World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk

Car bomb kills senior aide to ex-Lebanon PM Saad Hariri
Arctic 30: five Britons on way home from Russia
Flooding in Surrey on Boxing Day – video
Can you be too ethical? | Andrew Brown
Goodstart childcare staff to receive 15% pay rise for just 10 months
Tech 128: 2013 was the year of Moocs, OK Google - and NSA surveillance
Turned out nice: hot summer makes it a vintage year for wildlife across the UK
High winds and heavy rain lash UK and Ireland again
Scott Morrison: 'The boats have not yet stopped but they are stopping'
SPC Ardmona sacks entire maintenance workforce at Shepparton cannery
Body found in New Zealand on route of missing British hiker
Novelist Alex Miller attacks Australia's 'cruel and inhumane' refugee treatment
From the archive: 27 December 1953: My Two Weeks in Gaol
Middle-income countries to have the casting vote on future of development | Alex Evans
My classical music top ten of 2013
Kerry O'Keeffe steps down from ABC commentary duties
Clive Palmer goes fishing and tells Nick Xenophon to 'get upset' in new year
UN agency says bill will lead to ethnic profiling
Snapchat users' phone numbers may be exposed to hackers
A nagging compulsion to ride horses that I'm saddled with for life
Piers Morgan faces a Brett Lee over - video
New bullying measures criticised for fostering 'entitlement and victimhood'
Chinese media attacks Japan's Shinzo Abe for visit to Yasukuni shrine
UK anti-Muslim hate crime soars, police figures show
Sharks of more than three metres to be caught, shot and dumped into sea

Car bomb kills senior aide to ex-Lebanon PM Saad Hariri

Posted: 27 Dec 2013 01:38 AM PST

Mohamad Chatah, outspoken critic of Hezbollah and Syrian regime, killed in attack near Hariri's compound in Beirut

A senior aide to the former Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri has been assassinated by a large car bomb in central Beirut. Fifteen other people were injured in the blast, which destroyed part of a neighbourhood near Hariri's compound.

Hariri-linked media reported that Mohamad Chatah, a key adviser to the now exiled leader died in the blast. He was believed to have been en route to a meeting at the nearby headquarters, where he kept an office. Chatah was an outspoken critic of the Syrian regime and of Hezbollah, which has held sway over the Lebanese government since Hariri was ousted as leader three years ago.

Chatah, 62, is the second senior opposition figure to have been killed in the past 14 months. The political killing of figures linked to the Hariris dates back nine years.

In October last year, Wissam al-Hassan, the head of the Internal Security Forces intelligence branch, was also killed by a car bomb. He was buried several hundred metres from the scene of Friday's blast in a shrine alongside former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, the patriarch of the western-leaning 14 March alliance whose assassination in February 2014 sparked a new era of instability in post-civil war Lebanon.

Friday's bombing comes several weeks before the start of the long-delayed trial of the alleged assassins of Hariri, five members of Hezbollah, who will be tried in The Hagie in absentia. Hezbollah has vehemently denied being responsible for Hariri's death, which it labels as a US and Israeli plot.

A giant mushroom-like cloud towered over the downtown district where the explosion hit, not far from the Hariri compound in the Wadi Abu Jamil area. The Lebanese Red Cross said at least 15 casualties had been taken to nearby hospitals. It was not immediately clear how many had been killed and whether the toll would rise.

14 March leaders have been strong supporters of the uprising against Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, whom they accuse of seeking hegemony over Lebanon both directly and through Hezbollah and Iran. The bloc is strongly backed by Saudi Arabia and supported by Qatar. Each side is arming proxies in the vicious war in Syria, while seeking to assert its influence on the Lebanese political scene, which has been unable to form a government for more than a year.

Chatah had an adopted unusually strident tone against both Syria and Hezbollah for the past year, taking to Twitter regularly to warn of the perils of political chaos and the influence of foreign players. "As Hezbollah chips deeper into the state's sovereign prerogatives, it undercuts the foundations of a single/united Lebanon," he said recently. In another tweet he said: "Arafat, then Assad then Nasrallah. If Lebanon is not saved from its current path, history will tell how the third blow led to its downfall."

In his final tweet, hours before he died, he said: "Hezbollah is pressing hard to be granted similar powers in security and foreign policy matters that Syria exercised in Lebanon for 15 years."

Martin Chulov

Arctic 30: five Britons on way home from Russia

Posted: 27 Dec 2013 01:32 AM PST

Greenpeace activists, crew member and freelance journalist to arrive in London three months after arrest during protest

Five Britons who were among the Arctic 30 are on their way home from St Petersburg, three months after Russian authorities seized their ship and arrested them.

Members of the group were initially charged with piracy and held in jail for two months before being given bail and then granted amnesty.

Anthony Perrett, 32, of Newport, south Wales, will arrive in Paris on Friday and then travel by Eurostar to London with fellow Greenpeace activists Alexandra Harris and Phil Ball, a crew member of the Arctic Sunrise ship, Iain Rogers, and freelance videographer Kieron Bryan, one of two journalists on the trip. They will be met by their families. A sixth Briton, activist Frank Hewetson, was travelling to another country, according to Greenpeace.

Perrett told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme the experience had been worth it.

"I hope we have got conversations started in Russia about drilling in the Arctic and raised the issue with Russian voters," he said.

Perrett suggested the prospect of a long term in prison was nothing compared to ensuring the continuing existence of humanity: "What price can you put on that?"

He said that while the physical and "aesthetic" prison conditions in which the protesters and journalists had been held were like those of a second world war concentration camp, the guards had been professional and had not treated them like prisoners of war. Asked whether he would go back to Russia for Greenpeace, Perrett said: "I don't think that they are planning to go back to Russia any time soon, to be honest".

He called the experience "a long hundred days", adding: "I am eager to get back to Wales and sleep in my own bed and get back to work."

A spokesman for Greenpeace said: "After 102 days it's great to have them on the way back home. We've spoken to them and they're excited to be coming back. It is a relief to their families who have gone through a difficult time."

The group was detained for protesting against an Arctic offshore oil rig owned by the Russian gas giant Gazprom.

James Meikle

Flooding in Surrey on Boxing Day – video

Posted: 27 Dec 2013 01:28 AM PST

Aerial views of the aftermath of severe flooding in Surrey on Boxing Day following yet more heavy rain over the Christmas period

Can you be too ethical? | Andrew Brown

Posted: 27 Dec 2013 01:00 AM PST

Corporate smoke-screens, some Catholic bioethics … such problematic displays of 'ethicity' can easily confuse the issue

This may be the only question in this series to which the answer is "no".

It's not obvious that you can't have too many ethics. Like every other word, it's used to conceal the truth as well as to point towards it, and in some corporate meanings "ethical" is, and ought to be, a warning sign.

"Ethical" in the corporate sense is something much more like "pious", although without the Christian underpinning. Perhaps we need a word for the resulting vain self-satisfaction – ethicity, after the model of piety. This would cover fair trade, sustainability, the ostentatious avoidance of sweatshops and so on. It is the kind of thing of which oil companies boast, and Google.

This isn't actually always a bad thing. It's better than unbridled vice. The Scott Trust is an improvement on Richard Desmond, who famously said he had no idea what the word "ethics" means. But it is possible to have too much ethicity. Google is a pretty good example, as is much of the culture of Silicon Valley. Good behaviour isn't always something you can buy with money. Still less is it something you can buy with money you have made through ruthless libertarian selfishness.

Another form of too much ethics is shown by some forms of utilitarianism which proceed from apparently reasonable premises to obviously monstrous conclusions. The two Australian ethicists who in 2012 argued that there was nothing wrong in killing newborn babies if their existence inconvenienced their parents are a poster case for this. So is the reaction of the editor who published the paper:

"What is disturbing is not the arguments in this paper nor its publication in an ethics journal. It is the hostile, abusive, threatening responses that it has elicited. More than ever, proper academic discussion and freedom are under threat from fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society."

When "ethics" becomes a term for a style of reasoning about moral questions which leads its adepts to monstrous conclusions, yes, we can certainly have too much of it.

Much the same could be said for some forms of Roman Catholic bioethics. Beyond that is the general problem of pharisaism, where ethical reasoning comes to be a way of demonstrating the cosmic significance of the mote in your opponent's eye.

In all these cases it looks as if you can be entirely too ethical and anyone who complained of this would be instantly understood. But when you look at the complaint more closely, it actually means that someone has acted wrongly in their display of ethicity, or rule-based smugness – and to act wrongly is by definition unethical. So what looks like to much ethics is in fact too little.

This makes most sense in the context of Aristotelian reasoning about virtues, where the virtuous position is balanced between two vices, so that either too much or too little is a flaw in your character. The essence of virtue, then, is moderation, or perhaps just proportion. Framing it this way avoids the obvious retort – so often heard in discussion of ethics here – that you can have far too much moderation because you can't have too much justice. And neither, properly speaking, can we ever be too ethical. We're lucky if we can just be ethical enough.

Andrew Brown

Goodstart childcare staff to receive 15% pay rise for just 10 months

Posted: 27 Dec 2013 12:53 AM PST

Company confirms it will refuse Abbott government’s request to hand back $60m it is entitled to under from newly axed quality fund

Daniel Hurst

Tech 128: 2013 was the year of Moocs, OK Google - and NSA surveillance

Posted: 27 Dec 2013 12:01 AM PST

Plotting the biggest stories of the year, there was nothing bigger than the revelations about how US and UK security services are tracking the web and mobile phone activity of millions of people. By Samuel Gibbs and Siraj Datoo

Samuel Gibbs

Siraj Datoo

Turned out nice: hot summer makes it a vintage year for wildlife across the UK

Posted: 27 Dec 2013 12:00 AM PST

Though a cold start made it hard for some, the National Trust's annual audit of flora and fauna has found most species did well

After six consecutive years in which awful weather had blighted the UK's wildlife, 2013's cheerful summer turned around the fortunes of flora and fauna across the country, an annual audit has found.

The heat of July and August was a particular fillip for insects that thrive in the warm, such as butterflies, moths, bees, crickets and grasshoppers, according to the National Trust, which publishes its report today of how the weather affected the natural world.

It flags up in particular the success of the tree bumblebee, which only started to colonise the UK in 2001 and has expanded its range considerably, even creeping into Scotland. But there is also good news for a range of mammals, birds and flowers from pine martens to puffins and orchids.

Matthew Oates, the National Trust's naturalist, said: "We were more than overdue a good summer, and eventually we got a real cracker.

"The way our butterflies and other sun-loving insects bounced back in July was utterly amazing, showing nature's powers of recovery at their best. We have seen more winners than losers in our wildlife year, which is a tremendous result, considering where we were last year."

In the 2012 audit, the best that could be said was that it was a good year for slugs, which relish the damp, and for picnickers, who were not tormented by wasps. This time, the cold spring and hot summer meant slugs had a tougher time, a relief for gardeners. Another piece of reasonably good news for horticulturists was the scarcity of aphids, though on the other hand that meant birds such as tits and insects such as seven-spot ladybirds, which feed on aphids, lost a food source.

That chilly spring made life difficult for summer migrant birds such as swallows and martins, and resident species including some owls – especially the barn owl – lost out.

"2013 was one of the most remarkable wildlife years in living memory. Best of all, this year has set up 2014 very nicely," Oates said.

January

A mild first half of the month, followed by 10 days of a 10-day cold, snowy spell.

A wonderful winter for waxwings, crested birds that overwinter in the UK

February

A dry but cold and grey February; the land dried out.

Snowdrops continued to flower for an unusually long period, slowed down by the cold weather.

Rooks began building nests mid-month and went on to have a hugely successful nesting season despite the weather. But it was a poor breeding year for chough http://www.cornishchoughs.orgon the Lizard in Cornwall and on the Welsh coast.

A survey of 54 gardens at National Trust properties revealed that the cold, snowy weather put a pause on spring as flowering plants and bulbs held off for warmer weather. There were 46% fewer of plants in bloom compared with last year.

March

The coldest March since 1962 – chillier than December, January or February.

The extreme cold weather stopped frogs breeding in many ponds.

Badgers and hedgehogs suffered from a shortage of worms and there was little food around for dormice coming out of hibernation, although these all recovered later in the year and mostly went on to have successful breeding seasons.

It was a disastrous month for owls, especially barn owls, and many seabirds starved to death off the north-east coast.

April

April began with a cold drought, then became pleasant towards the middle of the month, but finished with a cool spell.

Spring was running late, with dandelions reaching their peak only at the end of the month, two to three weeks late, and trees were leafing three weeks behind time.

A hard month for nesting birds and returning summer migrants, which arrived on time, as food was in short supply due to the late spring.

A really challenging start to the season for bats because of the shortage of nocturnal flying insects.

May

The month began and ended brightly, but was otherwise cool and grey with many cold nights. Spring was by now even further behind.

A record year for puffins nesting on the Farne Islands, Northumberland, and Lundy in the Bristol Channel.

The first recorded tawny owl in Ireland attracted many birdwatchers to County Down. Bluebells were almost a month late, not reaching their peak flowering until mid-May, while daffodils persisted well into May.

June

A welcome break to the cold, with a 10-day fine spell early on, although thereafter the weather was mixed.

It was a record year for nesting sandwich terns in Norfolk, and for eider ducks at Strangford Lough, Co Down.

Bitterns – one of the UK's rarest birds – were found nesting at Wicken Fen, Cambridgeshire, for the first time.

The orchid population at Plas Newydd, a country house and estate on Anglesey, exploded from 20 in 2007 to almost 150,000 this year.

July

Hot and sunny weather for all of July – the first hot summer month since 2006.

Butterflies appeared from nowhere, with a spectacular emergence of purple emperors in the woods. Late in the month, there were huge population explosions of chalkhill blues on many downs, notably at Denbies Hillside, Surrey.

Tree bumblebees were visible all over the country, even in Borrowdale in the Lake District, one of England's wettest spots. There were also good numbers of rare moss carder bumblebees at Cwm Soden, Ceredigion.

The cold winter and late spring led to a dramatic increase in wasp numbers following last year's lull

August

After an unsettled start, the year's highest temperatures were recorded across south-east England.

A rare migrant butterfly, the long-tailed blue, established breeding colonies on the south-east coast, particularly on the white cliffs of Dover.

Cabbages were riddled caterpillars of small and large whites. Few seven-spot ladybirds were around but there were many grasshoppers and crickets, with a record count of wart-biter bush-crickets on north Wiltshire downs.

September

A combination of lots of the common autumn crane fly (daddy long legs) and many moths was good news for hungry bats ahead of mating and hibernation. It was also a good year for blackberries, although they arrived late as a knock-on from the cold spring.

The seal-pupping season on the Farne Islands was a few weeks late but the cold spring and hot summer helped to produce some of the sweetest and most colourful apples for years, although it was the latest crop since 1985.

October

An unsettled month, ending with the St Jude storm which that hit southern parts of England and Wales.

Yellow-rumped warblers were seen on Lundyisland, swept over from North America by the storm.

It was a great year for fungi in woods and rough fields, particularly in Saltram, Plymouth, where a field full of mushrooms was the best in more than 40 years.

The attractively named slime mould dog's vomit fungus was prominent in many woods and particularly common at Giant's Causeway, Co Antrim, Northern Ireland.

Fieldfares and redwing (migrant birds from northern Europe) appeared early in southern England, were brought in by north-easterly gales.

November

A late, colourful autumn, with lots of most berries, fruits, seeds and nuts, especially rowan berries. There were good amounts of acorns, conkers, sloes and sweet chestnuts too.

Deer in parks entered into the rut and winter well fed, and it was a good year for many mammals after a hard start, including for the pine marten , which is spreading well in Northern Ireland and Scotland.

December

Plenty of holly berries for Christmas and a great year for mistletoe with an abundance of berries.

Steven Morris

High winds and heavy rain lash UK and Ireland again

Posted: 26 Dec 2013 11:54 PM PST

Authorities warn of difficult conditions in many areas only days after Christmas Eve storm

Scott Morrison: 'The boats have not yet stopped but they are stopping'

Posted: 26 Dec 2013 11:47 PM PST

For the fourth time since the Coalition was elected no boats arrived in the past week, immigration minister says

Oliver Laughland

SPC Ardmona sacks entire maintenance workforce at Shepparton cannery

Posted: 26 Dec 2013 11:19 PM PST

Union labels move 'disgusting' after post-Christmas announcement that 73 employees will be replaced by contract workers

Body found in New Zealand on route of missing British hiker

Posted: 26 Dec 2013 11:06 PM PST

Andrew Wyatt had been missing for 12 days after setting out to walk the Te Araroa trail

Novelist Alex Miller attacks Australia's 'cruel and inhumane' refugee treatment

Posted: 26 Dec 2013 11:03 PM PST

Miller, who moved here in the 1950s, initially thought Australians were 'welcoming and generous people but this doesn’t seem true anymore'

Oliver Milman

From the archive: 27 December 1953: My Two Weeks in Gaol

Posted: 26 Dec 2013 11:00 PM PST

Naturally, we were segregated from the majority of our fellow-prisoners, who were black. Our food was brought to us by long-term black prisoners. They seemed decent

Mr. Duncan, the thirty-three-year-old son of a former Governor-General of South Africa, was convicted after participating in a civil disobedience campaign directed against the Union's discriminatory racial laws. He was sentenced to 100 days in prison, with the alternative of a fine. He chose to serve fourteen days as a protest.

Prison is not a pleasant place. I suppose that is true of most prisons round the world: it is certainly true of Boksburg Gaol, in the Transvaal, where I recently spent two weeks.

When I arrived I was taken down a small dark passage, in one side of which were three ironclad doors. It was quiet, and when one of these doors was opened, it was a surprise to see six people within. They were lying on felt mats on the floor. I went in and the doors were locked. None of the six looked up. That was my introduction to the most extraordinary fortnight of my life.

Naturally, we were segregated from the majority of our fellow-prisoners, who were black. Our food was brought to us by long-term black prisoners. They seemed decent. We could see nothing of what went on among our African fellow-prisoners, but could hear them being mustered – and hit if anything went wrong – at the morning roll-call. In general, white prisoners have little to complain about, but black prisoners are abominably treated.

Why serve a prison sentence when it could be avoided? People object that to do so brings law into disrepute. I did it because I believe that for a majority of our people in South Africa the present situation is intolerable. I believe it is necessary to work for a Government which will attract the loyalty of all races, and this cannot now be done inside Parliament. Our Parliament represents merely the white minority, with all its limitations.

Up till the defeat of the United Party in 1948, it was possible, though not intelligent, to believe that a white group, acting within parliament, might reverse the century-old trend away from the equality of the non-racial Cape constitution of 1853. After 1948 it was no longer possible to expect this, and I became convinced that our best hope lay in non-violent civil disobedience.

If our future political life was to be driven outside Parliament by the white supremacists, out on to the spectrum of extra-parliamentary activities ranging from non-violence right down to bloodshed, then it was vital to hold it as near to the top end of the spectrum as possible. Acting on this belief, I resigned from the Colonial Service and took part in last year's campaign. The prison sentence was imposed on me as a result.

What good can individual actions like this do? The answer is that individual actions can do little. There is only one internal power that can challenge successfully the colour-bar backed by embattled Afrikaner nationalism. That is the working class, which is largely African. This latent power may manifest itself in the Communist Party, or in a South African party open to all races on a programme of emancipation. In my view the future of South Africa depends on this last alternative, and my individual action was aimed at affirming this truth, at pointing the way to common action.

"But you are playing with fire. This will all turn to violence." I do not agree. But let us concede it for the sake of argument. Which other way promises less violence? There is no safe path. We are in a fearful situation, and our task as realists is to choose, not a perfect path, but the least imperfect path possible. Perhaps in this we are in much the same predicament as the rest of the world.

Middle-income countries to have the casting vote on future of development | Alex Evans

Posted: 26 Dec 2013 11:00 PM PST

Hopes of ending poverty, limiting global warming and achieving sustainable globalisation rest with upwardly mobile countries

As 2013 draws to a close, the outlook on globalisation and sustainability suggests a tentative balance between two alternative futures: one of intensifying zero-sum competition – a scenario that would be disastrous for the world's poor – and one of increasing co-operation in a revitalised, rules-based order.

Globalisation, the engine of emerging economies' growth over the past 15 years, appears to be entering a period of increased stress. Having previously outstripped GDP for 30 years, trade has expanded more slowly since 2011. About 1,500 "stealth protectionist measures" have been introduced by G20 members since 2008, when they promised to eschew such practices. And amid stagnant wages, high unemployment, and anaemic growth, support for globalisation is waning in advanced economies.

Meanwhile, the world remains way off track for sustainability. Global greenhouse gas emissions are now 46% higher than they were in 1990, and the International Energy Agency estimates that existing policies will result in long-term warming of between 3.6C (38.5F) and 5.3C – well into the zone where catastrophic climate tipping points could be triggered, potentially wiping out progress made on poverty reduction over the past 15 years. Yet the decisive action needed to halt these trends is being held back by the usual squabbling and competitiveness.

Efforts to formulate new international development targets to succeed the millennium development goals (MDGs) when they expire in 2015 are emerging as a key indicator of what the future holds. And it's middle-income countries – a group that includes not just the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, but also players like Indonesia, Turkey, and a range of highly influential Latin American countries, including Mexico and Colombia – that could have the casting vote on which of these scenarios we end up heading into.

Governments agreed at this year's UN general assembly that the post-2015 goals should be universal, targeting not only the 1 billion people living in absolute poverty, but all 7 billion of the world's inhabitants. The reality, though, is that the new development agenda will be anything but unless middle-income countries engage with it seriously – and at present, it's unclear what, if anything, they really want or feel they stand to gain.

After all, middle-income countries are much less reliant on foreign assistance than they were when the MDGs were agreed. Aid flows now account for just 0.3% of their GDP, compared with nearly 10% in low-income countries. By contrast, their capacity to access finance from sources such as foreign direct investment, equity markets, commercial debt, and remittances has soared.

Most spectacular has been the explosion in their capacity to mobilise domestic resources. On average, middle-income countries' domestic tax revenue is now five times higher than foreign direct investment inflows, and 40 times higher than aid receipts. By 2030, developing countries will account for almost 65% of global savings (up from 45% in 2010) – with most in middle-income countries.

Of course, middle-income countries still face massive development challenges. They house the majority of poor people, often in stubborn poverty "tails" hallmarked by political or geographical marginalisation.

And while hundreds of millions of their citizens have escaped poverty since 2000, the members of this "breakout generation" are finding that though they have new opportunities to improve their lot, they are also encountering dangerous new risks that could halt their progress – or push them back into poverty.

Those risks include insecure and low-paid employment; urban infrastructure that could be pushed beyond breaking point by rocketing demand; resource scarcity and its effects on the price of basic goods; the social strains of high inequality; a lack of safety nets; unaccountable or unresponsive institutions; and the risk of shocks, from economic crises to accelerated climate change.

These challenges affect poor people in all countries, of course, but they have a particular political potency among emerging middle classes in middle-income economies, as protest movements in countries from Egypt and Turkey to Bulgaria and Brazil underline.

These challenges are common to many countries, implying that collective approaches could contribute powerfully to tackling them. Yet many middle-income countries see these issues differently, eschewing collective action in favour of national approaches. Examples include focusing on natural resource access deals in Africa, resistance to greater multilateral co-ordination of aid programmes, and enthusiasm for non-binding approaches to global climate policy.

If we're going to eliminate poverty by 2030 (the probable headline target of the post-2015 goals), limit global warming to 2C, or move to more sustainable and inclusive globalisation, we're going to need a serious new global partnership – with middle-income countries fully on board.

Alex Evans

My classical music top ten of 2013

Posted: 26 Dec 2013 11:00 PM PST

Tom Service picks his musical highlights from a year that was dominated by Wagner, Verdi and Britten. Tell us about your picks of the year in the comments section below

That was the year that was: 12 months dominated, of course, by the celebrations marking the anniversaries of those three titans of music: the 300th birthday of Jan Benda, Étienne-Nicolas Méhul's 250th, and Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow's 350th. Well, and there was even some room for a bit of Britten, Wagner, and Verdi as well… Actually, in all seriousness, not nearly enough was done this year about Méhul, the most important French composer during the Revolution, who does deserve some rediscovery; but in any case: from operatic behemoths to festivals of 20th century music, here's a run-down of my top ten of the year in the world of classical music.

At 10, Covent Garden's first-ever staging of Verdi's Les Vêpres Siciliennes, in star director Stefan Herheim's production: "ambitious and generally highly successful", Andrew Clements thought.

No 9: English National Opera's revival of their production of Deborah Warner's "unmissable" production of Britten's last opera, Death in Venice, with John Graham-Hall's show-stealing performance as the ageing Aschenbach.

No 8: Glyndebourne bucked the trend of all that Wagner and Verdi by opening their season with a controversial staging of Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos. Tim Ashley thought Katharina Thomas's version "annoying"; for me, it was at least a bold attempt to turn Strauss's magnificent confection into something more serious, staging the piece through the prism of the second world war.

No 7: One of many highlights of the Southbank Centre's The Rest is Noise festival - a game-changing, year-long programme whose concerts, talks, and events told a compelling story of 20th century music was the presence of both Philip Glass and Steve Reich in London over the same weekend to play two of their minimalist masterpieces, Glass's Music in 12 Parts, and Reich's Music for 18 Musicians; a moment that made quite a lot of history - with quite a lot of repeating.

No 6: Antony McDonald's new production of Wagner's Lohengrin for Welsh National Opera was one of the stage highlights of the Wagner celebrations, conducted by WNO's new music director, Lothar Koenigs, and with stand-out performances from Emma Bell and Susan Bickley.

At 5, the Manchester International Festival presented an all John Tavener concert in July. There were three world premieres on the programme, including a coruscatingly fearless and compressed dramatisation of Tolstoy's novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich. It's a piece whose toughness, terseness, and final, hard-won image of transcendence makes it among Tavener's finest achievements. Tavener had found a genuine musical renewal in the works he was writing before his death in November (and you can hear the piece on Radio 3's Hear and Now on 4 January).

No 4: The Aldeburgh Festival's Grimes on the Beach was the most elementally extreme and crazily authentic production of the whole Britten centenary. Tim Albery staged Peter Grimes on the very shingle on which the work's drama is set. Singers and audience alike battled - and conquered! - the weather, the sea, and the nocturnal cold to produce some unforgettably briny theatre. The orchestral music was piped in over some miraculously weatherproof speakers, and Stuart Bedford conducted from a bunker buried into the beach. Alan Oke's Grimes was shatteringly powerful, and the whole show created an astonishing symbiosis of place, sea, and music - even if you did need a rug to protect your extremities.

At 3, the London Sinfonietta's performances of Stockhausen's Gruppen at the Royal Festival Hall, also part of The Rest Is Noise, were a virtually sold-out knockout, proving that there is a huge audience for the sharpest edges of the avant-garde - and demonstrating just how viscerally exciting this music can be.

No 2: Illness forced Abbado to cancel his autumn touring commitments, including a scheduled London visit, but I was lucky enough to hear him in August at the Lucerne festival. His concert of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony and Bruckner's (also unfinished) Ninth with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra was existentially shattering; music-making of sublime, transfiguring, and disturbing beauty.

And at no 1? Daniel Barenboim's concert performance of the Ring with the Staatskapelle Berlin at the Proms was, for me, the highlight of highlights of the whole year. Brilliantly cast (Bryn Terfel's Wotan! Nina Stemme's Brünnhilde!), conducted by a musician at the height of his powers, Barenboim's Ring was as powerful a performance as it's possible to imagine today. But more than that, the atmosphere created by this music, the sense of communion between everyone in the Royal Albert Hall and the musicians - and even everyone listening at home! - conjured a unique magic. This Ring wasn't simply an aesthetically transformative experience, but a social and philosophical one, too. The silence at the end of the journey was an astonishing tribute to the concentration of the performance - and the Prommers. And if you missed it, Radio 3 re-broadcast the whole thing again over Christmas, you can catch them on iPlayer if you're quick.

Tom Service

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Kerry O'Keeffe steps down from ABC commentary duties

Posted: 26 Dec 2013 10:52 PM PST

One of Australia’s best-loved cricket commentators, Kerry O'Keeffe, has announced his retirement from the ABC

Tom Lutz

Clive Palmer goes fishing and tells Nick Xenophon to 'get upset' in new year

Posted: 26 Dec 2013 10:44 PM PST

Independent senator says Palmer should have explained his paty's deal with Australian Motoring Enthusiasts

Daniel Hurst

UN agency says bill will lead to ethnic profiling

Posted: 26 Dec 2013 10:30 PM PST

Backbenchers condemn UN after it said some proposed UK laws could stigmatise foreigners and deny housing to those in need

Tory MPs have reacted with fury to a warning by a UN agency that David Cameron's new immigration bill could create a climate of ethnic profiling.

Backbenchers condemned the office of the UN high commissioner for refugees, after it said some of Britain's proposed laws could stigmatise foreigners and deny housing to people in need.

In a highly critical document, António Guterres, the UN high commissioner, raised concerns that the immigration bill will damage communities and lead to the marginalisation of refugees and asylum-seekers.

Cameron has proposed the immigration bill in order to crack down on illegal immigrants, restricting access to bank accounts and private housing, as well as forcing temporary migrants to pay for public services such as the NHS.

The commissioner is worried that legal refugees and asylum-seekers will be caught up in the new restrictions, as landlords, GPs and banks will find it difficult to interpret their immigration status. The commissioner is worried these protected groups would suffer discrimination if the legislation went ahead.

However, yesterday, Conservative MPs urged the government to press ahead with its efforts to protect the borders and said Britain should be left to manage its own affairs. Douglas Carswell, MP for Clacton, said the UN agency's warning was "foolish" and should be "immediately filed in the waste-paper basket".

"I answer to my constituents, not to some unelected international bureaucrat," he said. "There is absolutely nothing inappropriate about a sovereign country deciding who should be allowed to come and live within its borders and be entitled to benefits and who should not."

Nigel Mills, Conservative MP for Amber Valley, also condemned the "hysterical, over-the-top criticism of a perfectly sensible and proportionate policy".

"As a nation we are entitled to protect our borders and prevent illegal immigration," he said.

"You would think that the UN has enough work to on the various refugee crises around the world rather than making remarks about western European nations trying to introduce reasonable measures to protect their borders."

Bob Neill, vice-chairman of the Conservative party and MP for Bromley and Chislehurst, also criticised the record of Guterres, who leads the UN agency.

"We will not take any lectures about how to manage our borders from a Portuguese socialist turned unelected UN bureaucrat," he said.

"While he tries to score cheap political points, this government is taking the difficult, long-term decisions needed to support hard-working families and ensure that it is easier to remove illegal immigrants and stop abuse of our public services."

Political tensions over immigration are rising amid concern within the government about the possibility of a new wave of immigration from Bulgaria and Romania, when restrictions are lifted on the two newest EU countries on the first day of 2014.

Cameron has brought in a series of measures to limit benefits for EU migrants ahead of this date and said he will not tolerate "abuse" of the UK's public services. But Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat business secretary, on Sunday accused the Conservatives of creating an anti-immigration panic in a doomed and damaging attempt to ward off the UK Independence party.

He said the Tories were stoking an atmosphere similar to that created by Enoch Powell with his "rivers of blood" speech in the 1960s.

Earlier this year, Tories reacted with similar anger when the UN's special investigator on housing, Raquel Rolnik, warned that the bedroom tax was causing "shocking" hardship in parts of the UK.

Rowena Mason

Nicholas Watt