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Big W joins Aldi by taking 'Australia Est. 1788' T-shirts off the shelves

Daniel Hurst, Bridie Jabour — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 03:03:10 GMT

Shopping chains bow to social media pressure after complaints that the shirts were offensive to Indigenous Australians

Arianna Huffington announces launch of World Post news website

Dominic Rushe — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 00:31:13 GMT

Arianna Huffington and billionaire Nicolas Berggruen announce launch of new media venture that will also host novice contributors

Dominic Rushe

Best pictures of the day - live

Mee-Lai Stone — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 23:13:17 GMT

The Guardian's photo team brings you a daily round up from the world of photography

Mee-Lai Stone

Mass surveillance by security services should be reviewed, say Lib Dems

Patrick Wintour — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 21:22:06 GMT

Party's motion, in wake of Snowden whistleblowing, covers agencies' accountability, data collection and bill of rights

Judicial oversight of state surveillance and a regular release of the number of data requests made by the security services should be among the issues examined by a government "commission of experts" into all the recent allegations raised by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, the Liberal Democrats are to propose.

They will also call for the commission to review the effectiveness of all legislation surrounding the security services, including the system of parliamentary accountability. They envisage the commission as being modelled on Barack Obama's privacy and civil liberties oversight board, a five-strong body of legal, industry and security experts appointed by the president and confirmed by Congress. The board has been advising Obama on his imminent response to Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor.

The comprehensive response is being submitted in a motion to the Lib Dem spring conference by the party's president, Tim Farron, and home affairs select committee chairman, Julian Huppert. Such high-profile support suggests it is almost certain to be passed.

The terms of the motion have been discussed with Nick Clegg and the Lib Dem home affairs minister Norman Baker, and represent the most substantive sign that the Snowden revelations may yet prompt a political response in the UK similar to the one under way in the US and continental Europe.

A spokesman for Clegg said: "The motion is very much in line with Nick's thinking and he agrees with its principles."

The motion says mass surveillance of citizens without suspicion is alien to British traditions. It proposes that the government should not undertake bulk collection of data and could only access the metadata, or content of communications of an individual, "if there is suspicion of involvement in unlawful activity".

It also calls for a ban on fresh powers of surveillance, accessing data, and accessing new technologies without explicit prior parliamentary approval.

The commission would look at the resources and accountability of the bodies responsible for overseeing the security services, including select committees, tribunals and commissioners.

Farron said: "I think for many ordinary people we can through this issue restore the good name of human rights and civil liberties. I don't think that people realised that the nation's phone conversations could be accessed systematically by the state in this way. As Liberal Democrats, we understand the need for a security services, but also for an accountable security service working in the context of a digital bill of rights. In my personal view we have got to make the intelligence and security select committee operate on the same basis as other Commons select committees". We are trying to strengthen Nick Clegg's arm in government for the conversations now going on about how to respond to Snowden."

He said the recent appointments of Baker, and Simon Hughes to the Ministry of Justice, should be seen as a commitment by his party to strengthen the voice of civil liberties within Whitehall.

The commission of experts would be independent of business and security services. Its appointment would be an admission that the current closed investigation by the government-appointed Intelligence and Security Committee is not likely to gather public trust.

The motion says: "Indiscriminate harvesting and storage of the communications and metadata of people without suspicion is incompatible with our liberal and democratic principles, and has the potential to cast a chilling effect on free speech and free association.

"Whilst there are legitimate concerns surrounding national security, such concerns must not be invoked simply as a pretext to undertake blanket surveillance, stifle investigative journalism, or discourage public debate."

It adds that the surveillance of people without suspicion is "alien to our traditional British values" and adds: "The internet has the power to liberate, to educate, to bring people closer together, and to boost our economy." But it suggests, in line with many internet companies, that "such potential will be undermined by government control, surveillance, and censorship".

It also proposes an "annual release of government transparency reports which publish, as a minimum, the annual number of user data requests made by law enforcement, the intelligence agencies, and other authorities, broken down by requesting authority, success rates, types of data requested and category of crime or event being investigated".

At present the two relevant commissioners – the interception of communications commissioner and the intelligence services commissioner – do not provide this level of detail.

Huppert said: "Of course we benefit from the work of the intelligence and security agencies. But the recent revelations, covered so well in the Guardian, have shown just how much their surveillance has extended without parliamentary approval and without sufficient oversight. We need to set clear guidelines for state surveillance, and update our laws to match our principles."

The motion also suggests that the government should accelerate and expand the midata project, to grant citizens access to all their data in an open digital format, regardless of which business holds that data.

Patrick Wintour

Rebekah Brooks was upset by Milly Dowler voicemail hacking, say PAs

Nick Davies — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 19:50:52 GMT

Old Bailey jury hears Brooks was particularly upset by the hacking and tasked PAs to check her whereabouts at the time

Rebekah Brooks was particularly upset by the disclosure that the News of the World had hacked the voicemail of the missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler and tasked her two personal assistants to check old diaries and bank records to see whether she had been in the country when it happened, an Old Bailey jury heard on Wednesday.

Giving evidence in the phone-hacking trial, one of the PAs, Deborah Keegan, described how she and her colleague, Cheryl Carter, would look after every detail of Brooks's personal life from ensuring she had a fresh bottle of water on her desk in the morning to booking her personal trainers in London and Oxford. "It was life management," she said.

The jury heard of emailed requests from Brooks to buy more moisturiser and face powder, to send a driver to pick up keys she had left in her flat, to obtain the original of a cartoon from the Times, and to book a table for her and Rupert Murdoch to have dinner at the Kingham Plough pub in Chipping Norton. Mrs Keegan had also emailed Brooks's mother at one point to reassure her that 'Becky' was well. "It was a tough atmosphere to work in because Rebekah was very demanding but we had a good working relationship."

Keegan recalled the mood in Brooks's office in July 2011 after the Dowler hacking was revealed: "She was particularly upset," she said. "Rightly so." Brooks had asked the two PAs to check whether she had been in the country at the time.

"If Rebekah asked for something, she would get it," she said. Brooks had not told them that the News of the World was to be closed that week: "We heard the same as everyone else, but there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing in and out of Rebekah's office. We were aware of something."

The jury heard that on a typical day, one of the PAs would be in the office by 7am to open the post and make sure that Brooks's desk was ready with a bottle of water and a clean sheet of paper for her note-taking. As soon as Brooks arrived, the canteen would be told to bring up her breakfast. Several days a week, she would work out with her personal trainer, Zack, in the basement gym. When she was at home, she had a different trainer, Calum, and the PAs had arranged a joint bootcamp for Brooks and her husband, Charlie.

Keegan said her work as a PA would include booking Brooks's holidays, doing her shopping, organising cleaners at her home, looking after her cars, helping with her security, dealing with her family and supervising banking for her and Charlie.

She and Carter had access to Brooks's bank account, complete with her PIN, and would go to the HSBC bank on Mondays to draw out £200 in cash for her.

A "strictly private" box in the PAs' office contained a gun licence, a marriage certificate and share options while filing cabinets held Brooks's passport and driving licence, air mile records, Charlie Brooks's contracts, Cheltenham and Gloucester savings certificates, Barclays bank shares and records of investments in Morgan Stanley.

Keegan told the jury that she remembered a decluttering Sunday in the late summer of 2009 when Brooks was about to take over as chief executive of News International. She and Carter had filled bin bags with unwanted paperwork and sent other material to the company archive to be stored. She said James Murdoch had wanted a paperless office. One of the items later sent for storage, the jury has heard, was a portrait of James Murdoch.

Carter and Rebekah Brooks deny conspiring to pervert the course of justice by removing seven boxes containing Brooks's notebooks from the archive and destroying them. The trial continues.

Nick Davies

Ipso, the new press regulator, is just the PCC with extra bells and whistles

Roy Greenslade — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 19:38:12 GMT

Ipso is a creature of the publishers in which they will continue to hold the strings – including the purse-strings

At last, the new press regulator is emerging from the shadows. The Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso), the great invention of the majority of Britain's newspaper and magazine publishers, has assumed human form.

Well, up to a point. One man selected in opaque circumstances to head the project, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, and another man similarly plucked from obscurity, Sir Hayden Phillips (no relation), have together appointed an "appointment panel".

Note first their qualifications for this task. Phillips one is a former supreme court judge, its founding president no less. Phillips two is a former senior civil servant. They are indisputably members of that gilded, privileged and unelected set known as "the great and good".

No surprise, then, that two of their choices for the appointment panel should come from the same background – another former supreme court judge, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, and another former civil servant, Dame Denise Platt, who chaired the Commission for Social Care Inspection.

In their wisdom, doubtless with crucial input from anonymous publishing representatives, the Phillipses also chose a former editor and a current editor to join the panel.

They are Paul Horrocks, the engaging ex-editor of the Manchester Evening News who also happened to serve for four years on the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), the body that Ipso is to replace, and John Witherow, editor of the Times who was previously editor, for 18 years, of the Sunday Times.

Witherow also has experience of the present, discredited, form of self-regulation, having served for more than a decade on the editors' code of practice committee.

With Phillips two as chair of the appointment panel, the five of them will now have the task of selecting the chair of Ipso's board. But, according to the report presented by Lord Justice Leveson back in November 2012, the appointment panel "should contain a substantial majority of members who are demonstrably independent of the press".

Of the five, Witherow is obviously not independent. It could be argued – surely, will be argued by the publishers – that Horrocks, having relinquished his 12-year editorship in 2009, is an independent figure. Except that he is a director of a PR consultancy that offers media training, he is steeped in the nationwide editors' network, and cannot be genuinely said to be "demonstrably independent of the press".

It is possible, therefore, to quibble that the panel's composition does not provide a "substantial majority" of non-press members. Unsurprisingly, the body that represents victims of press misbehaviour, Hacked Off, has argued that very point.

They would, wouldn't they, because they – in company with the prime minister, other party leaders and most MPs – are outraged that the publishers, in setting up their own "independent" regulator, are planning to ignore the royal charter that was created to provide underpinning to a new form of press regulation.

The publishers view the charter as a threat to press freedom. Those who support it see it as a clever way to hold the press's feet to the fire without sacrificing essential freedoms.

No compromise has been found in the months of a debate between the two sides, with the government looking especially foolish by playing piggy in the middle.

But the arcane nature of Ipso's creation, with retired judges and civil servants called in to give the process a patina of respectability, cannot hide the duplicity at its heart: it is nothing more than the PCC reborn with a few extra bells and whistles.

While true that it will have the power to levy fines on a persistent offender of up to £1m, the chances of any paper being fined seem very doubtful indeed.

Ipso is a creature of the publishers in which they will continue to hold the strings – including, most importantly, the purse-strings.

This does not necessarily mean that it will be all bad. Nor, indeed, was the PCC. It made bad errors and it required a radical reform. However, one of those errors – over phone hacking, most notably – crucially undermined its credibility.

That failure, to get to grips with the News of the World, a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch's company, went to the heart of the problem of a body that lacked true independence from its publishing masters.

Ipso, as the manoeuvres over the appointment panel suggest, has every appearance of echoing the calamity that struck the PCC. It will work well enough until there is a real crisis. Then the publishers' grip on the reins of power will be revealed and the tiger will be shown to be toothless after all.

Roy Greenslade

Nick Clegg tweets 'Ed Balls' to signal thawing of party relations

Nicholas Watt — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 19:29:36 GMT

Shadow chancellor replies 'I agree with Nick' after giving interview hinting at stronger chance of Lab-Lib coalition in 2015

A rapprochement between Labour and the Liberal Democrats has been signalled as Ed Balls indicated he could imagine forming a coalition with Nick Clegg if no party secured an overall majority after the next general election.

In a New Statesman interview, the shadow chancellor said he understood "totally" why the Lib Dem leader had formed a coalition with the Tories after the 2010 general election – to ensure that Britain had a "credible" deficit reduction plan.

His interview prompted something of a Twitter love-in between the two politicians. Clegg made light of the interview by tweeting: "Ed Balls" – a skit on Balls's famous Twitter faux pas, which spawned Ed Balls Day, when he tweeted his own name when he was searching for tweets about himself.

Balls responded to Clegg by tweeting: "I agree with Nick".

Balls qualified his New Statesman remarks by saying it would be hard for Labour to join a coalition and that Clegg was wrong in 2010 to accelerate Alistair Darling's deficit reduction plan – to halve it over four years – in favour of eliminating the structural deficit by the end of this parliament. This target was missed.

The remarks by Balls contrasted sharply with his declaration in September 2012 when he told the Andrew Marr Show on BBC1 that it would be "really hard" to form a coalition with Clegg because of the "way he's gone about his politics".

During the 2010 Labour leadership contest Ed Miliband ruled out forming a coalition with the Lib Dems as long as Clegg remained leader.

A Lib Dem source said there had been a thawing in relations with Labour in recent months.

The shadow chancellor highlighted how Labour's attitude to Clegg, the deputy prime minister, had evolved even though Clegg told LBC last month that he avoided feuds except for "a man named Ed Balls" – remarks described by the Lib Dems as a joke.

The shadow chancellor told the New Statesman that he had a chat with Clegg at Westminster on Monday afternoon following the latter's attack on George Osborne for his "monumental mistake" in drawing up plans for £12bn cuts in 2016-2018.

Speaking later that evening, Balls said: "I had a friendly chat with him a couple of hours ago in the House of Commons … We had a nice chat about how things were going. I think it was the first time I'd had a conversation with him for a really long time."

In a sign of new warmth towards Clegg, Balls said he understood why he formed a coalition with the Tories. "I understand totally why Nick Clegg made the decision that he made to go into coalition with the Conservatives at the time.

"I may not have liked it at the time, but I understood it. I also understood totally his decision to support a credible deficit reduction plan, because it was necessary in 2010."

But he said Clegg was wrong to agree to a more rapid deficit reduction plan than the Lib Dems floated during the 2010 general election campaign. The Lib Dems said in their manifesto that imposing cuts too soon "would undermine the much-needed recovery and cost jobs".

Balls said: "I think the decision to accelerate deficit reduction, compared to the plans they inherited, which was clearly not what Vince Cable wanted, I think that was a mistake. I don't know whether that's something that, in the end, the Liberal Democrats will acknowledge. I think the decision to support the top rate tax cut and the bedroom tax, that was a mistake, those were an unfair combination. I think that the decision to go along with the boundary changes in return for the AV referendum was a mistake, which I think Nick Clegg acknowledged by reneging on his half of the deal in retrospect."

The shadow chancellor made clear that he would be working hard to ensure Labour wins an overall majority at the next election but indicated that he might be prepared to form a coalition with the Lib Dems if no party wins a majority.

"You always have to do is deal with politics as you find it. We're fighting hard for a majority, who knows how things will turn out. Very many Labour party members, voters, supporters, would find that [a coalition] very difficult and some Liberal Democrat voters would find that very difficult as well. But we'll deal with the situation as we find it. I saw that subsequently he made a further statement to one of the newspapers that these things weren't about personalities, and I think he's right about that."

A Lib Dem source said: "There has been a thawing in relations with Labour in the last year. But that does not mean that we are pitch-rolling for a coalition with one party or the other. Our position will always be that it is up to the British people to decide."

The source added that Clegg, who believes the Lib Dem role is to act as a restraining influence on the two main parties, is reviving the party's "equidistance" between Labour and the Tories – the approach abandoned by Paddy Ashdown when he embarked on talks with Tony Blair before the 1997 general election.

The source said: "We are equidistant between the two parties. We favour neither. We are not an annex to any other party. The Conservatives cannot be trusted to build a fair society while Labour cannot be trusted to build a strong economy."

Nicholas Watt

Does US Elle have a problem with Mindy Kaling?

Emine Saner — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 19:16:49 GMT

The magazine is under fire for four new covers, three depicting white American TV stars full length and in colour – and one of Kaling close-up and in black and white. What was it thinking?

You rarely have to look far to find something to criticise in the fashion industry, and the latest storm concerns four new covers of US Elle, each featuring an American TV star. But while Zooey Deschanel, Amy Poehler and Allison Williams are shot three-quarter length in full colour, Mindy Kaling's cover is cropped in close and printed in black and white. Guess which actor gets the odd-one-out treatment, asked the feminist site Jezebel: "If your answer was 'probably the woman who's on the record saying she's a size 8, not a size zero, and also happens to be the lone woman of colour,' then congratulations! You get a cookie … which is unfortunately flavoured with bitterness and institutionalised inequality."

Elle has responded to brewing Twitter complaints, saying: "Mindy looks sexy, beautiful and chic. We think it is a striking and sophisticated cover and are thrilled to celebrate her in our women in TV issue." Kaling has also declared she loves the cover, tweeting: "It made me feel glamourous & cool. And if anyone wants to see more of my body, go on 13 dates with me." Still, the fact that Kaling's image was presented differently stands out.

This is far from the first time a fashion magazine has been criticised for cropping a star who isn't supermodel size. When British Vogue shot the singer Adele for its cover in 2011, neck up only, fashion writer Melanie Rickey called it a "missed opportunity, when there are so many Vogue-reading women who would love to see how the magazine and its stylists would deal with beautiful Adele's voluptuous figure". When Gabby Sidibe appeared on US Elle's cover in 2010, she was the only one of four different actors to be close-cropped, and questions were raised about whether the magazine had lightened her skin - something Elle denied.

The fact that Kaling's cover image was printed in black and white is even more unusual. An unwritten rule of magazine journalism is that only colour images will be likely to sell. Though black and white cover images certainly exist, they tend to be reserved for specialist subscribers' covers rather for newsstands. So what's going on? One British women's magazine editor, who asked not to be named, speculates that Elle's publishers might have felt free to experiment with black and white because "with split covers [where there are several cover options], you're not relying on one cover to sell your whole magazine, so you can be more experimental and take a risk".

How likely is it that Kaling's race affected this decision, as so many have suggested? If we were talking about the UK, rather than US, market, she says "that question would be more pertinent", admitting that there is a shameful belief, in the UK, that putting a woman of colour on the front of a magazine means lower sales: "Though I don't think that's the case in the US."

As for the crop, she says: "Close-cropped covers do sell well, and if you're doing four covers, you don't want them all to look the same. You'll crop an image in and out and see which has the most power on the newsstand. I think it really is sometimes what happens to be the nicest image and what works the best with coverlines," adding: "Vogue had Victoria Beckham on the cover and they did a close crop – and you can't get thinner than her." Small comfort, perhaps.

Emine Saner

Twitter bullies must learn that with a voice comes responsibility | Claire Hardaker

Claire Hardaker — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 18:42:54 GMT

The internet gives a priceless voice to the marginalised – but the Caroline Criado-Perez abuse case shows that freedom of expression does not mean freedom from consequences

For many, the internet embodies an idealised vision of democracy – a liberal, open-minded environment that promotes free speech and provides a platform for alternative views. Once, only the powerful and wealthy had a voice which largely operated as a monologue; the elite spoke, and the masses listened. In turn, the masses drowned out the voices of the powerless and poor. This hierarchy, established over centuries, has been short-circuited in mere decades by the internet, in the form of article comments, government e-petitions, and social media sites such as Twitter. Now, the words or deeds of the powerful can trigger a loud and sustained response that is hard to ignore. It's easy to see the benefits of this. Marginalised and wronged groups have been able to use online campaigns to usher us all forward into a more enlightened era in which we are more open-minded about the LGBQT community, disability, race, religion and so forth.

In the perfect sweep of democratic even-handedness that characterises the internet, however, a voice is given to all, including those who use it to be abusive and intimidating. A case in point is the banknote campaign by the feminist and journalist Caroline Criado-Perez. After successfully petitioning the Bank of England to include a woman on a banknote in July 2012, Criado-Perez was subjected to a torrent of rape, mutilation and death threats sent from more than 80 different Twitter accounts. The response from Twitter was painfully slow, and Criado-Perez has described her frustration with the police investigation. While other trials are ongoing, only two individuals have so far appeared in court in relation to the abusive tweets. This week, John Nimmo from South Shields and Isabella Sorley from Newcastle pleaded guilty to sending messages of a menacing nature.

Nimmo had created multiple accounts to send numerous threats to both Criado-Perez and MP Stella Creasy in a campaign that lasted several days. His solicitor presented him as a sad individual; a social recluse who had jumped on the "rape threat train" as a way of seeking attention, validation and popularity. Descriptions of how he had been severely bullied at school were used to explain how he had become a pitiable, alienated individual who barely left the house except to empty his bins, and whose only life was lived through the internet.

Meanwhile, Sorley claimed to be unable to remember sending the abuse, and described herself as "off [her] face on drink" at the time. Her defence likewise sought to show that the occurrence of the threats, on only one day, in the early hours of the morning, was indicative of a moment of poor judgment brought about by ongoing drink problems. A possibly contradictory element to this, however, was that like Nimmo, Sorley had created multiple different accounts to send the abuse – a step more consistent with someone covering their tracks. Indeed, whilst Nimmo was bailed until sentencing on 24 January, Sorley has been remanded in custody due to a range of prior public order offences, and in her case, a custodial sentence is inevitable.

While Nimmo's accounts have long since been shut down, Sorley's remain active. At 9.16am on the morning of her trial, Sorley tweeted a selfie from Buckingham Palace, with the words, "Just chilling at the queens #London". Meanwhile, on 15 December, she tweeted, "Pretty sure i was in the quiet coach on the way home yesterday. There was nothing quiet about my behaviour #sorrymam". weets like these, and others besides, suggest an emotionally immature young woman who simply doesn't understand – or perhaps doesn't want to understand – how her behaviour affects those around her. It reasonably follows that someone with a limited grasp of empathy offline has little chance of being empathetic online.

Overall, that idealised democracy that the internet offers is priceless beyond measure. For every negative Nimmo or Sorley story, there is a positive one – such as a campaign that has brought about real, meaningful change. In other words, while this case might seem to implicitly support the censorship of marginalised voices, what it in fact demonstrates is a need for a better understanding that freedom of expression does not mean freedom from consequences. The web really does give a voice to those previously silenced, but with that voice comes responsibility, and a moment on the fingertips could turn into a lifetime on the criminal record slip.

Dr Claire Hardaker is a lecturer in corpus linguistics at Lancaster University

Claire Hardaker

Forget funeral selfies. What are the ethics of tweeting a terminal illness? | Emma G Keller

Emma G Keller — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 18:40:03 GMT

Lisa Adams is dying of breast cancer. She has tweeted over 100,000 times about her journey. Is this educational or too much?

Lisa Bonchek Adams is dying. She has Stage IV breast cancer and now it's metastasized to her bones, joints, hips, spine, liver and lungs. She's in terrible pain. She knows there is no cure, and she wants you to know all about what she is going through. Adams is dying out loud. On her blog and, especially, on Twitter.

She has tweeted over 100,000 times about her health. Lately, she tweets dozens of times an hour. Her Twitter followers are a mixed bag. Some are also battling cancer or work in the medical field, others seem to follow Adams' life story like a Reality TV show. Here's a taste of what it's like:

Pain today is worst in days. Cannot get on top of it. I have 1)constant drip plus ability to do 2)on-demand drip, 3)emergency. All in use.
— Lisa Bonchek Adams (@AdamsLisa) January 8, 2014

But it radiates out to side of back ("radicular pain") and has nerve component of pain. Mixes with the lung pain/same side
— Lisa Bonchek Adams (@AdamsLisa) January 8, 2014

All morning docs and nurses go in and out so you may see answers to questions in spurts. I also sometimes nod off mid tweet...
— Lisa Bonchek Adams (@AdamsLisa) January 8, 2014

She has been scrupulous about keeping track of her seven year decline. Her journey began with six month routine postpartum checkup after the birth of her third child. You can read all about the details of her disease and treatment on her blog right up until about this morning, which is when she posted her latest entry, only a few hours after the previous one.

She begins each day with the same tweet:

Find a bit of beauty in the world today. Share it. If you can't find it, create it. Some days this may be hard to do. Persevere.
— Lisa Bonchek Adams (@AdamsLisa) December 27, 2013

Over the past few years she has tweeted more than 165,000 times (well over 200 tweets in the past 24 hours alone.) Her clear-eyed strategy of living with cancer for as long as she can has caught the attention of many women with breast cancer, several writers and thousands of fans from everyday lives all over the world. I heard about her in the process of organizing a Guardian US Living Hour chat on DNA and cancer tumors in early November. Before you knew it, she was in the chat having her tumor genome and her cancer trial discussed in detail. I never met her, but I swapped tweets and emails with her, and kept track of her health.

Which is why a few weeks ago I noticed she was tweeting a lot more and from a situation she described as agonizing. The clinical drug trial she was on wasn't working. Her disease seemed to be rampaging through her body. She could hardly breathe, her lungs were filled with copious amounts of fluid causing her to be bedridden over Christmas. As her condition declined, her tweets amped up both in frequency and intensity. I couldn't stop reading – I even set up a dedicated @adamslisa column in Tweetdeck – but I felt embarrassed at my voyeurism. Should there be boundaries in this kind of experience? Is there such a thing as TMI? Are her tweets a grim equivalent of deathbed selfies, one step further than funeral selfies? Why am I so obsessed?

Social media has definitely become a part of Adams' treatment (I wonder what her hospital, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, thinks about that.) Tweeting makes her less lonely, it gives her a purpose, it distracts her from her pain, and the contact it brings clearly comforts her. Adams has managed to keep her dignity and her deft sense of humor intact as she has charted her decline.

As she tweeted a few hours ago:

"Why is she tweeting if it hurts so much?" I am sure people ask. It helps to distract me especially when I am alone (it's 6 AM here)
— Lisa Bonchek Adams (@AdamsLisa) January 8, 2014

Adams is not alone in doing this. Journalist Xeni Jardin live tweeted her cancer diagnosis two years ago and the long treatment journey. Jardin told the Guardian last year that she wasn't sure if she would be quite as "sharey" if she could go back in time.

It's clear that tweeting as compulsively as Lisa Adams does is an attempt to exercise some kind of control over her experience. She doesn't deny that. She sees herself as an educator, giving voice to what so many people go through. And she is trying to create her own boundaries, flimsy as they might be. She'll tell you all about her pain, for example, but precious little about her children or husband and what they are going through. She describes a fantastic set up at Sloan-Kettering, where she can order what she wants to eat at any time of day or night and get as much pain medication as she needs from a dedicated and compassionate "team", but there is no mention of the cost. She was enraged a few days ago when a couple of people turned up to visit her unannounced. She's living out loud online, but she wants her privacy in real life.

In some ways she has invited us all in. She could argue that she is presenting a specific picture – the one she wants us to remember. "I do feel there will be lasting memories about me. That matters," she wrote to me in a direct message on Twitter.

The ethical questions abound. Make your own judgement.

Are those of us who've been drawn into her story going to remember a dying woman's courage, or are we hooked on a narrative where the stakes are the highest?

Will our memories be the ones she wants? What is the appeal of watching someone trying to stay alive? Is this the new way of death? You can put a "no visitors sign" on the door of your hospital room, but you welcome the world into your orbit and describe every last Fentanyl patch. Would we, the readers, be more dignified if we turned away? Or is this part of the human experience?

We've put together a condensed timeline of Lisa Adams' tweets. You can also read her entire feed.

Emma G Keller

Is this white-van man the new Van Gogh?

Paula Cocozza — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 18:00:00 GMT

Rick Minns began drawing on the side of his florist's delivery vehicle to pass the time. Now growing numbers of people are following his art on his Facebook site

Rick Minns drives a white van, but he likes it best when it's muddy. In just 10 minutes, he can turn a filthy door panel into a work of art. See the complicated shading of this girl and boy, holding hands as they walk into the darkness of heavily caked mud, clutching balloons as fluffy as clouds? Her diffidence, his confidence, the curl of her hair, the tilt of his hat: such detail, and all created by a bloke doodling with his finger on the side of his van. Actually, this piece took more like 15 to 20 minutes, he says. He calls his style "graffilthy".

Minns, 39, works on deliveries for a florist wholesaler in Bowthorpe, Norwich. Over the past few days, it is fair to say that Flowervision – run by Minns' brother – has become better known for Minns' artworks than its floristry. "I started doing it two or three years ago," he says. The estate where Flowervision kept its vans had "a problem with people taking catalytic converters. We were keen to have someone around to put people off. Obviously there's not much to do – just standing about. I started doodling on the vans and they turned into pictures."

He finds images online, or takes photographs, and then copies them into the mud using his finger or a cottonbud. Beside the pictures, he scrawls: "If you see this and smile, please let me know – Facebook Ruddy Muddy." In growing numbers, people are doing just that.

One of the advantages of painting on a van instead of indoors on canvas is that the paintings become more intricate depending on the weather. One landscape recently benefited from a hailstorm: suddenly Minns' moody sky was spattered with white dots, each one where a stone had struck. The best pictures are built over a number of days. "You leave it and then go back and lift a bit more mud out of certain places, leave it a couple more days and then lift it again." Different gradations of white then appear. In terms of weather, Minns says that this is "the best winter since I've started. The conditions have just been perfect. Wind and sun – keeps the mud on."

Perhaps every artist has a nemesis though, and in Minns' case it is the pressure washer. Flowervision owns one, and once a fortnight Minns and his fellow drivers must clean their vans. The girl and boy with the balloons will be gone by the end of the week. "Initially, I felt sad about washing off the pictures," he says. "But now I see it as an opportunity to do something new."

Paula Cocozza

Benefits Street backlash continues as petition calls for series to be axed

Hatty Collier — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 17:12:54 GMT

Channel 4 says controversial documentary was fair and balanced amid accusations programme had 'stirred up hatred'

Channel 4 is facing an online petition urging it to axe the controversial documentary series Benefits Street, as the number of complaints about the show reaches nearly 700.

More than 3,000 people have signed the change.org petition, which asks Channel 4 not to air any of the four further episodes of the series, and to make a charity donation for the harm caused by "stirring up hatred".

Media regulator Ofcom said it had received nearly 300 complaints about the show by Wednesday morning, relating to unfair, misleading and offensive portrayals of benefits claimants, alleged criminal activity and excessive bad language. Channel 4 said it has received nearly 400 separate complaints about the show late on Wednesday.

Featuring the inhabitants of James Turner Street, which Channel 4 claims has one of the highest proportions of benefits dependents in Britain, the first episode of Benefits Street, aired on Monday night, was the broadcaster's most popular show in more than a year, attracting more than 4 million viewers.

Arshad Mahmood, of Bradford, who used to live near the Winson Green area of Birmingham where the documentary was filmed, set up the petition on Tuesday night, saying he was shocked by the public backlash on social media towards people on income support.

He said: "Having lived in Birmingham, not far from where the programme was made, I can honestly say this show is not representative of people in the area.

"Benefits Street has portrayed people on income support as scroungers and it's wrong. I have worked for 33 years, but after major surgery am now unable to work and receive some benefits. The backlash and abuse of social networks towards people on benefits as a result of this show has shocked me.

"Channel 4 should not broadcast any further episodes of the programme – it is creating a skewed image of a section of society and stirring up hatred. This is not a responsible approach from a public service broadcaster."

Those who signed the petition left messages of support for the people affected by the programme.

Some residents, who featured in the documentary, said they has been tricked by the programme makers, Love Productions, and were told it would be about community spirit.

A Channel 4 spokesman said Benefits Street was a "fair and balanced observational documentary", with contributors briefed extensively before filming and given the chance not to be included, or to view and comment on programmes they featured in before broadcast.

On Tuesday, those who had appeared in the programme were keeping a low profile. Desmond Jaddoo, a community activist, said those he had spoken to felt "very much betrayed".

"They said they believed the programme was going to be called Community Spirit. They found out about the name change last week. They were concerned about it and their concerns were borne out last night when it was aired," he said.

On Tuesday, other residents were coming to terms with a kind of celebrity they had not exactly been looking for. Within hours, one said, people were tweeting threats and making comments on social media. By Tuesday afternoon, young men in fast cars were driving down the street shouting "Benefits Street!" and laughing at people walking down the road.

Footage from the documentary series prompted West Midlands police to consider launching new investigations on Tuesday, after they were inundated with comments from viewers concerned that it may have featured criminal activity.

The force said it was assessing whether footage from the show could assist in ongoing investigations, or could warrant new inquiries being launched.

The Channel 4 spokesman added: "The production crew were filming in a purely observational capacity – at no stage was criminal behaviour encouraged or condoned. All contributors were briefed that if they carried out criminal activity on camera, this could result in criminal investigations after broadcast."

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Hatty Collier

Arrested Iranian activists and bloggers accused of BBC links

Saeed Kamali Dehghan — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 16:59:03 GMT

Allegations believed to be part of effort by Revolutionary Guards to undermine president's moves to improve contact with the west

Iranian judicial authorities have accused a group of recently jailed activists and bloggers of having links with the BBC and its past training courses.

At least 16 Iranian nationals, including employees of the technology website Narenji, were arrested in December in the southern province of Kerman as part of another crackdown by the intelligence forces of the elite Revolutionary Guards.

Half of those arrested have since been released on bail, the Guardian has learned, but the rest, including Narenji's staff, remain in detention.

The head of Kerman's justice department, Ali Tavakoli, alleged this week that those arrested had participated in projects run by the BBC and received funds deriving from London.

Iranian authorities have a deep suspicion of the BBC, especially its Persian service, which they accuse of having a political agenda, and have previously arrested people on charges of working or having links with the broadcaster.

"This gang was running a number of projects and plans for anti-revolutionary Iranians based abroad, especially for the BBC Persian under the guise of legitimate activities," he said during a press conference.

"Financial aid for this group was usually provided from London under the pretext of charitable donations. The director of the team was an individual who has served the BBC as a mentor and teacher in a number of countries such as Malaysia, India and Afghanistan and his travels to these countries was paid for by British intelligence services."

Tavakoli said that those held had confessed to "being tasked with fuelling social tension, spreading doubts and misrepresentations". It was not clear if the eight still in jail had access to lawyers or to their families.

He said: "They were consciously serving the plots designed by the sworn enemies of this country and they deserve to receive the most severe punishment."

The Guardian reported last year that the Iranian authorities had been conducting a smear campaign designed to discredit and intimidate London-based Iranian journalists working for BBC Persian.

A number of BBC Persian staff were victims of false allegations of sexual misconduct, duplicated Facebook accounts, and harassment of their family members in Iran including being summoned by the intelligence officials for questioning. The harassments have continued despite the election of Hassan Rouhani as president.

At least one of the detainees was among the trainees of an award-winning journalism development programme run by the BBC World Service Trust from 2006 to 2010, called ZigZag.

The BBC has denied that those arrested were co-operating with it and said the training programmes mentioned by the Iranian authorities ended four years ago, according to BBC Persian.

Soon after their arrests were made in Kerman, the semi-official Fars news agency, affiliated to the Revolutionary Guards, said the detainees has be in "contact with enemy media based abroad with the aim of producing content for educational websites targeted at citizen-journalists".

Bloggers and activists currently in jail include Aliasghar Honarmand, who is the founder of Narenji, which specialises in gadget news, Abbas Vahedi, Hossein Nozari, Reza Nozari, Amir Sadeghpour, Mehdi Faryabi, Ehsan Paknejad and Malihe Nakhaei.

A former BBC project manager, who did not want to be named, told the Guardian: "I believe the arrests, especially of the Narenji team, to be part of the reaction of the hardliners within the Iranian establishment to the attempts of President Rouhani to move towards the opening up of cyberspace and the media sphere; and to relax the previous rigid attitude towards contacts with foreign institutions."

The arrests have also coincided with attempts by the BBC to obtain stronger operational presence in Iran.

"As the Revolutionary Guards are opposed in general to improved contacts with the west; and in particular to developing contacts with foreign media outlets, especially the BBC, it seems they have revived an old and discredited story in an attempt to undermine the president's initiatives in this sphere," said the former BBC staffer.

"Additionally, after what have been in the eyes of the hardliners, unacceptable concessions by the government on the nuclear agenda, this could be part of a campaign to show that foreign policy compromises will not be matched by any accompanying liberalisation in the domestic sphere."

Saeed Kamali Dehghan

BBC telling us it staged sequences makes Hidden Kingdoms hard to watch

Mark Lawson — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 16:24:00 GMT

New three-part series has sequences with animals filmed in the studio that make you wonder about the truth of the rest of it

Some newspaper-generated controversies about the BBC can be accused of making an elephant out of a mouse. But the latest – involving, as it happens, an elephant and a mouse-like creature – raises valid concerns about the extent to which visual trickery is justified in factual programmes.

Hidden Kingdoms – a three-part series starting next Thursday on BBC1 – is another of the broadcaster's experiments with what post-Attenborough wildlife programmes might be like. Indeed, the show is a sort of sequel to Sir David's Life in the Undergrowth, stooping to forest or jungle ground-level to capture the habits of some of the smallest creatures on the planet.

In the absence of Attenborough, Stephen Fry, sounding disconcertingly like John Hurt, concentrates on the deepest sonorities of his voice as he commentates on scenes of, for example, an African elephant shrew (or sengi) quaking close to the thundering feet of an elephant.

Viewers are warned in advance, though, that some sequences have been dramatised for narrative or emotional impact, with some animals filmed in captivity or in the studio. Publicity material relating to the series further explains that, in order to present the perspective of the tiny protagonist in each scene, "stages" or tableaux have sometimes been digitally created around the genuine footage of the animals and insects.

This attempt at being transparent about the process was clearly intended to pre-empt a repeat of controversies about "faked" wildlife footage in previous series, even including some by Attenborough. However, admitting to heavy drinking does not prevent people concluding that you are an alcoholic and the controversy has simply happened anyway, with the spin that the BBC has "confessed" to fakery.

But, on the evidence of the first two episodes of Hidden Kingdoms, I think that there is a problem with the methods used and that it has only been increased by the openness about what has been done. Watching the show is like living with a liar: you start to question everything.

Much of the footage clearly is, in the great BBC nature film tradition, shot in situ in jungles and forests, making pioneering use of low-level tracking cameras, high-speed film, super slo-mo and so on. Sometimes – as, for instance, in the shots where the shrew and the elephant are placed in exaggerated proximity – it's clear that digital subterfuge has been used.

The difficulty comes in the sequences where it's less clear whether we are watching realism or creativity. A grasshopper mouse, a rodent with unusual immunity to venom, kills a scorpion in a moment that is both educative and enthralling in the best traditions of the form. But a soundtrack of doubt is running in our heads: did the encounter happen in a zoo or TV compound? Was the arachnid perhaps even digitally created? A disclaimer that relates only to some of the images in the series has the effect of fatally infecting all of them with scepticism.

Some would argue that the provenance of the shots matters less in wildlife programmes, which are essentially a form of entertainment, than in news and current affairs. Another available defence is that Hidden Kingdoms makes little pretence to be a documentary or reportorial account. Placed in the 8pm slot, and so clearly aimed at family and younger audiences, it arranges the information into Disneyesque playlets with the animals and insects soppily personified by the voice-over: "This young tree shrew must now leave her home." And: "With her mother gone, how will this youngster learn the secrets of sengi life?"

But the weakness of these excuses is that nature programmes – perhaps more than any other form of television, except top sporting events – depend heavily for their effect on the viewer's sense of privileged admission: the amazement that cameras have been able to penetrate the lairs of previously unseen creatures. More than any other subject-matter, nature demands a naturalistic approach. The shot of a chipmunk graveyard – littered with skeletons left by predators – that features in the second programme is astonishing if true, but frustrating and worthless if merely a digital effect.

The reputation of nature and wildlife documentaries has been built on the viewer's frequent reaction of "I can't believe I'm seeing this." Once we don't know whether what we're seeing can be believed – when "Wow!" is closely followed by "How?" – the genre is dangerously compromised and loses much of its point.

Mark Lawson

Saturday Night Live adds Sasheer Zamata, but will things change? | Eris Zion Venia Dyson

Eris Zion Venia Dyson — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 15:50:55 GMT

Eris Zion Venia Dyson: Though Zamata's hiring is undeniably a step forward, culture must change behind the camera as much as it does on stage

Eris Zion Venia Dyson

Tumblr for the arts – live chat

Matthew Caines — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 15:32:00 GMT

Join us from noon on Tuesday 14 January to talk all things Tumblr, from social strategies to case studies – the third in our series of social media surgeries
• Join our panel

A fan of great art in ugly rooms? There's a Tumblr for that. More of a corporate-logos-on-classic-paintings kind of person? I give you the Swoosh Art Tumblr. What about northern and early Renaissance art turned into GIFs? Check out these deeply funny animated collages from web wizard James Kerr.

Tumblr – the gift that keeps on giving. Just when you think you've reached complete culture comedy saturation, another one pops up in its place (Idea for an Artwork comes highly recommended). But the arts on Tumblr aren't all about insider jokes and funny one-liners; in fact, the platform has the potential to foster genuine long-term engagement for venues and organisations – especially those looking to tap into a younger demographic with highly visual content, both key features of the blogging tool.

Add to that the fact it's easy to use and that Tumblr has visit times typically longer than those of other social networks, and you can see how it can make for a pretty powerful weapon. But how do you go about setting up a shareable and popular Tumblr – one that goes on being followed and read long after its launch?

As Katie Moffat wrote for us last year: "Like any social network, it takes time to get Tumblr right. But, with the right thought behind it, and investment of time, it may well prove to be the right platform for you."

Well why find out by starting right here, by joining in with our social surgery on Tumblr for arts and culture organisations, which takes place below, in the comments section, from 12-2pm on Tuesday 14 January. We'll be looking at everything from the simple and straightforward – what to post, how to post and when – all the way through to the more advanced case studies and practices.

Join our panel

This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. To get more articles like this direct to your inbox, sign up free to become a member of the Culture Professionals Network.

Matthew Caines

Coronation Street tear-jerker to fuel the post-Christmas comedown | Media Monkey

Monkey — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 15:09:49 GMT

After the festive hols, the new year comedown. In an email headlined: "CORONATION STREET – EXCLUSIVE SCREENING INVITATION", ITV is summoning hacks to Salford on 10 January to view the "final episodes of one of the best-loved characters in British Soap". Spoiler alert: The broadcaster will screen "Hayley Cropper's moving final scenes" as the popular character loses her battle with terminal cancer. Corrie bosses are promising a "painful, tear-jerking" exit for Hayley's long-speculated demise, which viewers had been spared over Christmas. "A light lunch will be provided" to leaven the experience for the assembled journos.

Monkey

Channel 4 has betrayed the residents of Benefits Street | Lynsey Hanley

Lynsey Hanley — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 14:45:00 GMT

The aim of this series about an impoverished part of Birmingham appears to be generating as many hateful tweets as possible

When Channel 4 makes a documentary series about one of the poorest streets in Britain, you're no longer expecting (as you might have done in, say, 1983) a reflective and contextualised look at how people make lives for themselves in adverse circumstances.

Benefits Street, which started on Monday, goes much further than that. I've never seen a programme so obviously edited in order to generate Twitter posts. You can call a series anything you like – and at least Benefits Street, though inflammatory, isn't as crassly judgmental as the BBC's equivalent, Saints and Scroungers – but Channel 4 knows what it's doing, and is quite happy to do the government's dirty work.

The series jettisons the long, commentary-free scenes of true observational filmmaking in favour of trailer-sized soundbites designed to circumvent real debate. The first episode introduces a number of residents of James Turner Street, a road of terraced houses within walking distance of Birmingham city centre. Dee, a likeable and level-headed mother, is pigeonholed from the moment she appears. She is not simply bringing up two children, the narrator tells us, but "bringing up two children on benefits". When Danny, a youngish recidivist, is talking about his litany of convictions, the Benefits Street hashtag flashes handily on screen. No opportunity to reflect; no chance to observe that Danny is perfectly aware of the petty stupidity of his life as it is now. Only instantaneous judgments are invited, in 140 characters or less.

A third of children in Birmingham live in poverty. As well as Winson Green, they live in places like Kingstanding, and Stechford, and Hockley – none of which the programme-makers are likely to have had heard of, given that they're poor without being edgy. In the words of geographer Danny Dorling, they're the kinds of places where, as streets and neighbourhoods become more polarised over time, "just to get by is extraordinary".

There's a wilful ignorance at play here: a casual blindness to the fact that the people living on James Turner Street lose any say they have in how they are portrayed as soon as the makers of the series enter the editing suite. Some residents are said to feel betrayed, yet the imbalance of power from the outset determined how their lives would be shown.

The sort of lives that make sense to TV producers – middle-class lives, the lives of people they know and associate with – are infinitely more likely to be shown in the whole and documented without judgment. The lives of people who rarely get to speak, in full, about their day-to-day experiences will be subject to a travesty of that whole. The blunt immediacy of TV only makes this more pronounced, with a disproportionate and detrimental impact on those without power.

Benefits Street is, in spirit, straight out of Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle: a sort of visual vomit-fest in which you can binge on things you purport to hate the sight of, and then purge yourself on Twitter, venting empty outrage then going back for more.

How I long for circumstances in which Channel 4, true to its original spirit, actually sets up home in Winson Green, asks people what they think a programme about their lives should show, and involves them in every aspect of its making. That would be difficult, wouldn't it? It would require communication, responsibility and an understanding that people who seem to be utterly unlike you are also human.

Lynsey Hanley is the author of Estates: an Intimate History

Lynsey Hanley

Abducted Swedish journalists released in Syria

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 13:58:01 GMT

Writer Magnus Falkehed and photographer Niclas Hammarström were abducted as they were leaving Syria in November

Two Swedish journalists who were abducted in Syria in November have been released.

Sweden's foreign ministry confirmed on Wednesday that writer Magnus Falkehed and photographer Niclas Hammarström had been released and were receiving assistance from Swedish diplomats in Beirut.

The two freelance journalists were abducted as they were on their way out of Syria in November.

Swedish authorities would not say who abducted them or how they were set free. But national police spokeswoman Jessica Krasser Fremnell said Swedish police had worked closely with other authorities to secure their release.

Press advocacy groups say Syria has become the most dangerous country in the world for reporters over the past two years, with kidnappings becoming a major threat.

Meanwhile, activists say rebels in Syria have seized control of a hospital in the northern city of Aleppo that was used as a base for the area by their al-Qaida rivals.

The capture of the hospital was a boost for the rebels, who only the day before saw 20 of their fighters killed in an al-Qaida suicide car bombing in the northern city of Darkoush, said the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

It also underscores the intensity of the rebel infighting that has raged for days between Syrian rebels and their one-time allies, fighters from the extremist Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Also in Aleppo, the observatory said a series of government air strikes in two rebel-held suburbs late on Tuesday night killed 19 people. There were no further details. The government in Damascus did not comment on the bombings.

Millionaire Steve Forbes has a cynical campaign to keep working people down | Richard L Trumka

Richard L Trumka — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 13:45:00 GMT

A minimum wage hike would improve the lives of 30 million working Americans. Forbes wants to falsely spin it as a job killer

What do you give to a man who has everything? A man like publisher Steve Forbes, worth a reported $430m. What do you give him if you're his beloved-but-on-the-ropes Republican Party?

How about a cynical campaign to defeat a US federal minimum wage increase?

That's what Forbes calls for in his column in the 18 November edition of Forbes magazine. To keep from getting "smacked around by President Obama and congressional Democrats", instead of "passively taking a hit", Republicans should gin up their spin machine to portray a minimum wage increase as a job-killer. Hold House hearings, he says, and parade out people who will say they were hurt by the last minimum wage increase.

Do they really think those House witch hunt hearings still have any credibility?

In case they do, here's a big red flag for Forbes and any Republicans who may be listening to his advice: the public doesn't buy your argument. A recent national survey conducted for the National Employment Law Project (Nelp) by Hart Research Associates finds just 25% buy the claim that raising America's wage floor so working people can live in decency costs jobs.

And the public would be right. Recent respected academic research has determined that raising the minimum wage does not result in job loss – even during bad economic times.

Forbes, a two-time unsuccessful Republican presidential candidate, is on the wrong side of the public in more ways than one. The Nelp-commissioned survey shows that 80% of the public – including 62% of those in Forbes' own party – supports raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour and adjusting it for inflation in the future, as President Obama and congressional Democrats propose.

An increase in the minimum wage is overdue. If the minimum wage had just kept pace with inflation since 1969, it would be around $10.70 an hour today instead of $7.25 (or the scandalous $2.13 for tipped workers). If it had kept up with the growth of workers' productivity, it would be $18.72. Meanwhile, if it matched the wage growth of the wealthiest 1%, it would be $28.34.

The stagnation of the minimum wage is digging a deeper and deeper hole between the Steve Forbes's of this country and the rest of us. For the first time since the Great Depression, middle-class families have been losing ground for more than a decade. In fact, America's working families are earning less today than 15 years ago.

This loss hasn't been about productivity – no, America's workers are more productive than ever. And it's not about education – in fact, wages for college grads outside the top income brackets have stagnated or even declined.

What's happened is that the wealthiest people in America have sucked up all the pay raises. Since 1997, all income growth has gone to the wealthiest 10%. Most of those increases have gone to the richest 1%.

Raising the minimum wage is the right way to begin closing the economic chasm between America's wealthy and regular working people. Lifting the wage to $10.10 an hour would benefit 30 million workers, pump $32bn into the economy and add 140,000 new jobs – all without increasing the national deficit. It would have particular impact on the lives of women – who are two-thirds of minimum wage earners.

Not to mention that it's the right thing to do. Does anyone who works hard and plays by the rules in this wealthy nation deserve to live in poverty, forced to choose between paying for rent or food or the heating bill?

Most people in the country think not. But with his $430m, Steve Forbes is living a very comfortable life as he plots to deny others the basic decency of a hard-earned wage they can live on.

Richard L Trumka

Will Young: BBC's Alan Yentob makes me want to leave right now | Media Monkey

Monkey — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 13:36:15 GMT

BBC creative director Alan Yentob's arts profiles leave Will Young yawning, it appears. Discussing the public appetite for shows such as Pop Idol, which first catapulted Young to fame in 2002, the singer said: "People do get het up about a show like Idol. It's really entertaining. You're not watching Imagine with Alan Yentob. You're watching entertaining talent shows." Young, who speaks during a Radio 2 profile of Simon Fuller, the entrepreneur behind the Idol format, broadcast on Wednesday night, is picky about his arts presenters. He happily submitted to Yentob's rival, Melvyn Bragg, for an "intensely personal and intimate" South Bank Show special.

Monkey

Liverpool Echo to get Sunday edition

Roy Greenslade — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 13:26:00 GMT

The Liverpool Echo is to launch a Sunday edition on 19 January. Trinity Mirror's announcement comes soon after its closure of its weekly title, the Liverpool Post.

Print sales of the Echo, which publishes from Monday to Saturday, stood at an average of 74,984 copies a day in the first six months of last year (the last available audited figures). That was 7.2% down on the same period in 2012.

In May last year the Echo published a new edition for the Wirral, which is thought to have added extra circulation.

Trinity Mirror says the launch of a Sunday issue - with a cover price of 50p - follows "months of planning and research". According to the press release statement it will "strengthen the brand's online publishing by creating a flow of content across the weekend that will further fuel audience growth on the Echo's thriving desktop, mobile and social media platforms".

The Echo's editor, Ali Machray, sees the launch as "testimony to what an amazing city Liverpool is... Its news and sports potential are astounding and we're determined to give its people a Sunday Echo they can savour."

Trinity Mirror's chief executive, Simon Fox, referred to it as "an exciting opportunity for the group."

Roy Greenslade

Turkish police chiefs removed from posts amid graft investigation

Wed, 08 Jan 2014 13:06:31 GMT

Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan says police influenced by cleric Fethullah Gülen contrived graft scandal

Turkey's deputy police chief was sacked overnight, the most senior commander yet targeted in the purge of a force heavily influenced by a cleric whom the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, accuses of plotting to seize the levers of state power.

Erdoğan's AK party sent plans to parliament allowing the government more say over the appointment of prosecutors and judges.

Erdoğan argues that a judiciary and police in the sway of the Hizmet (Service) movement of Fethullah Gülen contrived a graft investigation that is shaking his administration.

The police website said the deputy head of the national police, Muammer Bucak, and provincial chiefs, among them the commanders in the capital, Ankara, and the Aegean province of Izmir, were removed from their posts.

The government has purged hundreds of police since the graft scandal erupted on 17 December, with the detention of dozens of people including businessmen close to the government and three cabinet ministers' sons. Among those questioned, most have been released. A remaining 24, including two of the ministers' sons, remain in custody, according to local media.

Details of the allegations have not been made public, but are believed to relate to construction and real estate projects and Turkey's gold trade with Iran, according to Turkish newspaper reports citing the prosecutors' documents.

The affair, which has exposed a rift within the Turkish political establishment, has hit market confidence, driving the lira to new lows. Ratings agency Fitch warned strains on institutional integrity were among the factors that could weaken Turkey's creditworthiness.

Erdoğan has in the past referred to a foreign-backed interest rate lobby, or "chaos lobby", trying to force Turkey into raising rates and slowing down its economy.

Turkey's government bond curve briefly inverted on Tuesday, short-term yields rising above long-term yields, a rare phenomenon showing traders were betting on an emergency interest rate hike to support the lira. But bonds returned to more normal levels on Wednesday after the finance minister, Mehmet Simsek, appeared to rule out a rate hike.

Continued uncertainty or instability could present hazards for the region, where Ankara has extended its role under Erdoğan. Turkey borders Iraq, Iran and Syria and hosts hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees.

Don't know any of the BBC Sound of 2014 acts? Don't worry, just listen | Oscar Rickett

Oscar Rickett — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 13:05:47 GMT

It's easy to feel past it if you haven't heard of the next big thing in music. But that anxiety at least shows you're curious about pop culture

Last month, the BBC revealed its Sound of 2014 longlist. Compiled with the help of 170 tastemakers, the poll "showcases some of the brightest new acts for the year ahead". This week, the top five are being revealed, one day at a time, with the winner being anointed on Nick Grimshaw's Radio 1 show on Friday in what will hopefully be a frenzied, bacchic ritual presided over by a group of major label executives.

These mainstream polls that strive for credibility always attract the slings and arrows of weary old hands who feel they know better, or critics who see them, with some justification perhaps, as part of a malevolent music industry plot to make the artists with the most money behind them stars. But mostly, plenty of people will look at the poll and think, "I have never heard of anyone on this list".

It's an accepted truism in our culture that, after a particular age, most people lose touch with the latest fashions and become square dads, old aunts or past-it uncles. Once, you were cutting the sharpest shapes at the hippest discotheques. Now, you're using words such as "discotheque". The world rushes past you at an ever-increasing pace and when you do come across a new artist you can barely understand their name because it's some kind of acronym or a collection of odd symbols. The flipside of this is that there's a widespread suspicion of anyone over the age of 40 who listens to new music, because really you should stop being so bloody pretentious and start doing decent things like having children and doing the washing-up.

This is why feeling out of date can result in an anger aimed at those perceived to be in the know. That anger often lurks behind many of the tiresome jokes and rants about hipsters, which so often portray this poorly defined group of people as laughing smugly at the rest of society. I don't think anyone has actually ever been laughed at by a braying group of hipsters in real life but it's the kind of thing you can imagine happening if you feel as if you're standing on the outside. When you start to feel out of touch it can make you anxious, afraid even – of getting old and boring and beyond that, if you want to be really dramatic, of death itself. Better, then, to dismiss anyone you think is still up to date as an idiot or a hipster.

Though it's associated with getting older, you can begin to feel left out of popular culture at almost any age. We've come a long way since The Replacement's 1985 love letter to alternative radio, Left of the Dial, in which singer Paul Westerberg reads about the band of a girl he likes in a regional paper, before trying to find their music on a series of local stations. Today, staying hip is a question of sifting through a mass of material across the internet. You will never have heard of all the bands because there are so many. In this way, an awareness of what is out there can make you feel as though you are out of touch, and that's no bad thing. It just means you know that there's always more to listen to, more to read, more to see.

Whatever staying up to date actually means, I can say fairly confidently that it doesn't relate to knowing who BBC Sound of 2014 picks Luke Sital Singh or George Ezra are. Recently, I started worrying that I hadn't heard enough music, so I emailed some friends and asked them to share some of what they'd been listening to. I wasn't asking for an approved list of music, I was asking for something different, something that might surprise me. If you've stopped wanting to listen to music you haven't heard before, or you've stopped feeling curious about the world, then you should be worried, however old you are. But if you don't recognise any of the names on an industry poll, I wouldn't worry about it. Just have a listen to a couple of their songs. You never know, you might like them.

• This article was commissioned after a suggestion by Pairubu

Oscar Rickett

China blocks the Guardian, censorship-tracking website says

Jonathan Kaiman — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 12:07:20 GMT

Attempts to access the Guardian site in Beijing fail, but no clear reason for China's leadership to take issue with recent content

Jonathan Kaiman