United Kingdom - UK News

A huge variety of people, including politicians and Cameron's family were brought on to explain just what a terrific guy he was

David Cameron – the infomercial – was shown on ITV last night. In the hour-long programme, a huge variety of people, including politicians, members of ethnic minorities, and Cameron's family were brought on to explain just what a terrific guy he was.

You could get a flavour of the show by filling in unheard questions that elicited these answers:

Mrs Cameron, when things get difficult in your family, does your husband cut and run?

Actual answer: "We've been through some fairly tough times and, in all those times, he has never let me down."

When you first met him, was he a humorous and pompous old fart?

"Though he had a very serious job, he was really funny and very interesting and clever."

Does he neglect his children?

"He's a fantastic dad."

Old Etonian friend Giles Andreae, was his privileged upbringing a drawback?

"No, it's a benefit, he's been well-educated, and that's not a problem."

And while at Oxford, did he spend all his time at the Bullingdon Club, drinking champagne and walking around in top hat and tails all day?'

"No, we would go to the pub and shoot pool. He's very good at it."

Former prime minister John Major, has he taken the Conservative party back to being the party of the well-to-do?

"The party is a much better reflection today of the country as a whole.'"

Trevor McDonald, you've been following him around for a week. Does he buckle under the strain?

"He must be under intense pressure, but if he is, it doesn't show."

To be fair, his wife Samantha, when really pushed, managed to reveal some of his faults, or "lots of irritating habits" as she put it. He cooks, but very messily. He doesn't pick up his clothes. He channel-hops. But the opposite of those would be rather spooky. Do we want a prime minister who washes up as he goes?

Deliberately, the programme contained not one world of policy. It was Cameron as he and all his friends want us to see him. Would he ever contemplate firing George Osborne? What did they expect him to say? "No, even if he were convicted of grievous bodily harm and downloading child porn, he would keep his job"? Of course not – "George has said to me, 'if ever you want to move me, it's your decision.' I have friendships in politics but that would never stop me making the right decisions."

We did learn some intriguing facts. His father had a disability: his legs were much too short. "Yet for him the glass was always half full, overflowing, with something alcoholic!" His mother was a magistrate, and tried to inculcate in her children a dread of what might happen to them if they went off the rails. And the notorious posters – they weren't airbrushed; he actually looks like that – "I have a baby face".

Perhaps the scariest new information was that, according to Samantha, he loves to watch the Godfather films, "again and again and again". This is a series of films about a tight, self-obsessed group of greedy, power-crazed people who destroy anyone who gets in their way. Just a fantasy, of course.

Film will focus on unhappy childhood of DJ and comedy performer who died in 1995

He created a character called Cupid Stunt and told a filthy joke about Margaret Thatcher on Radio 2. But now the late Kenny Everett is in line for the latest in showbusiness establishment accolades – a BBC4 drama biopic.

The BBC is developing a 90-minute film called Number One in Heaven about Everett, who died of an Aids related illness in 1995 aged 50.

Written by playwright Tim Whitnall – best known as the author of hit stage play Morecambe, about comedian Eric Morecambe – the as-yet uncast biopic promises to focus on Everett's troubled childhood at his Catholic secondary school on Merseyside where he was picked on for his diminutive size and his effeminacy.

"He was so small it is hard to think of finding an actor who can play him," Whitnall told the Guardian. "It is possible he could be played by a woman in fact, which is something he may have appreciated. I knew him and I loved him – in fact the title refers to the moment I first saw him when he was dancing in Heaven nightclub."

Everett, born Maurice Cole in Seaforth, Lancashire, started his professional life as a pirate DJ for Radio London and Radio Luxemburg before joining Radio 1 in the mid 1960s. He befriended the Beatles and accompanied them on their 1966 tour of the US.

His TV work included stints for Thames TV from 1978 to 1980 and for the BBC between 1981 and 1988, where he is thought to have first coined the term "the Beeb" to refer to the corporation. Among his comic creations were the punk Sid Snot and the American chatshow host Cupid Stunt, whose catchphrase was: "It's all done in the best possible taste."

Regarded in the 1980s as a supporter of prime minister Thatcher, Everett once appeared at a Young Conservatives conference waving enormous foam hands and saying "Let's bomb Russia" and "Let's kick Michael Foot's stick away". However, friends of Everett now question whether he was in fact a supporter of the Conservatives.

The BBC confirmed that it is working on the film but declined to comment further. It is expected to be made by the BBC's in-house film department, where it will be overseen by BBC Films executive producer Jamie Laurenson.

The savage "exemplary" sentences handed out to young Muslims (Sent to jail for throwing a single bottle, 13 March) need to be viewed in the broader context of the "war on terror", which itself has turned out to be a euphemism for a more shadowy war on Islam. While the government's huge assault on our basic civil liberties has affected a wide range of citizens (prayers for the fallen at the Cenotaph, calling out "rubbish" at a party conference, silent prayer in Trafalgar Square), it has impacted mainly on the Muslim community.

The absurdly high-profile assaults on Muslim households are designed to send a clear message to a vulnerable group. They should be seen within the context of the illegal attack on Iraq, the government's acquiescence in the incarceration of over a million Gazans, and the calamitous neglect of Afghanistan post-2002. The attitudes inherent in all these actions seem designed to create a climate of contempt that can only oil the wheels of extremism, defeating the very object the government proclaims – at the expense of the daily loss of young lives and the huge waste of economic resources.

Future historians may well trace the dramatic decline of this country in economic, political, social and democratic terms to this disastrous failure to relate these repressive attitudes to the ongoing creation of a negative climate that can only be self-destructive.

Roger Iredale

Yeovil, Somerset

• On reading the report on the arrest and conviction of many young Muslims over the January 2009 demonstrations against the massacre in Gaza, a number of uncanny similarities strike one with the situation in Palestine. The first is the reported police brutality in response to low-level violence, where the Israeli security forces use similar methods.

The second parallel is the behaviour of the legal systems. Israel's overlooks the war crimes in Gaza reported by Judge Goldstone, but is keen on arresting and holding without charge boys of 10, and treating boys of 12 who throw stones as terrorists. Meanwhile, the London courts seem as keen to throw young Muslims in jail, as Gordon Brown is prepared to bend the legal system after the election so as to not inconvenience those responsible for ordering and managing the massacres in Gaza. Certainly, if Britain set out to create Muslim radicalism, it could do no better.

Professor Haim Bresheeth

University of East London

• After acknowledging Mosab al-Ani's excellent character, Judge John Denniss is quoted as saying: "I'm going to give you this [prison] sentence to deter other people.". I thought fair sentencing was supposed to work on the "punishment fits the crime" principle. If so, Judge Denniss badly needs reminding of this, or better, early retirement. I was at the demo and that bottle never got near the Israeli embassy.

Judith Kazantzis

Lewes, East Sussex

• Bruce Kent is wrong: there is "absolute outrage". What kind of country are we living in when police force themselves into private houses in the middle of the night and arrest and handcuff members of the public because they were rowdy at a political demonstration? I have written to my MP, but what can I expect from the chair of the Conservative party, when the response to these cases from Labour, Tory, Lib Dem and even the Greens has been all but inaudible?

Frank Welsh

Balsall Common, West Midlands

• "... protests against the attack on Gaza ... 50,000 demonstrators ... Muslim and Christian ..." And plenty of Jews, including Israelis.

Vivien Lichtenstein

Jews for Justice for Palestinians

• Richard Hamilton's political point-scoring in juxtaposing maps of the UN partition plan and Israel and Palestine today is more than "pretty obvious" (Spot the difference, G2, 3 March). It's disingenuous. I don't approve of the occupation of the West Bank, but the Arab States rejected the partition plan in 1947, invaded Israel and did nothing to create an independent Palestine when they could have done so. And Gaza, though blockaded, is not occupied.

Jeremy Beecham

Vice-chairman, New Israel Fund UK

Discovery raises possibility of manufacturing painkillers more cheaply using vats of microbes rather than fields of flowers

Scientists have identified the two genes in opium poppies which are used to make codeine and morphine, two of the most important painkillers in a doctor's armoury.

The discovery opens the door to alternative ways of making the drugs which do not involve giving over vast areas of farmland to growing the flowers. One hope is to transfer the genes into microbes, which could be grown in vats and provide huge quantities of the drugs at a fraction of the cost of farming and processing the plants.

Researchers said the findings could lead to the creation of strains of opium poppies that cannot make morphine, the opiate chemical turned into heroin and exported from Afghanistan and other countries for illicit use.

More than 2,500 hectares of British fields have been turned into opium poppy farms to meet NHS demands for morphine, a potent painkiller that was first isolated in 1806. The flower variety, Papaver somniferum, has been grown commercially in the UK since 2002 and differs from the common red flower, which does not contain morphine.

Pharmaceutical companies extract the drugs by processing seed pods stripped from the flowers, producing an annual national yield of codeine and morphine of 100 tonnes. Some 27m pills containing codeine are sold over the counter every year in a painkiller market worth £500m.

A team led by Peter Facchini at the University of Calgary, in Canada, identified the two genes used to make codeine and morphine from out of 23,000 in the opium poppy. The finding, reported in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, ends a 50-year quest.

"The evolution of these two genes in a single plant species has had such a huge impact on humanity over the past several thousand years," said Facchini. "Our discovery allows this unique genetic power to be harnessed."

Microbes are already used by the medical industry to mass produce synthetic insulin for diabetics and steroids for treating rheumatoid arthritis.

Last year, Tasmania's attorney-general, Lara Giddings, raised concerns over the impact of opium poppy farms on wildlife. Farmers in the country, the world's largest producer of legal opium, reported that wallabies had been hopping around in circles after eating the plants.

In 2008, the European Union's drug agency warned that Britain faced a heroin crisis following a record harvest of poppies in Afghanistan, which accounts for 90% of the world's illicit opium. By blocking one of the genes, scientists said they could create a strain of poppies that produce codeine but do not go on to convert this into morphine, the source of heroin.

This would "allow the direct recovery of codeine from the plant and prevent the formation of morphine, which would preclude the illicit synthesis of heroin," the scientists write in the journal.

Suggestion comes as the EU's external border agency, Frontex, prepares to assume extra powers

Deportation flights should carry human rights monitors to check on the safety of failed asylum seekers who have been forcibly removed, a senior EU commissioner has recommended.

The suggestion comes as the EU's external border agency, Frontex, prepares to assume extra powers to charter aircraft, buy equipment and explore satellite technology to survey the union's frontiers.

Research by the Warsaw-based agency on the use of drones – unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – to patrol frontiers is being closely followed in Britain, the UK Border Agency (UKBA) has confirmed. Although the UK is not in the Schengen agreement, which removed most EU internal borders, it is closely involved with Frontex. The Home Office minister Meg Hillier was present when the EU Justice and Home Affairs Council meeting supported reinforcing the agency's remit.

The research projects and extra capabilities Frontex is taking on include:

• Hiring aircraft to pick up failed asylum-seekers from EU states in order to improve coordination of deportation flights to Africa, Asia and South America.

• Harmonising the workings of Automated Border Control (ABC) gates that check travellers' biometric passports, to encourage information sharing between intelligence databases. ABC gates are in use at several UK airports.

• Developing training programmes to "lay the foundation of a culture of border guards" that respects human rights.

• Testing surveillance systems such as UAVs, remote sensing equipment and satellites to forestall illegal immigration.

Frontex, established in 2005, has been active in coordinating naval patrols in the Mediterranean and Aegean seas to intercept boatloads of migrants attempting to enter the EU. Its annual budget is €80m and it has a staff of around 230.

The latest development will see its role enlarged. Frontex liaison officers could be stationed in states such as Turkey that are commonly used by migrants as hopping-off points to enter Europe.

The suggestion that observers be put on board deportation flights is a response to claims by failed asylum seekers that they have been hit or abused by guards.

Unveiling plans to strengthen Frontex, Cecilia Malmström, the Swedish EU commissioner for home affairs, said: "Safeguards [should be] put in place to make sure that [Frontex] return operations are carried out in full respect of fundamental rights. For example, an independent monitor shall be present during such operations and report … on compliance with EU law."

Some EU states, though not the UK, already allow Red Cross observers to accompany asylum seekers being forcibly returned overseas.

The proposals have to be approved by the European parliament.

The UKBA said it welcomed a greater role for Frontex in coordinating the efforts of EU member states to mount effective returns for failed asylum seekers. Britain has, "on occasion" allowed representatives of the Independent Monitoring Board on board deportation flights as observers. "This is a matter we will keep under review," it added.

In June, Frontext will host a conference and technical demonstration of potential uses of UAV drones for border surveillance. Edgar Beugels, the Dutch head of research and development at Frontex, told the Guardian he expected UK firms and agencies to attend the event, which will be held in Spain. "The UK is very much interested in UAVs," he said.

For the past three years, Frontex has helped coordinate deportation flights of failed asylum seekers. Britain has participated in flights that have removed failed asylum seekers to Nigeria, Pakistan, Kosovo and Georgia.

In its enhanced role, Frontex will be responsible for hiring aircraft for the purpose of joint return operations.

On drones, a UKBA spokesman said: "[We have] followed the development of UAVs for the purpose of border surveillance … The UK Border Agency has no current plans to use drones but we are always open to examination of the potential of innovative technology and do not rule out the use of drones at some time in the future."

A spokesman for the Stop Deportation campaign welcomed deployment of human rights monitors on flights but added: "Frontex's greater role may push accountability to another level away from national governments. It may make it more difficult to challenge deportations."

The Lords is for people of all faiths and none: there is no space for reserved benches for the clergy

Over the last few days the 26 bishops who sit in the House of Lords must have been astounded to receive over 50,000 letters telling them their time as legislators is up. Today an ICM poll for Power2010, who organised the write-in, shows that 74% of voters think unelected bishops should have no place in the legislature, and only 21% believe that they should. Even more persuasive is that 70% of Christians want the bishops gone, and only 26% are in favour of keeping them. We are the only western country with theocracy in its law-making. Join the letter-writers at www.power2010.org.uk/reformtthelords.

Failure to reform the Lords, despite the Commons voting for a 100% elected upper house, is just one of Labour's long list of missed opportunities. But a revised plan will emerge shortly to join Labour's manifesto of regrets. Why didn't Labour do Lords reform? It would have taken a year of guerrilla warfare with the ermine, obliterating all other business. What a mistake: all that fidgety "other business" is long forgotten but this would have stood as a monument, fulfilling at last what the Commons has tried to do since 1911.

Maybe 2011 will be the year to do it. This is a trap for the Tories, by no means united on Lords reform. If Cameron votes down the constitutional reform bill in the "wash-up" of unfinished bills when the election is called, he will be voting to prevent a referendum to let people choose electoral reform for the Commons. He will also be voting to keep the present preposterous 92 hereditary peers, with their bizarre blue-blood byelections to replace their dead.

Labour regarded Lords reform as abstruse, nerdy stuff, alienating voters. But Power2010 is proving them wrong, campaigning for wide public involvement in how democracy works. With more than 100,000 votes cast in the campaign's open poll on ideas to change the system, it is pursuing the people's top constitutional reforms. The voters' first priority was proportional representation; then came scrapping ID cards and "the database state"; third was an all-elected second chamber. All candidates will be challenged to support the chosen reforms at the election.

Jack Straw is currently consulting on whether a guaranteed number of women and faith representatives should be included in the new senate. While a women's quota could be fixed in a proportional system, or with women-only seats, the idea of elections among only Christians or Muslims is absurd. If some non-elected places are reserved for the holy men and women of the faiths, their position becomes even more anomalous than at present. This is one of the world's most secular societies, where only 7% ever go to church in a year, only 1.9% on any Sunday. By what logic does religion deserve a reserved space, where votes are tied to outside instructions?

Bishops in the Lords hold great sway over matters of life and death, most recently in organising to prevent right-to-die reform – against the will of 82% of voters. They helped engineer an exemption in the equalities bill to allow religious employers to discriminate against gays and others, though they run a third of all schools and increasing numbers of state-financed services, from hospices to care homes and day centres. Ed Balls, inexplicably, allowed religious schools to opt out of most sex education: children in religious environments probably need open discussion most.

The idea that faith offers some missing moral dimension to politics is offensive. All politics is about moral choices. As individuals there are good, wise and clever people of all faiths and none. Let the religious stand for office alongside everyone else, with no reserved benches that honour their office and their dogma instead of their individual qualities.

Polly Toynbee is the president of the British Humanist Association

Men detained following MoD inquiry into companies allegedly receiving millions of dollars for undelivered armoured buses

Two men have been arrested following a Ministry of Defence inquiry into an alleged multimillion pound fraud in post-invasion Iraq, involving British companies headed by ex-soldiers and a former high-ranking Scotland Yard officer.

One man was detained after he flew into Britain from the Far East, while a second is understood to have been arrested in London and freed on bail.

The arrests, carried out by the fraud squad of the MoD's police force, follow investigations on both side of the Atlantic that were triggered by a Guardian report on fraud on the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) that was installed in Baghdad shortly after the 2003 invasion.

In March 2007 the Guardian reported that a number of British companies were paid millions of dollars for the delivery of dozens of armoured buses to protect Iraqi civil servants from attack by insurgents, although the vehicles had never been delivered.

One company, headed by a former deputy assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard and a colourful ex-army officer, received $5.7m (£2.93m), even though the vehicles never left the factory in Russia where they were due to be manufactured. A second company, headed by another former British soldier, is understood to have received $2.7m for the same "phantom" vehicles.

The deal at the centre of the arrests was negotiated in late 2004, as the CPA was about to hand over responsibility to Iraqis. Amid the growing threat from insurgents, the CPA put out a tender for a fleet of 51 armoured vehicles. The money to pay for the contract came from Iraqi oil revenues which were held by the Trade Bank of Iraq, but under the control of US officials.

The $8.48m contract was won by Zeroline, a Norfolk-based armoured car company run by ex-soldier Peter Tarrant, 66. He subcontracted the sourcing of the vehicles to another British company called APTx, a subsidiary of Alchemie Technology Ltd. Alchemie and APTx were formed soon after the invasion of Iraq by Haslen Back, a former junior officer in the Royal Anglian Regiment. The chairman of APTx is Graham James, 55, a former deputy assistant commissioner of Scotland Yard. James is understood not to have been arrested.

Back, 42, from Suffolk, has lived for several years in Moscow, where he is said to have planned to acquire the armoured vehicles. It is understood that he faced difficulties in obtaining permission to export the vehicles from Russia to Iraq. Although the vehicles were never destined to pass through Britain, British government regulations specified that British export licenses were needed for the armoured vehicles because the principals behind the company were British.

A few weeks before the contract was due to expire in July 2005, however, APTx and Zeroline received their payments from the CPA, without the vehicles ever having been supplied.

After the Guardian reported that this had happened, investigations were launched by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, a US federal agency set up to inquire into fraud, corruption and waste in post-invasion Iraq, and by the MoD's own police.

One man, Massachusetts businessman Benjamin Kafka, 56, a director of Alchemie and head of its North American operations, pleaded guilty to fraud in a US court last April. Kafka has been co-operating with US investigators and is expected to be sentenced shortly. The US authorities are known to have taken a close interest in the British investigation, and have not ruled out further prosecutions.

The MoD police inquiries concentrated on the movement of funds once the payments had been received, as well as a series of documents which were presented to a bank in Britain which released the funds. JP Morgan Chase has confirmed that officials at its Global Trade division in Bournemouth, Hampshire, were shown documents which appeared to suggest that the convoy of vehicles was about to be shipped from Russia. At this point, the bank says, it agreed to make payments totalling $8.48m.

The US authorities in Iraq were unaware that the payment had been made and, six months later, in December 2005, they announced that the contract had been cancelled.

Tarrant has admitted to the Guardian that he had received his payment, although he knew the vehicles were never delivered.

Nick Clegg's principles are flexible enough for the Tories, yet an alliance would spell disaster and a new election in a year

It is becoming irritatingly difficult for Conservatives to ignore the Liberal Democrats. For most of the last decade they have been seen by Tories as a form of political pest control, helpfully eating away at the Labour vote by positioning themselves as the anti-war party of the left. But for weeks now most opinion polls have pointed to a Lib-Con alliance. If the election does return a hung parliament, then the Tories must be prepared to negotiate – and immediately. It is time for them to think the unthinkable.

For his part, Nick Clegg is all dressed in blue and ready to tango. Last week, he told the Spectator how much he admires Margaret Thatcher for defeating the miners' unions in the 1980s. He duly denounced her to the Guardian later – but this is the skill of the Lib Dems. They are ideologically flexible. They embody the Groucho Marx dictum: "These are my principles and if you don't like them: well, I've got others." Clegg now has an impressive chocolate box of principles: some red, some blue. And enough blue ones to make a Lib-Con alliance workable.

They agree on the civil liberties agenda, and the abolition of identity cards. Clegg backs Michael Gove's plans for Swedish-style market-driven school reform (but claims he thought of it first). He supports the Barack Obama surge in Afghanistan, so war is no longer a stumbling block. They disagree on Europe, but neither wants a confrontation with Brussels over the next four years – so this need not be a dealbreaker. And on electoral reform, the Conservatives would never give ground. But they might set up a commission to review it, thereby kicking the issue into the long grass.

The most important part of any Lib-Con pact would involve the budget. On this, Clegg can be relied upon to play ball. In his speech yesterday, he declared himself "the guarantor, whatever the outcome of the election, that no risks will be taken with Britain's financial position". He has some credibility on this point, having torn up almost all the Lib Dem proposals for extra spending and saying that the deficit must be tackled using only spending cuts – rather than the mix of tax rises and cuts that the Tories advocate. A Lib-Con axis on finance would be a marriage of tough, and tougher.

Any formal coalition would have to be made palatable to the grassroots of both parties, who will hate the idea. Cameron would have to prove he was being politically canny, inviting Lib Dems into areas that are most likely to explode. And Clegg would have to show that he was propping up the Tories not just to find ministerial office for himself or his friends, but to change the nature of Cameron's government. For example, he might demand that Ken Clarke is made chancellor. There is no prospect of Vince Cable being made chancellor: to cede control of the economy would move Tory MPs to mutiny. Losing George Osborne is something they would handle far better.

Liam Fox, regarded as the flame-keeper of the Tory right, would also be a prime target for the Lib Dems. He might be asked to make way for Lord Ashdown, whom the Tories greatly admire. Giving the Lib Dems ownership of the Afghanistan war would have its political attractions: the narrative from Helmand is likely to be one of ignominious retreat. Ashdown, lover of horrible jobs, would relish the task.

But the single most likely appointment is Clegg to the Home Office. Bets are being placed on it (Ladbrokes is offering odds of 20/1). It is a substantial job – so such a move would please the Lib Dems. It is also a job which has destroyed the last four holders of the post – which would please the Tories. Clegg and Ashdown would, in effect, be given suicide missions and have to impose the most awful cuts. And some of the more free-market Lib Dems (such as David Laws, who has proposed the break-up of the NHS) are too rightwing for a Cameron government anyway.

With all this potential for cohabitation, it seems rude to point out that any coalition would end in disaster and – most likely – another general election within a year. The Westminster adversarial system does not lend itself to coalitions, as history shows. Since 1900 there have been four hung parliaments, none lasting more than two years. Even a majority of less than 15 is inherently unstable: of the three elections that returned such a result, just two lasted more than 18 months. Whatever the theoretical merits and policy dovetails, coalitions do not work in the British political system.

And as my Spectator colleague James Forsyth has argued, we must add to this the prospect of leadership challenges. The Tories will not easily forgive Cameron for failure to win outright against such an unpopular Labour prime minister. Meanwhile, the polls suggest that Clegg might lose a third of his MPs at the next election. So if the two men enter coalition, they would be acting not only with half an eye to facing each other in a new general election but facing down rebels in their own parties.

None of this augurs well for stable government. So even if a Lib-Con alliance is struck, it would likely last no longer than a Hollywood shotgun marriage. But it should, at least, be every bit as entertaining.

Targeting marginals is logical sense for Ashcroft and Whelan. But the system sucks all fire and clarity from party lines

Back in the old days, they used to make ceramic caricatures of the political villains and heroes. Michael Ashcroft and Charlie Whelan are today's unlikely pair of toby jugs, the Belize-based peer and the ruddy-faced Unite official grinning at one another from opposite ends of the mantelpiece. Both are being credited with almost supernatural powers in winning over marginal seats.

Ashcroft long ago realised that parties didn't win or lose elections in a uniform way across the country, but through street-level battles in clusters of swing constituencies. After the 2005 election he published a call to arms, Smell the Coffee, and began to channel money and energy into these seats. Running the Tories' target-seat campaign, he brought the kind of focus you would expect from a buccaneering entrepreneur, badly spooking Labour MPs and candidates.

Whelan, now political director of Unite – a key Labour funder and the parent union of British Airways cabin staff – got the same point. He has been working to use the union's contacts and membership to shore up Labour voting in many of the same key marginals.

In many ways, the two men are opposites – not just in politics but in character. Ashcroft is a tightly controlled figure in public, austere seeming, obsessed by military history and his collection of Victoria Crosses. Whelan is seen as a cheery bully: once the ultimate Brownite enforcer, he has become strangely tweedy since decamping to the Highlands and pursuing salmon rather than political opponents.

If Ashcroft is held up by the left and much of the media as a symbol of everything that is wrong with the Conservatives – an unaccountable, shadowy figure who hasn't paid his fair whack of taxes and exerts a puppet master's influence – then Whelan is getting it in the neck as the embodiment of all that's wrong with Labour under Brown – a ruthless conspirator, using trade union money to sideline opponents and build new power bases.

You could call this the Dan Brown school of politics: we love to believe in secret conspiracies – private cabals directing things behind the scenes to their own agenda. But in neither case have things gone smoothly.

Ashcroft's non-dom status caused David Cameron and William Hague acute embarrassment and made them look naive, or worse. You can't say the Tories' stick, or slide, in the polls was caused by the Ashcroft story, but it didn't help, and contributed to a sense that Cameron was less in control than he would like us to think. Ashcroft is clearly a more traditional, rightwing Tory than Cameron, so how much influence has he really wielded in those target seats?

But now the right is using Whelan to make a link between travel-disrupting strikers and Labour's re-election campaign. A leftwing union is pushing aside Blairite or moderate candidates in winnable seats, so the theory goes. Unite, holding the purse strings, is now pulling the strings. It is a mirror image narrative. Tit for tat. But is it fair?

At one level Unite's critics have a point to make about the union's influence in politics. What is it trying to achieve? Perhaps at a local level it is helping Labour, using trade unionists to speak to fellow unionists to get the vote out. But nationally the strikes will be the worst possible pre-election headlines for Gordon Brown. No wonder ministers are frantically twisting arms and begging the brothers and sisters to desist.

But it is hard to get worked up about the union's local campaigning. If the Tories have the money, near-broke Labour has to respond in any way it can. And getting Unite members to knock on doors is far closer to a traditional idea of democracy than the focus groups and expensive internet-based campaigns the Tories are using. Furthermore, as the Conservatives hold to a belief in faster, deeper cuts and public-sector pay freezes to repair public finances, then don't public-sector trade unions have a right, even a duty, to warn their members and try to prevent a Tory victory?

Of course, if we do get a hung parliament, then the nature of the new Labour parliamentary party will matter very much. It may be symbolised in a fight for the leadership between David Miliband and Ed Balls if the left wins. And if the central political agenda is all about public-sector cuts, then it's a final goodbye to New Labour and perhaps a return to a more traditional left-right divide in the Commons. That would be a Labour party far less likely to do some kind of deal with the Lib Dems; the centre-left could remain split. These may be really important arguments. The people who should be worried about Whelan and Unite aren't the Tories so much as Mandelson, Miliband and co.

However, there is a much more serious and damaging political consequence of this focus on target seats by both Ashcroft's team and Whelan's one. They are behaving entirely logically, given our strange electoral system, but homing in on swing voters in marginal constituencies must inevitably narrow the range of messages the parties send out.

We get political rhetoric shorn of fire and clarity, converging in a damp, bland place. We get mealy-mouthed, mumbling politics – despite the huge issues facing the country – on everything from war to climate change and the debt. The more politicians obsess about target seats, the less they speak boldly to the country. This is presumably why the parties are so cagey about expressing clear views on the economic dilemmas ahead.

But the obvious effect is to turn off most of the electorate in the rest of the country, who have cottoned on to not being told the truth about what Labour or the Tories would do if they won a majority. Whatever happens to turnout among the uncommitted groups in certain "battleground" areas, the overall turnout and enthusiasm is being dampened. The irony is that, in their different ways, Ashcroft and Whelan have stronger, clearer views than most people in politics.

So don't get too worked up about our toby jug villains. Ask instead about the voting system producing this strange mix of expensive, narrow tactics and bland public discourse. The sickness in our democracy is a lot deeper than one tax exile splurging his millions around Conservative central office, or a tweeting trade union official doing favours for his old mates.

We need reform. If, out of a hung parliament and a certain period of political confusion, we got real change in the voting system – goodbye to sugar daddies and sweetheart union deals – that would be the best outcome of all.

More than 80 university heads, generally known as vice-chancellors, now earn more than the prime minister

The income of thousands of the most senior British academics has soared over the past decade, far outstripping growth in average lecturers' pay, according to a Guardian inquiry.

More than 80 university heads, generally known as vice-chancellors, now earn more than the prime minister, and some have seen their annual earnings double or even triple in 10 years. Some got 15% or 20% pay rises last year alone, compared with a 45.7% rise over 10 years for average higher education teaching professionals.

The hightest-paid VC gets £474,000, and 19 get more than £300,000, including employer pension contributions. By contrast, the prime minister, Gordon Brown, gets £197,000 plus a pension.

Salaries of more, sometimes much more, than £100,000 are paid to almost 4,000 other academic administrators, consultants and scientists in Britain's 150 university institutions, compared with only a handful at that level a decade ago.

The Guardian has identified eight universities at the head of a league table based on a combination of chief executive pay and the proportion of high-earning staff.

In order of vice-chancellor income they are: the London Business School; UCL; Liverpool; Imperial College; Nottingham; Oxford; Kings, London; and Bristol.

The Guardian findings led the general secretary of the lecturers' union, UCU, Sally Hunt, to protest about "snouts in the trough".

She said: "The pay rises senior staff, in particular vice-chancellors, have enjoyed in recent years have been a constant source of ridicule. There is no transparency for the arbitrary rises they receive. Those at the top hide behind the clandestine world of remuneration committees as an excuse for their massive salaries."

All universities face savage funding cuts, with students asked to pay higher fees to help balance university books.

Wes Streeting, president of the National Union of Students, said today: "The fact they are giving themselves and other managers huge pay rises will raise questions about whether students' money is being well spent."

At Oxford, where the income of the VC – currently Prof Andrew Hamilton – has more than tripled since 1999 to its present £327,000, a spokesman defended the rises because Oxford was "the number one university in the country" and the biggest research provider.

Hamilton's predecessor had succeeded in doubling research income and fundraising £770m, the university said.

Oxford has the highest-paid university employee in the country: the fund manager Sandra Robertson is paid £580,000 to manage its billion-pound endowments.

Many universities defend their exploding top pay bills as a reflection of competition among universities, or "comparability" with other heads of big organisations. One small former technical college, Aston in Birmingham, however, refuses to explain the £309,000 package awarded to the engineering professor Julia King on the grounds that it "does not comment on the pay of any staff member".

By contrast, another vice-chancellor, Prof Eric Thomas at Bristol, decided to give some of the money back from his £309,000. The university said: "The VC took no pay rise last year, and made a donation to the university of £100,000.".

Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of Universities UK, which represents vice-chancellors, said todaythat universities were "highly complex businesses". "Salaries of university heads in the UK are comparable with those in competitor countries and are also in line with remuneration packages for directors and chief executives of public and private organisations of a similar size. As the role and importance of higher education have grown, so have the demands on the offices of vice-chancellors."

Which universities pay their senior staff the most? Get the full data from our investigation here
• Get the data

The income of thousands of top British academics has risen dramatically in the last decade.

The Guardian charts how more than 80 heads of universities now earn more than the Prime Minister. Annual earnings for some of them have doubled or even tripled over the past 10 years.

Almost 4,000 other academic administrators, consultants and scientists are now being paid more than £ 100,000 a year, compared to just a handful a decade ago.

You can see how much individual universities pay their senior staff here - can you do anything with the data?

If you have any comments on the data, please email reporter Rob Evans.

Download the data

• DATA: download the full datasheet

World government data

• Search the world's government data with our gateway

Can you do something with this data?

Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group or mail us at datastore@guardian.co.uk

• Get the A-Z of data
• More at the Datastore directory
• Follow us on Twitter

Data summary

Blackwood Miners' Institute, Gwent

Debuts are difficult. National Theatre Wales has solved the problem by launching an ambitious first-year programme with a defiantly local show: a populist piece, written by Alan Harris, about life in the valleys after the pit closures. It starts its tour in a south Wales institute built for the miners in 1925 and now a multipurpose arts centre; what the show lacks in narrative focus it makes up for in communal vigour.

The form it takes is a mix of stand-up and soap: cabaret blends with stories as if we were watching a raucous version of Under Milk Wood. Our host, Con, is a joke-cracking MC and manager of the "'stute", as it's affectionately known, who paints a vivid picture of a struggling town where the carpet shop doubles up as the taxi office. But the principal storyline stems from the return of Kyle to prospect, on behalf of an international firm, for gold mineral deposits. Kyle's plans would involve demolishing the 'stute, and his miner father was once ostracised as a scab, so his presence stirs up ancient hostilities.

"The past is a trap" is the play's message. The valley towns, it argues, have to move on, bury the mining myths and redefine themselves. That's a plausible argument, but Harris's stories frequently undermine it. For Kyle, local loyalty wins out over commercial imperatives. Elsewhere, a son is reluctantly reconciled with his dying dad, a painterly wife sticks with her drunken spouse, and a female amateur boxer skips a big fight to attend a funeral. If Harris never resolves the contradiction between tribal tradition and the need to break the mould, he provides a graphic portrait of present discontents: a schoolgirl's tirade against the predictable pattern of her life won a volley of sympathetic applause.

For all the unresolved tensions between past and future, the tone of John E McGrath's production is festive. Bingo, booze and songs blend with social issues, and the cast of six swap roles with furious and sometimes bewildering speed. Boyd Clack holds the show together as the MC, and there are striking contributions from Siwan Morris as the pugilist, Amy Starling as a mutinous cake factory worker and Sharon Morgan as a dog-toting senior who is into heavy metal. The show is torn between populism and preaching, but it gets the company off to an ebullient start and whets one's appetite for its upcoming programme.

At Blaengarw Workmen's Hall, Bridgend, tomorrow. Box office: 01656 871911. Then touring.

Rating: 3/5

PM calls Unite chief to discuss deal to halt three-day British Airways strike, following attacks by the Tories over union links

Gordon Brown has intervened personally in the British Airways industrial dispute in an attempt to avert a walkout by 12,000 cabin crew next weekend.

The prime minister called the joint general secretary of the Unite trade union, Tony Woodley, to discuss potential solutions to the looming three-day walkout, according to sources close to the dispute. Brown's private communications this weekend are believed to have taken a less aggressive tone to the one used todayby the transport secretary, Lord Adonis, who launched a broadside at one of the Labour party's biggest donors.

The Conservatives will this week launch a new attack on Labour's ties with the unions in an attempt to portray the party as going back to its Labour roots. Eric Pickles, the Tory party chairman, wrote to Brown tonight calling on him to condemn the strike and suspend Labour's financial relationship with Unite until it is settled. "In the face of this reckless [strike] action, you are giving the impression of siding with the union," he said.

Adonis admonished Unite for threatening a "totally unjustified" series of strikes, starting with a three-day action from 20 March and a further four-day walkout from 27 March – days before the expected announcement of a general election on 6 May. Unite has also reserved the right to strike from 14 April onwards, in the middle of an election battle, if there is still no agreement in a row over staffing cuts on flights. Adonis told BBC1's Andrew Marr Show: "I absolutely deplore the strike, it is not only the damage it is going to do passengers and the inconvenience it's going to cause – which is quite disproportionate to the issues at stake – but also the threat it poses to the future of one of our great companies in this country."

Hopes of a resolution to the dispute plummeted on Friday when Unite announced strike dates, triggering the withdrawal of a formal peace offer by BA. Little more than an hour before BA withdrew the offer, Unite had said it would put the proposal to its members in a consultative ballot, while simultaneously setting strike dates for eight days later in case cabin crew rejected the deal.

Observers say the offer, which included a partial repeal of staffing cuts and a three-year pay agreement, might well have received consideration from a membership that had voted 81% in favour of a strike weeks earlier.

However, the BA chief executive, Willie Walsh, said he withdrew the offer because it was conditional on Unite and its cabin crew branch, Bassa, not setting strike dates.

Unite accused Adonis of being "badly informed" and said BA had lost an opportunity to end the dispute. "Lord Adonis should publicly urge management to put that offer back on the table. Should they do so, there is still a possibility of peace," said a Unite spokesman. A Bassa source said some members are now seeking to exclude Labour party donations from their monthly dues.

A Downing Street source refused to give a running commentary on the prime minister's involvement in the strike, but insisted that Brown had already condemned the action as "unacceptable". The source said: "The PM has condemned it, Andrew has condemned it. The whole government is clear that we want both sides back at the table and talking."

Meanwhile preparations for the strikes are under way on both sides. Walsh said BA will announce a revised schedule for flights during the strike tomorrow, having pledged todayto operate up to seven out of 10 of BA's daily services during a walkout.

BA would normally expect to carry more than 500,000 passengers over the seven days of strike action. The airline is hoping to overcome the absence of staff with 1,000 volunteer flight attendants drawn from the ranks of its non-cabin crew and 23 aircraft leased from other operators, which come complete with crew.

However, the temporary workforce will have to pass picket lines at Heathrow airport organised by Unite. Bassa representatives will meet police at Heathrow tomorrowto discuss where they are legally allowed to place picket lines – the first since a cabin crew walkout in 1997.

The dispute is rooted in BA's attempts to cut its cabin crew budget in the face of record losses, including a pre-tax loss of £401m last year. It has achieved savings of £62.5m by unilaterally reducing cabin crew numbers on flights through a voluntary redundancy programme and offering staff part-time contracts. Unite says the move was antagonistic because it was imposed and damaged service standards.

Instead Unite has tabled a counter-proposal that it claims would save the same amount of money while restoring the majority of staffing cuts. Walsh has criticised the offer, saying both sides are "not close at all" to a deal.

The Civil Aviation Authority also warns of a prolonged downturn for the UK airline industry tomorrowas it confirms that last year saw the steepest fall in air passenger numbers since the second world war. UK airports handled 218 million passengers during 2009, a fall of 17 million on 2008, said the aviation watchdog.

"Passenger numbers are back to the level they were six years ago … and it could be a number of years before they reach their peak again," said Harry Bush, director of economic regulation at the CAA.

Bulger killer's recall to jail may not provide best platform for exploring how society should treat young offenders

It is a pity that the debate over the age of criminal responsibility, revived this weekend by the children's commissioner, Maggie Atkinson, has become embroiled with the issues raised by the recall of Jon Venables to prison. I don't know whether her interview with the Times was coincidental or held specifically to take advantage of the  Venables affair.

The impact, though, was muddled. She made some valid general points about the inappropriateness of the legal age of responsibility being set at 10, (except in Scotland, where it will soon rise from eight to 12) but these seemed unconvincing when tested against the facts of the James Bulger killing. Her arguments would have been given greater serious consideration at another time, but then she might not have got such prominence in the media.

We lock up too many delinquent children, she says. The approach of most western European countries is "more therapeutic, more family and community-based, more about reparation than simply locking somebody up". But she went on to argue that Venables and Thompson should not have been prosecuted, though she was not for a moment suggesting they should not have been detained for a long time.

The killers of James Bulger were not tried in a youth court, where the public and media are absent and trials not reported. They were tried in the full glare of an English courtroom, teeming with journalists and an atmosphere of hatred. The lawyers tried to lessen the formality by shedding their wigs but the effect could only have been minimal.

Such a circus was not necessary. But a secret trial would have been unacceptable for a crime of such horrifying gravity. More importantly, how much did it matter that the boys were publicly put through the formalities of a full trial, rather than dealt with behind closed doors? There would have been little difference to their subsequent treatment; they would have been detained somewhere secure for several years, and provided with psychologists, psychiatrists, educators and counsellors.

What happened to Thompson and Venables is not what happens to the huge majority of other children who end up being locked up for their crimes. Atkinson's remarks about those other child offenders deserve further debate, but will not receive it. The Ministry of Justice was exceptionally quick to respond to her, unyieldingly.

The government has no intention of raising the age of criminal responsibility, nor changing the system of criminal justice affecting children.

There is no reason to believe a Conservative government would do otherwise. Nor do I think the public seeks change.

Fundamentally, the reason why so many other European nations do things so differently does not have much to do with the law but with the way children generally, not just delinquent ones, are regarded in their societies. That is a question for philosophers and historians.

Jack Straw to publish manifesto plans to scrap the House of Lords and replace it with chamber modelled on US Senate

Ministers are working on proposals to transform the House of Lords into a democratically elected second chamber based loosely on the US Senate.

The transport secretary, Lord Adonis, who would lose his seat in the Lords and his post in government under the plans, confirmed today that they would be published "very shortly".

Leaked blueprints reveal the current 704-seat chamber would be reduced to 300 seats, its members elected under a system of proportional representation. The justice secretary, Jack Straw, will publish his proposals in a draft bill before the election and these will feature prominently in Labour's manifesto. Labour strategists hope that it will create a new dividing line with the Tories, allowing them to portray the Conservatives as being anti-reform.

The second chamber would no longer be known as the House of Lords, a name which has been in use since the 14th century. Members would face elections every three terms and earn a salary of around £65,000. They would also be subject to a US-style "recall ballot" which would disqualify them for incompetence.

The plans are designed to make parliament and legislative scrutiny more accountable, but they predate the recent rows about privilege in the Lords centring on the revelations of the Tory donor Lord Ashcroft's non-dom tax status.

Adonis told the BBC's Marr show: "The time has now come to make it legitimate in the only way that a legislative assembly can be legitimate in the modern world, which is to be elected. Of course you couldn't introduce that reform until after the election, but there'll be firm proposals. And they build on the big changes we've already made to the House of Lords – notably the removal of the hereditary peers which has transformed it from being an essentially one-party Tory assembly with very little connection with modern life to being a proper working assembly."

There are still 92 hereditary peers, a concession the government made to force through the 1999 reforms. Under the new plans, which were leaked to the Sunday Telegraph, they would all be removed.

It is understood the main sticking points still to be overcome are over what to do about the 25 bishops in the Lords, whose removal would trigger a row with the church, and how to manage the transition to the new system.

A spokesman for the Conservatives said that Labour had had 13 years to reform the Lords, and to launch proposals now was playing politics with the electoral system. " We will work to build a consensus for a mainly elected second chamber to replace the House of Lords," he said.

Muslim Arbitration Tribunal reports 15% rise in non-Muslims employing sharia law in commercial cases

Campaigners have voiced concerns over a growing number of non-Muslims using Islamic law to resolve legal disputes in Britain despite controversy over the role of sharia law.

A spokesman for the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal (MAT) said that there had been a 15% rise in the number of non-Muslims using sharia arbitrations in commercial cases this year. Last year, more than 20 non-Muslims chose to arbitrate cases at the network of tribunals, which operate in London, Birmingham, Bradford, Manchester, Nuneaton and Luton. "We are offering a cheap and effective service for Muslim and non-Muslims," said MAT spokesperson Fareed Chedie.

"95% of the people who come to us for arbitration do not feel they need legal representation." Chedie said that tribunals deal mainly with civil and commercial cases, including mosque disputes referred by the Charity Commission. But the tribunals have also continued to hear cases in the field of family law and divorce, Chedie said.

"We are increasingly dealing with reconciliation and mediation in marriage," said Chedie. "Many of these are cases where women have petitioned because they have a difficult marriage and want some guidance and direction. If they then want to terminate the marriage then we can help with that."

The increase in marriage and divorce cases comes as one law firm has begun offering advice on civil Scots law and sharia law, making it the first in Britain to offer both civil and Islamic law as part of one service.

Glasgow law firm Hamilton Burns says that it is responding to a greater demand from Muslim clients who want advice on sharia law alongside civil advice under Scots law. It has teamed up with Shaykh Amer Jamil, a Muslim scholar who specialises in Islamic family law.

"We hope that by incorporating sharia family jurisprudence against a background of domestic Scottish legislation, we can provide our clients with as much relevant information as possible," said Niall Mickel, a solicitor advocate and managing partner at Hamilton Burns.

But some groups have criticised the move by the Scottish firm, arguing that the recognition of sharia law decisions in Britain is regressive and harmful to women.

"We have a petition signed by more than 22,000 people saying that all religious tribunals should be prevented from operating within or outside the legal system," said Maryam Namazie, a spokeswoman for the One Law for All Campaign, which campaigns against sharia law in Britain. " I have spoken to women who are losing custody of their children in the sharia councils – under sharia law custody of a child goes to the husband after a certain age, irrespective of the welfare of the child.

There are cases of domestic violence where women have dropped criminal charges and the sharia councils have sent the husbands on anger-management courses. That is just not how we deal with domestic violence in this country," Namazie said.Many Muslim lawyers have challenged criticism of sharia law in Britain as "islamophobic", arguing that there is a distinction between sharia councils – which largely operate outside the law – and arbitration tribunals, which are subject to the Arbitration Act passed by parliament.

"The media get this out of context and hyped up," said Dr Saba Al-Makhtar, from the Arab Lawyers Association. "Under English law there is room to settle disputes on any ground that it is acceptable to the parties involved, provided it doesn't conflict with English law .… it is an extremely good idea.

"Critics deny that the campaign against sharia law is targeted specifically against Muslims, however.

"Our campaign is focusing on sharia but we are against all religious tribunals including the Jewish beth din," said Namazie. "Human rights are non-negotiatble and religious tribunals puts religion before people's rights and their freedoms. Law based on any religion – whether the Bible, Torah or the Quran – is completely antithetical to rights woman have in this day and age. Many of the rights women have now result in the UK is the result of a hard fight to wrestle control out of church hands."

Instead of a blanket hike on VAT, a targeted tax on fizzy drinks could raise money and save lives

The idea is alive and living in New York state. Sugary canned drinks ruin your teeth and make you fat. Therefore, like everything else that palpably hurts health, they should attract extra taxation: say one penny per ounce, around 20% more on a 75-cent can of sweet soda. Of course the notion isn't universally popular. Fox News is against, as it is against almost every policy supported by Barack Obama. But at least nobody can sing the "pain" song too easily. You can't talk pain over a swig of Pepsi. One reason, perhaps, why Alistair Darling should get interested.

Is VAT going up to 20% under whoever rules the Treasury next? It's a solid, sullen bet. Yet why use this tax as a blanket impost, unrefined, oblivious to health or environmental imperatives, when a little fine tuning shows the way?

We know "food of a kind used for human consumption" is zero-rated – but we also know that too much human consumption leads to an early grave. We acknowledge that in the rising price of beer and cigarettes, yet there the logic of cost and constraint runs out. You can wade through the minutiae of the VAT rules for hours without ever encountering an argument a doctor might salute.

The inspectors standard-rate crisps, fizzy drinks, ice cream. But tortilla chips, milk shakes, frozen yogurt (if it melts) escape scot-free. A bottle of mineral water rakes in 17.5%; a jar of prunes in armagnac takes nothing on top.

Maybe, at first sight, a taxing obsession with chocolate in every shape or form has keeping fit somewhere in its rationale. Expect standard rate on "biscuits wholly or partly covered in chocolate or some product similar in taste or appearance" – except "chocolate chip biscuits where the chips are either included in the dough or pressed into the surface before baking".

In fact, though, health takes a back seat the moment you find that spreading caramel all over shortbread attracts no charge, that chocolate chips to sprinkle on cakes come duty free (unlike chocolate buttons), that Bourbon biscuits with chocolate cream in the middle pass no-taxation muster. Health really isn't an issue in any of this introverted detail.

When I wander down to a supermarket and pick up a lunchtime chicken sandwich shot through with salt and saturated fats, the VAT man looks the other way. When I reach into the chiller cabinet and pull out a pizza or a packet of burgers, then the needs of "human consumption" have the last word. Frozen mousses, toffee apples, prawn crackers ... welcome to the club. But don't confuse standard-rated ice cream wafers with zero-rated communion wafers, or you'll end up in the mire.

Any bureaucratic list built up over decades is open to ridicule, perhaps. But the disconnect between public policy and current concern right along the VAT chain is painfully clear. (And not just on the edible side either: Britain's reluctance to put a "tax on knowledge" – ie books, newspapers and magazines – means that all those lads mags and porn specials escape tax; under cover, presumably, of what Richard Desmond might call a "tax on carnal knowledge".)

But let's not worry about no VAT on bingo club memberships and houseboat moorings, for the moment. There will always be another budget to clear up the peripheries. Let's stay with Mayor Bloomberg of New York, talking soda taxes in a city where nearly 40% of school-age children are overweight, with "diabetes, heart disease, asthma and depression" lying in wait. Let's save many more lives than any new drink-driving purge. Let's send hundreds of millions more to our Treasury in the best of all possible causes – one where personal gain trumps minimal pain.

For, as those self-same VAT regulations conclude: "Burial or cremation of dead people – exempt."

Attacks that killed at least 35 people was a show of force ahead of Nato summer push in and around city facing Talibanisation

A series of fatal bomb attacks in Kandahar was a warning to Nato forces that the Taliban is ready to challenge a coming offensive to take control of the area, a spokesman for the militants said today.

Insurgents let off a series of bombs yesterday evening in an apparent attempt to repeat their coup of June 2008 when bombers destroyed part of the city's prison, releasing hundreds of Taliban prisoners. The ministry of interior said at least 35 people were killed and 57 wounded in the latest attacks. The dead included 13 police officers and 22 civilians.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, said the bombings showed that the militants were still capable of carrying out major attacks despite the build-up of foreign troops before the push by Nato this summer. "With all the preparations they have taken, still they are not able to stop us," he told Associated Press.

In Kandahar, residents said the city was struggling to return to normal life. "People are afraid because this shows the strength of the Taliban in Kandahar," said Abdul Karim, owner of a construction company in the city. "They have close links to city officials and target whatever they want."

The governor of Kandahar province, Tooryalai Wesa, said two car bombs and six suicide bombers on motorbikes and bicycles struck near the city prison, police headquarters and a wedding hall.

The provincial police chief Sardar Mohammad Zazi said the attacks in different parts of the city appeared designed to distract soldiers and police from the militants' main target – the prison.

Wesa demanded that more troops be sent to a city already in the process of being reinforced, with 300 US military police on regular patrols since August.

Nato generals say Kandahar and its outlying districts will be the focus of intense military efforts in June and July as General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, pursues his strategy of trying to secure the more populous south of the country. Afghanistan's second city has suffered from a creeping Talibanisation as insurgents have grown in influence.

The militants, when unarmed, move unhindered around the city, using its backrooms to carry out their trademark swift justice and occasional executions.

Some of the few foreigners and aid workers there have predicted the city's eventual fall, not through military offensives but through the emergence of insurgents as Kandahar's main power brokers. Most analysts agree that reversing that trend will require an overhaul of a local government that is riddled with corruption.

In a recent interview, Brigadier General Craig King, the Canadian soldier in charge of planning future operations in the province, said improvements in governance would be more important than military operations during the summer push.

But changing the way Kandahar is governed faces an obstacle, Ahmed Wali Karzai, the Afghan president's half-brother who heads the Kandahar provincial council. Many Kandaharis believe he is involved in the province's drugs and criminal networks – charges he has always denied.

Despite pressure on the president to send his half-brother away most diplomats are pessimistic about that happening, with some even fearing that his removal would further destabilise the city.

A unique gold coin, minted by Caesar's betrayer, Brutus, was said to be worn as a talisman by a conspirator

A unique gold coin celebrating the assassination of Julius Caesar, which may have been worn as a boastful talisman by one of the emperor's killers, will go on display at the British Museum tomorrow – the Ides of March, marking the 2,054th anniversary of his death.

The British Museum was first shown the coin in 1932 but couldn't afford to buy it. Many private owners later, it has now been loaned to the museum, and will be displayed for the first time.

Caesar was struck down at the Senate, stabbed 23 times, in 44BC. The coin was among those issued by Caesar's former friend and ally, Brutus, leader of the conspirators, after they fled to Greece.

Although 60 surviving examples of the silver version are known, including several in the museum's coins and medals collection, there were only believed to be two in gold. Experts now believe one of those is a fake, making the newly displayed treasure unique.

The coin shows the head of Brutus on one side and, on the other, two daggers and the date, Eid Mar, the Ides of March, which would forever after be regarded as unlucky. The daggers flank a pileus, a freeman's hat, symbolising the conspirators' insistance that in killing Caesar they were toppling a tyrant who threatened the future of the Roman republic.

The coin was punched with a hole shortly after it was minted, probably so it could be worn – certainly by a supporter, conceivably by one of the conspirators.

The swaggering imagery displayed on the coin was already famous in antiquity. In the second century AD, the Roman historian Cassius Dio wrote: "Brutus stamped upon the coins which were being minted in his own likeness and a cap and two daggers, indicating by this and by the inscription that he and Cassius had liberated the fatherland."

New National Trust exhibition reveals legacy of work of husband and wife studio in Liverpool

Nothing could be more respectable than the devoted couple who lived at 59 Rodney Street, a smart Georgian house in one of the grandest streets in Liverpool. She ran the business, he, a buttoned-up Edwardian figure, reserved and quiet, took the pictures. Between them they created a photographic firm that proved the only place to go to for flattering portraits of plump babies, marriageable daughters, youths in uniform about to go to war, or aldermen bursting with pride in their robes.

But the photograph Edward Chambré Hardman took of Margaret Hardman in her silk camisole, or the smouldering photographs she took of actors such as Robert Donat, make it clear that there was more to the relationship than dull domesticity.

The first exhibition to bring a remarkable woman out of the shadows, and establish Margaret Hardman's reputation as an important photographer in her own right, opens this week in the house where she lived and worked until her death in 1970.

In 1926, and as a 17-year-old straight out of school, she was apprenticed to Edward, who was 10 years her senior. After she left to get a job in Scotland, tormenting him with accounts of other lovers, they married in 1932.

After her death he lived on as a virtual recluse until 1988, leaving an archive of more than 200,000 images, including thousands recording the now vanished houses, streets, shipyards and slums of his adopted city, an extraordinary body of work leading to his recognition as one of the most significant British photographers of the 20th century.

His belated fame, however, overshadowed his vivacious, clever and ambitious wife. She was the one who chatted up clients, bossed the staff and sent out the bills. But she also loved theatre, opera, dancing and music, wrote poems and music, took part in amateur theatricals, and left a wardrobe of film-star glamour, including dozens of hats and boxes of vividly coloured jewellery. Even her wellingtons had high heels.

It is Margaret whom people who visited or worked in the house remember. She stamped like a flamenco dancer and people came running, recalled a former employee. But they also recollected her kindness: one darkroom worker found at the end of the day that she had replaced his worn bicycle tyres.

Margaret also left thousands of her own photographs, many stamped with the firm's name but unsigned.

"I'm starting to recognise them, they have a very distinctive quality," said Ffion George, curator of the Hardman house in Merseyside, which is now owned by the National Trust. "He was renowned for the use of shadows in his work, but she pushed that to extremes."

Her portrait of Donat, one of several of the Liverpool Playhouse stars the Hardmans photographed, transforms an actor usually pictured as gentle and soft into a dangerously sexy thug. "She has a real eye, and there's always a sense of drama in her photographs."

George is certain it was Margaret who inspired the move from the studio's first home in Hope Street, close to many other rival firms, to Rodney Street, a road still dubbed the Harley Street of Liverpool. There the couple lived in three small, dark, back rooms, leaving all the grand high-ceilinged rooms to the business – waiting rooms, dressing rooms, offices, studios, darkrooms.

The house still has its masses of toys, kept to distract and pacify small clients. The lampshades and mirrors on the ground floor, where the clients waited, are subtly tinted pink: the Hardmans could make the most unpromising subject look beautiful.

The couple kept everything, including tinned food, even tinned eclairs, and medicines. But according to George there appears no evidence that the pair ever cooked anything except toast.

Margaret had been interested in photography from childhood; her headmistress sent her to Hardman with a glowing reference in 1926, and she quickly learned the business. Within three years she had left for a job in Paisley, clutching a glowing reference from Hardman, describing her as "energetic, most intelligent, versatile, and [with] an excellent memory".

He wrote: "We are very sorry to lose her." Just how much soon became clear. Almost immediately they started to exchange increasingly personal letters, and within months they were "Pearl" and "Gobbles". She sent him photographs and reviews of her roles in amateur theatricals, and accounts of at least two affairs.

That did the trick: after Edward's flurry of panic stricken letters and telegrams they were soon engaged. A touching wedding-day photograph shows him looking down at the pretty woman straightening his tie. They would hardly be parted until Margaret died of cancer, aged 61. Edward, heartbroken, rarely left the house in his remaining years. George said of Margaret. "She was the power in the relationship … and a very interesting and talented woman."

Hardman's Photographic Studio, with Margaret Hardman show, opens 17 March

Pearl and Gobbles

Margaret to Edward, May 1929: "Gobbles, Big Sweetheart, when she woke up on Sunday morning, instead of saying "Only a fortnight till Gobbles comes" she said "Only one more Sunday till Pearl sees her Dearest!" and it made it seem lots nearer!"

Edward to Margaret, in a telegram from Spain:

"He wants your love. Gobbles."

Poem by Margaret for Edward:

"Happy days and health and fun

And easy smiling sitters

(Not the kind that growl and scowl

And give us all the jitters)" 

Colin Walsh, of Crescent Capital, is working with US entrepreneur Frank Costello to end companies' dependence on the public sector and foreign investment

A former Kennedy clan insider and a Belfast-based venture capitalist are helping to lead a revolution aimed at moving Northern Ireland away from outright dependence on the public sector and foreign investment.

The American entrepreneur and historian Frank Costello, who was chief of staff to Congressman Joseph Kennedy, is working with Colin Walsh, founder and managing director of Crescent Capital, to divert tens of millions of dollars into indigenous Northern Irish companies that do not rely on either the state or foreign multinationals.

Costello, Walsh and their colleagues want to rebalance the economy in favour of locally grown, export-led businesses.Among the fledgling enterprises they have backed are a hi-tech company based in west Belfast that sells digital cameras to Nasa.

Northern Ireland's economy is heavily reliant on the state sector, with 32 per cent of the local workforce in the public services. The remainder of the local economy is increasingly dependent on foreign direct investment (FDI).

Speaking at Crescent Capital's headquarters in Belfast's university district, Walsh said: "The problem with concentrating all of your private sector FDI is summed up in one word – mobility. At any given time these foreign companies could pull up the stakes and move their tent away to somewhere in eastern Europe or the far east. To rely on it solely in terms of export-led growth would be foolish."

Crescent and its offshoot Hambro Northern Ireland Ventures have raised between them £36.5m over the past six years. The millions come from a wide range of private investors, including the New York State Common Retirement Fund and a number of multimillionaires.

Another tranche of investment, worth £30m – from new and previous investor groups – is planned by the end of this year.

Costello, who cut his teeth in New York politics and is the author of books on Irish history, stressed that the millions channelled into the Northern Irish enterprises were not handouts.

"This is not about being entitled to the money – there are no blank cheques. Each investment is done in order not only to help the fledgling enterprise but to ensure a return on the investment to those we raise the capital from," he said.

Many of the hi-tech and biotech businesses that have received funding were incubated in Northern Ireland's two universities. They include:

• NiSoft. Based in east Belfast. Makes software used for safety checks in oil refineries and power stations in Europe, North America and Asia

• Axis Three. Based in the Sandy Row area of central Belfast. Creates 3D images of the human body for use in cosmetic and plastic surgery

• Andor Technology. Builds scientific digital cameras. Has 10,000 customers, including Nasa, in 55 countries

• Balcas. Based in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh. A timber company that promises that for every tree it harvests, two are planted. It has the largest state-of-the-art timber plant in the British Isles

One of Northern Ireland's leading economists said that while venture capital support for indigenous companies should be "top of the wish list", the handful of companies receiving such support in Northern Ireland compared poorly with up to 70 similar enterprises in the Irish Republic.

Mike Smyth, a senior economics lecturer at the University of Ulster, called the number of venture capitalists backing local business "pathetic" compared with the Republic or Britain.

"Venture capitalists like Crescent [are essential in] helping startups and fledgling companies," Smyth said. "But while there is so much free money from government departments like Invest Northern Ireland, demand for VC support is going to be slow. That is the main reason why there are few venture capitalist enterprises in Northern Ireland."

Leader brushes aside coalition talk, telling pre-election conference he believes party can lead next government

Nick Clegg, today shrugged off the idea he would play the role of kingmaker in a hung parliament, telling the Liberal Democrats' pre-election conference that the party "could lead the next government" if it upped its share of the vote from one in four to one in three.

Speaking over the heads of the party faithful, the leader encouraged wavering voters to vote "with your heart" and not dismiss voting Lib Dem because the electoral maths where they lived suggested the party would not win a seat outright.

The Lib Dems should seek to break the two-party duopoly of Labour and the Conservatives, he said, and end the "pass the parcel" electoral system by increasing their party's share of the vote to 33% from the 22.1% they received in 2005. He cast the choice as one "between the party of the few and the party of no one".

After the speech, aides explained the party thought it could reach a vote share percentage in the high 20s by picking up three points more than it normally does with the increased profile of an election campaign and then a further two to three on Clegg's participation in the party leaders' television debates. After that they hope for a further credibility boost.

Currently, the party is dogged by opinion polls suggesting a hung parliament that would see the Lib Dems called on to support one of the other two parties. Clegg told the assembled Lib Dems in Birmingham: "I am not the kingmaker. The 45 million voters of Britain are the kingmakers. They give the politicians their marching orders, not the other way round. It's called democracy – and I kind of like it. Almost one in four voters chose the Liberal Democrats at the last election. If that increased to one in three we could lead the next government. This election is a time for voters to choose, not a time for politicians to play footsie with each other. The party with the strongest mandate from voters will have the moral authority to be the first to seek to govern."

Speaking with a sore throat that occasionally gave way, Clegg repeated the four pledges that constituted the centre of the Lib Dem's election offer. He repeated the first of these – raising the personal tax threshold to £10,000 – three times to urge activists to use it more on the doorstep. Party aides said it was playing well both in the north of England and the south, appealing to both natural Tory and Labour voters. The other three pledges were £2.5bn extra funding for schooling, reform of Westminster and reform of the City.

If his party did form part of a government, Clegg said, it would be the "guarantor of good sense", having already gone further than the others in identifying £15bn of spending cuts a year by 2012, two-thirds of which would go into reducing the deficit. At the end, he was rewarded with an ovation and whoops of support.

Though Clegg played down the prospect of a hung parliament, before he had even made his speech, senior MPs from rival parties played a game of tug of war over the prospect of the Lib Dems doing a deal with the Tories. Referring to the large body of the party's grassroots being social democrats rather than liberals, the transport secretary, Lord Adonis, said an alliance with the Conservatives should there be a hung parliament would "destroy" the Lib Dems. The shadow business secretary, Ken Clarke, said Nick Clegg was a conservative with whom he shared the same views. In his speech Clegg made light of these competing arguments saying the pair were "close to confusion".

The Lib Dems have repeatedly insisted they can enter no coalition without what is known as the "triple lock", which requires three-quarters of the party to agree to any move made that would compromise its "independence".

Aides to the leadership spent the weekend insisting that this process would be quick, taking less than a week, a rebuttal aimed to counter concerns within the financial markets that the involvement of the Liberal Democrats in any post-election negotiations could be slowed down. Equally, the grassroots wanted to know that the triple-lock mechanism would kick in if the party was deciding on issues that would not strictly compromise its independence but that they would not support, such as voting through a Conservative Queen's speech or emergency budget.

The question of which of its rivals the party might support bedevilled the spring conference, with one of the party's highest-profile backers, the agony aunt Claire Rayner, criticising her party leader for comments he made last week praising Margaret Thatcher for battling with the unions in the 80s. Rayner said the Lib Dem leader was trying to "butter up" David Cameron ahead of possibly entering government with him.

Speaking on the BBC, Clarke said the Tories would push for Lib Dem waverers to vote Conservative, showing them "the futility of being a liberal party". Clarke said: "I like the Liberal, I like Nick Clegg, but he's in a hopeless position. Nick is a conservative, his views are very like mine; Vince Cable is a social democrat ... the party is all over the place. I think they're in a hopeless dilemma."

The Labour party is engaged in two moves: one to prevent wavering Labour voters transferring their support to the Lib Dems, and one to encourage the Lib Dem leadership to realise it is only with the Labour party that they could form a successful alliance.

On the BBC Andrew Marr show, Adonis, a former Liberal Democrat, said: "I cannot conceive of the circumstances where the Lib Dems could support the Conservatives in government. I think it would destroy their own party. The issue they have to address is: are they basically on the centre-left in politics ... or are they going to try to shift to the right because they sense that may be a short-term populist strategy, but which would betray their own principles and destroy their party?"

Mass motorcycle ride in support of the armed forces serving in Afghanistan is expected to raise more than £100,000 for charity

Paul Rea, 24, believed to have got lost and frozen to death on one of the coldest nights of the winter at Pas de la Casa

A British man has been found dead in a ski resort after apparently getting lost on one of the coldest nights of the Andorran winter.

The body of Paul Rea was discovered on Thursday afternoon covered in snow near a river close to the resort of Pas de la Casa, in the Pyrenees.

Rea, 24, who was on holiday with friends, was last seen on Wednesday evening in the bar district of the resort, which lies on the French border. He is believed to have wandered off, become disorientated and frozen to death, police said.

A police spokesman told the Spanish news agency Europa Press that the body was found near the entrance to the Envalira tunnel, a major road artery, and showed "no signs of violence". Officers were alerted to the discovery by a tunnel worker.

"We are aware of the death of a British national in Andorra on March 11," a Foreign Office spokeswoman said. "Next of kin are aware. We are providing consular assistance."

A postmortem examination was carried out on Friday and Rea's family have travelled to the resort.

The Diari d'Andorra newspaper said Rea went missing on one of the harshest and coldest nights of the winter. Last week, parts of north-eastern Spain were hit by the heaviest snowstorm in decades, cutting off many areas and blocking the border.

Rea is the second tourist fatality in Pas de la Casa in recent months. Last December the body of a Spanish holidaymaker, 30-year-old Igor Mate García, was found near the tunnel entrance. An investigation found that he died of hypothermia after drinking high amounts of alcohol.

Ancient northern border of the Roman empire seen in new light as beacons line its 70-mile length

In pictures: Lighting up Hadrian's Wall

They came, they saw and they clambered on the ramparts – in numbers not seen on Hadrian's Wall since the Romans called it a day and pulled out their legions 1,600 years ago.

Drawn by the first-ever lighting of the 70-mile monument from end to end, thousands of visitors filled every local car park, lay-by and footpath, while helicopters and a Nasa satellite recorded the necklace of beacons from above.

The airborne had the best overall view, but crowds who shrugged off the chill after sunset and clustered round each flare were rewarded with an awesome sense of the past. Flickering into life on the Whin Sill crags, above the twilit forest and marsh to the north, the 500 lights recreated the ancient border between civilisation and the barbarians.

"It's magnificent," said Matthias Fabian, from Nijwiller in the Netherlands, striding about in the red cloak of a Roman cohort sergeant, plus plumed helmet which made drinking his tea difficult. "How better to get the sense of what life was really like in those far-away days?"

None of the romance was dimmed by the 21st century's inevitable contribution – a far brighter river of car headlights on the sightseer-jammed B6318, the old military road that flanks the frontier. Likewise, the streetlamp glow from the wall's two bookends, Carlisle and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, failed to outshine excitement at beacons on urban fragments of the wall.

"It's just a brilliant idea, literally," said Norma Cooney, as she watched her grandchildren Brad and Brooke play about on what they call "the rocks" - the hundred yards of wall that survive between Denton housing estate and the A186 dual carriageway on the edge of Newcastle.

The effect was most dramatic above the lonely hamlet of Once Brewed, where the wall snakes unbroken, and up to six feet high, past Housesteads fort, Cuddy Crags and Sewingshields farm. The milecastles and turrets, full of people watching as the flares lit in sequence, looked as busy as in 122AD when building began.

Designed as a symbol of Hadrian's contemporary-sounding policy of "peace through strength", the wall marked the northern frontier of the Roman empire. Appropriately, the modern military joined in the illumination, with some of the beacons lit by servicemen from the RAF's electronic warfare centre in Spadeadam forest.

Once used for secret trials of the UK's aborted Blue Streak rocket, the base now tests pilots before sorties in Afghanistan, the world's latest theatre for Hadrian's theory.

The chain of lights, manned by 1,200 people drawn from an avalanche of applicants, was designed to draw world attention and give an early spring to tourism as Britain struggles out of recession. It looks to have succeeded, with helicopter film released to the internet and Nasa's pictures expected to show the complete chain of light through the evening's patchy cloud. Visitors at Steel Rigg, such as the Meadows family from Leicester who were weekending specially to see the light-up, called for future spectaculars.

"Maybe they could rebuild it," said 10-year-old Nicky Meadows, who also wanted to see the whole monument floodlit next time.

Organisers were contemplating such events, but were more immediately concerned with thanking the thousands of people who got involved. As the nearest of the beacons – which were spaced 250 metres apart – flared into life, Linda Tuttiett, chief executive of Hadrian's Wall Heritage, said: "This is our wall. It belongs to everybody, and especially to the people in the communities across the north of England who have worked so hard to let us share it, spectacularly, with the world."