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

Nikkei falls into correction territory as emerging market fears hit shares - business live
Salvation Army whistleblower fired, royal commission told
Cadbury cash 'radically different' to SPC Ardmona funding request, says PM
Atheism is an offshoot of deism | Theo Hobson
Ryanair posts quarterly loss but forward bookings rising
Sun lawyer: our Christian group at News UK is allowed to meet every week
Al-Qaida denies links to ISIL in Syria
Thai protesters plan to have election results annulled
12 Years a Slave takes best film prize from London critics
It's too late to flee bushfire, WA residents told
Super Bowl 2014: Malcolm Smith is MVP as Seattle dismantle Denver
Sinkhole swallows up car in High Wycombe
Police beat boys who ran away from Salvation Army home, hearing told
Coalition outgunned Labor party by $25m in pre-election spending race
Ian Thorpe reportedly taken to hospital after police received concerned calls
The kangaroo court of Twitter is no place to judge Woody Allen | Suzanne Moore
El Mundo's founder ousted from editorship
Boy, 13, questioned after classroom stabbing on NSW south coast
Two asylum seekers transferred to Christmas Island for medical reasons
Our battle to democratise universities will go on | Michael Chessum and Michael Segalov
West Papuans 'beaten and had guns held to head' in military operation
Ghana struggling to translate oil money into development gains | Celeste Hicks
The London Cabman's Club: from the archive, 3 February 1960
Tulipmania - a picture from the past
Who can deport the most migrants?

Nikkei falls into correction territory as emerging market fears hit shares - business live

Posted: 03 Feb 2014 01:22 AM PST

Japan's stock index has now lost 10% since the start of 2014 as emerging market jitters sweep the markets

Graeme Wearden

Salvation Army whistleblower fired, royal commission told

Posted: 03 Feb 2014 01:22 AM PST

Former house parent at boys' home says he was given 48 hours to leave after he reported extreme punishment

Cadbury cash 'radically different' to SPC Ardmona funding request, says PM

Posted: 03 Feb 2014 01:03 AM PST

Tony Abbott says grant was only for re-establishing chocolate tour – contradicting a Liberal party pre-election press release

Lenore Taylor

Atheism is an offshoot of deism | Theo Hobson

Posted: 03 Feb 2014 01:00 AM PST

Jean-Jacques Rousseau – part 2: Atheism, like Rousseau's deism, sees rationalism as a benign force that can liberate our natural goodness

In the previous article, I considered Rousseau's political radicalism, at some speed. I want to offer a summarizing reflection on that theme, before moving on to his religious thought.

Political justice, said Rousseau, depends on an understanding that state power belongs to the people, exists to serve the common good. What is this vision? Where does it come from? It is motivated by a moral idealism rooted in Judeo-Christian tradition (social justice, concern for the poor, hostility to luxury, the equal worth of all human lives). But its practical side is derived mainly from Plato's Republic. It's a potent conjoining. Rousseau is perhaps the principal pioneer of the idea that a more moral politics must be established and sustained through force – as all political order is.

His political radicalism annoyed the authorities, but what really provoked them was his religious radicalism. In his novel Emile he put his thoughts into the mouth of an ultra-liberal priest, the original trendy vicar (in his youth Rousseau was deeply influenced by a real-life version of this figure). He explains that God is the creator of the orderly universe, that his rules are written in our hearts, in the form of conscience, that virtuous action brings true happiness. We are made for virtue – though we are free to misunderstand this and do evil. Because "the greatest ideas of the divinity come to us from reason alone", revealed religion is dubious, a source of conflict and error. It is a slur on God to associate him with anger and vengeance, and narrow intolerant doctrines. "If one had listened only to what God says to the heart of man, there would never have been more than one religion on earth."

But traditional religion cannot be simply rejected, says this fictional priest – otherwise he would have left his job. The truth of rational religion must be propagated through traditional religious forms – this is its necessary packaging (an idea later developed by Kant and Hegel). People need structures, traditions, ritual practices, through which to relate to divine morality.

On one level this is a conventional restatement of deism. But Rousseau's emphasis on the emotional appeal of this creed breathed new life into it. He rescued it from narrow rationalism, and associated it with a deepening of humanity. (By putting it in the mouth of a priest he presents it as primarily a spiritual phenomenon.) He thus prepared the way for the poetic deism of Wordsworth, for example.

Not many people nowadays identify with deism. In fact it is almost universally scorned: as a timid compromise, for those who can no longer believe in religion but are not quite ready to take leave of God. Atheists of course see themselves as going a daring step further. To Christians, it is a diluted form of Christianity emptied of crucial concepts such as revelation, grace and sin.

I suggest that both the atheist and the Christian should be a bit less scornful, and see how deeply they are indebted to this huge intellectual movement.

Atheism is less distinct from deism than it thinks. It inherits the semi-Christian assumptions of this creed.

Atheism derives from religion? Surely it just says that no gods exist, that rationalism, or 'scientific naturalism', is to be preferred to any form of supernaturalism. Actually, no: in reality what we call atheism is a form of secular humanism; it presupposes a moral vision, of progressive humanitarianism, of trust that universal moral values will triumph. (Of course there is also the atheism of Nietzsche, which rejects humanism, but this is not what is normally meant by 'atheism').

So what we know as atheism should really be understood as an offshoot of deism. For it sees rationalism as a benign force that can liberate our natural goodness. It has a vision of rationalism saving us, uniting us. For example, AC Grayling, in his recent book The God Argument: The Case Against Religion and for Humanism, argues that, with the withering of religion, 'an ethical outlook which can serve everyone everywhere, and can bring the world together into a single moral community, will at last be possible'. This is really Rousseau's idea, that if we all listened to our hearts, there would be 'one religion on earth'.

On one hand atheism is more coherent than deism – it neatly eliminates the supernatural. But on the other hand it has less self-knowledge: it does not understand that it remains fuelled by a religious-based vision of human flourishing.

Next time I will suggest that Rousseau's deism also has something to teach Christians who are over-confident in their brave distinctness from secular humanism.

Theo Hobson

Ryanair posts quarterly loss but forward bookings rising

Posted: 03 Feb 2014 12:53 AM PST

Budget carrier reported its biggest third-quarter loss in five years as fares fall nearly 10%

Ryanair reported its biggest third-quarter loss in five years on Monday as average fares slumped 9%, but management said intense price competition in Europe was easing and forward bookings were up.

The Irish airline, Europe's largest by passenger numbers, issued its first profit warnings in a decade last year on weak winter bookings but has said it hopes to bounce back by improving its customer service.

The carrier said it lost €35m (£28m) in the three months to 31 December, its worst performance in its traditionally weak third quarter since 2008.

Chief Executive Michael O'Leary said the loss, due to lower average fares and weaker sterling, was expected and he reaffirmed the airline's guidance for profit of between €500m and €520m for the year.

"Market pricing remains soft but is no longer declining," he said.

Ryanair flew 6% more passengers in the last three months of 2013 compared with a year earlier, but revenue was flat due to the fall in ticket prices.

British rival easyJet by comparison increased revenue 7.7% on passenger numbers growth of 4% in the same period.

After being voted the worst of the 100 biggest brands serving the British market by readers of consumer magazine Which?, Ryanair said last year it was cutting baggage and boarding card fees, allowing passengers to bring a second carry-on bag and introducing assigned seating on all planes.

Deputy chief executive Michael Cawley said the changes had not yet had an impact on profit, but that there signs the strategy was starting to bear fruit.

"There has been a very positive reaction ... particularly in terms of forward bookings which we have never had as substantially ahead," Cawley said.

Sun lawyer: our Christian group at News UK is allowed to meet every week

Posted: 03 Feb 2014 12:46 AM PST

Justin Walford, a media lawyer with The Sun, has given an insight into a little-known feature of life at the paper's publisher, News UK.

"We have a very strong Christian group in News International (sic). It's not large by any means but we meet every week.
Murdoch is seen as an empire of darkness but they allow us to meet every week."

Walford was speaking before a packed congregation at St Peter's church in Brighton yesterday. According to a Brighton Argus report, he was being questioned by the vicar, Archie Coates, who wondered what a Christian was doing working for The Sun.

Walford responded by talking of the media's widespread influence. "It influences people's lives," he said, "and I think it's important that Christians go into areas that affect millions of people's lives.

"Is it more questionable to be working in a bank? I don't believe that Christians should surrender the media. The media is absolutely vital and it's really important that Christians are there."

Walford, who regularly attends services at St Peter's, also admitted that he is not a Sun reader by nature.

He joined the paper's publisher in 2005 after spending 20 years with Express Newspapers. His primary responsibility is to check articles to ensure they do not breach libel and privacy laws.

He gave evidence to the Leveson inquiry and was a witness in the current phone-hacking trial.

Source: Brighton Argus

Roy Greenslade

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

Al-Qaida denies links to ISIL in Syria

Posted: 03 Feb 2014 12:45 AM PST

Statement denying any relationship with the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (ISIL) seen as a bid to reassert authority over rebels

Al-Qaida's general command has said it has no links with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), in an apparent attempt to assert authority over the Islamist militant groups involved in Syria's civil war.

The small but powerful ISIL has been caught up in battles with other Islamist insurgents often triggered by disputes over authority and territory, and has also clashed with secular rebels.

The internecine fighting - among the bloodiest in the three-year conflict - has undermined the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad and dismayed western powers pushing for peace talks.

Rebel-on-rebel violence in Syria has killed at least 1,800 this year alone.

ISIL follows al-Qaida's hard-line ideology and, until now, the two groups were widely believed to be linked.

However, the organisations that have clashed with ISIL include Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaida's official Syria wing, which is led by al-Qaida chief Ayman Zawahri.

In a message posted on jihadi websites on Monday, the al-Qaida general command said ISIL "is not a branch of the al-Qaida group … [al-Qaida] does not have an organizational relationship with it and is not the group responsible for their actions."

In April, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of ISIL, tried to engineer a merger with Jabhat al-Nusra, defying orders from Zawahri and causing a rift.

Charles Lister, visiting fellow at Brookings Doha Centre, said the statement "represents an attempt by al-Qaida to definitively reassert some level of authority over the jihad in Syria" following a month of fighting and ISIL disobedience.

"This represents a strong and forthright move and will undoubtedly serve to further consolidate Jabhat al-Nusra's role as al-Qaida's official presence in Syria."

Thai protesters plan to have election results annulled

Posted: 03 Feb 2014 12:44 AM PST

Demonstrators, who forced closure of polling booths in Bangkok, say they will fight ballot on several grounds

Thai protesters have vowed to stage larger rallies in Bangkok and push ahead their efforts to nullify the results of elections that were expected to prolong a national political crisis.

Despite fears of violence, voting proceeded peacefully in 90% of polling stations on Sunday. Protesters forced polling booths to close in Bangkok and southern Thailand, disenfranchising millions of registered voters. As a result, not all parliament seats will be filled and a series of byelections are required to complete voting, extending political paralysis for months.

Protesters said they would fight the election on several grounds, including that it is required by law to be held on one day. The opposition Democrat party, which backs the protesters and boycotted the vote, said on Monday it was studying other legal justifications to invalidate the vote.

The struggle to hold the polls was part of a three-month-old conflict that has split the country between supporters of the prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, and opponents who allege her government is too corrupt to rule.

Demonstrators have occupied major intersections in Bangkok and forced government ministries to shut down and work elsewhere.

"We are not giving up the fight. We still keep fighting," protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban said. "Our mission is to keep shutting down government offices, so don't ask us to give those back."

Suthep, a charismatic speaker and former opposition politician, said the movement was closing two of its Bangkok protest sites and asking crowds to consolidate at five other locations, mostly in the business centre of the capital.

The plan was bound to cause more disruption in central Bangkok, where protesters have shut major intersections in the Silom and Sukhumvit business districts and Ratchaprasong shopping district, where the city's upscale malls are located.

The protesters want to suspend democracy and are demanding the government be replaced by an unelected council that would rewrite political and electoral laws to combat deep-seated problems of corruption and money politics. Yingluck has refused to step down, arguing she was elected by a landslide majority and is open to reform but that such a council would be unconstitutional and undemocratic.

The protesters are a minority that cannot win through elections, but they comprise a formidable alliance of opposition leaders, royalists and powerful business people who have set their sights on ousting the government. They have won past battles – by ousting Yingluck's brother, the former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, in a 2006 army coup, and by forcing out two Thaksin-allied prime ministers through controversial legal rulings.

Many believe another "judicial coup" will bring down Yingluck's government.

Suthep's public assurance to followers that the ballot would be nullified left no doubt that the constitutional court would end up hearing a case to annul it, said Verapat Pariyawong, an independent lawyer.

If the ballot was nullified, Verapat said, there would be "more blood on the streets", a reference to the expectation that government supporters in the north were unlikely to sit idle.

Before Thaksin was deposed in 2006, the constitutional court nullified a vote won by his party a month earlier. The ruling partly found that the positioning of ballot booths had compromised voter privacy.

12 Years a Slave takes best film prize from London critics

Posted: 03 Feb 2014 12:39 AM PST

Steve McQueen's harrowing slave drama named film of the year, with lead actor Chiwetel Ejiofor given actor of the year

• 12 Years a Slave's John Ridley wrote script 'for free'

The harrowing Steve McQueen historical drama 12 Years a Slave was last night named best film at the London Critics' Circle film awards.

Star Chiwetel Ejiofor also won best actor for his portrayal of free black New Yorker Solomon Northup who was captured by slavers in Washington DC in 1841 and sold into servitude on the plantations of Louisiana. And Lupita Nyong'o picked up the best supporting actress award in a triumphant evening for McQueen's film.

The British director, whose film is an Oscars frontrunner with nine nominations, noted 12 Years a Slave's "tremendous response" in the UK.

"It got people to the cinema," he said. "What's so interesting about the response from critics and audiences is that they want to see films which have some difficulties.

"They are interested in films where they have to work. They are interested the films where they see themselves reflected in the cinema screens.

"I have people in the street - builders, bus drivers - being so supportive to the movie. I've felt so much love for this film in this country and I'm so humbled and heartwarmed that it's from my own country."

Elsewhere, Alfonso Cuarón was named best director for 3D space thriller Gravity, while Oscars frontrunner Cate Blanchett picked up best actress for her work in Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine. Somalian actor Barkhad Abdi won best supporting actor for his turn as a pirate in Paul Greengrass's Captain Phillips.

The Selfish Giant was named best British film, while James McAvoy won best British actor for his work in Filth and Trance over the past 12 months. Judi Dench picked up best British actress for Philomena.

Among the Hollywood luminaries on the red carpet were Steve Coogan, Naomie Harris, Andy Serkis, John Hurt and Gary Oldman, with the latter honoured with the Dilys Powell award for excellence in film.

This year's ceremony took place at the Mayfair hotel in London.

Full list of winners:

Film of the year
12 Years a Slave

Foreign-language film of the year
Blue Is the Warmest Colour

Documentary of the year
The Act of Killing

British film of the year
The Selfish Giant

Director of the year
Alfonso Cuarón - Gravity

Screenwriter of the year
Ethan Coen & Joel Coen - Inside Llewyn Davis

Actor of the year
Chiwetel Ejiofor - 12 Years a Slave

Actress of the year
Cate Blanchett - Blue Jasmine

Supporting actor of the year
Barkhad Abdi - Captain Phillips

Supporting actress of the year
Lupita Nyong'o - 12 Years a Slave

British actor of the year
James McAvoy - Filth / Trance / Welcome to the Punch

British actress of the year
Judi Dench - Philomena

Young British performer of the year
Conner Chapman - The Selfish Giant

Breakthrough British film-maker
Jon S Baird - Filth

Technical achievement award
Gravity - Tim Webber, special effects

Dilys Powell award for excellence in film
Gary Oldman

• Will Steve McQueen be first black film-maker to win best director Oscar?

Ben Child

It's too late to flee bushfire, WA residents told

Posted: 03 Feb 2014 12:34 AM PST

People living in Banjup, south of Perth, warned that trying to leave homes could be dangerous as fire bears down

Super Bowl 2014: Malcolm Smith is MVP as Seattle dismantle Denver

Posted: 03 Feb 2014 12:33 AM PST

Immoveable object beats irresistible force in much-hyped meeting of best offense and defense as Seahawks beat Broncos 43-8

Paolo Bandini

Sinkhole swallows up car in High Wycombe

Posted: 03 Feb 2014 12:24 AM PST

Firefighters called to house in Buckinghamshire where family car disappears down 9-metre-deep sinkhole

A 9-metre (30ft) deep sinkhole has opened up in the driveway of a house in Buckinghamshire and swallowed up a family's car.

Firefighters were called to the property in Main Road, Walter's Ash, High Wycombe, at 8.32am on Sunday, where they found the hole, which is 4.5 metres (15ft) in diameter.

No one was inside the Volkswagen Lupo when the hole opened up.

A Buckinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service spokesman said: "Firefighters were called to a sinkhole … which swallowed a parked car in the driveway of a house in Main Road, Walter's Ash. Firefighters placed a cordon around it and gave safety advice.

"The incident was handed over to building control at Wycombe district council. Firefighters were at the scene for about an hour."

Police beat boys who ran away from Salvation Army home, hearing told

Posted: 03 Feb 2014 12:22 AM PST

Children who complained of sexual abuse were given a 'flogging' then taken back to home, former resident says

Coalition outgunned Labor party by $25m in pre-election spending race

Posted: 03 Feb 2014 12:11 AM PST

Electoral commission reveals Coalition spent $70m compared to Labor's $40m, but full pre-election figures not released until 2015

Gabrielle Chan

Ian Thorpe reportedly taken to hospital after police received concerned calls

Posted: 03 Feb 2014 12:02 AM PST

Police take man to hospital after emergency services received calls expressing concern about seeing him near a vehicle

Helen Davidson

The kangaroo court of Twitter is no place to judge Woody Allen | Suzanne Moore

Posted: 03 Feb 2014 12:00 AM PST

Dylan Farrow's accusations of abuse against her father could encourage forgotten victims to speak out

First off , I don't know if Woody Allen abused his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow and nor do you. I only know what I am inclined to believe and what the reasons are. Those reasons are, in fact, opinions. Some are to do with this particular case, some with the way that victims of abuse are routinely dismissed, some with the way Hollywood operates. Some are to do with the films he makes – the texts themselves – and some with the context: the context in which so many perpetrators walk free. That context is changing.

When the custody battle between Farrow and Allen took place in 1992, social media was not around. Right now online, especially on Twitter, many people are absolutely certain that Allen is guilty. Just as they are absolutely certain that Amanda Knox is guilty, just as they will be absolutely certain that what I am saying here is wrong. There is not a lot of nuance in Hashtag Justice. There is a hashtag #IBelieveDylanFarrow.

This is destroying Allen's reputation as much as the explosive custody case did at the time. It is worth reiterating that the judge, Elliott Wilk, found the evidence of abuse against the seven-year-old Dylan "inconclusive" and doubted that Allen could ever acquire "the insight and judgment necessary for him to relate to Dylan appropriately". He damned his parenting his skills, saying he did not qualify as "an adequate custodian for Moses, Dylan or Satchel". He also talked about the way he isolated Soon-Yi Previn from the rest of her family, leaving her with "no visible support system".

Was this part of the grooming he used to cover up abuse of Dylan? I don't know, but clearly for most people he crossed over a boundary with his relationship with Soon-Yi.

Such boundary crossing is, as we know, not uncommon for the rich and powerful and nor is Hollywood Babylon the only institution to shrug it off. The Golden Globes award Allen was recently given for lifetime achievement seems to have activated the Farrow family. Dylan's open letter is harrowing, and given more power coming via the writer Nicholas Kristof, who is not only a friend of the family but also a brilliant campaigner for the rights of women and girls. We know that it takes immense bravery to speak out. We know that false allegations do happen, but rarely. We know that the reality of child abuse is that we continue to ignore the victims.

In Britain, a weird kind of post-Savile displacement occurred where the victims were again "disappeared". Discussion moved on to the institutions that had housed this abuse – all of them – and then focused on the management of the BBC. Right now there are ongoing trials of old men charged with rape and abuse. These are necessary, however uncomfortable. For the alternative is what we are seeing online: kangaroo courts where people not in possession of many facts are not doing the real victims any favours. Someone tweets "#IBelieveDylanFarrow because it wouldn't be the first time a film-maker guy rapes little girls". No it wouldn't. I assume this is a reference to Roman Polanski.

Polanski, it is important to note, was arrested, charged, made a plea bargain and fled the US when it look like he might be imprisoned. The man is a genius, which is why I wanted to interview him some 20 years ago. Since then, attitudes have changed – and I have changed my attitude, too. I now think I should not have given him publicity. I now think I got it wrong. But with Polanski there is no doubt of his guilt.

With Allen there is doubt and probably always will be. His detractors use his films as evidence; his fans refuse to give them up. Actually, the great Joan Didion's takedown of his characters all living in self-absorbed, privileged adolescence still hits home. The old questions are asked again, though we already know the answer: can great art be made by the immoral or the amoral? Of course, history provides the evidence again and again.

As I said, I am inclined to stand alongside Dylan's howl of pain but it is untenable to think that any justice is served for victims by tweeting opinion as fact. Due process, the law, is slow and complicated, but we are waking up gradually to the fact that we must listen to the voices of victims. But justice is key here. Because so many victims have been ill-served by the system for so long, there is a void into which rush the certainties of online mobs.

It is easier to see that Hollywood has been complicit in child abuse than to address the shaming and blaming of victims closer to home. Indeed, home is exactly where most children are abused. And where we really don't want to look. If Dylan Farrow's letter helps other people speak up and get justice, she has done something heroic.

Suzanne Moore

El Mundo's founder ousted from editorship

Posted: 02 Feb 2014 11:54 PM PST

Pedro J. Ramírez, the founder of the Spanish daily, El Mundo, has been ousted from the paper's editorship.

He blames his dismissal on the government, claiming that it is retribution for his reporting of corruption allegations involving the prime minister, Mariano Rajoy.

"This is a show of force by a government that wants to send a message, not just to El Mundo, but to the whole media sector, that whoever acts in a way that the government sees as inconvenient will pay the consequences," Ramírez told a New York Times reporter.

But the claim by Ramirez - known in Spain as Pedro Jota, his middle initial - has been dismissed by government spokespeople. Observers point to El Mundo's plunging circulation as a more likely reason for his departure.

Official figures show that sales of El Mundo - the second-highest circulation Spanish daily - fell by about 25% in the 10 months from January 2013 compared to an 18% decline for the market-leading El Pais.

Ramírez will remain with the paper as a columnist, but there are fears for El Mundo's future which has had a tradition of investigative journalism since it was launched in 1989.

The paper is owned by a Milan-based Italian company, RCS MediaGroup, through its Spanish subsidiary, Unidad Editorial. In November, RCS injected €400m in Unidad to keep it afloat.

Ramírez has been replaced as editor by his deputy, Casimiro García-Abadillo, who has also been with the newspaper since its launch.

Sources: El Pais/Bloomberg/New York Times In Spanish: El Colombiano

Roy Greenslade

Boy, 13, questioned after classroom stabbing on NSW south coast

Posted: 02 Feb 2014 11:52 PM PST

14-year-old victim in a stable condition after attack on Monday at Shoalhaven high school

Two asylum seekers transferred to Christmas Island for medical reasons

Posted: 02 Feb 2014 11:33 PM PST

Second asylum seeker taken to Christmas Island as a result of maritime interception activities, Scott Morrison says

Paul Farrell

Our battle to democratise universities will go on | Michael Chessum and Michael Segalov

Posted: 02 Feb 2014 11:30 PM PST

University managers have used police violence to attack and subdue student protest. This strategy is backfiring

Since the beginning of the academic year, universities have witnessed the growth of a broad movement against the privatisation of higher education, focused around a series of strikes by education workers and demands for the democratisation of universities. The police and management response to this emerging movement constitutes the most violent and draconian clampdown on the right to organise on campuses in decades, and is providing a clear example of what austerity and political policing will mean for civil liberties.

Last week, students from around the country gathered in Birmingham to plan the next phase of a reinvigorated student movement, and demonstrate at the university under a banner that included a living wage for all staff and an end to the marketisation of universities. Having ended our protest with a brief sit-in in the great hall of the university, the entire demonstration was ambushed and kettled by police for four hours in sub-zero temperatures.

Officers demanded personal details of all students as a condition for leaving the containment, a practice ruled illegal by the high court only last year. Those who refused were arrested, and the 13 detained were held for more than 24 hours, some strip-searched, and released on bail conditions forcing them to sleep at their home address every night; and banning them from entering any university campus, associating with any other arrested student or gathering in groups of more than 10 in public. Three arrested students were held on remand on charges of violent disorder, a highly political charge, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

It is becoming clear to anyone watching this emerging movement that the police are now acting exclusively on behalf of managers. December witnessed a co-ordinated attempt by the University of London and the Metropolitan police to clamp down on protest following the eviction of an occupation of the university's headquarters. In Birmingham, all arrested students have now been suspended – without a right of appeal – not for any action, but for the very act of being arrested. At the University of Sussex last year, students were arrested and charged after sitting down in a road on their campus, and will be tried in the coming week.

The demand being put forward increasingly by activists, for police not to be allowed on to campuses, is not just about a dislike of the police or a disdain for their record of institutional racism and violence at demonstrations. It comes from an understanding of the role of police in an age of austerity – as the enforcers and agents of company bosses and university managers. It is not an impossible demand: across the world, in Latin America and Greece, legislation exists to protect universities as self-governing academic communities by preventing police from intruding on to campus.

The key battleground for this new movement is democracy. Its broader campaign for democratic universities – run by the students and staff who make them function – is now reliant on a more basic demand: the right to organise and protest on campus. University managers have shown their intention to attack and subdue student protest before it can get off the ground, and they have used an unprecedented level of policing and violence to do so. By and large, this strategy is backfiring and helping to mobilise students.

The vision of education we are fighting for – which is to an extent still alive – is one that liberates people and serves society. The right to dissent has historically been written into the fabric of higher education, legally and culturally. This is not only to ensure the right to protest is protected, but also that academics and students can research and write critically, free from the interests of business and the state.

As institutions have their services outsourced and their governance dominated by a drive to bring in tuition fees, lucrative research funding and corporate sponsorship, it should come as no surprise that administrations are determined to use any means necessary to stamp out rebellion. When universities exist to serve their communities, protest plays an integral role in empowering students and giving life to the university. As shareholders begin to extract money from our cafes, conference centres and cleaners, dissent is purely an obstacle that must be overcome.

From 6 February, when education workers again take strike action against a fifth consecutive year of real-term pay cuts and for a living wage for all staff, students nationwide will be organising co-ordinated direct action and occupations across the country. With dissent itself under attack, the academic community and the broader public sector must mobilise itself, or gradually lose the ability to do so.

Michael Chessum

Michael Segalov

West Papuans 'beaten and had guns held to head' in military operation

Posted: 02 Feb 2014 11:12 PM PST

Villagers in Puncak Jaya region claim they were violently interrogated them about their involvement with the separatist Free Papua Movement

Marni Cordell

Ghana struggling to translate oil money into development gains | Celeste Hicks

Posted: 02 Feb 2014 11:00 PM PST

Infrastructure development remains slow, fuelling fears that the transformative potential of oil may have been overestimated

"We've taken the bull by the horns; this city is going to get a facelift" says Jacob Ntiamoah, deputy development planning officer with Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Assembly. "We're going to dramatically improve the road network – there will be flyovers and a six-lane highway from Takoradi to the beach town of Busua."

Seven years ago, oil in commercial quantities was discovered off Ghana's southern coast, more than 93 miles west of Sekondi-Takoradi. Attracted by the city's existing harbour and airport, oil companies, service and exploration companies have flocked to set up headquarters, followed by tens of thousands of migrants looking for jobs.

Despite grand plans by the metropolitan authority, the dilapidated road network is still the talk of the town. "We spend a lot of time in traffic jams; it's not good for getting things done," says Abdul-Salam Mohammed from the NGO Global Communities in Takoradi. Roads that connect the harbour to the city, and the city to the coast and beyond – all the way to the border of Ivory Coast – continue to creak under the burden of increased traffic and heavy goods vehicles.

And while infrastructure development has been slow, the cost of living has surged. "Before the oil you could rent a decent room with a private bathroom here for 10-20 cedis, now the same room will cost you 120 cedis [£30.32]," Mohammed says. Similar increases in the price of land have also been reported.

But the city is looking better. Hotels, restaurants, shops and warehouses have sprung up, and there are more daily flights from the capital, Accra. For those who seized the opportunities to provide services for the arriving oil companies there has been a payoff. "The smart guys got in early and they really made their fortunes," says Ntiamoah.

Jobs have been created – UK-based Tullow Oil, operator of the Jubilee offshore platform, says that although the Ghana operation employs only 300 or so people, 86% are locals, according to 2012 figures.

Sekondi-Takoradi's fortunes are typical of the challenges faced by any government seeking to turn an oil windfall into lasting development. The country has been praised for its efforts to install a system of transparency to prevent the so-called "natural resource curse", which often seems to accompany extraction in poorer countries. But what is the link between transparency and development?

The 2011 Petroleum Revenue Management Act (pdf) guaranteed that payments by oil companies would be made public, as would details of what the government does with its share of royalties. The act allows for 30% of receipts to be set aside for savings; disposal of the remaining 70% is down to the ministry of finance, which is charged with choosing four priority sectors for development every three years.

In the first selection, Ghana's road infrastructure was identified as deserving of attention, along with agriculture, capacity building and paying off debts used to create the country's oil and gas infrastructure.

An innovative civil society body, the Public Interest and Accountability Committee (Piac) has been created, tasked with monitoring whether the money is being spent on development as well as seeking the views of local communities.

"Our recommendations for increased spending on education and infrastructure as development priorities came directly from the people, and I'm pleased to report that in the 2014 budget, the minister of finance is addressing these issues," says Major Daniel Ablorh-Quarcoo, head of the Piac.

Three years into production, many are beginning to realise that the potential for the oil money to deliver rapid development may have been overestimated. Production has not lived up to expectations: it was initially estimated that the Jubilee oil field would yield 225,000 barrels a day, but unresolved technical challenges, such as dealing with excess gas, have kept the number barely above 100,000 barrels a day. Early projections suggested the country could earn up to $5bn (£3bn) by 2015; according to the Piac, however, the figure for 2010-12 is closer to $858m.

Oxfam America has been a keen supporter of the role civil society can play in shaping development. "People are very interested in whether the government is getting value for money for the plans it draws up," says Richard Hato-Kuevor, the charity's extractive industries advocacy officer. He worries that there are too many national development priorities: "There are more than 10 national road construction projects under way. The money is just being spread too thin.".

Celeste Hicks

The London Cabman's Club: from the archive, 3 February 1960

Posted: 02 Feb 2014 11:00 PM PST

The green hut on the pavement near the Ritz was the most famous of London's cabmen's shelters

Although it looked - as they all do - like a cross between a Baptist chapel and a Victorian summer-house, and was lapped by the noisy tide of Piccadilly traffic, it served the finest haddock-and-eggs in the land. Or so the taxi-drivers would tell you. No one knows whether this was the attraction which brought in the social flowers of Mayfair and the clubmen from St James's in the early hours of the morning. It could equally have been the prospect of talking to the muffled cabmen and studying their cockney faces, some of them sharp and knowing, others as world-weary as those in a Belcher cartoon.

The significant thing was that they came. They came wearing evening dress, the women in furs and the men perhaps smoking cigars, and all of them just remembering, with a pang, the dinners they had eaten four or five hours before. They sat on the scrubbed benches at wooden tables and either played dominoes or ordered their haddock, steak or chops grilled on the glowing coke stove. They were charged 2s 6d, a shilling more than the drivers.

From well before the First World War, when these unusual customers included "Teddy," Prince of Wales, and Scott of the Antarctic, and Shackleton, that green hut on the pavement near the Ritz was the most famous of London's cabmen's shelters. Its tradition of being one of Britain's most exclusive supper clubs continued until the night when partial destruction came in the shape of a Luftwaffe bomb, the job being completed a few hours later by what the cabmen described afterwards as "a lady driver on the pavement."

To the drivers the hut was known as "The High Ground" because it was at the top of the rise which begins at Hyde Park Corner. (How many people realise that Piccadilly is a hill?) To the "swells" it was the Junior Turf Club, named after the senior establishment across the road.

Mr Bob Rogers, who now keeps the shelter in Hanover Square, still recalls with pride his nights of cooking and serving at The High Ground. Apparently the height of its fame was reached in the late twenties and thirties. In those days your driver might possibly have just finished a steak with the Prince of Wales (now the Duke of Windsor) or a cup of tea with Jimmy White, the legendary financier who later committed suicide. Lord Derby also went there, and a number of Harley Street surgeons. So did Mr Lobb, the famous bootmaker of St James's, and Sargent, the portrait painter.

The irony of it was that under the rules of the charity which built the huts - the Cabmen's Shelter Fund - the rich and the famous should not have been there at all. Only cabmen are supposed to use the shelters. Another, even more important rule was also broken in those days of social glitter. Sometimes the illegal customers would bring in a bottle of whisky. In the 1880s a glass of beer would have been enough to bring further white hairs to the heads of those elderly ladies who carried lumps of sugar in their reticules for the cab horses, and who were among the fund's chief supporters.

The fund began, as many Victorian activities did, with a burst of zeal in which philanthropy and non-conformist teetotalism were equally mixed. It started almost by accident on a snowy morning in 1874, after Sir George Armstrong, the proprietor of the "Globe" newspaper, had tried unsuccessfully to hire a hansom cab from the rank outside his home in Acacia Road, St Johns Wood.

Click on the article below to read on.

Tulipmania - a picture from the past

Posted: 02 Feb 2014 11:00 PM PST

The price of tulip bulbs in the Dutch market collapsed suddenly in February 1637, marking an end to what many considered to be the first financial bubble

Karin Andreasson

Who can deport the most migrants?

Posted: 02 Feb 2014 11:00 PM PST

MPs are falling over themselves to be tough on foreign-born criminals – but we rarely hear about the extent to which migrants themselves become victims of crime and exploitation

An unedifying sight, watching MPs and the government in a race to establish who might best be trusted to deport the most people. The targets were criminals born abroad – who would be first in line to strip them of citizenship and chuck them out? I imagined a physical process, like that of a disgraced soldier in the movies having his army stripes yanked. We could televise the process. Theresa May could do the yanking. Imagine the viewing figures.

I'm gunning for foreign-born criminals who commit the most violent offences, she has been saying, and that sounds reasonable. But I'm not sure I buy these parameters, not least because she has also been trying her damnedest to deport the guy who disrupted the Oxford v Cambridge boat race. The only thing between Trenton Oldfield, a native Australian, and the next plane out of town has been a couple of wise-headed immigration appeal judges. He was jailed for six months for disrupting a spectacle. Served two. No violence. So when the home secretary says the application of her discretion in this regard would be limited, head for the cutlery draw, count the spoons.

We hear much about the "foreigner" as menacer of society because it frames a political debate and sells papers, but noticeably less about the extent to which foreigners and migrants actually become victims of crime and exploitation. We learned a bit about that last week, as BBC London revealed what happened when it sent two Romanian undercover researchers into the job marketin the capital.

After picking up casual work in north and north-west London, they were set to toil for criminally low rates of pay and spoke with compatriots who had suffered much worse. One man claimed he worked an entire day and at the end was paid £10. They heard accounts of desperate migrants being encouraged by crooked employers to sleep in squalid properties close to the workplace; set to work in perilous conditions; encouraged to smuggle drugs and commit robberies. All seemed fair game.

Some will say it proves migrants need more help from the authorities and society. And they're right. Others will say it is proof that migration creates problems for the authorities and society. They're right too. But there are benefits. Has it ever been any other way?

Hugh Muir