now
when the job is done?
T
This point persuaded the Bank’s
asked with striking a monetary policy committee
balance between the members Silvana Tenreyro and
unexpected increase Swati Dhingra to vote against a
in February’s inflation rate rise from 4%, just as they had
numbers and concerns objected to the increase from 3.5%
about a new banking in February.
crisis, the Bank of England has The remaining seven MPC
voted for an 11th consecutive rate members, including the governor,
rise. The question now is whether Andrew Bailey, indicated that
it will opt for a 12th. the strength of the economy
Markets are pricing in a further underpinned their decision for a
small increase to 4.5%. However, further base rate increase to 4.25%.
a glance at the forecasts for According to this view, upwards
pressure on inflation could come
from the economy’s moderately
improved resilience. For instance,
it was eye-catching that a previous
Bank forecast of a fall of 0.4% in
gross national product during
the second quarter of 2023 was
torn up by the MPC in favour of
an expectation that GDP would
“increase slightly”.
Most of this extra buoyancy can
be attributed to the extension of
the energy price guarantee from
April to July, which will protect
household incomes and consumer
spending during the summer.
At 0.25%, this was the smallest
increase since June 2022. The MPC
minutes suggest another after this
one is unlikely. To some extent, it
shows a commitment to bringing
down inflation while not turning
the screw too much more.
That might seem palatable inside
Threadneedle Street, but the MPC
risks having already overtightened
and that this rise just makes the
situation for households and
businesses that much worse.
The minutes don’t say it, but
it would take quite a leap for the
Bank to push through another rise.
it typically takes two years to
repossess a home, and that this is
very much seen as a last resort.
Will house prices crash?
One of the key drivers of property
prices is how much people can
borrow, so higher costs will have
a big impact.
In recent months some of the
big indices have shown price
falls, but lately there have been
suggestions that the property
market may be more resilient
than some had anticipated.
According to Halifax, the
average UK house price increased
by 1.1% in February after a 0.2%
rise in January, and the property
website Rightmove said on
Monday that the average asking
price had risen 0.8% this month.
But it’s more good news for
savers, isn’t it?
Yes, this should mean another
boost to savings rates, which have
been on the rise for a while now.
However, there is no standard
savings account that can outpace
inflation running at 10.4%. For
the time being at least, inflation
will continue to eat into the value
of millions of people’s nest eggs.
Banks have been under fire
recently for the paltry rates on
some popular accounts. The
Barclays Everyday Saver easy
access account offers only 0.55%
interest, and Santander Everyday
Saver pays 0.6%. However, there
are a number of easy-access
savings accounts available paying
more than 3%, according to
Moneyfactscompare.co.uk.
Meanwhile, new five-year
fixed-rate savings bonds were
paying up to 4.6% yesterday.
33
Construction
firms fined by
competition
watchdog over
bid rigging
Rob Davies
Ten construction firms have been
fined a combined £60m by the com-
petition regulator for “illegally
colluding” to rig bids for lucrative
contracts on projects including
Bow Street magistrates court and
Selfridges department store.
The Competition and Markets
Authority (CMA) found that the com-
panies had acted as a cartel over 19
private and public sector contracts
that were worth £150m. The con-
tracts were found to have been rigged
between 2013 and 2018 using a tac-
tic known as “cover bidding”, the
regulator said.
Cover bidding involves companies
conspiring to assist each other in
winning contracts by submitting a
substandard or overpriced tender
that gives the false impression of
competition while ensuring that the
rival bid will win. The losing bidder
will then return the favour on a differ-
ent contract. The practice can result
in customers such as the public sector
overpaying or receiving lower qual-
ity services, the CMA said.
Ten companies in the demolition
and the asbestos services trade were
involved in the cartel, said the com-
petition watchdog, naming Keltbray,
Brown and Mason, Cantillon, Clifford
Devlin, DSM Demolition, Erith Con-
tractors, John F Hunt, McGee, TE
Scudder and Squibb.
Five of them were found to have
entered into arrangements whereby
the company that deliberately “lost”
the bid was compensated by the win-
ner, in one case to the tune of more
than £500,000. Some firms produced
false invoices to disguise the bid-
rigging, the CMA said.
Michael Grenfell, the CMA’s exec-
utive director of enforcement, said:
“Today’s significant fines show that
the CMA continues to crack down on
illegal cartel behaviour.
“It should serve as a clear warning:
the CMA will not tolerate unlawful
conduct which weakens competition
and keeps prices up at the expense of
businesses and taxpayers.”
As well as the fines, three directors
of firms involved in the cartel action
have also been disqualified, the CMA
said. The regulator began its investi-
gation in 2019.
£150m
The value of contracts awarded to
firms which had acted as a cartel.
They were fined £60m in total
 From

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Friday 24 March 2023 The Guardian
Overlapping
crises push
Lloyd’s into
loss as a
‘mega trial’
looms over
Ukraine war
Julia Kollewe
Lloyd’s of London has swung to an
annual loss after it paid out more than
£21bn to customers for claims relat-
ing to the war in Ukraine, Hurricane
Ian and other events.
The world’s biggest insurance mar-
ket reported a pre-tax loss of £769m
for 2022 compared with a profit of
£2.3bn in 2021. Its payouts included
“substantial claims” related to
Ukraine and £2bn for property dam-
age from Hurricane Ian in Florida.
That hurricane and other natural
catastrophes caused $275bn (£223bn)
•
Business
worth of damage last year and cost
insurance companies $125bn, accord-
ing to the reinsurance firm Swiss Re.
Lloyd’s has set aside £1.4bn to
cover Ukraine claims, largely for air-
craft stranded in Russia, as well as
ships trapped in the Black Sea. A ship
is deemed lost and becomes a claim
after 12 months, said Bruce Carnegie-
Brown, the Lloyd’s chairman. He said
the £1.4bn reserve was an early-stage
number and could go up.
More than 400 aircraft, worth
almost $10bn, have been stuck in Rus-
sia since western countries imposed
sanctions on the country after Mos-
cow’s invasion of Ukraine in February
2022. The planes are covered by
▼ Lloyd’s paid out £2bn for property
damage in Florida after it was
devastated by Hurricane Ian
PHOTOGRAPH: RICARDO ARDUENGO/AFP
Russian insurers and Lloyd’s is one of
the western firms that have provided
contingent insurance to the Ireland-
based lessors that own the aircraft. If
the Russian insurers do not pay out,
the lessors’ insurance policies would
be triggered. Carnegie-Brown said
the Russian insurers are “interested
to pay, but are prohibited by sanc-
tions from moving money”.
Lloyd’s now faces a “mega trial” in
£1.4bn
The amount Lloyd’s has set aside
to cover Ukraine claims, largely
for aircraft stranded in Russia
London from a number of claimants,
including AerCap, the world’s biggest
aircraft leasing firm.
The Dublin-based company said
last week it was “inconceivable” that
it would not recover some losses from
insurers over jets stranded in Russia.
AerCap is suing insurers including
Lloyd’s and AIG in London’s high
court for up to $3.5bn over the loss
of 116 aircraft and 23 engines under
its all-risks insurance policy or $1.2bn
under its war risks policy.
Carnegie-Brown said there was
still a dispute over whether the con-
flict is a war. Some insurers have
refused to pay because they argue
that the planes are not yet lost. Some
jets are being used by the Russian flag
carrier Aeroflot while others are being
used for spare parts.
The judge ruled the lawsuits
should be dealt with in one large trial
– the biggest in the insurance indus-
try in years – to save time. A start date
for the trial has not yet been set.
Lloyd’s said it made a one-off
£2,500 payment to the half of its staff
who earn less than £75,000 a year in
September to help with the soaring
cost of living, and will make a further
£1,500 payment in April.
“The operating environment has
been difficult for everyone,” said
Carnegie-Brown.
“The overlapping crises we’ve
faced have created a complex set of
challenges for us to tackle.”
35
Sub-prime loans
company Amigo
to be liquidated
Julia Kollewe
The sub-prime lender Amigo Loans is
to be liquidated after it failed to raise
enough money to fund compensation
to customers.
After months of trying to come
up with a rescue plan, Amigo said
it would stop lending with immedi-
ate effect and will be placed into an
orderly wind-down, with all surplus
assets transferred to the creditors of
its compensation scheme. The shares
crashed 75% to 0.4p on the news.
The wind-down is expected to take
about 12 months. The firm specialises
in providing credit to people who are
excluded from mainstream banks.
Those owed compensation will
receive an estimated 17p in the
pound, according to PwC, which is
supervising the process. Amigo said
it had not received enough inter-
est from potential equity investors
to raise £45m to keep going. Danny
Malone, chief executive, said: “This
is a very sad day for all our employees
… shareholders and stakeholders.”
 • The Guardian Friday 24 March 2023

36

Weather
Friday 24 March 2023
UK and Ireland Noon today Forecast Around the UK

London
Sunny Mist Fog
Low 7 High 11 Lows and highs Precipitation Air pollution
Tomorrow
8 7 13 85% Low
Sunny intervals Hazy
Manchester

Mostly cloudy
21 Inverness Shetland 7 12 85% Low
Overcast/dull Edinburgh
9 10
16
4 11 85% Low
Moderate
Sunny showers
984 Belfast
Edinburgh
18 Low 4 High 7
Sunny and heavy showers 980 Glasgow 6 11 90% Low
Sunday
Birmingham
Light showers Newcastle
ca
10
7 12 85% Low
Rain Sleet Light Belfast Moderate
Brighton
snow 988 12
York

Snow showers 8 11 85% Low

Dublin Liverpool
rpoo
ol 13
11
Bristol
Heavy snow Ice Nottingham
Nott m
Carbon
count
35C 13 Norwich
992
Birmingham
ming
7 11 90% Low
30
Thundery rain Cardiff
25 Daily atmospheric CO2
readings from Mauna Loa,
20 11 1
13 Hawaii (ppm):
Thundery showers 15
Cardiff
Ca
a L
London 7 11 90% Low
Latest
X
10 12 21 Mar 2023 420.78 Newcastle
5
Dover Weekly average
Temperature, 0 996 12 Mar 2023 420.16
ºC
-5
12 6 12 85% Low
Plymouth 23 Mar 2022 418.52
-10 12
23 Mar 2013 397.16 Penzance
Rough 31
-15 1000 Pre-industrial base 280
Wind speed, Windy
mph -20 Safe level 350
The Channel Islands 8 12 90% Low
Source: NOAA-ESRL

Atlantic front Pollutionwatch Around the world

A new study reveals that farming is Algiers 25 Lisbon 19

responsible for more than a quarter Ams’dam 13 Madrid 20
of particle pollution in British Athens 20 Malaga 26
cities. During 2019 agriculture in Auckland 21 Melb’rne 21
Britain created 38% of the particle B Aires 25 Mexico C 27
pollution in Leicester, 32% of that Bangkok 36 Miami 29
in Birmingham and 25% in London. Barcelona 21 Milan 17
Cold front In each case the contribution from Basra 28 Mombasa 32
rural agriculture was greater than Beijing 12 Moscow 10

Warm front all of the sources within the cities. Berlin 15 Mumbai 31
Dr Jamie Kelly, from the Bermuda 21 N Orleans 28
study team at University College Brussels 13 Nairobi 26
Occluded front London, said: “We were surprised Budapest 22 New Delhi 26
to find that ammonia from rural C’hagen 10 New York 12

Trough agricultural is so large. It is often Cairo 31 Oslo 7

the dominant source of particulate Cape Town 23 Paris 16
matter pollution in UK cities, even Chicago 6 Perth 27

High tides
Source: © Crown Copyright. All rights reserved. Times are local UK times
Sun & Lighting in cities as large as London. If the Corfu 21 Prague 17
government is truly committed to Dakar 24 Reykjavik 1
Moon up addressing particulate pollution to Dhaka 31 Rio de J 29
improve public health, there need Dublin 11 Rome 17
Aberdeen 0255 4.3m 1502 4.5m London Bridge 0323 7.4m 1548 7.2m Belfast 1845 to 0615 to be more ambitious measures to Florence 19 Shanghai 10
Avonmouth 0900 14.1m 2118 13.7m Lossiemouth 0125 4.0m 1331 4.3m Birm’ham 1827 to 0559 reduce ammonia emissions.” Gibraltar 23 Singapore 31
Barrow 0051 9.5m 1307 9.9m Milford Haven 0756 7.4m 2012 7.1m Brighton 1820 to 0553 Farming is the main cause of H Kong 27 Stockh’m 8
Belfast 0038 3.3m 1255 3.6m Newquay 0647 7.3m 1904 7.0m Bristol 1830 to 0603 the springtime smog that affects Harare 27 Strasb’g 16
Cobh 0707 4.2m 1922 4.1m North Shields 0502 5.1m 1708 5.3m Carlisle 1832 to 0602 western Europe each year. A study Helsinki 6 Sydney 24
Cromer 0818 4.9m 2015 5.3m Oban 0719 4.2m 1926 3.9m Cork 1853 to 0626 by Public Health England and the Istanbul 13 Tel Aviv 25
Dover 0033 7.1m 1253 6.8m Penzance 0619 5.8m 1836 5.5m Dublin 1845 to 0616 Met Office estimated that more Jo’burg 21 Tenerife 25
Sun rises 0554
Dublin 0055 3.9m 1310 4.2m Plymouth 0734 5.7m 1953 5.5m Sun sets 1819 Glasgow 1839 to 0608 than 1,600 people in Britain died K Lumpur 32 Tokyo 22
Galway 0644 5.5m 1904 5.3m Portsmouth 0057 4.8m 1306 4.7m Moon rises 0700 Harlech 1836 to 0608 early owing to particle pollution in K’mandu 24 Toronto 6
Greenock 0204 3.4m 1421 3.7m Southport 0015 9.2m 1230 9.5m Moon sets 2217 Inverness 1838 to 0605 March and April 2014. The worst Kabul 11 Vancouv’r 8
First Quarter 29 March Kingston 30 Vienna 18
Harwich 0107 4.2m 1335 4.1m Stornoway 0818 5.1m 2039 4.6m London 1819 to 0552 10 days had an estimated 600
Kolkata 31 Warsaw 17
Holyhead -- -- 1159 5.9m Weymouth 0841 1.6m 2101 1.4m M’chester 1829 to 0600 extra deaths and more than 1,500
L Angeles 17 Wash’ton 15
Hull 0801 7.5m 2006 8.1m Whitby 0538 5.6m 1747 5.8m Newcastle 1828 to 0557 extra hospital admissions. Many
Forecasts and Lagos 30 Well’ton 18
Leith 0410 5.7m 1623 5.8m Wick 0052 3.4m 1301 3.7m
graphics provided by
Norwich 1815 to 0546 of these could have been avoided.
Lima 27 Zurich 14
Liverpool 0034 9.5m 1249 9.8m Workington 0052 8.5m 1309 8.8m AccuWeather ©2023 Penzance 1841 to 0615 Gary Fuller @drgaryfuller
Friday 24 March 2023 The Guardian
Rugby union
WRU chair poised The Holmgaard
for pivotal vote twins on their
on Welsh rugby
derby excitement
Robert Kitson, page 38 
Saturday mourning
Soccer AM was not
just laddish banter
– its energy and soul
changed my life
Max Rushden
•
Football
nt
Interview, page 40 
▲ Max Rushden on his
Soccer AM debut in
2008 alongside co-host
Helen Chamberlain –
Sky has announced the
show will end in May
BSKYB
M
y first vivid memory of Soccer AM
was in a hungover stupor
sprawled across a sofa at a mate’s
student house in Birmingham
in the late 90s. There was a
man on television doing keepy-
uppies with a giant cuddly toy
sheep, there were lots of goals
– then two people started wrestling in leotards by the
Hammersmith flyover. It was charming and silly and
kind of hazily endless – no matter what you did on a
Saturday morning, it would still be on when you got in.
Around a decade later, it’s 16 August 2008, and I’ve
spent the night staring at the ceiling. I am terrified.
Soccer AM starts at 9. I’ve never hosted a TV show before.
There was no audition, no screen test. My whole career
has led to this point and I’d rather be anywhere else. I
just about get my opening words out. The show happens
around me. And to be honest, it does for months. Had
social media been the force it is now, I wouldn’t have
lasted. But very slowly I vaguely learned what I was
doing – I was lucky to be next to a brilliant broadcaster
in Helen Chamberlain. Those enjoyable seven seasons
are often referred to as The Glory Years ’08-’15.
It isn’t necessarily a surprise that Sky is dropping
Soccer AM at the end of this season but it has taken
me on a nostalgic journey thinking about the good
times. Eighteen-hour days filming recreations of the
John Lewis Christmas advert dressed as a penguin or
a snowman in Helen’s ramshackle farmhouse. John
Barnes’s baton twirling. (Speaks into dictaphone) Sword
fighting with Frank Leboeuf. Gaizka Mendieta and his
Viennetta. The dance-offs. Gloves for Hatem Ben Arfa.
37
Getting big in Belgium (Genk to be precise). Offering
professional footballers a tenner if they did a certain
celebration that afternoon and then watching Jonathan
Walters doing it at Portman Road.
Occasionally you’d sit back and think in no other world
would Uwe Rösler, Dr Karl Kennedy from Neighbours
and Mark Ronson be sitting next to each other. You
would pop into the green room to see Kevin Hart in
conversation with Bananarama while Wagner from
X Factor and Brett Ormerod were having a cup of tea.
C
ritics often reduce the whole 30 years
to laddish banter and nothing else.
And a lot of it was – but that does
the producers and crew a massive
disservice. They were everything –
writers, actors, stage hands, music
pluggers, directors, editors – as well
as doing the day job of football TV
production. At our peak we got almost 750,000 viewers
so while there were always more than 66 million
people doing something else, when you were in that
bubble it really felt like the whole world.
The show had an energy and a soul. Playing football in
the studio with 10 seconds to go before everyone raced
into position for the opening link. Sometimes the gags
were brilliant, sometimes they were shit. But that was
the charm. And there was always some football to show a
minute later – the best goals, the showboat, the third eye.
There were jokes that didn’t make it. The week that
Richard Keys and Andy Gray went we were expressly
told not to mention it. I suggested a lifesize stuffed
elephant in the studio that we didn’t mention for the
whole show. It didn’t get through.
Some parts of the show have aged terribly. It’s not
rewriting history to say I didn’t like the Soccerette part.
My predecessors were quite alpha – they were good
at it. I was sitting there with GCSE Latin and Grade 8
clarinet. A producer once sat me down and told me to
flirt more. I did not have that in my locker.
Fortunately we got rid of it two years into my tenure.
Perhaps had I been more experienced, or stronger
willed, I would have campaigned to lose it sooner, but
I didn’t; 2010 simultaneously wasn’t that long ago, but
feels like a completely different time – that’s the excuse
everyone uses right? To me, then, it was just a bit of TV
– and one at which I didn’t excel.
The show did not always go to
In no other plan. One morning we accidentally
booked Shaun Williamson instead
world would of Shaun Goater. Mel B left in an ad
Uwe Rösler, break to get some chicken, and there
will always be: “Stevie Wonder, if
Dr Karl
Kennedy
from
you’re watching, give us a call.”
Once someone shouted: “You’ll
never be Lovejoy you mug” when I
was wandering down the road, and
Neighbours Twitter lights up now and again
and Mark telling me I ruined it all. In reality
you probably liked it best when you
Ronson be were young – it has largely stayed the
sat next to same through all its incarnations.
If anything has killed it, it’s social
each other media. When I began no one had
seen the funny own goal from League
Two, or the slapstick defending from La Liga. Now
everything is online before the game has even finished.
Without all those clips it’s just a much harder gig.
Soccer AM changed my life – so this is not an
objective review. And not just professionally. Without
that show I wouldn’t have had two months off every
summer to wander around Central and South America.
I wouldn’t have met my wife on a volcano in Nicaragua.
I wouldn’t have a son – certainly not this one.
I can only be grateful to everyone who played even
the tiniest part. From Tim Lovejoy all the way through
to whoever counts down to the final second of the final
show. A lot of people behind the scenes have been
there for years and years, it’s a huge part of their lives. I
wish them all well. May they go out in whichever style
they want.

38
Sport
In brief
Cricket
Welsh Fire spend big in
Hundred draft rebuilds
Pakistani pace pair Shaheen Shah
Afridi and Haris Rauf, all-rounder
David Willey and England batter
Sophia Dunkley are all heading
to Cardiff for this year’s Hundred
as Welsh Fire rebuilt their under-
performing teams at the 2023 draft.
Fire finished bottom in the men’s
and women’s tournaments last
year. The men’s side landed three
overseas stars, with the electric
Afridi signed for £100,000 before
the new head coach Mike Hussey
splashed another £75,000 on
Rauf. In the women’s competition,
Dunkley was signed up as the Fire’s
first pick in the top band of £31,250.
Harmanpreet Kaur will be bringing
star power to the Trent Rockets
women after her £31,250 base was
met. PA Media
Rugby union
Scotland hand McGhie
debut versus England
The Scotland head coach Bryan
Easson will hand a first cap to
Francesca McGhie in the Women’s
Six Nations opener against
England tomorrow. Centre Beth
Blacklock is in line to make her
debut off the bench at Newcastle’s
Kingston Park. Asked what
should be expected of McGhie,
Easson said: “Excitement. A lot
of pace.” Scottish Rugby awarded
professional contracts to 28 players
last December. PA Media
Snooker
World Tour chief calls
O’Sullivan ‘disrespectful’
World Snooker Tour chairman
Steve Dawson has hit back at
Ronnie O’Sullivan’s comments
about the state of the sport.
Seven-time world champion
O’Sullivan claimed this week that
the game was in the “worst state
ever” with regard to prize money
and raised the possibility of players
staging a strike. “Ronnie is a legend
of our sport, but sometimes his
misguided comments go too
far,” Dawson wrote on the WST’s
website. “His comments too often
are disrespectful to snooker’s
dedicated management, the sport’s
commercial and venue partners,
and to his fellow players.” PA Media
Ronnie O’Sullivan has
spoken out against the
World Snooker Tour
• The Guardian Friday 24 March 2023
Sport
Rugby union
‘If we are to be
progressive, we
must act now’
WRU chair Ieuan Evans
hopes to earn mandate for
change when 282 clubs and
organisations cast ballots
Robert Kitson
I
t is no exaggeration to say the
entire future of Welsh rugby
is at stake in Port Talbot this
Sunday morning. “You sense
it is a significant moment in
our history,” confirms Ieuan
Evans, chairman of the Welsh Rugby
Union (WRU) and a former national
captain, as he awaits the critical vote
which will determine if the sport in
Wales can step back from the abyss.
“We love a watershed in Wales, we
have them every fortnight.”
Evans’s slightly dark humour
is understandable. There is a
good reason why he is spending
his 59th birthday talking to the
Guardian and it is because the
WRU faces a binary choice. Either
there is approval for a package
of governance reforms that
drags it into the 21st century or
total disaster looms. Should the
WRU not obtain the necessary
75% majority at this weekend’s
emergency general meeting, the
dinosaurs will inherit the earth.
Overly dramatic? Not in the
context of the grim allegations
of sexism, misogyny and a toxic
culture within the WRU, currently
the subject of an independent
review. Or the continuing influence
of the amateur “blazer brigade” on
a supposedly modern, professional
organisation. And we have not
yet mentioned last month’s strike
threat by the national squad, the
financial problems engulfing
the regions or the existential
threat to rugby union in one of its
traditional heartlands.
With prominent sponsors also
poised to abandon ship in the
event of a “no” vote, Evans and the
WRU’s acting chief executive, Nigel
Walker, have been working flat out
No change to
selection rules,
Premiership
chief insists
England’s restriction on selecting
players based abroad will remain in
place for the next agreement oversee-
ing the domestic game, according to
the Premiership Rugby chief execu-
tive Simon Massie-Taylor.
Massie-Taylor insists there is no
to persuade the grassroots to back
their special resolution. The 282
voting member clubs and affiliated
organisations will be asked to
approve a more independent-
minded and more diverse WRU
board, with at least five of the 12
directors set to be women.
Last time, at the AGM in October,
there was insufficient support for
change but Evans is more hopeful
this time. “At the last AGM we were
accused of not properly listening or
engaging. I don’t think anyone can
accuse us of that now. My hope is
that the support of the clubs will be
overwhelming in our favour. If we
are to be a progressive, outward-
looking organisation this is what we
need to do.”
Evans freely acknowledges that
the days when Welsh rugby was cut
some slack as the country’s highest-
profile sport have faded. “We can’t
take it for granted any more. We
were taking massive liberties that
we can ill afford. People looked
across at Wales for many years
and said: ‘How did they get the
success they’ve got?’ They’ve since
addressed that and they’ve got the
numbers [of players] as well. We
need to up our game again.”
If not, fears Evans, they will be
fatally exposed to the winds of
change not just gusting through
Wales but elsewhere. “Everyone
is having to address the same
existential points. Some of the
problem has been that we probably
stopped doing things because we
desire among Premiership sides, nor
the Rugby Football Union to relax a
rule designed to keep the country’s
top stars at home, as well as giving
England’s head coach greater control
over his players. An ‘exceptional cir-
cumstances’ clause saw Toulouse’s
Jack Willis picked during the Six
Nations, but he is the lone example
of its use since 2011 with dispensa-
tion only granted because of Wasps’
financial collapse in October.
Steve Borthwick wants the over-
seas policy eased in order to pick
the “best players available” amid a
recent spate of signings for Top 14
sides, including Luke Cowan-Dickie,
David Ribbans and Joe Marchant. But
thought: ‘We’re doing pretty well,
everything’s great.’ The world
doesn’t stop for you, particularly in
high performance. The landscape
of elite rugby globally is moving at
such a rate you can’t stand still or
look backwards. You have to move
forwards – and quickly.”
Plenty of remedial work also
remains to be done on Welsh
rugby’s image, even with a
signed financial accord with
the regions now imminent.
As an ex-professional player,
Evans clearly empathises with
those facing big wage cuts or no
contract at all. “It’s been deeply
disappointing, frustrating and
upsetting for everybody concerned.
Hopefully, in the next couple of
weeks we’ll alleviate some of those
concerns but Wales aren’t alone.
“There’s been a reset in terms
of the money available within the
whole game. We can’t carry on
writing cheques we can’t cash. We
have to find a system that allows
the game to flourish and survive in
a sustainable way. My heart goes
out to the players and families who
have been affected. But we can’t
Either reforms are
approved that will
drag the WRU into
the 21st century,
or disaster looms
that prospect has been ruled out as
talks continue over the new Profes-
sional Game Agreement that comes
into effect from July 2024.
“Having our English players
playing within the Premiership is
▲ Jack Willis featured in the Six
Nations despite playing for Toulouse
▼ Ieuan Evans admits it
has been an ‘unpleasant’
period for Welsh rugby
DAVID ROGERS/GETTY IMAGES
carry on as we were doing. It should
have been addressed some time
ago, but it hasn’t been.”
So all roads lead to Port Talbot’s
Princess Royal Theatre at 11am
on Sunday. The WRU president,
Gerald Davies, will speak and
contributions from the floor will
be invited, with an independent
scrutineer overseeing the
subsequent ballot. Where will
Evans hide during the voting?
“I’ll go find a dark room and start
making whale noises.”
He and the rest of Welsh rugby
can only pray sanity prevails after
a painful winter. “There has been
darkness over the last few weeks,”
says Evans. “It’s been avoidable,
unpleasant and draining.”
His travels around the country,
though, have also crystallised
the cause for which he is fighting.
“You see what rugby means to
people. Wales has some of the most
deprived wards in the UK. Without
the rugby club there isn’t an awful
lot else going on. Rugby plays such a
fundamental role in the wellbeing of
people around Wales.”
And that is what is ultimately at
stake. “It’s the size of the cake, not
the size of the slice that matters,”
concludes Evans. “And we need to
grow that cake, not just in terms
of financial and commercial cake
but our player base as well. The
professional game cannot survive
without the numbers coming
through the community game. We
need to start future-proofing.”
important for England and for the
Premiership,” Massie-Taylor said
at an event for Funding Circle, the
UK’s largest small business lending
platform. “Provisions exist for excep-
tional circumstances, but we agree
England players should be playing
in the Premiership.”
The latest incarnation of the PGA
promises to be a fine tuning of the cur-
rent arrangement rather than a signif-
icant overhaul, ending the prospect
of players being directly contracted
to the RFU. Saracens director of rugby
Mark McCall stated on Wednesday
that central contracts should be “top
of the agenda”, while also tabling the
idea of a “salary share”. PA Media
Friday 24 March 2023 The Guardian
Makinson helps Saints
to win in Huddersfield
Huddersfield
St Helens
Aaron Bower
John Smith’s Stadium
It is an unfortunate by-product of the
dominance St Helens have enjoyed
in Super League in recent years that
even with this, a perfectly reason-
able start to the season given there
has been a trip to Australia thrown
in the mix to contend with, you are
left wondering what more there is to
come from the reigning champions in
the weeks and months ahead.
Three wins from five is far from a
perfect start, but it is not a disastrous
one either. Here, the Saints did just
about enough to edge an attritional
contest against a Huddersfield side
who will almost certainly be in the
mix come the end of the season so
to that end, this is a result which
showed plenty about the character
of the champions, if nothing else.
Open up your
world view
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•••
Sport
Rugby league Super League
They were made to work hard for it,
12
and got the job done in that regard.
But it is fairly obvious that there
are still a few more gears for the side
14
– who have won the last four Grand
Finals – to click through. Whether
there is a hangover from their historic
World Club Challenge victory over
Penrith, or whether they are just not
quite on form under their new coach
Paul Wellens yet, remains some-
thing of an unknown. But victories
at places like this are hard to come
by, making this a good test passed
for a side still not quite firing on all
cylinders.
“It was extremely tough,” Wellens
said. “We spoke all week about how
tough it would be. To compete and
to hang in there, it was a true test of
our character.”
The difference in the end was a
second-half penalty from Tommy
Makinson which put the game out
of reach, on a night when both sides
scored two tries each. But the fact the
Saints had to do it a man light after
losing Sione Mata’utia to a concus-
sion after just 30 seconds is perhaps
even more impressive.
St Helens needed someone else to
step up, and their prop, Matty Lees,
did that with an 80-minute perfor-
mance – a rarity these days – with
68 tackles for good measure. Those
numbers, make no mistake about it,
are herculean, and it was perhaps
no surprise Wellens drew compari-
sons to another Saints great, James
Graham, post-match. Lees’ perfor-
mance was pivotal in helping the visi-
tors move into a 12-0 lead just before
half-time.
“I never came into tonight think-
ing a middle player would have to
do that but I never saw signs of him
slowing down,” Wellens said of the
England international. “They’ve got
a few days off and they’ll all need it,
but Matty certainly will.”
▲ Tommy Makinson
scores St Helens’ second
try against Huddersfield
MARTIN RICKETT/PA WIRE
After a low-key opening half-hour
where defences were very much on
top, quickfire tries from Konrad Hur-
rell and Makinson made it 12-0 in the
blink of an eye, underlining the qual-
ity this St Helens side has in quickly
turning an even game in their favour.
But Huddersfield responded with
a crucial score on the stroke of half-
time as Ashton Golding exposed a
rare gap in the Saints defence to halve
the deficit.
“I’m not worried about where we
are,” Ian Watson, the Huddersfield
coach, said after their third defeat
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39
in five to start the season. He is per-
haps right to be positive as the Giants
are within touching distance of the
league’s best, as this performance
proved. “We’re on the right trajec-
tory for sure,” he said. “That was two
good teams going toe-to-toe with
each other.”
Another positive on the night for
Huddersfield was the second debut
for the club for Jake Connor, their
mercurial off-season signing from
Hull FC. Connor’s introduction to
the game after 50 minutes certainly
lifted the Giants but when Makin-
son nudged the Saints into an eight-
point lead with a penalty on a night
where points were at a premium and
defences were mostly on top, it felt
like a significant moment.
Connor did have the impact eve-
ryone had expected when he laid
on a try for Innes Senior following a
well-executed move from a scrum, as
a glut of Huddersfield pressure mid-
way through the second half finally
led to points. That created a some-
what dramatic finale, with Connor
and his teammates frantically chanc-
ing their arm to try and win the game
in the dying moments: but the Saints
held on.
Huddersfield Pryce; Golding, Naiqama, Halsall, Senior;
Russell, Marsters; Hill, Peats, Trout, Livett, McQueen,
Yates. Interchange Connor, Ashworth, Ruston, Ikahihifo.
Tries Golding, Senior. Goals Russell 2.
St Helens Welsby; Makinson, Hurrell, Hopoate, Bennison;
Lomax, Dodd; Walmsley, Roby, Lees, Mata’utia, Sironen, Bell.
Interchange Lussick, McCarthy-Scarsbrook, Paasi, Royle.
Tries Hurrell, Makinson. Goals Makinson 3.
Referee J Smith.
Annual (20% off)
£37.13 £132
£3.09 £2.59

40
‘We wouldn’t
have this if we
hadn’t pushed
each other on’
After their first spell apart,
Everton’s Holmgaard twins
are back together again and
relishing a Merseyside derby
Louise Taylor
O
nce the Holmgaard
twins step on to
a football pitch it
becomes relatively
easy to tell them apart.
While Sara is left-
footed and plays in central defence,
Karen favours her right foot and
anchors midfield but, back in the
dressing room, the pair’s similarities
far outweigh the differences.
Even Everton’s manager, Brian
Sørensen, has been known to
confuse one identical twin with
the other. “Being left- and right-
footed is the biggest difference.
I’m maybe a bit quieter but
otherwise we’re nearly the same,”
says Sara before Karen interjects.
“I have a higher bun,” she points
out, gesturing to her hair. “But we’re
just enjoying being here together,
it’s something special.”
The Holmgaards relish following
the path set by their similarly
identical male football counterparts,
Jacob and Josh Murphy, who played
together at Norwich, and Michael
and Will Keane, once regular
fixtures in assorted Manchester
United and England youth teams.
In the women’s sphere, a precedent
Player facing
rape allegations
investigated for
third offence
Nick Ames
The Premier League footballer cur-
rently on bail amid two allegations of
rape is being investigated for a third
alleged sexual offence.
It has emerged that the player,
whose bail was recently extended
until July, was interviewed by the
Metropolitan police last month. “In
February 2023, the man was inter-
viewed under caution for a sexual
offence alleged to have taken place in
Barnet in February 2022,” a statement
from the force read. “This relates to
a third victim and was reported to
police in July 2022.” An investigation
is understood to be ongoing.
• The Guardian Friday 24 March 2023
Sport
Football
was set by the Kmita twins, Mollie
and Rosie, although that pair
have now swapped West Ham for
sports broadcasting.
As the Holmgaards prepare
for tonight’s Merseyside derby
against Liverpool at Goodison Park,
retirement is the last thing on the
24-year-olds’ minds, but they accept
they are unlikely to synchronise
their entire careers. Indeed they
have only recently been reunited
after being divided for the first time
when Sara spent the first half of
this season on loan at Denmark’s
Fortuna Hjørring.
Although strictly temporary,
this parting of the ways proved a
useful exercise in independence
for the Danish siblings who had
previously played together at
Hjørring and Germany’s Turbine
‘At school people
couldn’t see the
difference, so
sometimes we
tricked them’
The player was initially arrested
in July on suspicion of rape that was
alleged to have happened in June
2022; he was taken into custody and
further arrested on suspicion of two
further incidents of rape, alleged to
have taken place in April and June
2021 against a different woman.
In late July the force confirmed it
would take no further action regard-
ing the June 2021 allegation. Investi-
gations into the two further allega-
tions have continued and are now
joined by the latest case. The player
has been on bail, extended several
times, since last July. The most recent
extension was made in January.
The player is not being named for
legal reasons but has been a regular
member of his club’s first team this
season. The club confirmed in July
that he would not be suspended and
that he would be considered for selec-
tion until further notice.
The Guardian has previously
reported that the player’s club were
made aware of a rape allegation
against him in the autumn of 2021.
That allegation was reported to the
Met in August 2021 but did not appear
to affect his status in the team.
Potsdam. “It was our first time
without each other and, yeah, of
course, it was a good thing,” says
Sara. “We learned a lot about a lot of
things. We expected it to be difficult
and it was hard – but not as hard
as I imagined. It was nice to try to
live alone and, also, to show people
outside that we can be apart.”
Karen believes the dual
Denmark internationals have
now achieved a perfect balance
at their shared apartment in
Liverpool’s fashionable docklands
area. “Sometimes I go out with a
friend and Sara stays at home,”
she says. “But we have a lot of
the same friends so we’re often
all chilling together.” Sara is
particularly appreciative of her new
habitat. “The culture’s different to
Germany,” she says. “Personally, I
love to be here. The people are so
warm and friendly. They’re just
kind, it’s good to be among them.
“The football culture in Germany
was tough too. The games were a
lot about power but, in England,
although the intensity’s the same,
there’s a lot more possession. In
Germany we had a lot of running in
training, but here it’s much more
Football
In brief
Wrexham
Veteran Foster comes
out of retirement
Wrexham have announced the
signing of the former England and
Manchester United goalkeeper Ben
Foster on a short-term deal.
The 39-year-old has agreed to
come out of retirement to help
the promotion-chasing National
League side until the end of
the season. It will be Foster’s
second spell at the Racecourse
Ground after a loan stint with
the Welsh outfit in 2005. Foster
hung up his gloves last year after a
distinguished career that included
lengthy periods with West Brom
and Watford. Wrexham sounded
him out about a return to action
after losing regular keeper Rob
Lainton to injury. “I’m over the
moon,” said Foster. PA Media
▼ Sara (left) and Karen Holmgaard
signed for Everton last summer
EVERTON FC/GETTY IMAGES
tactical.” As Karen emphasises, it
also helps that the pair previously
worked with Sørensen at Hjørring.
“I think he was the main thing for
us to move over here last summer,”
she says. “We had Brian for two
years before and we really enjoyed
that time. He supports us and we
just like him as a manager. But,
even after working with Brian
for so long, there are still times
when we confuse se him.”
The twins have
helped Everton to
sixth in the WSL
National League
Players could strike
over contract shake-up
National League players could
strike over controversial
contract changes by the Football
Association. New conditions, due
to come in on 1 July as part of the
FA’s changes to non-league player
contracts, will see injured players
in the National League only paid
in full for 12 weeks. If they are ill or
injured longer than four months
clubs will be able to reduce their
wages to statutory sick pay – £99.35
a week and payable for 28 weeks –
until they are fit. For those playing
below the fifth tier they will get
their full wage for six weeks.
Oldham’s Peter Clarke, who is
on the Professional Footballers’
Association’s players board, said:
“A strike sounds very drastic. Is it
something we want? I don’t think
so. Is it something the FA want?
I don’t think so either. But is it
something that may happen? Quite
possibly. I think all options have got
to be explored. Hopefully the FA
Perhaps most memorably,
at Hjørring, Sorensen once
congratulated Sara for a goal scored
by Karen. “At school people couldn’t
see the difference,” says the latter.
“So sometimes we did something
funny and tricked them.”
During that childhood in Mid
Jutland the duo excelled at both
football and handball and it was
only after a joint, post-college
discussion that they opted to pursue
mutual success in the former,
with their near telepathic on-pitch
connectivity and inter-twin
competitiveness helping secure
them senior Denmark debuts in
2019. “We wouldn’t have this life
now if we hadn’t each pushed the
other on,” acknowledges Sara.
After joint involvement in
Euro 2022, they hope to be on
the plane to this summer’s World
Cup in Australia and New Zealand
where Denmark face England in a
group-stage game in Sydney. “It’s
going to be tough,” says Karen.
“England are good. I think they’re
better than us right now, but we’ll
see. We’re very excited.”
More immediately, they aim to
help Everton improve on their sixth-
placed WSL standing while finding
the time to explore England. “We’ve
heard the Lake District’s really
beautiful so we want to visit the
mountains,” says Karen. “And we’d
like to see more of London.”
The only problem is that,
between now and the WSL
season’s conclusion in late May, the
matches come thick and fast. “But
playing in England’s a good feeling,”
says Sara. “Every game’s important.
You can lose to the last team in the
table and win against the highest.
It’s nice to feel there’s always
something to play for.”
As Karen stresses, tonight’s
meeting with Liverpool, the
first to be staged at Goodison,
is a particularly high-stakes
fixture. “We’re just so excited
to be part of it,” she says. “We
understand the history, we know
Merseyside derbies are always
something special.”
and the captain’s group can work
this out as amicably as possible. But
there have been times where strikes
have been necessary.” PA Media
Huddersfield
American consortium
agrees Terriers deal
Huddersfield have agreed a
club takeover with an unnamed
American consortium. The deal will
end chairman Dean Hoyle’s 14-year
association with the Terriers.
Doyle revealed last year his
intention to buy back the majority
of shares from former owner Phil
Hodgkinson with a view to selling
the Championship club. A club
statement yesterday read:
“Mr Hoyle has exchanged contracts
with a North American group on a
sale of the 100 per cent shareholding
in Huddersfield Town.” The deal
is thought to ensure the club
avoid administration, with Hoyle
reportedly writing off £40m he is
owed. The Terriers reappointed
Neil Warnock as their manager last
month. PA Media
Friday 24 March 2023 The Guardian
Analysis
Philipp Lahm
Euro 2024 can unite a continent
in troubled times, but that
responsibility rests with all of us
T
he countdown to
Euro 2024 is ticking.
The qualifiers began
yesterday with
Kazakhstan against
Slovenia. These are the
first international matches after the
World Cup, which was attractive
in sporting terms but controversial
in Europe. Qatar benefits from
football for its political goals. We
should do the same.
The 2024 European
Championship being in the
heart of Europe offers the ideal
opportunity to do so. Germany
welcomes the continent and seeks
to defend it with the common
achievements that make it strong.
The tournament obliges us to put
football back in the spotlight.
Football has been a unifying
element in Europe for more than
a century. It is a constant driver of
equal opportunities, diversity and
freedom. In times of polarisation
and division in our societies, it is all
the more important to strengthen
this. Football provides many vivid
political analogies: how does an
individual behave in a group? What
freedom does the game provide
in the face of the imperative to
conform to a tactic? How do rules
shape our coexistence? If you’re
talking about football, you’re
talking about social sustainability.
That football works as a game
was experienced in Qatar. The best
teams had an identity. Argentina
radiated joy and determination;
you could tell they knew what they
were running for: their teammates
and their country. Appreciation
comes from the respect of others
and when everyone realises their
contribution is important, they
fight.
For France, Olivier Giroud
became a role model. In the final he
was substituted before the break. It
was the coach’s admission that he
▲ Oliver Giroud showed solidarity
during France’s World Cup final loss
•
Sport
Football
had chosen the wrong strategy.
That is a blow for every athlete;
he only accepts something like
that when there is a bigger goal
and he understands that it needs
a new attempt. Afterwards Giroud
acted in solidarity and rooted for
the team from the bench. He had
understood the coach’s decision.
He also knows that in France, as in
every European country, football
has a social significance.
In such cases a football
tournament leaves its mark on
the nation, and the whole thing
is amplified when the hosts are
involved. So the responsibility for
Germany is enormous.
The national team are different
from a club team. There is three
times as much money involved
in the big clubs as there was 10
years ago. The national team,
meanwhile, have to escape
the logic of growth. It cannot
be about higher bonuses. A
player who earns an annual
salary of €15m-€20m does not
need €200,000 or €400,000. A
national player should know their
duties. The child in the jersey
and the volunteer in the amateur
club want to see themselves
represented by him or her. If he or
she gives them something, he or
she gets something back.
I remember when millions
of people celebrated us and
also themselves in 2006. This
attachment, in turn, creates
an added value for the players
that money cannot buy, that
can protect you in this tough
business in more difficult days.
The love that Lionel Messi is now
experiencing from Argentina will
not exist for him in Paris.
My dream for 2024 would be
for every player to internalise the
enthusiasm of playing for their
country, and also for Europe. An
underdog is welcome to surprise,
as Iceland did in 2016. Everyone
remembers their primal scream.
A tournament such as this can
create a spirit of optimism. After
the pandemic, Russia’s attack
on Ukraine and the energy
crisis, it would be good if we all
rediscovered ourselves together.
The present is a Zeitenwende,
a turning point. Europe has to
reflect on itself. Perhaps many
people hadn’t realised before now
how fortunate it is that we can
host a tournament in a democracy
again. Every professional
footballer should realise the
advantages of our way of life. An
audience of billions will watch as
we come together and celebrate a
great European festival that will
strengthen faith in us.
‘It has not been easy’:
England’s champions
reunite for World Cup
Ian Foster and his squad are
focusing on the Under-20s
tournament in Indonesia,
battling a stop-start schedule
Andy Hunter
O
n a wet and windy
night in Manchester,
Ian Foster runs
through an itinerary
that is taking the head
coach of England
Under-20s men’s team to Marbella
and Bali over the next week. “It’s
tough at the top,” he jokes. Warmer
weather aside, Foster’s quip has
substance, as the ripple effects of
staging a winter World Cup in Qatar
continue to be felt.
On Wednesday, England began
preparations for the Under-20s
World Cup in Indonesia with a 2-0
win over Germany at Manchester
City’s Academy Stadium.
Samuel Iling-Junior, the Chelsea
academy graduate who has broken
into Juventus’s first team this
season, scored twice as England
overcame a difficult start to deliver
a controlled and comfortable
victory. The squad now heads for
the Marbella Football Centre where
they face USA tomorrow and France
▼ Samuel Iling-Junior, of
England Under-20s, gets away
from Germany’s Jens Castrop
MATT MCNULTY/GETTY IMAGES
on Tuesday. And that will be that
in terms of a World Cup warmup:
three fixtures in seven days. Foster
then goes from southern Spain to
Bali for next Friday’s World Cup
draw.
Wednesday was the team’s
first competitive outing for six
months. It was the first, and
only, appearance on home soil
this season for a squad that
qualified for the World Cup by
winning the European Under-19s
championships last summer. “We
were desperate to play in England
as European champions,” says
Foster, who oversaw the triumph in
Slovakia and has stayed in charge
of the group’s development. “It is
our only opportunity to do so and
I thought the crowd [of 2,205] was
brilliant. We chose Germany for two
reasons: one, it is a special fixture,
and, secondly, because of the Elite
League they are in. Their players
are a year older than ours so we
knew it would be a sterner test.”
‘Germany at home,
USA and then
France are three
tough games. That’s
what we need’
41
World Cup preparations would
normally be stepping up at this
stage, not merely starting, but
the unprecedented timing of
the senior tournament had an
impact on the football calendar at
numerous levels. “We are probably
six games down with having no
October window and no November
window,” Foster says. “It has
not been easy for the players.
We haven’t seen them since
September, and because of injury
we haven’t seen a few others since
the summer. But others are now
getting a first opportunity and it
was brilliant for them to be capped
against Germany.”
Foster, his coaching staff and
the Under-20s team manager,
Annabelle Cummins, have
additional complications to
contend with. The tournament,
the first Fifa event to be held in
Indonesia, which was due to host
in 2021 before the pandemic forced
a cancellation, will be played
between 20 May and 11 June.
England plan to depart about 11
May because, as the head coach
explains: “You are crossing eight
time zones so ideally you should
have eight days in the country to
acclimatise before you play.” But
the Premier League season does
not finish until 28 May and the
Championship has the playoffs at
the end of that month.
“Because the World Cup is being
played in the season we won’t
have any prep games because we
will have to leave it as late as we
possibly can to get the players out
of the clubs,” says Foster. “But,
listen, Germany at home, USA who
are North American champions
and then France are three really
interesting and tough games for us.
That’s what we need.”
Wednesday brought
encouragement for England’s
World Cup prospects, however.
Foster’s team adapted swiftly to
Germany’s gameplan while the
impressive central midfield pair of
Chelsea’s Carney Chukwuemeka
and Bristol City’s Alex Scott
illustrated the benefit of Premier
League experience and regular
first-team football respectively.
“There is a real contrast in terms
of where they are all getting their
minutes,” says Foster. “Players get
first-team football either at the club
they are at – like Alex and Ronnie
Edwards [Peterborough United]
– or on loan like Callum Doyle [at
Coventry City from Manchester
City], Tim Iroegbunam [at Queens
Park Rangers from Aston Villa] and
Aaron Ramsey [at Middlesbrough
from Villa], and then the lads who
are at Premier League clubs and
can’t get in.
“They are all playing but there
are different levels. It tests you
as a coach, as a developer and as
a scout. Ultimately we have to
determine who are the best to come
in based on form and potential.”
There is another factor in
England’s favour for the World
Cup: the experience of winning
last summer’s Under-19s European
Championship. “It has definitely
helped us,” says Iling-Junior . “That
feeling you get when you win a
tournament, you want to go again.
This group of boys are monsters
and we want to win again.”
 •••
42 Sport
Football Euro 2024 qualifying
England battle to opening
victory after Shaw sees red
paign looked set to begin with a bang.
Italy 1 It ought to have been 3-0 in first-half
Retegui 57
stoppage time only for Jack Grealish
to miscue wide of a gaping goal.
England 2
Instead, Gareth Southgate’s team
Rice 13, Kane 44pen
followed an age-old template. First
Possession half good, second half not too good,
Italy England as one of his predecessors, Sven-
57% 43% Göran Eriksson, would have put it.
Italy leapt up off the canvas, scoring
Shots on target
through the debutant Mateo Retegui,
1 3
and came to control the tie just as
Fouls their opponents had done previously.
12 5 England sat deeper, their passing
sloppy, inviting Italy on – just as they
David Hytner had done in the Euro 2020 final when
Stadio Diego Armando Maradona they surrendered the initiative and
eventually lost on penalties. The key
It was a night when a Harry Kane pen- difference this time was that England
alty conversion overflowed with nar- had scored the first two goals.
rative drama. It was his first attempt England had to dig in, especially
for England since his notorious miss after Luke Shaw was sent off in the
in the World Cup quarter-final exit 80th minute for a trip. His first cau-
against France last December and tion had come 54 seconds earlier
so goodness knows what was going for time-wasting. England, though,
through his mind as he shaped to take got over the line. Despite what
it, after the VAR had spotted a Gio- amounted to an Italy siege after
vanni Di Lorenzo handball. the interval, Southgate’s team were
When he scored it took him clear of able to restrict them to precious few
Wayne Rooney as England’s all-time clearcut chances.
leading scorer with 54 goals. What A win is a win and this was a big
a moment it was for the captain. It one, England’s most difficult assign-
put England 2-0 up and to describe ment of the group passed already. It
them as rampant at that point late was Southgate’s first victory over
in the first half would have been Italy as manager at the fifth attempt
no exaggeration. and England’s first on Italian soil
Declan Rice had scored the first since 1961. Revenge for the Euro
and the Euro 2024 qualifying cam- final was a part of it. At full time, Kane
the Scudetto so close that everyone in
town has started to prepare for the
party of the millennium – it can feel
like an out-of-body experience.
There was still excitement, still a
crowd that needed to be subdued,
but it probably said a lot that there
were empty seats and the 2,500
travelling fans were able to make
themselves heard.
slumped to his knees, exhausted but They could celebrate an early tonic
elated. He was the man of the match, after England moved up the field very
his link-up play superb, ditto his pass- smartly – and not for the first time. Or
ing; his running with and without the the last. It was Kane to Grealish and
ball relentless. He and England are he did well to release Jude Belling-
off to a flyer. ham, who advanced and unloaded
The first thing to say about the a vicious drive that Gianluigi Don-
occasion – Naples’s first senior inter- narumma tipped over. Bukayo Saka’s
national in 10 years – was that it was corner reached Kane beyond the far
not a Napoli game. When they play at post and, when he shot, the ball rico-
this stadium – especially this season, cheted off Di Lorenzo and broke for
Rice. He always looked like finishing,
the spin and shot assured.
Leading England scorers It has been said before but it had
to be said again. How is Bellingham
only 19? He was central to England’s
Caps Goals barnstorming start as they controlled
1 Harry Kane 81 54 the tempo and the ball, looking
2 Wayne Rooney 120 53 extremely confident on it. Belling-
3 Bobby Charton 106 49 ham showed his quick feet in posses-
4 Gary Lineker 80 48 sion, his strength and rangy stride
5 Jimmy Greaves 57 44 plus his passing ability. He won the
6 Michael Owen 89 40 ball; he made things happen. Above
7= Nat Lofthouse 33 30 all, he looked fearless.
7= Alan Shearer () 63 30 Italy are, of course, the reigning
7= Tom Finney 76 30 European champions, although it
10= Vivian Woodward 23 29 feels as if their second failure in a
10= Frank Lampard 106 29 row to qualify for the World Cup is
defining them more at present. Local
optimism had not been high before
kick-off, especially with Roberto
Mancini being without a clutch of
injured players including Leonardo
Bonucci, Federico Chiesa and Giac-
omo Raspadori. It is not a vintage
Italy, although it is still Italy.
England dominated the first half.
They enjoyed themselves. Italy could
The Guardian Friday 24 March 2023
Cool Rice
breaks the
deadlock
in Naples
West Ham’s
midfielder
reacts fastest
to a loose ball
in the box to
give England
the perfect
start against
the Italians
CIRO DE LUCA/
REUTERS
not get near to them on the ball, the
combinations up through the thirds
easy on the eye. From back to front
– and that included the goalkeeper,
Jordan Pickford – the passing was
on point.
It was incredible to see the spaces
that England were able to create and
the chances flowed before the inter-
val, a further clutch coming before
Kane’s record-breaking goal. Italy
were made to look toothless. Saka got
into dangerous areas and even Kalvin
Phillips, who was recalled in a nicely
balanced midfield, fizzed a shot just
wide. The only frustration of the first
half was Grealish’s miss – and it was
a horrible one – after Kane’s low cut
back from the right. Grealish held his
head for some time.
England were guilty of offering
encouragement to Italy, which was
ridiculous. It was still Italy. Retegui’s
goal came when Harry Maguire lost
possession and Italy worked the
opening expertly, Marco Verratti
prominent. Lorenzo Pellegrini played
the killer pass and Retegui, the Argen-
tina-born striker, finished clinically.
The turnaround was remarkable.
Italy pushed high and looked com-
posed on the ball, threatening with
it, too. England made errors and they
were indebted to John Stones for
some important interventions. When
Shaw saw red, it was easy to fear the
worst. England would celebrate upon
the full-time whistle with real feeling.
Italy England
4-3-3 4-3-3
Donnarumma; Di Pickford; Walker•,
Lorenzo, Toloi, Acerbi•,
Spinazzola; Barella
Stones, Maguire•,
Shaw•; Phillips, Rice•,
(Cristante 62), Bellingham (Gallagher
Jorginho• (Tonali 70), 85); Saka (James 85),
Verratti (Scamacca 88); Kane, Grealish• (Foden
Berradi (Politano 62), 69; Trippier 81)
Retegui, Pellegrini
(Gnonto 69)
Referee Srdjan Jovanovic (Ser)
Friday 24 March 2023 The Guardian
Analysis
Barney Ronay Stadio Diego Armando Maradona
Noble Kane completes the
cycle of nation’s hotshots
and sets admirable record
T
here was an agreeable
note of pantomime
when the moment
came for Harry Kane.
Goalscoring records
don’t matter, perhaps,
or shouldn’t matter, are just
numbers in the book. And yet of
course they do matter, not least
in international football, with its
sense of duty and history and ritual.
And somehow it always seemed
likely Kane would get his chance
to take that England record in this
wonderful mini-epic of a qualifier,
with England just about holding on
to take a thrilling 2-1 victory.
Naples is a glorious place to
play football, a city where even
the lead-up to the stadium, the
total chaos of carriageways and
concourses speaks to something
unbound and slightly beyond
the control of everyone present.
Football basically happens to
Naples, jamming the roads,
scrambling squadrons of police,
causing strange noises, energies,
excitements to break out. You don’t
really steward or manage football
in a place like this. You ride it like
a wave.
And England were sublime in
those first 45 minutes, establishing
a two-goal lead that could have
been a few more, and producing
surely their most balanced
midfield performance under
Gareth Southgate.
Kane was a magnet for the ball
in that period, making it stick like a
human baseball mitt. His little runs
into space drove the Italy defence
into a mania of indecision. Several
times he dribbled away from his
man, then was caught – he really
does chug these days – then had to
dribble again, a strange game of tag.
The record moment came after
a corner. Giovanni Di Lorenzo
•••
handled the ball shielding it
from Kane. The referee, Srdjan
Jovanovic, strode to his VAR
screen, then returned to point at
the spot. Gianluigi Donnarumma
threw the ball away. The blue shirts
crowded around the penalty spot,
churning the turf.
Kane paused, collecting his revs,
gathering the potential energy
of all those years, the rungs on
the ladder from there to here, the
stumbles and steps up, the act of
finally getting in the Spurs team,
of making his debut for England
under Roy Hodgson, scoring
within moments of coming on and
looking, even then, like a man just
born to do exactly this.
The ball that Kane had sent into
the night sky from the penalty
spot at the Al Bayt Stadium three
months ago is still out there
somewhere, floating in the desert
air. He wasn’t going to miss this.
Donnarumma dived right. Kane
buried it high to his left and just
kept on running to the corner as
one slice of the ground at the far
end erupted.
And that was that: the mark
passed, 54 goals for England, and a
note in the pages of England-dom
that will always be there, and is,
very unlikely to be passed soon.
It is a huge moment
personally for Kane,
who loves records,
and who clearly feels
his own place in that
scoring lineage
It is huge moment personally
for Kane, who loves records, and
who clearly feels his own place
in that England scoring lineage,
a golden seam of main men, goal
kings, record-chasers running
back through Harry Kane-Wayne
Rooney-Michael Owen-Alan
Shearer-Gary Lineker, amassing a
total of 225 goals between them in
the years 1984-2023.
There has always been
something retro in Kane’s noble
sad-lion styling, the comic book
brow, the 1950s insurance clerk
hairstyle, as though this England
line is turning back on itself in
time, completing the cycle of
England hotshots. Who will take
it up from here? The English
game doesn’t churn out goal-
poachers right now. Kane himself
is something of an outlier, forged
by Football League loans and time
in the doldrums, a No 10 who
became a No 9.
K
ane is, for some
reason, talked down
by some, dismissed
as a penalty king, a
deflections merchant,
a man who has simply
got lucky 54 times in 81 games.
This seems back to front. In reality
Kane has scored relentlessly while
always playing for teams with
an aversion to winning. Imagine
being this good while playing for
Spurs and England.
Kane has got there quickly too.
His goals per game record is better
than any significant goalscorer
of the past 50 years, better than
Rooney, Charlton, Lineker, Owen,
Shearer. Only Jimmy Greaves
and Vivian Woodward finished
with more than 30 goals at a
better rate.
Greaves was an outright genius.
Woodward was born in 1879. Kane
has done all this while leading
England to a final and a semi-
final, taking a World Cup Golden
Boot, barely playing a friendly
(although there has been plenty of
meat for the grinder, as there is on
every single one of these scorers’
lists: check out Charlton’s roster of
whipping boys).
Plus of course Kane is not just
about goals. He plays as a No 10
for half the game, uses the ball
beautifully is, in effect, a one-man
attacking plan. England were
already 1-0 up when he scored
his record-breaker, after the goal
from Declan Rice. Just before half-
time Kane almost made a third
for England, sniping through on
the left, looking up and pinging
the perfect low cross to meet Jack
Grealish’s run on the opposite
flank. The finish was horrible,
stunned weirdly back across a
semi-open goal and well wide
of the post. If anything it was a
useful reminder. This stuff only
looks simple.
 Harry Kane and his England
teammates celebrate the landmark
EDDIE KEOGH/THE FA VIA GETTY IMAGES
43
Bundesliga Tuchel will hope to emulate his
success in his first season at Stamford
Bayern sack Bridge, where he took the reins in Jan-
uary 2021 and steered the Blues to the
Nagelsmann and Champions League trophy that same
season. His Chelsea side defeated
turn to Tuchel
Manchester City in the 2021 final and
by coincidence Bayern now face Pep
Guardiola’s team in the quarter-finals
of this year’s competition. The winner
Fabrizio Romano of that tie will face Real Madrid or
Chelsea in the semi-final.
Tuchel’s imminent appointment
The former Chelsea manager Thomas ends any chance of him returning to
Tuchel is in line to take over at Bayern
Munich after Julian Nagelsmann was
the dugout in the Premier League, after
being linked to the manager’s position
sacked last night. at Tottenham in recent weeks.
Nagelsmann, 35, has lost his job
after a poor run of form which cul-
minated in a 2-1 defeat at Bayer
Leverkusen on Sunday which cost
Bayern top spot in the Bundesliga. The
Bayern hierarchy have acted swiftly to
appoint 49-year-old Tuchel, who has
been out of work since being sacked
as Chelsea manager last September.
It is understood Tuchel has agreed
to join Bayern with immediate effect, ▲ Thomas Tuchel is available after
with full agreement in place. being sacked by Chelsea in September
Tennis
Results ATP/WTA MIAMI OPEN (Florida)
Men: First round: E Nava (US) bt J Isner (US) 7-6 (7-5) 7-6
(7-4); J Lehecka (Cz) bt F Coria (Arg) 6-3 6-4; A Kovacevic
(US) bt J Munar (Sp) 7-6 (7-4) 2-6 6-1; P Martínez (Sp) bt
Q Halys (Fr) 6-2 7-6 (7-4); C Garín (Chl) bt M Giron (US)
6-4 2-6 6-4; R Carbellés Baena (Sp) bt B Zapata Miralles
(Sp) 6-0 3-0 ret; C Eubanks (US) bt D Kudla (US) 7-6 (7-2)
Football 6-2; A Mannarino (Fr) bt J Shang (Chn) 1-6 6-4 6-2;
A Molcan (Svk) bt J Thompson (Aus) 6-2 4-6 6-3; M McDonald
UEFA EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIP QUALIFYING (US) bt D Galán (Col) 6-4 6-2; Y Watanuki (Jpn) bt B Paire (Fr)
6-4 7-5; R Gasquet (Fr) bt C O’Connell (Aus) 6-4 3-6 6-1.
Group C
Women: First round: E Mertens (Bel) bt D Kasatkina (Rus)
Italy (0) 1 England (2) 2
Retegui 56 Rice 13, Kane 44pen 4-6 6-2 6-2; P Badosa (Sp) bt L Siegmund (Ger) 7-6 (7-2)
4-6 6-2; Zheng Q (Chn) bt I Begu (Rou) 2-6 6-1 6-1;
North Macedonia (0) 2 Malta (0) 1 P Martic (Cro) bt Wang X (Chn) 6-3 6-3; D Collins (US) bt
Elmas 66, Churlinov 72 Yannick 86 V Tomova (Bul) 7-6 (7-3) 6-2; J Pegula (US) bt K Sebov
(Can) 6-3 6-1; J Ostapenko (Lat) bt M Björklund (Swe) 6-3
Group H
6-4; L Samsonova (Rus) bt V Golubic (Sui) 6-1 6-1;
Denmark (1) 3 Finland (0) 1
Højland 21 82 90 Antman 53
A Potapova (Rus) bt M Kostyuk (Ukr) 6-1 6-3; C Gauff (US)
bt R Marino (Can) 6-4 6-3; C Liu (US) bt J Gragher (Aut) 6-4
Kazakhstan (1) 1 Slovenia (0) 2 6-3; M Linette (Pol) bt E Rodina (Rus) 6-3 6-4.
Samorodov 24 Brekalo 47, Vipotnik 78 Rugby league
San Marino (0) 0 Northern Ireland (1) 2 BETFRED SUPER LEAGUE
Charles 24 55 Huddersfield 12 St Helens 14
Group J Cycling
Bosnia-Herzegovina (2) 3 Iceland (0) 0
Krunic 14 40, Dedic 63
VOLTA A CATALUNYA (Spain)
Stage four (Llivia-Sabadell, 188km): 1 K Groves (Aus)
Portugal (1) 4 Liechtenstein (0) 0 Alpecin Deceuninck 4hr 19min 38sec; 2 B Coquard (Fr)
Cancelo 8, Silva 47 Cofidis; 3 C Strong (NZ) Israel Premier Tech at same time.
Ronaldo 51pen 63 Overall standings: 1 P Roglic (Slo) Jumbo Visma 12hr
Slovakia (0) 0 Luxembourg (0) 0 42min 17sec; 2 R Evenepoel (Bel) Soudal Quick Step at same
time; 3 G Ciccone (It) Trek Segafredo +19sec
INTERNATIONAL FRIENDLIES
El Salvador 0 Honduras 1; Hungary 1 Estonia 0;
Fixtures
Football (7.45pm unless stated)
New Zealand 0 China 0
Cricket
European Championship Qualifying
Group B France v Netherlands; Gibraltar v Greece
Group E Czech Republic v Poland; Moldova v Faroe Islands
THIRD ONE-DAY INTERNATIONAL
Sylhet Ireland 101 (Hasan Mahmud 5-32). Bangladesh 102-0
Group F Austria v Azerbaijan; Sweden v Belgium
Group G Bulgaria v Montenegro (5pm); Serbia v Lithuania
(Litton Das 50no, Tamim Iqbal 41no). Bangladesh beat
Ireland by 10 wickets.
International friendlies
Australia v Ecuador (9am); Japan v Uruguay (10.30am);
Saudi Arabia v Venezuela (7pm); South Korea v Colombia
SECOND ONE-DAY INTERNATIONAL
Harare Zimbabwe 271 (SC Williams 77, C Madande 52;
(11am); Uzbekistan v Bolivia (6pm)
FA Women’s Super League
Shariz Ahmad 5-43). Netherlands 270 (MP O’Dowd 81,
TLW Cooper 74). Zimbabwe beat Netherlands by one run.
Everton v Liverpool (7.30pm)
Cinch Scottish Championship Ayr v Cove;
Golf Inverness CT v Partick Thistle; Queen’s Park v Arbroath
Cinch Scottish League One Clyde v Airdrieonians (7.30pm);
JONSSON WORKWEAR OPEN (Johannesburg) Falkirk v Kelty Hearts; FC Edinburgh v Queen of the South
Leading first-round scores (GB/Ire unless stated): Cinch Scottish League Two East Fife v Elgin City (8pm)
64 D Fichardt (SA); M Vorster (SA). 65 N Bachem (Ger); Rugby union
J Lagergren (Swe); S Soderberg (Swe) H O’Kennedy (SA). Gallagher Premiership
66 A Cockerill (Can); G Coetzee (SA); E Ferguson; G Green (Mys); Newcastle v Gloucester (7.45pm)
C Hill; N Norgaard (Nor); M Simonsen (Nor); J Schaper (SA). United Championship
Leinster v Stormers (7.35pm); Zebre v Cardiff (7.10pm)
WGC DELL TECHNOLOGIES MATCH PLAY (Austin, Texas)
Group one: S Scheffler (US) bt A Norén (Swe) 5&4;
RFU Championship
Hartpury v Ampthill (7.45pm)
Kim T (Kor) bt D Riley (US) 1up. Rugby league
Group two: J Rahm (Sp) bt K Mitchell (US) 4&3;
B Horschel (US) bt R Fowler (US) 3&2
Betfred Super League
Castleford v Warrington (8pm); Wakefield v Hull KR (8pm);
Group three: K Bradley (US) bt S Stallings (US) 6&5; Wigan v Salford (8pm)
R McIlroy (NI) halved with D McCarthy (US)
Group four: P Cantlay (US) bt K Lee (Kor) 4&2;
Cricket
First T20 international
B Harman (US) bt N Taylor (Can) 3&2
Afghanistan v Pakistan, Sharjah (4pm)
Group five: M Homa (US) bt K Kisner (US) 3&2;
J Suh (US) bt H Matsuyama (Jpn) 3&1
Group seven: H English (US) bt W Zalatoris (US) 5&3;
A Putnam (US) bt R Fox (NZ) 2&1
Group eight: S Kim (Kor) bt V Hovland (Nor) 4&3; C Kirk Greg Wood’s racing tips
(US) halved with M Kuchar (US)
Group nine: C Morikawa (US) halved with A Svensson (Can);
J Day (Aus) bt V Perez (Fr) 2&1
Group 10: T Finau (US) bt A Meronk (Pol) 4&3; K Kitayama
(US) bt C Bezidenhout (SA) 2&1
Musselburgh 1.20 Garde Des Champs1.50 Ravenscar
2.25 Bringbackmemories 3.00 Lastofthecosmics (nb)
Group 11: X Schauffle (US) bt A Wise (US) 2&1; C Davis 3.30 Cuban Cigar (nap) 4.00 White Rhino
(Aus) bt T Hoge (US) 3&1
Group 12: T Montgomery (US) bt J Spieth (US) 2&1;
4.30 Of Course You Can
Newbury 1.30 Iliko D’Olivate 2.05 Our Jet 2.40 Arqoob
M Hughes (Can) bt S Lowry (Ire) 4&3 3.10 Zanza 3.40 Enzo D’Airy 4.10 General Probus
Group 13: S Burns (US) bt A Scott (Aus) 1up; S Power (Ire) 4.45 Caryto Des Brosses
bt A Hadwin (Can) 1up
Group 14: T Hatton (Eng) bt L Herbert (Aus) 2&1; R Henley
Hereford 1.40 Crem Fresh 2.15 Charles St
2.50 Voice Of Hope 3.20 Credo 3.50 Pawpaw 4.20 Bertie B
(US) bt B Griffin (US) 5&4.
Group 15: C Young (US) bt C Conners (Can) 1up;
4.55 Heros De Romay
D Thompson (US) bt S Straka (Aut) 4&3 Newcastle 5.15 Daaris 5.45 Engles Rock
Grup 16: Im S-j (Kor) bt JT Poston (US) 1up; T Fleetwood 6.15 St Andrew’s Castle 6.45 Brooklyn Nine Nine
(Eng) halved with M McNealy (US). 7.15 Blazing Son 7.45 Mighty Power 8.15 Elzaal

‘Mel B left to get some chicken’
Max Rushden on his memories
of hosting Soccer AM and why
he will be sad to see the show go
Exclusive column Page 37 
Report and analysis
Pages 42-43
Italy England
1 2
Retegui 57 Rice 13, Kane 44pen
Jacob Steinberg
Stadio Diego Armando Maradona
Harry Kane said his dream had
come true after the striker became
his country’s record goalscorer and
helped England make a flying start to
their Euro 2024 qualifying campaign
by winning away to Italy for the first
time since 1961.
Kane moved on from the pain of
his missed penalty during the World
Cup quarter-final defeat to France by
scoring the winner from the spot as
Southgate’s side secured a 2-1 victory
in Naples.
England, who gained revenge for
their defeat to Italy in the Euro 2020
final, were under pressure after losing
•••
‘My dream came true’
Kane sets England goal
record in historic win
Luke Shaw to a late red card. But the
night belonged to Kane, whose 54th
international goal saw him move one
clear of Wayne Rooney.
“It was a really special night for
me,” England’s captain said. “A really
special night for the team – the first
time England have won in Italy for
a long time so to be a part of that is
amazing. I am really proud. Thank
you to everyone that has made this
dream become a reality. It had to be
a penalty. I had a feeling it would be.
But I’ve prepared well for it. Thank-
fully I put it away.”
Kane was asked if his miss against
France went through his mind before
he converted his penalty. “Any pen-
alty is nerve-racking,” the 29-year-old
said. “I was really disappointed with
how the World Cup ended. It feels like
forever since I last put on an England
shirt. I was itching to get out there. It
was a great feeling to see that hit the
back of the net.”
Southgate embraced Kane after
full time. “His overall performance
was outstanding,” England’s manager
said. “To break the record in the man-
ner he did given the recent history
was a real indication of his strength
of character. I couldn’t be happier for
him and his family. They’re lovely
people. He’s a brilliant professional
and to do it as quickly as he has is an
incredible achievement.
“The players gave him a brilliant
reception afterwards and I think that
was both in response to the record
and what he’s had to recover from.”
The Guardian
Friday 24 March 2023
▲ Harry
Kane roars
with delight
after netting
a nerveless
penalty in
Naples to set
the England
scoring record
ISABELLA BONOTTO/
ANADOLU AGENCY
VIA GETTY IMAGES
Kane, who was described as a
complete striker by Italy’s manager,
Roberto Mancini, addressed the
squad in the dressing room after the
game. “Everybody recognised this
was a very special moment,” South-
gate said. “A historic moment and
he deserves every bit of praise he’s
getting.”
England dominated the first half,
took an early lead through Declan
Rice and were 2-0 up at half-time.
But Southgate was unhappy with
his side’s second half. Mateo Retegui
scored on his Italy debut and Eng-
land had a nervy finish after Shaw
was booked twice in the space of 54
seconds. The left-back will be sus-
pended when England host Ukraine
at Wembley on Sunday.*
United bid
chaos leads to
fears Glazers
may not sell
Sean Ingle
Concerns are growing among some
parties involved in the Manchester
United sale that the Glazers might
have “played them for months” – and
instead of selling the club they would
prefer to either push up the price to
create leverage for a loan, or offload a
minority stake to a hedge fund.
The latest plot twist came on a day
where parties were told the dead-
line for the second round of bidding
would now be today at 4pm – having
been pushed back from Wednesday
night – and US hedge fund Elliott
Management confirmed that it had
made an offer for United, but only for
a “small amount of common equity”.
To some well-placed observers
those words suggest Elliott, which
used to own Milan, are only interested
in the 31% of non-Glazer shares that
are traded on the New York Stock
Exchange. However they could target
the members of the Glazer family that
want to sell. Either way, it raises the
prospect of a scenario that would
allow United’s co-chairmen, Joel and
Avram Glazer, to stay at the helm.
Meanwhile eyebrows continue to
be raised over claims that up to eight
bidders are interested in the club
given that only two, the Ineos owner,
Sir Jim Ratcliffe, and the Qatari
consortium of Sheikh Jassim bin
Hamad al-Thani, have gone public.
A spokesman for Ineos said: “Sir Jim
Ratcliffe and Ineos can confirm we
have submitted a revised bid.”
The suspicion remains that Raine,
the US bank running the sale, is trying
to ramp up a bidding process that
is not as competitive as made out.
Well-placed sources believe Raine’s
aim is to push potential suitors
towards the upper end of the Glazers’
£5bn-£6bn valuation – significantly
higher than the Qataris or Ratcliffe
appear to want to pay.
Yesterday the Finnish entrepreneur
Thomas Zilliacus was the latest to be
linked with United, saying he would
put up £3bn for the club if fans were
willing to put up the other half of a
£6bn bid. His move seems unlikely
to succeed given he has yet to show
proof of funds or make a bid.
However, a nightmare scenario
for United fans remains in play: the
family that loaded £514.9m of debt
on  the club when they took over
in 2005 – with only £35.1m coming
off since – staying in charge for the
foreseeable future.