You need support to help you feel less resentful and to find other ways of giving each other pleasure. And don't discount extramarital sex: it could work for both of you

For a decade my wife has been suffering from poly-viral arthritis. She is exhausted and her sexual interest has dwindled. Now she uses orgasms to get to sleep rather than enjoyment. I don't know what arouses her any more. I feel neglected, unfulfilled and tired myself as I end up doing things alone we'd normally share. I've been told, when we argue about the issue, that I can look for a lover, which seems utterly wrong. I'm no longer sure what works for me sexually as I've been dependent on fantasy too long. The condition is taking over more of my wife's life and while we get on very well, I can't help but feel neglected and ill-used (which I know is irrational and unfair).

It's very hard when illness or disability means that a lover becomes a carer. You are both mourning the loss of your sexual relationship and the loss of her health. Depression and despair are common, and typically undermine sexuality. You need more support. Perhaps take more breaks or get extra household assistance – to help you feel less resentful. Your sexual response will improve when you are not giving so much. If she wishes, try timing love-making to when her pain level is lowest, and consult her doctor regarding using moist heat pads and strategically placed cushions. If the suggestion of outside sex is a true, loving offer, I have seen such an arrangement benefit both partners.

• Send your problem to private.lives@guardian.co.uk

• Sex
• Relationships
• Health & wellbeing

Pamela Stephenson Connolly
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As a jazz trio, we always knew we were outsiders to win the Mercury. The exposure it gives to modern jazz is a good thing – but a separate Mercury jazz prize would be even better

I never dared to hope we might win the Mercury prize. For a jazz act like my band, the Kit Downes Trio, just being there is the important thing – we're not making mainstream music, so we can't hope to compete in any way. But even though we knew we weren't going to win, the Mercury ceremony was still a celebration: there we are, getting played on BBC2, which for us is a huge deal, because you can count the number of times contemporary jazz gets played on primetime BBC TV on one hand. This was improvised music's three-and-a-half minutes per year in the spotlight.

For us, then, the main thing about Tuesday evening was the performance, after the stress of the build-up. For the rest of the evening it was just odd to be in a room with a load of people from the music industry who we didn't know, and who didn't know us, and who after the ceremony ended would probably never think about us again.

Over the past few months I've come to realise that the jazz act that gets nominated for the Mercury becomes an ambassador for jazz, because of the raised profile that results. And that's odd for us, because we're only 23 or 24, and it feels like a lot of pressure for people at the beginning of their career, when there are people out there who are both much older, and much better. And at the same time, you have to accept that many of the people who hear about the award regard you as the "token jazzer" – but it's right that jazz should be represented on the shortlist, because jazz accounts for about 10% of the audience for live music in the UK. Nevertheless, I'm not surprised people greet the jazz nomination with this mixture of fear and confusion, because it's not mainstream music.

In fact, jazz isn't one music, and it doesn't have one audience. People don't like "jazz", because that term covers so many things – they like particular musicians or kinds of music. They might like Iain Ballamy because of what he does with electronics, or they might like Seb Rochford – and then that might draw them into other aspects of music. So if you type "Seb Rochford" into Google, you'll discover how many different bands he's involved with, and how much different music he plays. In fact, the internet has been a great way for people to discover more about improvised and experimental music, because it enables people to see the connections between different artists and musics.

One reason the Mercury is so important is that there aren't that many awards in British jazz – just one or two – and they don't reach the mainstream like the Mercury does. What would really help the profile of jazz and improvised music in this country would be if the Mercury had a jazz shortlist alongside the rock and pop shortlist, so six artists could see their profile raised, instead of just one, and the idea of the token jazzer would disappear. That would also show people the huge range of music that jazz encompasses.

As for what the Mercury prize has done for us: we've sold a lot more records, we've been able to play to new crowds, we've been able to talk to more people about jazz. And we've found that people are listening to us who we never imagined would have been interested – I heard from a heavy metal fan, for instance. And it's also made me aware of music that I didn't know anything about, too – I've now discovered how good Villagers are.

The Kit Downes Trio play Kings Place, London N1, tomorrow. Kit Downes was talking to Michael Hann.

• Kit Downes Trio
• Mercury prize
• Jazz

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Pope's Glasgow visit: umbrellas are banned, there are no seats and security dictates mass-goers have to stay for five hours

The 100,000 Roman Catholics expected to attend the pope's open-air "great mass" in Glasgow have been urged by their cardinal to endure the "sacrifices" the event will involve. Tens of thousands of pilgrims in Glasgow will have to get to next Thursday's event at Bellahouston Park on public transport after their private coaches were cancelled.

Umbrellas have been banned, there will be no seating provided, and pilgrims will have to stay in the park for at least five hours on security grounds.

Cardinal Keith O'Brien, the leader of Scotland's Roman Catholics, said there had been "ups and downs" and "hiccups" with the event, but was confident that close to 100,000 people would attend. He said: "I'm sure that the optimism which has already been engendered will increase."

Strathclyde passenger transport said extra buses and subway trains were being put on to cope.

O'Brien, who will host Pope Benedict at the start of his four-day state visit next week, said the open-air mass was not intended to be luxurious.

"At the great mass at Bellahouston, you're there for a serious purpose, to join in the celebration of mass, to listen to the word of God, to listen to the teaching of the church being proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI, and that is a serious business," he said.

"You're not sitting back at the beach relaxing: it's something serious and obviously there's something penitential. There is penance involved in it, just sacrifice; sacrificing of time, sacrificing of comfort, sacrificing of your energy and so on, to be involved in all that's going on. And I see great benefit from that as well."

The cardinal said he was delighted by the papal visit. While John Paul II was a charismatic figure able to captivate a large crowd, Benedict was a serious and intellectual figure who was attracting priests to join the church.

Catholics were "stimulated just by his openness, his honesty and you know, his integrity, and they respect that with him", he said. "He sticks to his guns."

O'Brien added that the pope's visit was also intended to heal many of the divisions and problems in the church, including the child sex abuse scandals. The pope was the church's "chief healer", he said.

"You know the shepherd's crook, the sign of a bishop, is to reach out and bring in those who are lost, those who are hurt, those who have been offended in any way, in particular to have reconciliation with the victims of child sex abuse, just to say we are sorry. Our chief leader is sorry. We're sorry for anything that has gone on. Come back to us."

Hugh Farmer, a Catholic journalist involved in arranging the open air-mass at Bellahouston by Pope John Paul II in 1982, which was attended by 250,000, said he was keen to hear the pope, but feared it would be a shambles.

"If it's teeming with rain and it's windy, we're in Bellahouston on our own, I'm afraid. If it goes alright, it will be a miracle."

• Catholicism
• Pope Benedict XVI
• Christianity
• Religion

Severin Carrell
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Terry Jones claimed agreement had been reached to move location of planned mosque at site of September 11 attacks in New York

Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who planned to stage a Qur'an-burning protest on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, has decided to cancel the event.

Jones, who heads the Dove World Outreach Centre church based in the university town of Gainesville, called off the book-burning after he claimed an agreement had been reached with Muslim leaders to move the controversial location of a planned Islamic cultural centre and mosque in New York.

The New York imam behind the development, however, said there was no agreement to move the mosque away from the former World Trade Centre site. Feisal Abdul Rauf said there had been no negotiations, while Manhattan real estate developer Sharif El-Gamal also denied that any talks had taken place. Gamal said the centre would go forward as planned.

The pastor's proposal to burn the Qur'an had drawn criticism from Barack Obama and religious and political leaders across the Muslim world.

It emerged tonight that the US defence secretary Robert Gates called Jones to ask him not to proceed with plans to burn the Muslim holy book, the Pentagon said.

Many people, both conservative and liberal, dismissed the threat as an attention-seeking stunt by the preacher. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs called him a "desperate man" who would endanger the lives of American troops abroad.

"This is a recruitment bonanza for al-Qaida," Obama said earlier in an ABC television interview.

"You could have serious violence in places like Pakistan or Afghanistan. This could increase the recruitment of individuals who would be willing to blow themselves up in American cities or European cities."

Obama, who has sought to improve relations with Muslims worldwide, spoke out in an effort to stop Jones from going ahead with his plan and head off spiralling anger among many Muslims.

The international police agency Interpol warned governments worldwide of an increased risk of terrorist attacks if the planned burning went ahead, and the state department issued a warning to Americans travelling overseas.

Jones's threat has caused worldwide alarm and raised tensions over the 9/11 anniversary, which this year coincides with the Muslim Eid al-Fitr festival ending the fasting month of Ramadan.

• United States
• Islam
• Religion
• Christianity
• Florida
• New York
• Global terrorism
• Obama administration
• Barack Obama

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The Guardian's Jonathan Franklin, in a unique despatch, documents a day in the subterranean life of the 33 miners trapped 700 metres below the Chilean desert

Day in the San José mine begins at 7.30am, when a makeshift lighting rig powered by truck batteries and a portable generator flickers into life, casting a weak light on the refuge where the men have now spent 35 days.

In the hours after the shaft was sealed the miners used truck headlights to light their way, but in the following days, electrician Edison Pena wired up a series of lamps which provide between eight and 12 hours of light to provide a semblance of day and night.

"In those first few days, he took care of all the illumination down there, they had some equipment in there. It was never dark," said Pedro Campusano, a nurse with the rescue operation who has regular contact with the miners. "They had some machinery including a pickup, a truck, so he installed an electrical [generator] to feed the lighting system."

Breakfast begins to arrive at 8.30am via a delivery system known as the "pigeons" – the three-metre metal tubes that are packed with food, medicine and letters and lowered 700 metres through a 8.8cm communications shaft.

The food takes over an hour to arrive, with deliveries every 20 to 30 minutes. At the bottom of the mine, three men are tasked with receiving the "pigeons," unpacking bottled water, hot sandwiches and morning medicines, then stuffing the latest letters and messages into the torpedo-shaped tube, which slowly rises out of sight.

After breakfast the men clean their living area. "They know how to maintain their environment. They have a designated bathroom area, garbage area and are even recycling," said Dr Andre Llarena, an anaesthesiologist with the Chilean navy. "They put plastic stuff away from biological [wastes], in different holes. They are taking care of their place."

Morning showers require the men to climb aboard a bulldozer-type mining vehicle that rumbles 300 metres up the tunnel to a natural waterfall where they shower, shampoo and clean off the ubiquitous rust-coloured mud.

Showers and breakfast are followed by morning chores, some under instruction from mining engineers above ground, others in obedience to common sense.

Last week the trapped men sent up a list with a job description for each of them. "We have three groups, 'Refuge', 'The Ramp' and '105' [metres above sea level]," wrote Omar Raygada in a letter to his family. "I am head of Refuge."

Each group leader reports directly to Luis Urzua, the shift foreman on 5 August, when the men entered the mine in northern Chile for what was expected to be a half-day shift. Each has a variety of jobs which must be completed before the eight-hour turn is over.

"These men are trapped in their office – they are not tourists who went cave visiting. They know the drill, know how to get around," said Llarena. "They regularly spent 10-12 hours down there in the heat and humidity, and that's what they're doing now. That's what psychologists are reinforcing – this is a long shift, a very long shift, but still a shift."

Nineteen-year-old Jimmy Sanchez, the youngest of the group, is the "environmental assistant", who roams the caverns with a handheld computerised device that measures oxygen, CO2 levels and air temperature, which usually averages at around 31C. Every day Sanchez takes the reading from the gas detector and sends his reports to the medical team outside the mine. Another group of men reinforce the mine walls and divert streams of water seeping into their refuge. Several of the drilling and communications tubes connecting the men to the surface use water as lubricant, meaning a constant stream of muddy gunk trickles into their world.

Throughout the morning, some of the men maintain regular security patrols to scan the perimeter of their sleeping and living quarters, alert for signs of another rockfall. Others spend hours working with long-handled picks to lever loose large rocks that threaten to fall from the ceiling.

What the miners most fear is that a small rockfall could suddenly trigger a full-scale collapse, leaving them trapped in an even more confined space.

"They will seek shelter at the first major movement [of rocks]," said Alejandro Pino, a lead organiser of the rescue operation who works for the Association Chilena de Seguridad [ACHS]. "These are experienced miners – at the first sign of major movement they know where to hide."

The relief bore that will allow the men to escape is still some 140 metres from the living quarters, but in around three weeks' time a much larger drill bit will start tearing through the ceiling of the chamber, and the men will need to start moving an estimated 500kg of rock and mud every hour as debris from the drilling drops from the roof.

Food deliveries and meals take up much of the day. Lunch delivery starts at noon and takes a full hour and a half to deliver the hot meals.

"When they finish lunch, they have a general meeting, and in this meeting they start their prayers," said Dr Jorgé Diaz, a member of the rescue team.

The daily prayer is organised under the leadership of José Henriquez, who has been named the group's official "pastor". If Henriquez wants to record his sermons, he has the media team of Florencio Avalos, the group's official cameraman, and two sound engineers, Pedro Cortez and Carlos Bugueno. Aside from sermons, the sound engineers are also in charge of maintaining the phone lines, both conventional and fibre-optic. Telephone conversations and now video conferences are often scheduled for the early afternoon.

With basic needs such as food and sleeping quarters now fully organised, the men have also chosen to fill both bureaucratic and cultural positions. Victor Segovia is the group's official biographer, penning daily accounts from day one in an effort to keep an ongoing log of the men's predicament.

In a nation that produced the Nobel prize-winning poets Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda, it is only briefly surprising that the men named Victor Zamora as the group's official poet. Zamora's rhymed compositions are often one-page homages to the rescue team. Zamora's combinations of hope, gratitude and humour are among the most-read messages from below. Even after multiple readings, the poems still brings tears to the eyes of Campusano, the nurse working topside: "When this first came up, I read it and got halfway through, I couldn't." Campusano's eyes fill with tears. "It fills me with emotions … when I read it."

After lunch, the men are free to relax. Many of them spend the afternoon writing letters to their families, using safety lamps attached to their helmets. Letters from the men are frequently stained with rusty red blotches, a permanent reminder of the 85% humidity and muddy conditions inside the mine. The men have requested books, sketchpads and a stereo to play music.

Medical rounds are conducted daily by Jonny Barrios, a miner who trained in advanced first aid. Barrios once dreamed of studying medicine, but probably never envisaged how that ambition would be realised: as the team's official doctor, he is now undergoing a crash course in distance learning.

With fungal infections and bad teeth at the forefront of current medical problems, Barrios is under strict orders to make a daily list of any health problems.

In recent days, dermatological infections, toothaches, constipation and withdrawal from tobacco addiction have also caused problems. When a miner is considered ill, his name is added to those who have been "transferred" to a category known as the "intensive care unit". Barrios is so busy taking temperatures, administering medicines and updating patients' charts that he has now brought in Daniel Herrera, who has been given the title "assistant paramedic".

Of all the men given the job of keeping the group functioning, Barrios is perhaps the most crucial. He has already vaccinated the entire group against diphtheria, tetanus and pneumonia.

"We need him to measure the men, we need their circumference [in order to find out if they will fit through the small rescue hole now being drilled]," said Dr Devis Castro, a surgeon who has carried out advanced studies in nutrition. "The only way to weigh the men is with one of those scales like you see at the fruit market. So we are designing one small enough to send down through the tubes. Then they are going to have to figure our a way to hang themselves from the hook."

Apart from the daily medical rounds, Barrios has a daily hour-long consultant call every afternoon in which he receives messages from Chilean government's medical team, who huddle around a phone the size of a briefcase in a small tent some 700 metres above the trapped men.

"Jonny, can you hear me?" yelled the Chilean health minister, Dr Jaime Manalich, during a medical conference call last week. "Jonny, have you ever pulled out a tooth?"

From far below came the crackle of Barrios's voice. "Yeah … one of my own."

"If we have to ask you to pull a tooth and send you sterilised equipment, could you?" asked Manalich, who promised to first send a how-to video showing Barrios the most professional way to rip out an infected molar. "Remember Jonny, tell the men if they don't keep brushing their teeth that you will soon be ripping their teeth out down there."

From the moment the men were trapped on 5 August, the miners organised themselves for a rescue they guessed would be many days away, said Dr Jorge Diaz of the ACHS medical support team. "These are thinking people, they are workers with a work ethic that goes back many years. They don't need us to tell them what to do."

With the three shifts functioning like clockwork, psychologists have begun permitting certain extra pleasures. Earlier this week, the 33 miners gathered to watch their first live football match: Chile lost to Ukraine, 2-1. But despite the mud underfoot, loose rocks threatening to crash down and a lacklustre match, the men cheered every moment. Former football star Franklin Lobos, a legend on the pitch for the northern Chilean team Cobresal, ran a play by play summary.

After the match was over, the men prepared to sleep. They walked down the ramp to the bathroom, an area kept constantly clean by a stream of fresh water that washes away the urine and faeces.

By 10pm, the lights are out, and the men prepare their beds – inflatable mattresses shipped down from above. As they drift off to sleep, they are assured that if nothing else, their saga has been shortened by one day.

• Chile
• Mining

Jonathan Franklin
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Politicians use parliamentary privilege to attack police inquiry and target News International figures over claims

Rupert Murdoch was today accused of knowingly appointing Rebekah Brooks as chief executive of News International even though she had admitted that the News of the World had made illegal payments to the police, as Labour MPs intensified their attacks on the media mogul by using parliamentary privilege to round on his senior executives.

In a parliamentary debate on the phone hacking scandal at the News of the World, in which Conservative MPs voiced concerns, the Metropolitan police were also criticised for evasiveness in their investigation of the illegal practice.

Tom Watson, a Labour member of the Commons culture select committee, placed Murdoch in the line of fire by accusing him of appointing Rebekah Brooks as chief executive of News International knowing that she had broken the law over payments to police.

Brooks admitted in evidence to the Commons culture select committee in 2003 that the News of the World had paid police officers in the past for stories. This was condemned by the committee and by the Met as illegal. "When Rupert Murdoch appointed Rebekah Brooks he did so in that knowledge," Watson said of the ruling from the Commons committee.

Les Hinton, then chair of News International, later told the committee that Brooks subsequently told him she had "not authorised payments to policemen". He said her evidence was meant to suggest "there have been payments in the past".

The former Labour Cabinet Office minister was speaking as MPs debated whether to refer the phone hacking allegations to the powerful Commons standards and privileges committee.

The standards committee is to examine whether the News of the World breached ancient parliamentary privilege by endorsing the hacking of MPs' phones.

Watson recommended that Murdoch be summoned to give evidence."

He accused Brooks of refusing three invitations to give evidence to the culture select committee, which examined the allegations during the last parliament. "[She] was pursued on three separate occasions. We gave up."

Paul Farrelly, a former journalist who is another Labour member of the committee, used parliamentary privilege to make allegations about Andy Coulson and the News International legal director, Tom Crone. Coulson, now Downing Street director of communications, resigned as editor of the News of the World in 2007 after the paper's royal editor, Clive Goodman, and a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, were jailed for hacking into phones. Coulson denies any knowledge of the hacking.

Farrelly said people had wrongly assumed that his committee had cleared Coulson because it could find no evidence linking him to the phone hacking. "We were frankly incredulous of the notion that such a hands-on editor would not have had the slightest inkling about what his staff, and what private investigators employed by the paper, were up to."

Farrelly alleged that Coulson personally spiked a News of the World story about Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association. Coulson allegedly did this after a conversation with Crone, who had had a denial from Taylor's lawyers. A £700,000 payout by News International to Taylor, revealed by the Guardian in July 2009, prompted the latest round of allegations.

"We thought it would be highly unusual for an editor to accept a denial at face value," Farrelly said. "We'd expect an editor to ask, how can we stand this story up? The answer, we thought, would inevitably involve some discussion of … the source of the story. We suspected, although we could not prove it, that the story was spiked, in part at least, because any libel suit would have exposed the phone hacking that was going on."

Farrelly alleged Crone misled his committee. "He denied admitting a payoff to Clive Goodman, after he got out of jail. He also misled our committee on the identity of the junior reporter involved in transcribing phone hacking messages."

Watson was highly critical of people who refused to appear before the committee. These included Greg Miskiw, former assistant news editor at the paper, who said he was too ill to attend, Mulcaire, who said through an intermediary he would not give evidence, and Goodman, who said he was unavailable.

Andy Hayman, former head of the Met's special operations unit, who was in charge of the Mulcaire inquiry, was also criticised. Watson said the committee should summon Hayman to "get the bottom of which MPs were on the target list".

Farrelly criticised Hayman for interviewing only Mulcaire and Goodman. He also criticised Hayman's successor, Assistant Commissioner John Yates. "Had Mr Hayman been in charge of the Watergate inquiry President Nixon would have safely served a full term. His line is one which … John Yates is finding increasingly difficult to maintain … We were very critical of the evasiveness displayed by Mr Yates in the police evidence to us."

Paul McMullan, the former News of the World executive who spoke on the record to the Guardian, was deputy features editor at the NoW when Coulson arrived as deputy editor in May 2000. He worked with Coulson for 18 months. A Channel 4 website report incorrectly suggested that McMullan worked with Coulson for just a few months, casting doubt on his claims that Coulson must have known about the hacking practice.

What MPs said

"The barons of the media, with their red-topped assassins, are the biggest beasts in the modern jungle. They have no predators, they are untouchable, they laugh at the law, they sneer at parliament, they have the power to hurt us, and they do with gusto and precision."

Tom Watson, Labour MP for West Bromwich East and former minister

"This is … about what kind of investigative journalism we want in this country. Searching, yes. Critical, caustic, aggressive and cynical, maybe. But not illegal. And it is about whether this house will be supine when its members' phones are hacked, or about whether it will take action when the democratic right of MPs to do their job without illegal let, hindrance or interception has been traduced."

Chris Bryant, Labour MP for the Rhondda

"Former assistant commissioner Andy Hayman has repeatedly told the news that, as far as the Met is concerned, 'we didn't leave a stone unturned, we interviewed everyone who was relevant at the time'. That, I'm afraid, is simply not true.

The second thing I wanted to address ... is that our committee 'found no evidence that Andy Coulson knew about the hacking'. That has been taken to mean that we effectively cleared Mr Coulson of not knowing what his staff were up to. Nothing could be further from the truth."

Paul Farrelly, Labour MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme and member of the culture committee

"The Press Complaints Commission has not done a robust job. The public are not adequately protected from the press."

Simon Hughes, Liberal Democrat MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark

• News of the World phone-hacking scandal
• Rupert Murdoch
• Newspapers & magazines
• News International
• Newspapers
• News of the World
• National newspapers
• House of Commons
• News Corporation

Nicholas Watt
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Proposals which chancellor says will target those who view welfare as 'lifestyle choice' draw fury from leftwing Lib Dems

The chancellor George Osborne today dramatically turned up the heat in the spending review by revealing he will slash the benefit budget for the unemployed by a further £4bn, and saying he would go after those who regarded welfare benefits as "a lifestyle choice".

Interviewed today, Osborne said: "People who think it is a lifestyle to sit on out-of-work benefits … that lifestyle choice is going to come to an end. The money will not be there for that lifestyle choice."

Treasury sources indicated they were confident they would secure £4bn in further savings by 2014-15 on top of the £11bn savings set out in the June budget.

The Department of Work and Pensions, however, said no agreement had been struck, or specific figure agreed. Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, has been involved in bitter talks with the Treasury over his potentially costly plan to improve work incentives for those on the dole, and some of his allies were annoyed by Osborne's rhetoric at a sensitive point in complex negotiations.

One source said: "This feels like an effort to get Andy Coulson off the front pages rather than anything to do with welfare reform."

The Treasury said the £4bn extra saving was not dependent on a fall in unemployment, but is an estimate of the number of extra people who will find jobs due to the government's Work Programme and changes to work incentives.

The benefit savings could be increased if the Treasury presses ahead with proposals to restrict current universal benefits such as the winter fuel allowance, travel passes and TV licences.

The benefit proposals, and the manner in which they emerged in Osborne's interview with the BBC's Nick Robinson, drew fury from leftwing Liberal Democrat MPs Mike Hancock, Tim Farron and Bob Russell. Vowing to vote against such cuts, Hancock said: "This goes right to heart of the benefit system in this country. He has a lot of questions to answer and this is not the right way to do things."

Russell said: "This is not the way the coalition should work. I think Liberal Democrat MPs need to find out what is being done in our name. He is going around with a sledgehammer."

Farron said: "The government needs to demonstrate that those who got us into this mess are going to more than bear the brunt and that the most in need will not be targeted. We need to scrutinise where the cuts are made."

Osborne's declaration came on the day Nick Clegg had tried to send out a nuanced message that the cuts in the 20 October spending review would not fall in one blow, and would not be "dramatically different" to those proposed by Labour.

Osborne, by contrast, adopted a blunt tone, telling the BBC: "The welfare system is broken. We have to accept that the welfare bill has got completely out of control and that there are 5m people living on permanent out-of-work benefits. That is a tragedy for them and fiscally unsustainable for us.

"There will be further welfare cuts amounting to several billions of pounds additional to what I announced in the budget," he promised. "The people of this country understand this choice and they have chosen for us as a government to push further on welfare reform."

During the election campaign David Cameron promised the winter fuel allowance would not be cut, but it is possible that it, and some other universal benefits, could be restricted to those on pension credit, as the Lib Dems advocated.

In a speech today Clegg warned that the biggest risk facing the government in next month's spending review is panic, with civil servants slashing budgets across the board.

Six weeks before 25% cuts in departmental budgets are unveiled, the deputy prime minister revealed that the government "was putting a lot of pressure on departments not simply to panic, and do a numerical exercise, but also think about their long-term vocational purpose".

Clegg said he knew the spending review would be very controversial. "More worrisome still, they simply look at the cost of employing people and slash jobs."

He also disclosed that the spending review would provide extra money to introduce a pupil premium for poorer school children. It would include a deal to loosen Treasury controls over local government so "over time there is a rebalancing of the fiscal system", he said.

It is understood that the cabinet agreed this week that spending ministers will be entitled to take their departmental spending cuts programme to the domestic affairs committee of the cabinet to ensure there is full political buy-in into the cuts programme, so ministers collectively agree on highly controversial individual department programmes.

It had previously been thought cabinet ministers would simply strike bilateral deals with the Treasury, or the so-called star chamber.

Clegg's politically driven need to calm anxieties carries the danger of sending a mixed political message, since to placate the markets the coalition is also insisting that Labour's deficit reduction programme was totally inadequate.

Clegg argued: "This is a four- to five-year plan. It means for a department that is being asked to have its finances to be reduced by 25%, it is an annual reduction of about 6%. Under Labour's plans it would have been 20% reduction so that it would have been 5% every year.

"Our plans are not that dramatically different in some cases from what Labour was planning, and crucially it takes place over time, so I hope that gives everyone in public services and local government time to plan carefully, not to panic, and to take the wrong decisions right at the beginning."

However, Clegg admitted that the public were at present reading their worst fears into the spending review. He admitted: "Of course, there are plenty reasons for people to be anxious, particularly in those parts of the country that are very dependent on the public sector."

• Welfare
• Conservative and Liberal Democrat cabinet
• Conservatives
• George Osborne
• State benefits
• Liberal Democrats

Patrick Wintour
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The government is encouraging us to set up our own 'free schools'. One former teacher imagines what his would be like

The Richard Dawkins Humanist Conservatoire is so far only a gleam in my eye, but once someone rich enough to convince the government that they ought to be running a secondary school comes into partnership with me, we will make it a reality together. And I already have a pretty good idea of what my dream candidate for Michael Gove's "free school" programme would be like.

We humanists do not believe in faith schools – we think children of all faiths should go to the same school, and all the religious traditions there should enrich each other. Unfortunately, other faiths like to lock their children away from external influences, and faith schools have mushroomed until now religions control one third of all state schools. We can't beat them – not yet, anyway – so we are joining them.

Why "conservatoire"? Back in the 1980s, the then education secretary, Kenneth Baker, decided that "schools" had come to mean dreadful places where pupils ruled and teachers had lost the plot, and introduced City Technology Colleges. In 1997, David Blunkett saw that the word "college" had now gone downmarket too, and called his version "academies". I am staying one step ahead in this relentless verbal gentrification.

I have been a teacher (a very long time ago), a parent, and a writer about education, and RDHC will be a school where I would be happy to teach or send my children. It would reject educational dogma as firmly as it rejects religious dogma. On the teaching of reading, for example, the left shouts "real books" while the right shouts "phonics"; and the voice of the classroom teacher, who knows you need both, is drowned out. We will not choose what we do because it has the correct political label, but because it helps children to learn and to be happy.

One way to ensure that happens is to let teachers, parents, pupils and the local community run the school. So unlike all existing academies, the sponsor will not have an inbuilt majority on the governing body. We will make elected parent and teacher governors powerful, and have at least two elected pupil governors.

As a humanist school, we will pride ourselves on our teaching of religion. Other faith schools have agitated for and been given the right to discriminate against teachers and pupils who are not of the correct religion, but we will not. Our children will learn about all beliefs. Children can cope with the fact that adults believe different things. And we see nothing but good in the idea of a Muslim learning mathematics from a Sikh, or an atheist being taught English by a Catholic.

So, no spying to find out whether a prospective parent had been guiltily sneaking into church. No demanding evidence of a subscription to New Humanist. Personal letters confirming faithlessness from Dawkins himself will get you nowhere. Even being the object of a fatwa will not get you in. If we are oversubscribed – which I confidently expect we will be – we will take pupils strictly on the criterion of proximity to the school.

This is not just because selection at 11 is wrong, though it is. It is also because a successful school is rooted in its community. Families know each other, know the school and care about it. So, not for us these bullying, bureaucratic home-school contracts, designed to make the parents feel responsible for anything that goes wrong. We will involve parents as a part of the daily life of the school. Those with time and skills to teach will be cajoled into coming in and helping us.

There will also be no parents evenings. Instead, there will be constant dialogue between parents and teachers, and we will have a system of mentors to make sure that happens. Every child will have one of our staff assigned as his or her personal mentor – and, crucially, staff will have a reduced teaching load if they take on mentoring. The mentor will remain with the child throughout their time at the school, and the two will be expected to get to know each other very well.

Of course, our admissions criteria will mean that we get our share of the children who are hardest to teach, and among those will be a few who cannot read properly when they arrive at the age of 11. If you cannot read, you cannot learn anything else. Most of what is done in other lessons goes over your head, and you end up disaffected and disruptive, leaving school with no qualifications and no prospect of work. Prisons are packed with adults who never learned to read properly.

We will adopt an idea put to me by teacher Phil Beadle, author of that splendid practical manual How To Teach. At RDHC, every child's reading ability will be assessed when they arrive at the age of 11. Those who cannot read properly will go straight into a reading recovery group. We will not try to teach them anything else until we have taught them to read fluently.

Reading recovery, as originally formulated in New Zealand, is aimed at younger children, but we will adapt it for 11-year-olds. It requires some long sessions of one-to-one teaching, which makes it very expensive. But we will find the money. This work will have first call on our resources. When times are tough and we have to cut, it will be protected.

This will cut down the number of children who make learning impossible in the classroom and make other children's lives miserable outside it. It will not eliminate them, though, and however good your teachers, they will get nothing useful done while these pupils remain.

The author Francis Gilbert writes of a school where he once taught: "Just walking down the corridor was hazardous. Frequently, children would rush up behind me and hit me on the back of the head, shouting out, 'Gilly, Gilly, how are ya doing, mate?'" When he complained, his head of year said he needed to get a sense of humour. Beadle had a pupil who regularly called him a "fucking idiot". In our school, the boundaries will be drawn widely, but they will be fixed. Cross that boundary and the sky falls in on you.

We will not flinch from calling in the police. Our staff are not police officers, nor are they social workers or probation officers; they are teachers. Why should they, or our pupils, be less safe in the corridors of their school than on the streets? Bullying, abusing staff and making lessons unbearable will not be tolerated, and those who do it will be excluded.

But there is a problem with that. In the days when local authorities had power and some disposable money, they could provide the specialist places these children need. Today, the local authority, whatever it says in the 1944 Education Act about its duty, probably has nowhere suitable for them to learn. By throwing them out, we are condemning them to a life on the margins, and probably a life of crime. So the RDHC will have its own pupil referral unit, on another site some distance from the main school.

And we will confine this unit's population to those children who damage the learning experience of others. We are not going to fill it up with people who break rules. We do not like seeing our pupils smoking in the street, and we will tell them so, but it is their health they are damaging. We do not approve of truanting, but it is not a hanging offence. Our staff have better things to do than go round measuring the length of pupils' hair, or enforcing a uniform code. David Cameron says we "all know" what a good school is; it is a school where all pupils wear uniforms. But we think the PM is talking tosh. A very wise headteacher – Sean O'Regan, of Edith Neville School in London – told me: "People think a uniform is a short cut to raising standards of behaviour, but it is not."

I learned a few things about how schools should be laid out from Paul Kelley, headteacher at Monkseaton high school in Tyneside and best known as the Laura Spence head (Spence was the pupil turned down by Oxford despite brilliant A-levels, made famous by Gordon Brown). Kelley has no office – you can find him hunched over a desk pretty well anywhere in his school, with pupils walking round him. He does have a staff room, but it is surrounded by glass, so everyone can see in. Most people think this is a formula for disrespect. At Monkseaton, the pupils have discovered that the sight of a teacher drinking tea is terminally tedious.

As far as possible, our common spaces are going to be places where pupils and teachers mix naturally. We will have as few mysteries and no-go areas as we can get away with. Both sides learn that the other can be quite good company, and the presence of teachers cuts down on casual bullying. Teachers will be encouraged to eat with pupils as often as possible. Beadle writes: "Given that school dinners are repulsive mulch you wouldn't feed to a pig, a child wolfing them down enthusiastically with snaffling relish will tell you something very important about that child: that they are not properly looked after, and you must take special care of them in lessons."

We cannot divorce ourselves from the target culture, but we can make sure it does not run our lives. If our results are not quite as good as they were the previous year, we will not consider ourselves to have failed, and if other people think we have, then that is their stupidity. This stand will enable us to avoid using the national curriculum as an excuse to teach to the test. Take English as an example. It is possible to teach English Literature to GCSE by taking individual scenes from the Shakespeare play you are studying and not reading the whole text. You can pass the exam, but it is a pointless way of teaching. Our English department will use the whole text. In many schools, only pupils who do well in English language are allowed to take English literature at GCSE. All our pupils, without exception, will study English literature to GCSE.

Schools are forced into all sorts of stratagems to stop pupils from doing exams they might not do well in, so as to keep their apparent results up. Our children will take any exams they wish to take. Our priority will be the children we teach, not our place in the league tables. Everyone says that, but we mean it.

• Free schools
• Schools
• Education policy
• Michael Gove

Francis Beckett
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Huge backlash leads health secretary to claim all that will change is the number – but critics fear staff cuts

A political row has erupted after the health secretary was accused of making "a significant U-turn" over plans to scrap NHS Direct, the popular phone helpline, in the face of widespread public anger.

Andrew Lansley, secretary of state for health, said that NHS Direct would remain but that its telephone number would be replaced so that from 2013 people could call 111 for non-emergencies and 999 for emergencies.

"I have not announced plans to scrap NHS Direct. I have announced plans to phase out the NHS Direct number," the health secretary said in a letter released last night.

This appears to contradict statements from the Department of Health last month, including to the BBC, that said the service would be scrapped. The new 111 helpline is already being piloted in the north-east of England.

However, there are concerns that fewer medical staff will be employed by the new service. NHS Direct employs 3,400 people, 40% of whom are trained nurses. It was reported that the ratio for the new helpline would be lower.

The threat to the telephone service, which costs £123m a year to run, provoked an immediate backlash. In the fortnight since the story broke, more than 16,000 people have signed a petition to save NHS Direct, which provides general health advice and information about out-of-hours GPs, walk-in centres, emergency dentists and 24-hour chemists. Lord Prescott, the former deputy prime minister, played an active role in the campaign – including changing his Twitter picture to a "Save NHS Direct" badge.

Significantly, the Royal College of Nursing said it would be "shortsighted" of ministers to axe a service that had saved the NHS more than £200 million by dispensing advice over the phone.

Labour attacked Lansley for a "significant U-turn" that had seen the health secretary "rowing back" from previous statements. "It's an incredible victory for the campaign to save NHS Direct," said Andy Burnham, Labour's leadership contender and spokesman for health.

A series of letters between Lansley and Burnham, the previous health secretary, reveals a combative exchange. Burnham accused his Tory counterpart of "misrepresenting his position" as Lansley claimed that the 111 number was Labour's idea and he was "getting on with what you failed to do".

In a statement the health secretary said: "This is the latest political stunt from [Burnham]. He seems more concerned with trying to boost his leadership campaign than discussing our policies accurately."

Burnham said: "Mr Lansley's own department confirmed to the BBC that it was planning to scrap NHS Direct — he now says all he wants to change is the phone number. NHS Direct is a much-valued service that saves the NHS money … This is a welcome climbdown and great news for the staff who work for NHS Direct and all of us who rely on it."

Unions warned that the future of medical staffing levels in the new service would remain an issue. Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, said: "Staff will still be confused and worried the government may have another change of heart. I would like a guarantee from the health minister that the 1,300 nurses working for NHS Direct will still have a job there this time next year."

Despite its popularity, the medical establishment has been divided over the benefits of phone line. Earlier this summer British Medical Association chairman Dr Laurence Buckman said that getting rid of NHS Direct could be one way of cutting back on spending — adding that the "expensive" phoneline delayed healthcare reaching patients.

• NHS
• Andrew Lansley
• Andy Burnham
• Health
• Health policy
• Healthcare industry

Randeep Ramesh
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Rahm Emanuel could make a good mayor of Chicago – and clear the way for a less divisive White House chief of staff

I should say up front that I don't really really know what goes on in the White House. I don't cover it, the way a younger Tomasky once covered City Hall. And I don't really know a lot of the folks, just some of them. One in my position hears a lot of things, but it's sometimes hard to know whom to believe, and anyway, my thirst for palace intrigue isn't what it was when I was young.

All that said, it has long been my suspicion that Rahm Emanuel's influence has been more negative than positive. So I think his departure to go off and run for mayor of Chicago could be a great thing for the White House.

It's not just his obvious contempt for the left wing of the Democratic party – although that's pretty bad by itself. There's just no excuse for that "fucking retarded" comment. I've been plenty critical of liberals who had ridiculously high and ahistorical expectations of Obama, but there's just no justification for treating the people who knock on doors and donate what they can (as opposed to what they must to get their way) in such a manner.

I think Emanuel is probably at the core of Obama's problems with the left. A different chief of staff would treat those folks more respectfully. There are hundreds of people around this town who work on healthcare or union business, or the environment or immigration, or what have you, who are making modest salaries. (Emanuel, by the way, made $18m in just two-and-a-half years between his government jobs.) When a Democrat gets in the White House, they understand that in a climate like ours, they're not going to get everything they want by a long shot. But they do expect, and reasonably so, that every once in a while, they'll get to go to the White House and simply be heard and treated with a little dignity.

But, by all accounts, Emanuel treats everyone that way. Cabinet officers. Others in the White House. Old congressional colleagues. He loves to drop the f-bomb on everyone in his path. It's not charming. That word is really funny when you're 20. Repeated use of it is permissible in selected social situations when you're 30. Even 40.

But it was Edmund Wilson, I think, who once quite wisely said that after the age of 50, one should never be seen either eating face (however he would have phrased it) or getting drunk in public (he sure was drunk in private a lot, though). Likewise, by 50 (Emanuel's age now), one should cut down on the "fucks". Failure to do so possibly reflects a certain self-regard: I can do what I want. That, in turn, probably reflects someone who is good with vinegar but not so much with honey.

I'm sure he's done many good things I don't know about. The media (except Dana Milbank) cares only about screw-ups, so I've heard about those and probably haven't heard about his behind-the-curtain triumphs. I admit that I haven't read, say, Jon Alter's book. Fair enough. Although speaking of Milbank, that apparent leak from Emanuel to Milbank that trashed other administration officials was pretty breathtaking, and deserves not to be forgotten in farewell columns if he does go.

Politico thinks Rahm will have a tough time getting elected mayor (the election is February, so it's time to get a move on, though he would surely wait until after 2 November). Apparently, the leading candidate is the Cook County sheriff. First I've heard of him. Nice-looking fellow, though: he looks a little like Gabriel Byrne.

Whatever. I hope he goes. However, I must note that the list of potential replacements that's going around isn't so great. It's practically all administration insiders – Valerie Jarrett, David Axelrod and so on.

Surely, this team, especially after what's likely to happen in November, could use a fresh set of outside eyes. And an outside brain to give some different advice. Sounds like they could use that now.

• Rahm Emanuel
• Democrats
• Obama administration
• US politics
• United States

Michael Tomasky
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London conference sees American rightwing movement share tactics with British and European tax lobby groups

British anti-tax campaigners are taking advice from leaders of the rightwing Tea Party movement in the US in a bid to import the mass-protest techniques that have seen a million activists march on Washington DC to call for lower taxes and smaller government.

The Taxpayers' Alliance, an influential campaign group that calls for tax cuts and low government spending, is being advised by Freedom Works, a powerful Washington organisation credited with helping to destabilise the Obama administration through its mobilisation of 800,000 grassroots activists.

Libertarian US Tea Party organisations attended a conference in London today to share tactics with British and European taxpayer lobby groups, and described their activities as "an insurgent campaign" against their government's tax and spending policies.

The move reflects an increasing desire within rightwing circles to establish a British version of the Tea Party "uprising", and a growing belief that expected union action against the coalition government's programme of cuts could be harnessed to mobilise vocal counter-demonstrations. The Taxpayers' Alliance also believes that public anger at the Revenue & Customs blunder that has left 1.4m people facing backdated tax bills could fan the flames of a wider anti-tax revolt.

"You could say our time has come," said Matthew Elliott, founder of the TPA, which has seen its supporter base rise 70% to 55,000 in the last year. "Take the strikes on the London underground this week and how much they annoyed and inconvenienced people. Couldn't we get 1,000 people to protest that?

"We need to learn from our European colleagues and the Tea Party movement in the US ... It will be fascinating to see whether it will transfer to the UK. Will there be the same sort of uprising?"

Elliott said that the HMRC blunder could fuel protests. "When the envelopes [from HMRC] hit the doormats there will be a lot of fury," he said, "not least because a lot of people won't be able to pay it."

The Tea Party movement – named after the anti-tax Boston Tea Party protest of 1773 – emerged last year, partly in protest at the US bank bailout, and has been championed by Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice-presidential candidate. It claims to have mobilised more than one million voters against the government through dozens of local groups. Freedom Works is organising a second mass protest outside the White House this weekend.

Terry Kibbe, a consultant at Freedom Works, which claims to convene 800,000 activists, told the Guardian she wants to help mobilise otherwise cerebral political institutions in the UK and Europe by helping them create grassroots activist wings.

Behind the Tea Party movement are a series of well-financed and well-established rightwing lobby groups who pay for TV adverts, campaign materials and supply training for local grassroots chapters.

"We have been working to identify groups in Europe that would be amenable to becoming more activist-based, thinktanks that could start activist wings," said Kibbe. "We have worked with the Taxpayers' Alliance, in Austria and in Italy, and we want to do more."

Freedom Works trains Tea Party activists in running mass demonstrations and provides access to bespoke-designed software to allow activists to set up powerful computer networks that would otherwise be too expensive. It has also published an activist manual and will shortly issue a "Rules for Patriots" booklet.

Americans for Prosperity, another Tea Party group which claims to have 1.5m activists and is headed by oil billionaire David Koch, was also represented at the London conference, and helped fund it.

"In the US there is a growing consciousness of the effect of government spending and debt on their own prosperity," said Tim Philips, president of AFP. "It strikes me that many Britons are coming to the same conclusion."

AFP is one of several US thinktanks that have sought to disrupt the Obama presidency by opposing healthcare reform, stimulus spending, and cap-and-trade legislation on carbon emissions.

Other leading US rightwing thinktanks that financed the conference include the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Conservative MPs Peter Lilley and Robert Halfon spoke at the event, which was also attended by representatives from Philip Morris and Imperial Tobacco, the Global Warming Policy Foundation – a climate change-sceptical thinktank led by Lord Lawson – and BP.

"We need to reach out to a broader audience," said Barbara Kohn, secretary-general of the Hayek Institute in Vienna, which is one of Europe's leading low tax campaigners and has also been advised by Freedom Works. "We need to come from various angles. We have all seen what our friends in the Tea Party movement, and their march, have achieved."

What remains uncertain is whether British and European people are likely to mobilise in the same numbers as their US counterparts.

• Tea Party movement
• Tax and spending
• Protest
• US politics
• United States

Robert Booth
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Tehran expected to announce on Saturday whether Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer or Joshua Fattal will be released

Iran has announced that it will release one of the three American hikers it has held for more than a year and accused of espionage. Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal were arrested by the Iranian authorities while they were on a hiking trip in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq in July 2009. Iran has accused them of espionage and illegally crossing the border – charges that they, their families and supporters have categorically denied. The three hikers have not been formally charged with any crime.

Iran's culture ministry did not immediately say which of them would be freed, but instructed foreign correspondents in Tehran to come on Saturday to the same hotel in the capital where the Americans' mothers were allowed to meet them in May, news agencies reported. Later an official at Iran's UN mission said Shourd would be the one freed.

It was said that the release was to mark Eid al-Fitr, the festival ending the Muslim Ramadan holiday – which this year coincides with the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The families of the three had repeatedly asked for them to be freed on humanitarian grounds.

In Washington, Robert Gibbs, a White House spokesman, said all three Americans should be freed immediately since they had "committed no crime". He said officials were in touch with the Swiss government, which represents US interests in Iran, to determine if the report of the pending release was true.

Families and friends were seeking confirmation of the news. The mothers said: "We have seen the news reports and are urgently seeking further information. We hope and pray that the reports are true and that this signals the end of all three of our children's long and difficult detention."

It is possible the move is intended to ease international pressure on the Islamic republic over the case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery and murder – and the subject of a campaign that has clearly rattled the authorities.

"I'm overjoyed to hear the news of this potential release and hope they'll all be set free soon," said James Sadri, a close friend. "Sarah, Shane and Josh have a long history of campaigning for peace and justice. They should never have been detained in the first place."

According to a detailed investigation by the Nation, the US political journal, the three hikers may have been captured on the Iraqi side of the border, possibly to serve as bargaining chips in Iran's fraught relationship with the US. The two countries have had no diplomatic ties since the 1979 revolution and tensions are high over Iran's nuclear programme and wider regional differences.

It was hoped that the hikers might be freed in exchange for Shahram Amiri, the Iranian scientist allegedly abducted by the CIA and who was allowed to leave the US for Iran in July.

Shourd, 31, and Bauer, 28, had been living in Damascus, the Syrian capital, and became engaged after they were imprisoned. Fattal, also 28, is a college friend.

Ironically, friends say, all three were deeply critical of US policy in the Middle East and had worked with Palestinian and Iraqi refugees.

In July the Iranian embassy in London refused to accept a letter from their mothers as they raised the profile of their campaign before 31 July, the first anniversary of the hikers' capture.

• United States
• US foreign policy
• Middle East
• Iran
• Iraq
• Human rights

Ian Black
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Political and religious leaders urge Pakistanis to donate to flood victims instead of holding lavish parties to mark end of Ramadan

In a normal year Pakistanis would be scurrying home tomorrow night for a weekend of gluttony-tinged indulgence marking Eid al-Fitr, the end of the fasting month of Ramadan and Islam's near equivalent of Christmas. But this is no normal year.

With 21 million people – almost one-eighth of the population – affected by the worst floods in living memory and broad swaths of the country still under water, many have no homes to go to, and no mosques to attend.

The traditional Eid present is a new set of clothes. But in Charsadda, a flood-ravaged area near Peshawar, Hakim Khan stood among the crushed masonry of his collapsed home and plucked a bundle of damp, mud-streaked shirts from the rubble. "These are our Eid clothes," he said bitterly.

In the main cities, sparkling Eid lights still drape the streets. But inside homes, a new austerity has curtailed the festive spirit. Traders report disastrous pre-holiday sales while engaged couples have scaled back plans for extravagant nuptials during the autumn wedding season. "There's a feeling of helplessness," said filmmaker Samar Minallah. "People want to reach out."

A prominent Muslim preacher has offered ideas on how to do that. Tahir-ul-Qadri has bought television ads urging people to forgo new clothes in favour of flood donations. "I have a message for the nation: mark Eid in a very plain manner," he says.

Many are taking that message to heart. Shahzad Liaqat, a 29-year-old optometrist from Islamabad, recently drove to Nowshera, one of the worst-hit towns, in a truck laden with wheat, medicine and secondhand clothes. His family will be wearing old clothes this holiday. "When you see these people on the television, you can't celebrate anything," he said.

Business at Liaqat's glittering shop, which sells designer sunglasses, has plunged to the worst level in years. Some of this was flood-related austerity, he felt, but it was also a product of shrinking wallets. Pakistan's economy suffers galloping inflation and has become reliant on international financial bailouts.

In Charsadda, the flood waters have receded, allowing foreign and local aid to flow in. Irfan Nawaz Raja, a Punjabi businessman, drove a truck filled with secondhand clothes and food packets donated by family and friends into a camp filled with white tents. He had been motivated to act by the images of human suffering on television. "It made us cry," he said.

Like many private donors, Raja said he wanted to bring his aid directly to the people, because he was suspicious about corruption in government. But such ad-hoc aid cannot meet the immense needs of flood-ravaged areas.

Next door to Hakim Khan, a wizened 85-year-old man sat quietly under a hastily erected straw lean-to, watching over a small hill of bricks – the remains of his home – that he guarded with his walking cane. "If I leave, people will steal them," he said.

A few yards away Muhammad Iqbal, a 25-year-old rickshaw driver, wept as he described how he would spend Eid: sitting in his unpleasantly warm, mould-covered tent, eating food handouts. His wife, eight months pregnant, stood quietly by as he wiped tears from his eyes; his five-year-old daughter chewed on a sweet, wearing a donated orange dress.

The black mood has been heightened by Pakistan's recent national traumas, particularly on the sports field. On Wednesday at Lahore airport, enraged cricket fans shouted "Shame!" at Ijaz Butt, chairman of the country's troubled cricket board. One fan threw a shoe in his direction. Like much of the cricketers' batting during recent matches with England, it failed to connect.

A steady drumbeat of Taliban and US violence continues apace. This week, suicide bombers attacked three police stations in the north-west; yesterday a US drone fired a missile into a house in the tribal belt, killing five people – the fourth such strike in less than 24 hours.

On the political front, the combination of crises has taken a toll on President Asif Ali Zardari, who is widely disparaged as "Mr Ten Per Cent" – a nickname that once applied to alleged corruption but which, if current trends continue, could refer to his poll ratingsinstead.

Perhaps as a result of public scepticism, Pakistan's leaders are conspicuously flaunting their piety. The prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, has promised to spend the holiday with flood victims; the leaders of the main opposition parties are urging their parliamentarians to do the same.

But, while most Pakistanis will treat the coming days as a welcome breather, the holiday could also be marred by disturbances.

• Pakistan
• Flooding
• Islam
• Religion
• Natural disasters and extreme weather

Declan Walsh
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• 'Strong likelihood' of violent attacks if if burning goes ahead
• US pastor hints at cancelling event if contacted by Obama

Interpol, the international police agency, has warned of an increased risk of terror attacks if the planned burning of the Qur'an by extremist US pastor Terry Jones takes place on Saturday.

"If the burning goes ahead as planned there is a strong likelihood that violent attacks on innocent people would follow," Interpol, acting partly on a request from Pakistan, said in a statement.

The warning came as Jones, a pentecostal preacher from Gainseville, Florida, hinted he might be prepared to call off the burning – planned to mark the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks – if he was contacted directly by Barack Obama, the state department or the Pentagon.

"That would cause us to definitely think it over," Jones told USA Today. "That's what we're doing now. I don't think a call from them is something we would ignore." But he said that as things stood he was "not convinced that backing down is the right thing".

The White House confirmed it was discussing whether to contact Jones – whose church, The Dove World Outreach Centre, has a congregation of about 50 – to ask him to call off his plans. Pentagon spokesman Geoffrey Morrell said: "That possibility is currently under discussion within the administration. I don't believe they've come to any resolution yet."

Barack Obama earlier joined mounting worldwide condemnation of the plan, saying the event would be a "recruitment bonanza for al-Qaida".

The US president told ABC News: "If he's listening, I hope he understands that what he's proposing to do is completely contrary to our values as Americans," Obama said.

Obama said the event was a stunt that would boost support for terrorism. "This could increase the recruitment of individuals who would be willing to blow themselves up in American cities or European cities," Obama said.

The president repeated a warning by General David Petraeus, the commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, that the burning would endanger US troops.

"And as a very practical matter I just want him [Jones] to understand that this stunt could greatly endanger our young men and women who are in uniform," Obama said.

David Cameron's spokesman said earlier that the prime minister strongly opposed any attempt to offend members of a religious group.

Religious leaders of all faiths have warned against the event, with statements of protest coming from both the Vatican and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

This week protests took place in the Afghanistan capital of Kabul where effigies of Jones were burned alongside the American flag.

Anjem Choudary, the former leader of the banned Islamist organisation Islam4UK, told Reuters he was calling on radical Muslim groups around the world to burn American flags outside US embassies in retaliation.

Today about 200 lawyers and civilians marched and burned a US flag in the central Pakistani city of Multan, demanding that Washington prevent the book burning.

The foreign ministries of Pakistan and Bahrain issued some of the first official denunciations in the Muslim world, with the latter calling it a "shameful act which is incompatible with the principles of tolerance and co-existence".

The president of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, has written to Obama asking him to stop the bonfire. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told Obama that images of the Qur'an in flames could "threaten world peace", according to his special adviser Heru Lelono.

India's home office has asked its country's media to exercise restraint in reporting on the planned burning.

The rightwing US presidential hopeful Sarah Palin urged Jones and his supporters to reconsider. Writing on her Facebook page she said: "People have a constitutional right to burn a Qur'an if they want to but doing so is insensitive and an unnecessary provocation – much like building a mosque at Ground Zero."

In a statement on his faith foundation website, Britain's former prime minister Tony Blair, said: "Rather than burn the Qur'an I would encourage people to read it".

• Global terrorism
• United States
• Florida
• Islam
• Religion
• Barack Obama
• Obama administration
• US politics

Matthew WeaverTim Hill
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Liberal resolution with 337 majority rebukes Nicolas Sarkozy for deporting Roma and destroying their camps

Nicolas Sarkozy has been accused by the European parliament of stirring up racism through his anti-Gypsy campaign in a highly unusual vote against a leading EU country that has humiliated the centre-right dominating the politics of Europe.

A parliament resolution denouncing the French government's policy of deporting Roma families and demolishing their encampments was carried by a much bigger majority than expected – a vote of 337 to 245, bringing an uncommon victory for the centre-left and liberals in a chamber dominated by conservatives.

The resolution carried by the parliament also strongly criticised the European commission, which polices observance of European law, for appeasing the French and "failing to do its job".

The motion was proposed by social democrats, liberals, Greens and the hard left, and demanded an instant halt to the expulsions in France.

An opposing resolution from the centre-right European People's party, grouping Christian democrats and conservatives including Sarkozy's UMP, failed to criticise the French policy and was defeated.

Eric Besson, the French immigration minister, who was in Romania today pressing Bucharest to do more to integrate its large Roma/Gypsy minority, dismissed the parliament's attack. Paris would not bow to its "political diktat", he announced. "France has taken no specific measures against the Roma," he said.

Last month French police expelled 977 Roma, mostly to Romania, and demolished 128 camps, according to official French figures. The Gypsies from Romania are EU citizens and enjoy the right of freedom of movement in the union.

The French policy's contradictions were highlighted by the case of three Roma from Romania expelled from northern France. They received a deportation order, crossed the border into Belgium, walked a few metres, then turned around and legally walked back into France under the watching eyes of a French official.

"This is to demonstrate the absurdity of French government policy on the Roma," said their lawyers, Clément Norbert and Antoine Berthe.

The European parliament resolution is non-binding, purely a verbal rebuke. But it represents a big blow to French prestige, not least because the parliament sits in France, in Strasbourg. It is rare for the parliament to single out a big founding member of the EU for such a reprimand.

The result of the vote was also a fiasco for the centre-right EPP, the strongest caucus in the parliament representing Angela Merkel's Christian democrats from Germany, Silvio Berlusconi's deputies from Italy and Sarkozy's own UMP MEPs.

The voting figures indicated that many conservatives are deeply uneasy about the French policies, which have also split the Sarkozy cabinet and been denounced by the UN and the Vatican and the United Nations.

The parliament said it was "deeply concerned at the inflammatory and openly discriminatory rhetoric that has characterised political discourse during the repatriations of Roma, lending credibility to racist statements and the actions of extreme rightwing groups".

It accused the European commission of doing too little too late in considering whether France was breaking EU freedom of movement laws and anti-discrimination rules. "This places the commission under renewed pressure to begin legal action against the French authorities for failing to respect the rule of law in the way it has been targeting the Roma as an ethnic group," said Claude Moraes, the Labour MEP who helped draft the resolution.

In Paris on Monday, the European commission chief, José Manuel Barroso, and Sarkozy reached a truce on the Roma row, agreeing to play the matter down. "I've avoided entering the debate about France because it is not my role," Barroso said. "The subject is extremely politicised." He added, in reference to Jean-Marie Le Pen's far-right National Front party: "It's a mistake to say that freedom of movement must be absolute. Doing that, you'll create plenty of Le Pens."

• France
• Nicolas Sarkozy
• Roma
• European commission
• European Union

Ian Traynor
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Pope Benedict's four-day tour involves more trips to different sites than any previous state visit, says senior police officer

The pope's tour of Britain next week will require an unprecedented policing operation that could cost as much as £1.5m, senior officers said today.

Meredydd Hughes, the chief constable of South Yorkshire police who is co-ordinating the operation, said no previous state visit had involved so many trips to so many different sites.

Pope Benedict, who is due to arrive in Edinburgh next Thursday, will travel to Glasgow, London and Birmingham over the course of his four-day visit.

As visiting dignitaries seldom venture outside London, said Hughes, the papal itinerary meant that the visit "needed an extra element of co-ordination".

Although he could not put an exact figure on the cost of the policing operation, Hughes said he expected it to total at least £1m.

"There will be changes to plans through the hurlyburly of running operations," Hughes said. "We will know the cost after the event. The total cost is £20m – £11m funded by the church and £9m funded by the state — but we're talking about £1m to £1.5m in policing costs."

Speaking at a briefing by the Association of Chief Police Officers in London, he said that while officers would look after the "safety and dignity" of the pope, they would also protect those wishing to see him and any protesters against his visit too.

"There is no intelligence to suggest any specific group will attack the pope," he said, adding that the last few attacks on the pontiff were by Catholics.

Commander Bob Broadhurst of the Metropolitan police, who will be responsible for the pope's safety, said he was confident that things would run smoothly despite the controversial nature of the visit.

"We are very used to protecting people, be it the pope or the president of the United States," he said. "A key element is getting the blend right and keeping him and his entourage safe."

Broadhurst, who was a junior officer when Pope John Paul II made a pastoral visit to the UK 28 years ago, said he did not think as many people would turn out to greet the pope this time.

"The 1982 visit was obviously very busy," he said. "But we're gearing up a policing plan that involves tens of thousands of people. We are anticipating big numbers."

Hughes, who also policed the last papal visit, agreed.

"This is a very different time to '82," he said. "The world has changed and people's willingness to come out has changed."

Hughes said he had been pleased to see talks take place yesterday between the archbishop of Southwark and the leaders of the Protest the Pope movement, which is planning to march through London on 18 September to demonstrate against the visit.

Broadhurst said he expected no more than 2,000 protesters to join the demonstration, and estimated that between 10 and 20 protesters would turn up at the Pope's pastoral events elsewhere.

He pointed out that other events — including a full football programme — were continuing during the visit and the police operation would be "nowhere near the scale of the Notting Hill carnival".

He said that while the police were not anticipating any disorderly protests, "we may at times be protecting the protesters from the faithful if one or two people get hot under the collar".

Broadhurst added: "People get very, very passionate and very, very emotional. Do not underestimate the passion and fervour that this will bring."

Hughes promised a "proportionate response to peaceful, lawful protests", but added: "Once you start throwing eggs, you are committing a criminal act."

• Pope Benedict XVI
• Police
• Religion
• Catholicism

Sam Jones
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Former Cuban president says Marxist model 'doesn't even work for us' in offhand remark to US journalist Jeffrey Goldberg

It was a casual remark over a lunch of salad, fish and red wine but future historians are likely to parse and ponder every word: "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us any more."

Fidel Castro's nine-word confession, dropped into conversation with a visiting US journalist and policy analyst, undercuts half a century of thundering revolutionary certitude about Cuban socialism.

That the island's economy is a disaster is hardly news but that the micro-managing "maximum leader" would so breezily acknowledge it has astonished observers.

Towards the end of a long, relaxed lunch in Havana, Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for the Atlantic magazine, asked Castro if Cuba's economic system was still worth exporting. The reply left him dumbfounded. "Did the leader of the revolution just say, in essence, 'Never mind'?" Goldberg wrote on his blog.

The 84-year-old retired president did not elaborate but the implication, according to Julia Sweig, a Cuba expert from the Council on Foreign Relations who also attended the lunch, was that the state had too big a role in the economy.

Raúl Castro has been saying the same thing in public and private since succeeding his older brother two years ago. With infrastructure crumbling, food shortages acute and an average monthly salary of just $25 (£16), it has become apparent that near-total state control of the economy does not work.

But for Fidel to acknowledge the fact could be compared to Napoleon musing that the march on Moscow was not, on reflection, a great success.

"Frankly, I have been somewhat amazed by Fidel's new frankness," said Stephen Wilkinson, a Cuba expert at the London Metropolitan University. "This is the latest of a series of recent utterances that strike me as being indicative of a change in the old man's character."

The remark should not, however, be interpreted as a condemnation of socialism, added Wilkinson. "That is clearly not what he means, but it is an acknowledgement that the way in which the Cuban system is organised has to change. It is an implicit indication also that he has abdicated governing entirely to Raúl, who has argued this position for some time. We can now expect a lot more changes and perhaps more rapid changes as a consequence."

Raúl has said Cuba cannot blame the decades-old US embargo for all its economic ills and that serious reforms are needed. Fidel's statement could bolster the president's behind-the-scenes tussle with apparatchiks resisting change, said Sweig.

Agriculture has been a big disappointment. The lush Caribbean island of 11 million people could be a major food exporter but central planning and state-run co-operatives have produced chronic shortages, prompting an old, bitter joke that the revolution's three biggest failures are breakfast, lunch and dinner. Raúl's reforms are not going well: food production fell 7.5% in the first half of the year.

Once propped up by the Soviet Union, Cuba's lifeline is now cheap oil from Venezuela, where President Hugo Chávez considers Fidel a mentor.

Chávez swiftly followed another surprise statement of Castro's – accusing Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of antisemitism – with an announcement that he would meet Venezuelan Jewish leaders. The move was "a direct result of Fidel's statement", according to Goldberg.

Marxist reforms?
The remarks about Cuban economic policy are not the only surprise statements made recently by the former Cuban leader. Others include:

• He feels responsible for the "great injustice" of the persecution of Cuban homosexuals in the 1970s.

• He laments Jewish suffering over the centuries, defends Israel's right to exist and accuses Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of antisemitism.

• He appears to regret urging the Soviet Union to nuke the US during the 1962 missile crisis. "After I've seen what I've seen, and knowing what I know now, it wasn't worth it all."

• Fidel Castro
• Cuba
• Communism
• Economics
• Hugo Chávez

Rory Carroll
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Vladimir Putin says attack in relatively quiet Vladikavkaz was designed to 'sow enmity between our citizens'

At least 16 people were killed today and more than 100 injured when a car bomb ripped through a market in the relatively quiet southern Russian city of Vladikavkaz, in what appears to be the latest suicide strike by Islamist militants.

Police said the bomber drove into the crowded marketplace at 11.20am local time, then blew himself up. The bomb hidden in the boot contained the equivalent of 40kg of TNT, officials added.

Investigators said the suicide bomber drove a Volga saloon which he bought on Wednesday in the neighbouring republic of Ingushetia. The car's previous owner who was being interrogated said he had sold it to an unidentified man.

Officials said 114 people were injured, with 108 treated in hospital. The death toll rose to 16 when an 18-month-old boy died in intensive care. His three-year-old sister was critically wounded, the health ministry said.

Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, condemned the attack as "monstrous". The prime minister, Vladimir Putin, said the attack was designed to "sow enmity between our citizens". He called on Russia's substantial Muslim population to make a "decisive contribution" in the fight against extremism.

Russia is fighting a rampant Islamist insurgency across the Muslim-dominated North Caucasus. Bomb attacks and shoot-outs take place daily, with Ingushetia, Dagestan and Chechnya the epicentre of the violence. But the republic of North Ossetia and its historic capital Vladikavkaz have been relatively immune. Its inhabitants are predominantly orthodox Russians, lending a sectarian dimension to the bombing.

It was the most serious attack in North Ossetia since the Beslan school siege in 2004, in which 331 people died, most of them children. Schoolchildren in the republic were sent home today. Security was also bolstered in Moscow, with traffic police instructed to look out for vehicles with North Caucasus plates.

The blast follows another major terrorist strike against civilians in March, when two female suicide bombers from Dagestan blew up the Moscow metro.

Experts said today's attack may have been a response to the killings over the summer of several rebel commanders by security forces. "It appears to be part of a strategy by radical groups to attack soft targets and kill civilians," said Dr Cerwyn Moore of Birmingham University, an expert in political violence in the North Caucasus.

"Their aim is to destabilise the region and retaliate for federal successes in countering the insurgency in the North Caucasus."

Radical groups viewed North Ossetia as a staunch ally of the Kremlin and an outpost of Christianity, Moore said, as well as a staging post for federal attacks during Moscow's second Chechen war.

Moore said the choice of North Ossetia, and the timing of the attack, may reflect infighting within the insurgency. Rebel leader Doku Umarov stepped down in August and was replaced by Aslanbek Vadalov, a veteran Chechen field commander. Umarov has now ousted Vadalov again as head of the self-styled emirate.

Vadalov's supporters are believed to have been behind an attack last month on the home village of Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's Moscow-installed president. These latest attacks could indicate that radical and moderate factions are vying for power within the hierarchy of Islamist insurgency, Moore said.

Vladikavkaz – the name means ruler of the Caucasus – was an imperial outpost in tsarist times, and has long been a Russian enclave surrounded by Muslim villages and highlands.

Initially a small fort on the Terek River, founded by Catherine the Great, it played a crucial role in extending Russian control the region. It is now a bridgehead to the separatist Georgian territory of South Ossetia, recognised by Moscow as an independent state.

• Russia
• Global terrorism
• Vladimir Putin
• Dmitry Medvedev

Luke Harding
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Universities minister David Willetts says graduates must pay a 'fair contribution' towards their studies in line with their earnings

Higher earning graduates can expect to pay more for their degrees in the form of a "progressive and fair" contribution that could be introduced as early as next September, a government minister said yesterday.

The universities minister, David Willetts, outlined government proposals to transform higher education in a major speech today, which also suggested that bright teenagers from poorly performing schools could be headhunted to encourage them to apply to the best universities.

Willetts said universities needed to place more emphasis on teaching, and urged institutions to cut costs, saying the number of senior university managers had risen to more than 14,000 last year while the number of professors fell to 15,500 – a trend that could lead to managers outstripping academics this year.

The Tory minister told an audience of university vice-chancellors that the government believed graduates who go on to lucrative jobs should pay more. A report earlier this week suggested that Lord Browne, who is looking at university finance, will reject a graduate tax in favour of letting universities raise tuition fees to £7,000. That could prove divisive for the coalition government, as 55 Liberal Democrat MPs have signed a pledge to vote against an increase in fees.

Willetts said: "I do believe it is better for the younger generation to have the chance of going to university – and then pay for that out of the higher earnings they achieve later on – rather than experiencing poorer quality HE or being deprived of the opportunity altogether. This has to make sense for young people."

In remarks made after the speech at Cranfield University, Willetts said the government was considering a graduate "contribution" rather than a tax, because of fears that the latter could encourage potential high-fliers to study abroad.

He spoke of "a graduate contribution that is progressive and fair, not necessarily a full-blown tax".

Willetts added: "A full-blown tax, which is not what the coalition is proposing, in its extreme form, would mean that because you've been to university, you pay a percentage of income for the rest of your working life."

"The risk is that people who end up in high-paid jobs in medicine or in business would have a tax burden that meant they looked, for example, at studying abroad."

Changes to student finance could come into force by next September, Willetts said.

The minister's remarks come at a time of record student numbers. Latest figures show this year's student intake will be 463,000, which is 11,000 more than last year.

However, the share of public spending on British higher education is 0.7% of GDP, below the developed-country average of 1%, with Britain lagging behind the US, Canada, Sweden, Germany, Poland and Slovenia.

Lord Browne is due to publish his findings in the coming weeks, just ahead of the government's comprehensive spending review in October, when universities are expecting deep cuts.

Professor Steve Smith, president of the vice-chancellors' umbrella group Universities UK, warned the government against squeezing university funding.

"My worry is that we may be about to make decisions that fundamentally undermine our future capacity to be a globally competitive knowledge economy," he said.

The government plans to publish a white paper on higher education, Willetts said, which will lead to a bill by autumn 2011. It is expected to look at broader questions including the status of private universities and the distinction between universities and further education colleges.

The government is keen on the idea of distance learning, which gives students the chance to save money by living at home. It is also interested in students doing university courses at a local college, with degrees awarded by a more prestigious institution. Reforms such as these could be implemented, if parliament approves, by the start of the academic year in 2012.

In his speech, Willetts also expressed concern about the numbers of bright children from struggling schools who fail to go to the best universities – estimated at 3,000 a year.

"I am particularly keen to do everything possible to identify and encourage the so-called 'missing' 3,000 teenagers who get good qualifications, often from poorly performing schools, but do not go on to our most competitive universities."

Willetts said he had asked the universities and colleges admissions service, Ucas, to track the routes young people take through education, and identify teenagers who were missing out.

He told reporters: "We believe we can identify – based particularly on their GCSEs, but not that alone – high-performing teenagers who have a good shot at some of our most competitive universities, but don't apply. Why is this happening? It may be personal choice, but they may not be aware of what's out there.

"A competitive, research-intensive university in the region could write to Joe Smith or Jill Smith and say, you've got good GCSEs, and you're at a school where even kids with good GCSEs are not likely to apply to university – have you thought of coming to our summer school? Have you thought of coming to our engineering department? At least to encourage them to think about applying."

Willetts also called for a "renewed emphasis on teaching" at universities. He said institutions that downplayed the importance of teaching students were "in danger of losing sight of their original mission".

He added: "It remains hard to shift the impression that what really counts in higher education is research. This needs to change."

The president of the National Union of Students, Aaron Porter, welcomed proposals for a graduate contribution.

He said: "Our position is quite clear, that we want a genuinely progressive graduate contribution based on earnings, not the institution or subject. David Willetts is moving in the right direction. However we do need to see much clearer detail."

• Tuition fees
• Higher education
• Students
• University funding
• Education policy
• David Willetts

Jeevan Vasagar
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Never one to give 'em what they want, Robert Plant goes his own way again, and Alexis Petridis approves

It seems surprising that Robert Plant is never considered part of rock's sexagenarian awkward squad, that select cabal of artists who've turned bewildering audiences and critics into an art form, who see pleasing the crowd as dereliction of duty. Judging by his solo career, that's where he belongs – in the old contrarians' clubhouse, basking in the sunny glow of Lou Reed's winning personality, wiping a tear of mirth from his eye as Neil Young recalls how his fans hated 2009's Fork in the Road so much they actually pleaded with his record label not to release it, nodding while Van Morrison revisits the time he decried music magazines for their "obsession with the past" during an interview to promote an album of 50s and 60s country-and-western covers.

Plant could certainly hold his own with them, at least on musical terms. No sooner had he minted a new-wave AOR style distinct from Led Zeppelin and scored a hit single with the unfortunately titled Big Log than things started to go off-road. First an album of high-camp 50s rock'n'roll covers as the Honeydrippers, then the flatly indescribable Shaken 'N Stirred: whatever Plant's fans imagined he'd end up doing in the 80s, it probably wasn't singing a song called Doo Doo a Do Do over honks of atonal synth and flailing bass. On the occasions he's acquiesced to the clamour for something Zeppelin-shaped, he's thrown some kind of curveball: singing over samples of the band on 1989's Now and Zen, enlisting Steve Albini as producer for the Page and Plant album Walking Into Clarksdale, then abandoning the reunion altogether, first to play the Queen Mary Ballroom in Dudley Zoo with the Priory of Brion, then to form Strange Sensation, the latter making Plant one of the few musicians in the world who'd rather be in a band with a bloke out of Cast than Jimmy Page. When Led Zeppelin finally did re-form, Plant appeared to go out of his way to talk the event's significance down, then coolly walked away to promote his country album with Alison Krauss, Raising Sand.

Not even Raising Sand's mammoth critical acclaim, multi-platinum sales and five Grammy awards could quell the clamour for a Led Zep reunion, much of it emanating from his former bandmates. Those who like to read deep meanings into things might feel there's something telling in his decision to resurrect the name Band of Joy for his latest solo album: originally the name of Plant and John Bonham's 60s psych-blues band, it harks back to a world in which Led Zeppelin never existed.

The preponderance of Nashville session players in Band of Joy's ranks might lead you to expect a continuation of Raising Sand's country explorations: singer Patty Griffin – her desolate voice a fascinating counterpart to the downhome warmth of Alison Krauss – and guitarist Darrell Scott have both written mainstream country hits for the Dixie Chicks. It's an idea immediately upturned by the opening cover of Los Lobos' Angel Dance. The mandolin riff in the chorus suggests it could have been performed as straight country, but instead the pretty melody is swamped in tremolo-heavy guitars: it sounds humid and mysterious. It's evidence of Band of Joy's often thrillingly tangential approach to their material, which is brilliantly chosen. You wouldn't think it based on the way he dressed in the 70s, but Plant is a man of exquisite taste, hence two tracks from slowcore band Low's 2005 album The Great Destroyer – their creepy intensity ratcheted up by guitarist Buddy Miller's opaque smears of feedback and Plant and Griffin's eerily controlled vocals – rub shoulders with a Richard Thompson song, House of Cards, a fabulous, obscure bit of mid-60s New Orleans r'n'b called Can't Buy My Love and the late Townes Van Zandt's heartbreaking final song, Harm's Swift Way. Rather than play up the song's weary pathos, the performance is straightforward, propulsive country-rock: you notice its sweet tune before the lyric's stark intimations of mortality.

At the other extreme, there's Even This Shall Pass Away: a 19th-century poem set to a clattering syncopated beat and buzzing synthesised bass, Plant's voice entwining with fragments of densely effected guitar. You could, if you squint hard, see the ghost of Led Zeppelin lurking around its sound, yet it feels like a song with its eyes fixed firmly on the future, rather than resting on past glories. Like the rest of Band of Joy, it feels more edifying than a Led Zep reunion, not just for the guy singing on it, but the listener. It's marked by the fresh excitement of mapping out new territory rather than the more craven pleasure of wallowing in nostalgia: an object lesson in the value of not giving people what they want.

Rating: 5/5

• Pop and rock
• Robert Plant
• Led Zeppelin

Alexis Petridis
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