reposted from: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/martin_wainwright/2007/10/the_north-south_double_helix.html

The north-south double helix

The new line that splits England in half is a welcome trigger for debate, but a two-dimensional model does not suit this complicated subject.

Martin Wainwright

October 24, 2007 11:30 AM |

Today's new dividing line, as arrived at by a Sheffield University study, between the north and south of England, looks as dodgy as its many predecessors. However, it's a welcome trigger for debate.

A diagonal between the Bristol Channel and the Humber throws up endless flaky anomalies,

even when backed by the university's formidable expertise (which, thank goodness, remains firmly in the north).

Leicester is south, but Nottingham's north. Worcester is north, but Lincoln south.

The line's inventor, Professor Danny Dorling, a human geographer, talks excitingly of "a £100,000 cliff in house prices" along his division, but the truth is that there are no such dramatic pieces of social landscape. A two-dimensional model of such a complicated subject simply will not do.

Anyone who travels in either the putative south or north must become aware of the countless distinctions between areas at a micro-level, in every field from life expectancy to education.

The Sheffield report covers itself to an extent, by accepting that the country's worst concentration of poverty is in London, but it still falls victim to the crudities of lumped-together statistics.

Thus my own city, Leeds, will appear in this kind of data as a not terribly brilliant performer when it comes to education; an overall figure which disguises the many excellent schools (and not just in affluent neighbourhoods). Neighbouring Huddersfield has a comprehensive sixth form college, Greenhead, which regularly sends more students to Oxbridge than Eton, but that sort of fact, which means a great deal in terms of quality of life across the western mid-Pennines, is too small to register in this kind of survey.

Likewise house prices, for which a weekly dip in the property pages of Saturday's Yorkshire Post is instructive. I did an exercise recently which convinced me that houses within the Leeds commuter ring are now more expensive than those in the lush southern patch around Oxford. This is cherry-picking, I agree, but there are an awful lot of cherries. You will find similar swathes of success and prosperity all over the north - Wag-ish Cheshire, of couse, Cotswoldy North Yorkshire (at long last recognised this year as England's most beautiful county) and the valley of the South Tyne.

That may be a familiar litany but it is growing all the time. I am about to set off for Manchester this morning along a not-very-fashionable stretch of the Bradford ring road, which always gives me great joy. British Asians have been buying up rundown but essentially very sound Victorian villas there and lavishing money on them, down to elaborate gates and railings with the family's name entwined in wrought iron. There are very few parts of the north which have not had a share of this improvement during my 20 years reporting from the region.

It matters to make this point, because of the persistently misleading effect that simplistic north-south data has on an understanding of the realities, particularly in London where, alas, the decision-makers mostly live. I still have to cope with expressions of metropolitan amazement when, for example, Sheffield Hallam is named as one of the 10 most affluent constituencies in Britain, or Bradford as the nation's greenest city. Neither should surprise any northerner.

This subject needs a 3D model like the double helix, which would better show things as they really are.

Burma: The whole world must act by Gordon Bronw

reposted from: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/gordon_brown/2007/10/the_whole_world_must_act.html

The whole world must act

Today Daw Aung San Suu Kyi marks the end of her 12th year under house arrest - but there is another reason why Burma should be in our thoughts.

Gordon Brown

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October 24, 2007 8:00 AM | Printable version

"Even under the most crushing state machinery, courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilised man"

These are words of compelling power, written by a woman of extraordinary courage. Today Daw Aung San Suu Kyi marks the end of her 12th year under house arrest. And that anniversary tells only part of the story: since she committed her life to a better future for Burma she has watched her children grow up in a faraway land, and she has survived an attack that left 80 of her supporters beaten to death. I had the privilege of meeting her husband shortly before his death, as he faced with courage both his illness and the cruel Burmese policy that prevented him from seeing his wife in his last days.

But there is another reason to remember Burma today. Over the past few weeks we have seen the Burmese people once again display the tenacious courage of which Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was writing. In the face of a brutal regime they took to their streets in their tens of thousands, marching for their freedom and their dignity. They were met with batons and bullets. We cannot know how many were killed, but we believe it is many times more than the regime has admitted. We believe that more than 2,000 monks and other demonstrators remain in detention, on top of the more than 1,000 political detainees that the regime was already holding. The reports from eyewitnesses reaching us are horrific: monks stripped of their robes and beaten, prisoners left to die in their cells, hundreds crammed into rooms smeared with excrement and without basic sanitation, night-time interrogations, no medical care, novices as young as seven imprisoned.

In the face of this horror, we must not and will not turn away.

The steps that the regime must now take are clear: end the violence; release prisoners; grant effective access to the UN special rapporteur on Human Rights in Burma, Sergio Pinheiro and the International Committee of the Red Cross; and engagement in a UN-led process of national reconciliation that involves leaders of all Burma's political opposition and ethnic groups, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

The regime now faces a sharper choice than it has ever faced. On the one hand there is growing international pressure. The UN security council has, for the first time ever, taken formal action on Burma by issuing a strong statement deploring the regime's actions, calling for an inclusive political process, and expressing strong support for the good offices mission of Ban Ki-Moon's special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari. The council will meet again to review the results - and if progress is insufficient will have to consider adopting further measures. The European Union has strengthened its sanctions against the regime, imposing new commercial bans on sectors which provide revenue to the regime's leaders.

Should there be no progress, we will make those sanctions even tougher, including through a ban on all new investment.

On Friday, President Bush announced a similar increase in measures against the regime. And Asean have publicly expressed their revulsion at the regime's actions. Burma's neighbours clearly realise that, for the sake of the region as well as Burma's people,

the regime must change course and allow genuine reconciliation and political reform.

We also need the people of Burma, inside and outside the regime, to understand clearly that if there is a genuine political transition in Burma, the international community stands ready to support the recovery of Burma with aid and other measures. Last week I wrote to G7 leaders, Prime Minister Socrates, UN Secretary General Ban, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Premier Wen Jiabao, the president of the World Bank and the managing director of the IMF, proposing discussion of a possible economic initiative to support recovery in Burma, to be implemented if and only if there is real, verifiable progress towards reconciliation and democracy. Over the weekend, Douglas Alexander hosted a meeting of interested countries at the World Bank Headquarters in Washington. The regime likes to portray itself as a victim of outside interference. But let's be absolutely clear: the only thing that is standing in the way of a more stable and prosperous Burma is the regime itself.

In an interview with Alan Clements, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said:

"It's no use standing there wringing your hands and saying my goodness, my goodness, this is terrible. You must try to do what you can." It is a message upon which on this day - whatever you choose to call it - the whole world should be acting.

To learn more about Aung San Suu Kyi Day, visit www.amnesty.org.uk