Greeny News

Wildlife and the world's last uncontacted tribe both at risk as Mennonites turn Chaco forest into prairie-style farmlands

Hitler was said to have fled there, the Spanish conquistadores failed to penetrate it, and the only uncontacted tribe outside Amazonia lives within its borders. But now the vast Paraguayan wilderness of thorn trees, jaguars and snakes known as the Chaco is being transformed by a Christian fundamentalist sect and hundreds of Brazilian ranchers.

All countries food shortages and the rock-bottom price of land in Paraguay Chaco made the last agricultural frontier. Great series of virgin forest spike once called Latin America 'S "green hell", now turned into a prairie-style meadow to the rear of the meat to Europe and to grow biofuels for cars.

Recent satellite imagery confirmed that about one million hectares, or nearly 10%, of the virgin, dry forest in northern Paraguay has been cleared in just four years by ranchers using fire, chains and bulldozers to open up land. By comparison, Brazil claims to have nearly halted its deforestation of the Amazon.

Landowners in the Chaco, the second-largest South American forest outside the Amazon, must by law leave trees on 25% of their land but the region's remoteness and the government's lack of resources for monitoring or prosecuting law-breakers has encouraged rampant, illegal felling of the dense, slow-growing forest.

The consequence, say conservationists, including David Attenborough, is a growing ecological disaster with widespread erosion and desertification taking place in one of the world's most fragile and diverse environments.

"This is one of the last great wilderness areas left in the world. It is vital that we save the incredible biodiversity of these habitats," said Attenborough, who made some of his earliest wildlife films in the region.

The barely populated expanse of almost impenetrable forest, twice the size of the UK, is home to about 3,400 plant species, 500 bird species, 150 species of mammals, 120 species of reptiles, and 100 species of amphibians. Jaguars, pumas, giant anteaters and otters make it one of the most diverse in the world.

In November the Natural History Museum will send 60 scientists to investigate two areas of the forest. They expect to find several hundred new species.

About 20,000 Indians lived in the area for centuries but the land was never colonised by western groups until the 1930s when fundamentalist Mennonite sects from Russia and eastern Europe were given large areas, to allow them to avoid communist persecution.

As in Brazil, the indigenous people were largely wiped out and then deprived of their ancestral land.

The Mennonites, who include the traditional Amish sect of Pennsylvania, believe in a strict interpretation of the bible and often seek isolation in remote areas. But the Chaco land rush, which has seen prices rise from under $10 a hectare to over $200 in a few years, has made the sect worth at least $500m.

The large Mennonite families and powerful co-operative farm groups have bought an estimated 2m hectares of land in the Chaco. What also used to be modest meat and dairy enterprises have grown into formidable agri-businesses dominating Paraguayan livestock farming.

Mennonite communities, where an old German dialect is mostly spoken, now sport new pick-up trucks and have north American-style hypermarkets and restaurants.

"We intend to expand in the Chaco as much as the law allows. Not just physically but by making the land more productive," said Heinrich Dyck, finance director of the Neuland co-operative of Mennonite farmers based in Filadelfia, the largest Mennonite community, of 4,000 people. The co-operative is one of Paraguay's largest meat and milk exporters and owns the country's biggest slaughterhouse.

Dyck added: "Religion is at the heart of everything we do. The Christian faith is fundamental to us. God made it clear in the bible that we should take care of the land and use it as a source of sustainability and production.".

The Mennonites, who until recently paid no taxes, run their own schools and police. They have been joined in the Chaco by hundreds of Brazilian ranchers. These are mostly the descendants of German émigrés who established themselves in southern Brazil after the war. The Brazilians are now believed by government to own nearly 3m hectares.

"The Brazilians are now exporting deforestation," said one government spokesman.

The two groups, which both speak German, now control nearly a third of the Paraguayan Chaco and have rapidly developed a $100m-a-year meat and dairy agri-business which exports meat to Chile, Europe, Israel and Russia.

Ignacio Rivas, a conservationist with the Paraguayan group Guyra, said: "The fate of the Chaco lies with these groups. At this rate 75% or more of the Chaco will have disappeared in a generation. Both groups are expanding aggressively. Their style of farming is totally unsuited to the fragile soils of the Chaco and will lead only to desertification and erosion."

Mennonite and other large landowners this week defended the deforestation, arguing that it created jobs. "The Chaco was for sale a few years ago. No one wanted it. Why did not the conservationists buy it then?" said Massimo Coda, a spokesman for the Rural Association of Paraguay. "The reason why so much land is being cleared now is that we fear that more restrictions will be put on how much forest we can fell. We fear we will be stuck with a forest which pays nothing. We accept there is ecological damage, but we are prepared to leave more land forested."

A spokesman for the environment ministry said: "We know what is happening in the Chaco but there's little we can do. This land is very fragile. It will take many years to recover. The most important thing we can do is to try to conserve as much as possible. But we need the help of the international community to stop the losses in the most fragile areas."

Concern is building for the future of isolated Indian tribes. Ayoreo-Totobiegosode is the only uncontacted tribe in South America outside the Amazon, but at the beginning of this year, bulldozers hired from the shipping company Mennonites have been found illegally destroying thousands of acres of land, which they regularly use.

According to the International Organization for the survival of American fundamentalist churches helped organize "manhunts", in which large groups Totobiegosode were forcibly brought out of the woods as the end of 1986 will be converted to Christianity.

\\ "Everyone knows about Amazon, but it is one of the last unknown places on earth, and it is destroyed for the sake of a few burgers, before we even consider it. This is a short-term benefits of desertification only long-term. He will stop working as the ecosystem, if we allow this destruction to "said John Burton, CEO of Word Land Trust.

The Chaco has a history of surviving anything that man can throw at it, including war and a proposal that it become a global nuclear waste dump. During the 16th century, Spanish conquistadores tried to penetrate it but the vegetation, harsh climate, lack of water and indigenous tribes defeated them and the Chaco was largely ignored.

In 1932, following a rumoured oil strike by Shell, Bolivian troops invaded the region but were defeated by a lack of water and searing temperatures. More than 2,000 people died in the three-year war and the outlines of trenches are still clear, with pieces of metal from tanks still littering the countryside.

Researchers hope a new kind of

Sixty British and Paraguyan scientists are to spend a month in unexplored northern Chaco in a biodiversity expedition expected to discover several hundred new wildlife species.

The Natural History Museum's expedition will be the largest scientific exercise ever mounted in Paraguay and one of the most ambitious by British scientists in 30 years.

Specialists in several fields, including spiders, birds, microbes, plants, mammals, and fossils, will spend two weeks in two of the remotest northern regions, close to the Bolivian border.

The army-backed expedition of 100 scientists, cooks and logistics experts will have to endure extreme conditions. "Temperatures are expected to reach 48C, humidity will be 100%, floods are possible and mosquitoes, ticks and other biting insects are certain," said Alberto Yanosky, chief executive of the Paraguayan conservation group Gwyra, which is helping to organise the trip. "We have no idea what we might find. No one has researched these areas."

The Chaco, which stretches over nearly 240,000 sq km, is similar topographically, and in places climatically, to the Australian outback. Covering parts of Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina, it is a mix of forest, palm woodland, shrubby steppe, and swamp. It is the second largest biome in South America after Amazonia.

Hailed as 'the greatest theatre producer who ever lived' and the champion of all things beautiful, Serge Diaghilev transformed not only ballet but all the arts in the 20th century. Andrew O'Hagan welcomes the V&A's lavish celebration of his legacy

In Proust's rather newsy big novel, Mme Verdurin does not simply have her salon, she does not simply throw her party, her "Wednesdays": she puts them together "like a bird building its nest". She may be awful, but she has a captivating love of art, and she takes some trouble to make social life distinct for her small birds of paradise. In Scott Moncrieff's translation, Verdurin is "a sort of accredited representative in Paris of all foreign artists . . . an aged Fairy Godmother, grim but all-powerful, to the Russian dancers". In the last decade of his life, Proust would several times get dressed, apply his cologne, don his white gloves, and escape his clammy rooms on the Rue Hamelin to attend performances by the Ballets Russes. He went as if to greet the dawn. "This charming invasion," he wrote, "infected Paris, as we know, with a fever of curiosity less agonising, more purely aesthetic, but quite as intense perhaps as that aroused by the Dreyfus case."

Picasso was there with Jean Cocteau. Bakst was there with Benois or Stravinsky. Apollinaire was certainly there, making notes, with Satie, making comments. Braque came in. Coco Chanel whispered something to Matisse or Prokoviev or Max Reinhardt, and the person with the programme was Clive Bell, accompanying the "lovely but incredibly silly ladies" lampooned in letters by his sister-in-law Virginia Woolf. And there at the dead centre of this Risko cartoon of Modernity was the man who put it together, Serge Diaghilev, who is celebrated in a beautiful new show which has just opened at the V&A. Diaghilev was a tastemaker, a despot, a hustler and a genius: he not only "jump-started Western ballet", as the critic Joan Acocella has said, "but he staffed it". He gave Nijinsky and Pavlova to France and the world, but he also gave Marie Rambert to Great Britain, George Balanchine to America, Léonid Massine to Hollywood and Monte Carlo, and Stravinsky to himself. It might be time to say that the great avant-garde artist of the 20th century was not really an artist at all, but a producer.

Who but the world's greatest impresario could attract stage sets by Braque, costumes by Chanel and choreography by Massine, all to guide and enhance the faltering steps of a young Russian composer? Diaghilev was a businessman and a cosmopolitan who floated on ambiguity, a radical who thought only beauty could save the world. The V&A show demonstrates how the great 20th-century impulse, in the arts, was for international connection, and what was Diaghilev if not a global manager of wonder, a man who, out of his Russian beginnings, sought forms of wordless magic that could leap over borders and time zones and native conventions?

On 18 May 1922 he was looking rough at the edges. His shirts, though clean, were threadbare, and he had only £500 to his name, borrowed from the mother of Hilda Bewicke, one of his British dancers. It was the opening night of Le Renard at the Paris Opera, a ballet composed by Stravinsky and choreographed by the brilliant Nijinska, whose brother had once "paused in mid-air"â€" poor Nijinsky now insane and kept to an institution. That night, after the premiere, TS Eliot's friends Sydney and Violet Schiff threw a supper party at the Hotel Majestic to celebrate the Ballets Russes. Diaghilev, ever the man in charge of arrangements, took over the guest list. He was determined to get Picasso, Stravinsky, Joyce and Proust round one table, and he did so, in the upper room.

According to a wonderfully ripe account Picasso "exhibited his secret dandy soul by wearing a Catalan faixa above his eyes to upstage those dressed in white tie". (Les Demoiselles d'AvignonUlysses . Proust had been an admirer of Picasso's stage sets for Parade

You often hear it said that someone is like a person in a novel. But Diaghilev was like a person in many novels â€" Baron de Charlus by way of Prince Myshkin and Count Vronsky. He came to ballet late, after skirmishes with music (his compositions were dismissed by Rimsky-Korsakov), and art â€" curating, and editing a lavish fortnightly journal, The World of Art. He came to believe that ballet was the most magical of the arts, the place where sculpture and space, music and movement, painting, design, sex and death, came together. But for me the shadow of Proust's great ambition falls over him, the shadow of Joyce's, Henry James's, Nabokov's: to Diaghilev the ballet was like the novel, a place where the human spirit could find itself addressed in pattern, in rhythm and in thought; where delight abounded in a social unravelling and form evolved to become a revealing new dream of vitality. Walking through the V&A's show, you hear the wiry, kinetic frenzy of Stravinsky's Firebird , and you see flash after flash of genius â€" a shock of Matisse on the costumes for Le Chant du Rossignol; a certain inward turn of limbs in a photo of an acrobat from Parade; Nijinsky taking shape as the essence of roses, Leon Bakst 'S costumes Scheherazade ; Picasso's giant, sublime front-cloth of running women in Le Train Bleu â€" and you see that, whatever Diaghilev set out to do, he did in large measure, setting off not merely a fin-de-siècle ballet cult but an entire ferment in the culture of Europe. Several of his productions, not least The Rite of Spring, To stir up trouble, but he was a riot, and the work he produced an ongoing interruptive of the small pleasures and sedations art. You look at these works and these numbers are objects, and you're thinking: this story of a man in pursuit of a story of human ingenuity.

Born on 19 March 1872, Diaghilev grew up in Perm, at the foot of the Urals, and his childhood was one of horses and carriages and imperial winters. His best and latest biographer, Sjeng Scheijen, a Russian speaker with access to previously unpublished family letters and archives, locates an enigma in Diaghilev growing up in such a remote place, a man who was to become "the ruler of European taste during one of its finest periods of cultural blossoming â€" perhaps the greatest theatre producer who ever lived . . . a champion of beauty", emerging from a world bleaker than any in Chekhov (he would later invite Chekhov to be literary editor of his fortnightly journal). His father's money was made in vodka distilleries and lost when their monopoly ended, leaving the family bankrupt when Diaghilev was 18. The coming impresario showed his skill for organisation early, caring for his half-brothers from money left to him by his mother. He had a distant relation in Tchaikovsky, a muse in his father's new wife, his "second mother", and a lifelong family feeling about all who helped him escape into art. He attended St Petersburg in a vice of death-thoughts, and he visited Tolstoy, coming to the conclusion that "the dream and purpose of my life is to work in the field of art".

In constant contradiction with himself, Diaghilev was, as his biographer says, "trans-national and trans-sexual", a lover of the past â€" of Russian realism, formalism, nationalism â€" but with a special dispensation towards making it new. At first he wanted to exhibit the glories of European art in Russia, then he wanted to exhibit the glories of Russian art in Europe, and he did both, though the latter project would be the one that would make him famous. He and his friends, the young painters and dancers, resemble some of those in Nabokov's first novel Mary , teetering on the edges of revolution and self-invention. Even before be brought the Ballets Russes to the west, he was collecting sensibilities that might serve his project. In Paris in May 1898, he went to see Oscar Wilde with the intention of buying some of Aubrey Beardsley's erotic illustrations. "There is a young Russian here" Wilde wrote, "who is a great amateur of Aubrey's art, who would love to have one. He is a great collector, and rich. So you might send him a copy and name a price . . . His name is Serge de Diaghilew." The young Russian said to his friends that people stood on chairs as Wilde and he walked arm and arm down the Boulevard.

The self-myth-making had already begun. In this great anniversary year of the Ballets Russes, what we find when we look at Diaghilev is a great and sometimes monstrous example of the self-inventor as international guru of art. Behind him stood his mentor Tolstoy, his admirer Oscar Wilde; in front of him stood his young friend Picasso, his protégés Stravinsky, Nijinsky, Debussy and Prokoviev. And ahead of them: Balanchine and Nureyev, Nabokov and Andy Warhol, Schoenberg and Louise Bourgeois. Each was head of a school that celebrated its own discrimination. Each chose to represent the universal reach of tradition and the individual talent. Diaghilev was a new kind of artist: he was an operator as much as a beauty-maker, as savage as he was sublime. The Ballets Russes put ambiguity on a reconstituted map, and though there would always be something of the green carnation about these artists, as ballet professionals they trumped feyness with athleticism and married androgyny to paganism, an achievement that we now see lighting the way for every other aspect of popular culture.

High culture isn't what it used to be. Ballet is fighting for its life, poetry is a blood sport, and the avant garde is a joke in the Daily Mail, so what today, other than a debt of gratitude for how it revivified the arts in the 20th century, do we owe to the beautifully crazy world of the Ballets Russes? There are some small answers: the persistence of atonality and robust sexuality in orchestral music; a connection between design and movement that continues to inform innovation in the theatre; the presence of liturgical ritual, gesture and androgyny in rock and roll. But the bigger answer is to do with ballet itself as an art form, an area of endeavour going through a bad patch for my generation, but decidedly sacred, to some of us, as a hall of mirrors to the human imagination. Diaghilev made dance part of the modern mindset, and he continues to make it so, wherever the investment is able to be made. I can't see a ballet, or a fashion show, or an art installation, or a frieze, without thinking of Diaghilev and the connections he made possible. Stravinsky, in old age, credited the Ballets Russes with "the development of choreographic art in the entire world". When Bonnard was asked about the influence of the Ballets Russes, he said, "But they influence everyone."

Diaghilev's world, of course, was full of other changes, and after 1917 he would never be allowed home. His base of operations became Monte Carlo. You sometimes wonder how all these scarf-fluttering, slipperette-wearing individuals avoided the agonies of the first world war and the Russian revolution. The answer might be that they responded to public tumult at the level of style, which is pretty much all you can ask of artists anyhow. They represented their own vanguard and their own campaign against barbarity, doing it by leaps and with dressmakers' scissors, which doesn't make them war heroes but makes them what they are. Diaghilev, in accordance with decadent tradition, drank champagne during the first world war, and made do with his own plots and incendiaries. But while the squeals went up from the orchestra pit and the bourgeoisie chewed their fists, his own brother Valentin was taken to the Solovki prison camp, where eventually he was murdered. Stalin removed Valentin's son in 1937 to the mines of Solinsk as a designated enemy of the people.

Culture was threatening in those days. The more talented took risks, and sometimes others paid the price, but Diaghilev himself never stopped believing the Ballets Russes could fulfil a promise he once made to his mother from Venice. "All that is real," he wrote, "is in constant contact with magic and mystery." He took it for granted that political power alone could not answer life's mysteries, though he himself was mad on power. That was his personal contradiction, but what he made, and what he left, was a charming vision of otherness, a compendium of how to live and dream of perfection.

Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes, 1909-1929, Victoria & Albert Museum, London SW7 until 9 January 2011. 'Extra' members get a 20% discount on full-price tickets. guardian.co.uk/extra

Greeny NEWS

Plus: Ships named after clubs (2); Live musical football soundtracks (2); and third-choice Peter Shilton. Send your questions and answers to knowledge@guardian.co.uk and follow the Knowledge on Twitter at twitter.com/TheKnowledge_GU

"After Kevin Davies was called up to the England squad, I was wondering who the oldest ever international debutant might be," poses Tony Hurley.

Even at 33 years old, Tony, Davies is still some way short of the English record. At the age of 38 Leslie Compton became this country's oldest post-war debutant on 15 November 1950, when he won the first of his two caps during a 4-2 Home International Championship win over Wales at Roker Park. He is also the oldest outfield debutant, but even he arrived later on the scene than the all-time England record holder, Alec Morten.

Morten's date of birth is disputed with some sources citing 15 November 1831 and others suggesting it was not until 1832. Either way, though, his age at death (68 in February 1900) confirms that he could not have been younger than 41 (and may have been as old as 42) when he captained England in only their second official game, against Scotland at Kennington Oval in London on 8 March 1873. Coincidentally, the game also finished 4-2 to the home side.

We haven't managed to find any older debutants from other countries, but if you know of one then drop us a line at knowledge@guardian.co.uk

SHIPS NAMED AFTER FOOTBALL CLUBS (2)

Last week we listed major football clubs who have had ships named after them but it seems there may be even more out there than we first realised. We've included a few more suggestions below, though first of all we'd like to revisit one of the ships mentioned last week â€" a vessel called Aston Villa.

"There is a story about this ship that may interest you," begins Pete Moxon and he's not wrong. "During the second world war she was requisitioned by the navy and became HMS Aston Villa, and was part of the fleet that responded to the German invasion of Norway. On 30 April 1940 she was struck by German dive bombers, and eight of the 38 crew were killed. She sank off the coast of Norway on 3 May 1940."

More information can be found on the HMS Aston Villa here and here, but it wasn't the only ship with a familiar name to see service. "I seem to remember reading somewhere that Tottenham supporters raised enough money during WWII to buy a battleship for the Royal Navy, called the HMS Hotspur," writes Paris Goursoyannis. "This one was apparently bought with those funds and nicknamed 'Tottenham'. Is this really what happened?"

You're not far off Paris. The Royal Navy has had four different HMS Hotspurs down the years but the version to which you refer was launched in 1936, and went on to serve in the second world war. The name did not initially have anything to do with Tottenham but in 1942, as part of the British National Savings campaign â€" in which the public were asked to donate money to help the war effort â€" residents of Tottenham decided to pool their funds and "adopt" the ship (although presumably not all necessarily cared about the local team).

Many other communities across the country did the same during Warship Week, raising huge sums which were spent on repairing and refitting the ships they had adopted, as well as running costs. People who had raised money would often send letters and gifts to the crew, and as this account notes, the "ladies in Tottenham knitted woollies for the crew of their adopted ship".

Claus Moser alerts us to the steamship Hertha, which, rather than being named after Hertha Berlin, actually provided the German club's name in the first place. "The name was suggested by one of the club's founders (as were the ship's blue and white colours, and the flag, which is part of the club crest) because he had spent a recent weekend cruise on it, and his partners couldn't come up with a better one," explains Claus. "Like the club, the ship subsequently had a history of ups and downs.

"She was built in 1886 and in service well into the 20th century, mostly travelling on lake, canal and river cruises across Berlin. Then in East Germany, she was renamed Seid Bereit."

Peter Hands alerted us to ER Bayern, launched this August in Korea by none other than Heidi Beckenbauer, wife to Der Kaiser himself. Dietmar Lang, meanwhile, points out the ship named Werder Bremen that, as he puts it, "simply can't refrain from entering the Port of Hamburg".

Any more for any more? Drop us a line at knowledge@guardian.co.uk

FOOTBALL SCORES (2)

Another topic discussed last week was the idea of putting football to music. We relayed how Nigel Kennedy put together a semi-improvised performance in front of a silent screening of Poland's 1973 World Cup qualifying draw with England as part of his Polish Weekend event in May this year, but Ben Cottrell wrote in to point out that it's all been done before.

"The Vortex jazz club in Dalston has run improv gigs for loads of matches at the last two World Cups," he says. The performers react live to the action on the screen, mixing improvised riffs with more familiar tunes, and generally receiving positive reviews.

Ben alerted us to a Time Out interview with Billy Jenkins, the man behind the shows at the Vortex jazz club, in which reference is made to performances dating back to 1998. "Most memorable was a gig in a Deptford pub during the 1998 World Cup that coincided with the Iran v USA fixture," writes Time Out's John Lewis. "Jenkins's band played the role of the United States (playing Duane Eddy riffs) while Stuart Hall's tongue-in-cheek world music band Orquestra Mahatma played Iran (ululating horns, Persian ghazals, hypnotic Middle Eastern rhythms and so on)."

KNOWLEDGE ARCHIVE

\\ "In England 'S Group game against Morocco to Mexico, 86 Bryan Robson got off injured and threw bandages to Ray Wilkins. But Butch was sent shortly after for throwing the ball at work, so that those who took the captain "S bandage? " asked Ruth Relfe in 2007.

Easy answer here Ruth, or at least it was for the all-knowing FA historian David Barber. Ray handed the armband over to goalkeeper Peter Shilton â€" unsurprisingly, it was the first time more than two players had worn the England captain's armband in the same match.

For many more sepia-tinged questions and answers, why not visit the Knowledge archive?

Can you help?

"My quiz team-mate was telling me how caught Marsh bowled Lillee (c Marsh b Lillee, the way it would go down in the scoring books) was the most common form of dismissal in cricket until it was replaced by lbw Akram," writes Tamizhmarai. "This made me wonder what it would be for football. If we came up with a form of notation in football, say, assist X goal Y, then which would be the most common form of goal scoring in football?"

"During the City-Newcastle MBM Steven Thomas wrote in and asked how many British players have had their legs broken this season. This got me thinking. Are there differing injury rates between different leagues? If so, do they support the perception that football is 'harder' in the British leagues? Has anyone ever studied this?" ponders Tom Baird.

"Local Notts newspapers are positively buzzing with the news that Mansfield may be afforded city status," writes Tom Parry. "Has any club ever changed their name because of a change in their status? Will Mansfield Town become Mansfield City?"

Send your questions and answers to knowledge@guardian.co.uk and follow the Knowledge on Twitter at twitter.com / TheKnowledge_GU .

Plus: Ships named after clubs (2); Live musical football soundtracks (2); and third-choice Peter Shilton. Send your questions and answers to knowledge@guardian.co.ukand subsequent knowledge on Twitter at twitter.com / TheKnowledge_GU

"After Kevin Davies was called up to the England squad, I was wondering who the oldest ever international debutant might be," poses Tony Hurley.

Even at 33 years old, Tony, Davies is still some way short of the English record. At the age of 38 Leslie Compton became this country's oldest post-war debutant on 15 November 1950, when he won the first of his two caps during a 4-2 Home International Championship win over Wales at Roker Park. He is also the oldest outfield debutant, but even he arrived later on the scene than the all-time England record holder, Alec Morten.

Morten's date of birth is disputed with some sources citing 15 November 1831 and others suggesting it was not until 1832. Either way, though, his age at death (68 in February 1900) confirms that he could not have been younger than 41 (and may have been as old as 42) when he captained England in only their second official game, against Scotland at Kennington Oval in London on 8 March 1873. Coincidentally, the game also finished 4-2 to the home side.

We haven't managed to find any older debutants from other countries, but if you know of one then drop us a line at knowledge@guardian.co.uk

SHIPS NAMED Football Clubs (2)

Last week we listed the major football clubs, who had ships named after them but it seems there may be even more out there than we first realised. We've included a few more suggestions below, though first of all we'd like to revisit one of the ships mentioned last week â€" a vessel called Aston Villa.

"There is a story about this ship that may interest you," begins Pete Moxon and he's not wrong. "During the second world war she was requisitioned by the navy and became HMS Aston Villa, and was part of the fleet that responded to the German invasion of Norway. On 30 April 1940 she was struck by German dive bombers, and eight of the 38 crew were killed. She sank off the coast of Norway on 3 May 1940."

More information can be found on the HMS Aston Villa here and here, but it wasn't the only ship with a familiar name to see service. "I seem to remember reading somewhere that Tottenham supporters raised enough money during WWII to buy a battleship for the Royal Navy, called the HMS Hotspur," writes Paris Goursoyannis. "This one was apparently bought with those funds and nicknamed 'Tottenham'. Is this really what happened?"

You're not far off Paris. The Royal Navy has had four different HMS Hotspurs down the years but the version to which you refer was launched in 1936, and went on to serve in the second world war. The name did not initially have anything to do with Tottenham but in 1942, as part of the British National Savings campaign â€" in which the public were asked to donate money to help the war effort â€" residents of Tottenham decided to pool their funds and "adopt" the ship (although presumably not all necessarily cared about the local team).

Many other communities across the country did the same during Warship Week, raising huge sums which were spent on repairing and refitting the ships they had adopted, as well as running costs. People who had raised money would often send letters and gifts to the crew, and as this account notes, the "ladies in Tottenham knitted woollies for the crew of their adopted ship".

Claus Moser alerts us to the steamship Hertha, which, rather than being named after Hertha Berlin, actually provided the German club's name in the first place. "The name was suggested by one of the club's founders (as were the ship's blue and white colours, and the flag, which is part of the club crest) because he had spent a recent weekend cruise on it, and his partners couldn't come up with a better one," explains Claus. "Like the club, the ship subsequently had a history of ups and downs.

"She was built in 1886 and in service well into the 20th century, mostly travelling on lake, canal and river cruises across Berlin. Then in East Germany, she was renamed Seid Bereit. "

Peter Hands warned us that the ER Bavaria, launched in August this year in Korea is nothing but Heidi Beckenbauer, Der Kaiser's wife herself. Dietmar Lang, meanwhile, points to the vessel named "Bremen", which according to him, "just can 't refrain from entering the port of Hamburg".

Any more for any more? Drop us a line at knowledge@guardian.co.uk

FOOTBALL SCORES (2)

Another topic was discussed last week was the idea of putting a football music. We passed as Nigel Kennedy collect semi-impromptu performance before the screening of silent Poland "From 1973 World Cup draw with England in its Polish event weekend in May this year, but Ben Cottrell wrote in a note that" it's all been done earlier.

\\ "Vortex Jazz Club in Dalston ended improvisation gigs for loads of matches in the last two world championships" he says. Artists react live to the action on screen, blending improvised riffs from the more familiar tunes, and generally receive positive feedback.

"Putting World Cup footie to music proved highly feasible," wrote Jack Massarick in London's Evening Standard of the performance during England's 1-1 draw with the USA this summer. "Numbers chimed surprisingly often with the onfield action. Luck Be a Lady Tonight (at kick-off) was soon followed by Land of Hope and Glory (Gerrard's goal), the Hokey Cokey â€" put your left leg in, shake it all about (Milner carded for a foul) and Greensleeves (at Rob Green's gift equaliser, though many would have preferred You Need Hands)."

Ben alerted us to a Time Out interview with Billy Jenkins, the man behind the shows at the Vortex jazz club, in which reference is made to performances dating back to 1998. "Most memorable was a gig in a Deptford pub during the 1998 World Cup that coincided with the Iran v USA fixture," writes Time Out's John Lewis. "Jenkins's band played the role of the United States (playing Duane Eddy riffs) while Stuart Hall's tongue-in-cheek world music band Orquestra Mahatma played Iran (ululating horns, Persian ghazals, hypnotic Middle Eastern rhythms and so on)."

KNOWLEDGE ARCHIVE

"During England's group game against Morocco at Mexico 86, Bryan Robson came off injured and threw the armband to Ray Wilkins. But Butch was sent off shortly after for throwing the ball at the ref, so who took the captain's armband?"asked Ruth Relfe in 2007.

Easy answer here Ruth, or at least it was for the all-knowing FA historian David Barber. Ray handed the armband over to goalkeeper Peter Shilton â€" unsurprisingly, it was the first time more than two players had worn the England captain's armband in the same match.

For many more sepia-tinged questions and answers, why not visit the Knowledge archive?

Can you help?

"I was quite surprised to attend a match at my local club, Wisla Krakow, who were playing PKS Slask (from Wroclaw) in the Polish first division," writes Roger Mackin. "I was a bit worried about dangerous hooligan action but I was told beforehand that the hooligans of these two teams were 'friends'. And it was true. They proceeded to sing each others' songs and included a cute 'Wisla i Wroclaw' number. Do other clubs have such a love affair going on whilst in the same (top) division? It seems unlikely but there must be a precedent. Having said that, I can't imagine English fans singing 'Stoke and Fulham, la la la la la.'"

"During the City-Newcastle MBM Steven Thomas wrote in and asked how many British players have had their legs broken this season. This got me thinking. Are there differing injury rates between different leagues? If so, do they support the perception that football is 'harder' in the British leagues? Has anyone ever studied this?" ponders Tom Baird.

"Local Notts newspapers are positively buzzing with the news that Mansfield may be afforded city status," writes Tom Parry. "Has any club ever changed their name because of a change in their status? Will Mansfield Town become Mansfield City?"

Send your questions and answers to knowledge@guardian.co.uk and follow the Knowledge on Twitter at twitter.com/TheKnowledge_GU.

Treasury chief secretary Danny Alexander insists in interview that emergency budget has been fair but warns of more cuts

A clampdown on tax avoidance among the super rich is to be announced at the Liberal Democrat conference next week as part of a drive to show that Nick Clegg's party remains committed to fairness.

David Cameron has given the Lib Dems clearance to announce introduction of measures against tax avoidance. The Treasury held back from any move in the budget in June to allow consultation.

With the left of the party anxious ver some parts of the coalition's programme, Clegg is expected to deliver "a chin up, chest out" speech, emphasising that distinctive Liberal Democrat policies are being put into action for the first time in the party's history.

Before the election the Liberal Democrats estimated that a general anti-avoidance rule could raise £2.1bn in corporation tax per year, but many see such a proposal as too intrusive and likely to hand the Inland Revenue excessive powers. A review into non-domicile tax status has yet to be completed.

Alexander drew fire in August for appointing Sir Philip Green, the Monaco-based billionaire retailer, to oversee a government efficiency review. today, while defending the appointment, he also said: "I hold no candle for Sir Philip."

Sir Philip has been criticised for the way his Topshop and BHS family business is largely owned by his wife, Tina, who lives in Monaco. Although he pays tax in the UK, the arrangement is thought to save them tens of millions of pounds in tax.

The Treasury on Thursday condemned the UK's staggering £42bn tax gap, the difference between tax collected and tax that should in theory or in law be collected.

Alexander, overseeing the most difficult spending round since the war, regards taking on tax avoidance as vital to show the government is spreading fairly the responsibility for tackling the deficit.

In the face of polls showing support for the coalition deficit programme is dropping, Alexander issued an uncompromising message, saying: "This has to be done. We inherited from the previous government the largest structural deficit in Europe. Public finances had never been this bad in modern times. This year the government was spending £150bn more than we raised in taxation. Under Labour, for every £4 spent, £1 had to be borrowed. That is not a sustainable situation."

He conceded that some cuts due to be announced on 20 October were going to be "very, very difficult" for some people. "Some things people value are going to have be cut, and, yes, some things will have to end."

Axlexander also claimed the coalition had a mandate from the electorate to eradicate the structural deficit by 2015, saying "there is a widespread understanding for what we are doing". He argued: "When we came into office, there was a serious danger inside the eurozone â€" questions were being asked about the ability of countries to pay off their debt.

\\ "Those kinds of questions can be asked to start from the UK. We took the country from the danger zone, by acting quickly."

He also defended the fairness of the emergency budget and his approach to the spending round. "If you look at what we've done from April 1, 900,000 low-paid workers will no longer pay income tax, a first step to a £10,000 tax-free threshold. There is a pay freeze where people who earn less than £21,000 will still get a pay rise.

"We've increased capital gains tax. We have reintroduced the earnings link for pensions. Labour had 13 years to do this and we have done this in 13 weeks. So I am not going to take any lecture on fairness from Labour."

The central figure in the talks coaliton in dramatic days after the election, he denied any suggestion that both sides can join or create an informal pact in the next election. He knew the government would have to make some very unpopular decisions, but he denied his party was losing its identity.

"I think what the government set out to do over five years was a blend â€" I'd say a pretty even blend â€" of Lib Dem and Conservative ideas. People will have to judge us over 5 years. People will have to judge what we said we were going to deliver. We have been effective in doing that."

Next week 'S UN summit will be determined ambitious plans to protect life on Earth. But if the U.S. ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity to halt the bout of losses will be even tougher

• Join the Guardian's Biodiversity 100 campaign

If the world has been reminded of anything through the tragedy of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, it is that biodiversity and the health of ecosystems is neither an abstract scientific concept nor the pet project of a green elite. Biodiversity and healthy ecosystems are the vital underpinnings of human society.

Food and energy production on land and from the sea; medicine; tourism, and real estate: these industries and many others have been shown to be starkly vulnerable to the destruction of marine and terrestrial ecosystems. And yet, while the link between biodiversity and human well-being is better understood now than ever before, the news from the frontlines of the global effort to preserve the world's biodiversity is bleak. The web of life that we all rely on for our very survival is being torn apart at an increasingly alarming rate and action to address this global crisis is still distressingly lacking and slow.

Our failure to act might be attributed, in part, to the misperception that preserving the world's biodiversity is a legacy issue, one to be addressed in the future. But the conclusions of the third edition of the Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO3), Basic Assessment Report issued in May this year under the Convention on Biological Diversity , put that misapprehension to rest. Drawing on 120 national reports from parties to this unique legal treaty aimed at protecting life on earth, it soberly warns that without collective action, our ecosystems will approach tipping-points, putting human lives and livelihoods, as well as such irreplaceable services as air and water purification, the renewal of soil fertility, and climate stabilisation at risk of irreversible degradation and collapse.

While the poor are particularly vulnerable, no one on earth is immune from the negative impacts of deforestation, species extinction, the collapse of coral reefs, loss of fresh water lakes, and ocean acidification. An estimated 1 billion people in developing countries depend upon fish as their primary source of food. However, 80% of the world's fisheries are fully or over-exploited. As biologists from Stanford University, California, have said: "The idea that economic growth is independent of environmental health, and that humanity can therefore indefinitely expand its physical economy, is a dangerous delusion." Therefore, only through sustained conservation will future generations of the developed and developing worlds meet their food, health, energy and security needs.

This autumn, there are two important moments in our attempt to create a new paradigm for a global response to the world's biodiversity challenges. On 22 September, in observance of the International Year of Biodiversity, world leaders will call for the introduction of sustainable practices in land and resource use, an increase in protected areas around the world, and for plans to reconcile development with conservation.

For the first time at the UN Heads of State and Government and officials from its 192 Member States will hold meetings devoted solely to biodiversity crisis.

In October, the summit of Nagoya Biodiversity will take place in Aichi prefecture, Japan. There, the 193 parties to the convention on biological diversity will adopt a new strategic plan for 2011-2020, containing new targets for 2020 and a new biodiversity vision for 2050.

Meaningful success in this effort will require the full commitment of all nations, and here, the US falls sadly short of the mark. The US is, inexcusably, one of only three countries that have not ratified full acceptance of the convention.

President Obama firmly stated his commitment to solving the world 'S environmental crisis. At the UN summit on climate change in Copenhagen at the end of last year, the president referred to "Our responsibility to leave our children and grandchildren are cleaner and safer planet".

As the most comprehensive biodiversity treaty to date, the convention will provide a unique opportunity for the president to fulfil these responsibilities and inspire the renewed dedication of the global community.

We urge him to aggressively pursue the process of US ratification. Let's all look forward to the moment that the US rejoins the champions of biodiversity and formally dedicates itself as a nation to preserving and protecting life on earth.

• Edward Norton, an actor and a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Biodiversity appointed by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon .

Copyright: IPS

Greeny NEWS

'We had little in France, but we have nothing in Romania', say Gypsy families forced from their adopted home

On the approach to Barbulesti the highway dissolves into gravel and dust. For Romica Raducanu the village in which he was born and brought up feels like the end of the world. His hopes of a new life are for now a distant dream and he is stuck here. Only his T-shirt gives away the place he considers home: emblazoned over stripes red, white and blue is one word â€" France.

Until three weeks ago Raducanu was living on the outskirts of Montpellier in southern France, eking out a living for his wife and children by collecting scrap metal and selling it on for seven centimes (6p) a kilo. Then, after a summer of growing unease, the crackdown ordered by President Nicolas Sarkozy hit home. Friends were ordered to leave, and the pictures he was seeing in the newspapers became too much. Raducanu was scared.

If you do not take the money available to him as part of "Voluntary Repatriation" scheme - it Didn 'I understand the work, he says, so he Didn' t sign them - 35-year-old and his wife packed their family in the car and went along with the other departing Roma to travel over 1000 miles in Romania.

A day later he heard that the police had come to clear away his former home. Now, in the dilapidated surrounds of his new one, he is bitter and depressed.

Vichy comparison

Extreme commentary in the same spirit provoked anger this week at the Elysee Palace, where French President fumed over the comparisons made by Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Justice, between the onset of summer and the persecution of Jews during the Second World War.

But, incendiary as these remarks may be, the vehemence of Raducanu's anger is perhaps understandable. For, he says, while he had little in France, he has nothing in Barbulesti.

Since the end of July, when Sarkozy made a speech in Grenoble outlining his tough new approach on crime and immigration â€"the two themes, he implied, were inextricably linked â€" about 1,000 foreign Roma have left France, mostly for Romania and mostly under a scheme offering €300 (£250) for each adult and €100 for each child returning to their native country.

About 200 non-authorised Roma camps have been cleared, as well as hundreds of traveller sites occupied mostly by French citizens. However, a leaked circular, since amended to avoid singling out an ethnicity, stated that the Roma were the chief targets of the evacuations.

For many French and other Western Europeans, who have seen the poverty in which many Roma live in the cities of Marseille to Milan to Madrid, and their desire to remain unknown.

Yet most of the 7,500 Roma in Barbulesti, a predominantly Gypsy village 50 miles north-east of Bucharest, say that a life in the wealthy west offers chances unimaginable in their native Romania, where the vast majority are trapped in a cycle of discrimination, unemployment and poverty.

And, as long as this remains the case, they say, they have no intention of staying put. Ever a nomadic people, they will be on the move again soon.

Raducanu, an EU citizen entirely conscious of his right to free movement within the bloc, is already planning his return. "I can't wait to get back, to work. There is nothing to do here. Hunger. No work. I will go back," he says. Later, in a flourish of the language he had learned to love, he adds: "C'est très dur, la vie." Life is very hard.

Appearances

At first sight, it is difficult to understand why Raducanu and his fellow villagers feel this way. With its large, villa-like houses in bright shades of reds, oranges and greens, Barbulesti looks from far off like a Disneyesque hamlet rising from the acres of flat, drab Romanian scrubland. Children wander, rucksacks on their backs, home from school; many roofs have satellite dishes and expensive cars are parked in driveways.

Compared with some of the squats Roma in France, these houses appear healthful.

Appearances, however, can be deceptive. In one house in the centre of the village carved lion heads sit proudly atop wrought-iron gates and the back garden is shaded from the sun by trellises threaded with vines.

But, inside, the reality of living standards becomes clear. The villa is clean and tidy- but its four rooms are home to four families. "Seven people live in here," says Stylian, a 34-year-old man who did not want his surname to be published. "And six in here."

Throughout the house, open wires run precariously over ceilings and walls, and the cheer of paint in electric pink and lime green cannot mask the fact that the mud walls and wattle-and-daub roofs are badly in need of repair. The kitchen, used to feed more than 20 people, is open to the stony ground, and the fridge is virtually bare.

A decades-old well brings up water, and the single toilet is a hole in the ground in an outhouse. "We wash it, we keep it clean," says Stylian. As he speaks, children play on the rusting hulk of a climbing frame next to a pig sty. The pigs are long gone.

But he insists that his lack of success was not due to lack of effort: he had tried his utmost to work legally, he says, but to no avail.

One of the features, like an apple-picker have been particularly successful. "The documents were left in the prefecture, the apples remain on the tree, and we left" he jokes.

When asked about the trigger for his return a fortnight ago, however, Stylian's smile vanishes and his voice begins to boom around the driveway. "I don't agree with these [forced or voluntary] returns. It's racism," he says, describing how, frightened by the political climate and police threats of expulsion, he eventually left of his own accord.

Before Sarkozy, he says, there was less prejudice against the Roma in France than in Romania. "But now they're both the same." Were it not for the fact that, at home, "you can work all day and not make enough to eat", he says, there would be no reason to go anywhere else. "Nobody would leave then. Who wants to leave their home?"

In a statement earlier this year, human rights group Amnesty International issued an urgent appeal, warning that the government should stop them "forced evictions" Roma "to immediately move the" living in the " hazardous conditions "to the margins of society.

After a summer in which the plight of France's estimated foreign Roma, estimated to number between 15,000 and 20,000, came under the spotlight as never before, those words are all-too familiar.

Nevertheless, the statement was not directed at Paris, but in Bucharest and living conditions have not been described those aliens in a foreign country, but the Romanian citizens in Romania.

\\ "Throughout the country, Romani families evicted from their homes against their will. When this happens, they are Don 'T just lose their homes. They are losing their property, their social contacts, their access to jobs and public services, "Galya said Gowan, Amnesty 'in Europe and Central Asia Program Director, introduced in January.

With unofficial estimates pinning the number of Roma in Romania at 2.2 million, the minority makes up about 10% of the country's total population. Yet, say human rights groups, the Roma are routinely ignored and pushed out of the mainstream, their needs not met and their voice not heard.

According to Amnesty, endemic prejudice leads to discrimination from the authorities as well as society at large, while the statistics speak for themselves: 75% of Roma live in poverty, compared with 24% of Romanians and 20% of ethnic Hungarians. Unemployment is far higher than the norm, and life expectancy is significantly lower.

For all these reasons â€" not to mention the economic ties that have deepened since EU accession in 2007 â€" the Romanian government has been careful in its reaction to the Sarkozy crackdown. As the French have repeatedly pointed out, Bucharest is in no position to judge: if it weren't for its failure to integrate the Roma, they argue, the "problem" would not be so acute elsewhere in Europe.

Mild rebuke

However, the relatively mild diplomatic rebuke issued by President Traian Basescu, who, although he said the French "understands" its position, insists that Romanians have a right "to travel without restrictions within the European Union "there is considerable anger.

"It's obviously a discriminatory position. It is not normal to expel people collectively," says Ilie Dinca, head of the National Agency for the Roma (ANR), a government body set up to try to secure funding for Roma-related projects. He is impressed, he says, with the "belated but good" line taken by Reding this week. The commissioner has since apologised for the delay.

And, in a reflection of the confusion expressed by many people in Barbulesti, he adds that he has "a big question mark over the paperwork" returning Roma had been asked to sign in France relating to the "voluntary repatriation" schemes. "Because they weren't given a copy of what they signed," Dinca says.

The ANR is at the forefront of government efforts to solve the Roma problem. In the past decade a number of projects designed to facilitate integration and boost living standards have emerged, from the appointment of special health and education "mediators" designed to communicate on behalf of the Roma, to positive discrimination measures in Romanian high schools.

On top of the €22m received from the state, Dinca says, €90m comes from Brussels to go towards various NGOs and Roma-related institutions.

And yet no one â€" in Bucharest, Brussels, or least of all Barbulesti â€" believes it is making a lot of difference.

For Viorel-Vivari Banescu, a teacher at a mainstream Romanian school near Barbulesti, the one thing that could change things is education. The most important thing the state can do, he says, is provide retraining opportunities for adult Roma and classes for their children. "They have a tendency to self-victimise, to say 'I don't have a job because I'm a Gypsy,'" he says. "But that's not true. He doesn't have a job because he doesn't have any training."

Pacing the ground in the town, Banescu tries to recruit 14-year-old Posirca Marian, who has been skipping class, a common problem in the local school, which has the county's biggest number of pupils on paper but in practice sees high absenteeism.

Parents receive €10 from the state for every child they have in school, but often say they still can't afford the kit required for attendance. "I want to make him my champion and get him through the 7th and 8th grade," says the teacher.

Over in the Raducanu family's backyard, lines of tiny socks and vests hang out to dry in the sun, and indoors Romica's wife, Simona-Mariana, struggles with the couple's restless brood of toddlers. They are a family of nine living in a two-room house with no proper kitchen.

As he strides up to the paint-chipped door, the village's vice-mayor, Lita Vasile, snatches a pear out of the mouth of five-year-old Jacob. It is half-rotten. "This is what we're eating," he exclaims, brandishing the fruit in his hand. "Sarkozy should think about the basic rights. His [Raducanu's] kids have nothing to eat today."

Unlike many of his more bombastic, heavyset friends, Raducanu is a slight young man who speaks quietly, in both French and Romanian, of the "great" people of Montpellier, of the "respectful" French police, and his life there, where, in the embodiment of Sarkozy's work ethic, he "got up early and even worked Sundays".

It can provide more for his family than here, "he says, as squeals come through the bedroom window. What are his hopes for the future? "That I will return to France to give them something."