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Sun Jan 24 11:41:18 EST 2010
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Terror threat real, Miliband says, as 'Bin Laden' speaks -

Danger of attack still 'very real' says foreign secretary after tape claims responsibility for Detroit plane bomb attempt

The foreign secretary today warned that the danger of a terrorist attack remained "very real", hours after the release of an audio tape purportedly from Osama bin Laden claiming responsibility for the attempted bombing of a plane over Detroit.

David Miliband said the Christmas Day bomb scare demonstrated that links could exist between different terrorist groups, but urged caution about the al-Qaida leader's latest message.

"Let's wait to see what he actually says; we know that the al-Qaida senior leadership are in the badlands of the Afghan-Pakistan border, probably on the Pakistan side," Miliband told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show. "We know too that the Detroit attack was the first time that al-Qaida of the Arabian Peninsula, which is a sub-group of the al-Qaida franchise – it's the first time, the Detroit attack, that represents an attack on the west rather than an attack within the Middle East."

On the tape, broadcast on al-Jazeera, the speaker addressed Barack Obama directly. "The message I want to convey to you through the plane of the hero Umar Farouk [Abdulmutallab], reaffirms a previous message that the heroes of 9/11 conveyed to you," he said.

"America will never dream of living in peace unless we live it in Palestine. It is unfair that you enjoy a safe life while our brothers in Gaza suffer greatly. God willing, our raids on you will continue as long as your support to the Israelis will continue."

Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian national, has been charged with attempting to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight as it approached Detroit Metro airport on Christmas Day. The bomb hidden in his underwear failed to explode. Abdulmutallab told US investigators afterwards that he had been trained by al-Qaida operatives in Yemen.

Yemen has launched a series of air strikes targeting al-Qaida leaders since the Detroit incident and has claimed to have killed several senior figures including Qasim al-Raymi and Ayed al-Shabwani – claims that al-Qaida has denied. The US has been supplying military equipment, intelligence and training to Yemen.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula originally took credit for the Detroit incident, but in the latest tape it is Bin Laden who claims primary responsibility. There was no way of confirming the authenticity of the tape, but it resembled previous recordings attributed to the al-Qaida leader, who is believed to be somewhere in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.

An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Andy David, dismissed Bin Laden's attempt to link Israel with attacks on the US. "This is nothing new; he has said this before. Terrorists always look for absurd excuses for their despicable deeds," he said.

The last public message from Bin Laden appears to have been on 26 September, when he demanded that European countries pull their troops out of Afghanistan. That audio tape also warned of "retaliation" against countries allied with the US in the war.

The Home Office said a raised terror threat level would not cause "any discernible difference" for the British public. The home secretary, Alan Johnson, increased the threat level from "substantial" to "severe" on Friday night , meaning he considers an attack "highly likely".

According to the Sunday Telegraph, his move came amid fears that al-Qaida terrorist cells had trained women, who may not be of Arabic appearance, to carry out suicide attacks. The Home Office said it was unable to comment on whether the two were linked, but insisted the threat level was raised only in consideration of an "entire body" of information.

Richard Clarke, a former chief White House counter-terrorism adviser, told the paper: "They (al-Qaida) have trained women. There are others who are still out there who have been trained and who are clean skins – that means people who we do not have a record of, people who may not look like al-Qaida terrorists, who may not be Arabs and may not be men."

The Conservative MP Patrick Mercer, chairman of the home affairs sub-committee on counter-terrorism, criticised the lack of information from the government. He told the BBC: "We have had absolutely no guidance from this government about what to spot, about what to be suspicious of and how to report it."

The independent reviewer of anti-terrorism legislation, Lord Carlile of Berriew, said the government was right to announce the change in the threat level. "It is absolutely essential that there should be public vigilance and the government has – quite rightly – decided that if you don't tell the public to be vigilant, they are not going to be vigilant," he said.

Gordon Brown announced new measures last week, including a suspension of direct flights between the UK and Yemen and a "no-fly list" to prevent people with suspected militant links from travelling to Britain.

The escalation of the threat level reverses a decision in July last year to downgrade the likelihood of a terror attack from "severe" to "substantial".

JTAC, a unit within MI5, sets the level based on an analysis of intelligence. The assessment covers potential attacks by al-Qaida or linked extremist groups. There are five levels of threat, ranging from low – meaning an attack is unlikely – to critical, when an attack is expected imminently.

Home secretary plans national launch of powers enabling parents to check whether child carers are convicted sex offenders

The Conservatives today backed plans by the home secretary, Alan Johnson, for a national roll-out of powers allowing parents to check whether those who regularly care for their children are convicted sex offenders.

The decision followed a pilot scheme in four police areas – Cambridgeshire, Hampshire, Cleveland and Warwickshire – which gave parents and carers controlled access to the sex offenders register.

At least one police force, Avon and Somerset, refused to take part in the pilot.

The decision was announced by Johnson in the News of the World, which has campaigned for what it calls "Sarah's law" – the publication of the names and addresses of convicted sex offenders.

The tabloid described the move as "the biggest breakthrough since the campaign was launched after the abduction and murder of eight-year-old Sarah Payne in July 2000".

The shadow home secretary, Chris Grayling, said: "We are very sympathetic to what the Home Office is trying to achieve and, if the pilots have worked properly, we would be happy to see the scheme extended."

The Conservatives indicated that the national roll-out was likely to take place whatever the outcome of the general election.

However, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, Chris Huhne, voiced caution over the decision to extend the system to all police areas in England and Wales.

"We need far more information about these trials before they are rolled out across the country," he said.

"The concern is that this will do nothing for the safety of children and could even lead to an increase in sex offenders."

The News of the World said Johnson's decision followed an evaluation by De Montfort University, in Leicester, of the 585 inquiries made by parents in the 12 months to September 2009.

Researchers found that 24 children had been in contact with convicted sex offenders out of 315 cases treated as applications for information about suspected individuals.

The home secretary said the early results were encouraging and that the pilot had provided crucial protection for children who might otherwise be at risk.

"The development of this scheme is a major step forward in our ability to protect children from sex offenders," he said, adding that a final decision on extending the scheme across England and Wales would be taken shortly.

Sara Payne, the mother of Sarah and the government's "victims' champion", told the News of the World: "In all the long years of campaigning for parents' rights to keep their children safe from predatory paedophiles, this is the most important development to date."

When the pilot schemes were introduced, the then home secretary, Jacqui Smith, stressed that they did not amount to the "community-wide" notification schemes of the photographs and addresses of sex offenders used in the "Megan's law" disclosure schemes in the US.

Disclosure is only made to parents and others with a direct interest in a child about a carer who has regular unsupervised access. The police and probation service consider each individual request.

Foreign Office official's evidence the day before attorney general Lord Goldsmith appears will increase pressure on Tony Blair

Tony Blair's decision to take Britain to war in Iraq was illegal, the Foreign Office's former chief legal adviser will tell the Chilcot inquiry this week.

The Observer has been told that Sir Michael Wood, who was the FO's most senior lawyer, is ready to reveal that, in the run-up to war, he was of the opinion that the conflict would have been unlawful without a second UN resolution. This will provide an explosive backdrop to the former prime minister's appearance before the inquiry on Friday.

The evidence from Wood, who will appear before the committee on Tuesday, will provide the firmest proof to date of the bitter wranglings that divided the government in the countdown to war.

His testimony will come the day before the appearance of Lord Goldsmith, the former attorney general, who is said to have dropped his legal objections days before the invasion, following intense pressure from Blair and his closest advisers, and the US authorities.

A senior legal figure close to the discussions at the time told the Observer: "The advice that was given consistently in the Foreign Office [by Wood] was that war would be unlawful without a second resolution. The important thing is that Foreign Office advice was given consistently in one way, and then the attorney general, right at the end, gave advice to the contrary. That is what will come out."

It is also believed that the legal advice from Wood, who left the Foreign Office in 2006 and is now a barrister in private chambers in London, could be published for the first time by the inquiry.

The revelation is certain to inflame the already febrile atmosphere among the relatives of those killed in Iraq. More than 40 will sit in on the inquiry during Blair's appearance on Friday.

Last night there were signs that the families may stage some form of symbolic protest when the former PM takes the stage. They have written to the inquiry chairman, Sir John Chilcot, asking for a short private session with Blair in what one relative described as an opportunity to bring "closure".

Reg Keys, who stood against Blair in the 2005 election after his son Tom, a military policeman, was killed in Majar al-Kabir in 2003, said he had contacted the inquiry chairman asking for families to be offered "one final chance to share their concerns".

Blair will take his place amid intense security, with mass protests expected in Westminster. Sources close to Scotland Yard said Blair's appearance had been a major factor behind the government's decision to raise the terror threat level from "substantial" to "severe".

Intelligence operatives had picked up "domestic chatter" that had given them reason to believe his appearance before the inquiry required a higher state of alert. "We are gearing up for Blair," said the source."

His appearance will be crucial in determining the process by which the country went to war. He will face intense questioning on the way patchy intelligence evidence of Saddam Hussein's weapons programme in 2002 was translated into firm assertions that the threat was "growing" and "beyond doubt".

Tough questioning is expected, particularly from Sir Roderic Lyne, a former diplomat who is emerging as the most tenacious of Chilcot's inquisitors. The panel are also certain to question Blair on what he decided at key meetings with President George Bush in the run-up to war and whether more could have been done to equip soldiers for the conflict, in which 179 British service personnel have died.

But the question of the legality of war threatens to be the most damaging. Goldsmith is likely to be pressed on whether he was pushed into changing his mind by Blair and senior US officials. At the time, arguments raged on whether UN resolution 1441, which related to Iraq's ceasefire obligations from the first Gulf war, gave legal cover for military action. Because the consensus among lawyers was that it did not, desperate – and ultimately fruitless – attempts, led by Britain and the US, were mounted to win support for a second resolution that would have made the case watertight.

Whitehall sources have revealed that Goldsmith and Wood had worked closely on the issue of the legality of war. But in the days before invasion, Goldsmith abruptly changed his position, declaring that it would in fact be legal. "There was agreement. [Goldsmith] then went to talk to the Americans, the US State Department. And the Americans were very clear what they wanted and what they thought, and that is what changed his mind," said an FO source.

Wood's deputy at the time, former Foreign Office lawyer Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who resigned two days before the war because she believed the invasion was a "crime of aggression", will appear at the inquiry after Wood on Tuesday.

Eleven days after the 7.0 earthquake devastated Haiti, and with the death toll rising to 120,000, rescue teams pull 22-year-old man alive from the rubble

A man was dramatically rescued tonight after spending 11 days under the rubble of a hotel in Port-au-Prince, hours after the Haitian government declared search and rescue operations over.

The survival of 22-year-old Wismond Exantus Jean-Pierre was hailed as "more than a miracle" by international emergency teams who had been at the point of leaving Port-au-Prince.

"I was hungry," Jean-Pierre said from his hospital bed. "But every night I thought about the revelation that I would survive." He survived initially by diving under a desk when the rubble started to fall. Trapped in such a small space, he had lie on his back and survived by drinking cola, beer and cookies.

"I would eat anything I found," he said. "After the quake I didn't know when it was day and when it was night."

Rescue workers were called back from the airport to help after Jean-Pierre's brother, Jean Elie, heard tapping from the ruins of the Hotel Napoli Inn where he had been searching daily for him, after dreaming that he was alive. "Today is the first time we communicated with him," Jean Elie said. "He asked for us to save him. God has been keeping him alive." Jean-Pierre turned to his brother by his bedside and told him: "When you are in a hole, I will try to reach out to you, too."

Rescuers said Jean-Pierre, who had been working as a cashier at a grocery store on the ground floor of the hotel when the earthquake struck, was fine but thirsty.

Karl Jean-Jeune, a 23-year-old local working for Greek television, spread word of the dramatic events using Twitter. Apostolos Dedas of the Greek rescue team was one of those summoned to the scene. During the rescue operation he said: "I'm asking Jean-Pierre if he is OK and he taps. It's a miracle."

Two members of French and Greek search and rescue teams crawled into the tangled mass of concrete rubble, wooden beams and corrugated iron that was all that was left of the hotel to reach Jean-Pierre. They sawed away material to help the trapped man out.

Carmen Michalska, a rescuer with the Greek team, said: "He was holding the light to help us saw. He just said 'Thank you' when we pulled him out." Michalska said the team would continue the search because it had "an indication" that more people were trapped.

Jean Elie said he was disappointed at the government's decision to disband rescue operations, which was taken a day after a young man and an ­elderly woman were pulled out alive after 10 days buried in debris. "Hope is vanishing now, though we could still have miracles," said Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman for the UN office for the co-ordination of humanitarian affairs. The announcement came as the official death toll from the 12 January quake climbed to at least 120,000.

A crowd gathered in front of the ruins of Notre Dame de l'Assomption cathedral today for the funeral of the Roman Catholic archbishop, Joseph Serge Miot, who died in the 7.0-magnitude quake. His body will be transferred to a new cathedral when it is built, said church officials.

Some rescue teams had packed up and left even before the official end of rescue operations. British teams with sniffer dogs were expected to arrive back at Gatwick airport tonight after pulling three survivors from rubble, including a toddler called Mia.

"We should all be proud of the brave British firefighters, who worked tirelessly to help the Haitians, in difficult and dangerous conditions," said Douglas Alexander, the international development secretary. "I would like to thank them on behalf of the UK government."

Speaking from Geneva, Byrs said the Haitian government's announcement did not mean that all rescue teams would immediately cease working. "In cases where there is the slightest sign of life, they will act," she explained.

Some critics have complained that rescue efforts diverted resources that could have saved more lives if they had been used to treat Haiti's estimated 250,000 injured. But Fernando Alvarez Bravo, a representative for rescue crews, said such efforts gave the rest of the population the assurance they had not been abandoned. About 130 people were pulled alive from collapsed buildings by international teams, including two on Friday. An 84-year-old woman, dehydrated, injured and almost skeletal, was found in her home.

Emmanuel Boso, 21, emerged in better shape after an Israeli team extracted him from the ruins of his home. Speaking from a hospital bed, he described stepping out from the shower when the earthquake hit.

"I felt the house dancing around me," he told AP. "I didn't know if I was up or down." The student said he passed out in the rubble and dreamed that he could hear his mother crying. He had no food and drank his own urine. "I am here today because God wants it."

Aftershocks have continued to jolt the city, keeping most people outdoors at night. The US Geological Survey said there was a 3% chance of another 7.0-magnitude earthquake and a 25% chance of a 6.0.

Hammer F5 or use our auto-refresher for the latest updates, and send your thoughts, musings and bank details to john.ashdown@guardian.co.uk

38 min: Robinho, whose interest in this game seems to have waned somewhat, lazily wafts a shot high and wide, much to the amusement of those in the home terraces.

37 min: De Jong is - perhaps harshly - is penalised for a tackle on Togwell, McCann three-woods it in, but Taylor plucks it out of the north Lincolnshire (?) air.

35 min: Ibrahim wins a free-kick from Thompson, Petrov seven-irons it in, Hayes clears. City, just as the Iron did earlier, have grabbed control of the game after conceding.

33 min: An epic email from Scott W: "If your readership want to make better jokes about Scunny, perhaps they could consider the town's works produces more steel than any other in the UK; the fact that it has one of the six sixth-form colleges in the UK with government-assigned 'Beacon' status; our ground looks like a shoebox without its lid; and we are one of the largest towns in the most sparsely populated county in the land. To recap: steel - emptiness - shoebox - braindrain."

31 min: Robinho, who if we're feeling particularly vindictive we can blame for the goal (it was his error that led to the corner), taps a shot at Murphy which is tamer than a hand-reared chihuahua.

30 min: The Iron have deserved that - they've responded superbly after that early set-back.

GOAL! Scunthorpe 1-1 Manchester City (Hayes 29) Another short one isn't dealt with properly by the City defence, Woolford helps it back in and Hayes, a yard and a half offside, volleys sumptuously passed Taylor.

28 min: Robinho hands Scunny possession 30 yards from his own goal and the home side have another corner ...

26 min: A thudded backpass from Togwell puts Murphy in an awkward position, but the keeper just about copes. And he does likewise with Petrov's curling shot moments later.

24 min: ... a terrible set-piece is smuggling away by City and a lightning-fast break sees Robinho hammer a shot into Murphy's midriff. The Iron got away with one there.

23 min: "Leave Jim Beglin alone, he's one of the best football commentators around at the moment - which isn't saying much admittedly," writes Adam Timmins. I'd agree with that, he's the best of a pretty average bunch. Thompson gets round the back and wins another corner ...

21 min: City finally get a kick, and they'e put together a decent move, ending with Onuoha's blaze over the bar.

20 min: De Jong concedes possession in his own half, but Thompson can't quite thread the ball through to Hooper.

18 min: Scunny are in the ascendency here and no mistake. They really should be level - Byrne's miss from the header looks pretty shoddy on the replays, though it was a tremendous little move. City are struggling to get a foot on the ball.

17 min: The first of what I assume will be a number of emails containing THE RUDE WORD arrives in my inbox. Jon Matthews take a bow. Or hang your head. I'm not sure which.

16 min: ... OFF THE BAR! Scunthorpe miss two sitters in succession. First City are sleeping from a short corner, Byrne is clear at the far post little more than two yards out but directs his header onto the underside of the bar. Hayes then can't quite get his boot on the end of another cross. A lucky escape for City.

15 min: I think I just saw Robinho make a tackle, or at least attempt a tackle. He's been pretty good thus far, to be fair. Hang on, corner to Scunthorpe ...

13 min: Hayes, Hooper and Woolford again combine, but the winger's touch is a tad heavy and Boyata is able to clear.

12 min: Murphy has to head clear from the edge of his box as Robinho closes in.

11 min: United's best move of the game so far, worked from right to left, with Woolford cutting inside and raising Taylor's heart rate with a whipped shot that flies just wide.

9 min: Hooper megs Kompany, but is crowded out as he attempts to recover the ball. Scunny have just begun to settle a touch now though.

7 min: Hayes finds space down the left, but his cross, like a voucher in a magazine, is easily cut out.

6 min: Another lovely move from City almost has Benjani trundling onto Ireland's through-ball, but the pass is just a little too heavy.

4 min: "In the photo, Mancini can't be tackling a winegum surely," writes Jeremy Boyce. "I can't remember seeing him tackle anything in his entire career ..." Bom tish. That goal's a bit of a hammer blow, not what the game needed from a neutral perspective.

GOAL! Scunthorpe 0-1 Manchester City (Petrov 3) Holy moly that's some goal. City string together maybe 20 passes, Robinho sends the ball wide to Petrov, who skips passed Thomson and screams the ball into the top corner.

2 min: The Patronisometer lights up as Jim Beglin describes the Iron as "honest and hard-working".

1 min: Hooper scampers after a long ball but Taylor goes down to save.

Peep! Scunny get things underway in front of the Grove Wharf Stand.

Click, clack, click, clack ... the teams are emerging from the bowels of Glanford Park.

Here's Roberto Mancini, who wants his team to take on the characteristics of Fairy washing up liquid or high-quality orange squash: "I hope that we are very, very concentrated." He also wants his team to "play hard".

And here's very affable Nigel Adkins: "Carpe diem. It gives our players an opportunity to prove how good they are."

Pre-match build-up: Del's just told Rodney that the painting competition he's won is for kids. Rodney's not happy, Cassandra's being less than supportive, but she soon changes her tune once she learns she has to pretend to be Del's wif ... oh, hang on. I'm on the wrong channel.

The teams have been copied and pasted from Scunthorpe's website are in:

Scunthorpe United: Murphy, Byrne, Mirfin, Jones, Williams, Thompson, Togwell, McCann, Woolford, Hayes, Hooper.
Substitutes: Lillis, Milne, Sparrow, Forte, May, J. Wright, Crosby.
Manchester City: Taylor, Onuoha, Ireland, Robinho, Sylvinho, Petrov, Mwaruwari, Kompany, De Jong, Boyata, Ibrahim,
Substitutes: Neilsen, Richards, Zabaleta, Wright-Phillips, Barry, Bellamy, Cunningham.

So Abdi Ibrahim makes his first start for City, there's no Tevez, no Barry, no Given ... I make it eight changes from the side that beat Manchester United in the week. For Scunny, Irish stopper Joe Murphy - a player I interviewed for his hugely popular blog, that people just couldn't stop commenting on - replaces Josh Lillis between the sticks.

Preamble: Afternoon all. Well, well, well - this thing is wide open now isn't it, with, as it stands, only one of the Premier League's top six definitely through to the fifth round. City will be confident of becoming the second, but standing in the way are Nigel Adkins' Scunthorpe United.

The Iron aren't a side with a great deal of Cup pedigree - they haven't reached the fifth round since 1970, and they've done it only twice in their entire history - but Adkins has built a decent footballing side at Glanford Park, one who have been pretty solid at home in the Championship this season.

United will hope City's focus strays to their imminent other cup tie, the one against Manchester United in the Carling Cup. City's recent FA Cup form isn't much to write home about either - they've reached the quarters twice this century, but haven't been beyond that stage since reaching the final in 1981. Roberto Mancini's team selection will be very interesting, and should give some clue as to where his priorities lie.

Iran election unrest an example of US 'naked political scheming' behind free speech facade, says Communist party editorial

The United States used "online warfare" to stir up unrest in Iran after last year's elections, the Chinese Communist party newspaper claimed today, hitting back at Hillary Clinton's speech last week about internet freedom.

An editorial in the People's Daily accused the US of launching a "hacker brigade" and said it had used social media such as Twitter to spread rumours and create trouble.

"Behind what America calls free speech is naked political scheming. How did the unrest after the Iranian election come about?" said the editorial, signed by Wang Xiaoyang. "It was because online warfare launched by America, via YouTube video and Twitter microblogging, spread rumours, created splits, stirred up and sowed discord between the followers of conservative reformist factions."

Washington said at the time of the unrest that it had asked Twitter, which was embraced by Iranian anti-government protesters, to remain open. Several social media sites, including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, have been blocked in China in the last year.

The editorial asked rhetorically whether obscenity or activities promoting terrorism would be allowed on the net in the US. "We're afraid that in the eyes of American politicians, only information controlled by America is free information, only news acknowledged by America is free news, only speech approved by America is free speech, and only information flow that suits American interests is free information flow," it added.

It attacked the decision to cut off of Microsoft's instant messaging services to nations covered by US sanctions, including Cuba, Iran, Syria, Sudan and North Korea, as violating America's stated desire for free information flow. Washington later said that such services fostered democracy and encouraged their restoration.

China initially gave a low-key response to Google's announcement that it was no longer willing to censor google.cn. The internet giant said it had reached its decision following a Chinese-originated cyber attack targeting the email accounts of human rights activists, and in light of increasing online censorship.

Clinton's direct challenge to China, in a speech that had echoes of the cold war with its references to the Berlin wall and an "information curtain", led Beijing to warn that US criticism could damage bilateral relations. Clinton called on China to hold a full and open investigation into the December attack on Google.

In an interview carried by several Chinese newspapers today, Zhou Yonglin, deputy operations director of the national computer network emergency response technical team, said: "Everyone with technical knowledge of computers knows that just because a hacker used an IP address in China, the attack was not necessarily launched by a Chinese hacker."

US diplomats sought to reach out to the Chinese public by briefing bloggers in China on Friday. They held a similar meeting during Barack Obama's visit in November.

Warren Hern is no ordinary doctor. He has lived under siege for 25 years, and seen eight of his colleagues assassinated. Even some of his own patients want him dead. John H Richardson meets the last late-term abortionist in America

The young couple flew into Wichita bearing, in the lovely swell of the wife's belly, a burden of grief. They came from a religious tradition where large families are celebrated and they wanted this baby, and it was very late in her pregnancy. But the doctors recommended abortion. They said that with her complications, there were only two men skilled enough to pull it off. One was George Tiller, a Wichita doctor who specialised in late abortions.

They arrived on Sunday, 31 May last year. As they drove to their hotel, a Holiday Inn just two blocks from the Reformation Lutheran Church, they saw television cameras. They wondered what was going on, a passing curiosity quickly forgotten. But when they got to their room, the phone was ringing. Her father was on the line. "There was some doctor who was shot who does abortions," he said. They turned on CNN. Dr Tiller had just been killed, shot in the head as he passed out church leaflets.

Now there is only one doctor left.

After the first two doors of bulletproof glass, a sign at Dr Warren Hern's Boulder Abortion Clinic warns that mobile phones and cameras will be confiscated. The receptionist hits the buzzer that opens the third bulletproof door. In the waiting room, a sad woman with a tight perm waits for her daughter. The receptionist lets you through a fourth bulletproof door and leads you down a green hall decorated with lovely pictures of nature, leaving you in a small room stocked with tissues and free condoms.

Twenty minutes later, the abortionist enters. Dr Hern is a tall man in green surgical scrubs, remarkably vigorous at 70, emphatic in speech and impatient in manner. He has a long face and no lips, which gives him a severe look. He apologises for having very little time. This is the day he sees patients for the first of three visits, giving them the seaweed Laminaria, which slowly dilates the cervix, and his normal caseload has been doubled by Dr Tiller's patients – including two with catastrophic foetal abnormalities and a 15-year-old who was raped, all in the second trimester, all traumatised by the assassin who calls himself pro-life, a phrase he cannot utter without air quotes and contempt. "They hate freedom," he says. He says it again. He warns me not to use anyone's name or it will put them at risk.

Walking out, he leaves the door open. You hear voices drifting down the hall. "The worst picture of an abortion doctor ever," someone says. "Is that Fox?" "Yes, Bill O'Reilly." "Supposedly they were there to protect us." You see a nurse you cannot name leading a middle-aged Indian woman to an examining room. "You'll need to undress from the waist down." You hear one of the receptionists you cannot name speaking in the carefully modulated voice the doctor prescribed in his first book, Abortion Practice, a classic in the field. Steps come down the hall. "I'm Dr Hern. Where are you from? Lie down now. Put your hand on your chest."

The phone rings. "Did you have an ultrasound? And they referred you here?"

Yesterday, the man arrested for Tiller's murder warned that more killings were on the way. All last week, the anti-abortion groups put out statements denouncing the murder and praising the result. One called the killer a hero. As a result, a squad of US marshals rushed out here last week on orders from the attorney general. One of them paces the hall. The second receptionist you cannot name asks him, "Did you see that guy out there smoking a cigarette?"

"Yeah, I saw him."

The first receptionist keeps talking. "If you can fax us the amnio. We don't know, we'll have to wait to see what your body tells us. Do you want us to run your Amex now?"

Another phone rings and the second receptionist answers. "It's basically a three-day process. We require that you stay here in Colorado."

The voices begin to overlap. "Are you on any medication?" "Have you had surgery in the last year?" "No, we don't have any genetics counsellors to interpret that for you." "We don't get a lot of protesters. It's a liberal and tolerant community." "If that changes, we will contact you." "No, you'll get up and get in your car and drive home. And, if you have a change of heart, please call us – our schedule is completely full and you'll be taking someone else's place." After another silence, a soft voice gets softer: "I also want you to know, we don't care what your reasons are. We're not going to judge you."

In the kitchen at the clinic, Dr Hern bolts down two microwave tamales. He talks fast and doesn't smile. "It is my view that we are dealing with a fascist movement. It's a terrorist, violent terrorist movement, and they have a fascist ideology…" Dr Hern goes on like that for some time. Long before the first doctor got shot back in 1993, he was warning that it would happen. He was getting hate mail and death threats way back in 1970, just for working in family planning. They started up again in 1973, two weeks after he helped start the first non-profit abortion clinic in Boulder. "I started sleeping with a rifle by my bed. I expected to get shot." In 1985, someone threw a brick through his window during a protest by the quote unquote Pro-Life Action League. He put up a sign that said THIS WINDOW WAS BROKEN BY THOSE WHO HATE FREEDOM. In 1988, somebody fired five bullets through his window. In 1995, the American Coalition of quote unquote Life Activists put out a hit list with his (and Tiller's) name on it. The feds gave them protection for about six months, then left them on their own.

"People don't get it," he says. "After eight murders, 17 attempted murders, 406 death threats, 179 assaults, and four kidnappings, people are still in denial. They say, 'Well, this was just some wingnut guy who just decided to go blow up somebody.' Wrong. This was a cold-blooded, brutal, political assassination that is the logical consequence of 35 years of hate speech and incitement to violence by people from the highest levels of American society, including but in no way limited to George Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jesse Helms, Bill O'Reilly, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Reagan may not have been a fascist, but he was a tool of the fascists. Bush was most certainly a tool of the fascists. They use this issue to get power. They seem civilised, but underneath you have this seething mass of rabid anger and hatred of freedom that is really frightening, and they support people like the guy who shot George – they're all pretending to be upset, issuing statements about how much they deplore violence, but it's just bullshit. This is exactly what they wanted to happen."

He goes on about TV host Bill O'Reilly for a while. Over the course of 29 shows, O'Reilly accused "Tiller the Baby Killer" of performing a late abortion for any reason at all, even so that a girl could attend a rock concert – a charge that is blatantly untrue. "O'Reilly is a disgrace to American society," he says.

But O'Reilly says he's just exercising his right to engage in vigorous debate, you point out.

"He's full of shit. This is not a debate, it's a civil war. And the other people are using bullets and bombs. I think O'Reilly is a fascist."

It's odd, you say, trying to be agreeable. They always go after the doctors, never the mums.

His eyes snap up. "What mums? The patients? They're not mums until they have a baby."

Late that night, Dr Hern calls you at your hotel. You are reading one of his many scientific publications. This one argues that man is a "malignant ecotumour" laying waste to the planet. A cancerous growth resists regulation. A cancer cell is a cell that reproduces without limits.

He's sorry, he says, but he must turn down your request to ride in his car to the Tiller memorial in Denver. He has to go with four US marshals in an armoured car. Even his wife can't ride with him. Same with dinner in a restaurant. "I will never be safe," Dr Hern says. "I'm always looking over my shoulder."

You use the term "partial-birth abortion" and he bristles. "It's a barbaric term for a procedure that was described at National Abortion Federation meetings in the early 90s by two doctors who didn't take the deadliness of the psychological warfare seriously." And then the Republicans took it up "and it became this obscene anti-abortion pornography". And when he tried to tell his colleagues, No, this is not the safest way to perform a delayed abortion, they accused him of working with the anti-abortion people and basically rode him out on a rail. "The whole thing turned into a tortured witch hunt – an incredibly painful experience."

Nothing pains him more than the disdain of other doctors. Sometimes the young ones ask to come in for an afternoon so they can learn to make a little money while their careers get started – they think it's as simple as changing a tyre. "There's no sense that this is an important operation that has to be done well, that a person's life depends on it." But let's face it, abortion is the lowest-status activity in medicine. That's why they always call their clinics Family Planning Centres or Women's Wellness Facilities, or some crap like that. Not his place: it's had the same name since 1975. "Because I felt that performing abortions was the most important thing I could do in medicine."

The patients can be upsetting, too. They're under terrible stress, of course, but sometimes they come in very angry. One had conjoined twins and would have died giving birth, but she exploded when told she couldn't smoke in the office. Some treat him with contempt: usually those who have been directly involved in anti-abortion activities. They hate all abortion except for their special case. One even said they should all be killed. Only 14, she came with her mother. "What brings you here?" Dr Hern asked. "I have to have an abortion." "Why?" "I'm not old enough to have a baby." "But you told the counsellor we should all be killed?" "Yes, you should all be killed." "Why?" "Because you do abortions." "Me too?" "Yes, you should be killed, too." "Do you want me killed before or after I do your abortion?" "Before."

He told her to leave. Her mother was very upset. But he isn't an abortion-dispensing machine. He's a physician. He's a person.

When Dr Hern takes his family home, he's escorted by the US marshals. When you come in, his mother is sitting in an easy chair surrounded by her family. She is 92, but she still has a girlish smile and twinkling eyes that summon gingham skirts and radio serials. You bend down to shake her grandson's hand. "So you want to be a pirate?" He nods and adds in a shy voice: "Or maybe a doctor."

The phone rings and Dr Hern goes to answer. He speaks in a heated voice. Hanging up, he's visibly agitated. "That guy got your number off the internet. He's a reporter.You have to change your number."

Dr Hern's mother explains that her number hasn't been listed for almost 40 years, because the anti-abortion people used to make nasty calls at two in the morning. Then there was a mix-up and it appeared in the phone book. Now she doesn't tell him about most of the calls. He's got enough to worry about.

As a boy? Always helpful. When he was just three, she'd give him a rag and let him dust. He sang in the choir. They got involved in church activities. But politically, they were always on the liberal side. He loved to go camping and fishing, and played the clarinet. His father was a carpenter, so they didn't have much money and couldn't afford to travel. But they always had exchange students from all over the world – Germany, Brazil, Italy, France, Pakistan, Japan, 13 countries in all. That was a way the kids could learn how other people lived. And he won second prize in Kodak's national contest for high school photography.

One thing that's probably important, she says, she had terrible migraines from as far back as she could remember. She'd get up in the morning and feel like her head was gonna roll down the hall. And one day she asked Warren what he wanted to be and he said, I really want to be a doctor, Mother. "He thought he'd be a neuro brain surgeon and maybe he could figure out what to do about my headaches."

That same year, he read a book about Albert Schweitzer healing the sick in Africa and announced, Mother, I'm going to go to Africa before I go to medical school. And he did, raising money so he could be a community ambassador with the Experiment in International Living. At college, he worked three jobs to pay his tuition. He learned ancient Greek and studied the Bible in the original. Then he sat her down and said, "I don't believe in this stuff any more." She said, "Well, you don't have to believe in it. Maybe I don't believe in all of it either."

In medical school, he saw his first botched abortions. Then he spent two years as a doctor for the Peace Corps in a Brazilian town so desperately poor, it wasn't unusual to see a dead baby on a rubbish heap. After that, he worked as a family-planning chief for the Nixon administration and spent some time in Appalachia, where he saw unintended pregnancies dragging families deeper and deeper into poverty.

But even after all that, there are still some family members who can't accept what he does. And other doctors, too. It really hurts him terribly, she says. "In his mind, he's trying to help women who desperately need help. And why can't these doctors, of all people…"

In his mother's opinion, he needs to retire.

The shooting? He called her as soon as it happened. He was trying to stay calm, but it was all he could do to keep from losing it. "I could hear the terror in his voice."

Has she ever tried to get him to stop? Especially now that he's kind of making himself a target. "I know that," she answers. "But that wouldn't do any good. He's got a mind of his own." The rims of her eyes are getting red. She moves her glasses and dabs at them.

Warren Hern's wife likes good coffee, so you meet at an espresso bar. She has a strong Roman nose and black hair that breaks against her cheeks in an ebony wave. In a charming mixture of English and Spanish, she tells you about growing up in Cuba, happy, sun-filled days and good medical training, until she started ducking the weekly "discussion" meetings and they told her she wasn't a good communist.

Later, working in a hospital, she saw women who tried to induce their own miscarriages bleed to death. Then she got pregnant. At 18 weeks, she went to her gynaecologist for the blood test. "They said, 'The baby's no good. You have a real problem.'" She went to a geneticist and a specialist in prenatal diagnosis. The geneticist suggested an abortion, "but the prenatal diagnoser, he said, 'What do you think about the baby?' And I said, 'I think he is good. I feel it in my soul, and I want to take him.' He said, 'Go and take your baby.'"

Labour lasted 36 hours, intensive care a month. The specialists told her the baby might have lifelong seizures or learning disabilities. To lighten her workload, she moved to Barcelona and took a job in an abortion clinic. She sees no contradiction in this. "I know that many women don't feel anything when they're pregnant and many women feel sad, feel angry. In this situation, you never can judge who's God. You need to respect women."

All that led to the man who would become her husband. She was at a medical conference in 2003 when Dr Hern came up to her and said, You are so beautiful. He was 64, she was 37. She was struck by his confidence. They began to send letters across the ocean and talk for hours on the phone. And he always showed her his fears and the loneliness of a life under siege by fanatics. She could relate: "When I was aborting in Spain, I finished the abortion of a young woman, first trimester. When I finished this procedure, she sat on the table, and said, 'Oh, doctor, you are really nice, you are such an angel, how do you kill babies?' I said, 'I'm sorry, I don't kill babies. I aspirate gestational sacs. You kill your baby.'"

But most important, Dr Hern always asked about her son. Other men did not do that. In the summer of 2006, they were married.But that was not their happy ending. At the end of May, when they were just back from a rafting trip in Utah, the phone rang. Warren took the call in his office, "and he didn't have any colour in his face. I said, 'What happened?' He said, 'A shooter shot George Tiller.' I thought it was crazy people, and he said, 'No Amor, these people killed him.'" Since that day, he has not relaxed one second.

Dr Hern barely has time to eat. Reporters come and go, the phone rings constantly, he disappears to the hidden rooms where no outsider is allowed to go. Every so often he snatches a minute or two to drop into the counselling room. You squeeze in a question. This idea about mankind being a "malignant eco-tumour". Doesn't it just invite the hate?

"I'm not inviting people to do anything. I'd like them to think. I do think that helping people control their fertility is highly consistent with helping people be responsible citizens of the planet. If somebody misunderstands it or tries to distort it, I don't give a shit. I'm sorry, I'm living in this country because I can say what I think."

But you're 70. You have ideas for a dozen books. Why not retire?

"I have important work to do here."

You want to cosy up to the next question, but there's no time, you blurt it out: What are your limits? When would you tell a woman no?

"There's no specific answer to that. I'm in the process of turning down somebody who's going to be 34, 35 weeks, with an important reason for doing abortion. I'm not going to do it." The phone rings. "OK. I'll be right there," and he's gone.

Hours pass. You've been moved to the nurses' office, where a soft felt sunflower weaves through the metal in-box. You are staring at a flyer advertising the clinic's services: "Specialising in late abortion for foetal disorders. Outpatient abortion over 26 menstrual weeks for selected patients with documented foetal anomaly, foetal demise, or medical indications."

The opponents of legal abortion often use the phrase "abortion on demand", implying there are no restrictions at all. This characterisation is untrue. It has always been illegal in the US to perform abortions after viability without a compelling medical reason. In Kansas, for example, where Dr Tiller practised medicine, the law for any abortion after 22 weeks requires two doctors to agree that failure to abort would put the mother at risk of "substantial and irreversible harm". But Dr Hern's long list of foetal abnormalities that have led women to his clinic ranges from anencephaly to dwarfism, and you know a few dwarfs. You like to think you'd be happy with a dwarf child.

He comes in, remembers that the US marshals don't like him to use this room because the window is too exposed, and walks right back out. You follow, asking about the patients who were supposed to see Dr Tiller.

"The patient I just finished was very unhappy to see me. I think they are very anti-abortion. She had a foetal abnormality, and she and her husband are just devastated. Stuff like that."

What kind of foetal abnormalities are we talking about? "One was Down's syndrome, another was a lethal brain abnormality along with a lethal heart abnormality. Another one had a catastrophic… we're not talking about cleft lip, we are talking about cleft face. There was no face."

He goes home, riding in the bulletproof car with three US marshals. You follow in a separate car. At home, there's a beautiful Bösendorfer piano with Beethoven on the stand and a primitive bow and arrow from the Amazon rainforest, where Dr Hern has cured diseases and conducted ethnographic studies for over 40 years. There are books everywhere, and many of the nature photographs he has published in environmental books and magazines. Then he leads you to his office. He sits down to bang out a letter to President Obama. "As you know, Dr Tiller was unarmed, vulnerable, and acting as an usher for his fellow worshippers."

It's four in the afternoon and he still hasn't eaten his miserable microwave tamales. Is he the abstemious type? "I enjoy food when I have a chance. I love to cook. Grown men lie down on the floor and cry with ecstasy over my paella."

What do the women do?

"They watch the men."

It's the first light thing you've heard him say. So you try to reach the emotional core everyone keeps telling you about. This woman you refused to treat, what was her reason?

"She was raped. I'm sympathetic, but I can't risk my medical licence for someone who just didn't get around to doing anything about it. I've done some cases over 36 weeks, but very few."

For what cause? "Catastrophic problems – anencephaly or lack of kidneys, you know. Lack of a brain."

The anti-abortionists say that in those cases, the woman should just give birth naturally and let God take the baby.

The sharp tone comes back. "Having a delivery is not a benign procedure. When you are trying to keep the baby alive, that increases the risk for the woman. And Reagan put in a bunch of rules about requiring to keep babies alive no matter how hopeless it is. You have people going to Europe to get away from that."

You mean the hospital requires them to save the baby?

"The hospital requires full resuscitation measures, no matter what."

Also, his seaweed procedure is very slow and gentle on the cervix. The tissue dehydrates, the collagen starts to pull apart, the uterus gets softer. If you do a forceful dilation, you're going to tear the cervix. All around, his way is safer.

Safer for the mum?

"Not for the mum," he snaps, "for the woman. Till she's had a baby, she's not a mum."

While you wait, you try to chat up his staff. Most don't want to talk on the record, but one says she's been working here for 13 years. Dr Hern is very caring with all of them, she says. He pays them well. He gives them insurance and a retirement savings plan, which is not routine in the abortion trade. Once, he took them all rafting down the Green River.

So what brings out his emotions?

"Well, I think it is difficult for him when women are experiencing pain and he's not able to control that for them."

Have you ever seen him cry?

"That's a question for Dr Hern."

Does it bother him when the patients show disgust? "That's a question for Dr Hern."

He is on the phone, talking with the editor of a scientific journal. "Well, I went to George's funeral in Wichita, and I was probably the most heavily protected son of a bitch in the state. I was surrounded by rings of marshals and they might've been able to get me with a shoulder-mounted rocket or something. But the grief of this situation was pretty hard."

The phone rings again. This time it's the president of the National Society of Genetic Counsellors, Steven Keiles. Dr Hern wants him to issue a statement denouncing the murder, the sooner the better. "I'm sorry, this is not very complicated. You make a statement and you issue it to the press, a one-page statement condemning the brutal assassination of a conscientious and dedicated doctor who helped tens of thousands of women." He slams down the receiver. "That guy is a fucking clerk. I have no patience for this kind of bullshit. George gave them so much money and so much help."

He starts ranting about the time the militant anti-abortion activist Randall Terry prayed for his death on national Christian radio. "These guys are just despicable. If anyone wants hope for the human species, don't talk to me."

A receptionist comes to close the door so the patients don't hear him. Later, he says, "You can never get used to this. I think we're hardwired, biologically, to protect small, vulnerable creatures, especially babies. The foetuses may not be babies, but some of them are pretty close." He suggests you read an essay called What About Us? Staff Reactions to D&E (Dilation and Evacuation). "The anti-abortion people quote the shit out of it. It's kind of anti-abortion porn for them. But the pro-choice people don't like it either. They don't like it when you talk about how it really feels to do this work." His voice is somewhere between bitter and proud.

So why did he write it? And what about this theory that man is a cancer? "I wrote it because, A, I'm a human being, and B, I'm a writer, and C and D, I'm a physician and I'm trying to understand what we're doing here."

You read the paper. He describes the reactions members of his staff have when they see residue of late abortions, which include "shock, dismay, amazement, disgust, fear and sadness". The later the pregnancy, the harder it is to accept. One assistant resented the patients for putting them through such a horrible experience. Two others described dreams where they vomited foetuses. Common coping mechanisms were denial, projection and rationalisation. The paper ends with the passage the anti-abortionists love to quote, always out of context; words so honest they are almost as painful to read as they must have been to write: "We have reached a point in this particular technology where there is no possibility of denying an act of destruction. It is before one's eyes. The sensations of dismemberment flow through the forceps like an electric current. It is the crucible of a raging controversy, the confrontation of a modern existential dilemma. The more we seem to solve the problem, the more intractable it becomes."

Dr Hern is in the basement doing an abortion. Today is Thursday, operating day. It's just after 8am, and very quiet. The waiting room is empty. So are the examining rooms. A receptionist tells you he just got done with a patient and should be back shortly.

A woman comes to the door. "Is it OK if I go outside for a minute?" "Sure. Knock on the door if you're starting to feel bad."

The phone keeps ringing. "If you have tissue samples," says the receptionist you cannot name, "That makes it logistically easier. Can I put you on hold one second?" She opens the door for the sad woman and her daughter. "Thank you," the daughter says in an emphatic tone that suggests she's not just talking about the door.

A few minutes pass and the phone rings again. "Good morning, Dr Hern's office. OK, did you get any measurements from the ultrasound? OK. And where was this done? OK."

When the calls slow down, the receptionist tells you about the time a pro-life reporter pretended to be looking for information and then quoted her by name. "They do these things to scare you."

The US marshals keep walking up and down the hall, carrying black bags that look ominously tactical. The receptionist opens the door again. It's a woman in an ankle-length Amish dress. "You've seen her before," she tells Dr Hern. "She was with another woman in the same kind of dress."

While you wait, you read another one of the doctor's essays. "It has been my practice to rupture membranes with ring forceps," it says.

At 11:30, the doctor comes up in a cheerful mood. "I have to go check the level of molecular degeneration in my tamales."

It's the second lighthearted thing you've heard him say. And when he comes back from the kitchen, he says another. "I identified a new species in my tamales. But I think with a gastroenterologist standing by…"

The receptionist smiles. "It's your risk."

The Amish women leave. He walks them to the door and says, "Give my regards to Dr H –"

In the nurses' office, the soft felt sunflower weaves through the metal in-box. A young woman wearing a 1920s flapper scarf comes up the stairs alone. At that very moment, you are reading page 83 of Abortion Practice, the section called Isolation: "One of the loneliest persons in the world is the woman who has not told anyone she is pregnant or considering an abortion. Some women have no one to whom they can turn; others insist on suffering alone as a form of self-punishment. The individual abortion counsellor may, and frequently does, fill that gap for both kinds of patients."

The woman in the flapper scarf stops at the receptionist's office. "Thank you so much," she says. "You're so helpful. You're wonderful ladies." Another woman stops at the desk. She's a Latina, here for her sister. "Can I wait? I want to say goodbye to everyone."

The phone rings. "Well, have you had an ultrasound? OK. If it's between 19 weeks and 24 weeks, it'll be between $5,000 and $7,500."

Five minutes later, it rings again. "No, we need to know what the measurements are before you travel. It's a measurement in millimetres and centimetres. Fax it to us. Everything is based on the measurement."

Now it's 1:47, and you're sitting down in the counselling room with the young couple who arrived in Wichita just in time to see the news cameras that surrounded the Reformation Lutheran Church. The woman has light brown hair and wears conservative glasses. She is calm, sombre and depleted.

As gently as you can, you ask her to tell you why she chose abortion.

"We had found out something was wrong at 28 weeks, seriously wrong. And they found out that it was going to put me, my health, perhaps in danger if I carried through to the end."

And it was a planned pregnancy?

"Oh yes. Absolutely."

And when you arrived in Wichita?

"We were caught between grieving about going through this and this awful situation."

You couldn't find a doctor closer to home?

"They do these kinds of procedures in Canada, where we come from, but because I was a very complicated case, and because I didn't feel comfortable with the way they wanted to do it, it was very high risk, I wanted to come to someone who is an expert."

Do you mind explaining why it was so complicated?

"The child had severe abnormalities."

You change the subject, asking what was wrong with the Canadian doctors.

"They do it very fast. They don't use the seaweed, they don't take their time, and it puts the woman at risk. And you're at risk of losing your uterus. I would like to have children, so I didn't want to have that risk."

And how did it go, the surgery?

"Well, Dr Tiller said that…"

Hern.

"Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. Dr Hern said I was a very complicated case. He said it went well, but it wasn't an easy thing to do. It was painful physically and mentally."

You ask if there's anything else they want to say. The husband answers. "It's important that people have a choice. At the end of the day, when things go bad, you know? I mean, God forbid something happens to Dr Hern, where are we going to go next? Australia? China?"

Five minutes later, you catch Dr Hern in the nurses' office. Did their procedure take long?

"Yeah, it was 45 minutes. The average is five minutes. She was very far along. It was the position of the uterus, and she had a previous C-section, poor dilation, it was very difficult. I think any other procedure would have been very, very dangerous for her."

She was in danger of her life?

"Oh yeah. She would have risked having a ruptured uterus in an induction procedure."

In surgery, or in birth?

"Well, she's at risk, at this point, no matter what she decides to do. That's why I'm quite sure this was the safest option for her."

Later that evening, you will drive with Dr Hern's wife and son to the Temple Emanuel in Denver. He'll choke up when he ascends to the dais to say that George Tiller was "gentle, considerate and compassionate", then recover and roll into the refuge of his annealing anger: "This brutal, cold-blooded, premeditated political assassination is the inevitable and predictable result of over 35 years of rabid anti-abortion harassment, hate rhetoric, violence..."

When he comes off the stage to embrace the wife, he will break down in racking sobs. His son will stroke his shoulder. You will be standing right next to them, close enough to hear him say, "Amor, Amor, Amor," close enough to hear members of the audience – who came by word of mouth, because the rabbi considered it too dangerous to advertise publicly – whisper their gratitude. "Thank you for your courage." One woman squeezes his hand. "It's because of people like you that my relatives survived the 1940s."

Three weeks later, the woman from Canada calls you. She has some things she wants to tell you. It was the most tragic and terrible experience of my life, she begins. She has a son almost ready to start kindergarten, she was afraid she wouldn't survive to raise him, and she wants to have a big family, and the situation was so crazy with the marshals and the bulletproof glass and the constant fear of a mad killer with a gun. Dr Hern was under so much pressure. She could see the stress in his face. "Now I'm still recovering, and still sad and still mourning, and I realise how grateful I am that Dr Hern was able to take me under such quick and terrible circumstances. That's what gets me so upset. He's a doctor who is trying to help people. It's shocking that people want to hurt him."

Without Dr Hern, she says, she doesn't know what she would have done. It's crazy he's the only one left. She is grateful, so grateful that she will be here to raise her son. And as the words tumble you hear, in the urgency unleashed by her deliverance, a love too sad for sermons, too personal for headlines, a private benediction, the abortionist's reward, the love song of Warren Martin Hern, MD.★

Prime minister and Irish taoiseach to meet in attempt to ward off collapse of power sharing

Gordon Brown and his Irish counterpart, Brian Cowen, will hold crisis talks in Downing Street tomorrow to stave off the threat of the collapse of the Northern Ireland assembly and power sharing.

Critical talks will also take place between the Democratic Unionist leader, Peter Robinson, and Northern Ireland's deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness tomorrow. Sinn Féin said yesterday that this encounter would be a "critical and defining" meeting on the issue of devolving policing and justice powers to Northern Ireland.

The DUP MP and junior Stormont minister, Jeffrey Donaldson, said: "I think it's time that they calmed down a bit and let's engage to resolve the outstanding issues.

"We remain at the table ready and willing to discuss those issues and move the process forward."

Donaldson said Sinn Féin had not turned up for talks "on a number of occasions" over the past week.

However, Sinn Féin's Gerry Kelly accused the DUP of going into talks with preconditions.

"The DUP have made a precondition of sorting out these contentious parades, the whole parades issue," he said.

"What they're saying is that the Orange Order will make the decision on that and they're linking that to giving a date on policing and justice."

The leader of the Alliance party, David Ford, accepted it was time for the British and Irish governments to intervene.

However, Ford said the local parties should be able to sort matters out and opposed the convening of so-called "hothouse talks" outside Northern Ireland.

A spokesman for No 10 said the talks at Downing Street were "part of ongoing discussions on Northern Ireland".

The prime minister and the taoiseach talk regularly on the phone and were pleased to have the opportunity to meet face to face, he said.

A government watchdog is ready to launch a snap inspection into Doncaster council, where social workers have been revealed to have been "reluctant" to get involved with two children who abducted, tortured and battered two other boys they did not even know.

The Audit Commission will announce this week whether it will invoke rarely used powers to carry out a detailed inspection of the troubled local authority. "We are considering carrying out a corporate governance inspection," said a spokesman. "It is a process we undertake only very rarely and any recommendations would then be reported directly to the secretary of state, who then has the power to intervene."

Nick Jarman, the head of child protection in Doncaster – where at least seven children have died because of abuse in three years – has promised a "thorough investigation" into the failings that left the two brothers free to terrorise their neighbourhood in Doncaster, where they lived with their drug-addled mother, and then, last April, after they had been moved to live with foster carers in Edlington, went on to carry out the violent sexual and physical assaults of the two boys.

Jarman gave an unqualified apology for the "admitted failings which led to this terrible incident" and said action would be taken against staff deemed to have mishandled the affair. Only one member of staff has been disciplined so far. It came as cross-party pressure was mounting on the children's minister Ed Balls to make public the full report into the failings at Doncaster. Only the executive summary has been made public, which showed that 31 opportunities which might have stopped the brothers committing the attack were missed by staff, and called the assault entirely "preventable".

The Lib Dems have been calling for serious case reviews to be made public since the report into the death of baby Peter, a murdered toddler who was also under the care of Doncaster social services. Yesterday, shadow children's secretary Michael Gove wrote to Balls asking him to consider the move.

"We urgently need to reform and improve child protection in this country. Every year, new cases of scarcely imaginable horror hammer at the nation's conscience. Governments pledge that lessons must be learnt, but the documents that contain those lessons are kept under lock and key, censored by the establishment."

But even if the full report is ­published, it is likely to throw up themes that are becoming depressingly familiar in cases like this: failings by agencies that missed warning signs or by individuals who failed to take action out of fear or ignorance or both.

Previous research has shown that even after potentially psychopathic children are identified by social workers or other agencies, there is an average delay of four-and-a-half years before appropriate specialist treatment is sought.

Dr Eileen Vizard, consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist and clinical director of the NSPCC's national child assessment and treatment service, was the lead author of a 2006 study, which looked at some 280 disturbed and violent children. Vizard assessed the Edlington brothers and Robert Thompson, who killed two-year-old James Bulger in 1993. She cannot comment on either case but, based on her extensive clinical work and research, she believes a new approach is needed to reach Britain's most troubled children.

"We are at the beginning of learning how to intervene with this very disturbed sub-group of children. We do know that ordinary parenting programmes do very well with a lot of families, but with the psychologically disturbed sub-group, things like the 'naughty step' will be successful with less disturbed children but never work with this sub-group because they don't care about other people's point of view.

"We need to intervene as early as we can to stand the best chance of preventing them going down the wrong route. And we need funding for research studies to see what could work. We must find novel ways of turning around children with the most worrying behaviour before they become the psychopaths of the future."

Four party officials sign strongly worded open letter in protest at jailing of co-author of Charter 08 call for reform

Four senior Communist party officials known for their liberal views are pushing for the release of an imprisoned Chinese dissident who had called for political reform.

The four have signed a strongly worded letter addressed to "incumbent party and government leaders", urging authorities to reconsider the verdict against Liu Xiaobo, who was sentenced in December to 11 years in prison on subversion charges.

The letter did not call specifically for Liu's release, but He Fang, one of its signatories, said its purpose was "to reverse the verdict and to find that Liu is not guilty and to release him. Also, to safeguard the constitution and the rights of freedom of speech."

Liu was the co-author of Charter 08, an unusually direct appeal for political liberalisation in China, which was signed by more than 300 people including some of China's top intellectuals. Rights groups have said the harshness of Liu's sentence was a warning to others who challenged China's one-party rule.

The open letter was written by Hu Jiwei, a former editor of the People's Daily newspaper, a mouthpiece of the Communist party. The signatories are all in their 80s and 90s, according to the letter; their age could provide them with a degree of protection from harassment.

It said the main evidence against Liu was that he had called for the establishment of a Chinese "federal republic." Hu and other signers contend that the term was a "correct slogan" used in the early days of the Chinese Communist party.

"If the judge violates the constitution and has no knowledge of the history of the party … and makes false and incorrect accusations that will seriously tarnish the image of the country and the party, then it's difficult to prove that China is a country ruled by law and a harmonious society," said the letter.

The other signers were Li Pu, a former deputy chief of the official Xinhua news agency, and Dai Huang, a former Xinhua senior reporter. He Fang is an honorary member of the academic committee at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Liu, a former university professor, spent 20 months in jail for joining the 1989 student-led protests in Tiananmen Square. He has been the only person arrested over the charter, but rights groups said several signers had been harassed or fired from their jobs.

Tehran alleges time-wasting as curator trawls through thousands of cuneiform clay fragments for Cyrus the Great's legacy

The discovery of fragments of ancient cuneiform tablets – hidden in a British Museum storeroom since 1881 – has sparked a diplomatic row between the UK and Iran. In dispute is a proposed loan of the Cyrus cylinder, one of the most important objects in the museum's collection, and regarded by some historians as the world's first human rights charter.

The Iranian government has threatened to "sever all cultural relations" with Britain unless the artefact is sent to Tehran immediately. Museum director Neil MacGregor has been accused by an Iranian vice-president of "wasting time" and "making excuses" not to make the loan of the 2,500-year-old clay object, as was agreed last year.

The museum says that two newly discovered clay fragments hold the key to an important new understanding of the cylinder and need to be studied in London for at least six months.

The pieces of clay, inscribed in the world's oldest written language, look like "nothing more than dog biscuits", says MacGregor. Since being discovered at the end of last year, they have revealed verbatim copies of the proclamation made by Persian king Cyrus the Great, as recorded on the cylinder. The artefact itself was broken when it was excavated from the remains of Babylon in 1879. Curators say the new fragments are the missing pieces of an ancient jigsaw puzzle.

Irving Finkel, curator in the museum's ancient near east department, said he "nearly had a coronary" when he realised what he had in his hands. "We always thought the Cyrus cylinder was unique," he said. "No one had even imagined that copies of the text might have been made, let alone that bits of it have been here all along."

Finkel must now trawl through 130,000 objects, housed in hundreds of floor-to ceiling shelving units. His task is to locate other fragments inscribed with Cyrus's words. The aim is to complete the missing sections of one of history's most important political documents.

The Iranians have been planning to host a major exhibition of the Cyrus cylinder ever since MacGregor signed a loan agreement in Tehran in January 2009. I was in Iran with the museum director, reporting for BBC Radio 4 on his mission of cultural diplomacy.

Six months before pro-democracy protests were met with violence in the wake of the presidential election, tea and sweet pastries were offered to the British guests at the Iranian cultural heritage ministry. MacGregor was there to meet Hamid Baqaei, a vice-president and close ally of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Their friendly discussion was a significant diplomatic breakthrough at a time when tensions between Britain and Iran had been strained to breaking point after the expulsion of British Council representatives from Tehran. The recent launch of the BBC Persian television service had also been interpreted as a provocation by London.

With even the British ambassador in Tehran struggling to maintain a dialogue, MacGregor was the sole conduit of bilateral exchange in January 2009. The sight of a miniature union flag standing alongside the Iranian flag on the table between the British Museum boss and his Iranian counterparts boded well for an amicable meeting. In previous weeks, the only British flags seen in public in Tehran were those being burned on the streets outside the embassy.

MacGregor's objective was to secure the loan of treasures from Iranian palaces, mosques and museums for the museum's exhibition on the life and times of 16th-century ruler Shah Abbas. Discussions over the loan of treasures relating to one great Persian leader prompted the suggestion that another – Cyrus – could play a part in a reciprocal deal.

MacGregor may have been put on the spot by Baqaei, but he agreed to a three-month loan by the end of 2009. A year later, Baqaei's tone towards MacGregor is not so friendly. Quoted by the Fars news agency in Iran, he accused the museum of "acting politically". Further "British procrastination" would result in a "serious response" from Iran.

The Cyrus cylinder remains a compelling political tract more than two and half millennia after its creation. Accepting her Nobel peace prize in 2003, the Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi cited Cyrus as a leader who "guaranteed freedoms for all". She hailed his charter as "one of the most important documents that should be studied in the history of human rights".

In 2006, the then foreign secretary, Jack Straw contrasted the freeing of Jewish slaves by Cyrus with Ahmadinejad's "sickening calls for Israel to be wiped from the face of the map".

David Miliband, the current foreign secretary, has yet to reflect on the contemporary resonance of Cyrus in a country in which human rights have been violently curtailed of late. But a spokeswoman for the Foreign Office said: "It is a shame that the British Museum has felt compelled to make this decision." She added that "we share the British Museum's concern that this would not be a good time for the cylinder to come to Iran" owing to the "unsettled" situation in the country.

Last week MacGregor presided over a launch, at the British Museum, of the History of the World in 100 Objects, his collaborative project with the BBC. The director is presenting a 100-part series on Radio 4, in which the story of mankind is told through individual artefacts. The Cyrus cylinder was considered for inclusion, but did not make the final hundred.

Some guests at the launch, when told how the discovery of the new fragments had delayed the loan of the Cyrus cylinder, were suspicious. "Fancy that, what a stroke of luck," said one. "That gets Neil out of a jam for now."

The director himself says he is determined that the cylinder will eventually be lent to Tehran, along with the newly discovered fragments, to tell a better story about Cyrus. He says he can understand the frustration and anger in Tehran, but it will be worth their wait.

They may well be getting more than they bargained for. To the Ahmadinejad regime, the cylinder is an iconic object, one that fuels collective pride in national heritage. But to those who are fighting for freedom of expression in Iran in the face of violence, the return of Cyrus could offer a potent new rallying point.

Author claims that over-30s would be happier if they settled for Mr Not Bad

Women looking for a Mr Right should give up after 30 and settle for a Mr ­Second Best or a Mr Right Now.

Lori Gottlieb, author of Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr Good Enough, which is published in the UK next week, believes women who refuse to commit unless they find a man with whom they feel a deep, romantic love are consigning themselves to a lonely future.

"The theme of holding out for true love (whatever that is – look at the divorce rate) permeates our collective mentality," writes Gottlieb, a 40-year-old single mother who now admits she wishes she had "settled" for any of the "perfectly acceptable but uninspiring" men she rejected during her search for the perfect man.

"My dream, like that of my mother and her mother, was to fall in love, get married and live happily ever after. Of course, women are loth to admit it in this day and age, but ask any soul-baring 40-year-old single heterosexual woman what she most longs for in life, and she probably won't tell you it's a better career or a smaller waistline or a bigger apartment. Most likely, she'll say that what she really wants is a husband (and, by extension, a child)," she writes.

Gottlieb's book is based on an article she wrote in 2008 for the Atlantic magazine. The piece created such a sensation that it was picked up by Oprah Winfrey's O magazine and polarised readers. The debate caught the attention of Warner Independent and Tobey Maguire's Maguire Entertainment, which bought the book and film rights. Maguire intends to produce the film himself.

Gottlieb blames feminism for the number of women who find themselves alone after spending years holding out for their white knight. To the outside world, says Gottlieb, these women still insist they are self-sufficient. "But in reality, we aren't fish who can do without a bicycle; we're women who want a traditional family," she writes. "Every woman I know – no matter how successful and ambitious, how financially and emotionally secure – feels panic, occasionally coupled with desperation, if she hits 30 and finds herself unmarried."

It is not just feminism that has betrayed women by telling them they could have it all, said Gottlieb: every book, film and television show that perpetuates the myth of combining romantic love with a happy-ever-after ending – from Jane Austen to Friends – has done women a great and dangerous disservice.

"We're conditioned to crave that Big Love. It's painful how pervasive the fantasy is that The One is out there," she said. "We grew up idealising marriage, but if we'd had a more realistic understanding of its cold, hard benefits, we might have done things differently. So we walked away from uninspiring relationships that might have made us happy."

She even claims that settling for Mr Second Best could make women happier in the long run. "When we're holding out for romantic love, we have the fantasy that this level of passionate intensity will make us happier," she writes. "But marry­ing Mr Good Enough might be equally viable, especially if you're looking for a reliable life companion.

"What makes for a good marriage isn't necessarily what makes for a good romantic relationship. Marriage isn't a passion-fest; it's a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane and often boring non-profit business. And I mean this in a good way."

But fellow author Elizabeth Gilbert believes that women are wrong to believe marriage will make them happy. In her new book, Committed: A Sceptic Makes Peace with Marriage, she writes: "We marry most often because we are in love and we think it will make us happy. Yet married women are more likely to suffer from depression than are single women.

"Married women are not as successful in their careers as single women."

She adds: "The fact is women generally lose in the exchange of vows."

A selection of the best images from around the world

Paul Morley discusses the phenomenon of the 'next big thing' with rising stars Ellie Goulding, Lonelady and These New Puritans

Why are we all still so hung up on the Romantics? In the week that the Guardian and Observer launch a seven-day series of booklets of Romantic poetry – bringing you the best of Burns, Blake, Byron, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley and Wordsworth – we ask the former poet laureate and Keats biographer Andrew Motion how important they are today, and whether we're right to lump them all together. To illustrate their power, we've unearthed a brilliant recording of actor Michael Sheen reading Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn.

We also talk to the winner of this year's TS Eliot prize, Phillip Gross, about the appeal of water to the poetic imagination, and the influences that shaped his collection The Water Table.

Finally, we take a spin through the literature of cycling with sports writer Richard Williams, looking at the scandals and the celebrities of a sport that has been making its own giants for more than a century. We also challenge listeners to come up with their favourite bicycle books.

Reading List:

Poetry
The Water Table, by Philip Gross (Bloodaxe)
Keats, by Andrew Motion (Faber)
Buy the Guardian and the Observer for the next seven days for the Romantic poets booklets (or buy the full set at guardian.co.uk/readeroffers/romanticpoets)

Audio
Great Poets of the Romantic Age, read by Michael Sheen, with music from Beethoven et al (Naxos)

Cycling
The Third Policeman, by Flann O'Brien
Fallen Angel: The Passion of Fausto Coppi, by William Fotheringham (Yellow Jersey)
Put Me Back on My Bike: In Search of Tommy Simpson, by William Fotheringham (Cape)
The Rider, Tim Krabbe (Bloomsbury)
The Discovery of France by Graham Robb (Picador)

We begin the latest Media Talk podcast by analysing the second coming of the New York Times paywall. Is this the beginning of the end of free online news? Why will the Times succeed this time when they've failed with subscription models before? Emily Bell is on hand to give her views.

Also in the podcast, Matt Wells speaks to Alan Rusbridger and Sly Bailey about the future of digital media on a local level. The so-called godfather of hyperlocal Rick Waghorn – creator of the MyFootballWriter network – also weighs in.

Plus, the former Channel 4 chairman Luke Johnson tells us why the BBC Trust has had its day, and Maggie Brown and Steve Hewlett set the record straight about BSkyB, ITV, and all sorts of media policy wonkery that our most dedicated fans will no doubt lap up.

Finally, Andy Duncan proves why he's everyone's favourite ex-chief executive ... or not. Speaking of which, his successor has finally been named.

Have a listen to the show and post your feedback on the blog below, and follow these links to find us on iTunes, Facebook, and Twitter.

From creative tantrums in Liverpool to religious mania in Bexhill-on-Sea, here's what's happening in the arts around the country

Is London's banking system a vital cog that keeps the capital running, or a timebomb in the British economy? Let the debate begin...

Dear Boris

If Britain allows its banking sector to grow as rapidly over the next decade as in the last, with so much of its revenue diverted not to building up its capital but to paying extravagant bonuses, when the next crisis comes it will overwhelm the British state.

We could just about get through this crisis with £1.3 trillion of liquidity, guarantees and capital injections into the banks. Next time round – in five or 10 years' time if nothing changes – Britain simply could not pay the bill. We would have to print money or endure an even deeper recession, and that will include Londoners.

Andrew Haldane, executive director of the Bank of England, calls it a "doom loop".

Of course we want a vibrant banking sector in London, but we also need it to be sound. For more than a decade, banks and investment banks have got used to paying out routinely up to 50% of their revenues as bonuses. As the Bank of England says, if they had paid just 20% less in bonuses and dividends between 2000 and 2008 they would have had £75bn more capital – more than the taxpayer put in. They must change in future.

Tax on bonuses is part of a much bigger story, of trying to create a sounder banking industry. Bankers may think there is some escape – but to where? Smaller financial centres like Singapore or Hong Kong lack the economic muscle to support big banks when things go wrong, so depositors will vote with their feet. The banks' business will dissolve.

There is nowhere in the EU with a better infrastructure or regulatory/tax framework kinder than London's. And President Obama has announced a 10-year levy on banks because of their "obscene" bonuses – hardly friendlier than here.

You are being taken for a ride. We may lose a few bankers as the sector shrinks, which is what happens in capitalism when businesses make mistakes. But instead of defending the indefensible, why not be on the side of a sounder banking system and a more diversified London economy – a great legacy as mayor?

Best, Will

Dear Will

I defend financial services for the same reason that I have championed the London Living Wage, given cut-price travel to jobseekers, frozen City Hall's council tax and built 20,000 affordable homes in the last 18 months. I will fight for the interests of Londoners who work in banking for exactly the same reason that I fight for the interests of those who work in tourism or the media or in public transport. I do so because I sincerely and passionately believe it is in the interests of London. Of course I deplore, like you, the current orgy of excessive bonuses – and in case you think I am just saying this to suit an Observer readership, let me direct you to an article I wrote in that proud capitalist organ, the Daily Telegraph, on 19 October. In fact, let me quote a chunk of the concluding bombardment: "The decision of these banks to hand out these bonuses as though nothing has changed is unbelievable. The only reason these bankers are still in jobs is because the taxpayer bailed out the system.

"These banks can no longer talk glibly about the need to offer competitive salaries to star bankers, and the operation of the free market. Their irresponsibility almost brought the free market crashing to its knees. How can they pretend that the world hasn't changed? What blindness, what deafness, what Asperger's afflicts them?"

And I went on to warn the banks that if the bonus bonanza continued, and if they continued to seem so heedless of wider society, then the pressure for fiscal retaliation would be overwhelming. I was proved right, of course, and the issue now is not whether banks will face new taxes, but to what extent these measures can be globally concerted so as not to disadvantage London.

I agree with you, by the way, that an international accord should oblige the banks to insure themselves against the consequences of their risk-taking. We must somehow end this implicit taxpayer guarantee that makes the current bonus round so outrageous.

But if I read your letter correctly, that is not enough for you. Oh no. You want to go further. You actually want to "rebalance" the British economy by an unspecified process of shrinking or pruning the financial services industry.

You want a "more diversified" London economy. This may or may not be a good thing, but I am not sure how you achieve it. The financial services industry contributes about 9% of GDP, and every job in the sector is estimated to add £117,000 to the London economy.

The taxes generated by the hedge funds and private equity alone are enough to pay for 200,000 nurses or 165,000 teachers or the entire Olympic budget. How else are you going to find that money, Will?

And what about all the London families and individuals who depend more or less directly on the wealth and energy of the City? What about the lawyers and the accountants and all the other professions involved in the deals? What about the builders and the taxi drivers and the waiters?

What do you say to all these millions of people when you brilliantly decide to sabotage one of the main flywheels of the London economy?

What do you say to your friends in the arts world when their operas and their galleries are no longer able to call upon the philanthropy of these despised masters of the universe?

Suppose you were to accomplish your Pol Pot-style purge, and remove – say – one banker in 10. Which sectors do you think would miraculously sprout to fill the gap? I don't think you have a clue, and certainly no evidence for thinking that these people would pop up in, say, manufacturing.

Perhaps you would prefer more people became journalists or the heads of think tanks. As even the Work Foundation [of which Hutton is the executive vice chair] may be about to discover, there is a limited amount of taxpayers' money to fund endless studies into this or that, and it's no way to run an economy.

London is blessed with a world-beating industry that is of colossal importance to the UK economy. We are agreed that the present bonus round is a huge own goal. We are agreed that the system needs reform. But to set out to attack the City of London, to reduce it in scale, to diminish its share of GDP, in the delusive hope that some other sector will supplant it in a "more diversified" economy – that strikes me as positively barmy.

Best, Boris

Dear Boris

But the financial statesman reverts to D'Artagnan with a blink of an eye. Since we began this debate, Obama has raised the stakes massively with his proposal to stop banks running trading desks where they speculate in so-called derivatives, or owning and sponsoring private equity groups and hedge funds to whom banks have lent hundreds of billions of dollars.

Obama has reversed three decades of financial policy making, and struck at the pyramid of securitised lending, with its interconnected credit default swaps and derivatives.

I support his move – together with banks carrying more capital and paying an insurance levy, I think the banking system could be made a great deal safer, and the intolerable risk of taxpayers picking up the bill while insiders walk away with grotesquely high bonuses will be greatly reduced. Do you agree?

But this has big implications. Blowing the whistle on pseudo profits and the accompanying bonuses is not a "Pol Pot" weeding of the ranks of City employees. British bank assets doubled in the decade to 2007 as the capital underwriting them fell and they exploited regulatory holes they'd lobbied for. That can't happen in the next decade, or if it does, as I repeat, the next crisis could overwhelm the economy.

Putting this right is not barmy – it is correcting what has become a tax on the rest of the economy. That figure of £117,000 for every City job you use takes none of this into account. Do the economists who produced the estimate assume that the alternative for talented people working in the City is unemployment or making zero economic contribution, which would be pretty unlikely? Do they net out the cost of bailing out banks? We've ended up with too many banks, lawyers, estate agents and the like – and not enough hi-tech companies, designers, advertisers, software houses, health companies and all the other opportunities out there.

We have too little productive entrepreneurship generating jobs and wealth beyond financial services. It now puts London at risk. I applaud your support of the London Living Wage and cut-price travel for job-seekers, but you could go even further. How about launching a London network of "Johnson" institutes whose job is to scan the horizon for new scientific and technological ideas and connect them with dynamic young companies who don't have the resource to do such scanning themselves? George Osborne has talked about developing banks that are more supportive of business. How about a London Business Bank? Health is becoming a boom area; how about getting behind London's great teaching hospitals to promote and entrench London as the leader in world health? I don't think it's barmy to think in these terms. I suspect Boris B doesn't either. But what about D'Artagnan Boris A?

Best, Will

Dear Will

Everybody wants to bash them and to bash anyone so rash as to defend their very existence. But what you seem to ignore is the many other London sectors that are globally dominant and which seem – on the face of it – to be completely out of scale with our population. London not only has four of the world's six largest law firms. We have more of the world's top universities than any other city, with two of the top five, and with billions in revenues from foreign students that are crucial for the higher-education economy.

We have a huge creative, culture and media sector, with 30% of the UK workforce and a bigger advertising industry than New York. We have the biggest constellation of medical science centres outside America, a stunning treasury of intellectual riches.

And yes, since you ask, I met representatives of the three key players – King's, Imperial, UCL – last October, and we agreed that our new Promote London Council would make medical science a central part of the message to the world. We have the biggest tourist industry of any metropolis, with more visitors than either New York or Paris – which is not surprising since we have twice as many bookshops as New York and more museums than Paris, and, oh yes, it rains more in Rome.

Now let me ask you: do you believe that any of these gigantic London sectors are somehow "too big"?

Is it a "tax on talent" that so many bright minds are drawn to teach at London universities, so that we have become the Athens of the modern world, with foreign fees pouring in to subsidise the impecunious natives?

Would you say that those who work in our tourism industry are somehow generating "pseudo-profits"? Of course you wouldn't. You don't disapprove of people coming here to make millions from London's thriving and cosmopolitan film industry, do you?

You wouldn't want to kick some of them out, or reduce the number of movie millionaires. So why are you so determined to make London less attractive for financial services and to reduce the number of bankers?

You are making two fundamental mistakes: first, in thinking that London is entirely dependent on financial services, when that is plainly not true. Second, you seem to imagine that London's financial services industry should be somehow "proportionate" to the rest of the London economy, with each limb – manufacturing, media, transport, whatever – assembled with the harmony of some ancient statue.

That is to misunderstand what London is, and the role it plays in the world. Financial services are part of a global industry, and 75% of London's banking and insurance products are sold overseas.

Ever since we got rid of the anti-enterprise mentality of the 1970s, London has been a global talent magnet. My worry now is that we – or rather you and the Labour government – are starting to sound hostile to the kind of wealth creators who have come here in the last 25 years, attracted by our energy and our diversity and what used to be our fairly low tax rates.

I repeat: Obama is right to say the banks need reform, though it is hard to know what he means when he says he wants to stop retail banks doing proprietary trading "unless it is necessary for customer services". That seems a fairly large loophole.

I agree that we need a healthy banking sector, and I repeat that these outlandish bonuses should not be given with the luxury of a taxpayer guarantee. But what I don't understand is your seemingly implacable desire to shrink banking for the sake of it, to stop people going into it and to corral them into other professions. I feel I need to know the psychological origins of this rage against the kulaks.

Is it not time Observer readers had the full backstory of banker-bashing Will Hutton?

Best, Boris

Dear Boris

The aftermath – rebuilding sound banks, unravelling the hundred of billions of now largely worthless loans, consumers rebuilding their savings, lowering unemployment and getting public finances back in order – will take a decade. And it was an avoidable disaster.

I welcome that we agree the case for reform – yes, let's close down any loopholes in Obama's proposals. This is what you're suggesting, isn't it? Because when I make the case, you accuse me of banker-bashing, shrinking banking for the sake of it, etc, etc. You say you want sounder banks; but you recoil from the consequences – throwing invidious charges around like confetti but trying to dodge any flak yourself. It is not a lovely sight.

I am keenly aware of London's strengths beyond banks which I celebrate too, and of the structure of the London economy. But over the past decade London became disproportionately dependent on financial services. The difference between London's global pre-eminence in cultural and creative industries, health and universities and its pre-eminence in finance is that none of those have the same capacity to grow what amounted to gigantic pyramid selling schemes or ask for trillion-pound cheques when things went wrong. Capitalism is the best system yet devised to generate wealth. But when it gets too unfair it becomes dysfunctional, which is what we have witnessed. It is what I want to put right. It would be great if a politician with your flair for expression shared that aim – and its consequences.

Best, Will

Dear Will

We want the banks to help us come up with a financial instrument that will allow Londoners to retro-fit their homes. I want London to be at the heart of green banking, so that we create jobs not just in retro-fitting but in the financial services that make retro-fitting possible. We think the numbers look good for the banks. On the buildings that City Hall has retro-fitted, we will make money in eight years. But of course there is a risk. Perhaps – though it seems unlikely – world energy prices will collapse, and take the saving out of retrofitting. The key thing is the risk should be borne by the bank.

As you rightly say, Will, the problem we face now is not so much the initial crisis as the consequences of our response. Those banks took demented risks, and though a couple went down the tubes we bailed the rest of them out. Which means they all know in their heart of hearts that they can do it again. And we agree that it is outrageous that the current round of bonuses is made possible by a taxpayer guarantee. But the solution is not to demolish the banks. The solution is to ensure that if a greedy, bonus-hungry, testosterone-fuelled banker takes a stupid risk – then he cops it, or his bank cops it, and not the taxpayer.

That is why we need these people to insure themselves. Of course I accept that if this reform is mishandled it may damage the sector and lead, as you suggest, to significantly more job losses. Where we differ is in the way we would view such an outcome. You actively want to reduce the size of the banking industry, your former employer, dear Will. You relish the prospect of some sort of retribution, after the boom years of "pseudo-profits". I reject that concept.

These bankers didn't just invest in catastrophic sub-prime mortgages. By lending money at risk, they made possible every betterment of the human race from the iPod to new treatments for Alzheimer's. Those weren't pseudo-breakthroughs. And the staggering sums they pay in taxes – that isn't pseudo-money. Those weren't pseudo-lunches they bought and those weren't pseudo-jobs they generated in everything from building to IT to piano lessons.

London's financial services industry is big because London happens to have a large share of one of the most complex, fast-growing and intellectually challenging industries in the world. That is a tribute to the inventiveness of Londoners and the attractions of the city, and I am proud to defend it.

Best, Boris

I'm all for matrimony, but we must not forget those who are divorced, widowed or abandoned

When I was conceived, in the late 1940s, my mother faced a dreadful set of choices. Her lover was a married man and to all intents and purposes abandoned her. The stigma on single mothers in those days was so fierce that for many young women, maybe most, the next step was the dangerous one to an illegal, backstreet abortionist. For those who could not bring themselves to take that awful course, the standard alternative was to have the baby and give it away for adoption immediately after the birth.

One of the reasons I have always admired my mother is that she had the courage to resist those ferocious social pressures and keep me. The battle between social stigma and a mother's love for her child must have been agonising. Nobody I know of in the Tory party wants to go back to those days. Or if they do, they keep quiet about it around me.

But none of that gainsays a single, overwhelming set of facts. Children do well when they are brought up by two parents in a long-term stable relationship. On average – and only on average – married couples stay together for longer than unmarried ones. So, on average, children do better when their parents are married. There are plenty of exceptions, of which more in a moment, but that is the average.

The job of government is to improve the average outcome for everyone, without visiting injustice on anyone. In this area of policy, that is clearly difficult. It is made more so by the fact that there are a vast variety of different family circumstances.

Take the category of single mothers alone. The common assumption is that they are mostly young teenagers who are careless or who even deliberately get pregnant as a step to a council flat and a benefit cheque. Of course there are young women who do that – and some who follow it up by having other children by other fathers. The prospects for their children are often dire. These are all too often the children who fill the care homes or end up being abused by the peripatetic fathers. At the extreme end of this spectrum we find the Baby Peters and the Victoria Climbiés.

But that is not the typical single mother by a long chalk. Single mothers come in a wide variety of categories. There are married mothers who are separated or divorced from their husbands. There are single mothers who decide to have a baby, but who are capable of providing for that child, both financially and emotionally. Then there are widows.

The fact that the policy area is difficult is not an excuse for avoiding it. As it stands, from a social policy perspective, our tax and welfare system is at best chaotic and at worst perverse. The tax credit system clearly penalises couples over single parents. This leads many couples to pretend to live apart – the notorious "living apart together" scam. I have heard estimates that 200,000 people are in this category. This puts a tax not just on marriage, but on having any stable relationship. In fact, it criminalises relationships by leading people to lie about their status.

This nonsense has to go. Similarly, I want to see the tax system recognise and reinforce marriage. This is not, for me, an issue of morality. People's moral choices are nothing to do with the state. It is simply an issue of reinforcing what works best for most children in most circumstances.

In the party political spat over marriage and tax in the last two weeks, David Cameron volunteered that he had "messed up." While this was a gracious thing to say, I am not sure that I agree. Tactically, he may have created a problem, but strategically I think the Conservative party is in the right place.

Few people are more pro-marriage than me. I want the Tories to implement policies that favour marriage, both symbolically and practically. In my mind, to be pro-marriage is to be pro-children. But a tax break is no use if you do not have a job. So the need to balance the books must take priority over social aims. Recessions do not help marriages. In my grandmother's words: "When money troubles come in the door, love goes out of the window."

So it may take time to deliver a pro-marriage tax and welfare policy. So what? In my view, that is a good thing. This is a policy whose social impact will take more than a decade to pay off and it is vital that we get it right. So a year or two does not matter.

When he became chancellor, Gordon Brown was warned that the tax credit policy was prone to fraud, error and waste. He ignored the many warnings and rushed ahead. For more than a decade, poor families have had reason to regret that haste.

To illustrate how difficult this is, take my favoured policy, a transferable marriage allowance. Imagine, for example, a young woman married to a soldier who goes off to fight in Afghanistan. He is killed in the service of his country. Does she lose the allowance? Presumably she does, so when we introduce the allowance we must alter the widow's pension to make up for this.

That is just one example of the many complexities we will have to address. Take another. It is almost certainly the case that the financial circumstances of the nation will require us to introduce any sort of allowance in stages. I would start by introducing an allowance for families with young children. I am influenced by watching my daughter struggle to balance career, school runs and finding good childminders. But what about others with competing claims? What about families with disabled children? There are many deserving categories.

It is clear the Conservatives favour reinforcing marriage. It should be clear that we do not intend to do so in a way that compounds the misfortune of the widow, the divorcee, the abandoned mother. It is obvious, for these reasons, and because of the dire financial state of the nation, that we will need to proceed cautiously. If that is the Tory promise, then for I one am happy with it.

David Davis is Conservative MP for Haltemprice and Howden

The pop master gives us an exclusive peek to mark the release tomorrow of A Reality Tour, the live double album of his acclaimed 2003-4 world tour

I've chosen the songs that I've been playing the most over the last month. Here they are in no particular order.

Stay with Me by Lorraine Ellison

Ellison only got to record this goose bump-making classic because of a Sinatra cancellation at the studio. The vocal build and release on this track is galvanising. Writer Jerry Ragovoy also wrote "Time Is On My Side".

El Ninõ – For with God No Thing Shall Be Impossible by John Adams; Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Willard White, Dawn Upshaw, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, conducted by Kent Nagano

Just over a minute long and propulsive like a storm. I want to crush furniture. The emotional in search of the divine.

Junker's Blues by Champion Jack Dupree

Simple, beautiful New Orleans piano. This 1941 song was the blueprint for Fats Domino's 1949 hit "The Fat Man" and probably played a part in the making of Professor Longhair's "Tipitina".

Nixon in China: Act I, Scene 1; 'Soldiers of Heaven Hold the Sky' by John Adams; Orchestra of St Luke's, Edo de Waart

Adams's minimalism disguises the rich romanticism of his melodies. Ever ascending, rising through the clouds.

Embroidering Pouch by Peng Liyuan

Hugely huge in China. Peng holds the rank of major general in the People's Liberation Army. I have a thing about Chinese folk music, OK?

All These Deserters by Boxharp

Mystical country. An eerie yellowing photograph.

Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin) by Scritti Politti

Who could dislike this glistening 1984 beauty? The upside of the 80s.

Dinner at Eight by Rufus Wainwright

There aren't that many son/father songs but this is the best of them as far as I know. Rufus is just simply one of the great writers.

Different Trains I: America-Before the War by Steve Reich; Kronos Quartet

One of the late 20th century's most affecting works. I love the use of speech as a source for melody. But it's so much more than a concept, it's also impossibly moving.

Blue Skies by Josephine Baker

I'm not a big Baker fan but there's something about this performance that touches me. I think it's the break in her voice among all this gaiety and optimism.

Gathering Storm by Godspeed You! Black Emperor

GYBE are among my, erm, two favourite Montreal bands, Arcade Fire being the other. All Montreal bands have around nine members, I believe.

Sonny's Lettah (Anti-Sus Poem) by Linton Kwesi Johnson

The great Kwesi Johnson at his saddest. This forceful slice of narrative is part of the continuing evolvement from griot through the Last Poets to Mos Def.

Get Around to It by Arthur Russell

Quite strange but atmospheric. The late Arthur Russell was supplying all the background effects on his electric cello.

Sénégal Fast-Food by Amadou & Mariam

Let's dance. Saw this on Africa Channel or maybe Link last year and play it at least once a week. What time is it in Paradise indeed?

Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet: Tramp with Orchestra by Gavin Bryars; Hampton String Quartet, Michael Riesman and Orchestra

This will either drive you up the wall or you will produce some amazing drawings while listening to it. You could probably cook a fish to this as well.

OUR VERDICT by Observer muso Gareth Grundy

While largely reclusive since 2003's Reality, his listening habits are famously current – he was an early champion of the Arcade Fire, for example. And so it is here, Bowie clocking the prevailing trends for African sounds and the avant-garde disco of the obscure but cultish Arthur Russell. No one could have predicted the fascination with Chinese folk music, though. As for the influence of all this on a new album, don't hold your breath. Come on David, get a move on…

To hear David Bowie's selections in a Spotify playlist go to http://bit.ly/6oTqwp

Preston sport archive to be set up in popular exhibition centre that drew 250,000 visitors a year

It has been innovative, eclectic and that rare thing: a post-millennium project success story. But now the finishing touches are being put to the final ­popular culture show at Manchester's Urbis – for the centre is about to be booted out for football.

Redundancy notices have gone out to two-thirds of the staff at the Manchester exhibition centre and the outgoing chief executive, Vaughan Allen, says the ­process has been akin to grieving.

"The thing is we haven't failed," Allen said. "Commercially, our current year will probably be our best ever ­trading year. It's very hard to say to people you've been a great success but we're going to make you redundant, we hope there will be a job for you in 12 to 18 months' time."

Urbis, it was generally felt, had found its feet. With 250,000 visitors a year coming to see its ever-changing self-curated shows on subjects ranging from Manga to video games to urban gardening, it was a success story.

That was not always the case. Urbis (Latin for "of the city") was built in 2002 and is easily one of the most ­visually striking buildings in Manchester, ­resembling a glass ski slope with an indoor funicular.

The original idea was for Urbis to be a museum of the city but few really knew what that meant. It became, like so many post-millennium projects, something of a white elephant. Four years ago, with the arrival of Allen, a former style journalist, that changed. "We banned the word museum. The word museum does mean things in cabinets, and we didn't have any," Allen said.

The focus shifted towards representing popular culture in all its forms – fashion, music, television, gardening and so on – and having lots of ­changing shows that would be "zeitgeisty" and surprising. "We got to a point after a couple of years where we suddenly ­realised what we had created was a ­Sunday ­supplement," said Allen.

It seemed to be working: visitor numbers rose steadily and the place was popular with a young demographic group.

Then football came along. The National Museum of Football in Preston was in serious financial trouble and on the verge of closure. Its trustees approached Manchester city council, the main funders of Urbis, in the summer, and things moved quickly. After it's final exhibition, the building will close to reopen as the new football museum in the summer 2011.

Urbis was working, its reputation was growing, people said, but times were tough and, in terms of public spending, would get tougher. Wouldn't football, in the long run, be more bankable?

There were arguments. Ken Hudson, leader at Preston city council, said the football museum trustees had "given two fingers" to the people of Preston and Lancashire. Artists and people working in the creative industries in Manchester also complained, setting up Facebook campaigns against it. But the lure of football won.

It will not be a case of just transplanting the Preston exhibits to Manchester in the hope more people will be interested in seeing them; lessons must "be learned", drawing on the way Urbis ­handled popular culture, said Allen.

However, he is rueful. He hopes a property developer will consider a new version of Urbis elsewhere in the city. Or even in other places in the UK.

"The real victory would be, in two or three years, eight, 10, 12 galleries in Britain looking at popular culture … it is ludicrous that there are no other ­galleries really supporting or showing it," said Allen. "We shied away from ­taking an academic approach to a ­subject and we liked doing stuff that was still alive and still happening, and I think that's an attitude that will go over to football." The new football museum will certainly have enough subjects, Preston being home to both the Fifa and  FA collections.

Meanwhile, in the centre's main ­galleries, Urbis' head of creative programmes, Pollyanna Clayton-Stamm, is leading the mad rush to prepare the final show, a display on the "best of Urbis". Downstairs the hip-hop show continues, and upstairs a nostalgic look at ­Manchester TV is busy with people lounging on sofas watching Shameless, and Coronation Street.

Clayton-Stamm and her team will be working at the football museum. "I do have mixed feelings," she said. "But I am looking ­forward to it. There is a huge potential with football and we'll be bringing an Urbis take to it. We're going out on a high. Walking in to Urbis this morning and seeing all the galleries filled with exhibitions is an immense feeling, I'm so proud of what we have achieved."

In his notes for the final exhibition Allen refers to the best popular culture being "of the moment and short". He said: "You should always end with the public wanting more. The Jesus and Mary Chain got it right, they never played for more than 30 minutes."

• Andy Murray beats John Isner 7-6, 6-3, 6-2
• Fifth seed will play Rafael Nadal in last eight

Andy Murray's near-flawless progress in the Australian Open continued when he reduced the 6ft 9in American John Isner to a drained and dispirited wreck in straight sets to reach the quarter-finals in the best shape of all the remaining contenders. Murray will now play Rafael Nadal in the last eight after the Spaniard's win over Ivo Karlovic.

Nadal, who won in four sets, admitted afterwards that he expects a stern challenge to his title defence against the No5 seed.

"Being in the quarter-final is very good for me, it's given me a lot of confidence but I know I have got a really difficult match against Andy. I just wanted to enjoy it today," he said. "Andy is one of the most talented players on the tour. He can play aggressively, defensively."

Murray is the only favoured seed to have not dropped a set, and beat Isner in style, 7-6, 6-3, 7-2 in 131 minutes of superb tennis.

Murray's serve – curiously questioned by some earlier in the week – was in a perfect groove, tactically he put Isner through the wringer, he hit several absolutely exquisite winners – and made only eight unforced errors.

He could hardly have done more. They had never met before and Isner, at least, will not look forward to an early rematch.

"I think he's got the best serve in the game," Murray said. "I had my coach serving at me from the service line but, once you get out there, it's still so tricky. I think he was a little bit tired. He'd won the tournament in Auckland last week and he's in the doubles.

"It's been good. I've moved really well since the start of the tournament and I hit some great shots on the run today."

He certainly did.

This was a match made in tennis heaven, given the perfectly meshed and contrasting styles of the combatants. Isner charged in on stilt-like legs behind his booming serve, Murray, one of the best returners in the game, looked to pass or lob the American.

Isner, who went out in the first round here twice before, had promised he'd come to the net – and that is where he went so regularly that Murray had no trouble finding open space.

He got the better of their fascinating duel in the first set. Isner was break point down at 2-2 and aced his way out of trouble, but Murray already looked to have his measure tactically. Isner blew the only break point he had in the set, and Murray won the tie-break.

In the second set Murray broke a flagging Isner, who sought refuge in the shade time and again as he found lugging his 17st 7lb frame through the noon-day sun debilitating.

The third set was not exactly a stroll for Murray, but he won in a canter at the end as Isner, dispirited and doomed, could do nothing against some of Murray's quite extraordinary ground strokes. One that will live in the memory came when the Scot was forced wide and deep behind the baseline, jumped like a dog through a hoop and double-fisted a backhand to the American's weary feet, which is where the ball stayed. Remarkable. He finished the break with an equally shattering backhand down the line, that left Isner bewildered.

Murray has his eyes firmly on the prize now.

• Ferguson unhappy with Tevez's tackle on Wes Brown
• Accusation comes after Tevez's spat with Gary Neville

Sir Alex Ferguson believes Carlos Tevez, whose two goals won the first leg of the Carling Cup semi-final between Manchester City and Manchester United, should have been sent off during last Tuesday's heated encounter.

Tevez's contribution in front of goal won the match against his old club, but Ferguson insists the former United striker deserved a red card for what he felt was a reckless tackle on Wes Brown. The Argentinian caught Brown's thigh in a challenge the United manager suggested was worthy of dismissal.

"Tevez should have been sent off really," said Ferguson. "Have you seen the tackle? He went over the top of the ball. He didn't even get booked."

City lead the semi-final 2-1 with the return leg at Old Trafford on Wednesday night, when emotions are expected to be running high. Ferguson's accusation comes in the wake of a spat between his captain Gary Neville and Tevez.

After scoring his first goal, Tevez celebrated by making a "shut-it" gesture to Neville in retaliation to comments that Ferguson was right not to pay over the odds for a striker. Neville promptly responded with a gesture of his own, aiming a middle finger at the City forward, who later labelled the United right-back a "boot-licking moron".

In two decades the world wide web has become the most powerful information tool since Gutenberg's printing press, but also the most intrusive and threatening. Aleks Krotoski, presenter of a major new series on the history of the net, reports

On Thursday, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, gave a speech on internet freedom at a journalism museum in Washington, arguing that the architecture of the web must be free from censorship and manipulation. It is a position that stands in stark contrast with the approach of countries, including China, Egypt and Iran, that seek to curb access – and while there was a whiff of economic self-protectionism in Clinton's words, she opened up the floor to a global discussion about the potential revolutionary power of this invention.

Less than two decades after it came into being, the web is now a pawn in an international public policy debate that could create rifts between nations so deep that they lay the foundation for future wars.

For the past year, I have been working on Virtual Revolution, a four-part documentary series for BBC2, co-produced by the Open University. It aims to identify the true political, economic, social and psychological implications of this new technology. I spoke to an extraordinary cast of characters including the web pioneers, the e-entrepreneurs, and the sceptics who have seen it all before.

We identified the new power brokers in our society, whose non-traditional ascents through the web have challenged hundreds of years of hierarchy. We found the kids who took down the economic, communication and political pillars of an entire country with the press of a button. We looked at the tactics extremists use to radicalise new recruits, and compared them to the methods that have proved so successful in getting a generation that had been dismissed as dispassionate involved in politics.

We also looked at how the trails of information that we leave across the web are not only redefining privacy, but are creating feedback loops that may be narrowing our horizons, rather than opening our eyes to the new. And we discovered how the web is changing how we think and who we are.

I started the journey travelling through Ghana with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the unassuming Englishman who put the first website in history online on 6 August 1991. He was on a tour with the World Wide Web Foundation, carrying out field research to understand how the web was affecting rural communities who were only now getting connected. He was modest about his role in the development of this technology, making sure to name-check the others who were toying with the same ideas at the same time. His aim had not been to catalyse a worldwide revolution, but to create a framework that would connect lots of information that would not require one person to look after it. But his idealism and belief in the power of web has driven him to take the web to the world.

"Tim Berners-Lee created a new mode of human communication," Stephen Fry told me. "He created a new way of allowing communication to work in extraordinarily connected ways."

Fry, well-known for his enthusiasm for technology, reflected on what the web had meant to him when he discovered it in the early 1990s. "It seemed like a great new world," he enthused. "It seemed like a new democracy. It seemed like a new way of people coming together and spreading news, of educating, of giving yourself information and access to people and cultures and history. It seemed the most fantastic, radical and extraordinary development since Gutenberg produced his Bible."

His thoughts were echoed by Al Gore, the former US vice-president. "It represents the emergence of a new information ecosystem that will have a more profound impact on human civilisation than did the printing press," he said.

The web has brought about an enormous transformation in what information we have at our fingertips. It is extremely empowering: every­one has the freedom to participate in the library of knowledge collected online, by accessing it or creating it. Anyone who has historically held control over the distribution of information – governments, media, agents – is having to reposition in the face of this information tsunami.

"Individuals without great wealth or bases of power and the industrial world economy can exert influence on others who find their ideas resonating with them," Gore said. "It is inherently democratising and egalitarian and promotes a greater role for the rule of reason."

It is always dangerous, however, to be blinded by idealism. The web is undoubtedly a transformative technology on a par with the printing press, but it's difficult to believe that it will bring the end of inequality or will eradicate international conflict. In fact, some have learned to manipulate the web's power for their own ends.

When this sits well with our personal politics, we celebrate. A 25-year-old from San Francisco can create a piece of software that opens up a channel of communication on the violent streets of post-election Iran, giving protesters the ability to transmit what is happening to the rest of the world. Teenagers in London can organise mass protests on climate change, rallying people from around the country to march on a coal-fired power station in Nottinghamshire. But when the same techniques and tools are used to radicalise new recruits to fundamentalist causes, to attack a country's banks and newspapers, or to promote propaganda within authoritarian states, the web becomes something to condemn.

The debate becomes even more personal when you consider how our use of this overwhelmingly commercial space is transforming what privacy means in the 21st century. As we traipse across the web, our trails of personal information are captured and manipulated. We get services for free, but our actions are analysed to produce precisely targeted advertising that funds the companies behind the websites.

The greatest shock to most people is that we willingly create this commercial pact when we think we're alone. A Google search, for example, transcends the barrier between what we view as public and what we view as private. When we do a search on our computers at home, in the office or on the road, we have a misplaced sense we are transacting only with our machine. In fact, when we type a query in Google's search box, we are divulging our intentions to a technology located across the planet, with hundreds of potential eyeballs sifting through our search terms for the perfect advertising match. Yet we still treat it like an oracle, asking it deeply personal questions and looking for answers in its computer brain.

The surveillance implications for this are clear, but there are wider cultural implications when the money people behind the scenes get their rewards for feeding us exactly what we want. Amazon's recommendation engine, Last.fm's social music service, even news sites such as the Huffington Post, reduce the possibility for serendipity by serving up what they think we want, channelling us into a loop of confirmation. As author Douglas Rushkoff says: "The more like one of my kind of person I become, the less me I am, and the more I am a demographic type."

Socially, this is as potentially damaging as what the extremists peddle; we are coagulating into tight-knit groups who reinforce our own beliefs. It's a far cry from the global group hug that web proponents such as Fry or Gore had hoped it would be.

In addition, the web may be fundamentally changing how we think. There is evidence that there is a generational difference between how children and adults consume information online. A team of researchers led by Professor David Nicholas, of the independent research group Ciber, at University College London, has begun a series of experiments to test whether the architecture of the web put into place by Berners-Lee is transforming the connections in our brains. A lifetime of use seems to be having a cognitive effect.

Under-18s who have grown up with the web are better at multi-tasking. They also spend less time searching for information before deciding on what they view as the best answer to a question. Most intriguingly, the youngest users, born after 1993, "crowdsource" their knowledge: they look for the wisdom of their friends, networking what they know, rather than holding on to the information for themselves.

My PhD research looked at the social psychological implications of our interactions online. What I have come to conclude is that who we are on the web is simply a reflection of who we already are offline. We project hierarchical systems into the virtual world. We extend our interests and make them happen using the tools the web provides. We seek out things that make us feel good about ourselves. The web is a mirror, and we have to face it in confidence, warts and all.

Our relationship with the web is a synergy: as it matures, so will we. And as it draws us into its networks and its hyperlinks, we will shape them in our global image. It is the most revolutionary evolution that we as a planet have ever participated in. "The sorts of things which the internet brings by connecting people," Berners-Lee said to me while we were travelling to a community centre in Abiriw, outside Accra, "is openness and understanding of other people's ideas.

"On a good day," he added. "I hope we have a lot of good days."

Food standards agency rejects Improvac drug, fearing public outcry in wake of tainted pork scandal in Ireland

Meat from pigs that have been "chemically castrated" could soon be on sale in Britain, with no label to warn shoppers that it contains a controversial drug.

An injection to prevent puberty in male pigs was licensed for use in Britain and most of Europe last year, and has gone on sale to farmers who produce pork.

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer developed the drug, Improvac, to allow farmers to grow pigs bigger before slaughter but without them releasing the hormones that cause boar taint, a taste many consumers dislike. In much of Europe, young males are physically castrated, but in the UK the practice is rarely carried out.

Improvac has so far been rejected by the Assured Food Standards (AFS) agency, which licenses its Red Tractor symbol to 90% of British pig producers. But it could be used by the remaining farmers, and by overseas producers who account for one third of pork eaten in the UK. Pfizer said it was currently "being used by a small number of pig farmers in the UK". Meat produced using the drug does not have to be labelled as such.

Pfizer says the treatment was approved only after "rigorous" testing to ensure it could not affect consumers through the pig meat or the environment. The RSPCA said farmers in its Freedom Foods scheme could use Improvac from later this month if they convinced managers that it would help animal welfare, for example by reducing aggression between boars.

But the AFS, the country's biggest farm certification scheme, has rejected it, fearing a public backlash. David Clarke, AFS chief executive, said: "We're not saying we have concerns technically [but] we'd want more market intelligence before making a change."

Public sensitivity to chemical castration is likely to be high after the 2008 scandal in Ireland, when pork products were contaminated by PCBs – dangerous, man-made chemicals. Animal feed was blamed.

Tim Waygood, whose farm in ­Stevenage, Hertfordshire, advertises "high-welfare, ecological" food, said he objected to pigs being injected so their "balls shrivel up", and wanted more reassurance about safety for consumers and the wider environment.

Consumers should be better informed about such changes to their food, added Waygood. "[Farmers] are going to make an extra pound a pig because they are going to castrate their pigs chemically. It would be nice to compete against that when the consumers are informed."

There are also concerns about safety for farm workers who might accidentally inject themselves, and will have to handle bigger animals, said the British Veterinary Association.

Improvac, which has been used in Australia for a decade and is now approved in 53 countries, is marketed as a "vaccine… for the reduction of boar taint" and an alternative to physical castration of pigs. It works by injecting pigs twice with a synthetic product that causes the testes to shrink. The effect is said to be temporary, but the boars are slaughtered four to six weeks later, before it wears off.

Pfizer said it disagreed with the description "chemical castration", but critics argue that – as with use of the term for human sex offenders – the effect is the same. A spokesman said: "The European commission's licensing authorities, including a panel of international scientific experts, assessed Improvac's environmental safety, consumer safety and the product's safety and efficacy when used in pigs. The safety assessment of Improvac was every bit as rigorous as a human medicine assessment."

Barney Kay, general manager of the UK's National Pig Association, said the association wanted more research into consumer attitudes, but noted that farmers in a low-margin business could not afford to ignore the vaccine.

Peter Melchett, policy director of the Soil Association organic movement, said that its primary concern was the impact on the animals. "It's better than physical castration without anaesthetic, but it's still a gross interference with the animal's natural development," he said.

Uganda's oil production sharing agreements point towards a resource extraction programme designed for company profit, not country development, writes Taimour Lay

The Katine project is providing a compelling case study in the complexity of sustainable development. Genuine progress - when possible within the constraints of a liberal capitalist model - comes from solutions that are local, evidence-based and democratically accountable. There are few quick fixes and no magic wands.

But the exploration and imminent production of oil in western Uganda is being seen as just that - an easy answer to complex problems. Both government and the oil companies involved have been busy painting a roseate picture of bumper revenues and a country transformed. Forget the intricacies of agricultural reform, social ownership and political liberalisation; Uganda, we are told, will be turned into a middle-income country by $2bn a year in hard cash.

But the problems facing Uganda - and Katine - are almost certain to be exacerbated rather than solved by oil. Last month, the campaigning group PLATFORM published three of the production sharing agreements (PSAs) the government has spent years keeping a closely guarded secret. The deals point towards a resource extraction programme designed for profit, not development, and contain a series of provisions that undermine any hope of changing course.

Our analysis reveals that the international oil companies, including Tullow Oil, backed by a $1.4bn loan arranged by the Royal Bank of Scotland, and Heritage, run by former mercenary Tony Buckingham (which had been due to finalise a sale of their licences to Italian firm ENI for $1.6bn, although these may now be bought by Tullow), are set to reap huge sums at Lake Albert - as much as a 35% return on their capital investment. That's three times what's internationally recognised as a fair profit.

State risks

The oil contracts are structured so that price risk lies primarily with the state, while the private companies are virtually guaranteed a healthy return even if the market slumps. As the oil price rises, investors will make a higher and unlimited profit, taking close to one quarter of oil revenues, whether each barrel is fetching $70 or $200.

Even the Norwegian experts advising the government have expressed serious reservations: a review of Uganda's contracts commissioned by the Norwegian Agency for International Corporation (NORAD) in 2008 concluded that the profit-share model adopted "cannot be regarded as being in accordance with the interests of the host country".

The 20-year contracts, consistently weak or completely silent on human rights protection, also include a sweeping "stabilisation clause" - article 19 requires the Ugandan government to compensate the companies for any future change in the law that affects their profits - designed to militate against improvements in environmental standards.

Legal disputes between the two sides will not be resolved in Uganda, but in London: at the Energy Institute, whose president will pick the all-powerful arbitrator. For those in any doubt about the biases of the institution, it is currently headed by James Smith, chairman of Shell UK.

Still the leading player in Uganda, Tullow Oil had consistently claimed that its contracts with Kampala were "the best deals in the world" for the government.

Since our report was released, senior government figures have now accepted that the PSAs are flawed and need to be altered; but Ugandan civil society remains deeply concerned that the contracts allow no room for renegotiation.

The ingredients for the so-called "resource curse" are all in place: contract secrecy, government corruption, commercial disinformation campaigns, with environmental protections ignored, and a simmering border dispute with the Democratic Republic of the Congo frozen rather than resolved.

Moreover, British taxpayers find themselves unwittingly complicit in this unfolding disaster.

The World Development Movement, along with PLATFORM and People and Planet, will return to the courts this month to continue their challenge against the Treasury's decision to finance RBS, but ignore the government's own environmental and human rights criteria - contained in the Treasury's Green Book - when providing funds for investment projects around the world.

Our appeal for judicial review, filed on 9 December, argues that the Treasury, majority shareholder in RBS through UK Financial Investments (UKFI), has unlawfully failed to assess the environmental and human rights impact of RBS investments, including its role as Tullow Oil's lead backer in Uganda.

Rosa Curling, solicitor at Leigh Day & Co, says a successful appeal will give the government no option but to reconsider its position.

''Legal proceedings have already resulted in a significant victory. Having strenuously resisted the suggestion that the Treasury should even consider applying environmental and human rights standards to the way in which public money is used by banks such as RBS, it has now conceded that it does have to, and indeed has, undertaken an assessment on whether such standards should be imposed.

"However, the wholly inadequate assessment they carried out concluded that when it comes to considerations such as climate change and human rights it would be unlawful for the government to require RBS to go beyond what is narrowly in the 'commercial' interests of the company. Lawyers will argue that conclusion contravenes the duty of directors, under Section 172 of the Companies Act 2006, to take the impact of their business on the environment and the community into account.''

Urgent action

Given the companies involved and the Ugandan government's reluctance to change course, the urgency could not be greater. The UK is supporting oil exploitation while turning its back on the problems it will generate, refusing to use its role as financier to ensure a meaningful impact evaluation is carried out. Uganda stands on the brink of entering production with no Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) having yet been carried out. A coalition of NGOs in Kampala is now calling for a suspension of exploration drilling in protected areas of Murchison Park while the effects on wildlife remain so uncertain.

Lake Albert's oil is likely to prove yet another reason for the Kampala elite to ignore the struggling north and eastern regions of Uganda, including residents of Katine, as the nation's focus shifts west to the oil fields. The transition to a sustainable energy economy will be put back two decades or more, while political tension will only increase if the president, Yoweri Museveni, holds on to power beyond 2011 in anticipation of the new revenues.

For all the work of the country's 8,000 NGOs, the 30% budget support from donors and the rhetoric of international aid, it is these botched contracts and the financial interests of oil companies that will do most to define Uganda's future. While increased oil revenues give the impression of superficial growth, the sudden influx of cash distorts the economy and exchange rates, undermining alternative sectors, including agriculture and industry, that employ and feed far greater numbers.

Oil always promises growth, affordable energy and employment; from Nigeria to Angola, Sudan to Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, it has delivered only poverty and repression in Africa. Uganda will not be transformed into Norway, whatever Museveni may like to claim. The deals he has already signed for Lake Albert give little cause for optimism.

• Taimour Lay is a PLATFORM campaigner based in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Aradia Crockett, the Guardian's fashion stylist, guides you through the latest trends

Jamie-James Medina tracks down the last surviving greats of US music

Well-funded and influential lobby operation will argue that better regulation will be enough to solve problems

Banks are mobilising a smooth-running lobbying machine in Washington to ­battle Barack Obama's plans to limit the size and scope of Wall Street institutions, as financial services firms gear up to stop a shake-up that could slice away large chunks of their operations.

Their influence on Capitol Hill is broad – the top eight US banks spent $26m (£16m) on lobbying efforts last year, an increase of 6% on 2008 despite their financial woes, according to Congressional records. And in the first 10 months of 2009, the financial industry donated $78.2m to federal candidates and party committees – more than any other business sector – according to political research institute the Centre for Responsive Politics.

"The power of the financial services sector in this city has not dissipated at all … they've just done things in a quieter way," said Ethan Siegel, an analyst at financial consultancy The Washington Exchange, who monitors Congress for big investors. "They haven't pulled back on their lobbying just because they've become piñata [punchbags] in the press."

Wall Street lobbyists argue that scaling back the size of banks misdiagnoses the cause of the financial crisis, jeopardises jobs, damages America's competitiveness and could inhibit growth.

The Financial Services Forum, which represents 18 top banks including Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Citigroup, says the problem of institutions becoming "too big to fail" ought to be tackled through more effective supervision, and by creating an authority able to wind down failing firms, rather than by forcing them to shrink. Spokeswoman Erica Hurtt said: "This was not a trading crisis and these proposals miss the mark. They won't get to the causes of the crisis."

Banks' persuasiveness has already had significant impact on the Obama administration. Plans for the creation of a consumer financial protection agency are meeting staunch Senate opposition and may be watered down to get the 60-40 support needed to override objections.

One widely used strategy by the financial industry has been to deploy representatives of smaller high-street banks to make the case to lawmakers. Organisations such as the Independent Community Bankers of America tend to get a sympathetic hearing because they can point to members in towns and cities in almost every Congressional district, rather than purely in lower Manhattan.

Douglas Elliott, a non-partisan expert in financial services at the Brookings Institution, said JP Morgan and a few other firms were likely to be particularly alarmed at the prospect of a tightening of the existing cap preventing a bank from holding more than 10% of America's insured deposits: "They may already be over any limit under consideration. If they are, they'll probably be allowed to stay unchanged but it will mean they have to eschew acquisitions."

He added that banks will not succeed in defeating restrictions entirely: "Everybody hates banks now and my intuition is that bank lobbyists overplayed their hand last year. It would have been better for them to work out some compromises rather than trying to destroy reform bills entirely."

More major British names could follow Cadbury into overseas ownership as Britain's open markets and softening pound entice bidders

A raft of large UK companies could follow Cadbury onto the takeover block as overseas predators cash in on the weakness of the pound and the UK's liberal markets, analysts warn. While Barack Obama said last week that he was clamping down on the speculative activities of Wall Street banks, hedge funds face no such restrictions, and many are investing in potential UK takeover targets in the hope of making a killing.

According to research group Data Explorers, hedge funds have been rushing to cover their short positions at companies as diverse as Legal & General, J Sainsbury, PartyGaming (which said it had received a number of approaches), retailer DSG and oil exploration group Wellstream. Pension funds and insurers have raised their holdings in the same companies.

A prime driver of corporate action will be foreign groups eager to exploit the weakness of sterling to buy British competitors, illustrated by the planned takeover of Cadbury by Kraft Foods.

Graham Secker, head of UK equities at Morgan Stanley, says it is "entirely conceivable" that several major British companies could find themselves facing the prospect of a foreign takeover bid: "The UK is always open to business thanks to its liberal markets. And as banks become more willing to lend, foreign groups are bound to take advantage of sterling's weakness. In the last three years, the euro has appreciated in value against the British currency by 30%, and the dollar by 20%."

According to Secker, foreign-based ­multinationals will target UK firms that have strong positions overseas as mergers and acquisitions (M&A) continue to be driven by globalisation. Investment bankers say that UK companies under the spotlight include BG Group (energy), AstraZeneca (drugs), Compass (contract catering), Hammerson (property), ­Severn Trent (water) and Rexam (packaging).

Simon Perry, senior M&A partner at Ernst & Young, said: "Big companies can borrow money from banks for deals that make sound commercial and financial sense. Up until the third quarter of last year, that wouldn't have been possible.

"For now, the global economic situation has stabilised, so large corporations with strong balance sheets can think strategically. Buyers can be more certain about the stability of revenue streams they are about to acquire, while sellers know they can get a reasonable price."

David Lis, head of UK equities at Aviva Investors, says that while sterling's weakness will help to drive M&A, so too will subdued economic growth, which makes it difficult for companies to increase profits: "One solution is to acquire one of your rivals, so that instead of growing at 1% or 2% a year, you are able to move ahead by 8% or even 10%."

Richard Hunter at broker Hargreaves Lansdown says UK companies are cheaper than a year ago because of the continuing decline in the value of sterling on foreign exchange markets: "There are a lot of multinationals out there looking at British companies in sectors as diverse as mining, pharmaceuticals and energy. They have rarely looked cheaper.

"And don't forget the sovereign wealth funds from the Far and Middle East. They are awash with cash and could take strategic stakes in a number of industries in Britain, and elsewhere."

Analysts say the housebuilding sector is ripe for consolidation, with Bovis, Redrow and Bellway cited as possible targets. Building products company Sheffield Installation Group and builders' merchant Travis Perkins are both vulnerable, with French multinationals Lafarge and Saint-Gobain said to be monitoring developments.

Elsewhere, GDF Suez of France and International Power have abandoned talks over a partnership that would have created a world-leading electricity group after weeks of rumours fuelled a sharp rise in the British company's shares.

Observers are convinced talks could resume, but that any deal might come at a higher price. The companies had been in talks for several months about injecting GDF Suez's electricity production assets outside Europe into International Power. Analysts, who had hoped for a full takeover offer for International Power, said there was a great deal of industrial logic to putting the companies' assets together, with little international ­overlap.

Another bid candidate is J Sainsbury, whose shares surged in October amid speculation that Qatar could bid again for the supermarket chain after it raised £600m by selling shares in Barclays.

The Qataris, who have refused to comment on their interest in J Sainsbury, run by Justin King, tore up a proposed 600p-a-share £10.2bn bid in November 2007 as a result of the financial crisis. But rumours suggest they may be prepared to come back with an offer of about 420p a share. The Qatar Investment Authority currently owns 26% of the grocer.

Takeovers offer quick profits as the acquiring company can cut costs and boost revenue in the short term, but there is evidence that many deals are not in the long-term interest of shareholders. A study by consultants McKinsey of 100 mergers in Britain and the US in the 1990s found that only a quarter recovered the cost of the deal or achieved efficiencies promised by management.

"Scale brings its own challenges," says one management consultant. "Mergers are risky propositions and buyers must tread carefully if they are to avoid alienating the workforce and losing top talent."

A home workers' collective in Delhi is sparking a revolution in the rag trade. Supermodel and Traid spokesperson Erin O'Connor reveals how it is giving thousands of skilled women the chance of a better life

I have by no means met an exhaustive list of top models, but enough of them to be slightly on edge as I trudge through the horizontal sleet on my way to meet Erin O'Connor. In the event, any fear is needless because she really is different. She is warm, funny and at no point stares at me as if she can't believe someone with hat-hair has the audacity to make eye contact. She is also pleasingly self-assured, so I'm surprised when she admits she was "full of nerves and trepidation" when she turned up in East Delhi to meet women working in the garment trade who are part of an innovative and revolutionary ethical fashion experiment.

The women who now flock to the Rajiv Nagar Embroidery Centres are home workers, beading and embellishing thousands of garments each month, the clothes that become everyday stock in our high-street shops. Although highly skilled, they are on the bottom rung of the global, fast-fashion industry. They live hand to mouth, presided over by middlemen – the tyrannical go-betweens who hand out some of the lowest wages in the garment industry (and that really is saying something). They're proof that gross exploitation doesn't just exist in factory sweatshops.

The embroidery centres are part of a grand plan by SEWA, aka the All India Federation of Self-Employed Women's Associations, to change all this. "The wages paid to home workers are nowhere near even close to the minimum wage," explains Sanjay Kumar, one of the few male faces at SEWA, "and that is a direct result of layers of middlemen. So we wondered what would happen if we organised home workers and eliminated the middlemen from the equation. We began dealing with suppliers directly, trying to mobilise US- and UK-based retailers to support us." And did it work? "Well," he says, "we have increased our home workers' wages by nearly 100 per cent and enabled a lot of Muslim women to come out of their homes to a SEWA centre to collect their work and meet. Then they engage with other ideas, like microfinance or education for their children. This business model doesn't just increase their income but their mobility." Currently, SEWA has contracts for the home workers with Monsoon, Next, H&M and Gap, but Kumar says they have also had visitors from New Look and Arcadia Group (owners of Topshop), who all seemed to like what they saw but are yet to place any orders. "Overall, the percentage of work these brands are giving to SEWA is minimal, despite our requests to senior management of brands and their suppliers," he says. "We need more, and Erin helps us to publicise to retailers and consumers."

"It is a humbling moment when you go into a modest work environment like that," says Erin. "I sat down on the floor with all eyes on me, feeling quite uncomfortable." But you must be used to having all eyes on you, I suggest – one catwalk, I seem to remember, involved her walking out in front of the international fashion press with a large grey bird sculpture on her head. "Yes," she says, "but to be heard is a whole different ball game."

Erin O'Connor is increasingly being heard as the voice of reason in the fashion industry. She is vice chair of the British Fashion Council, and set up the Model Sanctuary, which offers respite and a full-time nutritionist (crucially, since the size-zero storm) to her very young colleagues, where she "plays mother hen". "These are really young people," she says with feeling. "They don't always realise that they need to set their own boundaries."

She is so lacking in celebrity hubris that it is easy to forget that she has been stratospherically successful in her chosen career (although as she was propelled from Walsall to i-D magazine after being spotted at the Clothes Show in 1995, perhaps it's more accurate to say that fashion chose her). Worth £12m according to the Sunday Times Rich List, she has made her name at opposite ends of the fashion spectrum: couture loves her height, strong features and ability to inhabit a character, but in 2006 she also became the M&S poster girl and thus the darling of the high street.

"I suppose I've had one version of the fashion industry and now I'm going out and having a tweak here and there," she says now. An ideal ambassador for ethical fashion, she explains: "I'm interested in looking for solutions because it's become the case that in fashion you're either a villain or a victim. Look at the industry's very limited remit in terms of body size, for example. I always felt there had to be a reasonable banter to start going backwards and forth. That's how you make positive change."

On the trail of positive change in India she soon felt at ease hanging out with the home workers, as the conversation turned to normal stuff – why she has short hair ("because it makes me feel more feminine") and if she was going to get married ("I bloody hope so. One day"). She went to their houses, saw where and how they worked and had a go at making some products herself. Admittedly the latter is a standard NGO trip photo op (I remember pictures of Chris Martin pulling a plough in Mexico), but it did give her huge respect for their skills.

"I have previously been a very enthusiastic consumer and I didn't think about the origins of garments enough," she says."The thing is, when you see an article – whether it be a bejewelled pen from Monsoon or a top in Gap that requires embroidery – you almost don't believe that it is made with a pair of very determined hands, and that it is time consuming, and that each garment, in a sense, is bespoke because of the way in which they do it – the chalk is their guideline, like a tailor. There's not much to make us aware of women using their hands and their heritage, is there?"

This lack of understanding is one of the reasons we have become so detached as consumers that we're happy to wear a piece a handful of times before chucking it out. It is no coincidence that the SEWA project is partly funded by a grant from Traid, the UK Textile Recycling for Aid and International Development, which deals with the other end of the fast-fashion chain – the waste. According to Defra, the clothing and textiles sector in the UK results in 1.5m tonnes of textiles going straight to landfill. Traid, which turns 10 years old this month, intervenes through its 600 bright-green clothing bins across the UK. Not only does the charity divert textile waste, but its unique sorting system involves designers picking out promising garments and fabrics and producing a whole collection of upcycled clothes that it sells through 11 quirky stores, and online.

It's an aesthetic that was made for Erin O'Connor. "We do have a bit of a love affair, Traid and I. It goes back to being 15 and the excitement of looking for that total one-off piece, a second-hand garment with a narrative that nobody else would have. Then wearing it with stripy tights, DMs and a fringe dyed pink with food colouring. You know, that really subtle look!" And her laugh turns to a guffaw when I ask her if she's ever been seduced by a more homogenised look. "It's a kind of running joke that I don't do trends terribly well. In fact, I should never have been allowed to get away with it."

Has the trip to Delhi had any influence on her wardrobe? "It would be just plain rude really to go back to my old habits, wouldn't it?" she says. "I do like shopping high street, but I do consider the long-term value of a specific piece and, also, one day giving it up for somebody else to love and enjoy. And I am aware of the brands that SEWA uses, and I want to support them." At the moment, this is easier said than done, because the products made ethically by SEWA aren't labelled in the participating high-street stores.

"I think there is some resistance when people talk about ethical fashion, and a tendency to panic that if you're bringing a moral agenda and highlighting the origins of the garments you can't incorporate style. But there's no reason why style and conscience can't co-exist. Those women know they are doing a very good job and SEWA's found a production model that is working. This should get bigger and bigger." It appears that ethical fashion is also in a pair of very determined hands.★

The textile charity Traid celebrates its 10th birthday with an exhibition of photographs from Erin's trip at the Richard Young Gallery, London W8, from 1-10 February. For more information, go to www.traid.org.uk. For information regarding SEWA, go to www.sewabharat.org"

Cinnamon sticks, cloves, three types of cardamom… The winter weather and a kitchen clear-out inspire Nigel to reach for the spices

There's a jar of whole cloves, whose scent reminds me of garden pinks; a thick glass pot of bone-dry cumin seed and another of whole coriander. There are cinnamon quills and vanilla beans as black as your hat, calico bags of peppercorns from Wynyard; there's pink salt from the Himalayas and coconut sugar from Bali. At the back, there are slim packs of Japanese noodles, sticky tins of black treacle and a bottle of is-it-sharp-or-is-it-sweet pomegranate syrup. There are old friends such as the collection of rosewaters from the Lebanon that never seem to get any fewer, and new arrivals, too, such as the Henderson's Relish – the vegetarian's answer to Lea & Perrins that the kind people of Sheffield proudly told me about.

It has been a year since I first decided to move the kitchen downstairs, and we are still at the planning stage. And though the builders are not due to start for several weeks, the dawn of a new decade and my sense that upheaval is more often a good thing than a bad one has found me emptying out the pantry and moving its contents to a temporary location. Absurdly, it is now closer to where I cook than ever before, squashed into a space barely the size of a gym locker.

It's the quantity of spices that has floored me. Actually, it's the sheer number of different ones that has shaken me. You see, I am not a hoarder. I loathe clutter. More truthfully, I suspect, I am scared of it, finding it affronts my need for order and calm. (Why do I hate going to the post office so much? Is it the long queues or the time everyone takes at the counter? No, it's the insane mess of stickers and notices over every available inch of space that so drives me to distraction.)

I have just moved three different sorts of cardamoms (black, green and the one for fish); two different colours of cumin seeds; vanilla pods from four different countries, plus one tied in the shape of a flower, not to mention more nuts than you could shake a pair of crackers at. I love them all. Each pot, jar or packet takes you away on an exotic breeze. Each cap unscrewed, every jar sniffed is a story all of its own. All welcome visitors, but nowhere for them to sleep.

There are too many and I really must get out the red pencil. Do I need quite so many oils? Couldn't I live without three colours and sizes of raisins (the black ones, almost navy really, were a gorgeous addition to a red cabbage salad last week; the golden ones a juicy inclusion to a tray of flapjack). And don't get me started on the coconut (milk, light milk, cream and a wonderful sugar scented with it)? Only desiccated never crosses my path (and that is only since someone told me it reminded them of toenail clippings).

In all, a great scented treasure chest of ingredients badly in need of somewhere to play. A curry seemed like a good enough place to start; at least it might make a hole in my spice mountain, and a cake, too, to use up a few of those endless packets and jars of dried goods. Well, it's a start.

MILDLY SPICED CHICKEN CURRY

Cut the chicken into eight or get a mixture of thighs and breast. Serves 4.

a large chicken jointed into 8 pieces
a little groundnut or vegetable oil
2 medium to large onions
½ a cinnamon stick
2 cloves
500g tomato passata
1 level tbsp garamasala
4 tbsp yogurt
a handful of chopped coriander leaves

For the spice paste:
8 green cardamom pods
8 black peppercorns
4 cloves garlic
a small lump of ginger
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground chilli
2 tbsp vegetable or groundnut oil

Season the chicken pieces. Warm a thin layer of oil – just a couple of tablespoons – in a casserole over a moderate heat. Add the chicken and let it colour appetisingly on all sides. Lift out and set aside.

Peel and roughly chop the onions, and add them to the casserole with a little oil. Then add the cinnamon and cloves. Cook over a low to moderate heat for about 15 minutes until the onions are soft, sweet and fragrant.

Meanwhile, make the spice paste. Crack the cardamoms and remove their seeds, then put them into a blender or food processor with the peppercorns, peeled garlic, ginger (peeled and roughly chopped), cumin, coriander and ground chilli. Pour in a couple of tablespoons of oil and blitz to a stiffish paste.

Add the spice paste to the onions. Moveit continually round the pan with a wooden spoon for a couple of minutes, allowing it to sizzle, but not darken. Add the passata and mix well. Add salt and black pepper, and then return the chicken to the pan. Bring the sauce to the boil, then immediately turn down to a gentle simmer, cover with a lid and leave to cook for 35-40 minutes until the chicken is tender. Towards the end of cooking, stir in the garamasala. Add a little water if the sauce is getting too thick.

Remove from the heat, stir in the yogurt and the roughly chopped coriander, and serve with steamed rice.

FIG AND WALNUT CAKE

A big family cake made in much the same way as carrot cake. Serves 8 (at least).

250g soft dried figs
100g shelled walnuts
3 eggs
65g golden caster sugar
65g light muscovado sugar
200ml groundnut oil
250g flour
a gently heaped tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
a pinch ground nutmeg
100ml yogurt
vanilla – a couple of drops

For the icing:
350g cream cheese
50g softened butter
vanilla – a couple of drops
250g icing sugar

Set the oven at 180C/gas mark 4. Line the base of two 20cm cake tins with lightly buttered or oiled baking parchment. Roughly chop the figs and walnuts. The nuts should be chopped slightly finer than the fruit.

Mix the eggs, sugars and oil using an electric mixer, and beat till pale and fluffy. Sift the flour with the baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and a pinch of salt. Add the yogurt to the cake mixture, alternating with the flour and spices. Stir in the vanilla, the figs and the walnuts.

Divide the mixture between the two lined baking tins and bake for 40-45 minutes, covering with foil for the last 10 minutes if the top is getting a little dark. Remove from the oven, leave to settle for a few minutes then run a palette knife around the edges and carefully turn on to a cooling rack. Remove the paper from each cake.

Make the icing. Beat the cream cheese, butter and vanilla till smooth, then beat in the icing sugar. Spread a layer on the base of one of the cakes, place the other cake on top, then move to a cake stand or plate.

Spread the remaining butter cream over the top and sides of the cake.★

nigel.slater@observer.co.uk

Next weekend is the perfect time to whisk your loved one away on an enchanting break for two. Nothing booked? Fear not: from cute cottages to luxury hotels, here are 20 hideaways that are still available on Valentine's Day

SEX AND THE CITY

Snowflakes blowing across the Charles Bridge, music recitals in candelit churches, underground bars, firelit restaurants serving huge plates of comfort food and fine red wines... How could your lover fail to be won over? Forget worries about rampaging stag parties – Prague has withstood far worse in its 1,000-year history, and its charms remain undiminished. Sip cocktails among the beautiful people at Tretters (V Kolkovne 3), or plunder the impressive wine cellar at Monarch (Na Perstyne 15), before dinner at Nostress (Dusni 10), an elegant fusion restaurant.

• A three-night break at the four-star Charles Hotel costs from £349pp, including flights from Gatwick, through Cities Direct (01242 536900; citiesdirect.co.uk)

2. DUBROVNIK

Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor used to escape to this beautiful Croatian city for a bit of holiday loving, and it still has the right atmosphere for a glamorous romantic break. The centre of the compact walled town is full of gorgeous boutiques and unusual jewellery stores (in case gifts are in order), pretty cafes with flower-filled gardens (should the Mediterranean sun make an appearance) and tiny bars with plenty of private nooks and crannies.

• Hidden Croatia (0844 477 9999; hiddencroatia.com) has three nights at the five-star Hotel Excelsior and Spa from £355pp, including flights and transfers

3. ISTANBUL

Exotic, frenetic and and utterly unique, Istanbul is European Capital of Culture in 2010 (en.istanbul21010.org), meaning that as well as the beautiful mosques and chaotic bazaars, there's a whole range of new exhibitions, shows and galleries to explore. The city can be hectic, so to slow things down and keep a romantic feel, stay on Heybeliada, one of the Princes' Islands that lie just a short ferry ride from the centre of the city. There is no traffic on the island so the best way to explore the stunning Byzantine monasteries and Greek Orthodox churches is by bike or horse-drawn carriage. Stay at the Karamanyan, a mansion converted into four stylish apartments.

• A four-night break at the Karamanyan costs from £140pp, booked through Istanbul Islands (020 7436 8009; istanbulislands.com). Easyjet (easyjet.com) flies from Luton and Gatwick to Istanbul

4. MARRAKECH

There is something hugely romantic about disappearing through an unmarked door in the medina into a coolly elegant hotel or ornately tiled cafe. Many of the riads in Marrakech have roof terraces where you can laze together, glass of wine in hand, watching the sun set over the rooftops, while the hustle and bustle carries on in the streets below. Stay at the elegant Riad Kniza. The owner, Mohammed Bouskri, has 50 years of guiding experience, and hundreds of tales to tell.

• A four-night break at the Riad Kniza costs from £589pp, including flights from Gatwick, transfers and one dinner, through Prestige Holidays (01425 480400; prestigeholidays.co.uk)

5. VIENNA

Coffee, cake, coffee, more cake – there are plenty of opportunities to spend time gazing into each other's eyes in Vienna's elegant coffee houses. Going for a February weekend means you'll have a good chance of snow, but that will just add to the romance. If you're a couple who thrive on intellectual discussion, drop into Café Central (Herrengasse 14), preferred hangout of Lenin and Trotsky in their pre-revolution days, or for more basic stimulation try a hot Buchtel (jam-filled bun) at Café Hawelka (Dorotheergasse 6).

• Ebookers (ebookers.com) has a three-night break at the five-star Vienna Hilton from £318pp, including breakfast and flights from Heathrow

INDULGENT ESCAPES

One of the best things about Valentine's Day is that it's a good excuse for a glass or three and a slap-up supper after a parsimonious January. The Shropshire town of Ludlow is a great place for foodies – though getting a table at Mr Underhill's, last week named best restaurant in Britain by the Harden's restaurant guide, might be tricky. Instead, you could follow the sausage trail to the six butchers in town (perfect for a Valentine morning's fry-up), pick up some yummy cheeses at the Little Big Cheese Shop, and stop for pastries at De Grey's coffee shop. .

• Dinham Hall (01584 876464; dinhamhall.co.uk) has a two-night break, dinner, B&B from £350 for two, or double rooms from £140 per night, B&B

7. BRUGES

Medieval Bruges must be one of the most romantic and beautiful cities in Europe, just made for slow strolls with a lover along canals and cobbled streets, and with dozens of lovely warm restaurants for a few hours of Belgian beer-fuelled heart-to-hearts. You can't visit Bruges without having a plate of moules marinière, follow it up with handmade chocolates and sipping a cup of hot chocolate at De Proeverie (Katelijnestraat 6) and trying one (or several) of the many beers at 't Brugs Beertje (Kemelstraat 5).

• A two-night break, including rail travel from St Pancras and B&B accommodation at the four-star Hotel Aragon, costs from £258pp through Inntravel (01653 617000; inntravel.co.uk)

8. TURIN

Italians love their food, and if you're after a foodie break on a budget, Turin – the country's capital of the aperitivo – is the ultimate treat. Starting at about 6pm, the grand old cafes and bars in the central grid of streets lay on sumptuous buffets to accompany early-evening drinks... and best of all, they're free (just don't tell your date that). Make sure you try the famous grissini (breadsticks). Mingle with the locals at Caffè Roberto at Via Po 5 and Caffè San Carlo on Piazza San Carlo, then, if you're still peckish, head for dinner at one of the city's elegant world restaurants, serving Piedmonte's specialities, such as porcini mushrooms and (when in season) white truffles.

• L'Orso Poeta (00 39 011 5178996; orsopoeta-bed-and-breakfast.it) has doubles from €110, including breakfast. Fly from Stansted with Ryanair (ryanair.com)

9. SAN SEBASTIáN

With more Michelin stars per capita than any other city, San Sebastián on the north coast of Spain is a mecca for foodies, and can be lovely at this time of year, with few tourists and mild weather. Work up an appetite with a walk along the palm-studded Playa de la Concha or through the old town, before feasting on pintxos – Basque tapas – in Bar Txepetxa (C/Pescadería 5), known for award-winning anchovies, or Bar Bergara (C/Artetze Jeneralaren Kalea 8), where the pintxos are like mini works of art. Or push the boat out at Zuberoa (00 34 943 491 228; zuberoa.com), a two-Michelin-starred restaurant in a 14th-century farmhouse in nearby Iturriotz.

• The boutique Astoria7 (00 34 943 445 000; astoria7hotel.com) has doubles from €115 a night, including breakfast. Easyjet flies from Stansted to Bilbao

10. THE ISLE OF WIGHT

The Isle of Wight a gourmet destination? Well yes, actually. Away from the family-filled summer months, the island is blissfully peaceful, with plenty of just-long-enough-to-justify-a-pig-out walking routes, interrupted with unspoilt beaches and excellent gastropubs. Try the New Inn at Shalfleet (01983 531314; thenew-inn.co.uk) or the Red Lion at Freshwater (01983 754925). If you feel like a splurge, book the Valentine's package at the Hambrough hotel in Ventnor in the south of the island, with a six-course dinner in the hotel's Michelin-starred restaurant on the Saturday, including langoustines, champagne and canapés, plus a bottle of champers in the room and, yes, more bubbles at breakfast. It costs £230pp, including ferry crossings from Portsmouth to Fishbourne or Lymington to Yarmouth.

• Book on 0871 376 0013; wightlink.co.uk or thehambrough.com

GLORIOUS ISOLATION

If there's one thing that takes the romance out of a stay in rural Tuscany, it's falling over other holidaying Brits. Head to the hills in February, however, and you may have this beautiful countryside all to yourself. Stay at Il Ruscello, a beautifully restored watermill for two people, with terracotta floors, beamed ceilings, exposed stone and French doors opening out onto a terrace. The picturesque village of Comano is close by and the surrounding area of Lunigiana is famous for its castles and the ancient Roman town of Luni.

• A three-night break at Il Ruscello costs £325 through Holiday Lettings (holidaylettings.co.uk/22359). The nearest airport is Pisa, served by Easyjet (easyjet.com) from Gatwick, Luton and Bristol

12. DORSET

As peaceful retreats for two go, The Orchard, set deep in rural Dorset near Sturminster Newton, ticks all the boxes. Pull back the curtains of this one-bedroom, weatherboarded cottage and you have endless views of open fields and the orchard from which the property takes its name. Don your walking boots for a ramble, visit the nearby towns of Bath, Shaftesbury or Salisbury, and then wrap up warm for a meal on the decked terrace.

• Three- to six-night breaks covering the Valentine's Day weekend start from £216 per couple, through Classic Cottages (01326 555555; classic.co.uk)

13. AUSTRIA

British snow is all very well, but it doesn't hold a candle to the gleaming white mountains of the Tyrol. For an unforgettable Valentine's break, curl up in your own igloo in the Alpeniglu village above the resort of Kitzbühel. Couples ride up the mountain on the Hochbrixen gondola and can then take a torchlit stroll through the forest and have a candlelit supper in the igloo dining room before snuggling up in super-cosy sleeping bags on an ice bed for two swathed in fur. Eat breakfast while watching the sun rise over the empty pistes – then ski down before the crowds arrive.

• A night costs €210pp, including dinner, breakfast, torchlit walk and drinks. Book on 00 49 711 3416 9090; alpeniglu.com. Easyjet (easyjet.com) flies from Gatwick, Liverpool and Bristol to Innsbruck

14. YORKSHIRE

On a crisp winter's day the North York Moors are spectacular. Near Osmotherly on the edge of the national park is Mount Grace Priory, a 14th-century monastery. Nestling against the walls of the original manor house is a stunning place to stay: the single-story Prior's Lodge. Residents have the grounds to themselves before the priory opens to the public at 10am each day. The cottage is ideally placed for romantic walks across the moors and along the Cleveland Way long-distance footpath.

• A three-night stay at Prior's Cottage costs £395 through English Heritage (0870 333 1187; english-heritage.org.uk/holidaycottage)

15. PEMBROKESHIRE

Perched on the edge of Martletwy village and surrounded by rolling fields on three sides, the two-bedroom Tin Bungalow is perfect for an away-from-it-all weekend. When you're not curled up in the glass sun room lapping up those views, take a walk to the Daugleddau Estuary or to Cresselly Arms at Cresswell Quay, an old fashioned country pub serving real ale, both just two miles away. There's even a shed for storing bikes.

• Three nights costs from £214 through Under The Thatch (01239 851 410; underthethatch.co.uk)

COASTAL RETREATS

Britain's beaches are often at their best beneath sharp, blue winter skies – and the long stretch of sand at Southwold is particularly lovely when there's barely anyone else to share it with. The area is surrounded by creeks, marshes and reed beds where you can have fun bird-watching or fishing for crabs before enjoying a warming pint by the fire in the Lord Nelson.

• Oak Beam Cottage is a short drive from Southwold in the pretty village of Eye; a two-night break costs £250 through CV Travel (020 7401 1086; cvtravel.co.uk)

17. ILE DE RE

The pretty clapboard houses and cobbled streets of the Ile de Ré – a small island linked to the French city of La Rochelle by road bridge – are idyllic at any time of the year, with long sandy beaches and pine forests to explore on foot or by bike. The island is also home to the fabulous Hôtel de Toiras, a classically French hotel situated at the entrance to the port of Saint Martin de Ré, the atmospheric and historic island capital.

• A one-night package at the hotel, including champagne, flowers, dinner and breakfast, costs from €300 per couple (00 33 5 46 35 40 32; hotel-de-toiras.com)

18. DORSET

Famous as a location in the book and 1967 film of Far From the Madding Crowd, the graceful, almost circular, sweep of beach at Lulworth Cove is one of the most stunning in the UK. On a wintry February weekend it's barely recognisable from its summer incarnation as tourist honeypot, and it's possible to do the spectacular walk over the cliffs to the Durdle Door without seeing another person. The Manor House Tack Room is a beautifully converted cottage in the nearby village of Winfrith Newburgh; its luxurious double bedroom has oak beams and a vaulted ceiling. The Weld Arms in East Lulworth a couple of miles away serves great suppers.

• A three-night break at the Tack Room is £153 with Dorset Coastal Cottages (0800 980 4070; dorsetcoastalcottages.com)

19. LIGURIA

If you really like to make a big thing of Valentine's Day, there's only one place to head for – the small town of Camogli on Italy's Ligurian coast. In the run-up to the big day, the town celebrates its own festival of love: local residents submit love poems to the municipal authority, which chooses 20 to display as posters along the Camogli waterfront. There's also an annual art competition to find the official image of the "Lovers in Camogli" festival – with all the paintings shown in an exhibition.

• I Tre Merli is a charming boutique hotel with two-night packages, including breakfast, access to the spa and a discount at a nearby restaurant, for €260pp. Book on albergohotelcamogli.it/en. Ryanair (ryanair.com) flies from Stansted to Genoa

20. GRAN CANARIA

If wrapping up warm for wintry romance isn't your thing, escape for a week in the Canary islands, where winter temperatures are usually around 20C. Gran Canaria, with its rolling sand dunes and lush palm plantations, has a stark beauty and, perhaps more importantly, a smattering of slick spa hotels. The five-star Palm Beach is located in a romantic 1,000-year-old palm garden close to the dunes at Maspalomas, and has a spectacular spa specialising in thalassotherapy treatments.

• A five-night break at the Palm Beach costs £875pp half-board, including flights from Gatwick through Sovereign (0871 200 6677; sovereign.com)

An ancient trail linking Asturias and León provides a door to some of the most spectacular, least-known scenery in Europe

After 20 years of living and travelling in Spain, I like to think I have a handle on the country and its people. Every so often, however, they can still spring a surprise.

Like when Guillermo Mañana, a 70-year-old scholar, first told me about the 56km Camín Real de la Mesa. The Camín Real, said Guillermo, was an ancient trail through the mountains of northern Spain, winding spectacularly among some of the grandest yet loneliest and least-known scenery in Europe. I had never heard of it, but if I was up for it, he said, he'd show me the secrets of this magical route.

That was in May 2009. I had just met Guillermo through a friend in Oviedo, capital of the region of Asturias, where together we walked the awe-inspiring gorge of the river Cares in the Picos de Europa mountains. Since he retired from his profession as an anaesthetist, he has devoted his time and energy to his overriding passion: the mountain landscapes of his Asturian homeland.

I was already familiar with his marvellous books, a series of lavish tomes documenting these landscapes in extraordinary detail. Now, he told me, he was preparing what would perhaps be his greatest work, a definitive study of the Camín Real de la Mesa.

For centuries the Camín was one of the few points of contact between the provinces of León and Asturias. It is essentially Roman in construction, but the route has been used for trade for 5,000 years, traversing a mountain range with peaks of 2,000m, reaching into some of Spain's most wildly beautiful and otherwise inaccessible landscapes.

While livestock and gold mining were flourishing industries, the way held a strategic importance. But with the rise of modern roads it fell into disuse, and now it is barely known except by a few local farmers and a handful of keen walkers who are happy to stay off the beaten track.

I was gripped by Guillermo's vision of this long and winding road, its historical importance and its near-obliteration at the hands of modern life. So we arranged a two-day trek on the section of the way that is accessible only to walkers, leaving out the northerly part which has been covered with asphalt, its beauty spoilt.

Our route would take us from Torrestio, at the northern edge of the province of León, to the village of Dolia in the county of Belmonte, Asturias – a distance of some 30km. At both ends of the route there would be simple places to stay, but the Camín passes through no other villages, so the plan was to take food and a sleeping bag. In summer you can sleep under the stars or take a tent but, since it was autumn, we would bed down in one of the thatched shepherds' huts, called teitos.

The night before our departure, my guide sent me a text: "Weather terrible. Cold front. Thick sleeping bag. Waterproof clothing." I felt a shiver of dread.

We met up on Sunday night in the mountain town of San Emiliano, on the León side of the Cordillera Cantábrica, and dined on fried eggs and chorizo in the Hostal de Montaña, a simple mountain hostel. Before dawn next day we drove to the hamlet of Torrestio, under a dark sky as cold and clear as spring water. At 7am there was a blanket of mist over the valley, but it was the right sort of mist, said Guillermo, the sort that would burn off quickly, leaving bright skies.

We set off in the half-dark, heading up the Valle de las Partidas: the Valley of Departures. Up ahead, the first rays of sun were beautifying the squat grey peak of El Muñón.

At the top of the valley was a fence marking the border between the two regions, Castilla y León and Asturias. A concrete pillar gave the height above sea level: 1782m. To the north lay a wide stretch of pasture between mountains: the Mesa, or tableland, from which the Camín takes its name. Brown cows with wide horns stood and stared as we passed, and the quiet was blurred only by waterfalls and cowbells.

Further down the Mesa lay a scattering of stone huts, some round and low, others square, roofed with tiles or thatch. These hamlets, called brañas, are the only human settlements in these mountains. Until 10 years ago 12 or 15 families might have spent the summer up there with the cows, subsisting on rye bread and onions, potatoes and lentils. It was a life of simplicity, hardship and closeness to nature, and has now almost entirely vanished.

We stopped beside a waterfall for lunch – Asturian cheese, Serrano ham, black chocolate, and bread with olive oil. We drank fresh spring water, but also supped from a leather skin filled with Valdepeñas wine.

A shepherd came by looking for a lost foal. A pair of binoculars hung around his neck, and by his side was a dog as big as a small pony. He'd been looking for the horse all yesterday, peering up the mountain through the rain and mist. But he feared the worst: last spring four or five of his horses had been taken by wolves. Not everyone is happy that, after many years in decline, the local wolf population is on the increase, and his dog wore a chain-mail collar bristling with metal spikes to protect him.

As we walked Guillermo pointed out curious historical, natural or architectural sights along the way, ranging from a wide meadow called Xuego La Bola – where the shepherds came to play bowls – to a long trench that had been an eighth-century defensive wall during the reign of Alfonso ll, part of Catholic Spain's protection against the Muslim hordes who had already claimed most of the peninsula.

The Camín Real is little documented except by a handful of adepts including Guillermo, who has spent years mapping it and searching for its history in the great archives of Spain. Bronze-age burial mounds can be seen along the route, but it was the Romans, or rather, their slaves, who built a proper four-metre-wide path.

By the third century AD it was the main access route between León and Asturias, used primarily by Roman civil servants and gold dealers heading south from the mines of Belmonte. It remained an important commercial corridor, with all sorts of goods – wool and cloth, wheat and wine, sheep and salt fish – travelling back and forth. Impromptu toll stations were set up, levying a tax on "brides and corpses".

Then in the early 19th century, a trunk road was built linking León and Oviedo via the Pajares pass, and the Camín fell into disuse. Parts of it were completely destroyed, especially at the northern end near Pravia, or became abandoned and overgrown. But it remained a secret door into the stunning wilderness of the Somiedo reserve.

Roman road-building skills made the Camín a broad path with a modest gradient. The walk is never gruelling, but the views are spectacular – grey-white mountains looming over deep valleys lined with beech, and gorges with patches of pasture clinging to shelf-like plateaus along their length. On the far horizon lay a line of palest blue: the Cantabrian sea. After eight hours, we stumbled into the shadow of a strange crag, La Peña Negra (the black rock), as dark and sinister as something out of The Hobbit.

Our accommodation that night would have appealed to the Baggins family. Braña La Corra, a collection of seven roughly thatched stone teitos, were deserted but in reasonable condition, their maintenance funded by the Asturian government. Shepherds live there in summer, but walkers are free to use any left open, though they can't be reserved. The owner of one had offered Guillermo use of it if ever he were passing, so we laid out our sleeping rolls on its hay-strewn floor.

From the terrace of our rustic lodging, 1,200m up, we could see the deep Valle de Saliencia below us and glacial lakes to the south, among a bristle of ash-grey peaks. The thick forests opposite are one of last remaining habitats of the Cantabrian bear, of which some 130 remain. Old-timers around these parts, said Guillermo as we ate our supper of sardines, bananas and almond turrón (nougat) often tell tales of bears, how they came down to the villages, destroyed beehives, and were hunted ruthlessly.

At 7pm, night fell like a stone and so did the temperature. Having no lights to read by, we cocooned ourselves in our sleeping bags, and Guillermo told me stories about the Camín Real, its history and legends, of a convoy of 45 ox-drawn carts that carried alabaster quarried in Guadalajara on a six-week journey from Torrestio to Salas, to build a mausoleum for Archbishop Valdés Salas – an important inquisitor who died in 1569. It remains the most important Renaissance monument in the principality, and on the Camín itself.

The next day we discovered the remains of a venta, a small stone shop in a wide green pasture called Piedra Jueves (Jupiter's altar), that once sold wine, and vinegar for the feet, to shepherds who had travelled for days to bring their sheep to the spot.

We stood at the crest of the hill, surveying an Impressionist wash of grey-green broom, yellow birch, and a scarlet stipple of rowan berries. I looked in vain for a building, a road, or a human figure, but there were none. In August you might meet groups of walkers, cyclists or riders, but off-season the mountains slump back into solitude, and on the entire journey we saw only three mountain bikers, a couple of horsemen, and the occasional shepherd in a 4x4, checking on the livestock.

The floor of the valley was speckled with bleached heaps of stone which, centuries before, had been dwellings. Guillermo, who had known the Camín as a populated place 35 years ago, told me about a great livestock fair that had been held annually up here, 1,000m above sea level, where shepherd clans from Somiedo, Teverga and Belmonte had met up to party.

The road itself has fallen into rui, too, and been further damaged by occasional four-wheel drive vehicles and quad bikes.

"Do you see now what jewels we have, and what a state they're in?" Guillermo said bitterly, pointing to a potholed and muddied section. "It should be a national monument."

At Cueiro the Camín diverges, east towards Oviedo (the Camín Francés) or north to Llanera and Gijón. We struck north, passing a large former venta, now a barn, ripe for conversion into a simple B&B for walkers unwilling to sleep on a floor covered with hay. I peered through the window of the venta's derelict chapel. The altar was piled with old whisky bottles.

The village of Dolia was pretty and bucolic, snoozing amid hazel woods, but the asphalt underfoot and the power lines overhead came as a shock after our three days in the wilderness. For when the tarmac begins, the spell of the Camín Real starts to wane. We had covered three-quarters of the 40km that can still be walked. The last quarter, where it pushes into the 21st century world of petrol stations and builders' merchants, has lost its mystery. We called a taxi and took a last draught of Valdepeñas from the wineskin.