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Some of the most prominent victims of phone-hacking have written to the culture secretary, Maria Miller, urging her to reject the royal charter proposed by the press industry, saying that it is unacceptable for “those responsible for the damage to our lives and the lives of others [to] seek to shrug off responsibility and once again write their own rulebook”.

Miller is holding a consultation on whether the press industry’s royal charter should be considered formally first by the Privy Council as opposed to one initially drawn up by the government with the support of Labour. The consultation ends this week, and government departments, as well as the Privy Council secretariat, will now take a further two weeks to decide its next step. Miller now has to decide if the industry’s royal charter meets the criteria.

The Press Standards Board of Finance (PressBof) petitioned the Privy Council with its version of the charter on 30 April, and has made some adjustments to its proposals partly in a bid to win over the Financial Times, Independent and Guardian.

In their letter, some of the most prominent victims of press misconduct including J K Rowling, Gerry and Kate McCann, and Sheryl Gascoigne say they object to the draft Royal Charter drawn up by the PressBof on behalf of the newspapers, saying “it demonstrates once again the press industry thinks it is above the law”.

They also claim it lacks any democratic legitimacy, pointing out the Leveson-compliant royal charter for self-regulation by the press has the backing of the main political parties. “We were subject to intrusion, bullying, harassment, intimidation, libel and other forms of abuse by some newspapers, and they were allowed to get away with it for a very long time because of the lax, self-regulatory system in place.”

They add that the prime minister had said he wanted the new system of regulation to enjoy the support of the victims, citing David Cameron’s evidence to Leveson on 14 June that “the test of the system is: is it going to provide proper protection to ordinary families who… get caught up in these media maelstroms and get completely mistreated?”

In their letter the victims claim: “There is no legitimate reason for the industry to be given a veto on a system which the public so urgently needs and which has been fairly and reasonably designed.”

They add the initiative is “an attempt by a small number of newspaper proprietors to continue to run the system for their own ends, claiming it has been led by Associated Newspapers, News International and the Telegraph Group, who have for many years dominated the discredited system of regulation run by the PCC”.

The victims also claim the PressBoF Charter “dilutes one of … Leveson’s core recommendations, the creation of a cheap arbitration panel to resolve disputes and save parties the burden of legal costs”.

The letter states the “PressBof charter does not make any provision for directing (or even requiring) apologies at all … this would enable newspapers to continue burying … apologies in the back of a newspaper, having defamed an innocent person on the front page.”

Article source: http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/uk/rss/~3/Rgm08qeeOu0/phone-hacking-reject-charter-proposal

Increasing numbers of low incomes households could be at the mercy of aggressive bailiffs because of recent cuts in council tax benefits, according to Citizens Advice.

Council tax benefit was axed in April 2013 and replaced by a localised scheme, council tax support. The new scheme has 10% less government funding than the old, national scheme, and has meant some councils have started to make savings by reducing the number of people entitled to the benefit, or have cut the amount of benefit people receive.

Council tax collection is already a lucrative business for bailiffs. In the year to March 2013, Citizens Advice bureaux in England and Wales helped with 60,652 problems to do with bailiffs; a third of these were for council tax debts, and 161,564 problems with council tax arrears.

But the latest changes to the benefit have already led to a substantial leap in the number of people visiting Citizens Advice worried about council tax, it said. It said it has also seen a trebling of the number of people seeking online advice about how to deal with bailiffs in the year to April.

“We’re concerned that changes to council tax benefit will mean more people will end up in debt because they can’t pay their bill and have the bailiff knocking at their door,” said Citizens Advice chief executive Gillian Guy. “Bailiffs often overstate their powers, deliberately frighten debtors and charge extortionate fees. We want councils to help people get on top of their council tax debts so the use of bailiffs is no longer necessary.”

Raymond Merry and his wife Susan recently found themselves at the sharp end of bailiff’s practice. They fell a month behind on their council tax payments after both being taken ill in December and then paid their January bill two days late. “The next thing I knew I had a note pushed under my door by a bailiff who was sitting in a van outside,” said Mr Merry. “He tried to walk in but I stopped him. He told me we owed him £300 – £107 was our debt and the rest in fees to him.”

The Merrys then paid off their arrears but the bailiffs kept coming round. “My wife was very worried and we felt threatened,” said Mr Merry. “In the end, after we had told them numerous times that we had been to Citizens Advice and that we had paid off our arrears, they stopped coming round.”

Recent figures released by the Money Advice Trust also show a sharp, long-term trend in calls to its National Debtline service for help with council tax arrears, with one-fifth of the calls made to the service in 2012 asking for help for this type of debt. In the past five years, calls for help with council tax have increased 40%. The charity estimates this rise is partly down to the increasing use of bailiffs to collect debts owed to local authorities.

Recent changes to legislation have been designed to reign in bailiff’s powers, although debt charities argue they don’t go far enough. The safeguards, introduced by the Ministry of Justice, will prevent bailiffs from: visiting a property outside the hours of 6am to 9pm; using force against people who owe money; fixing their own enforcement fees – the government is introducing a set fee structure designed “to end excessive and multiple fees”.

In August 2012 Citizens Advice analysed over 400 bailiff problems and found two in five bailiffs threatened the use of force to gain access to a property and one in four threatened to take items, such as clothing or work tools, that are banned from removal by debt collectors.

Article source: http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/uk/rss/~3/INbkvIpZlYo/council-tax-benefit-bailiff-visits

Rochdale borough council has apologised for letting down victims of child sexual exploitation after a damning report laid bare a catalogue of failures and a culture of complacency within the authority that allowed paedophile gangs to prey on the area’s most vulnerable girls.

The independent report found that the council’s former chief executive Roger Ellis “did not appear to be interested in children‘s social care issues” and said there was no evidence that he had any intention of investigating the events that led to the jailing of nine men in May last year for offences including trafficking, rape and sexual assault.

Ellis, who stepped down while the court case was ongoing, presided over a council with “a lack of consistent senior leadership, or a lack of vision and direction in relation to child sexual exploitation (CSE)”, according to the report’s author, independent consultant Anna Klonowski.

Frontline staff “did not know what to do about CSE and how to deal with it”. Furthermore, the 135-page report stated that social workers within the service “did not have a working knowledge of effective risk assessment”.

Ellis’s successor as chief executive, Jim Taylor, said: “It is clear from this review that some children were let down by Rochdale council. On behalf of the council, I am deeply sorry these young people did not get the care and support they deserved.

“We must never forget that the sexual exploitation of children is an appalling crime carried out by the worst kind of criminals. But keeping children safe from harm is the most important thing a local authority does, and we accept the conclusions and recommendations in the report.

“This review paints a poor picture of the way elements of Rochdale council has previously been run. Hard-working, dedicated staff were also let down by some senior managers who appear to have shown no leadership and taken no responsibility. I am absolutely determined to ensure these mistakes are never repeated.”

The report makes 16 recommendations, including that the council review the ways it suspends and/or revokes licences for taxi drivers and fast food establishments, helping to disrupt the environments in which the 2012 trial found that the abusers operated.

Klonowski also urged Taylor to ensure that any necessary disciplinary investigations against individuals relating to CSE be finalised and the “appropriate actions” taken.

Rochdale’s MP, Simon Danczuk, said it was wrong that senior officers such as Ellis had been allowed to escape disciplinary action by taking early retirement and called for systems to be put in place that would allow their pension funds to be clawed back.

“This report shows that there were alarm bells going off all over the place and they were ignored,” he said. “Senior officers turned a blind eye to child abuse and didn’t want to know. The perpetrators of these terrible crimes and some senior council officers have brought shame on our town.”

Danczuk also criticised what he called “appalling complacency” after it emerged that senior managers viewed CSE as being “no more or less prevalent in Rochdale than in other local authorities”. At one point a senior officer – believed to be the former executive director for children’s services, Terry Piggott – is quoted as saying that they viewed CSE “as part of the combined evils that many children faced”.

Danczuk said: “The council now needs to tell us what package Roger Ellis and other implicated senior officers left with. If Roger Ellis has one iota of decency, he will return this money.

“Jim Taylor has a very difficult job but he has decided to grasp the nettle that his predecessor ignored,” he said. “He has inherited a completely dysfunctional children’s services department and it will take time to turn it around.”

Ellis was unreachable for comment on Thursday night.

Article source: http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/uk/rss/~3/3qxhUnbOeTY/rochdale-child-sex-abuse-case-council-apologises

Children are exposed to violent and sadistic imagery which risks distorting their attitudes towards relationships and sex, according to the children’s commissioner for England.

A report released on Thursday by the commissioner’s office found that children who watch pornography are more likely to develop sexually risky behaviour and become sexually active at a younger age.

It called for urgent action to “develop children’s resilience to pornography” after discovering that a significant number have access to sexually explicit images. It also called on the Department for Education to ensure all schools delivered effective relationship and sex education, including how to use the internet safely.

“We are living at a time when violent and sadistic imagery is readily available to very young children … even if they do not go searching for it, their friends may show it to them or they may stumble on it while using the internet,” said the commissioner, Maggie Atkinson.

“For years we have applied age restrictions to films at the cinema but now we are permitting access to far more troubling imagery via the internet. It is a risky experiment to allow a generation of young people to be raised on a diet of pornography.”

The report, based on a review of academic research, also found that pornography could influence children’s sexual attitudes, foster a negative attitude towards relationships and lead them to engage in risky behaviours such as unprotected anal sex, sex at a younger age and the use of alcohol and drugs during sex.

Sue Berelowitz, the deputy children’s commissioner, said compulsory education was the only way to ensure children were guarded “against the possible impact of pornography on them and their relationships”. She said: “As part of our inquiry into the sexual exploitation of children in gangs and groups we have seen that young perpetrators of sexual abuse describe their activity as ‘like having been in a porn film’. This report provides the evidence to support there being a high correlation between exposure to pornography and it influencing children’s behaviour and attitudes.”

Miranda Horvath, senior lecturer at Middlesex University, which led the review of academic evidence, said: “When pornography is discussed, it is often between groups of people with polarised moral views on the subject. Rather than adopting a particular ideological stance, this report uses evidence-based research to draw its conclusions and further the debate.”

The report’s recommendations echo calls made by the End Violence Against Women coalition to make sex and relationships education compulsory in secondary schools. A recent survey by the National Association of Head Teachers found many parents believe schools should teach about the dangers of pornography as soon as children are old enough to use the internet.

Article source: http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/uk/rss/~3/aRQmAg_yd5o/protect-children-internet-pornography-report

Those who might think that the era of the press baron is over haven’t heard of Lord Black. He may not be a household name but the Conservative peer, director of the company behind the Daily Telegraph and consummate insider is the éminence grise for large sections of the industry, orchestrating an audacious attempt to frustrate parliament’s plans for press regulation with a rival scheme endorsed by the country’s five largest newspaper groups.

Not to be confused with the former owner of the Daily Telegraph, Guy Black has been at the heart of a Conservative-press nexus for the best part of two decades. For the most part, it has given him intimate access into the top tier of society, not least at the first official engagement of Prince Charles, Camilla Parker-Bowles and Prince William.

The occasion was a celebration of the 10th anniversary of the now discredited Press Complaints Commission, where Black was the director back in 2001. At the time, Camilla’s companionship of the heir to the throne was still a matter of controversy, but like a debutante she allowed herself to be formally introduced to a 600-strong party that included journalists, cabinet ministers, celebrities such as Kylie Minogue, Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Richard Branson and his family.

For Black and his partner Mark Bolland – the press secretary to the Prince of Wales – it was a crowning glory, an elegant confluence of both their interests to brighten up a dark February night in Somerset House. It demonstrated that Buckingham Palace could publicly celebrate Prince Charles’s romantic life and make it acceptable to a public still mourning Diana.

For critics though, the party was nothing but a “tacky showbiz event” denounced by the Daily Telegraph as “a frothy Hello!-type party for tabloid celebs … and cheesy stars such as Carol Vorderman and Richard and Judy.”

But the then-Telegraph editor Charles Moore was not a fan of either Black or Bolland and the soft power the couple wielded through their network of friends in the tabloid press, including Rebekah Brooks, then-editor of the News of the World and her then-boyfriend EastEnders star Ross Kemp, with whom the couple had holidayed.

Twelve years on, fate has gone full circle. Moore is long gone from the paper, and sitting in an office adjacent to the chief executive of the expanded Telegraph Media Group is one Lord Black, executive director reporting to the chief executive Murdoch MacLennan, the former managing director of Daily Mail publisher Associated Newspapers.

Brooks, facing phone-hacking and corrupt payments trials, may have moved out of the trade, but Black has moved on. He also has the ear of Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail, arguably the most powerful figure in the industry. Insiders at the paper say he always takes Black’s calls and was one of few (along with Brooks and MacLennan) to be invited to his and Bolland’s civil partnership ceremony. News International is also happy to follow his lead.

He is seen as the invisible hand behind the prime minister’s decision to delay previously agreed plans with Labour, Lib Dems and Hacked Off and consider the 11th-hour alternative put forward by the press. Even critics of his – and the rival royal charter – will freely admit that he is both sharp and shrewd. An executive at a competing newspaper group says: “You have to get up early to outsmart him.”

Few in newspapers will speak on the record about him, and criticism and praise come in equal measure. He is said by one of his friends to be one of the most “overtly political” animals in the business, “not in party-political sense” but in terms of networking, with his choice of guests at his civil ceremony – Dacre, MacLennan, Brooks – cited as evidence of his power-seeking sensibility.

And the pressure on Black to deliver is enormous. He was almost jettisoned as the industry’s unofficial ambassador last December in the wake of the ^{publication of the Leveson report because, as the former director of the PCC, he was seen to represent the discredited system of the past. Even now his support base is not complete, which means he will either end up being the kingmaker or the deal-breaker – some left-leaning newspaper groups, most notably the Guardian are sceptical.}

Black, 48, was a local Conservative councillor in Essex, where he grew up and went on to work in the Conservative research department after graduating from Cambridge with a double first. In 1986, he became special adviser to John Wakeham, then energy secretary. Later he followed Wakeham, who then took him to the PCC.

A brief stint working for Conservative party leader Michael Howard following his work at the PCC in the mid-noughties reportedly cured him of his ambition to be an MP, but it is his closeness to senior Tories that is said to have made him the perfect conduit for the press to No 10. After the 2005 election, he joined the Telegraph Media Group as executive director, a non-editorial role that essentially meant he was the newspaper group’s chief lobbyist.

Maintaining contacts was always a priority. His wedding party, held after the civil partnership ceremony in London, was held in the Cotswolds in 2006. It was a swanky affair attended by the great and good and a sprinkling of editors and PRs. Sir Michael Bishop, the former owner of airline BMI, arrived on a private helicopter. Eventually the networking was rewarded with a peerage in July 2010, just months after Cameron’s election victory, sponsored by Wakeham and Lord Marland, a reward for years of service.

Against such a background, the question is whether Black is the man to deliver a consensus across the normally warring Fleet Street elements.

One newspaper executive says Black has enormous abilities to bring warring factions together into “a demilitarised zone” between tabloids and broadsheets. “He has this frictionless personality and seems to get on with people weirdly well. He is like Wakeham in that he is smooth and unperturbable.”

Lord Wakeham says Black has long been able to achieve consensus because of his long experience at the PCC, where broadsheets and tabloids were at loggerheads during their stint together between 1996 and 2003.

His former boss is one of the few prepared to go on the record about Black, with whom he worked for 10 years. “There are lots of people poncing about saying things but they haven’t the remotest chance of actually getting anything through,” said Wakeham. The peer regards Black as “an extremely efficient operator” and a “great draughtsman”.

Critical in the interminable post-Leveson debate has been Black’s ability to produce reform proposals in an attempt to head of Leveson both before and after publication. Only those who read the documents closely see that he is careful to protect his own position too.

Parliament’s royal charter for press regulation bans working peers from participating in the revamped system. But one clause in the press’s royal charter for regulation insists on just the reverse.

The confusion created by the emergence of a rival press charter has produced a growing belief that there will be some sort of negotiation to bring together the two documents. Which means, after 17 years at the heart of press regulation, it is quite likely there will be a job behind the scenes for this most connected peer to fill.

Article source: http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/uk/rss/~3/1IsGDIduPDU/lord-black-tory-peer-press-telegraph

Dramatic footage has emerged showing the moment police officers shot the two men suspected in the killing of a soldier in Woolwich.

The video, obtained by the Mirror, shows one of the suspects running directly towards a police car, which contained a female officer before colleagues open fire.

Former Detective Chief Inspector Peter Kirkham, told the newspaper: “The female officer only has her Taser out and must have been terrified. They [the other officers] had no option but to open fire to stop them.

“I have never seen anything like this before, or even heard of it happening before. For two suspects to carry out a brutal attack like this then stand around in plain sight waiting for the police is crazy.

“The instant they spot the police car come round the corner they are on it straight away. The first one is sprinting full speed towards the cops before they have even got out the car.”

The birds-eye video was filmed from a tower block overlooking the scene. Eight shots can be heard, as people scream nearby.

On Thursday, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has said it is not pursuing any criminal or misconduct offences over the police officers who used their weapons at the scene of the attack in Woolwich yesterday.

After viewing CCTV footage, investigators said that two officers fired guns and one used a Taser.

IPCC commissioner Derrick Campbell said: “Officers have provided initial statements and we will be obtaining additional accounts.

“The IPCC is independently verifying information regarding the circumstances of this incident and we can promise the Woolwich community, and wider public, that our investigation will be thorough.”

Article source: http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/uk/rss/~3/7syNNnFaxcY/video-woolwich-attack-suspects-shot-police

So much for the idea that Halfords could soft-pedal in the slipstream created by British cycling triumphs at the London Olympics. The next Olympics in Rio will be in view by the time shareholders know whether new chief executive, Matt Davies, has found a winning formula for the business.

His revamp plan – Getting into Gear 2016 – is honest about the time required for a turnaround. Profits have just fallen by a fifth to £72m but Davies says it may be 2016 before investors see that figure, or something better, again. For good measure, he’s chopping the dividend by 35% to free up cash for investment.

Naturally, the shares fell in a ditch (they were down 16%). But Davies’ diagnosis of Halfords’ difficulties seem perfectly sensible. The company is meant to be a specialist retailer but it is bound to struggle in that role if 22% of new recruits leave within three months. The best independent bike shops are staffed by loyal fanatics who know their derailleurs backwards, and much the same is true in the car accessory market.

Davies envisages a big training programme, including pay rises for better-qualified staff, and investment in stores. It will cost £100m over three years. Given where profits stand, that’s not cheap. But investors, once they’ve overcome their shock, should accept that there were no quick fixes available. Sales had declined in 10 of the last 12 quarters. Whether the grand plan will succeed is, of course, another question. Pets at Home, Davies’ last job, looked an easier gig.

Article source: http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/uk/rss/~3/dwdBZ4VskTU/halfords-matt-davies-cycling

The former boss of Tesco‘s failed US chain Fresh Easy has received a £1.7m payoff despite the business being shut down after repeated losses.

Tim Mason, who departed in December after 30 years at the group, was awarded “liquidation damages” equivalent to his annual salary plus a sum equal to his average bonus over the past two years.

Tesco announced last month it would exit the US after racking up total costs of £1.5bn. Fresh Easy opened in 2007 but never made a profit.

Tesco’s checkout staff, meanwhile, learned that their annual shares bonus pot has been halved after the retailer’s first fall in annual profits in almost 20 years. Around 280,000 UK staff will receive a total of £56m in shares, down from £110m a year earlier and worth a maximum per worker of £1,625.

On top of his payment for “loss of office”, Mason also earned a £691,000 salary and received £400,000 in benefits last year. He had built up a £10.4m pension, and owns more than 1m shares, worth around £4.1m. He also has options on a further 1.15m shares, and will be paid £100,000 in “repatriation costs” to return to the UK.

The retailer’s disappointing performance meant that around 5,000 top managers, including chief executive Phil Clarke, missed out on a bonus and long-term shares awards for last year. Clarke received salary and benefits worth £1.2m, 1.4% higher compared with a year earlier. The total pay of finance director Laurie McIlwee fell 19% to £917,000.

Pre-tax profit halved to £1.96bn in the year to 23 February. As well as taking a hit on the US business, Tesco also made a UK property writedown of £804m, after abandoning plans to develop more than 100 sites.

“The year just ended was a challenging one,” said Stuart Chambers, chairman of the remuneration committee, in the report. “Our financial performance fell short of where we wanted it to be, which in turn resulted in no annual bonus being paid to the senior management team for 2012-13. The long-term incentives that were due to vest this year also lapsed as performance targets were not met.”

Tesco bosses will only receive an annual bonus in the future if profits grow. The retailer also said, however, that future bonuses would be less focused on short-term profits than in the past, and more focused on other “strategic and operational” measures, including customer service and colleague “engagement”.

In terms of financial measures, the level of bonuses will be determined by internet sales, like-for-like sales, and working capital as well as profits.

Chambers said that a number of factors had weighed on the company’s financial performance, including its decision to reinvest profits in the UK business to improve the shopping experience for customers, and the closure of Fresh Easy.

He added that “external challenges”, including a weak economic backdrop in central Europe and the regulatory restrictions on opening hours in South Korea, had also had an impact.

He said that the senior management’s failure to earn a bonus and long-term incentives showed that Tesco’s remuneration policy was “effective in aligning pay with performance.”

Richard Brasher, the former head of Tesco’s UK business, who was squeezed out in March 2012 after just a year in the job, also received a golden goodbye. He was paid “liquidated damages” of £1.3m.

At the time of his departure Clarke said he was taking control of Brasher’s UK operation in addition to his duties as group chief executive.

Clarke said in the report that Tesco would more focused in the future on growth, consuming less capital, and generating more free cash flow.

“Making this transformation in all its aspects will of course not be without its challenges – and the clearest evidence of this can be seen in the first reduction in profits of the group for two decades, which we reported on in April,” he said.

“Everything we are doing reflects my determination to deliver shareholder value, an appropriate balance between investing for future growth, and delivering sustainable returns for our shareholders.”

Article source: http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/uk/rss/~3/qo40mHISsc8/tesco-fresh-easy-tim-mason-payoff

Halfords‘ chief executive has outlined a three-year turnaround plan for the struggling bicycles and car parts chain, but it will come at a cost to investors, who have seen the dividend cut by 35%.

Matt Davies has set a sales target of £1bn by 2016, but said that profits would remain flat for at least two years as the chain invests £100m in staff training, store revamps and a better online offering.

The plan comes as full year pre-tax profits fell 22% to £72m, on sales up 1% at £871m. The shares plunged 63p, or 16%, to 333p as investors reacted to the news that they would be giving up a large chunk of their dividend.

Davies, who recently joined from Pets at Home, said: “The biggest risk is a do-nothing scenario and I’m asking shareholders for patience. I’m a shareholder too and will suffer, and I’m very aware the dividend is important to shareholders.”

He pointed out that 10 of the last 12 quarters had seen falling sales – a run broken only last spring and summer when British success in the Tour de France and the Olympics helped bicycle sales. The store now stocks Pinarello cycles – the Italian brand used by Sir Bradley Wiggins, pictured, and the Team Sky cycling squad.

The business will focus significantly on bicycles, hoping to sell 1m a year, and will refit every cycle department. But Davies acknowledged Halfords has been squeezed by rivals and online sellers.

Without addressing years of underinvestment, the company would suffer further, he said. “Stores are a bit tired so we really need to invest in them. We are also keen to get in knowledgeable people.” Staff will undertake a three-month course on joining the company, and will earn pay rises by completing further training, eventually leading to the position of store “guru”.

Around £50m will be invested in store refurbishments, with 150 stores to be revamped by 2016, and a further £50m will go on training and improving the company’s website and supply chain.

Staff turnover at the stores has been consistently high: around 20% of new workers leave within three months. Davies wants to halve that number.

He said: “That’s a problem if you are not recognising people and training people to build careers with Halfords.”

The company suffered from a fall in sales of car accessories. Davies said young drivers who “pimp up their car” were staying away because they could no longer afford the insurance.

Its Autocentre business continues to perform well, with sales up 13.5% to £125.8m, and management hopes to open 700 repair centres by 2016, offering MOTs and servicing. Halfords currently has 287 sites.

However, the company said short-term profit expectations at Autocentre since it was purchased in 2010 were “overly optimistic” now that an expansion was under way.

Analysts appeared impressed with the turnaround plans, despite the dividend cut. Philip Dorgan from Panmure Gordon said: “We like the plan and we like the £1bn revenue target, but we were wrong to assume fast payback from investment.”

Bethany Hocking at Investec said: “While near-term downgrades are clearly disappointing, we think the plan is credible and needed.”

Article source: http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/uk/rss/~3/wpmesLYNtYo/halfords-three-year-turnaround-cycling

A hail of enthusiastic tweets followed the Cannes premiere of Blue is the Warmest Colour – elevating it to the status of the critics’ favourite of the festival, and not a moment too long at three hours.

It also happens to contain the lengthiest, most intimate and most graphic lesbian sex scenes in mainstream cinema history. Praised for its tenderness and intensity, it has been hailed as a landmark in cinematic depictions of lesbian love and female sexuality.

Both lead actors spoke of their trust in director Abdellatif Kechiche over the four-month shoot for the film, including the scenes that, in the opinion of the Hollywood Reporter, “cross the barrier between performance and the real deal”. According to Léa Seydoux, who plays the older of the two women, “I succeeded in forgetting that a camera was there.”

It was a process so intense, and resulting in so much material, “that he could have made a whole lot of other films” with just the rushes, according to Adèle Exarchopoulos, who plays the younger of the two women. According to Kechiche, they regarded the filming of the sexual sections as “a game”.

“We also had a great deal of fun,” he said. “The actors felt they were enjoying themselves – while playing a part, of course.”

Kechiche’s last film, Black Venus, about a 19th-century black South African woman who was exhibited at fairgrounds, was deemed too harrowing and provocative for American and British distributors and so was never released in the UK.

The director, best known for his 2007 film, Couscous, said he would be willing to contemplate some cuts in Blue is the Warmest Colour to allow the widest possible audience to see the work. “We wouldn’t want the film not to be screened because of one scene,” he said, “but of course that wouldn’t apply if it were the whole thing”. It is, he said “a question of respecting other people’s film traditions. In the States there are different ways of portraying love, sex and even violence”.

Executive producer, Vincent Maravel, confirmed that the film had already sold American distribution rights “and we didn’t talk about cutting anything out”.

The intimate physical scenes come as only one element of a deep study of the relationship between the two young women as it grows from young first love into domesticity. Exarchopoulos, in an already highly acclaimed performance, plays a schoolgirl, also called Adèle, who embarks on a relationship with a boy, Thomas. But she finds herself drawn to Emma, a woman with blue-dyed hair whom she has seen in the street, played by Seydoux.

The film was screened less than a week after gay marriage was legalised in France. According to Kechiche, “When I decided to tell this story the particular political context did not exist – we didn’t make the film to comply with a given political context. I didn’t want to make a militant film that had a message to deliver about homosexuality, but of course it can be seen from that angle, and that doesn’t bother me.”

Unlike so many coming-out stories, there is no traumatic scene of rupture from their parents as the girls’ families take on the implications of their sexuality. “I didn’t want a major clash or a huge separation,” said Kechiche of the story, which is loosely adapted from a graphic novel by Julie Maroh. “What I loved aside from the love story was the fact that this person missed their train, meets this woman, and her life totally changes: this meeting held out such tremendous promise. The idea that you meet someone by chance and it changes your life for ever. I was deeply touched by that idea.”

Article source: http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/uk/rss/~3/t_lRc5RUj2k/blue-warmest-colour-cannes-kechiche