Cameron to say UK's 'safety' is paramount in eurozone crisis

Cameron to say UK's 'safety' is paramount in eurozone crisis

David Cameron is to insist it is his job to "keep Britain safe" whatever the fate of the eurozone.

In a speech to business leaders in Manchester, the PM is expected to say the euro area is at a "crossroads" and could go into "unchartered territory".

Greece's inability to form a government able to push through austerity plans has led to talk of it exiting the euro.

The PM will insist the UK is on the right economic course. Labour say the recession is all the coalition's fault.

In recent days, government ministers have used increasingly strong language to describe the political deadlock in Greece and its damaging impact on other European economies.

At Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday, Mr Cameron said the eurozone either had to resolve its problems quickly or face a potential break-up.

'Clear task'
In a speech to business leaders in the North West of England, the PM is expected to return to the theme - warning the problems in Greece and the survival of the euro are a "crisis that never really went away".

"Either Europe has a committed, stable, successful eurozone with an effective firewall, well capitalised and regulated banks, a system of fiscal burden sharing, and supportive monetary policy across the Eurozone or we are in unchartered territory which carries huge risks for everybody," he is expected to say.

"As I have consistently said it is in Britain's interest for the eurozone to sort out its problems.

"But be in no doubt: whichever path is chosen, I am prepared to do whatever is necessary to protect this country and secure our economy and financial system."

'Right direction'
Faced with the knock-on effects of the eurozone crisis, Mr Cameron will say that he has "a clear task" which is "to keep Britain safe".

He will defend the coalition's austerity measures, saying the programme of spending cuts, tax rises and pay freezes is already having the desired effect of reducing the deficit.

"Let me be clear, we are moving in the right direction - not rushing the task but judging it carefully. And that is why we must resist dangerous voices calling on us to retreat.

He will describe Labour calls for the pace of spending cuts to be slowed as "something for nothing economics".

"We cannot blow the budget on more spending and more debt. It would mean more austerity for even longer. It is not an alternative policy, it is a cop-out."

'Out of touch'
Labour said Mr Cameron was using the eurozone crisis as "an excuse for Britain's problems" and should instead be urging Europe to rethink its approach to austerity and the role of the European Central Bank.

"David Cameron is totally out of touch and deeply complacent if he thinks Britain is on the right course," shadow chancellor Ed Balls said.

"His failed policies have pushed us into recession and the government is now set to borrow an extra £150bn to pay for this economic failure.

"David Cameron must recognise the austerity policies which are failing in Europe are the very same policies that have failed in Britain and which the British government has been urging eurozone countries to stick with."

The Bank of England has again downgraded its forecast for growth in 2012 to just 0.8% with Governor Mervyn King attributing UK weakness to fissures in the single currency bloc.


Source: BBC

Australian cultural policy: a model for the UK

Australian cultural policy: a model for the UK
This country deserves a coherent, government-wide policy for culture, says John Holden, it's time once again to learn from the Australians

The proposed Australian cultural policy takes things in the right order, says John. Photograph: Hemis / Alamy/Alamy

Last November I visited Australia and the arts community was buzzing with talk about the country's proposed new cultural policy. So I took a look at the discussion document and I turned green with envy – why can't we have one of these in the UK?

In Britain we've never been good at framing a coherent approach to culture. Back in 1996 a senior civil servant at the Department for National Heritage told the Sunday Times: "It is not part of our culture to think in terms of a cultural policy," and not much has changed.

The Australian example shows what can be done. It's a remarkable and mercifully brief document that has many virtues.

First, it sets out the beliefs on which any serious cultural policy must be founded: "The arts and creative industries are fundamental to Australia's identity as a society and nation, and increasingly to our success as a national economy." It adds that "the policy will be based on an understanding that a creative nation produces a more inclusive society and a more expressive and confident citizenry."

Everything that follows in the document is built on this bedrock of ideology. Without such clear and transparent beliefs, and the commitment that flows from them, policies are doomed to endless wrangling about measurement and evidence.

But the document does acknowledge evidence where it exists, and uses it wisely. For example: "Research shows that arts education encourages academic achievement and improves students' self-esteem, leading to more positive engagement with school and the broader community and higher school retention rates" – therefore "the new national curriculum will ensure that young Australians have access to learning in the creative arts."

But in the UK we have to suffer the non-evidence based approach of abolishing what went before just because the other lot invented it.

The next virtue is that the proposed policy not only encompasses the arts, heritage and creative industries, but extends into other areas like education and infrastructure. Culture is deemed relevant to every department of government, from the role that it plays in international relations (British Foreign and Commonwealth Office) to its economic importance (HM Treasury), from its impact on the need to build airports for cultural tourists (Department for Communities and Local Goverment) to cultural scholarship in Higher Education (Department for Education).

That relevance is a two-way street: for example, the cultural uses of high speed broadband affect hard infrastructural requirements, while the existence of the hardware creates cultural opportunities.

But with our inheritance of initative-itis and dysfunctional 19th century silos in Whitehall, our treatment of culture within government is confused and contradictory. It needs pulling together into a consistent and logical whole, which is just what the Australian cultural policy is designed to do.

One interesting thing about this Australian initiative is its timing. Down under they are not afflicted by the global financial malaise to the same extent that we are, but they are clearly looking to the future, and asking where societies and economies are going.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the UK's Plan A and Plan B, it should be obvious that we need more than hope and excuses to reinvigorate ourselves. We need a long-term economic strategy that recognizes the important part that culture and creativity play. With the cultural and creative economy now accounting for such a large proportion of Britain's GDP, you would think that some serious consideration would be given to cultural policy right across the piece, rather than following the traditional fractured approach.

The proposed Australian cultural policy takes things in the right order: start with ideology and belief in making the case for culture; gather the evidence where you have it; work out a 10 year integrated strategy across government; decide on the consequent structures and funding needs; adjust according to circumstances.

In the UK we seem to have things topsy-turvy: first the treasury decides how much money there is; then government departments fight among themselves for how much they each get; they decide their own individual priorities; they hand out money; evidence is gathered by the recipients of that money to prove the cash wasn't wasted. There is no clear political articulation or acceptance of the case for culture at any level.

Those with long memories will recall that the impetus for much of the increased funding, energy and new thinking about culture and the creative industries that we saw in the UK at the end of the 1990s was prompted by an Australian policy paper. Prime Minister Paul Keating's 1994 document, Creative Nation had a profound influence here. It is time once again to learn from the Australians. This country also needs and deserves a coherent, government-wide policy for culture.

John Holden is associate at independent think tank Demos – he is also a visiting professor at City University in London

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Source: Guardian

Ladybird decline driven by 'invading' harlequin

By Richard BlackEnvironment correspondent, BBC News

harlequins

Ladybirds native to the UK and other European countries are declining fast as the invasive harlequin species spreads, scientists have shown.
Researchers found that seven out of the eight native British species they studied have declined, with issues also identified in Belgium and Switzerland.
The harlequin is an Asian species brought in for pest control, but which has now become a pest itself.
Scientists are warning of potential damage to ecosystems' "resilience".
Some UK species are "near the threshold of detection", the scientists write.
In an unrelated study released at the same time, researchers found that the colour of ladybirds shows how toxic they are to predators.
The harlequin (Harmonia axyridis) was first spotted in Belgium in 2001, and in the UK and Switzerland in 2004.
Scientists have warned since it appeared that native species were likely to be vulnerable, but this study, reported in the journal Diversity and Distributions, measures the scale of the impact and ties it squarely to the alien's arrival.
"This study provides strong evidence of a link between the arrival of the harlequin and declines in other species of ladybird," said Helen Roy from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Wallingford, Oxfordshire.
"This result would not have been possible without the participation of so many members of the public gathering ladybird records across Britain, Belgium and Switzerland."

The big seven-spot is able to hang on

The UK database contains nearly 90,000 observations of ladybirds made between 2006 and 2010.

The Belgian sample is somewhat smaller but began earlier.

Surveying the same batch of species in the same locality year after year enables researchers to make a good estimate of the rate of change.

And for some native species, the rate is spectacularly high.

Numbers of the two-spotted ladybird (Adalia bipunctata), they estimate, fell by 44% in the UK and 30% in Belgium in the five years following the harlequin's arrival.

The harlequin and the two-spot share a habitat of deciduous trees and as the harlequin is larger, it is able to out-compete its smaller rival for food, and prey on its larvae.

The only UK species apparently unaffected by the harlequin's arrival was the seven-spotted ladybird (Coccinella septempunctata) which is of a similar size and does not share the same habitat.

Declines were also seen in Switzerland, but the data was not as comprehensive.

The researchers warn that potentially serious consequences lie ahead if the harlequin continues its rampant march.

"Ladybirds provide an incredibly useful ecological function by keeping aphids in check," said Tim Adriaens, from the Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO) in Belgium.

"At the continental scale, the arrival of the harlequin could impact on the resilience of ecosystems and severely diminish the vital services that ladybirds deliver."

Currently, there is no way of selectively killing the harlequin. Gardeners are advised to take care if they decide to squish them, as their highly variable colour pattern means they can be hard to distinguish from native species.

Red signal

Another reason why the harlequin is able to out-compete native species appears to be because it is more toxic to birds and other animals that may try to eat it.

Working with the seven-spot, researchers discovered that individual ladybirds with red wings are more toxic than others.

As they detail in the journal Functional Ecology, the reason seems to be that these individuals are well-fed, enabling them to produce relatively large amounts of their defensive chemicals and the red pigment that probably warns predators off.

"Producing warning signals and chemical defences is costly, so when individuals lack access to an abundant supply of food they produce relatively weak chemical defences," said lead scientist Jon Blount from Exeter University.

There is no explicit link to the harlequin study; however, if the harlequins are eating better than the native species, as appears to be the case, that could increase the difference in toxicity between the natives and the invaders.

Source: BBC