Section:GDN BE PaGe:1 Edition Date:140213 Edition:01 Zone:S Sent at 12/2/2014 21:42 cYanmaGentaYellowblack
1
2
A
*
Haroon Siddique
Hundred-mile an hour winds buffeted
Wales yesterday , leaving more than
50,000 people without power supplies,
and caused chaos on the road and rail
networks in north-west England.
A high of 108mph was recorded in
Aberdaron, as the Met Offi ce issued a rare
red warning for Wales and north-west
England , indicating people should take
action because the winds were so strong
that there was a likely risk to life.
As more weather-related misery over-
whelmed the country on the back of the
devastating fl ooding, a Met Offi ce fore-
caster, Kirk Waite, said: “Red warnings are
a very rare thing for us to issue. We only
issue them when we do think there is a
need to take action to preserve life.” He
said the last such warning was issued due
to snow in January last year.
Waite added the winds were expected
to die down in England and Wales over-
night on Wednesday and during the day
on Thursday – but he went on to warn
that there would be fresh problems in the
shape of wintry showers which would
bring a risk of ice.
Rain and strong winds are then
expected to return on Friday and likely
to exacerbate flooding in areas already
aff ected – as the level on the river Severn in
Worcestershire reached what was thought
Continued on page 7 ≥
Interest rates on hold as Bank
says recovery ‘unsustainable’
Eye of the storm: hurricane-force winds lash Britain as fl oods continue
• No rise until after 2015 general election • UK economy still short of momentum
xx≥
Larry Elliott and Angela Monaghan
Britain’s ultra-low interest rates will
remain in force until after next year’s gen-
eral election, the governor of the Bank of
England signalled yesterday as he warned
that economic recovery was “neither bal-
anced nor sustainable”.
Mark Carney left the City convinced
that borrowing costs would be pegged at
0.5% for the rest of 2014 and beyond after
saying that the UK could not cope with an
end to the emergency measures adopted
fi ve years ago to counter the worst reces-
sion since the second world war.
The governor used the launch of the
Bank’s quarterly infl ation report to reas-
sure businesses and households that even
when rates do rise, the increase will be
gradual and modest. Carney insisted that
the nine-strong monetary policy commit-
tee “will not take risks with this recovery”
and indicated that it was comfortable with
the City’s view that interest rates would
not rise before the spring of 2015 and then
rise gently to 2% by 2017.
“A few quarters of above-trend growth
driven by household spending are a good
start but they aren’t sufficient for sus-
tained momentum,” Carney said. “For
a sustained and balanced recovery, the
degree of stimulus will need to remain
exceptional for some time.”
Jessica Hinds at Capital Economics said
that interest rates were unlikely to rise
until late 2015 because of a lack of infl a-
tionary pressure in the UK.
“The [Bank’s] monetary policy commit-
tee expects infl ation to hover around the
2% target for the next three years even if
interest rates remain at 0.5%. Our forecast Continued on page 2 ≥
is for infl ation to be even lower. Accord-
ingly, we continue to think that interest
rates will remain on hold until the fourth
quarter of 2015.”
Philip Shaw, economist at Investec, is
expecting the fi rst rate rise in the third
quarter of next year.
Labour’s shadow chancellor, Ed Balls,
agreed with Carney that the recovery was
unbalanced and said it was up to the gov-
ernment to do more to address the issue.
“This is not yet a recovery for ordinary
working people who are still facing a cost-
of-living crisis. Monetary policy alone can-
not secure a strong and balanced recovery
and earn our way to higher living stand-
ards for the many, not just a few at the top.
The chancellor also needs to act.”
Carney emphasised that the UK econ-
omy is still smaller than it was before
the financial crisis took hold in 2008,
with below infl ation wage growth and a
limited pick-up in business investment.
He said there were also mounting risks to
the global economy posed by problems in
emerging market economies.
The Bank announced significant
changes to its “forward guidance” strategy
after being forced to abandon its reliance
on unemployment as a guide to interest-
rate policy as a result of the sharper-than-
expected fall in joblessness since the sum-
mer of 2013.
Under the new approach, Threadneedle
Street will look at 20 indicators of how
well the economy is performing to judge
what spare capacity remains to be used up
following the below-par performance of
the UK during the deep slump of 2008-09
and the sluggish recovery that followed.
A composite satellite image shows the storm, with 100mph winds, approaching. Large parts of Britain were on red alert, as buildings and trees were expected to be damaged in the gusts Photograph: Nasa
6-7≥
‘Whacking Phoenix?’
An interview with Siri
£1.60
Thursday 13.02.14
Published in London
and Manchester
Eyewitness picture exclusive
But can you name the show?
‘Wh
An
The incredible hulks
In praise of brutalism
Blown out Arsenal miss their chance to go top in stormy night at the Emirates
theguardian.com
(Ch. Islands £2.00)
The Olivier
awards 2014
Section:GDN BE PaGe:2 Edition Date:140213 Edition:01 Zone:S Sent at 12/2/2014 20:59 cYanmaGentaYellowblack
*2 The Guardian | Thursday 13 February 2014
The Guardian
Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU.
Telephone: 020 3353 2000
Fax: 020 7837 2114
Guardian News & Media, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. 020 3353 2000. Fax 020 7837 2114. In Manchester: Centurion House, 129 Deansgate, Manchester M3 3WR. Telephone Sales: London 020 3353 3400; Manchester 0161 908 3800. theguardian.com. The Guardian lists links to third-party websites, but
does not endorse them or guarantee their authenticity or accuracy. Missing sections: 0800 839 100. Back issues from Historic Newspapers: 0870 165 1470. guardian.backissuenewspapers.co.uk. The Guardian is published by Guardian News & Media, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU, and at Centurion House,
129 Deansgate, Manchester M3 3WR. Printed at Guardian Print Centre, Rick Roberts Way, Stratford, London E15 2GN; Guardian Print Centre North, Longbridge Road, Manchester M17 1SN; and at Carn Web, 2 Esky Drive, Carn, Portadown, Craigavon, County Armagh BT63 5YY. No. 52,082, Thursday 13 February 2014.
Registered as a newspaper at the Post Offi ce ISSN 0261-3077
NEWSPAPERS
SUPPORT
RECYCLING
The recycled paper
content of UK newspapers
in 2012 was 78%
Bank of England
says recovery
‘unsustainable’
The Bank estimates that the slack
amounts to 1%-1.5% of national income,
which will be used up only gradually as
the economy grows over the next three
years. Threadneedle Street believes only
half the spare capacity will have been used
up by the end of 2014, even though it has
raised its 2014 growth forecast from 2.8%
in November to 3.4% – much higher than
currently expected by the Treasury or the
International Monetary Fund. The Bank is
expecting the economy to grow by 2.7% in
2015 and by 2.8% in 2016.
The report noted that a lack of infl ation-
ary pressure – with infl ation back at the 2%
target in December for the fi rst time in four
years – spare capacity in the economy, and
“headwinds” at home and abroad, meant
that “bank rate may need to remain at low
levels for some time to come”.
It continued: “Even when the economy
has returned to normal levels of capacity
and inflation is close to the target, the
appropriate level of Bank Rate is likely to
be materially below the 5% level set on
average by the [ monetary policy] com-
mittee prior to the crisis.
“Raising bank rate gradually would
guard against the risk that, after a pro-
longed period of exceptionally low inter-
est rates, increases in Bank rate have a big-
ger impact than expected on output and
spending.”
The February infl ation report provided
the most detailed forecasts yet from the
Bank, which is pencilling in a big surge in
both business and housing investment
of 11.5% and 23% respectively this year.
Consumers are expected to run down
their savings to compensate for another
year of weak earnings growth.
Carney said forward guidance was
working, and that it was now entering a
new phase in which the Bank provided
information about how and at what pace
it would raise interest rates.
The governor said uncertainty about
interest rates has fallen and “most impor-
tantly, businesses have understood the
guidance.”
Last summer the Bank would consider
a rate rise only when the unemployment
rate – then 7.8% – fell to 7%. At that time it
was not expecting the jobless rate to fall
to the threshold until early 2016. The MPC
now expects the next set of offi cial fi gures
to show the rate fell to 7% in January , less
than six months after the policy was set.
Despite his protestations economists
said this next “phase” of guidance was
more complicated, not least because the
output gap could not be measured.
“The latest revised forward guidance
from the MPC has become even more
complex and provides little clarity on the
key issue of how the committee will man-
age the process of raising interest rates,”
said Andrew Sentance, senior economic
adviser at PwC and a former rates-setter
at the Bank.
The Bank expects that wage growth
will surpass inflation at some point in
the second half of the year – easing the
squeeze on household budgets – although
it stressed that would be dependent on a
pickup in productivity which has been
weak in the UK.
“We are not complacent about this
recovery at all. We are serene but not
complacent. We need to see productivity
come in to validate wage expectations,”
Carney said.
Leader comment, page 34 ≥
← continued from page 1
Take internet governance away from
US after NSA scandal, says Brussels
Ian Traynor Brussels
The mass surveillance carried out by the
US National Security Agency means that
governance of the internet has to be made
more international and less dominated by
America, the European Union’s executive
has declared .
Setting out proposals on how the world
wide web should function and be regu-
lated, the European commission called
for a shift away from the California-based
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names
and Numbers ( Icann ), which is subject to
US law, is contracted by the US administra-
tion and is empowered to supervise how
digital traffi c operates.
“R evelations of large-scale surveillance
have called into question the stewardship
of the US when it comes to internet gov-
ernance,” said the commission.
“Given the US-centric model of inter-
net governance currently in place, it is
necessary to broker a smooth transition
to a more global model while at the same
time protecting the underlying values of
open multi-stakeholder governance …
“Large-scale surveillance and intel-
ligence activities have led to a loss of
confi dence in the internet and its present
governance arrangements.”
Besides criticising US domination of
how the internet and digital traffic are
organised, including the allocation and
determination of domain names, the
Brussels institution also warned against
increasing governmental attempts to
control the internet, as in China, Russia,
Iran and increasingly Turkey, which
passed a stringent law last week curbing
online freedoms.
“Governments have a crucial role to
play, but top-down approaches are not
the right answer. We must strengthen the
multi-stakeholder model,” said Neelie
Kroes, the commissioner for digital aff airs.
“Our fundamental freedoms and human
rights are not negotiable. They must be
protected online.”
She spoke out against giving the United
Nations the power to organise and super-
vise the internet or to grant such authority
to the International Telecommunications
Union, voicing fears that it would confer
too much power on governments.
The commission called for a clear time-
line for diluting US authority over Icann
and making it more “global”; for agree-
ment on “a set of principles of internet
governance to safeguard the open and
unfragmented nature of the internet”;
and a mediation body that would scruti-
nise confl icts arising from contradictory
national jurisdictions over the internet.
Decisions over domain names and
IP addresses should also be globalised,
Brussels said. “The next two years will
be critical in redrawing the global map of
internet governance,” said Kroes.
Brussels is to take its proposals to an
international conference on the issue in
Brazil in April. Brazil, angered by the NSA
revelations, has been highly critical of the
US role in internet governance.
“Nearly every person has an interest in
keeping the internet open, whether this
is an economic, social or human rights
interest,” said Marietje Schaake, a Dutch
liberal MEP who sits on an international
body examining internet governance.
“Governments are trying to bring the
internet under national control. States
like Russia and China use the argument
of increasing cyber-security to increase
control over their own population. Organi-
sations such as Icann, which registers
domain names worldwide, currently func-
tion under US law. That has to change.”
EU chiefs attack American
control of domain names
Warning over growing web
censorship around world
The European parliament has ditched
demands that EU governments grant
guarantees of asylum and security to
the whistleblower Edward Snowden .
The parliament’s civil liberties
committee voted last night on more
than 500 amendments to the fi rst par-
liamentary inquiry into the NSA and
GCHQ scandal, a 60-page report that
is damning about the scale and the
impact of the mass surveillance.
But there was no consensus on an
amendment proposed by the Greens
calling on EU governments to assure
Snowden of his safety should he
emerge from hiding in Russia and
come to Europe.
Amid what MEPs described as
intense pressure from national
governments , opposition from the
mainstream centre-right and social
democrats meant the amendment had
no chance of passing. Instead of the
asylum call the report seeks interna-
tional protections for whistleblowers
without mentioning Snowden by
name. Ian Traynor
Snowden rebuff ed
Bank of England
governor Mark
Carney tried to
reassure busi-
nesses that when
rates do rise it
would be gradual
Section:GDN BE PaGe:3 Edition Date:140213 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 12/2/2014 21:34 cYanmaGentaYellowblack
*The Guardian | Thursday 13 February 2014 3
News
From Young Vic to Ground Zero: artistic
director sets his sights on new heights
Lan to oversee arts hub at
One World Trade Center
New challenge will be ‘an
enormous job,’ he says
Mark Brown
Arts correspondent
One of the most respected fi gures in Brit-
ish theatre is to take on the challenge of
running the planned performing arts cen-
tre that will be a key part of the redevelop-
ment of Ground Zero in New York.
David Lan, who has won plaudits since
joining the Young Vic in south London
more than a decade ago, will today be
named as the consulting artistic director
of the Frank Gehry-designed arts complex
that will be built close to One World Trade
Center .
Because the building will not open until
at least 2018, it will be a part-time job and
Lan stressed he will not be giving up his
day job in London any time soon.
Nevertheless, the New York project “is
an enormous job ”, he said, “and a fasci-
nating one”.
Lan has in fact been doing the job since
September but it was not publicised
because he and his team needed to get
proposals in place and get them approved
by the board of trustees, he said. “Our
plans were largely not what they were
expecting, so we needed to work up the
arguments.”
A performing arts centre has long been
part of the Daniel Libeskind masterplan
for the World Trade Center site. It will be
only 60ft away from what is the tallest
skyscraper in the western hemisphere
and will have three fl exible 550, 250 and
150-capacity auditoriums.
From the very start there has been a will
to have culture and the arts represented
in the redevelopment plans . What form
that took has changed many times. At one
stage a future home for the New York City
Opera was talked about and after that the
idea that the Joyce theatre would create
an international dance centre.
Now the plan is for a multidisciplinary
centre with Lan at the artistic helm . Like
the Young Vic, which opened in its present
form in 2006 after major redevelopment,
it will be more than a theatre – it will be
a place to socialise, meet and collaborate
and be open from breakfast to night.
Having said that, Lan stressed: “What
we’re really not doing is transplanting the
Young Vic to downtown Manhattan, but
we are starting from the same position we
started 14-15 years ago. Let’s think about
who is there, let’s think about the work
we want to make, let’s think who we want
to talk to.”
Lan said the centre was “for New York
and for New York artists” but the main job
would be “enabling collaboration between
American artists and people in Europe,
China, South America, wherever”.
Key to the project is that it will be
premiering its own works.
The centre is slap-bang in Manhattan’s
fi nancial district but the hope is to attract
a diverse audience who want to keep com-
ing back. Lan said he had spent a lot of time
walking between the Hudson and East
rivers and down to Battery Park and had
discovered “a genuinely diverse” neigh-
bourhood. Then there’s the enormous
numbers that come in from Brooklyn and
New Jersey and work there, at every level.
Lan was born in South Africa and moved
to London in 1972. He has run the Young
Vic since 2000 and has no intention of giv-
ing that up, he said, although there may
be a time when he has to make a choice.
“I’m not even thinking about it. I have a
very good time here and am planning next
year and have ideas for the year after that.
Let’s see how we go,” he said.
Lan was headhunted by the PAC’s
director, Maggie Boepple, who knows the
Young Vic well from her time in London as
a senior adviser to Transport for London
when Ken Livingstone was mayor.
Boepple said when she first started
thinking who could do the job, Lan’s name
was one of the ones she wrote down. “It
is not that we are copying it, but I’ve long
wanted a place like the Young Vic in New
York.”
She did not ask one of the “great Amer-
ican artistic directors” because the job
would be part time – “we would be a little
brother or sister of whatever they were
running. Also we weren’t going to hire a
full-time artistic director because they
would go out of their minds, this isn’t
going to open until about 2018.”
David Lan, who
has in fact been
the consulting
artistic director
of the new
performing arts
centre since
September
Photo: Sarah Lee
for the Guardian
Appreciation
London’s loss is New York’s gain
It comes as no surprise to learn that
David Lan has been appointed as a con-
sulting artistic director to the new team
at the World Trade Center. Although
Lan has worked as a dramatist, director
and fi lm-maker, it is as a producer and
talent-promoter that he has excelled in
his tenure at the Young Vic. Although
he doesn’t look like a showman, he has
a Diaghilev-like fl air for bringing artists
together.
He once told me that he saw the
Young Vic as a “director’s theatre” in
contrast, say, to a “writer’s theatre” like
the Royal Court. Over the past decade
or m