Potes'n'Roll

PUBLICITÉ – « L’Angleterre est un clodo raciste qui pue. La France est encore pire »

"Ne venez pas au Royaume-Uni ! Il y pleut et les salaires sont dérisoires." Voilà, dans l'esprit, la campagne que le gouvernement Cameron envisage de mener en Roumanie et en Bulgarie pour dissuader les migrants de traverser la Manche, rapportait il y a deux jours la presse britannique.

Interpellé par cette curieuse initiative d'auto-sabotage, qui est encore à l'état de projet, le Guardian a eu la bonne idée de solliciter ses lecteurs, appelés à envoyer leurs propres affiches. "Le temps, nos transports et nos hommes politiques figurent parmi les suggestions les plus populaires", note le journal, qui propose une sélection des meilleures contributions. Elles illustrent tantôt une véritable désillusion des Britanniques vis-à-vis de leur pays, dénuée de tout second degré, tantôt cette faculté inégalable, héritée d'une saine confiance en soi, qu'ont les sujets de Sa Majesté à se moquer d'eux-mêmes.

La plus classique : "L'été et la vie ne sont pas si faciles" - "Ne pas déranger, nous sommes fermés".
Lee Jackson

La plus honnête : "Venez donc et nettoyez les toilettes" - "La Grande-Bretagne est pleine de boulots affreux pour lesquels nous employons des étrangers. Vous êtes les bienvenus".

La plus pessimiste : "En Grande-Bretagne, les parents doivent expliquer à leurs enfants que les ordures sont une plante d'asphalte qui pousse partout. Les Britanniques aiment raconter des contes de fées parce que la vraie Grande-Bretagne les révulse."
Emily Sorensen

La plus... anglaise : "La Grise-Bretagne est un clodo puant, humide et raciste ! La France est encore pire... Mais ils ont des alcools meilleurs et moins chers."
Nathan Page

Les Anglais ont tous les défauts qu'on voudra bien leur prêter, ils ont une qualité indéniable : ils seront toujours plus drôles que les Français. Pour autant, le projet de campagne d'auto-dénigrement du gouvernement britannique n'a pas fait rire tout le monde en Roumanie et en Bulgarie, rapporte Radio Free Europe.

Un journal roumain en ligne, Gandul.info, a décidé de riposter et de lancer une campagne pour inciter les Britanniques à s'installer en Roumanie, avec plus ou moins de bonheur.

La plus classique : "La moitié de nos femmes ressemble à Kate. L'autre moitié à sa sœur."

La plus... anglaise : "Nous parlons mieux anglais que n'importe où en France."

Ce n'est pas la première fois qu'une bataille de slogans oppose, avec plus ou moins d'humour, deux Etats de l'Union européenne. Quand la menace du "plombier polonais" avait été agitée, en France et en Grande-Bretagne, pour dénoncer les travailleurs bon marché venus d'Europe de l'Est, le bureau du tourisme polonais avait lancé une campagne invitant les Français à venir en Pologne. Les deux héros de cette campagne étaient une plantureuse infirmière et un charmant plombier... polonais.

That's yer Thatcher Ding Dong ding-dong: I blame the BBC
Would the Iron Lady get the irony?
Charlie Brooker
The Guardian, Sunday 14 April 2013 15.00 EDT

Last Monday, one of the most iconic figures of the 1980s passed away. Whatever your viewpoint, in terms of strength, drive, and unrelenting sense of purpose, we're unlikely to see their like again. This was someone who knew what they wanted and saw it through to the bitter end, dammit, no matter how shrill the outraged screaming. To admirers, an anti-establishment hero; to detractors, a subhuman hate figure who heartlessly devastated entire communities: a monster to dress up as for your next Halloween party.

Yes, Richard Brooker, the former English stuntman who played the ice-hockey-masked killer Jason Vorhees in the Friday the 13th movies, died last Monday. Maggie Thatcher died the same day, triggering a nationwide outpouring of grief as the TV schedules filled with boring tribute shows. The homages weren't limited to TV screens however. Git-haired One Direction sex minnow Harry Styles hastily tweeted an RIP, prompting many of his fans to wonder aloud just who this "Thatcher" person was, much to the amusement of onlookers not quite smart enough to understand how time works. It's unfair to berate One Direction fans for their Maggie ignorance: for one thing, they're about 10 minutes old. They've only just learned to grasp objects. When I was their age I didn't know who Alec Douglas-Home was. Still don't, come to think of it. Just had to Google him. Woah – sexy!

Incidentally, Maggie herself was a huge One Direction fan – by which I mean she wasn't for turning!!!! LOL OMG HaHa #AceGag

Still, not everyone has shown as much respect as the Dickensian chimney-sweep pin-up Master Styles. Within hours of the news breaking, "celebration" parties were attended by people so utterly committed to humanitarian causes that they're compelled to dance in the street when an old lady dies. Throughout the 80s I hated Thatcher, partly for selfish reasons. I figured that, thanks to the likes of her, the planet was about to receive a mushroom-cloud makeover, and I've never been that keen on burning to death unexpectedly on a school day. I found her almost too frightening to watch on TV. She seemed to display such cold disregard for those crushed by the wheels of her personal brand of progress, it was hard to believe she fully understood what human beings are, let alone cared about them.

Maybe, being the first female prime minister, she was consciously subverting cliche by being as masculine as possible. It's like Barack Obama using flying robots to bomb brown folk overseas – critics chuckle and say: "Man, I didn't expect the first black president to do THAT!"

Millions sang for joy when the Tories themselves kicked Thatcher out of No 10 back in 1990. Breaking into song again 23 years later because she's died of a stroke following years of debilitating illness and seclusion strikes me as futile and a bit sad – not unlike dancing into the British Museum to shake your fist at a mummy. But any active celebrations seemed fairly isolated until the press noticed an online campaign to get Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead into the charts. They were so outraged that they decided to promote it on their front pages, thereby causing a further surge in sales, which they then pretended was a crisis for the BBC, on the basis that Radio 1's weekly chart show – a factual record of what music the British public has been buying – might be forced to play the tune.

Pardon me for swearing, but in the spirit of robust free speech, not to mention accuracy, what the papers have perpetrated there is what Viz magazine would describe as "a cunt's trick". I'd think of a less offensive description, but there isn't one. I simply can't believe they've forced me to use such vile language in an article about our late premier. And by "they", I mean the BBC: officially to blame for anything bad since the eradication of cholera. On last week's Question Time, Charles Moore berated the BBC for even mentioning the Ding Dong! campaign on air, apparently unaware that, by doing so, he was himself promoting it on the BBC, which means he either a) believes himself to be invisible and inaudible, or b) had missed a golden chance to take another opportunistic pop at them before drawing his next breath. (Mind you, he didn't look as dumb as David Blunkett – also on the panel – who gleefully recounted dialogue from a famous Spitting Image sketch starring the Thatcher puppet that he'd somehow mistaken for a real-life quote from the woman herself. He's lucky Dimbleby cut him off before he went on to claim she'd had someone's arm up her arse at the time.)

Many of the obituaries have noted that Thatcher had little sense of humour, although we don't know how advanced her sense of irony was (being made of iron, she was quite irony herself). So we don't know how she'd react to the loudest squabble in the aftermath of her death being a surreal fight over an old musical number repurposed as an anti-tribute to her memory – a protest people actually have to pay to take part in. She'd laugh at that aspect, at the very least. It's hard to believe she'd turn in her grave. After all, as she told us herself, the lady's not for turning!!!! LOL OMG haha #AceGag #WellDone #Legend #JobDone #SigningOff #SeeYa

The Guardian, Thursday 15 March 2012 12.02 EDT1
100 NHS voices: what happens if the NHS bill passes?

Even professionals find the health and social care bill confusing. Below, as an introduction to this special series of interviews, Denis Campbell, the Guardian's health correspondent, explains what will happen if it goes through
• Explore what 100 people who work in or with the NHS think of the reforms in our interactive
• Tell us how concerned you are about the reforms and what the NHS means to you

• Primary care trusts (PCTs), which currently commission and fund patients' treatment, will be replaced by clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) – local groups of doctors, who are mainly GPs. They will gradually be handed responsibility for £60bn of NHS funds. They, rather than PCT managers, will be the ones who decide what care is right for patients, advise them where to go to get the best treatment and pay the bills. But many GPs are worried that this dramatic extension of their power could also damage their relationship of trust with patients because they will become responsible for rationing care, which will generate inevitable tensions.

• The new NHS Commissioning Board will manage the CCGs and try to drive up quality of care. It is meant to be handed much of ministers' day-to-day control of the NHS, to reduce political involvement. Critics fear, though, that the board's regional offices will be very similar to the strategic health authorities (SHAs) that will disappear next year. Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, has said he intends to streamline the NHS but the new system will contain many thousands of new bodies.

• Public health – tackling problems such as obesity, smoking and alcohol abuse – will transfer from the NHS to local councils. They will have a specific remit to narrow widening health inequalities between rich and poor.

• Any hospital which is not already a semi-independent foundation trust will have to become one, ideally by 2014. They will compete for treatment contracts from CCGs. Health policy experts predict that CCGs could over time force the closure of units, or even entire hospitals, if they do not rate the care given there.

The "cap" on how much hospitals can earn from private patients will rise from as little as 1.5% to 49%, prompting fears of a two-tier service in which NHS patients have to wait longer than those who pay.

• Competition will be extended, and non-NHS groups – charities and private healthcare firms – will be able to bid for increasing amounts of work currently done by NHS staff.

"Any qualified provider" will see nine NHS services, including treatment of neck and back pain, opened up to competition from next month, with other areas to follow later.

• Campaigners fear a "rush to the bottom" on quality of care as new providers of services put in unrealistically low bids to win contracts, leaving patients dissatisfied. Ministers deny they want to privatise the NHS but health leaders fear growing privatisation is inevitable.

'Bedroom tax' and welfare cuts protesters take to streets across UK
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 30 March 2013 11.51 EDT
Due to be introduced next month, the 'bedroom tax' entails a cut in housing benefit for claimants whose home has a spare room

Several hundred people gathered in London's Trafalgar Square on Saturday to protest against the government's welfare cuts and the controversial "bedroom tax".

Simultaneous protests were held in towns and cities across the UK ahead of the cuts scheduled to come into force in April. In Glasgow, around 2,500 people, including trade unionists and people from disabled groups, marched from Glasgow Green to George Square in the city centre.

The "bedroom tax", which is due to be introduced next month, will entail a cut in housing benefit for claimants whose home has a spare room. Pensioners, who have the highest number of spare rooms, are exempt, but critics say that a spare room is a necessity for many families, particularly those with ill or disabled members.

Noreen Aslam, 41, a working mother of four from Manchester was in London with her family. "We heard this was on and wanted to come. I think its a disgrace what they're doing, its the poll tax all over again. Homeless is Manchester used to be just the occassional person you'd see, now its the normality to see people sleeping on the streets. Its all over the place. I think its disgusting."

John MacDonald, 66, travelled from Norfolk. "I'd like to know if the second homes we pay for for MPs are all one bedroom. Its a disgrace. This government is dead in the water because we won't forget what they are doing to working class people," he said.

Sue Carter, 58, from Waltham Forest agreed: "They have just shut the soup kitchen in Waltham Forest despite having a real problem with homelessness. I'm a working single parent and now I've a tiny boxroom and now I'm faced with the choice between food, heat or paying the 'bedroom tax'.

"People have looked after their homes, improved them. Why should they be turfed out? An old widowed lady I know told the council she would be happy to move to a one-bedroom [home], but she would like to still have a little garden for her two dogs. They told her to get rid of her dogs."

Conservative claims about benefits are not just spin, they're making it up
Government ministers like Iain Duncan Smith and Grant Shapps are misrepresenting official statistics for political gain
Declan Gaffney and Jonathan Portes
guardian.co.uk, Monday 15 April 2013 10.32 EDT

In the past three weeks, readers of mainstream UK newspapers have learned a number of things about the UK social security system and those who rely on it. They have learned that 878,000 claimants have left employment and support allowance (ESA) to avoid a tough new medical assessment; that thousands have rushed to make claims for disability living allowance (DLA) before a new, more rigorous, assessment is put in place; and that one in four of those set to be affected by the government's benefit cap have moved into work in response to the policy. These stories have a number of things in common. Each is based on an official statistic. Each tells us about how claimants have responded to welfare policy changes. Each includes a statement from a member of the government. And each is demonstrably inaccurate.

When we say inaccurate, we are choosing our words carefully. Politicians are inevitably selective in the data they choose to publicise, picking the figures that best suit whatever story they want to tell. This can mean that stories that are technically accurate can nonetheless be potentially misleading. Within reasonable limits that is in itself neither improper nor unethical: indeed, it is virtually unavoidable. But here are some examples that are not just misleading: they assert that official government statistics say things they do not.

First, the claim that "more than a third [878,000] of people who were on incapacity benefit [who] dropped their claims rather than complete a medical assessment, according to government figures. A massive 878,300 chose not to be checked for their fitness to work [our italics]." For the Conservative party chairman, Grant Shapps, the figures "demonstrate how the welfare system was broken under Labour and why our reforms are so important".

In fact, every month, of the130,000 people who leave ESA, about 20,000 have not yet undergone a work capability assessment (WCA); a number that over four years or so adds up to the headline 878,000. There is no mystery about this: there is an inevitable gap between applying for the benefit and undertaking the WCA. During that time, many people will see an improvement in their condition and/or will return to work (whether or not their condition improves). DWP research has shown that overwhelmingly these factors explain why people drop their claims before the WCA; it also showed that it was extremely rare for claimants not to attend a WCA. In stating, in effect, that official figures showed the opposite of this, the story was simply wrong.

Iain Duncan Smith's assertion about a surge in DLA claims turns on the fact that DLA is being abolished for new claims and replaced with a new benefit, personal independence payment (PIP), for which most claimants will require a face-to-face assessment (for DLA, other forms of medical evidence could be used to support claims). He said: "We've seen a rise [in claims] in the run-up to PIP. And you know why? They know PIP has a health check. They want to get in early, get ahead of it. It's a case of 'get your claim in early'.''

Some very specific figures were cited: "In the north-east of England, where reforms to disability benefits are being introduced, there was an increase of 2,600 in claims over the last year, up from 1,700 the year before, the minister told the Daily Mail. In the north-west, there were 4,100 claims for the benefits over the past 12 months, more than double the 1,800 in the previous year, he said."

But these figures, to be found on DWP's website, in fact represent the change – successful new claims minus those leaving the benefit – in the total DLA caseload from August 2011 to August 2012, crucially including pensioners and children who are not affected by the change from DLA to PIP. They do not constitute even indicative evidence of a DLA "closing down sale". So what happens if we look at new claims, or indeed the total caseload, for those (between 16 and 64) who will be actually affected by the change? In fact, both fell, in both regions, between those two dates. These falls – well within the normal quarterly variation – tell us little, except to show conclusively that Duncan Smith's statements are supported by no evidence that he has offered whatsoever.

Finally, the coalition's flagship "benefit cap". On this occasion, not only did Duncan Smith misrepresent what his own department's statistics meant, but he chose to directly contradict his own statisticians, claiming: "Already we've seen 8,000 people who would have been affected by the cap move into jobs. This clearly demonstrates that the cap is having the desired impact."

But the official DWP analysis, from which the 8,000 figure is drawn, not only does not say this, it says the direct opposite: "The figures for those claimants moving into work cover all of those who were identified as potentially being affected by the benefit cap who entered work. It is not intended to show the additional numbers entering work as a direct result of the contact [their emphasis]."

As DWP analysts know only too well, people move off benefits into work all the time. Unless it is shown that these flows have increased for those affected, and by more for them than for other claimants – and no such analysis has yet been published, either by DWP or anybody else – we know nothing about whether the policy has had any impact (this claim is now being reviewed by the UK statistics authority).


None of this should be taken as comment on the merits of the policies in question. But these misrepresentations of official statistics cross a line between legitimate "spin", where a government selects the data that best supports its case, and outright inaccuracy.

Public cynicism about official statistics is often misplaced – the UK, like most democracies, strictly limits the ability of governments to influence the production and dissemination of official data, often, no doubt, to the frustration of ministers. These restrictions on what government can do with official data are an unsung but essential element in modern democratic governance. When government seeks to get around these limitations by, in effect, simply making things up, this is not just an issue for geeks, wonks and pedants – it's an issue for everyone.

A Slice of London So Exclusive Even the Owners Are Visitors
By SARAH LYALL
Published: April 1, 2013

LONDON — An odd thing was happening, or rather not happening, as dusk fell the other day across Belgravia, home to some of the world’s most valuable real estate: almost no one seemed to be coming home. Perhaps half the windows were dark.

It seems that practically the only people who can afford to live there don’t actually want to. Last year, the real estate firm Savills found that at least 37 percent of people buying property in the most expensive neighborhoods of central London did not intend them to be primary residences.

“Belgravia is becoming a village with fewer and fewer people in it,” said Alistair Boscawen, a local real estate agent. He works in “the nuts area” of London, as he put it, “where the house prices are bonkers” — anywhere from $7.5 million to $75 million, he said.

The buyers, increasingly, are superwealthy foreigners from places like Russia, Kazakhstan, Southeast Asia and India. For them, London is just a stop in a peripatetic international existence that might also include New York, Moscow and Monaco.

Along Elizabeth Street, home to a Poilâne bakery outlet and tony boutiques, foot traffic the other day was very slow. A Belgravia resident from Colombia, who was shopping at a pet store where dog beds go for $358 and cat blankets for $289, said that there were two English people along her street, and that it was hard to tell whether many of her neighbors were there or not there.

“French, American, Petra Ecclestone” — that would be the daughter of the Formula One impresarioBernie Ecclestone — “and Russians,” said the resident, considering those closest to her. She asked that her name not be used because, she said, she was scared of the Russians on the corner.

London is not the only city where the world’s richest people leave their expensive properties vacant while they stay in their expensive properties someplace else; the same is true in parts of Manhattan. But the difference is that so many of them here are foreign, and that they look to be buying up entire neighborhoods.

“Many areas of central London have become prohibitively expensive for local residents,” a recent report by the Smith Institute, a research group in London, said recently.

Paul Dimoldenberg, leader of the Labour opposition in Westminster Council, said the situation had reached a “tipping point” and was starting to concern lawmakers.

“Some of the richest people in the world are buying property here as an investment,” he said. “They may live here for a fortnight in the summer, but for the rest of the year they’re contributing nothing to the local economy. The specter of new buildings where there are no lights on is a real problem.”

In its report, Savills found that in 2011-12, 34 percent of people buying residential properties in the resale market in prime areas of London — places like Kensington, Chelsea and Mayfair as well as Belgravia — were from overseas, up from 24 percent in pre-crisis 2007. In the most exclusive spots, foreigners accounted for 59 percent of the sales.

This has made parts of London more international, more expensive and more empty. The salesclerk at a Belgravia clothing boutique, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity because she did not want to get in trouble, said that at some times of the year the area was virtually abandoned. “We’ll shut for the whole of August,” she said.

Many foreign purchasers are buying to rent, said Naomi Heaton, chief executive of London Central Portfolio, which represents high-end buyers. “There is a definite concern about ‘lights out London,' ” she said, “but the reality is that half of what is bought is bought for rental.”

But not at the top end, said Yolande Barnes of Savills.

“The very wealthy won’t rent their houses out. Why would they?” she asked rhetorically. “It’s more like buying their own private hotel, really — an alternative to living in a suite at the Dorchester.”

Meanwhile, prices are rising beyond expectation. For single-family housing in the prime areas of London, British buyers spend an average of $2.25 million, Ms. Barnes said, while foreign buyers spend an average of $3.75 million, which increases to $7.5 million if they are from Russia or the Middle East.

Of newly developed properties in what are considered “ultraprime” apartment complexes, those offering hotel-style amenities and apartments priced at more than $7.5 million, 78 percent of purchases last year were made by foreigners, the report said. Brokers are marketing new properties abroad in places like Hong Kong and Singapore even before advertising in Britain, as they did for Cornwall Terrace, a development at the edge of Regent’s Park where houses are priced at $45 million to $87 million.

The most visible, and also the most notorious, of the new developments is One Hyde Park, a $1.7 billion apartment building of stratospheric opulence on a prime corner in Knightsbridge, near Harvey Nichols, the park and the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, which functions as a 24-hour concierge service for residents. Apartments there have been purchased mostly by foreign buyers who hide their identities behind murky offshore companies registered to tax havens like the Isle of Man and the Cayman Islands.

It is rare to see anyone coming to or going from the complex, and British newspapers have been trying since it opened two years ago to discover who lives there. Vanity Fair reported recently that as far as it could discern after a long trawl through records, the owners seem to include a cast of characters who might have come from a poker game in a James Bond movie: a Russian property magnate, a Nigerian telecommunications tycoon, the richest man in Ukraine, a Kazakh copper billionaire, someone who may or may not be a Kazkh singer and the head of finance for the emirate of Sharjah.

One resident, Rinat Akhmetov, the Ukrainian, paid $204 million for two penthouse apartments that he combined into one, at a reported additional cost of some $90 million.

According to The Sunday Times of London, only 17 of 76 apartments, which have been sold for a total of $4 billion, are registered as primary residences, which means that the owners pay only negligible “second home” taxes of a few thousand dollars a year. Mr. Dimoldenberg called the building “London’s Mary Celeste” and said it “contributes nothing to local businesses or London’s economy.”

London’s housing market is at odds with that in the rest of the country, floundering since the 2008 crisis and now hit by a new wave of austerity-driven budget cuts. While housing prices outside the city fell by 10 percent in the last five years, inside London they increased by 21 percent. In Mayfair alone, they rose by 30 percent. A house in Chester Square that sold for $2.4 million as a long-term lease in 1987, Mr. Boscawen said, sold last year, as an outright purchase, for $48 million.

An American who lived for 20 years in a multimillion-dollar apartment in Belgrave Place, and who did not want her name used for fear of alienating her old neighbors, said the quiet could become oppressive.

Most of her neighbors seemed to be away most of the time, and she never met any of them. “So I was kind of excited when a Russian family moved in across the street,” she said. “I put a welcoming note through their letterbox, introducing myself.”

The neighbors invited her to their Christmas party, where she ate caviar, drank vodka and listened to Russian classical music. “I tried to meet people, but they didn’t speak much English,” she continued. “Anyway, that was the last I saw of my neighbors. I think they spend most of their time in Palm Beach.”

Attacks on Muslims soar in wake of Woolwich murder
Anti-Muslim incidents, online and in person, increase from a handful to 150 since Wednesday as arrests are made across UK
Conal Urquhart and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 25 May 2013 10.50 BST

Anti-Muslim attacks in Britain have soared since Wednesday's murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich.

Faith Matters, an organisation that works to reduce extremism, said it had been told of about 150 incidents in the last few days, compared to between four to eight cases before Wednesday.

Fiyaz Mughal, the director of Faith Matters, said incidents were happening on the streets and online. "What's really concerning is the spread of these incidents. They're coming in from right across the country," he told the BBC.

"Secondly, some of them are quite aggressive; very focused, very aggressive attacks. And thirdly, there also seems to be significant online activity … suggesting co-ordination of incidents and attacks against institutions or places where Muslims congregate."

Police have reported several arrests since Wednesday. Benjamin Flatters, 22, from Lincoln, was arrested on Thursday after complaints were made to Lincolnshire police about comments made on Twitter that were allegedly of a racist or anti-religious nature.

A second man was visited by officers and warned about his activity on social media, according to the police.

The charge comes after two men in Bristol were arrested and released on bail for making alleged offensive comments on Twitter about the murder. A 23-year-old and a 22-year-old, both from Bristol, were held under the Public Order Act on suspicion of inciting racial or religious hatred.

Detective Inspector Ed Yaxley of Avon and Somerset police said: "These comments were directed against a section of our community. Comments such as these are completely unacceptable and only cause more harm to our community in Bristol."

Two men will appear at Thames magistrates court on Saturday charged with religiously aggravated threatening behaviour over an incident in an east London fast food restaurant on Thursday.

Labourer Toni Latcal, 32, and plasterer Eugen-Aurelian Eugen-Beredei, 34, both from London, were arrested following the incident at 9.15pm on Thursday. Latcal was charged with religiously aggravated threatening behaviour and causing criminal damage, while Eugen-Beredei was charged with religiously aggravated threatening behaviour.

In Hastings, Adam Rogers, 28, of Kingsman Street, Woolwich, was arrested on Friday and will appear at Brighton magistrates court on Saturday accused of sending an "offensive, indecent or menacing message" online.