LED Lighting News

Capital Radio remains the biggest commercial radio station in London, where there was a big drop in listeners for Smooth Radio.

Global Radio‘s Capital London held onto the top spot despite shedding 8.7% of its listeners on the previous three months, down to 2.07 million listeners a week in the three months to the end of June, according to official Rajar listening figures published on Thursday.

Bauer Radio’s Magic 105.4 was in second place, with 1.95 million listeners a week, down 14.7% year on year.

Third-placed Heart London also lost listeners, the Global station down 9.6% year on year to 1.79 million, as was fourth-placed Kiss 100 FM, the Bauer dance station slipping 6.5% year on year and 11.1% on the previous quarter to 1.74 million.

But the most dramatic drop came at Smooth Radio London, which saw a 20.8% fall in audience year on year, and 38.5% on the previous quarter, to 385,000.

Global Radio bought Smooth from Guardian Media Group as part of the GMG Radio stable of stations in June. GMG also publishes MediaGuardian.

In terms of market share it was Heart, rather than Capital, which took the top spot, with a 5.3% share of the audience. Heart was ahead of Magic, with 5.1%, Kiss, with 4.7%, and Capital, with 4.6%.

Global’s talk station LBC 97.3 had 809,000 listeners, down 6.7% on the previous quarter, while its talk rival BBC London 94.9 had 453,000 listeners, down 10.1% on the previous quarter and slipping 18.2% year on year.

Another Global station, Xfm London, had 417,000 listeners, down 37.9% year on year but up 2% on the previous quarter.

Capital’s Dave Berry and Lisa Snowdon held onto the London breakfast show crown among the commercial stations, with 1.16 million listeners, down from 1.26 million in the previous quarter.

The battle for the runner-up spot was a closely fought one, with Magic’s Neil Fox, with 760,000, just ahead of Kiss’s Rickie, Melvin and Charlie (735,000) and Heart’s Jamie Theakston and Harriet Scott (734,000). Absolute Radio’s Christian O’Connell took fifth spot, with 674,000 listeners.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”.

• To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook.

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/aug/02/capital-radio-commercial-crown-london

Bank of England policymakers are facing mounting pressure to turn to further emergency measures to boost the recovery as the economic outlook becomes increasingly bleak.

The Bank’s monetary policy committee (MPC) is expected to hold quantitative easing levels at £375bn after last month’s £50bn injection while interest rates will be kept at record lows of 0.5%.

But economic growth figures released since the nine-strong panel’s July meeting revealed a sharper-than-expected decline in output between April and June.

The outlook darkened as a key purchasing managers’ survey revealed the worst manufacturing performance in three years in July and initial reports suggested the retail sector was not receiving the Olympic Games boost to business previously expected.

The focus will also be on the eurozone, where the European Central Bank (ECB) will reveal its own policy decision for the month after its boss recently pledged to do whatever it takes to save the single currency.

The comments from ECB president Mario Draghi prompted speculation that the central bank might return to financial markets and resume buying bonds of under-pressure countries, while a further cut to the key interest rate is also a possibility.

The MPC, chaired by Bank governor Sir Mervyn King, last month considered cutting rates below current levels in a drastic move that once seemed improbable.

However, most economists believe that while the action will be discussed again this week, the MPC will continue to favour quantitative easing as its economic weapon of choice.

Alan Clarke, UK and eurozone economist at Scotiabank, said: “The poor second quarter GDP data make it hard for the Bank of England not to loosen monetary policy further.”

He added: “However, we judge that a further reduction in bank rate could backfire and hold back the creation of new mortgages. Hence we suspect that the further policy ease will be in the form of more QE, not a cut in bank rate.”

The economy shrank by 0.7% in the second quarter, meaning the UK is now mired in the longest double-dip recession since quarterly records began in 1955 – and possibly since the second worldwar.

A reduced rate would be the lowest in the Bank’s 318-year history, with a cut to 0.25% saving a borrower with an average lifetime tracker rate on a £200,000 mortgage £328.56 a year, according to comparison site Moneyfacts.

But lower borrowing costs would deliver yet another blow to Britain’s savers, who have lost out since rates hit their current historic low in March 2009.

The Bank’s main concern over a rate cut beyond 0.5% is the impact it could have on some banks’ and building societies’ ability to lend.

Lenders have assets, mainly mortgages, with interest payments contractually linked to the Bank’s rate and a reduction below 0.5% might squeeze some lenders’ interest margins to the point at which they become less able to offer new loans to customers.

In its July meeting, the Bank raised the notion that the new £80bn “funding for lending” scheme aimed at kickstarting bank lending could lessen fears about the impact of a rate cut on the margins of lenders.

Clarke, economist at Scotiabank, said he expects another increase to the bank’s quantitative easing programme with the poor manufacturing survey reinforcing this view.

He said: “Most forecasters have assumed that the August MPC meeting is a non-event.

“The market has underestimated the probability of an expansion in QE at this week’s meeting.

“While we accept it is a close call, we believe that the extent of the revisions to the Bank’s projections mean that the Bank will not wait until November to expand QE further – rather it will act at this meeting.”

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/aug/02/bank-of-england-under-pressure

The future of the Northern Ireland Housing Executive (NIHE) is hanging in the balance as the Northern Ireland Assembly considers breaking it up into five housing quangos while placing it under supervision. The drastic move follows a report by the Northern Ireland Audit Office, which found irregularities on its housing repairs contracts worth up to £170m. The chair of the executive resigned and its chief executive claimed the homes it manages needed £1bn spent on them.

Created in 1972 by the British government, the NIHE was part of the push to tackle sectarianism and gerrymandering in Northern Ireland. Housing had been a major civil rights issue, with claims that investment and allocations were directed primarily on behalf of the Protestant majority. The NIHE took on 146,000 dwellings and around 2,220 staff.

Its record since has been positive, benefiting from decades of capital investment allowing it to improve stock and build modern homes while local authority counterparts in England where unable to develop. While it has to work within the prevailing sectarian geo-political boundaries – estates are primarily Protestant or Catholic, hemmed in by 90 “peace walls” that serve to reinforce community differences – it has been recognised for trying to offer a reasonable housing service.

Now, though, it must face the familiar demands of unmet need, insufficient resources and the belief that by becoming something else it will be able to access private sector finance to resolve such matters. Finance can provide the bricks and mortar, but does not in itself build communities.

If ministers do indeed decide the creation of five housing association, as is their preferred option, they must ask some serious questions about governance. Will the appointment of non-accountable board members – making significant decisions within the prevailing sectarian geo-political landscape – instil confidence that impartial decisions are indeed being made? Are they satisfied that the geographical boundaries of these new housing associations does not further compound sectarian divisions?

In 1968, the government’s Cameron Report concluded that housing policy and practices had been distorted for political ends. The difference today is an enduring peace process, and the return of devolved government that includes the major protagonists exercising ministerial oversight.

Given this context would this not be an opportunity to reinforce the democratic process by returning oversight of housing to the 11 new councils that are to be created from the current 26? Giving locally elected politicians power to set strategy and devise policies for their local boundaries would enable the housing service to become genuinely accountable for the first time since 1972.

The difference between operational practices and strategy are well versed in the rest of the UK. There may well still be difficulties and tensions, but today’s world is a far more transparent one with the basis of decision making on individual cases decided by officers determined by published codes of practice and eligibility criteria.

Elected members would remain free to advocate on behalf of individuals or local community interest. This must add to a sense of identity and common purpose, a trust that housing services are being provided first and foremost in their interest and not in the narrower interest of unaccountable bodies. The ability of local politicians to engage in and be directly accountable for housing services would help plug Northern Ireland’s democratic deficit. It would also add to the democratic leadership role provided by the Assembly, a genuine test of its own maturity.

The familiar challenges within local government of deciding where, when and how much capital investments should take place could serve to promote confidence and citizen engagement. Transparency, accountability and public engagement must be more important than simply complementary ingredients, in a society that has endured many years of conflict ahead of taking the simple organisational step of establishing a few quangos.

The counter-argument that local politicians cannot be trusted not to bring sectarian politics into decision making will be made by staff at the NIHE and those with professional ambitions to join the (not dissimilar) proposed new housing associations. But this argument suggests that the political institutions committed to equality of opportunity have already failed, and that local politicians cannot lead – not much of a future for Northern Ireland. It’s time for trust and confidence to prevail in local leadership, not professional self-interest.

If all this sounds too top down, a more radical and perhaps even more democratic option is to transfer the ownership and control of local housing estates to tenants. These bodies would, by definition, be very local indeed and couldn’t be more accountable – an opportunity for the tenants of Northern Ireland to offer an example for the rest of Britain.

An opportunity is here; what shape that opportunity takes will be down to the Assembly, but the history of housing in Northern Ireland deserves far more current thinking appears to offer.

Donald Graham is chief executive of Hertsmere borough council

This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. Join the housing network for comment, analysis and the latest job vacancies direct to you

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/housing-network/2012/aug/02/northern-ireland-housing-transfer-executive-councils

Bradley Wiggins is unique in British sporting history in that, every time he opens his mouth, you like him more. He is so good at cycling that it wouldn’t matter if he didn’t want to talk. But sometimes I think that he’s so good at talking, it wouldn’t matter if he didn’t win all the cycling. Already, his sideburns have taken on a talismanic status of their own, so that people stick them on as a charm for other sporting events, a rabbit’s foot made of beard. He’s so great, in short, that the last thing he would want is for you to forget about Chris Froome. Yet there it is.

Froome arrived at the finish in his suit, looking like a flying seal; he was, for a time, in first place; the commentator had been yelling for ages about how he was scorching and sizzling and burning, a constellation of metaphors that all seemed to come from a barbecue. Yet there it was, his bronze totally snuck up on the breath-baited crowd. It was like waiting for New Year’s Eve – no, it was like waiting for your GCSE results, only to find – no, sod it, there is no working analogy. It was what it was: the nation waited for its pride, its hairy pearl, to make medal history for a British athlete, and then found there was even more to celebrate. Nobody stole anybody’s thunder. Joy is a limitless resource, a use it or lose it muscle. The more you cheer, the happier you feel.

Sorry, before we get to all (both) the medals, raining down like (two, heavy) sploshes of medal, there was the zippy matter of this race.

Look, I’m sure they’ve given it a lot of thought, but I have a few quibbles with the way time trials are run. I get that there is a fairness issue when they all start at the same time, and it involves a lot of wind-based strategising, but frankly, when they all start separately, there’s no sense of scale. It’s like taking a picture of a baby bat without a pound coin next to it. You can’t tell how small it is, and you can’t tell how fast they’re going. The only comparative judgment you can make is that none of their thighs are as big as Chris Hoy’s (they don’t need the big thighs. You only need them if you’re planning to cycle sideways up a vertical slope. If they’d had to devise Spiderman without his webbing function, they would have given him Hoy’s thighs, though good luck getting your crime-fighting onesie over those, Spider).

Sorry, off the thighs, eyes on the road: many skinny thighs and skinnier arms, and the shiny, duck egg blue of Kazakhstan, that makes Vinokourov look like one of the air hostesses out of Fifth Element.

It’s also a little bit insensitive, if you ask me, making the least successful ones start first, so that they have that giddy illusion of arriving first, only to remember that it’s because they left first. They’re probably used to it.

From the crowd’s perspective, none of this mattered. It didn’t matter that the spectator experience was watching 30 odd brightly coloured shapes whizz past, then spending the next 47 minutes wondering what was happening in Esher. If this in itself were enough to stimulate the human mind, we would never have had to invent language, we could have just lain about, gazing at birds.

But there is too much thrill in the air to worry about the view or the narrative – and nobody had to wonder who was winning because, obviously, Bradley Wiggins was. “The great thing about cycling”, Wiggins said afterwards (brace yourself, he is about to become more likeable still) “is that anyone can watch it. We all know about the Olympic ticketing – inside here, it can all become a bit of a prawn sandwich fest. Ultimately, all the real fans are outside the gates.”

Chris Froome is a more taciturn creature, with a complexion a little bit like Wayne Rooney. The race over, he sat in his bronze throne looking like his hamstrings hurt (they did hurt). Bradley Wiggins sat in his gold throne looking sardonic (in truth, all the thrones were gold), and the German rider Tony Martin sat on the other side with his silver. They looked like they were just about to enter a three-way civil partnership organised by Posh and Becks’s wedding planner. This throne business is between Hampton Court and its conscience.

Just when people had started to talk about whether or not London had the lesser-spotted home disadvantage, the purpose of raw enthusiasm suddenly showed itself. The British cyclists, while not gushers themselves, appear to quite like it. “It was really something special, just enormous, the support,” Froome said. “It’s something that I don’t think I’ll ever experience again”. Wiggins said the same, “coming back round the roundabout in Kingston, I’m never going to experience anything like that in my entire career. It’s topped off.” I guess they’re used to this in France, but I find it droll to imagine anything momentous or life-affirming happening on a roundabout.

In a bid to articulate the gladness, people were instantly talking about making Bradley Wiggins a Sir, or Sports Personality of the Year – both of which accolades sounded significantly less of a big deal than everything he’s already won, like gifting someone the keys to Swanage because they’d won a Nobel Prize. It is well-known that he’s not interested in that kind of thing – “I don’t think I’d ever use it, I’d probably just keep it in a drawer,” he said of a prospective knighthood, when someone from the Telegraph brought it up. But if baubles and gongs seem necessary but insufficient, what else could a crowd do, to express an adulation a bit more complicated than jingoistic jubilance – we know you are not just superman, the crowd inside and out of the prawn-sandwich-zone said, with their eyes. We know you are also a Good Bloke, and how rare it is for supermen even to start off as Good Blokes, let alone stay that way. Well, there’s not much you can do, you can’t throw your pants at him, he wouldn’t like it. So it was settled that we would all yell. When he walked along, when he got his medal, when we alighted the podium, when he gave a dignitary a friendly pat, when he stood up, when he sat down, we yelled in slightly off-putting jubilation. He drinks vodka and tonic, by the way, in his downtime – if you are thinking of toasting the man in a way that he’d appreciate.

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/aug/01/bradley-wiggins-cycling-gold-reaction

It took a world record to beat Michael Jamieson to a gold medal in the 200m breaststroke on Wednesday as the Glasgow swimmer won silver for Great Britain with a measured and powerful performance that had a roaring Aquatics Centre on its feet.

Scoring his third personal best in two days, the 23-year old son of a swimmer and a footballer poured on the speed in the last 50m to almost haul in the world champion and eventual winner, Daniel Gyurta of Hungary.

Jamieson hit the wall amid a cacophony just an eighth of a second behind Gyurta, who set a new world record of 2m 07.28 secs.

It brought to nine the number of medals for Team GB. Jamieson’s achievement – the greatest yet for Great Britain in the pool at London 2012 – thrilled British swimming fans who until then had only had Rebecca Adlington’s 400m freestyle bronze to show for their fervent backing. It also reinstated Britain’s reputation in Olympic breaststroke swimming, which began at the 1976 Montreal Olympics where fellow Scot David Wilkie took gold in the 200m.

“I was desperate to get on the podium tonight to repay the support we’ve had,” he said after his first ever Olympic final produced a medal. “I planned for this and I think that helped with the nerves. For so many years I’ve gone over this in my head. I prepared for it and I am delighted.”

The Scot is improving fast. He was fifth at last year’s World Championships, and won silver at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi.

The 23-year-old had lowered the British record twice en route to the final to become the eighth fastest swimmer in the event in history. His final performance – 2mins 07.43secs – was the fourth fastest time in history.

Jamieson was drawn in lane 4 alongside his training mate, Andrew Willis in lane 3, and the redcapped pair who had qualified first and third attacked the race in tandem, keeping double Olympic champion Kosuke Kitajima and Gyurta in their sights. It was not until the final length that Willis faded into eighth place, and Jamieson showed his power to close on the world champion in front of his friends and family among the roaring 17,000 strong crowd.

Making the final turn, Gyurta seemed to be in control. Then, as he popped up and down in the water, heading for home, Gyurta suddenly felt Jamieson surging up on his right shoulder. The race was turning into a 50m shootout and Jamieson was in the ascendency on the champion. A few more strokes and it could have been Jamieson’s gold.

“I’m just delighted I swum so close,” he said. “I can’t believe I’ve just swum 2.07, and the crowd were unbelievable and I can only thank everyone for their support. It’s been a special week, I’ve done everything I wanted to and it’s been a good day for Team GB all round.”

Kitajima, one of the greats of world swimming, faded as the race reached its climax and was again denied in his bid to become the first male swimmer to win the same individual race in three straight Olympics – an achievement still possible for the American Michael Phelps.

Willis – who is 21 and trains in Bath under David McNulty, the same coach as Jamieson – was delighted for his team mate. “Michael deserves this and I’ve seen him train for a few years now and he’s capable of great things, we’ve seen that today,” he said. “So I’m really happy for him and to be there with him.”

Jamieson was a talented footballer who had to choose between the sports. He once said: “I was probably better at football to be honest but enjoyed swimming more. It must have been during winter when I decided.”

As he made his way to the medal podium, the reality of his achievement in swimming sunk in, and as he beamed and waved to the crowd he put his hand to his mouth in disbelief. When he received the silver medal he punched the air with both fists and puffed his cheeks.

In the semi-final of the women’s 100m freestyle, Fran Halsall qualified for Thursday’s final in fifth place and exhorted an already raucous Aquatics Centre to raise the roof for her medal race.

“It was loud tonight, but it was as loud for Missy Franklin [the USA swimmer],” she said. “All the Brits coming to watch tomorrow night – I want you to shout louder than the Americans did.”

A disappointed Amy Smith was knocked out in the same heat. Jemma Lowe came sixth in the 200m butterfly as China’s Jiao Liuyang added the Olympic title to the World Championship gold she won last year.

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/aug/01/team-gb-michael-jamieson-olympics-swimming-silver

• Move over, China, South Korea and Indonesia: let Britain show you the proper way to come second in a badminton match. All of Britain’s badminton players were out and heading home by day four, without a disqualification among them. It’s called losing, losers, and there’s an art to it. Watch and learn.

• There is also a British way to win: go for gold, then miss out on a silver to take bronze, and be glad of it. The men’s gymnasts did it, and so did the rowing eights. Yes, there has been some gold as well, but that’s not the point.

The point is, in the bronze medal table, Britain is doing rather well: joint 4th place, thanks to Chris Froome’s magnificent third place finish in the cycling time trials.

It’s unlikely that we’ll catch Japan (11 bronzes already! Are they cheating?) or the US (nine), but we could go ahead of China (only four so far; they must be disappointed) to take the bronze in bronze medal-getting.

Boris Johnson stuck on a zipwire in Victoria Park, east London. Photograph: Rebecca Denton

• With so many sports commentators gathered together for one enormous sporting extravaganza, it’s not surprising that cliche sweeps through their ranks like a virus. The BBC presenting team are currently afflicted with a propensity to refer to the epic struggles of top-form athletes as “a day at the office”.

In Wednesday’s tennis Tracy Austin characterised Vera Zvonareva’s third-round loss to Serena Williams as “a tough day at the office”. Minutes earlier a commentator had reported that the women’s coxless fours were having “a difficult day at the office”. Elsewhere one hears a swimmer’s easy win in an early heat described “just another day at the office”.

It’s not just lazy, it’s an insult to anyone who’s struggling to complete a monthly sales figures report in time for this afternoon’s marketing strategy meeting.

LingoWatch: repechage

After a week of hearing it, I was finally moved to look it up. From the French for “fishing out” or “rescuing”, it refers to a second-chance round for competitors who failed to qualify by a narrow margin in a previous round.

I’m not sure how I got to the age I am without knowing this, but consider me enlightened.

• The Curse of Cameron, whereby the PM jinxes Britain’s medal hopes though his attendance, is held at bay for another day while David Cameron visits Northern Ireland. Two gold medals won in his absence, and I swear the weather’s improved as well.

But the good luck charm of an appearance from William and Harry has been called into question. Yes, they were there for Glover and Stanning’s rowing victory, and for the eventing when the team took silver. But their cheerleading at the gymnastics – when the men were relegated from 2nd to 3rd (BRRRONNNZZZE!) – was hardly the stuff of miracles.

Could the real lucky charm be John Major, who sat near them at rowing and eventing? Could it be Norma?

Question of the day

Why is every point in the beach volleyball punctuated with naff pop music? The Macarena, More Than a Feeling, We Will Rock You. Is it in the rules?

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/tvandradioblog/2012/aug/01/armchair-olympics-day-five

A cyclist was killed near the Olympic Park in Stratford, east London, after being hit by a bus ferrying journalists between venues. The man, who police say was 28 years old, was struck by the double-decker just outside the park at about 7.40pm. He was not believed to be one of the Olympic athletes.

The Metropolitan police said the man was pronounced dead at the scene in Ruckholt Road, at the junction with the A12. A man in his mid-60s, believed to be the driver, was arrested at the scene on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving and was in custody at an east London police station.

A police spokesman said the cyclist was pronounced dead at the scene. He added that the collision was being investigated by the Met’s traffic investigation unit.

A London ambulance service spokeswoman said: “We were called at just after 7.30pm to reports of a road traffic collision involving a cyclist and a coach on the A106.

“We sent a single response car, one ambulance crew, the London air ambulance and the duty officer. Sadly one person was pronounced dead at the scene by the air ambulance doctor.”

A spokesman for Games organiser Locog said it was working with the police to establish what happened.

A London 2012 spokesman added: “We can confirm that a cyclist tragically died as a result of a collision with a bus carrying media from the Olympic Park this evening.

“The police are investigating the accident and our thoughts are with the cyclist’s family.”

After the fatal incident, gold medal-winning cyclist Bradley Wiggins was asked for his views on how safe London’s roads are for cyclists. He said: “It’s dangerous and London is a busy city and [there is] a lot of traffic. I think we have to help ourselves sometimes.

“I haven’t lived in London for 10 to 15 years now and it’s got a lot busier since I was riding a bike as a kid round here, and I got knocked off several times.

“But I think things are improving to a degree – there are organisations out there who are attempting to make the roads safer for both parties. But at the end of the day we’ve all got to co-exist on the roads. Cyclists are not ever going to go away as much as drivers moan, and as much as cyclists maybe moan about certain drivers they are never going to go away, so there’s got to be a bit of give and take.”

Wiggins said he would like to see the introduction of a law making it compulsory to wear cycling helmets.

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/aug/01/cyclist-killed-collision-bus

In a fresh sign of the coalition’s frustration at the civil service, the Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude will announce today that he is commissioning research into how foreign governments make civil servants personally contractually accountable to deliver ministerial objectives.

Maude wants to look at changing the balance between the permanent neutral civil service and introducing a larger politically appointed element, as in France and the US.

One possibility is replicating the Austrialian model that requires all permanent secretaries to offer their resignation on the appointment of a new government.

But the £50,000 research by a thinktank will also look at radically different models, such as the US where large parts of the civil service are replaced with the election of each administration.

It is the first time since the publication of the government civil service reform white paper earlier this summer that Maude has acted in his commitment to seek policy insights from outside the civil service.

Maude is offering a £50,000 contract and expects a report from the commissioned thinktank or academic by the late autumn.

Likely candidates for the research project include the thinktank Reform, the Institute for Government or the Constitution Unit at UCL.

Maude said: “While we are rightly proud of our civil service, we shouldn’t hubristically assume that there’s nothing we can learn from other successful governments, whether like Australia and New Zealand where they have political arrangements which are broadly similar to ours, or like Singapore or the United States where they are more distinct.

“To meet the future challenges of our fast-changing world, Britain’s civil service will need to continue to change and adapt, and that’s why we are determined to draw on new ideas.”

A ministerial source said: “Every option is on the table. It would be very arrogant to assume that the way we govern is unimproveable. Francis Maude is very clear he wants to look at radical models.”

The Cabinet Office said would look very closely at the New Zealand model where the equivalent of permanent secretaries are under a contractual model to deliver ministerially set objectives.

The review will also look at the French model where ministers have a larger politically appointed private office.

Ministers have been repeatedly frustrated in Britain that civil servants can avoid personal responsibility for errors they make by arguing that ministers are accountable to parliament for everything that happens in their department.

The thinktank Reform, one of the most influential critics of traditional civil service neutrality, argued before the election: “The doctrine of ministerial responsibility should be abolished. It not only shields officials from taking personal responsibility for their actions but also draws ministers into the process of delivery.

“Instead, ministers should be responsible for the strategic direction of policy and its communication. Officials should be personally responsible for the construction of policy and the use of resources.”

Ironically the Conservatives were very critical of Labour’s politicisation of the civil service, and the large number of special advisers, promising to cut them back as part of the a cost-cutting exercise. Since then figures such as Steve Hilton, David Cameron’s former director of strategy, have become frustrated at the slow pace of the civil service, and its apparent conservatism.

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/aug/02/francis-maude-thinktank-civil-service

Before they laid a finger on the battered, brown-leather book, the conservators at the Bodleian library in Oxford just sat and stared at it, working out how to do as little as possible.

The sorry looking volume is one of the most famous books in the world: the  1623 First Folio of the plays of William Shakespeare, published within seven years of his death by his friends and fellow actors, and the only reason the world inherited plays including The  Tempest, Twelfth Night, Macbeth and Julius Caesar.

The conservators have already made an extraordinary discovery: far from the traditional story suggesting the Bodleian’s was the finest example of the finest work of an Elizabethan printer, a luxury volume for an elite audience, the Stationer’s Company may have palmed off a shoddy copy, poorly printed on inferior paper full of production flaws, which should never have passed the quality control standards for paper makers and printers.

Some damage including folds in the paper and torn corners, assumed to be the work of careless hands over four centuries, was almost certainly there from the start.Today the university library launches a £20,000 appeal fund to digitise the book so that anyone in the world can read its tattered pages, with the backing of Stephen Fry, the director Sir Peter Hall, Dame Vanessa Redgrave, and Jonathan Bate, curator of the Shakespeare exhibition at the British Museum, who called it “the most important secular book in the history of the western world”.

Scores of copies survive, but the Bodleian’s is unique – the buckled splitting leather is the original binding of the loose leaf pages as they came from the printers in 1623.

At the time the rule of the library’s stern founder prevailed, barring all “riff raff and baggage books”, particularly contemporary plays.

Clive Hurst, head of rare books, said the fact that the First Folio was bound, chained and given shelf space, showed how Shakespeare was already moving from being seen as popular entertainment to the ranks of serious literature,

Most of the shelves had Greek, Latin and Hebrew volumes. The tattered pages of the folio showed that the scholars fell on such rare diversions: Romeo and Juliet was read almost to disintegration, King John left pristine.

The book is also a horrible warning to all librarians of the perils of disposal. In 1664 the library got the much smarter Third Folio, and a few years later sold off the First as a duplicate. It would pass through many hands until one day in 1905 a man walked in with the book in a bag, and asked what they thought of it.

A brilliant young librarian recognised the Bodleian library binding and the scars of the chains: it cost them £3,000, also raised by a public appeal, to get the book back. Since then it has scarcely been opened, and has spent almost all its time locked in a strong room.

Hurst feels very twitchy when the volume is out of the building in the conservation studio.

Permission is occasionally given to scholars who really need to use it, but it was the inspiration of Emma Smith, of the English department, who itched to get her hands on it, to get it digitised and available for the first time to the world.

Every page has to be photographed in the highest possible resolution, and the challenge for the conservators is to stabilise the book so that it does not disintegrate in the process – but without destroying any of the historically fascinating damage, or the heroic efforts of one 18th century owner to carry out homemade repairs.

They had to repair a split in the leather – which, comparison with superb 1905 photographs showed, had lengthened ominously and risked ripping completely – just so they could open the cover.

“Usually when a book comes to us the object would be to restore it to a condition when it could be given out to readers again, but that is never going to be possible, or desirable, with this book,” Nicole Gilroy, the team leader, said.

They have made scores of almost invisible repairs with slivers of Japanese paper almost as fine as surgical stitches, attached with wheat-starch glue, and they have straightened out some folds that were obscuring text.

But many more folds in plain paper, or tatters that were not actually about to fall off, were left alone.

They worked in pairs, one with the glue brush, one with a pencil recording every intervention: “The one with the brush always wanted to do more, the one with the pencil was always arguing for less,” Gilroy said. “It’s in our nature where we see damage to want to repair it.”

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2012/aug/02/bodleian-shakespeare-first-folio-online

Chris Moyles has slumped to his lowest audience for more than five years, as his departure from the BBC Radio 1 breakfast show approaches.

The self-styled saviour of Radio 1, who will leave the biggest job in UK radio in September, saw his audience fall to 6.93 million in the three months to the end of June, according to the latest official Rajar listening figures published on Thursday.

Moyles lost more than half a million listeners year on year, slipping below the seven million mark for the first time since the end of 2006, when he had an audience of 6.82m.

BBC Radio 1 controller Ben Cooper announced the much-anticipated departure of Moyles from breakfast last month, although he is expected to move to another role at the station. He will be replaced by the station’s late evening presenter, Nick Grimshaw, who at 27 is 11 years younger than Moyles. Cooper has come under pressure to retune the station to a younger audience.

Moyles’ imminent departure from breakfast is one of a number of changes instigated by Cooper, such as a clearout of many of its specialist DJs, including Gilles Peterson who has moved to BBC Radio 6 Music, and Greg James’s move to drivetime in place of Scott Mills. Overall, Radio 1 had an average weekly reach of 11.27 million listeners in the three months to the end of June, up 1.2% on the previous quarter but down 3.6% year on year.

It remains the second most popular station in the country, behind Radio 2 which had 14.46 million listeners, down 0.7% on the previous quarter but up 3.5% on last year.

Radio 2 breakfast DJ Chris Evans remains by some distance the DJ most people choose to wake up to. Evans’ audience of 8.95 million was down from 9.23 million the previous three months but up from 8.67 million in the second quarter of 2011.

Moyles had long harboured hopes of presenting the nation’s number-one breakfast show, particularly in the wake of Sir Terry Wogan’s departure from the Radio 2 breakfast slot.

The Radio 1 DJ steadily grew his breakfast audience from a debut of 5.93 million in 2004 to a high of 7.9 million at the beginning of 2010.

But up against Wogan, and now Evans, whose lead is more than two million listeners, the number-one spot eluded him.

Of the other BBC national stations, BBC Radio 4 was up 2.1% on the previous quarter but down 3.1% year on year to 10.52 million. Radio 4′s flagship Today programme pulled in 6.76 million listeners.

Its digital sister station BBC Radio 4 Extra added another 8.9% listeners on the previous quarter to a record 1.64 million and now has Radio 3, which had an audience of 2.04 million, in its sights.

Not such good news for BBC Radio 5 Live, which was down 3.4% on the previous three months and down 6% year on year to 6.15 million. But its sister station, 5 Live Sports Extra, piled on the listeners, breaking through the one million barrier to 1.07 million.

Among the BBC’s other digital stations, BBC Radio 6 Music was down 5.2% on the previous three months but up 8.6% on the year to 1.38 million.

BBC Radio 1 Xtra also had a record audience, up 24.1% on the previous quarter, to 1.14 million.

But the BBC World Service suffered a big year on year drop in its UK audience, down 19.1% to 1.39 million, up 6.8% on the previous three months.

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/aug/02/chris-moyles-radio1-ratings-slump