Campaigners demand David Cameron identifies member who killed bill protecting developing world from vulture fund bankers

Pressure is growing on David Cameron to identify the mystery Tory MP who deliberately scuppered a landmark anti-poverty bill that could have stopped "vulture" bankers profiteering from the developing world's debt burdens.

Debt campaigners have reacted in fury and disbelief to the killing of the bill and Labour MP Sally Keeble, one of the bill's backers, has accused the Conservatives of "duplicity" by pretending to back the legislation and then sabotaging it at the last minute.

Campaigners are now calling on the leader of the opposition to clarify his view of the bill and asking whether the MP concerned will be identified. The international development secretary, Douglas Alexander, has sent a letter to Cameron demanding an explanation.

The frustration has been compounded by the secrecy surrounding the events in the Commons last night. During the reading, three Tory MPs were seen to huddle together on the benches before one shouted the word "object!", which under parliamentary procedure effectively stopped the bill passing.

Three Conservatives were in the chamber – Christopher Chope, Andrew Robathan and Simon Burns – but none has admitted intervening. The Tory treasury spokesman, David Gauke, who was on the committee that debated the bill, insisted the Conservatives had wanted to see it go through and that the MPs, two of whom are Tory whips, did not have the support of the frontbench. He said he did not know which one had made the objection. "We have our suspicions," he added. "It is a pity. Our view was let's go with the bill but that was not to be. Everyone recognises that this was a rushed process."

But Keeble said that there had been plenty of time to debate the bill, both for two hours in the chamber and at committee stage. "All concerns that had been raised had been dealt with and the bill had been watered down already as a compromise to the Conservatives," she said.

"It's blatantly obvious that this was duplicitous behaviour by the Conservatives whose commitment to international development is deeply suspect. The three men went into a huddle and then no one can see who actually objects. It's disgraceful behaviour."

Nick Dearden, director of Jubilee Debt Campaign, said: "It is an outrage that one MP has taken it upon himself to effectively kill a bill which has the support of the vast majority of the house. His move will mean many of the poorest countries in the world will continue suffering at the hands of reckless and unethical investors.

"This action has destroyed the hopes of many people across the developing world that we might put an end to the appalling practice of vulture funds."

Vulture funds buy up the debts of poor countries, often at a fraction of their face value, and pursue them through the international courts, in many instances despite agreements by other creditors to give the country debt relief.

Campaigners wanted the legislation to apply retrospectively, because it could help countries such as Liberia, which lost a £13m case in London against two vulture funds late last year. The Liberian president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, has urged parliament to pass the new law. The scuppering came a day after the former Tanzanian president, Benjamin William Mkapa, backed the bill, saying: "I hope the international community joins hands to put an end to these deplorable activities of the vulture funds." The bill also has the support of Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Andrew Gwynne the Labour MP who proposed the bill, said: "It is staggering the Conservatives are still unwilling to support even the most basic legislation."

Cheats such as Mark Owen don't 'love' women, as they often claim. If you trick women and lie to them, you must hate them

I feel devastated. Every time I think about it, I feel sick. Mark Owen of Take That is a love rat. Speaking to the Sun – always the best way to confront your intimate problems – married Owen has confessed to multiple affairs. In his defence he says that the final tryst happened before he was wed to his partner of five years. Except that they were married only five months ago. It always tickles me to hear liars' justifications, the sliding scale of the cheat's charter of values: cheating on girlfriend, wonderful; cheating on wife, awful.

Yes, Owen looked virginal, but he was not. Expelled from Cupid's embrace, perhaps he can visit a gentlemen's club? There, he and other serial, simultaneous-multiple-victim cheats such as footballer Ashley Cole and golfer Tiger Woods can cry big fat crocodile tears while fiddling with abject women so far beneath them in status, power and confidence that should their stories ever come to light, they won't have any leverage.

They say that only the insecure cheat. That's probably true. But then insecurity lies behind most human endeavour, from an artist striving to create a masterpiece to a man so eaten up by jealousy that he murders his ex. The expression of the insecurity is gendered, played out through the power dynamic that already exists in the world. Insecure women harm themselves and slander and betray other women. Insecure men abuse women. They are not punished either by the mysterious forces of karma or by the people they are surrounded by, the employers, supporters, colleagues, friends.

Mark, Tiger and Ashley – and what a great team of roving provincial strippergrams they'd make, with names like that – don't "love" women, as compulsive male cheats are often forgivingly said to do. They hate them. If you spend years playing women, tricking women, duping women, lying to women, you are an abusive man.

It's hardly a complicated issue. If you're a famous chap and want to sleep with many women, stay single. Life will provide countless opportunities for sexual adventure. Take every one, it sounds fun! But don't, at the same time, pretend to be a really nice decent guy, or let your partner live her life thinking happily that she got a great catch.

I've met dozens of philanderers and they're all the same. They're always the "really nice guys" who pay lip service to feminism in public and viciously betray women in private. Their abusiveness is protected by their reputation for niceness.

There's the bestselling novelist who namechecks his partner and mother in interviews. The writer who often pens cute columns about his wife and kids. The wild-haired publisher whose wife has no idea what he does when he comes down to London. The street poet with the soulful eyes and funky trainers. They all use the same line: "I wouldn't mind if my partner was shacked up with some guy right now." Always, that partner is at home tending the kids, the house and her own career and would be devastated to discover what her one true love was doing.

At least this kind of deliberate, serial, mass, long-term cheating makes the perpetrator's true nature obvious when it finally comes to light. Why would any woman seek to salvage something from the final dregs of this pathetic game? Having been tricked by someone who lied throughout, she would naturally realise that his apology and pledges of future fidelity were lies too.

Having pretended to be devoted, he would then pretend to be remorseful, when in fact he was merely embarrassed. A traitor's gifts are nothing more than lavish bribes, his promises weightless confetti cut from a tissue of lies. No doubt a woman who's been played finds her adoration change instantly to disgust and sheer gratitude that he's out of the picture. The yearning to see him, no doubt, becomes overwhelming relief that he is no longer in her life.

No doubt? Owen and Woods have children. What do their partners do now? Cheating is not just a betrayal but a type of blackmail, the ultimate lose-lose. Walk, keep your dignity and principles, break up the family home? Or stay, lose your pride, sleep beside the one who backstabbed you, but keep the hearth-fire burning for the bairns?

What would I do? Would I stand by my man, as the song goes? Hell no. Cheats don't change. I'd write a new ditty and the chorus would go: take out the trash, ladies. Just take out the trash, because it stinks.

Children's commissioner Maggie Atkinson's call for age of criminal responsibility to be raised rejected by Ministry of Justice

The government has rejected raising the age of criminal responsibility after the children's commissioner for England argued that the killers of James Bulger were too young to have faced trial.

Maggie Atkinson, who was appointed as the commissioner last autumn, said Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, who were 10 when they killed the toddler, should not have been tried for murder because they were too young to understand the full consequences of their actions.

Calling for the age of criminal responsibility to be raised from 10 to 12, Atkinson told the Times that a civilised society should recognise that children who commit offences should be treated differently from adult criminals.

But a Ministry of Justice spokesman today ruled out a change in the law. He said: "We are committed to tackling crime, and in particular intervening early with young people to prevent crime and antisocial behaviour.

"We believe that children aged 10 and over can differentiate between bad behaviour and serious wrongdoing. We do not intend to raise the age of criminal responsibility. It is not in the interests of justice, of victims, or the young people themselves, to prevent serious offending being challenged.

"Custody for under-18s is always a last resort and is only used for the most serious, persistent and violent offenders.

"Only 3% of young offenders who admit or are convicted of an offence receive a custodial sentence and the government has expanded the range and intensity of community sentences available for young people, as an alternative to detention."

Atkinson's comments come after James Bulger's mother, Denise Fergus, met the justice secretary, Jack Straw, this week to discuss the return to prison of one of her son's killers, Jon Venables.

Earlier this month it emerged that Venables – who was given a new identity and released on licence in 2001 – had been recalled to prison following "extremely serious allegations".

Media reports have suggested that Venables, now 27, had his probation revoked over child pornography allegations, but Straw refused to confirm the details of why he was returned to prison.

Atkinson said politicians should put the needs of children first and not allow themselves to be so influenced by the views of victims' relatives.

"The 'we are too worried about the parents' issue is something that runs like a thread through a number of cases. My constant song is 'listen to the children and young people'," she said.

Calling for the age of criminal responsibility to be increased, the commissioner said even the most "hardened" of children who had committed serious crimes were "not beyond being frightened".

"The age of criminal responsibility in this country is 10 – that's too low. It should certainly be moved up to 12; in some European countries it is 14," she said.

"In terms of knowing what the full consequences of your actions are, you are into older childhood or adolescence."

"In most western European nations they have a completely different way of intervening with youngsters who have committed crime. Most of their approaches are much more therapeutic, much more family and community based, much more about reparation than simply locking somebody up."

Atkinson said the James Bulger killing was a "dreadful thing" and Venables and Robert Thompson, who were 10 in 1993 when they were charged with the two-year-old's murder, needed to be in a contained environment like a youth justice facility and given programmes to help them turn their lives around.

Venables's breach of the "life licence" under which he was released should help to force a debate on the effectiveness of the current system, she told the Times.

"Youngsters are usually tried in a youth court, [Thompson and Venables] were tried in an adult court. What they did was exceptionally unpleasant and the fact that a little boy ended up dead is not something the nation can easily forget. But they shouldn't have been tried in an adult court because they were still children."

In a statement issued today, Atkinson said she regarded crimes such as the killing of James Bulger and the recent case where two brothers in Edlington tortured two other young boys as "terrible atrocities".

"I empathise with the pain and anguish felt by all the families of the victims involved," she said.

But she added that many other children and young people were being locked up for committing far less serious crimes.

Criminal barrister Felicity Gerry, a specialist in prosecuting and defending child offenders, said she saw no need to raise the age of criminal responsibility.

But she added the burden was on the prosecutor to decide not just whether there was sufficient evidence for prosecution, but also to ask whether the child was fit to be tried, whether they understood what they did was wrong, and to look at the nature of the offence.

The Conservatives shadow justice secretary, Dominic Grieve, said: "Changing the age of criminal responsibility is not the answer. We need fundamental reform to address the causes of offending by children, including family breakdown, poverty, gang culture and school discipline."

Patients Association slams 'postcode lottery' of spending on service

Wide variations in the quality of out-of-hours GP services are leaving many people with a "poor" level of care, a survey has found.

The National GP Patient Survey for England has found that in more than a fifth of the country's 152 primary care trusts, one in six patients rated out-of-hours care as either "poor" or "very poor".

In some areas more than a fifth of patients rated the care provided as "poor" or "very poor".

Richmond and Twickenham and Hartlepool were among the worst rated trusts, with Central Lancashire and Plymouth among the best.

An analysis by the Patients Association of the survey results for the first two quarters of 2009-10 also found wide variations in the amount of money spent on out-of-hours services.

The association found that the average spend per patient across 90 primary care trusts, which commission out-of-hours care, was £9. But there was significant variation, with some trusts spending as little as £1.50 and others more than £20.

The director of the Patients Association, Katherine Murphy, said: "Once again, there is huge variation with more than double the number of patients rating the service as poor or very poor at the bottom of the table compared to the top. This is completely unacceptable. The postcode lottery of care has to stop.

"It is hard to understand how one PCT might be spending 16 times more on out-of-hours care than another."

Leaked adjudication largely clears government over campaign that some thought 'scary, inaccurate and too political'

Read the full text of the ASA adjudication

The advertising watchdog has mildly rebuked the government over the phrasing of a claim in two advertisements on the danger of climate change, while dismissing the rest of the complaints against the controversial television and newspaper campaign.

The campaign, run by the Department of Environment and Climate Change last winter, brought in 939 complaints. Various groups said the adverts were political, too scary, and factually misleading.

The vast majority of these complaints have now been dismissed by the authority.

The Advertising Standards Authority's only criticism was that a claim that "flooding, heat waves and storms will become more frequent and intense" should have be phrased more tentatively.

The environment secretary, Ed Miliband, said the authority had "comprehensively vindicated" the accuracy of the department's TV advert and had rebuffed those who attempted to use the advertising standards process to question the reality of man-made climate change.

"Science tells us it is more than 90% likely there will be more extreme weather events if we don't act.

"In any future campaign, as requested by the ASA, we will make clear the nature of this prediction."

Ruling leaked to the Guardian mildly rebukes government over print and TV campaign

With four in 10 working women in public sector jobs, redundancies will make a work-life balance even harder to attain

The key election debate will be about the speed, scale and scope of spending cuts. This is a bit strange. It is the recovery of growth that will make the biggest contribution to reducing the deficit by getting tax revenues flowing again. Polls report just as much support for tax rises as spending cuts. But the test of economic virility has become the size of your spending cuts.

And virility is the right word here as spending cuts will hit women harder than men. So far men have been bigger losers in the recession job-loss stakes. This is not because women's jobs are inherently more secure – indeed the chances of losing your job are about the same for men and women in hard-hit sectors such as retail, manufacturing or finance. But because those sectors that have suffered the most redundancies employ more men than women, the net result has been more male job losses.

But the public sector is different. Big spending cuts and job losses here will hit women, as they are twice as likely as men to work in the public sector. Indeed four in 10 women work in public-sector occupations. This has been particularly important in areas hit hard by private-sector unemployment such as the North East, Yorkshire and Humber and the West Midlands. In these regions male unemployment is more than 10%, and many families will now depend on a public-sector woman's wage. If public-sector jobs are axed, many families could find themselves without anyone in work.

Women often work in the public sector because it offers relatively secure work, flexible working patterns and a chance to build up a decent income in retirement. The gender pay gap is smaller and the public sector offers more opportunities to combine a proper career with caring responsibilities. Spending cuts would inevitably threaten this – and thus set back the cause of gender equality.

Women's pensions would be hit particularly hard. Those public-sector pensions of tabloid fury go largely to women. Two thirds of current public-sector pensions are being built up by women.

Cuts would also make the public sector a less woman-friendly place to work. While it is right to look to increase public-sector efficiency, unplanned job cuts will mean fewer workers doing the same amount of work, leading to stress and pressure to work even longer hours.

Politicians will battle hard for women's votes during the election. Child tax credits already look set to be a battleground and both parties are keen to show their flexible working credentials. But it will be a policy that perhaps few would immediately associate with gender that will make the biggest difference to working women. The size and shape of the parties' cuts packages does matter.

• A different article was mistakenly published yesterday under the author's name and subsequently removed. Comments on the original piece have been lost – apologies to those concerned

By refusing to bar BNP members from the classroom, the government is allowing these vile people to spread their hatred

The BNP's march into the mainstream moves forward. Fresh from their top-table seat on the BBC's Question Time (which marked International Women's Day with an all-female audience; it marked last year's Black History Month with an invite to Nick Griffin), party members have now been told that it's OK for them to teach our children.

In a review which will shock many members of the teaching profession, not to mention ethnic-minority parents, Maurice Smith, former chief inspector of schools, concludes: "I do not believe that barring teachers or other members of the wider school workforce from membership of legitimate [sic] organisations which may promote racism is necessary."

He reaches his decision because, in the last seven years, only four teachers, and two governors, have been found to be BNP members, and only nine incidents of teachers making racist remarks or holding racist materials have been uncovered. Banning BNP members would, he says, therefore be a "taking a very large sledgehammer to crack a minuscule nut".

Two things here are breathtaking: one is that a man who held such a senior position in the running of Britain's schools has such a one-dimensional and uninformed view of the issue of racism in our education system. Is he not aware of the underachievement statistics for many of Britain's racial minorities, widely believed to be party fuelled by low teacher expectations? Is he not aware of the massive rates of exclusions and disciplinary procedures against black boys?

Does he really believe that racism is all about making offensive remarks, rather than promoting, openly or covertly, a system of inequality and injustice? If that's the case, then, with people like him in charge, no wonder so little has been achieved in improving these statistics over the years.

He lists a number of bureaucratic "safeguards" to prevent racism in schools, but this is utterly unconvincing. Schools equal-opportunity policies are notoriously ineffective in making real differences, merely satisfying the box-ticking mentality which pervades the education system. And the "duty to promote social cohesion" is equality easy to subvert, the term often being used as a cover for anti-Muslim propaganda.

The second shocking development here is that his recommendations were immediately accepted in full by the schools secretary, Ed Balls.

Actually, given that all three parties are crawling over each other to win the votes of the "white working class" – whom they now subconsciously equate with racism and bigotry – it shouldn't be a surprise.

Let's be clear: the BNP is a racist party. It is anti-migrant and defines those of non-white racial origin as permanent second-class citizens, regardless of whether they were born here. It has been forced against its will to admit ethnic-minority members, but that doesn't mean it's suddenly become a party of race equality. In fact, the handful of minority members the party may attract will be fellow Muslim-hating extremists.

So when Ed Balls, in his reply to Smith, begins, "There is no place for racism in schools", he shows himself to be a complete hypocrite by then going on to agree with BNP teachers.

If he's OK with the party in the classroom, then he should be honest at least and say: "Yes, there is a place for racism in schools." And, to black and Asian families in particular: "Yes, parents, when you leave your five-year-old at the school gates, we don't care if you're handing them over to someone who despises your race, despises your faith, and who wants to terrorise you and run you out of the country. As long as they don't say it so anyone can hear."

The complacency, as the BNP gains council seats and could possibly even gain its first MP this year, is staggering.

It is often said that for evil to flourish, all it takes is for good people to do nothing. As the BNP's message of hate moves onwards, it is time for good people to take a stand.

Judge agrees with human rights watchdog that British National party's rewritten criteria for joining are still racist

The British National party was plunged into chaos yesterday, weeks before the general election, when a court ordered it to remove central beliefs and policies about race from its constitution.

In a landmark injunction at the Central London county court, a judge found that the BNP's membership policy remained discriminatory, even after a direct whites-only clause was removed last month.

The judge, Paul Collins, ordered the BNP to remove two clauses from its constitution as they were indirectly racist towards non-white would-be members.

The party also remains banned from signing up new recruits until it satisfies Collins it has changed the constitution, although it said last night that applications to join were being processed again.

In a further blow to the party's election hopes, it was ordered to pay an estimated £60,000 in legal costs. The bill could rise to £100,000 when its own legal fees are included.

While one offending clause is largely an administrative matter – a requirement that all new members agree to a vetting visit from BNP officials, something the judge found could intimidate non-white applicants – the other spells out core beliefs.

This is a requirement for members to believe in the "continued creation, fostering, maintenance and existence" of an indigenous British race and action towards "stemming and reversing" migration.

The BNP last month voted to remove a direct bar on non-white members after a legal challenge from the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). The government equalities watchdog then challenged the revised constitution on the grounds that ethnic minority Britons could still not subscribe to the party's beliefs without "denying themselves".
Collins ruled in favour of the commission, ordering the BNP to remove the offending clauses by Monday afternoon or face potential legal penalties.

The EHRC head of legal enforcement, Susie Uppal, said: "Political parties, like any organisation, are obliged to respect the law and not discriminate against people who wish to become members."

The BNP's leader, Nick Griffin, said the decision "opens a very dangerous door. It's a huge change to the unwritten constitution of Britain. The judgment has given a government-appointed, taxpayer-funded quango the rights to change the aims and objectives of political parties." The costs award would "have some effect" on the BNP's election campaigning, but it would not be significant, he added.

Griffin said he had already amended the constitution so the clauses were removed from membership criteria. He insisted, however, that the beliefs about immigration and race would remain, even if members did not have to officially sign up to them. "It won't make any practical difference to us. But it's hugely symbolic," he said.

A spokesman for the anti-fascist campaign group Searchlight said: "This judgment is a personal humiliation for Nick Griffin. The BNP has been proven in court to be as racist and extremist as ever."

The millionaire Asian businessman Mo Chaudry, who had said he would apply to join the party to "fight them from the inside", welcomed the ruling. He said: "This was the only decision that could have been made today. There was no alternative."

The decision follows weeks of wrangling over the legality of the far-right party's membership criteria. After the EHRC challenge last year, BNP members voted at an extraordinary general meeting a month ago to scrap the whites-only clause. BNP critics argue the party has no genuine interest in recruiting non-white members and is doing the minimum to avoid legal action and court costs.

An internal BNP memo seen by the Guardian this week told members that the party had not "gone soft". It continued: "We don't expect any more than a handful of people of ethnic minority origin to apply to join the party nationally, and we will not let this deflect us from our political objectives of saving Britain and restoring the primacy of the indigenous British people."

More than half a million travellers to be hit by strikes on successive weekends from 20 March

Commission of inquiry calls for levies to promote new media, warning that too few interests control too many outlets

Google and other websites that carry news they do not produce should be taxed and the money generated used to prop up local newspapers, says a report which warns control of the media is concentrated in too few hands.

The Commission of Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society, headed by Tony Blair's former head of policy, Geoff Mulgan, will warn next week that news is becoming "recycled 'churnalism' and aggregated content". In a report, Making Good Society, the commission says a future government must preserve freedom on the internet, ensure the media is not controlled by powerful interests, and promote accuracy.

It says four publishers control 70% of the local and regional press, three companies – BBC, ITN and BSkyB – produce national television news and just four companies have nearly 80% of the commercial radio market.

In a rapidly changing market, more than 100 local and regional newspaper titles vanished last year – a trend amplified, says the commission, by advertising revenues and audiences shifting to online platforms. "The advent of free newspapers, the emergence of 24-hour television news and the popularisation of online and mobile platforms have all contributed to a far more volatile and unstable environment for news organisations."

The report argues for levies to promote new media and encourage a diversity of news sources. Recycling money in this way, say the authors, is not new for Britain. Google could generate £100m a year for cash-starved media if it was taxed for the content it distributes.

The commission also says the law should be changed to allow charities to fund news gathering. In the US there is a model of "philanthropy journalism" which has seen the Huffington Post website secure cash from charitable foundations to fund its investigative reporting.

British charity law "adopts a stringent interpretation of public benefit that excludes any reference to news gathering" – and the commission argues this needs to change so that civil society can be involved in media ownership.

The report points out that civil society already produces its own media. Ofcom, the industry regulator, found the third sector spent an estimated £80m on public service content online in 2006-7.

To promote truthfulness, the report backs the idea of a "kitemark system" that would provide "transparent information on how content is produced".

The report also backs the BBC, saying that a recession makes it all the more pressing to "protect the respected, world-class, independent and original journalism produced". It says resources should be found through new industry levies rather than "top-slicing" the licence fee.

Everyone but the rich is outraged by the financiers' billowing wealth. At the budget, Labour can tip the balance back to the people

The budget is 10 days away and yet already the chief secretary, Liam Byrne, appears to have ruled out any new tax rises to deal with the deficit. That is a deeply alarming prospect – and as a political stand, a blunder. If the election squeezes out any honesty about the cuts to come soon, then voters need to know the choices. The Institute for Fiscal Studies warns the likely cuts will wipe out virtually all the extra spending of the Labour era – an unimaginable blow. Unless taxes rise to mitigate that disaster. Whether or not Byrne really meant it, why was he pretending tax rises were off the agenda?

Last week Gordon Brown warned of "bumps in the road" ahead. The man who denied the looming crunch doesn't say such things lightly. Economists warn that Britain is wobbling on a tightrope over a second recession where spending cuts would precipitate more unemployment and risk sinking the economy into a downward spiral. Mortgage lending figures just plunged, house prices are predicted to fall and export and manufacturing figures were dreadful. Growth figures for this year's first quarter may have fallen backwards – and they will emerge two weeks before election day. Blame the January snow for lack of shopping – but the outlook could be grim.

The chancellor should be listening to the group of 80 MPs and economists calling for another fiscal stimulus to keep the economy afloat: Britain is one of only two G20 countries withdrawing the stimulus this year. To invest in housing, transport and clean energy with growth and jobs is the Rooseveltian way out of recession and debt. The cabinet debates how to use a windfall from the bank bonus tax and lower than expected unemployment. With an abyss gaping below, of course it must be put back into investment. And this is no time to rule out tax rises.

So far Labour has failed to find the words to express public outrage at the financiers' billowing wealth while the Treasury is drained. Only weeks since launching, the campaign for a Robin Hood tax on all financial transactions has gathered extraordinary support. It hasn't been hard, so profound is the untapped public anger at the bankers. This week the European parliament voted for it overwhelmingly – 536 to 80 – supported by the social democrats and the majority conservative EPP grouping: opponents were the ECP rump rightwingers the Tories belong to. Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel support it. Vince Cable will put it into the Lib Dem manifesto. Gordon Brown supports it but, as ever, he wants US support, which is unlikely. Backed here by some 100 organisations from Oxfam to the Salvation Army, Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University came to London this week to promote the tax, urging the EU to go it alone.

Rarely has a campaign gathered such momentum in so short a time: 140,000 have joined and more gather by the day, besieging MPs (RobinHoodtax.org.uk). In this budget, campaigners want a sterling transaction tax, to come in at once. Imposing just 0.005% on every sterling deal is within Britain's sole control, raising £4bn. If the EU agrees a wider financial transactions tax, it would bring Britain another £4bn – one estimate is £100bn across Europe, to be used at home, in foreign aid and on climate change.

Money must be raised, but deficit panic has become a tulip mania in reverse, a group-think stoked up by those with a strong interest in no change. Frighteners about loss of credit rating are absurd: British debt is borrowed long, without need to refinance for some 12 years, and interest rates are low. But the Conservative's City friends are good at scaring the public about imminent bankruptcy and they lean hard on the Treasury. Look at the budget demands of the Institute of Directors: cut public spending by 35%, (but ringfence cash for roads, rail and airports). Cut corporation tax on companies to 15%, reverse national insurance and 50p tax rises and cut the protections for agency workers. Make the rich richer and the poor poorer – so who are the real class warriors?

Labour has failed to cash in politically on public fury at the rich who brazenly resist fair tax. HSBC's information has been stolen on 24,000 private accounts in Switzerland and now it frantically assures clients the contents won't reach tax authorities: HMRC hopes it does, but where is the Labour tub-thumping? Swiss and Liechtenstein bank doors are jemmied open by theft, but why does the EU tolerate any tax haven secrecy? General De Gaulle sent troops to surround Monaco over hiding tax fraud, and cut off its water: they relented. Meanwhile "respectable" consultants with government contracts advise top earners on avoiding the 50p tax rate by describing income as capital gains, or giving interest-free loans to be written off once the Tories get in and the tax is cut. PricewaterhouseCoopers tells the Financial Times it recommends paying dividends out before 1 April – their corporate social responsibility boasts somewhat at odds with denying cash to the state at a time of national emergency.

Where is the shame? The threat is that top people will flee to tax havens, but HMRC has finally toughened rules for residency. Do the rich relish the life of Guy Hands, the private equity head of Terra Firma who loves his money more than his school-age children and parents he can no longer visit from his Guernsey refuge, avoiding that 50p?

What we face here, which Labour has yet to find words to express, is a war between those who control the money sucked up into their own pockets, against the great majority who are the losers. This is the tidal pull of inequality that Labour tried and failed to swim against. This budget is the time to tip the balance on reward and tax towards the people. The reason the Robin Hood campaign is galloping forward so fast is that everyone but the rich wants that tide reversed. This is a totemic tax: many others are needed too.

The budget should lay out the facts – the country is still in great economic peril. If the deficit were paid off by cuts alone, that means a cut of 17% in every department except schools and aid – unthinkable and unnecessary. Money must be raised: it would be a positive social good to raise it from those still making fortunes out of easy processing and skimming of our money in these hard times. Put the case to the voters and see what they think. Labour has little to fear on this. If this is class war, the other side declared it – so let's fight it.

Tracy Allisonn quits following critical reports about 'patently flawed' formation of government watchdog

Another senior member of the Equality and Human Rights Commission quit this week as turmoil in the organisation intensified ahead of what is expected to be a devastating parliamentary report on it, to be published next week.

Tracy Allison, the commission's director of finance, resigned on Wednesday with immediate effect.

An email to staff informing them of her departure said that an interim director had now been appointed to "address significant weaknesses in the finance and procurement function of the commission".

It follows critical reports from the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee, which concluded that the formation of the government's equality watchdog, after a merger of three separate equality groups, was "patently flawed" and cost the taxpayer almost £39m.

The commission has had an extremely troubled beginning. Last summer at least three of its 16 commissioners quit in a row over the leadership of the organisation. Trevor Phillips, who previously headed the Commission for Racial Equality, is chair of the EHRC, which has not replaced its chief executive since Nicola Brewer left nearly a year ago.

Monday's report from the joint committee on human rights is expected to be extremely critical of both the commission's leadership and the strategic direction it has taken.

Phillips is separately being investigated by the standards committees of both houses of parliament after claims he attempted to "nobble" members of the human rights committee to influence the outcome of the report.

The commission's own assessment of its institutional risks, published at the end of last year before the critical select committee reports, warned they faced "significant" risks, because of "lack of organisational capacity and capability" and "failure to perform as an exemplar equality and human rights body".

It noted plummeting staff morale, the loss of key staff and said it was suffering from "reputational damage".

A spokesman for the standards and privileges committee confirmed that the an inquiry into Phillips's actions is under way.

Suzie Mackenzie shadowed PM for most of his period in No 10 but believed her book should also cover election

An in-depth and intimate study of Gordon Brown during the past two and a half years was this week shelved by its publishers, Bloomsbury.

After shadowing the prime minister for most of his period in No 10, the journalist Suzie Mackenzie told the publishers this week she would not be handing in the manuscript to meet their March deadline and Bloomsbury terminated the lucrative contract.

Mackenzie had been due to publish before the general election, but she said she had always told the publishers she believed the book should include time spent with the prime minister during this year's election.

Mackenzie told the Guardian: "I had said all along I didn't think it should be published before June because the book should include the election and that's what happened. That deadline just didn't feel right. No 10 staff were always extremely helpful."

A No 10 aide, alluding to the childhood sledge which was key to Citizen Kane's character, said: "It is very sad. We know she had extraordinary material. Really good stuff about his mother and father and maybe a 'Rosebud' moment."

Mackenzie was picked by Downing Street to write the book after writing an interview with Brown for the Guardian in 2004, which they felt was an accurate representation of his character. She was afforded intimate access and travelled with the prime minister through all the tribulations of his premiership, including the negotiations in the run up to the G20 summit and as world leaders grappled with the economic downturn.

In their spring catalogue the publishers said Mackenzie's work was going to be the most "definitive" account of the prime minister.

"Mackenzie does not aim to judge his success as prime minister – or, not only that. Instead she produces an extraordinary , multi-faceted portrait of the growth – political, intellectual, psychological – of Britain's most intriguing politician."

After Mackenzie indicated she was not going to be able to meet the March deadline, Bloomsbury were said to be further concerned when her material appeared to have been plundered by the publication of Andrew Rawnsley's book, The End of the Party, and the prime minister appearing on Piers Morgan's ITV chat show.

Downing Street has already been in touch with Mackenzie to ask what she intends to do with the material and she is reported to have said she has no plans until after the election.

Two weeks ago Mackenzie went public with a recording of Brown's foreign policy adviser Stewart Wood, which supported Rawnsley's allegation – at that time being rubbished by Downing Street – that Brown intimidated staff. Mackenzie's recording featured Wood saying Brown has once pushed him aside on the stairs inside No 10.

Postal watchdog says some managers may have received bonuses based on phoney mail delivery times

The postal watchdog is considering taking action against Royal Mail after allegations that service quality tests were rigged by workers.

Postcomm received an insider tip-off last year that the names and addresses of recipients of test deliveries were circulated among staff, including senior managers, "for a number of years". Workers could therefore ensure that post for those people – which were meant to be subject to independent testing – were delivered on time.

The abuse is thought to have being going on for "several years" and involved countless staff across the country from delivery workers to senior managers.

Senior staff, including Adam Crozier, Royal Mail's chief executive, have been paid tens of thousands of pounds in bonuses based on the company's "service quality" figures, which include data on delivery times.

Although there is no evidence that senior executives were aware of what was going on, Postcomm said some managers "may have received bonus payments to which they were not entitled", since they were "based on recorded levels of quality of service which were incorrectly monitored and recorded".

The watchdog said it was "minded" to find that Royal Mail had breached licence conditions relating to quality of service. In a preliminary report from 17 February, published in the Daily Telegraph, it found that Royal Mail had failed since July 2006 to meet those conditions.

If found guilty the company could face a six-figure fine.

As part of its licence conditions the Royal Mail was obliged to use the market research firm Research International to monitor the standard of its service.

Part of this clause also meant Royal Mail should make sure that the 22,000 volunteer panellists used to send test mail to each other remained anonymous.

Postcomm said postal workers were identifying the test mail by feeling envelopes for a microchip they contained. However, the rigging did not make a "material difference" to the firm's published quality of service figures, Postcomm said.

During Royal Mail's own investigation into the allegations a number of staff were suspended.

Postcomm is expected to make a final decision on whether to take action against Royal Mail in May.

Wife of Conservative leader David Cameron steps out of the shadows and firmly into the spotlight

Her buzz words are obvious: "strong" and "reliable"; "passion" and "drive".

Sprinkle in the references to his being "incredibly funny and really interesting and clever", too, and Samantha Cameron's election-honed lexicon is near perfect for getting those boxes ticked for her husband on polling day. Which, presumably, is the purpose behind this, her first ever television interview.

The wife of the Conservative leader David Cameron steps out of the shadows and firmly into the spotlight tomorrow night when she is grilled – well, gently sautéed – by ITV's Trevor McDonald about life with "Dave", the would-be prime minister.

On their first meeting: "It was a sort of holiday romance". On her attraction to him: "He was quite different from any of my friends".

On "Dave" the husband: "He's definitely not perfect and like any husband he has lots of very irritating habits."

And on his prime-ministerial ambitions: "So much of the Dave that I first met and fell in love with is Dave the politician. ".

After Gordon Brown's highly personal interview with Piers Morgan last month, Conservative Central Office will be anxiously monitoring reaction to Mrs Cameron's performance, particularly now that the papers have branded her "SamCam".

Could Cameron's good-looking 38-year-old wife even depose the formidable and accomplished "tweeting" PR, Sarah Brown, to become Britain's favourite political wife?

This interview is the first of some eight high-profile events to be conducted by Samantha Cameron. As David Cameron himself tells Sir Trevor: "I think you're about to see, in the election … probably a lot more of Samantha as the trail gets hotter."

She's his "secret weapon", so how is he going to deploy her?, questions Sir Trevor. "Well, she's one of those secret weapons that will have a pretty clear view of how she wants to be deployed," replies Cameron.

Of aristocratic heritage, a high-powered businesswoman in her own right, and a working mother – Ivan, the first of their three children and who suffered from severe epilepsy and cerebral palsy, died aged six in February last year – she has hitherto steered clear of such direct politicking. But that all changed with Sir Trevor.

Just as Sarah Brown has humanised Gordon as "my husband, my hero", Samantha's interview serves to flesh out Dave, the man.

"I'd say one of the brilliant things about him is he loves cooking. But he, you know, he makes a terrible mess," she says.

"He is not very good at clearing up as he goes along. He is not very good at picking up his clothes. He's a terrible channel flicker. I have to be quite firm about him not fiddling with his phone and his BlackBerry too much, 'cos it can be, you know, quite annoying."

She continues: "He's a fantastic dad. [The children], they really make him laugh." She gives insight, too, into their work-life balance, he as party leader and she as creative director of the upmarket luxury goods firm Smythsons, as they split their busy lives between homes in north Kensington and Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire.

"We do have very different jobs … But we talk a lot at home. His job is fascinating … when he comes home for supper, there's always lots to talk about."

The couple have been together 18 years, meeting through Cameron's younger sister Clare, a close friend of Samantha's and who invited her to join them on a family holiday in 1992.

At the time, Samantha, the upper-class bohemian daughter of the Lincolnshire landowner Sir Reginald Sheffield, and a descendent of Nell Gwyn, was studying art at Bristol Polytechnic, and hanging out and shooting pool with musician friends.

Cameron was based in London and working as a special adviser to Norman Lamont, who was the Conservative chancellor at the time. She was 21 and he was 25.

"He was quite different from any of my friends and anyone who I'd sort of met before," she says. "And I found him really fascinating. He had a very serious job, but he was, you know, he was incredibly funny and really interesting and clever, and we just got on really, really well from day one."

Two years later they were engaged. "I was very young when we got engaged. I was only 23. But I think I felt fairly confident that … Dave was the one for me for, for lots of reasons. He's a very strong kind of reliable person."

On his decision to enter the leadership contest for the Conservatives, she said: "I was very encouraging. It's a big commitment. But I really felt he was right for the job. I thought he had the right views, he had the passion and the drive."

Acknowledging that their life together has not been without tragedy, she says: "We've been through some fairly tough times – and I can honestly say that I don't think in all that time he's ever let me down. And he's always been incredibly strong, and kind and supportive."

Now it is her turn to be publicly supportive. "If he did become prime minister I would be incredibly proud of him. And, and our life would change – and that is daunting – I'm sure we would have to make sacrifices.

"But for me personally it would be a huge honour to do everything that I possibly could to support him and make sure that he could do the job to the very best of his abilities."

Analysis
Soft soap, and other handy hubby hints

It's stretching it a bit, isn't it? You look at David Cameron, someone tells you that he's not very good at clearing up as he goes along, and that's the most annoying thing about him.

I mean, sure, I bet he doesn't do a lot of washing up. If she'd said: "He has this insufferable sense of entitlement, which extends to a high-handed failure in all aspects of domesticity," I would buy that more, even thought it would effectively mean the same thing.

This, though, it doesn't even sound that personal. It sounds like she's flicked through Take-A-Break, put together a compendium of innocuous things women say about men, chosen the most innocuous and ta-da! Here he is, a three-dimensional human being, not-very-convincing-wart and all!

Sarah Brown, meanwhile, said on Mumsnet last month: "I am protective of our big family Sunday lunches round the table. No exceptions made, no football for DH [darling husband] or Moshi Monsters for the boys!"

Sure, because that's exactly what he looks like. A man who has to be torn away to the table, because otherwise he'd be yelling at the telly. Anything you'd like to add to this picture? Perhaps he's in his underpants, drinking a stubby? Or is that Homer Simpson? Sorry, ladies, but this is all so unlikely.

Michelle Obama set this scene. Under the cover of the critiquing her spouse, she exclusively revealed he has no fashion sense; he sometimes makes annoying remarks; and on occasion, this tendency and the ignorance coincide, exploding like potassium permanganate in an annoying remark about her wardrobe. The formula became: don't say he's perfect. That sounds a bit Stepford Wife and will damage your credibility, and not just as first lady. But likewise, don't say anything that might be meaningfully true. Where do you think you are, Relate? This is the campaign trial.

It's an absolute knife-edge between something that sounds like a believable aspect of a human being, but could be used against him by an opponent ("a bit flaky"; "tiny penis") and something so saccharine they might as well have left first lady at home.

Personally, I think Sam Cam fell off this particular knife (she doesn't even call her husband straightforwardly messy! He's messy while he's cooking. Even when he bad, ladies and gentlemen, he good). Better luck next knife.

Zoe Williams

Trevor McDonald meets David Cameron on ITV1, Sunday 14 March at 10.15pm

That such conditions exist is a scandal, and all the more appalling for having happened under Labour's watch

We are where we were: that's the insiders' view. The EHRC report has simply put an official stamp on what many of us have known – and been deeply worried about – since early 2000. A combination of factors – deregulation, globalisation, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the formation of new pools of labour thanks to the expansion of the EU – led to a race to the bottom in terms of labour standards. The food and drink sector, driven by the supermarkets, has been at the forefront of this. New technology that allows supermarkets to order at the last minute only what they know they can sell has resulted in an unprecedented casualisation of labour, not just in rich western countries but in the poorer countries, too. Labour standards have been driven down everywhere.

The impact has been obvious on the ground for a very long time. In the UK the effect is particularly apparent in rural areas – but because many of these areas are Conservative, the government for too long ignored the protests of local workers, or dismissed them as xenophobic hostility to migrants.

In factories and on big industrial farms there has been an incredible transformation of work – such things as 24/7 shift patterns, and the constant pressure to cut costs have turned what used to be decent jobs into terrible ones. These newly terrible jobs have usually been taken by migrants, often illegal. In this climate, abuse and exploitation flourish, and racial tensions grow as people see cheaper foreign workers being used to undercut local, more established workers.

In 2005 the unions began a massive programme of reorganisation – collecting facts and figures, attempting to organise casual and migrant workers, and campaigning on these issues. But because the whole industry is riddled with subcontractors, blame is all too easily shifted down the line. Labour legislation exists which outlaws practices exposed in this report, and this legislation has been strengthened – but too often it hasn't been enforced, and regulators were deliberately not given sufficient resources to enforce it. The Gangmaster Licensing Authority (GLA) in particular is very underfunded.

Journalists have exposed individual examples of exploitation. The unions have been trying to fight it. Workers have expressed outrage. But government and industry have insisted that the abuses were isolated incidences. The abuse detailed in the report cannot be dismissed – the EHRC highlights that it is a systemic failure to protect people. It is a structural problem that has set labour rights back several decades.

When it comes to recommending what should happen, the report is weak. The EHRC seems shy of using its power to litigate and recommends that the industry puts its house in order voluntarily. This won't work. The report also recommends giving more money to the GLA for enforcement, but in the current climate this is surely wishful thinking.

Voluntary measures haven't worked, and won't work in the future. The system is fundamentally wrong and needs to change. You have to regulate; you have to litigate and enforce. That such conditions exist in the UK is a scandal, and all the more appalling for having happened under Labour's watch.

Last year, during protests against the attack on Gaza, a mixed group of demonstrators clashed with police. But when the alleged culprits were arrested in dawn raids, nearly all those taken were young Muslims

Badi Tebani and his wife were sleeping peacefully when all hell broke loose. He shudders at the memory. The front door was forced open, and then came the screaming. "Wah, wah, wah, get down, get down, you are under arrest." Any number of voices. He thought it was a nightmare – that he was back in Algeria in the bad old days before he was granted political asylum in Britain, and that the military had broken into the house. When he opened his eyes, his bedroom was full of police officers. "I have diabetes and high blood pressure," he says quietly. "It was worse than Algeria, even. I became very depressed."

It was 5am, April 2009. Badi's eldest son Hamza, 23, takes up the story. "I woke up and tried to get out of bed. The next thing is three police officers jump on top of me with their knees, and they handcuffed me so hard I screamed. That's when I really woke up." Hamza had been sleeping in shorts. When he asked if he could put a shirt on the police said no and opened the window. "It was freezing. I was shaking."

His three brothers, the youngest of whom was 15 at the time, were also handcuffed. Hamza says there were too many officers to count – somewhere between 20 and 30. They took computers, clothes, iPhones, everything. "I've never been in trouble, never been to the police station except when my car was broken into, and they were treating me as a criminal. One of the officers was playing card games with my iPhone, another was just ordering coffee."

Badi, an Arabic teacher, tuts. "They make our house into a coffee shop."

But it wasn't Badi or Hamza the police were after. It was Yahia, one of Hamza's younger brothers. When Yahia heard that the police were looking for him he was confounded. "I didn't know why they were there, and then I hear my name and I'm shocked."

Three months earlier, in January last year, Yahia had been outside the Israeli embassy on a fractious demonstration against Israel's sustained bombing of Gaza. The British foreign secretary, David Milliband, had condemned the "unacceptable" loss of life caused by the Israeli strikes on Gaza, saying the "dark and dangerous" events could fuel extremism, and had called for an immediate ceasefire from both Israel and Hamas.

Protesters complained that the demonstration was policed provocatively and that they had been "kettled" inside a tunnel and beaten. Meanwhile, the police complained that they had been assaulted by demonstrators.

Yahia, 18, says both accounts are true. He claims that the policing was aggressive and intimidatory, and that demonstrators responded by throwing sticks and bottles at the embassy and the officers, who were wearing full-body shields. Yahia picked up a few sticks from discarded banners and flung them in the direction of the police. He was one of approximately 50,000 demonstrators, many of whom threw objects. It was a mixed bunch – white and black, Muslim and Christian, Stop the War Coalition, CND, all sorts. This was one of a number of Gaza demonstrations covered on television news, and it was reported there had been some trouble – but nothing on the scale of, say, the G20 protests or the poll tax riots.

Yahia, who was studying media technology at Kingston University, had gone on the march for two reasons – to protest, and to interview fellow demonstrators for a project on Gaza. The crowd was held by the police for four hours and eventually released. Some people were filmed and had to give their name and address to the police, some were arrested. Yahia simply left of his own accord, and eventually got home at midnight.

He told Hamza it had been a difficult day, it had given him plenty of food for thought, and that was that – until the police broke into the family home in Finsbury Park, north London, three months later. Yahia was arrested in March and charged with violent disorder and burglary – at one point during the demo, he says, he had taken a chair from the nearby Starbucks to sit on, but police reports said the Starbucks was trashed and mugs and chairs were used as weapons. He was advised that the burglary charge would be dropped if he pleaded guilty to violent disorder, for which he would probably receive a suspended sentence or community service. He thought a lesser charge of affray would have been fairer, but agreed to the compromise. "It would always look bad in the future if it says burglary. People won't know what really happened, so I couldn't risk that being on my file."

What Yahia didn't realise was nearly all the protesters who pleaded guilty to violent disorder would end up receiving immediate prison sentences. His friend Sidali is serving two years. Yahia was in court the day Sidali was sentenced. "He didn't even throw sticks," he claims. "He just pushed or something, and his clothes were ripped a bit. In court he was crying. The shock on his face, I've never seen anything like that. Pah!" He blows his lips together in dismay.

Yahia is to be sentenced this month. How's he feeling? "Stressed. Pah. Just waiting to go in. I've been asking my friend what it's like. He says time goes quick – he doesn't want to scare me."

It's not just the prospect of prison that terrifies him, it's what comes after. "If I've got 'ex-prisoner' on my file, how am I going to get a job? It will destroy my career."

At Isleworth crown court in London, where the cases are being heard, a disturbing pattern is emerging. Most of the 78 protesters charged with public order offences were young men in their late teens or 20s. Many were students. And nearly all were Muslim. Some 22 protesters have already received prison terms of up to two and a half years for public order offences, and more cases are due to come before the courts in the coming months.

The Gaza Protesters Defence Campaign has been formed by the families of some of those arrested, together with sympathetic MPs, the Stop the War Coalition and CND. The campaign aims to highlight the perceived injustice, and has launched a petition which will be presented to the attorney general and the director of public prosecutions.

Earlier this month, families queued up outside committee room 15 in the House of Commons for a campaign meeting. Many feel bewildered by the sentences the courts have passed on their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. When Joanna Gilmore, a researcher at the University of Manchester's law school who has monitored the cases, gets to her feet the room is already full, and latecomers are forced to listen from the corridor. "The vast majority of the people involved here are of exemplary character," she says, to mutters of approval. "The demonstrations were overwhelmingly peaceful and if you compare the relatively minor disturbances that took place with the violence on other demonstrations these sentences are very severe."

Gilmore, who has followed all the court cases, says the police arrested more people at the Gaza protests than at any political demonstration since the poll tax riots, when about 90 were charged with public order offences. At last year's G20 demonstrations, during which a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland was looted, 20 were charged.

"Many were on their first demonstration and were protesting because they were appalled about what was happening in Gaza," Gilmore says. "These people and their families are in shock and say that they will never take part in political demonstrations again."

Bruce Kent, a former general secretary of CND and long-time peace activist, gets to his feet to address the packed meeting. Kent, 80, had been on the demonstration and says he was "amazed and indignant" about the reaction of the police and the courts.

"I don't know why there isn't absolute outrage … All this will do is solidify in people's minds the idea that there is a persecution of Muslims which is determined and organised and will result in some young people being radicalised."

He says there is a huge discrepancy in the way different people are treated by the law, and recalls a time in 1986 when he had been convicted of criminal damage after cutting a wire fence during a protest at a nuclear base. "I was in the crown court waiting with my toothbrush packed. I thought I was off to one of her majesty's holiday camps. Not at all, not even a fine. Why? Because I am middle-class and white."

Like Yahia Tebani, 24-year-old Ashir was in bed when the police raided her west London flat at 4am. The strange thing is, she says, her brother, who is due to be sentenced for his part in the demonstrations this month, has never been interested in "politics or religion" and only joined the protest because he was at his cousins' house when they decided to go.

Although Ashir says her younger sibling did not throw any missiles, she admits he did protect himself when the "police people started fighting". He left as soon as he could, giving his details to officers. Two months later the police made their unannounced visit.

"We heard a disturbance at the neighbour's flat first and I heard loads of banging and shouting," she says. "I looked out of the window but no one had police uniforms on so I didn't know what was happening. A few minutes later when we were getting back into bed we heard people running up the stairs and then our door burst open. I was so scared because I had no idea what was happening or who these people were."

Every detail chimes with Yahia's experience – the family were handcuffed for two and a half hours, Ashir only had her nightclothes on and was not allowed to get dressed and her computer was taken. "They said I may have weapons in the house, but I didn't understand – what weapons could I have? I am not a criminal. They went through everything. They said they were looking for evidence, for clothes that my brother had been wearing on the demonstration. They took my laptop which had my university dissertation on spa tourism on it because they said he had had access to it. I asked if I could at least email the dissertation to myself but they said I wasn't allowed to touch it. I still have not got it back almost a year later even though I keep asking for it. I had to start my dissertation from where I had last saved it on a uni computer."

Ashir, who does not want to give her real name because she fears going public might result in her brother being given a bigger sentence, still has panic attacks about what happened that night. "I am scared if I see any police anywhere. Even if I was angry about something I would never go on a demonstration now because I have seen what can happen."

Muhammad Sawalha, president of the British Muslim Initiative anti-racist group, has two questions: why were such a high proportion of those arrested Muslim, and why have they been dealt with so heavy-handedly?

Actually, Judge John Denniss has been quite clear about sentencing policy. He has said, more than once, the draconian sentences are meant to act as a deterrent to future protesters. But, because of the fact that the people being brought before the courts are disproportionately Muslim, Sawalha says, the consequences could be disastrous: "The British Muslim Initiative encourages Muslims to express their feelings and ambitions and frustrations only through political and legal processes. But if anything sends the message that Muslims cannot express themselves through political processes, and they will not be dealt with like others, it will give more strength to the fringes within the community who say democracy and the political system doesn't apply to Muslims in this country. This will only increase the frustration and sense of alienation among these people."

Dr Khalil al-Ani says his son Mosab was one of the lucky ones. There was no pre-dawn raid, no handcuffs, no ransacking. He was simply asked to surrender his passport to the police. Months after throwing an empty Orangina bottle – the police said it was at them, Mosab said it was at the Israeli embassy gates – he was charged. Mosab, who was on a medical access course, hoped to be a dentist or dental technician. He is now in prison serving a one-year sentence.

It was the first demonstration Mosab had been on since his family marched against the Iraq war in 2003. Al-Ani, an Iraqi who works as a GP in Wakefield and Leeds, was pleased his son would be on the march. His two sisters were also going, and Al-Ani felt Mosab, then 20, would protect them.

Mosab was arrested on the day and taken to a police station where he admitted throwing the bottle, apologised, and stressed that he had not aimed it at the police. He was released and returned to Yorkshire, but didn't tell his father what had happened – he didn't want to worry him, and he assumed it was the last he would hear of it.

"He didn't think it was serious because how many times have you seen something like this or more serious, and nothing happens." Al-Ani stops, and apologises for his tears. "I'm sorry I get so emotional. I came to this country in 1981. You can hear by the way I speak my accent is not purely British. It is a foreign accent after all these years. But Mosab was born here in 1988 – he is British in every sense. This is the first time I feel that because he's a Muslim he's been discriminated against. What he did was certainly wrong, but he should be treated similar to a British citizen. He's gone to prison for a single bottle that didn't hurt anybody."

The astonishing thing is, he says, that the judge gave Mosab a flawless character reference. "He said, 'I know you came here peacefully, I know you have an excellent character, I know you were not armed, you said sorry to the police.'" He was sure his son would go free. "I was so pleased. Then the judge says, 'I'm going to give you this sentence to deter other people.'"

Back in north London, Badi Tebani is looking at the door the police forced open. As they left the house, they made a point of telling him it was still in one piece. "When they finished their work, the police officers show me the door and say, 'It's not broken, look, look,' and they took a photograph. I told him, it doesn't matter if you broke the door, you broke my life."

Joblessness, drugs and now deaths – the history of Glasgow's Red Road has been defined by decline

Just inside the reach of living memory, the Red Road was a rough, red-cinder track that led through the cabbage fields which once furrowed the high ground on Glasgow's northern outskirts. By the 1930s, the track had been widened, straightened and resurfaced by municipal planners who had their eye on the cabbage fields as sites for new housing. In the 1960s, this new housing rose up: the Red Road flats, announced proudly at the time as the tallest human habitations in Europe. This distinction, together with an alliterative name that suggested the Wizard of Oz (or of Omsk), made it an early favourite of sociologists and architectural students and later, when things had gone wrong, an attraction for writers and film-makers. Last week's triple suicide, if suicide is what it was, simply added an international paragraph to a long local narrative of disaster.

The project was proposed in 1960 and conceived in more detail by its architect, Sam Bunton, the next year. It is interesting to consider how Glasgow would have looked from the Red Road as Bunton worked at his drawing board. To the farther west, the cranes of Clyde shipyards stretched several miles downriver; to the closer west, the workshops of the North British Locomotive Company still exported engines to Africa and Asia; to the south, steam rose night and day from Parkhead's big iron forge; to the east, the chimneys of the Lanarkshire rolling mills and the conical waste heaps of collieries pricked the horizon.

Between these points, a dense pattern of blackened Victorian tenements lay blurred in the smoke. More than a million people lived in the city then, many in houses that were cramped and unsanitary. The city's plan was to give all of them better homes as quickly and as cheaply as planning regulations and budgets allowed. Bunton's part of it was to try to fit 1,356 dwellings for 4,700 people on a very tight site. He needed to build high: six 31-storey blocks and two 27-storey slabs went up, built controversially around steel frames rather than the traditional concrete and with the outer walls made of asbestos. The first was finished in 1966 and the last in 1969, but even by that time the view from Red Road had changed substantially. The air was much clearer and the chimneys and cranes sparser. Glasgow was ending its career as a premier manufacturing city and losing its industrial workers to factories elsewhere or to the dole queue. From the top floor of one of Bunton's blocks, nearly 300ft up, a tenant could see the peaks of Arran, and as the 1970s turned into the 1980s many tenants had plenty of time to study the view.

Patricia Ferguson, now a Labour MSP, moved into the first block as an eight-year-old in 1966. What she remembers is probably typical. In their old tenement, a family of four shared two rooms. Now they had three bedrooms, a lounge, a big kitchen and, for the first time, a bathroom. "We had lots of space and fabulous views," she said this week. "When people moved there, this was the future, this was hope." Her dad worked as monumental letter-cutter, inscribing tombstones. Neighbouring fathers and brothers left every morning to earn money as upholsterers, plumbers and fitters, or to clock on at the railway repair shops. But even before that way of life died, there were problems. Two lifts served 120 flats and each lift could carry only eight people. When they worked, which wasn't always, they caused physical struggles among peak-time crowds waiting at the bottom. They were too small to carry coffins horizontally – the dead needed to be put back on their feet. And the towers swayed in high winds – lounge carpets would puff up in the middle with interior gales that had got round the asbestos, and the water in the lavatory bowl would ripple and tilt.

Vandalism began, and then drugs. Ferguson's family moved out in 1977 after an empty flat two floors up was set on fire and a young boy died of asphyxiation. The Red Road blocks became harder to let, and as occupancy rates dropped so Glasgow council vetted new tenants far less strictly. (Ferguson recalled that before her own family was accepted for a Red Road flat, a municipal official had visited their old tenement home and checked their clean habits by looking under the beds.) In the 1980s, one block was turned over to student accommodation. Demolition faced others. A temporary salvation arrived 10 years ago when the UK government announced its decision to disperse asylum seekers from London and the south-east; and Glasgow, moved by either charity or financial opportunity or both, saw a way of filling up its more ill-favoured housing stock. The city now has the highest number of asylum seekers outside London – 2,485 according to the latest Home Office count, though that figure doesn't include those who have been finally accepted as refugees. Most of them live in the Red Road flats or smaller high-rises on the same northern edge of the city.

I went there on Wednesday to look at the place where three people had died. The comedian Frankie Boyle once remarked that life in his childhood home, a high-rise in south Glasgow, was so depressing that "they should have built diving boards on top". It was an unfortunate thought to remember and a difficult one to suppress. Each block rose storey by shabby storey into a cold blue sky. Some had windows patched by cardboard. Chicken-wire stretched across the tops of balconies to stop children falling out or pigeons getting in. As I stood looking at the flowers and the leaflets ("Jobs and houses for all – refugees are welcome here") which sympathetic demonstrators had left on the grass, a couple of women came up and talked me through the details as they understood them. First, the three dead had heaved a heavy wardrobe through the chicken-wire of their 21st-floor balcony, to make a hole, and then jumped 50 metres after it.

"It'll be all about them now," one of the women said, speaking of the dead and meaning by "them" the non-native. "But don't you fall for it! There'll be dead bodies all over the place if they think it'll work for them. These folk are coming over and jumping on the broo [benefits – in fact an asylum seeker gets £35 a week] and there are too many people here who canny get jobs." She wanted to get out of the flats to a new house, but the benefits office wouldn't accept that she lived separately from the father of her two children. "He's a depressive and I'm an alcoholic on methadone. Nobody's perfect and that."

So many things are unknown. The suicide theory is untested and the dead have not been officially identified, though the Russian Serge Serykh's paranoid history was quickly and widely leaked, almost certainly to forestall speculation that government policies were to blame. Among the dead, we may never exactly know who did what to whom or why. Only the venue can be explained: how they came to be where they were. The answer is that there, 50 years ago, an architect and a local authority embraced a vision of modernity little understanding its drawbacks, or foreseeing that the old society and economy it was built to perpetuate more decently was about to crumble so quickly underfoot.

Whether you're after backpacker hangouts or barefoot chic on a budget, life really is a beach – and not much else – on all of these Thai islands

Koh Sichang

Tiny Sichang, a short boat hop from the town of Si Racha, an hour east of the Thai capital, is the nearest island to Bangkok yet has never made it onto the travellers' circuit. There's decent accommodation, thick jungles, an abandoned palace, excellent aharn talay (seafood), monkeys and a small sandy beach.
See ko-sichang.com for accommodation.

Koh Tarutao

Set in the furthest-flung southern corner of Thailand's Andaman coast, 26km long Tarutao has incredible forest-rimmed beaches, wild jungles and no mod-cons. It is part of the stunning Tarutao national marine park, which comprises 51 islands including gorgeous Koh Lipe. Accommodation and food here are basic, but it's all the better for that.
See kohtarutaoisland.com. Tents for rent from £2 a night, bungalows from around £8. Open November-mid-May.

Koh Phayam

Up near the Burmese border, a two-hour boat ride from the town of Ranong, Phayam has slowly emerged as the sleepy island of choice for travellers eager to avoid the over-development of Phangan and Samui. Huge, arcing sandy beaches, excellent snorkelling, no cars and plenty of cashew trees and hornbills set the scene.
Bamboo Bungalows do what they say on the tin. There's also a tropical garden, Wi-Fi, motorbikes, surfing, snorkelling, fishing and volleyball.

Koh Jum

A short hop from the famed travellers' hub of Krabi, Jum certainly lacks the glamour of its near neighbour, Phi Phi. But this is an island to lose yourself in for weeks at a time, cut off from the world and working on your tan. Don't expect the best beaches but you will find a smattering of decent bungalows, villages of chao ley (sea gypsy) people, dense jungle and a soporific travellers' vibe.
See kohjumonline.com for a handful of backpacker places or the more upmarket bungalows of Koh Jum Lodge.

Koh Phra Thong

Koh Phra Thong is another unspoilt island in the Andaman Sea off Thailand's west coast, near the town of Kuraburi, with around 16km of empty, golden beaches, no cars and one "road" that's a sandy track. The Golden Buddha Beach Resort is the only resort on the island, with 21 traditional Thai-style wooden houses set in the coastal woods. Swim, get a massage, canoe the tidal river, snorkel in the lagoon . . . and that's it.
Doubles from £49, room-only.

Andrew Spooner is the author of Footprint's Thailand Islands and Beaches guide (£13.99).

Report revealing 'mistreatment and exploitation' of workers could be describing conditions in developing countries

The examples are many and varied, but appalling all the same.

Pregnant women being forced to stand for long hours in factory production lines without breaks, or perform heavy lifting under threat of the sack; meat factory workers having frozen hamburgers "like stones" thrown at them by line managers; women with heavy periods being refused toilet breaks so that they bled on their clothes on the production lines; workers with bladder problems refused breaks so that they urinated on themselves, workers exposed to verbal and physical abuse.

The "widespread mistreatment and exploitation" of agency workers, particularly migrant and pregnant workers, in meat and poultry processing factories, revealed in a report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) could be describing conditions in developing countries. But the inquiry, published today, focuses on employees in the UK.

Part of the largest manufacturing sector in Britain, the meat and poultry industry is worth hundreds of millions of pounds and employs 88,800 people. A total of 80% of processed meat goes to supermarkets.

The 15-month inquiry into recruitment and employment in the sector found that 70% of agency staff, a third of the workforce, are migrants. They are mainly Polish, followed by Lithuanian, Latvian, Czech, Slovakian and Portuguese. Some of the mistreatment of agency workers was illegal, it said, while other examples were a clear affront to respect and dignity. The report concluded:

• A fifth of workers interviewed reported physical abuse, being pushed, kicked or having things thrown at them by line managers. A Polish man working in a meat factory, said: "The managers …they would pull our clothes … and shout. They [threw] hamburgers. They were so angry because we were new and couldn't do the job as fast as we were supposed to … those frozen hamburgers are like stones."

• A third of workers said they experienced, or witnessed abuse, which was "bullying, humiliating and abusive". Some female workers said that women were verbally abused by line managers more than men and there were instances of sexual harassment.

One Brazilian man working in a poultry factory in the east of England, said: "I'll never forget it ... I'm not a slave. I just can't speak English. He talked to me like he talked with an animal. It is so terrible ... sometimes I don't even seep in the night. Because the next day, I need to go to there [to that] horrible place".

• A quarter of workers mentioned poor treatment of pregnant workers and women attributed miscarriages to conditions. There were reports of pregnant workers forced to continue work that posed risks, including heavy lifting, standing for long periods, under the threat of being sacked. Some workers were given no further work once managers learned they were pregnancy.

• Some, including pregnant women, those with heavy periods and people with bladder problems, had been prevented from going to the toilet by their line managers.

• Some workers told ECHR they worked every day of the week without days off. The maximum number of hours worked a week regularly was 90 hours, while some shifts lasted 16-18 hours with only a few hours rest in between shifts.

• Workers spoke of pains to their limbs and extreme fatigue, partly due to carrying out repetitive tasks on fast-moving production lines for extended periods. There were also reports of a lack of protective equipment – only three in five firms said businesses provides the agency with a health and safety risk assessment. A Polish woman, working in a meat processing factory, said: "Working at a line, its really hard work. And the boxes are about 16kg each, so they are quite heavy and my hands are swollen at the end of the day... There are days I cannot open the door or keep a glass in my hand. I can't feel anything."

• Some workers spoke of being forced to work while tired after a long shift, ill or pregnant, under threat of losing their job. There were reports of an agency entering homes and waking sleeping people to make them work on their day off.

• More than eight out of 10 of the 260 workers EHCR interviewed said agency workers were treated worse than directly employed workers in all aspects, from poorer pay to allocation of poor jobs, to being treated like "second-class citizens".

Half of agencies and a third of processing forms said it was difficult to recruit British workers and that they thought they were deterred by the pay and working conditions. A few British workers spoke of their difficulty registering for work with some agencies who supply almost exlusively eastern European workers, which would be unlawful under the Race Relations Act.

Despite finding the workplace distressing and degrading, nearly one-third of workers endured this treatment without complaint because of fears that their work would be terminated and their chances of securing stable, permanent employment harmed.

These workers also had little knowledge of their rights or how to make complaints.

However, the report also found examples of firms who managed or treated permanent and agency workers of all nationalities with respect. One employer, Bernard Matthews, was mentioned as an employer of choice for agency workers for this reason.

One of the major problems highlighted by the commission was the way that supermarkets, as the largest customers of British meat, ordered products. Some agencies thought that the downward price pressure exerted by supermarkets and the way they went about ordering products from suppliers brought about the conditions that supported unethical traders.

One HR manager in a poultry processing plant said: "If the supermarkets' ordering system was better you could say for the next 10 weeks we want that amount of staff and we could recruit them."

Firms also said their ability to offer permanent employment is affected by fluctuations at short notice in supermarket orders.

The commission's recommendations include: supermarkets improving their auditing of suppliers; processing firms and agencies improving recruitment practices, working environments and the ability of workers to raise issues of concern; and for the government to provide sufficient resources for the Gangmasters' Licensing Agency to help safeguard the welfare of workers. It said it would review their responses over the next 12 months and will consider taking enforcement action.

Supermarket suppliers under fire as one-fifth of workers interviewed for inquiry report being pushed or hit

Thousands of workers in Britain's lucrative food industry are being subjected to widespread mistreatment and exploitation, including physical and verbal abuse and degrading working conditions, according to an inquiry published today.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said it has uncovered significant evidence of abuse among producers supplying Britain's big supermarkets. The inquiry includes reports from meat factory workers who say they have had frozen burgers thrown at them by line managers, and accounts of pregnant women being forced to stand for long periods or perform heavy lifting under threat of the sack.

It also contained reports from women with heavy periods and people with bladder problems on production lines being denied toilet breaks and forced to endure the humiliation of bleeding and urinating on themselves.

One-fifth of workers interviewed, from across England and Wales, reported being pushed, kicked or having things thrown at them, while a third had experienced or witnessed verbal abuse.

The EHRC said some examples, such as forcing workers to do double shifts when ill or tired, were in breach of the law and licensing standards, while others were a "clear affront to respect and dignity".

Migrant workers are the most affected because one-third of permanent workers and two-thirds of agency workers in the industry are migrants, but British and other agency employees face similar ill-treatment, the report found. More than eight in 10 of the 260 workers who gave evidence to the commission said agency workers were treated worse than directly employed staff. The report found that 80% of processed meat goes to Britain's supermarkets, and that the main reason agency staff are used is to meet the big stores' demand.

Yesterday, Jack Dromey, the deputy general secretary of Unite union, which has campaigned for better rights for supermarket supply chain workers for four years, said: "Britain's supermarkets should hang their heads in shame."

Neil Kinghan, the EHRC director general, said: "We have heard stories of workers subjected to bullying, violence and being humiliated and degraded by being denied toilet breaks. Some workers feel they have little choice but to put up with these conditions out of economic necessity. Others lack the language skills to understand and assert their rights.

"While most supermarkets are carrying out audits of their suppliers, our evidence shows that these audits are not safeguarding workers and they clearly need to take steps to improve them. The processing firms themselves and the agencies supplying their workers also need to pay more than lip-service to ensuring that workers are not subjected to unlawful and unethical treatment."

Half of agencies and a third of processing firms said it was difficult to recruit British workers and that they thought they were deterred by the pay and conditions. A few British workers spoke of their difficulty registering for work with some agencies who supply almost exclusively Eastern European workers, which would be unlawful under the Race Relations Act.

Ian Livesay, the chief executive of the food picking and processing regulator, the Gangmasters Licencing Authority (GLA), said exploitation of workers was unacceptable and welcomed the report's recognition that the GLA has helped to improve standards in agencies and labour suppliers. He said: "We fully agree with the report's recommendation that supermarkets have a key role to play and, as the report recognises, we have signed an agreement with all the major retailers and their key suppliers to share information with us on serious breaches of our standards in their supply chain."

The government had recently increased its funding by £500,000 this year to cover enforcement and it now has 90 staff dedicated to stamping out abuse, he said.

Mark Boleat, chairman of the Association of Labour Providers, questioned the commission's methodology and suggested it had sought out workers who were experiencing abuse. He said: "How many workers did they interview? There are thousands in the meat industry. The workers are not a representative sample. I've never heard anything like that."

He said that some of the recommendations, such as paying workers for travelling time and engaging workers on contracts of employment rather than contracts for services, were impossible "unless there is a commitment from retailers and labour users to meet such costs, and past experience suggests that this is unlikely". If they were forced to offer contracts, many of its members would go bust, he said.

While it revealed many abuses, the EHRC report also highlighted examples of good practice, particularly when some firms did not differentiate between agency staff and directly employed workers.

The commission recommendations include: supermarkets improving their auditing of suppliers; processing firms and agencies improving recruitment practices, working environments and the ability of workers to raise issues of concern; and for the government to provide sufficient resources for the GLA to help safeguard the welfare and interests of workers.

Dromey said: "Supermarkets have driven down costs along their supply chain with tens of thousands of workers paying the price, suffering discrimination and unfair treatment.

"A two-tier labour market has been created, exploiting migrant agency workers on poorer conditions of employment and undercutting directly employed workers on better conditions of employment. That divides workforces and damages social cohesion in local communities. We welcome the call from the EHRC for workers doing the same job to be paid the same."

In light of the articles by Simon Jenkins (The bankers lied. And Darling, merely a puppet on their string, knows it, 12 March) and Mehdi Hasan (It's defeatist nonsense to talk of a crisis of leftwing thinking, 12 March), it seems evident that there is the need for a rearticulating of the political discourse. The hegemony of neoliberal thinking has defined the political space for 30 years, so much so that even in the present crisis, when we all should be marching on the streets against the bankers, New Labour is still running in fear of framing the debate in social democratic terms.

For the 30 years the right have had a stranglehold on how we define freedom. The political classes have been fearful of any reference to the state as a means of solving problems. Individual freedom, essentially defined in terms of freedom from the state, has been their mantra. For example, George Osborne's first reaction to the nationalisation of the banks was to jump enthusiastically up and down, claiming that old socialist nationalisation is here again. Cameron is careful that his slogan that there is such a thing as society is followed up by a clear rejection of any idea that this means a bigger state.

The current crisis has left both parties searching for ways to rearticulate a progressive politics, but it is up to the left to grab this opportunity, because they won't have another like this, to reshape the political discourse and redefine the state and its relation to individual freedom. This is a hegemonic struggle to reclaim the terms of liberty and equality in social democratic terms.

Robert Proni

London

• Donald Hirsch is quite right to say that decent employers should pay a living wage of at least £7.14 an hour, and more in expensive areas (The wages of dignity, 10 March). However, we also need to realise that the legal minimum wage of £5.80 an hour is not being paid to many thousands of employees. The root of the problem is that the statutory enforcement powers are held by Revenue & Customs, and they are failing to do their job properly. That is hardly surprising as there are only 123 enforcement staff for the whole of the UK.

In Hackney, where I live, only 258 investigations have been carried out in seven years. Anecdotal evidence of illegal avoidance abounds, but the onus is on the individual to complain, and few feel able to do so. Ideally the enforcement powers should be transferred to local authorities, but in the meantime high-profile awareness campaigns could be organised by councils with advice and information points located in their buildings. This policy will be part of the Hackney Labour manifesto for the forthcoming local elections.

Tim Webb

London

• Neil Kinnock (Letters, 10 March) utterly fails to comprehend the burning sense of disillusionment that has driven so many former Labour supporters either into cynical abandonment of politics or, like John Kampfner, to embrace the Lib Dems. The charge against the New Labour project is not that it did not deliver the benefits he lists. It did, and there were others which curiously he omits, above all the lancing of the Northern Ireland carbuncle and significant constitutional reforms – devolution and human rights legislation. The charge is that it squandered its massive parliamentary majorities and the goodwill that the electorate bestowed on it to transform a divided, sick society.

On the contrary, it took to its bosom the neoliberal ideology that nourished that divide, extending privatisation; it renounced and even demonised public sector initiatives and went back on the welfare state concordat that was the hallmark of the postwar Labour settlement. So, Labour administrations have presided over the widest gulf ever between the haves and have-nots and now the inevitable massive recession. We have witnessed a generation of politicians intent on feathering their own nests, the expenses "scandal" being a minor part of this. Not to speak, as Neil Kinnock dare not, of the criminal adventure that was the Iraq war. I, a onetime Labour activist, like John Kampfner, have joined the Lib Dems, who I see as a catalyst for, and working partner of, a rejuvenated Labour party once it is purged of the New Labour virus.

Benedict Birnberg

London

This week saw the first three-way kidney transplant, in which living donors gave to a stranger in return for an organ for a loved one. Peter Martin, who donated a kidney to his sister, describes how it feels

Four years ago I gave my sister Paula a kidney. It was just before Christmas and I'm sure we exchanged books, or knitwear or something too, but the details of the gifts we wrapped remain sketchy. The kidney (her kidney, now) is doing fine work filtering impurities from her blood. I don't think she works it as hard as I did, so things have worked out well for both of them.

When she was 21, Paula had an allergic reaction to penicillin that caused her immune system to attack her skin and kidneys. It began with pinprick sensations around her lower legs, and within two days both her ankles and knees had seized up. These unpleasant symptoms were followed by much more serious kidney problems. When she told me that she might need a kidney one day and that I was a potential candidate, I said OK and forgot about it. It was another 10 years before her deteriorating kidneys narrowed her options to either dialysis or a pre-emptive transplant.

I was happy to attend the first, crucial blood test, though I was less than keen on a major operation and the possibility of three months' unpaid convalescence. I wanted to help, but I also wanted my life to continue undisturbed. There was a part of me that hoped I would be ruled out of the donor process, and thought that mum or dad would be better candidates. My reluctance made me ashamed.

The outcome I feared most was the blood tests ruling out my parents, leaving me the only suitable candidate. You're constantly told no one will think any less of you if you say you don't want to donate, but who could refuse when to do so would announce one's unsurpassed selfishness to the world? (I later met a woman who donated a kidney to one of her sisters; a third sister had not only refused to be tested but had encouraged the donor not to be tested either.)

It turned out my parents and I were all good matches. I started to take time to talk to friends about my feelings, doing my best not to sound selfish, even though that's how I felt. I asked one, "What if I say no?" He didn't hesitate, "You won't say no. You'll do it, and it won't be a big deal." He was mostly right.

Over the next month or two, to their bitter disappointment, my parents were both ruled out on medical grounds. My reaction surprised me: I was happy. Now the only candidate, my ambivalence vanished. I felt relieved that neither of my parents would have to undergo a big operation – I'd been so busy agonising about my own tangled feelings that I hadn't thought about them.

Further tests had made it clear that I was a very good match and in great shape to face an operation. One ultrasound operator even told me my candidate kidney was "beautiful". (I bet she says that to all the donors.)

As it faded, I began to understand the roots of my initial reluctance. I was afraid of being forced to decide whether to donate because I was afraid that I might not want to, but wouldn't have the guts to say no. Now my head cleared: I did want to donate. It was a unique opportunity to do something good, and I wanted to spare my sister the risks and rituals of dialysis, and the long wait for a cadaver's kidney.

The operation itself wasn't a big deal. Because I opted for surgery they had to tell me every risk involved: risk of death? One in 5,000 (is that high or low?). Risk of chronic pain for the rest of my life? Depends on whether the surgery is open or keyhole – keyhole lessens the risk (I can't remember the exact figures, but I do remember thinking it might be better to be the one in 5,000). My upper lip wasn't stiff exactly – I had a minor freak-out when the op was delayed for a few days at the last minute – but when Paula and I were finally admitted, we managed to have a laugh. I even got to take my soon-to-be-ex-kidney to Pizza Express for a valedictory beer the evening before the op (my sister is teetotal, so for the donor kidney it was goodbye to me and goodbye to my pre-op stimulant of choice).

There were no nerves the next morning, just a series of procedures. At the last moment, before she was wheeled away, Paula said, "It's hard to say … but thank you," and gave me a hug. I managed to fire back a bright "You're welcome!", which somehow didn't spoil the moment for the orderly who was discreetly wiping his eyes. Paula's surgery was open, mine keyhole. Once she was ready for the transplant they brought me down and placed me in the theatre next door. I was anaesthetised, then the team disconnected my left kidney via two small holes in my abdomen and removed it through a larger hole in my stomach. They then popped next door and gave it to Paula, leaving her two "birth" kidneys in place.

Two days after the transplant my sister felt better than she had in two years. She stayed awake until midnight for the first time in as long as she could remember and even had rosy cheeks. She was taken off her high blood pressure tablets and managed three journeys to the double doors of the ward and back. She was home in a week.

I was home in three days, falling asleep with the unfinished crossword in my lap. Aside from some severe referred pain (irritation in the diaphragm causing terrible shoulder pain for reasons I still fail to understand) my recovery was quick. I could have returned to work in six weeks, but my employer, anticipating a longer convalescence, had hired someone on a three-month contract so told me to enjoy the break. I took a trip to the Lakes and fondly recall running up a hill in a state of giddy excitement.

On the night before our operations, a donor on the ward spent much of the night moaning in pain after his surgery. The next evening he was up and about, telling us he felt "euphoric". He'd donated a kidney to his nine-year-old daughter, who had been on dialysis for a year. He told us he'd woken knowing he'd done a good thing. His joy was deepened when staff told him his daughter was doing well. He stumbled off grinning, his dressing gown flapping open to reveal his shaved stomach and the freshly bandaged scars he bore with obvious pride.

My friend was right – I did it. But he got one thing wrong: it was a big deal. I don't know if I'll ever do a better thing. It was a privilege to be able to help my sister live a longer, happier life. She is doing well. I am very lucky.

The figures for bugs in train compartments sound a little bit on the high side. Where did they come from?

The figures were all very specific and very frightening. "Two thousand bugs taking a ride in every train compartment," said the Daily Mail. "Cockroaches cluster on trains," groaned the Telegraph. "Commuters share trains with 1,000 cockroaches, 200 bedbugs and 200 fleas," said the Evening Standard.

These figures all sound a little bit on the high side. Where did they come from? "Staff at Rentokil sprayed insecticide throughout the carriages of a train and a bus and then counted the bodies of insects," said the Standard. It quoted a Rentokil spokesman: "The bus we studied was within the M25."

But Transport for London says it has had no contact with Rentokil, and that no such study has been done on its vehicles. I asked Rentokil for more details.

After a bit of prodding, its PR company, Brands2Life, explained: no buses or trains were studied.

How did people get the wrong end of the stick? I have no way of knowing, as Brands2Life and Rentokil both declined to show me what they had sent to journalists but, in any case, contrary to what was said earlier, these numbers did not come from measurements and counts – they are based on a "theoretical model".

Models are handy. They're a simulation of reality, based on a series of assumptions. Rentokil's model for the number of bugs on trains and buses made some interesting assumptions, and you will have your own view on whether they make for a reasonable approximation of the real world.

It assumed, for example, that the railway carriage or bus was left in isolation. It assumed this carriage was helpfully furnished with a plentiful food supply. It assumed that the ratio of male to female bugs was perfectly optimal for breeding.

It assumed (surprisingly for anyone involved in modelling populations – surprisingly for anyone, really) that the population of bugs would be left entirely unchecked, with no external factors to control the mortality rate.

It assumed that the siding or garage was controlled at a constant temperature all day and night, with no extremes. It assumed there were no trampling commuters, no cruel vacuum cleaners, no anything. In fact, it assumed there was no cleaning, ever, and no passengers, ever. This was its model of insect populations on commuter vehicles.

You will have your own view on whether you could trust an organisation that makes assumptions like these in estimating the average population of bugs. But it's somehow unseemly that Rentokil, a company with £2.36bn in revenue and a 54% increase in profits in 2009 to £166m, and poised to pay £90m in bonuses to its top three executives, feels the need to make everyone afraid of public transport on a PR whim. There is also the ugly thought that Rentokil will do more business if it can make everyone scared of bugs on the bus.

And on 2 March, the day before the cockroach press release, Rentokil announced the single biggest ever contract in the history of its business: £200m over five years with London Underground.

Robert Hulse, director of the Brunel Museum, takes us on a tour of the Thames tunnel, described, when it first opened in 1843, as the eighth wonder of the world

Thames tunnel, created by Marc Brunel and son Isambard in 1843, reopened to walkers for first time in 145 years

"How they got the performing horses down here God only knows", says Robert Hulse, as he leads visitors into the gloom under the Thames for the temporary public reopening of one of the truly astonishing wonders of the Victorian age.

The Thames tunnel was today reopened to walkers for the first time in 145 years, giving punters a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see close up a remarkable feat of engineering – and a top tourist attraction visited by millions.

"The eighth wonder of the world awaits," Hulse, director of the nearby Brunel Museum, told visitors today. That description may surprise those who know it better as the Tube tunnel between Wapping and Rotherhithe – but it might be only a little hyperbolic.

The tunnel is being opened to the public this weekend as the finale to London's East Festival. A Victorian fancy fair, with fairground performers and musicians, will also be held in the tunnel.

It was a crowning achievement of Marc Brunel and his then teenage son Isambard Kingdom, but it was considered a nightmare to build.

Brunel – a Frenchman, as the British sometimes choose to forget – thought it would take three years to complete. It took 18. One newspaper wag called it The Great Bore.

But it took so long because it was so revolutionary. The tunnel was, says Hulse, "the birth of the Tube; the birth of mass urban transport."

It was dug in appalling conditions by men with short-handled spades working in cages, being constantly showered by water from a river that was, at the time, an open sewer.

"They weren't just showering in sewage; they were ingesting it," says Hulse. "Best not to dwell on that thought, but it is the worst job you can imagine."

There was also the frequent danger of getting burned, with gas lamps igniting the methane found below the surface. Men tended to pass out after two hours, owing to a lack of air, and were carried back to the surface.

Only six men died as a direct result, although how many might have died indirectly – from cholera and dysentery– is not known.

One man who very nearly died was young Isambard, swept the length of the tunnel by a flood wave, only weeks after a confidence-boosting banquet was held in the tunnel with the band of the Coldstream Guards blasting out Rule Britannia to terrified, silent diners.

But live he did, and in 1843 the tunnel opened, although not for its original intention.

It had been planned for moving cargo because of the chronic congestion on the Thames, easily the busiest river in the world with around 3,000 tall ships and 10,000 boats on it each day. "They used to say it took longer to get stuff across the Thames than to get stuff across the Atlantic," said Hulse.

But it proved too expensive to get the cargo down there, so was instead opened as a must-see tourist attraction: a shop-lined tunnel under the river. At its middle point, the tunnel is just 14ft below the river bed.Many refused to walk through. Hulse says: "You have to remember that in 1843 to walk under a river the size of the Thames was like walking on the moon."

In the neo-classical archways, stallholders sold Thames Tunnel gin flasks, pin cushions, snuff boxes, coffee cups and cigar cutters.

Hulse says: "It's a very early example of what is known as aggressive marketing of site specific merchandise. Or what you may know as tourist tat. Stallholders used to say: they're not just souvenirs - they're trophies. If you walked through the tunnel, you were one of the brave."

There were also sword swallowers, Ethiopian serenaders, Indian dancers, Chinese singers performing horses and a steam organ.

Not everyone was impressed by the tunnel. George Catlin, the American painter, said you emerged in Rotherhithe "in the midst of one of the most unintelligible, forlorn and forsaken districts of London, or the world".

In 1865, the tunnel was handed over to the East London Railway. Today the tunnel still has some of its original brickwork, as well as 19th century soot from the steam trains which came through from 1869.

This weekend's walk-throughs are very different affairs from those in 1843, when 50,000 people turned up on the first day. For one thing there is health and safety. Visitors are asked to wear latex gloves because of the risk of leptospirosis and Weil's disease.

After this weekend's events the next opportunity to see the tunnel will be in the spring, when the East London line reopens. But then you will need to keep your eyes on the glass as the trains drive through it.

Secret service plots and paranoia may have coloured the case of Serge Serykh's family, but a housing charity has blamed the tragedy on an asylum policy that 'treated them like cattle'

It was shortly after 10am on Sunday that Graham Galbraith and Carol Craig were woken by police, who told them that their next door neighbours had jumped to their deaths from the balcony of their high-rise flat.

When the couple looked over their own balcony on the 15th floor of 63 Petershill Drive in Glasgow's Red Road estate, they saw three bodies on the small square of grass below.

"They were right next to each other," said Galbraith. "Two of them side by side, and one just a bit away. We hadn't heard a thing."

There was little the couple could tell the authorities about their neighbours, not even their names. The father, mother and adult son had only moved in on 2 February, one of 670 asylum-seeking families temporarily housed in the cluster of decaying tower blocks that dominate the skyline of this north-east corner of Glasgow. Here, they all but disappeared among the other residents.

But the case of Serge Serykh, his wife, Tatiana, and his stepson was remarkable, not least because they were Russian and, it has emerged, had sought asylum in the UK from Canada, a country which had already granted them leave to remain and which Serge Serykh would claim was trying to assassinate the Queen and attack him with secret radioactive weapons.

Officials say that with obvious psychological issues at play it would be wrong to make generalisations from one tragic incident. They say the family, whose application to stay in the UK had been rejected, had been told to vacate the flat on the day they died but were not under imminent threat of deportation or even eviction.

Campaigners, however, say the family's deaths highlight the brutality of an asylum system that leaves people homeless and destitute once their application has been turned down, and living in fear of the moment that UK Border Agency officials will turn up to deport them.

"This has exposed how barbaric the system is," says Robina Qureshi, director of the Glasgow charity Positive Action in Housing. "The Home Office has tried to skew this story by putting the blame on a dead family. We don't believe for a moment that psychological issues were the only reason for this. We believe they were driven to the brink by asylum policy."

Tomorrow residents from the Red Road area will march through Glasgow in memory of the Serykhs and in support of another asylum seeker, Stephanie Ovranah, and her five-year-old twins, Joshua and Joel, who were detained by border agency officials in Glasgow last week after five years in the UK and are due to be deported to Nigeria, a country the boys left as infants.

"They were treated like cattle," says Qureshi. "They were shoved in a van; the boys were still in their school uniform. They've got strong Glasgow accents. They miss their schoolfriends. And the Serykhs were considered credible in Canada. Shouldn't that be good enough for us? They were going to be out on the street, destitute. What would that do to your mental state?"

The Serykhs first arrived in the UK on 28 November 2007, seeking asylum immediately. They settled in the north-west London borough of Brent, not far from Heathrow airport. They found accommodation in a recently built block of high rise flats on Forty Lane directly opposite the town hall.

Serge Serykh told those helping him with his case that he was a member of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and had fled the country with his wife and stepson, arriving in Canada in 2000, aged 33. The young family were granted leave to remain in Canada as "protected persons", a form of refugee status, but they existed in a legal limbo in which they were neither Canadian nor permanent residents, but they had indefinite leave to stay in the country. Canadian officials believe they lived in Toronto, but it is also possible they spent some time in Montreal.

Among those attending asylum surgeries held by the Brent North MP Barry Gardiner, Serge Serykh stood out. On a Friday morning he wore a slightly dated suit and tie and, gripping an attache case, often choosing to stand for four or five hours at a time rather than sit with everyone else in the waiting area.

"He was 6ft 2in and had a striking military bearing – chest out," recalled Gardiner, who handled Serykh's claim for indefinite leave to remain in the UK. "He held himself very stiffly and upright. He was clearly physically very powerful. He was always clean-shaven, always had shiny shoes, which gave some credibility to the idea that he might have had some military background."

No evidence has emerged to confirm Serykh's claim that he was a Russian secret agent – the FSB, previously headed by Vladimir Putin, is a notoriously secretive organisation, not known for its willingness to disclose the identity of its operatives, or talk to the western press – but there has been some speculation in Russia, meanwhile, that the Serykhs's deaths may not have been suicide, following the demise of several prominent journalists and rights activists who fell to their deaths from high-rise Soviet tower blocks in recent years.

A press attache at the Russian embassy in London said they were still waiting for confirmation that the family was Russian. "We don't have the bodies and we don't have the documents. It would be useless to speculate whether they are from Russia or from other countries of the former Soviet Union."

The name Serykh originally comes from Siberia, but it is sufficiently common for Serykhs to be found across the vast Russian Federation.

Serykh insisted to Gardiner, however, that he had fled to Canada because the country offered him protection in return for "services rendered". He claimed that while in Canada he had uncovered a plot by the Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, to kill Queen Elizabeth II. He became convinced that this made him a target for Canadian secret services, and that was ultimately the reason he said he needed to leave. He claimed Canadians and perhaps Russian agents had used psychotronic weapons against him. On one occasion he told Gardiner that he was being poisoned by someone sending anthrax in the mail. He brought the letters in a biscuit tin and the MP had them checked by House of Commons security experts, but no traces of poison were found.

Serykh later told a similar tale to the Glasgow Labour MP Willie Bain after the family moved to Scotland in the autumn of 2009. It was here, on 15 February this year, that the family's application for asylum in the UK was refused. As a result, their financial support and housing were withdrawn and they were told to leave the Red Road flat on 7 March, the day they died. The YMCA, which leases the Red Road building, said they would not have been evicted. They say the Serykhs were advised to make a fresh claim for asylum, and to seek temporary accommodation with the Scottish Refugee Council .

"I am not qualified to judge his mental health, but in layman's terms he had paranoia," said Barry Gardiner. "My overwhelming impression is that this was a tragedy that was always going to happen. He was not an ordinary person driven to suicide by the Kafkaesque immigration system, as some people seem to be suggesting."

But there is little sympathy for that view among the other residents of the Red Road. Six other asylum seekers have committed suicide in the Red Road flats since 2003, and mental health problems are prevalent among the asylum-seeking community with anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder the most common complaints.

Those still caught up in the asylum process say the pressure can be unbearable. "How can three different people all decide that they want to die?" said Tracey, 21, from Nigeria, who lives in the same tower block as the Serykhs. "Something pushed them. I blame the Home Office. You are terrified they will come to the door. It is always in the morning that they come. For someone to commit suicide, they are choking, you know? They have reached a point where they can't take it anymore. How did these three people get to that stage?"

Ian Jack, p35

Nine-minute duet with Beyonce already being touted by some as successor to Michael Jackson's Thriller

With some grunts, G-strings, heavy product placement and an enormous amount of hype, the 21st century's take on feminism and social commentary arrived this week with the video to Lady Gaga and Beyonce's duet, Telephone. Within 12 hours of the video being released on the internet it had half a million hits and nearly as many blogs eagerly dissecting the possible meanings behind the nine-minute video.

Already being touted by some as the successor to Michael Jackson's Thriller, Telephone continues Gaga's tradition of elevating her songs with clever videos. This time she and director Jonas Akerlund have created a melange of Russ Meyers, Quentin Tarantino, Thelma and Louise and the brief incarceration of Paris Hilton to make a film about lesbian murderers, set to the lyrics of a woman complaining about people phoning her in a nightclub.

While Beyonce is clearly the more talented, her brand of sexiness looks dated next to Gaga. Bloggers have been decoding the meaning behind the sunglasses made of cigarettes, but one might just as well try to decipher the dress Gaga once wore made of Kermit the Frogs: she does it because it's funny.

Gaga, never averse to ascribing depths to her work where others might see shallows, has claimed that the video's meaning came from "the idea that America is full of young people that are inundated with information and technology". Her intention, accordingly, was to "turn it into something that was more of a commentary on the kind of country that we are".

For
Forget outrage, just enjoy it

Some taboos are still alive and kicking. Lady Gaga and Beyonce's prison "lezz-ploitation" video has caused outrage, featuring as it does butch dykes, chicks with dicks, horny female prison wardens perusing lesbian dating sites – oh, and a bit of mass murder.

Early in the video there is a scene in the prison yard featuring a lesbian snog between a butch lesbian in leather and Lady Gaga, who is wearing a pair of sunglasses made from burning cigarettes. It's hard to know what to be outraged about first. The answer is, nothing – the answer is just enjoy it.

It's a cross between Tenko, Prisoner Cell Block H, a ghetto-girl Malory Towers and Thelma and Louise, as re-imagined by David Lachapelle and Betty Paige, only this time our heroines don't have to die. Instead, they drive into the sunset in Beyonce's "pussymobile" after Beyonce has turned to her (we assume) lover and said: "You've been a very, very bad girl, Gaga."

Women in prison exploitation movies took off in the 1950s thanks to the influence of pulp magazines with films such as Caged and So Young So Bad. But unlike them, there are no sadistic male guards in this one. While there are obligatory scenes such as the strip search ("I told you she didn't have a dick," says one guard) and the cat fights with the queen bee gang leader, the chicks are all doing it for themselves.

It's a silly, sexy, funny film for a song about the nightmare of having a mobile phone, ridden with product placement from the phone company logo on Gaga's screen to the cans of Diet Coke rollers in her locks, and it feels very zeitgeisty – a big, female power fantasy. These aren't just tough but hot tough chicks who can take care of themselves – like Trudy Chacon in Avatar, the cute Latina helicopter pilot, who's the sort of person you want looking after you if you find yourself in lost in a mad sci-fi jungle.

In terms of "all girls together" videos, it reminded me of Britney Spears' One More Time, only Lady Gaga has moved beyond the lame message of turning yourself into a Lolita schoolgirl, and has instead decided to turn the world completely lesbian – and good on her and her tattooed sisters in their studded leather bikinis, roaming the world avenging themselves on bad people.

Stephanie Theobold

Against
The same old boring sexism

Say what you like about Lady Gaga – everyone else does – but when it comes to colour and controversy she certainly delivers. She's appeared in hats shaped like lobsters, shoes resembling armadillos, dancing in a white latex catsuit in her Bad Romance video. She's regularly seen wandering around with a small china teacup and saucer in hand, apropros of nothing (this last affectation gets no less irritating).

What we get now is a cartoon-ish explosion of sex and violence. It starts with Gaga being taken into a women's prison, led past bra-clad, tattoo-covered inmates, who are writhing against the doors to their cells – and occasionally pausing (as you do) to lick the bars. Gaga is wearing a low-cut outfit, and as she gets thrown into her cell, she's stripped by the guards, revealing just a pair of fishnets and black plasters over her nipples.

When the cell door closes, she throws herself against it, and although her pubis is pixelated, the screen grab enables her to rebuke those tired old rumours of hermaphroditism. "I told you she didn't have a dick," says one guard. "Too bad," says the other.

There follow lesbian kisses, a mass poisoning, and a double act with Beyonce – the two drive off in a lurid vehicle nicknamed the "pussy wagon". Gaga has apparently said that the video was inspired by Quentin Tarantino's work, but the references reach further back to the 1960s exploitation flicks of Roger Corman and Russ Meyer's Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!.

These references coat the whole video in a slick film of irony, and make the whole enterprise seem occasionally funny and always ridiculous. But also, strangely, a little bit dull. Because if there's one thing that we've seen a thousand times over the past few decades, it's old-style sexism dressed up as new-style irony. Does the fact that Gaga seems to be winking knowingly at the camera as she dances in a bikini make the vision any less predictable, any less boring, any less reminiscent of sexist video after sexist video that you've seen in the past few years? Nope.

It's a disappointment from someone who seems to be popping with so many ideas. Gaga will do something great, I'm sure. But this isn't it.

Kira Cochrane

Corporation will build bespoke reusable studio in South Africa amid criticism of its spending on big events

The BBC will take up to 295 staff to cover the World Cup in South Africa, a total that is sure to provoke criticism from rivals but is 15% lower than the number in Germany four years ago.

In an attempt to ward off inevitable criticism over costs during a period of intense scrutiny from politicians and rivals, the BBC also told the Guardian that its Cape Town base, being built at an estimated cost of several hundred thousand pounds, would be its first "flat-pack" studio. It will look into shipping it back to the UK and using it at other major events following the World Cup.

The studio will be no Ikea flat pack, however, with the newly built glass studio on the roof of a hospital also housing a green room for guests and a production suite. Critics have already begun attacking the corporation for the size of its likely team and for investing in the bespoke studio in Cape Town with views of Table Mountain rather than using the International Broadcast Centre in Johannesburg with views of Soccer City, where the opening match and final will be played.

But the director of sport, Barbara Slater, and head of BBC TV Sport, Philip Bernie, said they represented a balance between value for money and meeting the expectations of licence fee payers.

"We live and breathe value for money," said Slater. "We have spent months going through these plans trying to get them to a minimum that we think can deliver the ambition of the programming that is going to be in people's living rooms on BBC1 night after night."

All staff would travel economy and there would be no more journeys than were strictly necessary, she said.

The BBC will send 48 radio staff, down from 69 in Germany, and 190 BBC Sport staff, compared with 210 in 2006. BBC News has yet to finalise its figures but has promised to send no more than the 57 staff that went to Germany, with the final figure likely to be between 45 and 50.

The BBC attracted widespread criticism when it admitted it had taken 437 staff to Beijing to cover the 2008 Olympics.

It is understood that ITV will take between 140 and 160 staff to South Africa, but the BBC argues that although both broadcasters will show 32 matches the corporation provides a greater breadth of coverage across more platforms.

The corporation will not reveal the cost of building a studio rather than renting space in the IBC, where ITV and other international broadcasters will be based.

"We have to build a studio somewhere. There is a strong expectation that it should be in South Africa, so then you ask where?" said Slater. "Cape Town was a cheaper rent but a more expensive build. I think that is justified in terms of a location that is representative of South Africa."

Despite its live coverage being anchored from Cape Town, the BBC will still have about 73 staff located in Johannesburg to oversee the feeds streaming into the IBC.

Slater, appointed in April last year, launched a passionate defence of BBC investment in major sporting events such as the World Cup and the number of staff required to cover them properly.

"This is incredibly important to audiences. In all our research, that comes shining through. People are working their summer plans around the World Cup, people are still celebrating 1966. It is a unique month," she said.

Bernie said the first African World Cup was a "momentous moment for world sport" that would "be a fascinating story for news outlets as well as sport outlets".

Criticism over the size of the BBC's World Cup squad has become as much part of the pre-tournament preparation as obsessing about injuries to key players and raising national optimism to unrealistic levels. It has risked further opprobrium by building the dedicated "glass box" rooftop studio, giving Gary Lineker, Alan Hansen and the rest 360-degree views of Table Mountain, the new Green Point stadium and Robben Island.

Industry insiders say it will cost several hundred thousand pounds more to send pictures via satellite from Cape Town to Johannesburg. But Slater said that it was not necessarily any more expensive than broadcasting from the IBC, which would have necessitated commissioning more outside broadcasts. A specially equipped bus will tour the country hosting broadcasts for the World Service, Radio 5 Live, CBBC and other outlets.

BBC Sport refused to give an overall figure for the World Cup budget, claiming the information was "commercially sensitive". However, Slater said: "The numbers are less than Germany and the costs of the event are less in real terms and that has been achieved despite long-haul flights, despite increased travel within the country, increased transmission costs to the UK and the exchange rate."

A National Audit Office report recently criticised the BBC for spending £250,000 on its studio for Euro 2008 in Austria and Switzerland. It said the BBC "does not have transparency" over the way money is spent on major events, but noted four of the six it considered came in under budget.

The BBC will show about 110 hours of World Cup coverage across BBC1 and BBC2. There will also be more than 100 hours of red-button coverage and 100 hours on the BBC website. BBC Radio will produce more than 250 hours of live coverage from South Africa.

In 2006 the World Cup dominated the list of most viewed TV programmes and England's group match with Sweden on ITV recorded the biggest audience of the year with 19.9 million.