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A 24-year-old fan died after collapsing at The Stone Roses‘ gig in Glasgow on Saturday 15 June. According to police, the young woman was attended by paramedics and pronounced dead at Glasgow Royal Infirmary.

“Just after 9pm [Saturday] we received a report that a 24-year-old woman had fallen [at the concert],” a police spokesperson told the media. “A post-mortem will be carried out in due course to establish circumstances of the death.”

Although police do not suspect foul play, the show at Glasgow Green was not without violence. Among the 50,000 ticket-holders, 24 were taken away on anti-social and drug offences. Alison Davidson was hit in the head when someone threw a glass bottle into the crowd. “There was blood everywhere,” she told the Daily Record. “Security at the gig was absolutely shocking, no bags were being searched on the way in.”

In July 2012, another fan died following the Stone Roses’ comeback show at Heaton Park. Christopher Brahney, 22, was found in the Manchester Ship Canal 10 days after he disappeared. Hundreds of people had helped search for the missing young man. Police have been unable to determine the cause of his death.

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A week today, we will have the oddity of a Westminster set-piece that was never supposed to be. Budgets, the Queen’s speech and the like can usually be plotted out years in advance. But this month’s spending review – or, rather, cuts review – was not expected to be necessary. The coalition originally ventured that the retrenchments it set out in 2010 would suffice to fix the public finances within a single parliament. But as the recovery failed to materialise, five years of austerity became six years, then seven and more, and it became unavoidable for George Osborne to detail an extra year of pain for the financial year 2015-16, which straddles the next general election.

We are all used to reading about 15%, 20% or 25% cuts, so the 2.8% saving that the chancellor requires from the average department might sound easy to find. And yet there are rumbling government rows over services such as the police. For the sanguine analysis that says a couple of percentage points is nothing to worry about ignores two crucial things: first, the fact that – after a half-decade of pain – the easy cuts have all been made; second, the continuing promise to exempt big chunks of spending, most notably the huge health service, from outright cuts redoubles the pain elsewhere.

Indeed, factoring in the “ringfences” for hospitals and schools, and on realistic assumptions about the ability of Philip Hammond and Theresa May to shield squaddies and bobbies from the worst, the Institute for Fiscal Studies reckons (pdf) that other departments might be facing cuts of around 10%. That is a savage saving to have to find in any year, and especially in a year that follows such a long lean spell.

Think about what a cut on this scale would mean for an urban town hall, where the cuts have already reduced spending power by substantially more than the English average of 12.2%. Statutory duties towards orphaned young people and frail elderly people consume a huge chunk of resources, and cannot lawfully be disowned. Council back-office services have already been pared to the bone – planning and development has been cut by an average of 46%. Meanwhile, typical cultural spending has been chopped by a fifth. If you care about a library, a sports centre or even a park close to your home, it is time to be afraid.

With the Treasury’s plans implying that – after the election – we will hear about detailed plans for yet another two years of similar pain, we are talking about cumulative cuts that go so far beyond what the public has been primed for that they could strain the social contract. No wonder those in the know are scrambling around for alternatives. Treasury officials slipped a telling sentence into the budget: “It would, of course, be possible to do more of this further consolidation through tax instead.” No doubt we can expect a conspiracy of silence from the politicians on that point until polling day is safely out of the way; for now, the vaunted Osborne alternative will be cutting welfare – again.

He wants to build on his benefit cap for individual families by somehow capping welfare spending as a whole. The counter-argument about poverty won’t interest him, but as the guardian of the economy he should be expected to give weight to the crucial role that social security payments have played in steadying demand in the slump. He might also recall the last time that spending which bounces about because of booms and busts was lumped in with the rest – in the late 80s and early 90s. The government ended up in a mess because it mistook the flattering effects of a brief burst of growth for a permanent improvement.

In the end, the pickle we’re in will take taxes to fix – but don’t expect anyone to tell you that next week.

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The Financial Times editor has proposed that Lord Grade, the former Channel 4 chief executive and BBC chairman, be appointed as a mediator to broker a deal between the newspaper industry and pressure group Hacked Off over a new press regulator.

Lionel Barber told a parliamentary select committee on Tuesday that a deal needed to be struck before September when the trials of current and former News International journalists and executives accused of phone hacking and illegal payments to public officials begin.

Barber said someone of Grade’s experience and calibre was urgently needed to shift the impasse in talks. Grade, also a former ITV executive chairman who is currently chairman of Pinewood and Shepperton studios, started his media career as a sports journalist on the Daily Mirror and had been mentioned as the kind of all-rounder who would command respect of all sides in the dispute over the future of press regulation in a similar way to George Mitchell, the US special envoy sent to Northern Ireland to negotiate a peace settlement in the 1990s.

“His name has come up in conversations with one or two editors,” Barber told MPs on the Commons culture, media and sport select committee. “You need someone who some experience of journalism, some experience of business and some political nous, and someone who is respected on all sides.”

Grade told the Times on Tuesday following the select committee hearing that he had not been approached but would be willing to take on the role.

“It’s very, very important that the future of press regulation is settled as quickly as possible and if anybody thinks I can help in that process obviously I would contribute,” he said.

“I am presently a member of the PCC [Press Complaints Commission] so I am fairly up to date on everything. If anybody asks me to try and help of course I would help. It is very important for the public that we get to a settlement on this.”

Barber told MPs the outstanding differences between the various sides with an interest in press regulation were not “as big as some people like to make out” and a deal was achievable.

His suggestion that Grade be parachuted in to find a solution acceptable to both sides in the standoff will give fresh impetus to efforts to get a new regulator up and running this year.

Alan Rusbridger, the editor-in-chief of the Guardian, tweeted immediately after the hearing that he agreed with Barber’s suggestion that Grade should become involved.

“FT’s @barberlionel suggests Michael Grade should be brought in to negotiate #Leveson settlement. I agree,” he wrote.

A deal was struck on 18 March between all three main parties and Hacked Off for a replacement for the Press Complaints Commission backed by a royal charter.

But the late night deal was immediately denounced by many in the press industry, who claimed they had been locked out of negotiations. Three of the country’s biggest newspaper groups – News International, Telegraph Media Group and Associated Newspapers – threatened to boycott the government’s plans and set up their own regulator.

Since then these publishers, along with Trinity Mirror, Express Newspapers and most of the regional press and magazine sector, have come up with an alternative royal charter, but need the support of Hacked Off and politicians if it is to be put before the privy council.

One of the main issues of contention is the cost of the regulator proposed by the government. The industry believes that the proposal to inflict exemplary or punitive damages on publications guilty of egregious breaches of libel or privacy law could put titles out of business. They also argue that it could be against European human rights law.

Barber said the FT would look at the cost of joining any new press regulator before making a decision. “If it’s too burdensome we won’t join,” he added.

Chris Blackhurst, the group content director at the Independent, told the same select committee hearing on Tuesday that if the cost of regulation rocketed it could lead to job losses.

Newspaper groups have been talking to the culture secretary, Maria Miller, over the past two months and to Hacked Off about breaking the impasse.

Barber said Hacked Off had “played a role” in negotiating a new regulator and it was important that the victims were “bound in and were part of the process”. However, he added: “There needs to be give on all sides.”

He said the newspaper industry had already made a major concession by agreeing to ditch its proposal to have a veto over appointments to the board of the new regulator.

Barber’s hopes that all sides would give ground were dashed immediately after the select committee hearing when Hacked Off said there was no reason to reopen negotiations.

“There is no basis to compromise further,” Hacked Off said in a statement. “Gerry McCann already called the Leveson recommendations the minimum acceptable compromise for victims of press mistreatment. Concessions in the cross-party charter, and the use of a royal charter itself instead of legislation have moved the deal in the press’s favour.

“We have an agreement signed up to by all political parties and both houses of parliament, backed by the victims of press abuse and the vast majority of the general public. What are the grounds for reopening negotiations, simply because, as Leveson predicted, the press barons are reluctant to comply?”

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Guardian photographer Don Mcphee’s image of striking miner George Brealey facing up to a line of police became one of the most well-known of the miner’s strike. The ‘battle of Orgreave’ took place on 18 June 1984

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This week we lost an appeal by Paddy Power over a decision to reject an operating licence on two grounds: we believed that it would add to crime and anti-social behaviour, and that the majority of profits would come from fixed-odds betting terminals.

The result was disappointing, particularly for the retailers and residents in our community who had demanded action.

They are under pressure because hard-pressed consumers are watching what they spend. At the same time, the internet and supermarkets have taken away a lot of trade from small businesses. Adding to this problem are betting shop clusters being created in the absence of effective licensing and planning controls.

In Newham, east London, we now have more than 80 betting shops, up by 23% since 2007. While the law limits the number of betting machines to four per premises, the betting companies are simply buying up multiple retail outlets. Premises such as former fast food takeaways and pubs are targeted because they do not require a change of use planning application to be made to councils.

Their presence in our community is no accident: sports minister Hugh Robertson, who oversees the industry, told the Commons the government was in little doubt that betting firms were targeting poorer areas.

Central government is not taking action because the tax revenue from the B2 category machines (with a maximum stake of £100) is around £300m. It is easy to collect and the amount will continue to rise.

A concentration of non-retail uses does little for an area’s vitality or attractiveness and there are significant crime and anti-social behaviour associated with betting shops. We have received incoherent advice from government and the Gambling Commission, which regulates the industry, in regard to licensing powers. Worse still, the decision by communities secretary Eric Pickles to relax planning restrictions on the high street will add to the problem.

The verdict in our case at least offers some clarity on what councils need to do but it is not easy. It will need dedicated resources and joint working with the police.

A licence cannot be revoked for anti-social behaviour issues. It must relate to crime and disorder, which is a higher test for councils to evidence.

Part of our evidence was CCTV footage of a man with a metal bar going into a betting shop and the police later arriving. The judge made clear that if we had more evidence of this kind, we would have stood a better chance.

Better recording of crime in and around premises is critical. This will need local police making evidence gathering a priority and working closely with council legal and licensing officers.

Also relevant is the protection of young and vulnerable people and here too we are breaking new ground. We have served a Notice of Intention to hold a review of a premises licence on William Hill under section 200 of the Gambling Act 2005 because we have concerns about crime and disorder and of the protection of young people. Evidence will need to be persuasive as councils will need to show show repeated problems and clear breaches of the law. We need to demonstrate what impact this betting shop has had on residents.

Ultimately, however, ministers must act: betting shops should be given a separate planning class. This was a recommendation of the Portas review and would stop the conversion of a range of valued local facilities like shops.

Ministers should free local authorities to serve their communities and enable the enterprisers. Local authorities can do a lot to help them but we need the freedom to do it.

Someone who gave evidence in our case was former Treasury minister Stephen Timms. He warned that the community element of traditional betting is steadily being lost as the machines take over. Reform would protect this part of the industry, which in turn keeps alive events like the Grand National.

It’s not red tape that is wiping out our independent shopkeepers, it’s intransigent Whitehall ministers. If we are to remain a nation of shopkeepers, then a united effort across local government is needed to help them thrive and I invite you to join us.

Ian Corbett is Newham council’s executive member for infrastructure and environment

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The Guardian’s award-winning picture team rounds up the most eye-catching images of the day

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It took 10 years and an elite unit from America’s navy seals to hunt down Osama bin Laden. Now the technology used to track the most elusive terrorist in history is at the centre of another top mission to help to enhance the life of cakes in British bakeries.

Strathclyde University has been awarded a grant to examine how the imaging used on the helicopters that surrounded Bin Laden’s Pakistan compound in 2011 might be used to perfect cupcakes, Victoria sponges and a host of other staples of the British diet.

They are working with a British food company, Lightbody, to try to accurately plot the deterioration of a cake and formulate a recipe with the best fat, sugar and liquid proportions for taste and shelf life.

“With hyperspectral imaging, you can tell the chemical content of a cake just by taking a photo of it. That allows the baker to optimise the process for shelf life and taste. It tells you what’s going on, how the sugars are breaking down, how the fats are breaking down. If bakers can get the formula right, they can extend the shelf life and sell their cakes further afield,” said Stephen Marshall, professor of image processing at the university.

In a military context, hyperspectral imaging captures hundreds of values in the electromagnetic spectrum which enable scientists to identify objects without sending them to a laboratory.

A hi-tech snapshot creates an electromagnetic “fingerprint” of the objects which can be used to identify minerals, crop disease, and movements of people and vehicles under military surveillance.

In the hunt for Bin Laden, it would have identified movements of people and vehicles simply by capturing changes in the grounds surrounding the terrorist’s compound.

Strathclyde and Lightbody received a grant of £25,000 from the Interface Food Drink, a Scottish fund designed to forge links between business developers and academic research.

Howell Davies of Interface said: “You can basically take a picture of something and analyse the product without taking it away for testing in a lab. You can see things that you can’t see with the human eye.”

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A petition will be delivered to the government on Tuesday demanding an “honourable acceptance of responsibility” for the massacre of 24 unarmed rubber plantation workers by British troops during the anti-communist insurgency in Malaya in 1948.

The petition, signed by 10,000 people, will be handed to the British high commissioner in Malaysia, Simon Featherstone. It will demand an apology and a memorial to those killed at Batang Kali and ask for “modest reparations”.

The case has been compared to that of elderly Kenyans who have been offered nearly £20m in costs and compensation after being tortured and abused during the Mau Mau uprising in the 1950s.

High court judges last year questioned the official record given to parliament – that the Malaysians were shot when trying to escape in 1948. Allegations that there was a “deliberate execution of the men and it was ‘covered up’ by the Scots Guards and British army” could “properly be made on the evidence,” the judges said.

However, they argued that there were “obviously enormous difficulties in conducting an inquiry into a matter that happened over 63 years ago”.

John Halford, lawyer for the Malaysians, has offered to reach a settlement in place of a costly appeal of the high court ruling due to be heard in November.

“This incident took place in living memory – indeed some of the claimants in the case were present in the village as children,” Halford said.

Lim Kok, a claimant in the case, said: “I applaud the moral courage of the British government in admitting the torture of Kenyans and taking responsibility for putting that wrong right. But it is absurd that the very same government has remained mute on the slaughter in Batang Kali, which took away my father’s precious life.”

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Drinking in moderation through pregnancy does not harm a baby’s neurodevelopment, according to new research.

Children whose mothers consumed the equivalent of a glass of wine a day were able to balance as well as those who had not been exposed to alcohol in the womb.

Almost 7,000 10-year-olds were asked to take part in balance tests, which are an indicator of prenatal neurodevelopment.

The drinking habits of their mothers had been recorded during and after pregnancy, with those who drank three to seven glasses of alcohol a week classed as moderate drinkers.

But social advantage could be a large factor in the findings, as the research found mothers who were more affluent and better educated were more likely to drink in moderation. Mothers from a working-class background were more likely to abstain from alcohol through pregnancy, to drink heavily or binge drink.

Professor John Macleod, from the University of Bristol’s School of Social and Community Medicine, led the study, which has been published by the journal BMJ Open.

“Most of the women in this study either didn’t drink at all or if they did drink, they didn’t drink very much,” he said.

“There weren’t many heavy drinkers. We know that heavy drinking during pregnancy has bad effects on a developing foetus.

“The moderate drinkers consumed an equivalent of up to one glass of wine a day.

“When we compared moderate drinkers with women who didn’t drink at all we actually found that in relation to a number of different tests of balance the children of moderate drinkers appeared to do better.

“However, we also found that the women who moderately drank compared to women who didn’t drink tended to be more middle-class.

“They were more socially advantaged. Having a middle-class mum compared to having a working-class mum is likely to advance a child in a lot of ways.

“They may have better balance, they might do better at school. Having middle-class parents has advantages to a child that are nothing to do with alcohol.”

The 10-year-olds were part of the University of Bristol’s Avon longitudinal study of parents and children (Alspac).

Alspac has been tracking the long-term health of around 14,000 children born between 1991 and 1992 to women living in the former Avon region of the UK.

Children of women whose alcohol consumption was recorded during pregnancy, at 18 weeks, and after pregnancy, at 47 months, underwent a 20-minute balance assessment at age 10.

The assessment included a number of balance tests such as walking on a beam and standing on one leg for 20 seconds with eyes open and then closed.

Researchers also asked the children’s fathers how much alcohol they drank when their partners were three months pregnant.

Over half consumed one or more glasses per week, with one in five drinking one or more glasses a day.

In contrast, 70% of the mothers drank no alcohol while pregnant. One in four drank between one and seven glasses a week.

Just 4.5% drank seven or more glasses a week. Around one in seven of these mothers were classified as binge drinkers, consuming four or more glasses at one time.

The mothers were also assessed four years after the pregnancy and 28% said they did not drink at all, while over half consumed between three and more than seven glasses a week.

Higher total alcohol consumption by mothers before and after pregnancy – and fathers during the first three months of pregnancy – was associated with better performance for the children, particularly for static balance.

MacLeod said: “The way we investigated this further was to look at genes. People who carry a certain gene are far more likely not to drink alcohol on average.

“If it was really true that using a small amount of alcohol during pregnancy benefitted children’s balance then we would expect those with mums who had the gene to have worse balance.

“We didn’t see any evidence that babies of mothers with this gene had worse outcomes than those who drank.

“There was a weak suggestion that children of mothers with the gene had better balance but our study was too small to show this reliably.”

He said results showed that after taking account of influential factors such as age, smoking and previous motherhood, low to moderate alcohol consumption did not seem to interfere with balance.

But better balance was associated with greater levels of affluence and educational attainment.

MacLeod said: “In this group of mothers, moderate alcohol intake was a marker for social advantage which could be a key factor in better balance.

“It could possibly override subtle harmful effects of moderate alcohol use.

“The supposed benefits we saw are not the effects of alcohol, they are effects of middle-classness.”

The Royal College of Midwives said expectant mothers should still steer clear of alcohol.

Professional policy adviser Janet Fyle said: “We recognise that this is useful research. However, there is also a large amount of evidence suggesting that the cumulative effects of alcohol consumption during pregnancy can harm the developing foetus.

“Our advice continues to be that for women who are trying to conceive or those that are pregnant it is best to avoid alcohol.”

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