What’s the big idea?Print is not dead. For all the wily charmsof the digital worldwith its tweets, feeds,blogs and apps, there is still nothing like the pleasure createdby ink on paper.

he server farms and all their delights cannot replace time spent in the company of something you can actually hold, whose pages you can turn down and whose spine you can crack. We believe in magazines which engross

and inspire at the end of a long week. We have no interest in creating throwaway media – we want to make something which is treasured, which ends its days making the bookshelf, coffee table or toilet just that little bit prettier and more civilised. And we believe that everyone needs a screen break.

Perspective, too, is not dead. Kneejerk punditry, live-blogging and the pounding waves of the 24-hour news cycle have their appeal. But there’s also joy in getting your head above the water, sucking in a lungful of clear air and taking your bearings.

This is our starting point. With our belief in print and perspective we bring you , the UK's quarterly almanac. A handsome devil that curates the news and captures the times, written by journalists armed with three months’ worth of hindsight, and without the albatross of an hourly deadline around their necks.

As the weeks and months zip by, we are keeping track, picking out the patterns, and seeing what is left after the dust has settled. We will strip out the white noise and give you the essentials, telling the story of the UK and the world over the last quarter.

This publication, then, is our flag in the sand – a magazine of record from editors determined to swim against the electronic tide. We'd love to have you with us.

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contentsSat 1st Jan – Thu 31st Mar 2011

Mar

Feb

MIThe March

for the AlternativeSat 26th Mar

Philip Pullman on the protests against cuts

Mar

Feb

MI

Moments that mattered

Mar

Feb

MI

Retrospectives

Mar

Feb

MI Infographics and illustrations

Mar

Feb

MI

How to avoid corporation tax

Sat 19th FebEnjoying a life

less levied

Mar

Feb

MI

The month in popMar openerThe meanings

of March’schart hits

The filmformula

Mon 28th FebThe making of every cinematic release

of February

Mar

Feb

MI

One list to rule them all

Sun 27th FebThe film awards season distilled

Mar

Feb

MISteven Davies

Mon 28th FebAlan Duffy on homophobia

in sport

Mar

Feb

MI

Not coming to a cinema near you

12th FebMourning the lost films

of the writers’ strike

Expectant mothersThu 20th Jan

Caroline McGinn ona new wave of

politicised mums

Mar

Feb

MIKeys and Gray

Sat 22nd JanKevin Arscott on the making of the perfect

tabloid storm

Mar

Feb

MI

Soap opera death watch

Mon 3rd Jan60 years of dramatic

mortality

Mar

Feb

MI

The Ashes digestedFri 7th Jan

Visualising the battle for the urn

Gail forceWed 26th Jan

Gail Sheridan and the rise and fall

of Tommy

Mar

Feb

MI

Arab Spring timelineFri 14th Jan

From Tunisia to Bahrain: How unrest spread across

the region

“It all startswith a coffee

machine”Mon 28th Feb

Morgan Spurlocklooks at the

effects of productplacement

Heroes ofthe downturn

Sat 5th FebTales of ordinarymen and womenfighting cutbacks

Soldierswithout

weaponsWed 9th Mar

At home with thePalestinian national

football team

PoliticsMedia & PREconomicsSportArts & entertainmentProminent peopleScience & natureCrime & legal

contentsSat 1st Jan – Thu 31st Mar 2011

PROlOGuEThe quarter in pictures

(cryptic)

Mar

Feb

MI

The month in cuts

Jan opener January’s new public

sector savings

“You can’tprocess me with a normal brain”

Mon 7th MarCharlie Sheen’s fall from grace

Mar

Feb

MI

The butterfly effectThu 24th MarHow China’s

decades-long boom is making British

trains late

Mar

Feb

MI

“I am the Ripper”4th Jan

Michael Bilton recounts the strange tale of

Yorkshire Ripper hoaxer Wearside Jack

See you in courtMon 10th JanA collection of

the more unusual court cases of

the quarter

The book is like the spoonWed 16th Feb

Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude Carrière discuss the future

of the book

Do not go gentle intothat good night…

Sun 27th MarCould changing theclocks save lives?

Our son of a bitchThu 17th Mar

The West’s role in the Arab dictatorships

The smartmoney

Tue 8th MarThe bets you should

have made thisquarter

Anjemprovocateur

Wed 2nd FebDelayed Gratificaton

meets Anjem Choudary

Mar

Feb

MI

The month in tweetsFeb opener

The world seenby hashtag

Mar

Feb

MIEgypt

Fri 11th FebGigi Ibrahim

Hosni Mubarak’s departure

Seven yearsfor a piece of

muttonSat 26th Feb

The price of crimein Victorian

times

Mar

Feb

MITucson

Sat 8th JanMark Evans on the

shooting of 19 people in Tucson, Arizona

The new gold rushTue 1st Mar

Three very different tales from gold’s

new frontiers

Meet the Justice union

Sun 13th MarThe UK’s first

real life superhero team prepares to

hit the streets

Mar

Feb

MIJapan

Fri 11th MarJon Wilks on the 9.0

magnitude earthquake

SnapdecisionsThu 3rd Feb

The rise of thesuper crocodile

Can we stillafford the panda?

Mon 10th JanAlan Rutter asks

whether it’s time to let the panda bear go

Mar

Feb

MISDSS

Tue 11th JanThe Sloan Digital

Sky Survey: a new way to look at the

universe

Mar

Feb

MI

The sexual revolution

started here17th Mar

Marie Stopes, the heroine of birth

control

The neverending story

Tue 18th JanThe literary characters

who are outlivingtheir creators

The filmformula

Mon 31st JanThe making of

every cinematic release of January

“The ice creamis just a cover”

Thu 24th FebThe politics of breast

milk ice cream

Enemiesof the State

Tue 4th JanNew reasons for national paranoia

The film formulaThu 31st Mar

The making of everycinematic release of March

EPIlOGuEThe quarter in pictures

(explicit)

Mar

Feb

MIChristchurch

Tue 22nd FebKaren Wrigglesworth on the 6.3 magnitude

aftershock

Pete Postlethwaiteremembered

Sun 2nd JanGreg Hersov recallsone of his favourite

memories of the late actor

“Pete was always interested in something personal to do with the part. When we were doing ‘The Tempest’ in 2007, the big question for him – as for any actor playing Prospero – was Prospero’s staff,

which he’s supposed to break at the end. And most actors worth their salt will be preoccupied with ‘what is my staff?’ because they often turn up and get landed with some great Old Testament club or some daft Darth Vader-like thing. And obviously when you talk about the staff you have to talk about what magic is in ‘The Tempest’ and what it means to be a magician.

So Pete and I had long talks about what we thought magic could be on stage and what we thought Prospero was about and how it was something to do with a man devoted to a certain exploration of life who had focused his mind, his body and his emotions in a certain kind of way so that he could make things happen, which I think is also the only way you can make an audience believe something. And after a few months of discussion, Pete said, ‘I found a piece of wood in the garden, I think it might be the staff.’ I was like, ‘Oh my God, he’s going to come up with a staff design and its going to be mental.’

So the next time I saw him he brought out this piece of wood and he held it and was balancing it on one finger, and it had a very particular size and a very particular kind of shape and it was very simple, very thin, not very big – just bigger than a conductor’s baton. He looked at me and I said, ‘Wow, that’s really amazing!’ so he varnished this piece of wood and he and friends of his did things to it and it came along to rehearsals. During rehearsals, one terrible time, I took a backward step and heard a dreadful crack. There was this awful, ‘I-can’t-believe-it’ moment, everyone froze... I had trodden on the staff. It was okay, though, thank God.

The staff became part of Pete when the audience saw it. He didn’t have to break it at the end, he handed it over to Ariel and just collapsed: he felt like all this power had come out of him. The audience believed him because he created it himself and I think that’s a kind of genius, to be able to do that, to have the originality and the taste and the care and the attention. No one who saw it would forget it and it was exactly the right thing for him to have. At the end of the run he gave it to me. He said, ‘I don’t need it any more, it’s for you.’ So I have it at home. It’s very special.

Pete very much brought a company together, he liked other actors and he liked to create a whole kind

of family from the company. For him every night was like doing a gig, he had that kind of live excitement: his dressing room door would be open two hours before curtain and he would be in there and he used to have the very respectable old custom among actors of having the odd pint of Guinness to see him through the evening, and people would just drop in and talk to him. He’d always have either Bob Dylan’s ‘Modern Times’ or Johnny Cash playing and he would chat away. And after the performance he’d always want to be there in the bar and talk about what happened, not in a laborious way but in a very fresh way.

Pete was fearless and he took risks, which is what all the great actors do. But there’s a world we live in now where everyone’s meant to deliver a brand or a known thing, and quite often I think actors are only being asked to give about 25 per cent of what they’re really capable of because people just want something everyone knows.

Daniel Day-Lewis, who gives these amazing performances on film, knew

Pete when he was a student and at Pete’s memorial service talked about

the time they spent in Bristol. It was because they met there, that when Dan was doing ‘In the Name of the Father’, he said, ‘I want Pete Postlethwaite to play my father.’ And it’s actors like Peter and Dan who I think really push the boundaries. Pete was a great exemplar of that and I think that sometimes

we don’t talk about the fact that this is what great acting is all

about: imaginatively transforming yourself into something and taking

risks as opposed to playing safe, which is what an awful lot of actors are being forced to

do at the moment.Pete would always do this fantastic kind of

farewell, he would go out into the theatre and do a clenched fist. It was just something he did that would make the audience feel like they had been involved in something, and make them feel special. That’s what I loved: he picked up on something that was a bit freer than theatre is normally, so the whole run of the play would be really exciting. He would always be in the moment and never got bored; he had people at the theatre who wanted to talk to him, he would have old friends he hadn’t seen for ages, he would have young filmmakers looking for help. It reminded me of being on the road with someone, with a band or something. It’s quite exceptional for an actor to be like that.” l Interview: Rob Orchard

Pete Postlethwaite, 7th Feb 1946-2nd Jan 2011.

Pete PostlethwaiteGreg Hersov, artistic director of the Royal Exchange, remembers

Pete Postlethwaite, who died on 2nd January.

2ndSun

“It kind of reminded me of

being on the road with someone, with

a band or something. It’s quite exceptional

for an actor to be like that”

JanSat 1st

A riot breaks out at Ford open prison as inmates torch buildings in protest at a clampdown on illegal drinking. The balaclava-clad rioters cause an estimated £3 million worth of damage.

Christopher Jefferies, the retired schoolteacher arrested in connection with the murder of Joanna Yeates, is released by police.m 22nd Jan ‘Moment that mattered’ m 23rd Jan m 7th Mar

60,000 homes in Northern Ireland have their water cut off temporarily to allow depleted reservoirs to refill. Vandals are blamed for emptying almost 5,000 gallons of water from temporary tanks in Coalisland, County Tyrone, causing some homes to be without running water for almost two weeks.

An estimated 2,000 red wing blackbirds fall mysteriously from the sky in Beebe, Arkansas. m 4th Jan

“It is a disaster of biblical proportions”Queensland’s treasurer, Andrew Fraser, warns that the state’s severe flooding could decimate its economy. m 11th Jan

Sun 2nd

Social media index Klout declares that teenage Canadian singer Justin Bieber is the most influential person in cyberspace.

‘The Archers’ celebrates its sixtieth anniversary with a double episode. After weeks of speculation about the content of the show that the BBC promised would ‘shake Ambridge to its core’ – including alien abduction, shootouts and bull rampages – Helen Archer has a baby and Nigel Pargetter falls off a roof. m 3rd Jan

Actress Zsa Zsa Gabor is rushed to hospital for an emergency amputation due to a blood clot in her leg.

The actor Pete Postlethwaite dies at the age of 64.f

The newgold rush Amid global financial turmoil, gold – longseen as the safest of safehavens – hit a historic highon 1st March as prices soaredto an unprecedented £877.29an ounce. This market-ledgold rush is having a hugeeffect around the world asprospectors, engineers, traders, warlords and scientists seek to cash in on the spike. Archie Davies and Marcus Webb explore three very different tales from gold’s new frontiers

Tue 1st

MarTue 1st “The price of this financial crisis is being borne by people who did not cause it” At the Commons Treasury Committee, governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King blames the financial sector for causing the UK’s economic woes, and says he is “surprised that the degree of public anger has not been greater”.

John Galliano is sacked by Christian Dior for “odious behaviour”. Dior had suspended the designer in February over alleged anti-semitic remarks. The dismissal followed a video surfacing of Galliano declaring on another occasion that “I love Hitler” and telling two women their parents “would have been gassed”.

The price of gold hits a historic high. gAt the Sugarswirlz bakery in Cardiff, a woman smashes display units, causes £400 in damage and attacks a member of staff after being told there are no more “sweet tooth fairy cakes” left.

Ice cream made from human breast milk is confiscated from a café by Westminster council amid fears it is not suitable for consumption. j 24th Feb ‘The ice cream is just a cover’

Wed 2nd In a shock victory, Ireland beat England at the Cricket World Cup in Bengaluru, India. England had been on track to win until Irish batsman Kevin O’Brien, whose hair had been dyed shocking pink to promote a cancer charity, stepped up and made the fastest century in the history of the World Cup, finally being run out after hitting 113 from 63 balls.

Police arrest 34 fans at Celtic Park during a particularly heated Old Firm derby between Rangers and Celtic; 187 further arrests are made in the area as a result of tensions sparked by the game.

The newgold rush

The first frontier: The Scottish Highlands

“F our billion?” It’s one of the more unusual parlour games I’ve played in my time and in one of

the more unusual parlours. The setting is Cononish Mine, 650 metres below Loch Lomond park in the Scottish Highlands, and the game is “guess the dollar value of the dirt around you”. Amazingly I seem to have hit the nugget on the head first time, although my companion is playing his cards close to his chest.

“That’s probably not a bad figure,” laughs Chris Sangster, the CEO of Scotgold, an Australian-funded company that owns the rights to mine in the area. “There’s nearly $250 million here,” he says, as we go deeper into the kilometre-long shaft. “Multiply that by five, because we think we’ve got five similar deposits nearby, and if you expand the area…” He shrugs as his grin broadens. Sangster is a circumspect, quietly spoken man, and he is not getting ahead of himself. But I don’t need to be so cautious: $250m seems likely, $1.25bn very possible and $4bn not beyond the bounds of reason – all lying in the Scottish earth waiting for somebody to come and get it. Welcome to the damp British frontline of a gold rush that is having transformative effects all over the world.

Unthinkable just a few years ago, a gold price above $1,400 (£858) an ounce is now the norm and Sangster and I are surrounded by the stuff. Yet the mine is dead: where you’d expect the clank and clatter of a hundred industrial drills busy at work there is only an eerie silence. Inside the tunnel, a rusty piece of equipment, long out of date, lies idle. We are the only ones here: all is currently calm on the new frontier and this gold mine is yet to sell a single ounce.

The reason for Cononish’s silence is that the mine sits just inside the boundary of Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, and near the Tay, a river protected by strict environmental and water-quality legislation. In August 2010 the park’s board, which is also the mine’s planning authority, rejected Scotgold’s latest planning application to begin mining. S

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Meet theJustice Union

Sun 13th

Outside a McDonald’s somewhere in Salford, a speeding Land Rover screeches to a halt, and two suspicious characters exit the vehicle. Something isn’t

right – they feel like they’re being watched, as if someone’s eyes are piercing them. Looking around, they spot a young man wearing a blue Lycra hood, a black eyemask similar to Zorro’s and a black leather trench coat. He is Knight Warrior, a “Real Life Superhero”“I stood a fair distance away getting ready to do something because it looked like a robbery was going to happen,” Knight Warrior says of this incident. “They looked around and saw me watching. As they saw me they drove off.” If this was a potentially bad situation thwarted by Knight Warrior’s presence, then he has achieved what the Real Life Superheroes are all about: small victories.

The Real Life Superhero (or RLSH) movement started as an American phenomenon, but has since spread to include costumed thrillseekers looking to help out their fellow man around the world. Over the last couple of years, a handful of British citizens have got in on the act with their own larger-than-life personae. Some, such as The Statesman and Lionheart, operate independ-ently, but a group of five new superheroes have formed their own “super team”. After months of discussion, they decided to call themselves ‘The Justice Union’ and opened the closest thing they have to a hideout – a Facebook page – on 13th March.

The group includes Terrorvision, a man from Kent in his mid-thirties who does graphic design work and is co-owner of a music recording studio. He is married and has a family. Dark Spartan patrols town centres and residential areas around Torbay at closing time. He too is married, “outing” himself as a hero to his wife after a series of packages – including a police riot shield, body armour and a cast iron Spartan helmet – started arriving at their house. Rounding out the team are three superheroes in their late teens: Man in Black, Knight Warrior and Blackvoid.

Blackvoid has a part-time job at a comic-book store in Plymouth, wears a Spandex mask and makes his own weapons, including a spring-loaded contraption that fires what looks like golf tees. Knight Warrior also has a Spandex mask and is secretive about his personal life. Man in Black has adopted a classic film noir look – a suit, a fedora and a scarf covering the lower half of his face. What these superheroes and crusaders like them around the world define as their mission varies. Some hit the street looking to stop

crime, others have a more humanitarian or charitable focus, and some a balance of both.

“My goal is to squash the socially acceptable apathy our country has adopted. I want to motivate “normal people” to help others,” Dark Spartan says. He tries to connect with the public by handing out his business card and fridge magnets to people while on patrol. Like the rest of the heroes, he also has a Facebook page. His day job is spent working in finance where he says he also encounters a fair amount of corruption.

“I hope to achieve lower crime rates and help the homeless to have more of a chance at life,” Blackvoid says, explaining his goal. “I do also want some public interaction.”

There may be anywhere from ten to 15 active RLSH in the UK, but keeping a headcount on a secret society is a hard task. The Justice Union is not the UK’s first superhero team. A couple of years ago there was a short-lived team with a similar name, the Union of Justice, featuring heroes like Captain Champion and Black Arrow, but those RLSH have since “retired”, moved on, or disappeared into the night.

Superheroes: a secret historyWhen people hear of the RLSH, many erroneously believe this is something new, probably inspired by films like ‘Kick-Ass’. The reality is that the concept goes much further back, to at least the 1970s, where we find some of the earliest recorded prototypes. Included in that line-up is The Fox, a shadowy environmental activist and Captain Sticky, a rotund man who drew attention to issues he was advocating with his flashy superhero costume.

The first known usage of the term “real life superhero” can be found in a small-press book by a mysterious individual named Night Rider. The rare book was titled ‘How to Be a Superhero’ and was published in 1980. Since then, occasional crusaders have

popped up here and there. Super Barrio, of Mexico City dressed as a luchador wrestler and championed working and housing rights in the mid-’80s. Captain Jackson, meanwhile patrolled the small town of Jackson, Michigan, from 1989 onwards.

The notorious Angle Grinder Man, angry at heavy-handed parking laws, spent the early 2000s sawing through wheel clamps on the streets of London. Motorists could get in touch with the vigilante through a hotline and soon Angle Grinder Man would arrive on the scene, firing up his namesake machine. There is no record of him after 2005.

The year 2005 is also when what is now considered the modern Real Life Superhero Movement began to develop rapidly. Hundreds of people have since signed up for the idea. Anyone can become a RLSH:

there is no central organisation, list of rules, or membership dues, which has led to a wide diversity of participants in the movement.

On the streets…This wide range of RLSH, of different political, religious, social, and economic backgrounds, has networked across America.

Phoenix Jones, the catalyst for a lot of media interest, seemed to appear

out of nowhere late last year, and for unknown reasons captured the media’s attention. He patrols the streets of Seattle up to five nights a week with his team, the Rain City Superhero Movement.

North of him, in Vancouver, Canada, is

Thanatos, a 61-year-old Vietnam vet. Thanatos

hands out supplies to Vancouver’s large homeless

population, in addition to doing some detective work. Motor Mouth, of San Francisco, leads the Pacific Protectorate who swung into action attempting do-it-yourself crowd-control during riots in Oakland, California last July.

One of the largest teams out there is the New York Initiative, which was started

On 13th March, five men tired of the crime they saw around them banded together to make a stand. Is this an example of the Big Society at work? Only if Cameron’s vision included martial arts, face masks and outfits ordered from eBay. Tea Krulos meets The Justice Union, the UK’s real life superheroes. Portraits by Rob Greig. Additional reporting Marcus Webb.

“My goal is to squash the

socially acceptable apathy our country

has adopted” – Dark Spartan

Original RLSH Captain Sticky pictured with Stan Lee of Marvel Comics in the early 1970s.

MarThu 17th The UN Security Council passes resolution 1973 (2011), which considers “that the widespread and systematic attacks currently taking place in the Libyan Arab Jamahiri-ya against the civilian population may amount to crimes against humanity” and imposes a no-fly zone over Libya. g m 21st Mar

“We are coming tonight… there won’t be any mercy” Speaking on state television, Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi threatens rebels in the eastern city of Benghazi.

Fri 18th Rajib Karim, a 31-year-old software engineer at British Airways, is jailed for 30 years for conspiring with Anwar al-Awlaki to blow up a transatlantic flight. Karim, based in Newcastle, had attacked BA’s computer systems and attempted to get a cabin crew job so he could plant a bomb onboard a flight.

The Tibetan parliament-in-exile, officially known as the Assembly of Tibetan People’s Deputies, passes a resolution asking the Dalai Lama – the fourteenth reincarnation of the Tenzing Gyatso, seen by Tibetans as the God King – to reconsider his request to resign as head of state.

Sat 19th Operation Odyssey Dawn in support of UN resolution 1973 begins, with air strikes by French warplanes on tanks used by Muammar Gaddafi’s forces outside Benghazi, and US cruise missile strikes from warships in the Mediterrannean. j 14th Jan ‘Arab Spring timeline’

A full Moon coincides with the perigee – the point in its orbit when it is closest to the Earth – to make a perigee-syzygy or “supermoon”, meaning the Moon is the closest it has been to the Earth for 19 years. m 20th Mar

Sian O’Callaghan goes missing after leaving Suju nightclub in Swindon. m 24th Mar

Our son of a bitch

The UN’s approval of air strikes on Libya put a new twist on the ongoing tale of Western engagement

with Arab dictatorships. Andrew Mueller examines our tortured relationship with the region’s strongmen…

It is plausibly the most brutally realistic assessment ever made by a head of government of one of his country’s allies: “He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.” It is most popularly attributed to

Franklin D Roosevelt, who reputedly said it about unlovely Nicaraguan autocrat Anastasio Somoza Garcia. It says much about US foreign policy – and about foreign policy in general – that every president of the United States, from George Washington onwards, could have said something of the sort about many of America’s diplomatic partners, and generally with good reason. If the current occupant of the White House has not yet had the opportunity, it could be that recent events in the Middle East have left him, along with everyone else, uncertain as to whose son of a bitch is whose. How the West was wonThe Middle Eastern regimes which have wobbled, tottered and collapsed since the beginning of 2011 have all relied upon American – and before that British, French and Italian – patronage and protection. Hosni Mubarak inherited Egypt’s presi-dency in 1981 after the assassination of Anwar El-Sadat, murdered by his own soldiers who were enraged at his efforts to make peace with Israel. Mubarak’s ruthless junta in Egypt received an average of US$2 billion for each of its 30 years in power, much of it in military aid, including 240 F-16s, which would have been comfortably sufficient to see off Libya’s flying circus of Soviet-built antiques, if whoever is currently in charge in Cairo had been willing – or, perhaps

more charitably, able – to display some regional leadership.

President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia, now wanted by nobody but Interpol, was a recipient of Western largesse throughout his quarter century in office. He was already prime minister when he helped himself to Tunisia’s presidency in 1987, after declaring – probably correctly, in fairness – that his predecessor, 84-year-old Habib Bourguiba, was no longer mentally capable. In the aftermath of Ben Ali’s own fall, claims emerged that his rise had been partly orchestrated by SISMI, the Italian intelligence service, in the interests, naturally, of stability. Ben Ali indisputably provided this, winning five consecutive elections, usually endorsed by around 90 per cent of the vote, although it was occasionally observed that the races might have been tighter had any meaningful opposition been permitted.

The ruling al-Khalifa clan of Bahrain have been our sons of bitches since signing a treaty with Britain in 1820, and the Persian Gulf archipelago remained a British protectorate in some shape or form until

1971. Bahrain is still very much a family firm, despite the

religious schism between its Sunni rulers and

mostly Shia population. Approximately half the royal-appointed cabinet are blood relatives of King Hamad ibn Isa al-Khalifa (Hamad, incidentally, was a mere Emir when he followed his father

into office in 1999; he declared himself King in

2002). Bahrain presently hosts the headquarters

of the US Navy’s 5th Fleet, and Muharraq Airfield, a vital

way-station for all US military operating in the region. In return for this hospitality, the Khalifas can feel confident that their

17thThu

“Middle

Eastern regimes which have collapsed since the beginning

of 2011 have all relied upon American patronage and

protection”

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Egypt’s former president Hosni Mubarak meets Barack Obama in 2009

MarWed 23rd continued jHollywood icon Elizabeth Taylor dies in Los Angeles aged 79.

Jose Socrates, the prime minister of Portugal, resigns after seeing his austerity budget rejected by the country’s parliament.

“Andrew Lansley, greedy Andrew Lansley, tosser! The NHS is not for sale, you grey-haired manky codger!”MC NxtGen posts a rap on YouTube denouncing NHS reforms. The rap is viewed more than 250,000 times by the end of March and contains the refrain, “So the budget of the PCTs, he wants to hand to the GPs/Oh please! Dumb geeks are gonna buy from any willing provider/Get care from private companies.”

Thu 24th Police find the body of Sian O’Callaghan near the village of Wantage in Oxfordshire. Another body is reportedly found nearby.

Manchester University announces it will charge students £9,000 per year in tuition fees as of the new academic year in 2012. m 28th Mar

The ‘English Indices of Multiple Deprivation 2010’ report is released. It shows that the most deprived place in the country is Jawywick Sands in Essex, and that the least deprived is Chorleywood, Herts.

The 07.38 from Cheddington to London is delayed due to the attempted theft of railway signalling cables from the line. gFri 25th “Your utter depravity knows no bounds”At Woolwich Crown Court, Judge Peter Rook sentences Delroy Grant, aka the Night Stalker, to 27 years in prison for raping and assaulting elderly people over 17 years.

CHEDDINGTON

1TONNE

$9631.7541kg

$560bnSOLD

Made in China

Cu

Cu

¥¥£$

The butterfly effectHow Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping affected the Cheddington commute. Words: Archie Davies

Thu24th

7.38am,24th Mar 2011The 7.38am train from Cheddington to London is delayed.

l

h 16th May 1980The Special Economic Zone of Shenzhen is established. Shenzhen, a fishing village

singled out by Deng Xiaoping for an experiment in market capitalism, goes on to receive over $30bn of foreign investment. It now has a population of more than 15 million people,

13 buildings over 200m high and has been China’s fastest growing city for 30 years.

22nd Dec 1978During the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Deng Xiaoping, Paramount Leader of the People’s Republic, announces the start of the country’s “Four Modernisations” programme. Deng is widely quoted as saying, “Poverty is not socialism. To be rich is glorious.” China now exports more each day than it did in the whole of 1978.

m

9000BCSomewhere in the Middle East, copper is first discovered and extracted.

m

CHEDDINGTON

1TONNE

$9631.7541kg

$560bnSOLD

Made in China

Cu

Cu

¥¥£$

Sources: Bloomberg, CSA Discovery Guides, The Economist, The Financial Times, Reuters,

Shenzhen Government Online, The World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 5216

The butterfly effect 1.00am, 24th Mar 2011 Thieves attempt to steal cable from London Midland train tracks, the latest in a series of copper-motivated crimes on the UK’s railways. m

11.59pm, 31st Dec 2010Copper prices start 2011 at a record high

price of $9,631.75 per tonne. China is consuming 63 per cent more copper in 2011

than over an equivalent period in 2007.

i

3am, 10th Aug 2010China becomes the world’s second largest economy, officially overtaking Japan in the second quarter of 2010. Its consumer electronics market is worth $125 billion a year and is growing at an annual rate of 26 per cent.

m

31st Mar 2009In the first quarter of

2009, China consumes 27 per cent of the global

copper supply. It is estimated that

China’s copper stockpile, used as

collateral for financial deals, could exceed

500,000 tonnes.

f2009$560bn is spent on residential property in China. 41kg of copper is used in the construction of the average middle-class home in the country. m

g1st Jul 2008

The hillside village of Bentang in Dao County receives

electricity for the first time as China’s power grid continues to grow. State Grip Corp, the

biggest Chinese electricity distributor, uses a million

tonnes of copper every year.

h14th Sep 2007The Shanghai Financial

Centre tops out. At 492m, it is the world’s third

tallest building.

2pm, 13th Jul 2001 hBeijing is awarded the 2008 Olympic Games, which results in an investment of over $44bn, mainly spent on infrastructure and new buildings.

hSpring 1992 Deng Xiaoping’s southern tour of Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Zhuhai results in an increase in the speed of privatisation. A building boom gathers pace in Shenzhen and other Special Economic Zones, requiring more and more copper.

h5.15pm,

19th Dec 1990Deng Xiaoping

reopens the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

The Chinese economy begins to open up and

economic growth accelerates.

“I was glad to see the March for the Alternative happen, although I didn’t think it would change anything. Marches never do. You should take part in them full-heartedly while secretly realising they won’t make any difference. It would be foolish to say I’m opposed to all cuts. I’m sure somewhere hidden away there are cuts that are necessary, but there’s no

doubt about the enormous amount of social damage that the current government is setting out to wreak on our society.

There is an alternative that is simple but the Labour Party dare not make the case for it. It depends on raising taxes. We’ve got to have higher taxes for richer people. I’m rich by most people’s standards and I don’t pay enough money in tax. I would be delighted to pay more, as long as other people in my position, and many richer people, paid their fair share. Labour lacks the political courage to make this case. They’ve got to stand up to the shrieking and screaming of the Murdoch press and the Daily Mail and the Telegraph, who would come down furiously on any government who tried to do so.

I do think it’s short-sighted for a government to cut arts and culture funding. The arts have always needed money put into them from the outside. I’ll be accused of exaggerating and be told that they can earn their own way. They can’t. You can guarantee a full theatre with a pantomime and if you want to fill a concert hall you put on a programme of recycled pop or old orchestral favourites, but it’s death really to go on recycling the same old things. If they’re going to live and flourish they’ve got to have the chance to do the new stuff and that means, inevitably, that they’ve got to be subsidised.

Is there any merit to this new Big Society? It’s a very slippery one to grasp, because one never knows what Cameron means by the Big Society. It seems to mean replacing as many things as possible that people are paid for with things that people do for nothing, by volunteering. Again, I’m very sceptical about this making any difference. I’m cynical because it’s another way for the Tories to show their contempt for the publicly funded good things that we’ve got and their desire to return us to a situation where everything has to be privately run. You can see the flaws in market fundamentalism straight away if you look at it. But people are caught up in the excitement and the possibility of making money and the sheer sexiness of conviction – if you’re convinced of something it is a more sexy feeling than if you’re not convinced about it or you’re more half-hearted about it. And people are very susceptible to this excitement of blazing certainty. You see it in fundamentalists of any sort. It’s a very exciting feeling but a dangerous one.

It was so convenient for the right-wing press that there was trouble on the day of the march. I wouldn’t put it past some of these right-wing buggers to do a little provocation of their own. I don’t really think that the Conservative Party would join with anarchists and start smashing stuff up. But still…” l

Interview: Rob Orchard

The March for the Alternative Philip Pullman

Sat 26th Mar 2011 Momentthat mattered

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MarSat 26th

The TUC-organised March for the Alternative sees an estimated 400,000 people from across the country descend on London to protest against the government’s programme of cuts. In separate protests, Fortnum & Mason is broken into, Oxford Street shop windows are smashed and Nelson’s Column is graffitied. g

Charli Dickenson, an avid Tweeter with 164 followers, tweets a picture of a house in Port Tenant, Swansea,

which she says looks like Hitler. It is retweeted by comedian Jimmy Carr and goes viral, receiving hundreds of thousands of views.

Sun 27th Thousands of anti-nuclear demonstrators march in the streets of Tokyo.

Rogerio Ceni, goalkeeper for Sao Paolo, scores the hundredth goal of his career, putting his team 2-0 up against Corinthians.

The clocks go forward. m ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’

Mon28th Forces supporting president elect Alassane Ouattara launch a “general offensive” in Ivory Coast, engaging with troops loyal to President Laurent Gbagbo. m 31st Mar

Research from the House of Commons library shows that a funding gap of more than £1bn could open up in higher education if more institutions decide to charge the maximum tuition fees of £9,000 per year. The government had budgeted on the basis of tuition fees being an average of £7,500.

The HMS Ark Royal is put up for sale on www.edisposals.com, the auction website of the Ministry of Defence, alongside destroyers HMS Nottingham and HMS Exeter. Anyone interested in purchasing the aircraft carrier has until 13th June to submit their bid.

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How to avoid corporation taxCEOs: tired of seeing your profits disappear into the government’s coffers? Read on… Illustration: Christian Tate. Words: Rob Orchard

Sat 19th

9. Accept another raise from the board and take a celebratory flight to Country E in your new golden helicopter.

8. Take out a company loan and use it to help fund a large dividend to all the shareholders, including your partner. Offset the interest payable on the loan against your annual profits when calculating your corporation tax in Country A.

5. Problem: you can’t funnel the remainder of the company’s profit directly from Country B to Country C without incurring tax. Solution part one: set up a second shell company in Country D. Do not visit it, employ any staff or produce any goods or services.

2. Set up a shell company in Country C – a Caribbean island with low or no levels of corporation tax. Do not visit the company, employ any staff or produce any goods or services.

7. Transfer your shares in all companies to your husband, wife or partner. Move them to Country E – which levies no income tax on individuals – for one whole tax year. They are now classed as “non-resident for tax purposes” in Country A.

4. Your shareholders will reward you with a handsome raise and make ‘thumbs up’ signs at you. Enjoy the warm feelings of belonging this induces and buy yourself a Porsche.

1. Move your company’s headquarters from Country A, your high-tax birthplace, to Country B, an accessible European nation with low levels of corporation tax.

6. Solution part two: send all payments which come in to Country B immediately on to your company in Country D, which has accommodating tax laws for onward transfers to Country C. Your shareholders will welcome you to the AGM with a standing ovation. Treat yourself to a nice yacht.

3. Put the rights to your brand under the legal ownership of the shell company. Get the shell company to charge your main operation large sums to use its own name and brand identity. Pay these charges: this money is now untaxable.

FebWed16th

US bookseller Borders closes 200 of its stores and files for bankruptcy. g

An investigation by The Guardian reveals that the government’s plans to set a minimum price for alcohol would only affect one in almost 4,000 drinks deals.

The Japanese government suspends its annual whaling hunt in the Antarctic after protesters made it difficult for the event to take place.

“I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords” Ken Jennings, famous for winning 74 games in a row on the TV quiz show ‘Jeopardy’, acknowledges his defeat at the hands of Watson, a computer made by IBM. Watson – which uses artificial intelligence systems to answers questions in natural language – won $1m (£624,414) which was donated to charity.

Thu 17th Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman confirms that the government has abandoned its plans to sell off Britain’s public forests following a huge backlash. “One of the things we teach our children to do is say sorry,” she says. “It is not a humiliation; it is my choice.”

Belgium breaks the modern world record for the longest period of time without a government – 250 days.

“It’s like Cairo has moved to Madison these days”Republican congressman Paul Ryan comments on the public protest against cuts in Wisconsin. j 5th Feb ‘Heroes of the downturn’

Fri 18th

French journalist Eric Zemmour is found guilty of incitement to racial hatred after claiming that most drug dealers are “blacks and Arabs”.

Tom

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