Crony Capitalism, Corporate State Log
Archive of Earlier Reports
Lloyds bankers relax at luxury spa
Taxpayer fund social Darwinist training course
It's a tough job working for a bailed-out bank that owes the taxpayer about £20bn – so exhausting, indeed, that Lloyds Banking Group dispatched a dozen top bosses on a luxury spa break at Champneys designed to teach them to eat like an executive and learn how to be more effective "hunter-gatherers in the corporate jungle".
The celebrity spa resort created a "bespoke programme" to prevent the executives from "bail out, burn out or being booted out".
The bank is just under 40% owned by the UK taxpayer ...
Tim Bean, the celebrity trainer who designed Lloyds' personally tailored programme ... said one seminar, called Hunter-Gatherers in the Corporate Jungle, was designed to "re-equip them with the skills of alpha males and females" ...
Gdn 17 May 2012
Remploy bidders offered wage subsidy
Government announces £10m concession in attempt to firm up bids for 36 loss-making factories under threat of closure ...
JonDess 17 May 2012 5:02PM So the much vaunted private sector that will expand to replace public sector jobs isn't interested unless heavily bribed to take over these factories. Whats the likelihood that once the taxpayer has been milked by the private owners they will dump the disabled workers and asset strip the factories then sell them for building space?Gdn 17 May 2012
Lucrative contract awarded to Eton crony of Cameron's
"In light of the close friendship between Octavius Black, Michael Gove and David Cameron, it is important that we understand what discussions Mr Black had with members of the Government's inner circle on this policy," said Kevin Brennan MP, Labour's shadow Schools Minister.
"We also need to know whether Mr Black stands to gain from this arrangement.
"David Cameron and Michael Gove have real questions to answer about how this contract was awarded. We need to know that there was a fair and open tendering process, and we need reassurance proper safeguards were put in place to prevent any conflict of interest."
Downing Street said it had decided to make the voucher scheme available to all parents to ensure that it is not seen to stigmatise "problem parents".
Lessons will cover discipline, diet, exercise, coping with family rows, good manners, bullying, reading bedtime stories and preparing children for school.
The trial schemes will be in Middlesbrough, Camden in north London and High Peak in Derbyshire. Parent Gym is a registered contractor in Camden ...
Ind 14 May 2012Parent Gym
Octavius Black
MPs consider RBS and Lloyds options
An influential committee of MPs will on Tuesday hold a hearing into the potential sale of the taxpayers' stakes in Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group, as fears grow that the public could be left with a multibillion-pound loss on the shares ...
There is speculation that a 29% stake in RBS could be sold for 35p a share to investors in Abu Dhabi.
Shares were bought by taxpayers at 50p ...
Gdn 13 May 2012How to free RBS from state ownership
In which Brown's old crony, Lord Myners, argues the case for selling RBS shares at a loss to the taxpayer ....
Duncan1 | February 23 4:20pm ...
Disgraceful... the bank should liquidate all assets and return the £45 billion to the taxpayer immediately ( if sufficient funds are not found the shareholders should be made liable for the debt to the taxpayer and private assets seized to make up the difference)
A greater transfer of public to private wealth has not occurred in history...
Where is capitalism, survival of the fittest, market forces??? This is disgusting socialism of the worst kind...
Privatise profits, socialise losses.
Heads should roll.... literally. Make all bankers personally liable for losses.
Our children will die in poverty if these men have their way.
"And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." Thomas JeffersonFT
Lord Myners given 'full disclosure' about Sir Fred Goodwin's 'enormous' pension
London 2012: army to use 'sonic weapon' on Thames during Olympics
"As part of the military contribution to the police-led security effort to ensure a safe and secure games, a broad range of assets and equipment is being used by our armed forces," the MoD spokesman added.
"This includes the LRAD which will be deployed during the Olympic Games primarily to be used in the loud hailer mode as part of the measures to achieve a maritime stop on the Thames."
Gdn 12 May 2012London 2012
Terra Firma care homes takeover triggers MPs' calls for tighter regulation
IDS's squalid ultra-right 'thinktank' should be attacking the 'private equity barons' not rationing the social state.
Politicians have called for care home owners to face a fit and proper persons test and submit their business plans for scrutiny to avoid a second Southern Cross-style collapse.
It comes as private equity baron Guy Hands prepares to become the owner of the biggest care homes provider in the country, with responsibility for 25,000 elderly residents.
The £820m purchase of Four Seasons Healthcare by Hands' Terra Firma will see the care home group's debt cut from £780m to £525m, but there are concerns Hands will deploy sale and leaseback tactics which he has used in the past ...
Gdn 06 May 2012 Archive: Southern CrossTerra Firma Buys Four Seasons
Southern Cross's incurably flawed business model let down the vulnerable
Should Guy Hands be barred from Britain?
Hinchingbrooke hospital: three months into treatment, what's the prognosis?
Yes, this one IS from the Guardian, not the Telegraph or The Times ...
... the "engine room" of Circle comes from outside the NHS.
Steve Melton, the head of mobilisation ... came to Circle from Argos.
He says Hinchingbrooke will be a "Sainsbury's Local or Tesco Express to bigger hospitals. We believe local people expect to find services within their community.
"Just like consumers don't want to go 45 minutes' drive out of town for bread, they will come to us for routine operations." ...blairsnemesisGdn 03 May 2012
3 May 2012 8:57PM
I also noted in another thread that experience shows that private companies that get involved in public services (where demand is always there and choices inevitably limited), invariably squeeze staff and reduce service quality.
My mum gets home care from a private company - the council contracts private companies to provide the care. These companies put in the lowest possible bid to win the contract and then hammer the staff to recover profits for the board/shareholders. There is huge staff in the company that deals with my mum, not least because the company recently axed petrol payments for the journeys carers make between patients.
Most are also on minimum wage or close to it. The quality of staff (and service) is getting worse because the company can't recruit suitable people at the wages they pay.
But the council does not care - they get a cheap deal and they do not care about the quality of care. The process of selecting the care company is based solely on the cost the care company puts in the bid - one care company owner admitted this recently.
This is how the NHS will go as privatisation moves forward.The Tories Are Plotting To Kill You For Personal Profit
Revealed: private firm's slice of NHS hospital savings
Privately run NHS hospital 'will need to make eyewatering cuts'
Private firm vows to breathe new life into struggling NHS hospital
Circle’s Nottingham treatment centre to be re-tendered
Private healthcare industry faces inquiry
Is Goldman Sachs to take the Bank of England too?
Jeremy Warner writes in support of government by corporate technocracy ...
"You cannot be serious", reads the best rated comment on our story today that Jim O'Neill, chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, is in the running to be the next Governor of the Bank of England.
Why not? In fact he'd make an excellent Governor, and in most respects, would be a perfect fit for the job ...
There's no conspiracy here, tempting though it is to imagine one. It's simply that Goldman Sachs attracts and trains a particular type of person.
These are clever people with unrivalled international connections in politics, business and finance ...
Mr O'Neill ... genuinely believes in the likelihood of decent outcomes. This is not altogether a bad thing in a central banker.
We need someone to talk up the UK economy, and to act accordingly ...
Tel 30 Apr 2012Goldman's Jim O'Neill in Bank governor race
Goldman Sachs conquers Europe
Europe’s Transition From Social Democracy to Oligarchy
It's the Corporate State, Stupid
The great euro Putsch rolls on as two democracies fall
The markets distrust democracy
2012 Olympics: Kabul. Baghdad. London. Three to avoid this summer
The Olympics have become an Orwellian parody of what happens when a world agency blackmails a government aching for prestige into spending without limit ...
... for the rest of the summer, London will effectively be "ruled" by the IOC.
Enthusiasts for world government should take note.
An unaccountable, self-validating body expects five-star hotels, chauffeur-driven BMWs, Soviet-style Zil lanes and all-green light phases for its thousands of "officials" and corporate hangers-on.
It not only expects them, it gets them.
It demanded and got its own legislative powers, under the 2006 London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act.
Lord Coe does what the IOC tells him and passes the bill to George Osborne, who pays it ...
Gdn 03 May 2012 ArchiveLondon 2012
Revealed: private firm's slice of NHS hospital savings
And who runs Circle? None other than "former director of Goldman's European technology banking team" Ali Parsi ... And who set this process in motion? Lansley? No. Kier Hardie's old party
A letter deposited in the House of Commons library by Earl Howe, a junior health minister, and uncovered by the [Health Service Journal], details for the first time the terms of the deal to hand running of the hospital to Circle.
A statement from the HSJ said: "The first £2m of any year's surplus goes to Circle; the company then takes a quarter of surpluses between £2m and £6m and a third of surpluses between £6m and £10m.
"The terms mean the trust, which has an annual income of around £100m, will need to make a surplus of at least £70m to clear its debts. 44% of that money would go to Circle." ...
Gdn 03 May 2012Vultures circle around NHS
First privately owned NHS hospital approved
Circle is at the cutting-edge of reshaping healthcare for the future
A Vicious Circle: NHS Hospital Sold To Private Firm
Circle Health aims to take over Epsom NHS hospital
How can it be right to profit from disability?
The Department for Work and Pensions has just announced the 10 private companies on the shortlist to deliver the personal independence payment (PIP) assessments, which everyone receiving disability living allowance will have to undergo from next year when DLA is replaced by PIPs.
With 3.2 million captive customers, not to mention a monopoly on all new claimants, it's not hard to see the appeal of the contract for profit-hungry companies untroubled by the ethics of slashing 20% from the money provided to disabled people to help them meet some of the basic expenses that living with a disability inevitably incurs ...
So what about those companies, carefully selected to manage the change to PIPs, charged with the unenviable, if lucrative, task of assessing all 3.2 million claimants to decide where the axe should fall?
Medical specialists, perhaps? Experts with a proven track record of accurate and respectful assessment? ...
Despite huge levels of criticism from individuals and charities that the test is not "fit for purpose", widespread inaccuracies in the assessment process (40% of appeals against Atos decisions are successful), and extensive anecdotal reports of farcical levels of incompetence on the part of the assessors, the DWP has shortlisted Atos for the contract to deliver PIP assessments in every available region ...
Gdn 01 May 2012Health and Disability Assessment Services Framework
Rules relaxed for reporting offshore oil and gas accidents
The Health and Safety Executive has introduced a new regulation that says injuries need only be reported if workers are out of action for over seven days ...
The leaking well in the Elgin field ... has been spewing up to 3,000 tonnes of carbon a day into the atmosphere but Total is still no nearer knowing what caused it.
Gdn 27 Apr 2012Was Elgin platform leak an accident waiting to happen?
Oil and gas companies
James Murdoch's Poodle
In which the mechanics of the corporate state are revealed as furtive, tawdry, probably corrupt, and definitely incompetent ...
Jeremy Hunt and the Murdochs: how minister oiled wheels of BSkyB bid
What made this busy back channel particularly remarkable was that the culture secretary was constantly claiming no such relationship existed.
Hunt told the Commons on 30 June:
"I am deciding this deal on a quasi-judicial basis, but I have not met Rupert Murdoch or James Murdoch in recent weeks, and all the meetings I have had with them have been minuted and done through official channels."
It appears Hunt was being economical with the truth ...
Gdn 24 Apr 2012Cameron will try to use Hunt as a human shield
Your judgment called into question once again, Dave ... Think Andy Coulson, think Emma Harrison, think crony capitalism
Number 10 is putting out an odd line that it has confidence in Hunt, but seemingly not in the way in which he and his department handled the BSkyB bid.
That amounts to saying: "he's a nice bloke". But Number 10 will be desperate to hold on to the Culture Secretary, hoping to use him as a human shield.
If he goes the main focus of the scandal will shift closer to the Prime Minister. Before the emergence of the sensational emails, there had already been the revelation in evidence at Leveson that, according to James Murdoch, he and David Cameron did discuss the BSkyB bid when they infamously met for Christmas dinner at Rebekah Brooks's house in the Cotswolds ...
Tel 24 Apr 2012James Murdoch appears at Leveson
Mr Murdoch's five hours of testimony to Lord Justice Leveson also highlighted the sharp contrast between his hands-off attitude over phonehacking at the News of the World and his hands-on role in the News Corp bid for BSkyB, in which he was constantly seeking to make his case to ministers ...
It raises the question as to what would have happened if James Murdoch had taken the same forceful action over phone hacking as he did over BSkyB's affairs ...
BBC NEWS 24 Apr 2012Hunt accused of giving News Corp special access over BSkyB bid
The special advisers mentioned in Fréd Michel's emails
Jeremy Hunt, the secret News Corp emails and the 'absolutely illegal' tip-off
Care UK fails to process x-ray records of 6,000 patients
"only a very small number need be recalled for further assessment"
One is too many, sixty is systemic incompetence
An NHS Brent spokesperson said it was working with Care UK to deal with the incident, adding:
"NHS Brent took immediate action to launch a full investigation when it was made aware of this issue.
"All patients affected are being contacted directly by Care UK and early findings from this review show that only a very small number need be recalled for further assessment ...
Gdn 17 Apr 2012
The reality behind London's 'ethical' Olympics
With just over 100 days to go before the Games begin, an investigation by The Independent has uncovered widespread violations of workers' rights in Indonesia, where nine locally owned and managed factories have been contracted to produce Olympic shoes and clothing for Adidas – the official sportswear partner of London 2012 and of the British team.
While the German company – which unveiled its Stella McCartney-designed kit for British athletes last month – hopes to make £100m from its Olympic lines, the mainly young, female factory employees work up to 65 hours (25 hours more than the standard working week), for desperately low pay.
They also endure verbal and physical abuse, they allege, are forced to work overtime, and are punished for not reaching production targets.
Ind 14 Apr 2012The Games Hurt Londoners
Olympics 2012 security: welcome to lockdown London
Locog agree to controversial ticket deal for Games
London 2012 Olympic’s shameful corporate sponsors
Corporate fat cats get more than half of top Games tickets
Corporate pollution of London Olympic Games
Our Olympics: a case for reclaiming the London 2012 games
Corporates offered use of VIP lanes ...
Police State Opening Ceremony
Private sector medical staff assessing benefit claimants told to sign Official Secrets Act
Atos, a French-owned healthcare and IT company, is being paid more than £100 million a year to carry out the controversial work capability assessments for the government, which help determine whether claimants are eligible for sickness benefits ...
The doctor, who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity, said. "I could not have been more surprised when I was told that everybody had to sign the OSA."
"There's something very sinister, cloak and dagger about it. It's weird that it would be used in the context of our work; it's not the same kettle of fish at all."
Signing a statement outlining their obligations under the act would make staff "reluctant to bring matters of concern to the attention of the wider public", the doctor said because of the potential "threat of sinister, treason-like charges" ...
The doctor added that there were already strict rules about disclosure of patient details so there was no need to invoke such draconian legislation.
"You would have thought we would be covered by our professional codes of conduct.
"The GMC and the Nursing and Midwifery Council would take a very dim view of if we disclosed personal details." ...
Gdn 12 Apr 2012The Official Secrets Bill
Comment by the Campaign for Freedom of Information
The scope of the bill
The bill itself will tighten control over protected information. If it was restricted to the most sensitive, highly classified information, this would be no bad thing. In fact, the bill covers great areas of information - much of it relatively low grade. Unlike Section 2, which in such areas is understood to be quietly dormant, unauthorised disclosures under the new Act may lead to immediate and successful proceedings.
The protected classes of information cover: international relations; information supplied in confidence by other governments and international organisations; defence; security and intelligence; the interception of communications; and information likely to impede law enforcment or lead to crime.
The bill applies to unauthorised disclosures by civil servants or other who acquire information through official duties (such as the police, members of the armed forces, and even government ministers) or as government contractors.
It also covers journalists or any member of the public who obtains protected information which has been disclosed without authority. Even if the information reaches the person indirectly (after passing through the hands of several people, or by being read in the newspapers) it could still be an offence to pass it on.
For some kinds of information, the prosecution would have to show that the person knew that the disclosure was likely to be harmful, within the meaning of the bill. This may protect the ordinary member of the public who finds and passes on an unmarked official document without realising its significance. It is less likely to help the press. Journalists will generally know when the information they are handling results from a leak which could fall within the scope of the new Act ...
The Campaign for Freedom of Information 1988Official Secrets Act
Official Secrets Act – 1911
Ministers told to reveal back-to-work fraud claims
Pressure is growing on the Government to disclose the full extent of fraud and misconduct within the back-to-work industry after it emerged that more than 100 cases of alleged wrongdoing at providers, besides crisis-hit A4e, had been investigated in the past six years ...
Tel 07 Apr 2012
Carers versus Atos's attempts to protect its image - video
Jon Ronson investigates Atos, the company that vets disability benefit claimants on behalf of the government, which has gone to great lengths to control references to it online. Ronson meets two people who have experienced this first hand, Frances Kelly and Phil Lockwood.
Gdn 06 Apr 2012Atos Macht Frei
Disabled people protest against Atos Origin - video
Atos Origin Protests Across the UK
Harrying the Ill and Disabled for Profit
Protest against Atos Origin - poverty pimp
Atos - global home page
The Games Hurt Londoners
Once the athletes have departed, London is likely to find that tourism has declined and that the Olympic stadiums are of limited public use, even as local sports facilities continue to close.
Proponents say the Games will get Britons involved in sport, but we’re more likely to end up with a population even more obese than it was before the five-ring circus came to town.
The hundreds of millions of pounds taken from funds for the arts, children’s and community sports will not be returned.
Instead, the budget — by some calculations already £24 billion — will expand with post-Olympics spending.
Britain will have moved further down the road to “demautocracy,” in which politicians unite to dismiss dissent as unpatriotic ...
NYT 04 Apr 2012London council accused of 'social cleansing' as it asks housing benefit families to move north
Who owns your child’s school? The rise and rise of edu-business
Faster than we recognise, schools are becoming profit centres. The buildings, the teaching, the cleaning, the exam results are all ways to make money.
But who benefits? Not the poorest, argues Melissa Benn ...
openDemocracy 03 Apr 2012Segregated UK schools 'toxic for poor'
Towards two-tier schooling
Morrisons' 'Satisfactory' Apprenticeships
The coalition's line-of-travel is the creation of fantasy jobs - workfare - at no extra cost to taxpayer or private sector.
[WP]
The suspect nature of the new breed if apprenticeship schemes was highlighted by the BBC Panorama programme -
The Great Apprentice Scandal -
which focussed on Morrisons' Supermarket.
Nick Linford, editor of the publication FE Week, said: “We’ve seen record growth in apprenticeships.
"Big headline numbers look great on paper but scratch under the surface and maybe we shouldn’t be calling them all apprenticeships.”
Elmfield Training, the private company that accredits Morrisons’ apprentices, has a government contract worth £37 million, Panorama said.
"It made a profit of £12 million in 2010 and the company’s chief executive Ged Syddall awarded himself a dividend of nearly £3 million, the programme said.
Yet when the company was inspected by Ofsted recently, its training for Morrisons was rated as “satisfactory”, the second lowest rating possible, it added ...
Express & Star 02 Apr 2012Director of training company earned £3m
Public funds ended up paying for luxury homes
The UK’s fastest-growing training provider, which last week was defended by the National Apprenticeship Service (NAS) over criticism of the quality of its retail courses, paid a director nearly £3 million last year and has used company funds to buy family homes worth £6 million.
Elmfield Training receives the majority of its income from taxpayers’ funds administered by the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) and it operates apprenticeships and other training courses for companies from Morrisons supermarkets to Vodafone. Last year, it generated more than £12 million profits on a turnover of about £33 million - a profit margin of around 36 per cent.
It used the profits to pay a dividend of £3 million to shareholders as a result. As the owner of 95 per cent of the shares, director Gerard Syddall was the main beneficiary.
And at the end of 2010, the company also took out mortgages on three homes: a detached house in St Helens worth £800,000; a Cheshire farmhouse and land worth £4.3 million; and a house near Stoke-on-Trent worth £800,000, which is next to Mr Syddall’s own home.
This is not the first time that the training company has used its income to buy residential property ...
TES 05 Nov 2011Revenue up 162% to £33.8m at Elmfield Training
Dave's Corporate Nanny State: Nudge didn't work!
Calories to be cut by major food and drink companies
The Department of Health says England has one of Europe's highest obesity rates and that consuming too many calories is the root of the problem.
Among ideas to help consumers will be resealable packaging on many chocolate bars, including Cadbury's Dairy Milk.
Under the new scheme, every chocolate bar made by Mars will have a cap of 250 calories, while the UK arm of Coca Cola says it will introduce a 30% reduction in some of its soft drinks by 2014.
And some supermarkets, such as Asda, will develop a new low-calorie brand.
The "calorie reduction pledge" is part of the Public Health Responsibility Deal, developed by the Department of Health ...
BBC NEWS 24 Mar 2012Alcohol pricing strategy 'cover' for Budget
What is the national emergency today?
On Friday the government announced it was proposing a minimum price of 40p per unit of alcohol in England and Wales - as it published its alcohol strategy.
Friday is usually a quiet day in the Commons when many MPs return to their constituencies.
Shadow home secretary Ms Cooper ... told MPs:
"There's no precedent for handling a long-awaited consultation document on a Friday morning with no notice in this way.
"Over the last 10 years there have been only three government statements on a Friday; on the Iraq war, on swine flu and on Libya.
"All of them involving serious issues around national emergencies. What is the national emergency today?"
BBC NEWS 23 Mar 2012
GovernmentalityMinimum alcohol price planned for England and Wales
Bigger welfare state 'reduces hard drug use'
Markets meltdown leads to surge in City addictions
Obesity linked to money insecurity in affluent nations
PM vows action to get addicts on benefits into work
Drink deaths: failure to act will cost an extra 250,000 lives by 2031
McDonald's and PepsiCo to help write UK health policy
Who is the government's health deal with big business really good for?
Alcohol 'more harmful than heroin or crack'
Drugs & Alcohol
Precarity
Transform
Protect our green and pleasant land
... the full National Planning Policy Framework is not to be published until next week, in an apparent attempt to make it look as though the changes are not primarily driven by economics.
But the truth is that the planning system is being changed from an instrument that protects the countryside to one that facilitates economic growth – in two key ways.
First, the system is to be altered so that the default answer to any "sustainable" development proposal will be Yes.
Second, the historic recognition that ordinary countryside has "intrinsic value" will be scrapped ...
Ind 20 Mar 2012Government to scrap 53 green rules
Britain ... a modern enclosure movement
Jobseekers who shunned voluntary scheme forced to do unpaid work
The term 'voluntary' has connotations of 'arbeit macht frei' in the corporate state
Jobseekers have been made to do compulsory unpaid work for up to eight weeks after refusing to take part in the voluntary work experience scheme.
The revelation, supported by documents released through the Freedom of Information Act, calls into question the concessions made to the voluntary programme last month, which removed a two-week benefit sanction imposed on those dropping out of that scheme, as refusal to complete a placement on the compulsory scheme can lead to jobseekers' benefits being stopped for three to six months.
Others have reported being placed on mandatory work schemes just weeks after signing on to claim unemployment benefits ...
Gdn 20 Mar 2012
Thatcher 'met Murdoch in secret'
The files show the key political question of whether Mr Murdoch's bid should be referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission (MMC) was not considered at the meeting ...
The Fair Trading Act 1973 required that all significant newspaper takeovers be submitted to the MMC, unless the Secretary of State certified a paper was unprofitable and under threat of closure.
In the end, this clause enabled the purchase to go ahead without a referral because of major losses at the Times ...
Chris Collins, the only historian to have studied the papers closely having worked for Mrs Thatcher since 1992, told the BBC ...
"His great asset, which he lays out before her, is that actually he's the only person who wants to keep the Times going... he's in a very strong position and he knows it."
BBC NEWS 17 Mar 2012Rupert Murdoch gets his political payback
... similar promises of editorial independence were made after Rupert Murdoch was permitted to buy The Times newspaper group in 1981. They were soon ignored ...
Ind 04 Mar 2011Good Times Bad Times
Devon NHS children's services set for privatisation
You don't have be the best, just the cheapest ... it's EU competition law
The Guardian has learned that NHS Devon and Devon county council have shortlisted bids led by two private, profit-making companies – Serco and Virgin Care – to provide frontline services for children across the county ...
The contract will be awarded to "the most economically advantageous" bid, according to criteria listed for it on the European commission website, where any European public tenders are required by competition law to be published ...
A spokesman for Lansley said the Devon bid was an example of how reforms were following the direction of travel for the NHS set long before the current government.
"We support patient choices and whoever is best getting the contracts ... " he said ...
Neither of the two private companies in the Devon bids has experience of running specialist children's health services for the NHS ...
Professor Terence Stephenson, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health ... also questioned whether private companies could run such important public services.
"It is hard to understand why a tender for something as important and complex as children's services has not been put into the public domain for scrutiny by professionals, since it makes it impossible to answer questions around why the service is being tendered, the criteria upon which successful bidders will be judged ... ", he said ...
Gdn 15 Mar 2012Tenders for NHS services
Boris's deputy lobbied five times for police to limit hacking inquiry
Yesterday Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick said she had been forced to "put down a marker" about the Met's operational independence after Mr Malthouse had lobbied her three times last year about the increasing police manpower being devoted to phone hacking.
The comments from Ms Dick, who took over from John Yates after he resigned over alleged links to a former executive at the News of the World, will increase the already significant political pressure on Mr Malthouse.
Last week the former Met Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson revealed that Mr Malthouse, who is responsible for policing in London, had urged him to scale back the phone-hacking investigation on several occasions ...
Ind 13 Mar 2012
Rupert Murdoch ... Corporate StateThe Conservatives' contact with News International
MPs' concern over Olympic security costs
Mrs Hodge said the committee was "particularly concerned" about the significant increases in the security bill.
"Locog (the London organising committee) now needs more than twice the number of security guards it originally estimated and the costs have roughly doubled.
"It is staggering that the original estimates were so wrong."
The report states Locog has been forced to renegotiate its contract with G4S for venue security from a "weak negotiating position".
Mrs Hodge added: "There is a big question mark over whether it secured a good deal for the taxpayer."
Locog's original estimate for the number of security guards in and around the venues was 10,000 - a "finger in the air estimate", according to the PAC report.
The government announced in December that figure had more than doubled to 23,700.
Security costs from the Olympics budget have risen from £282m to £553m.
The report said: "Locog itself now has almost no contingency left to meet further costs, even though it has done well in its revenue generation." ...
BBC NEWS 09 Mar 2012Olympic lanes for sale
LOCOG rapped over 'ticket secrecy'
LOCOG hands back 20% of room nights to hotels
London 2012 Olympics: hotels revolt over 2012 resale prices
My week: Anthony Barnett
Banks still starving firms of capital, warns Vince Cable
Vince Cable, the business secretary, has warned that innovative firms that are central to restoring growth are trapped in a "valley of death", unable to raise funds from banks that are disconnected from the real economy ...
Criticising the banks' reluctance to provide credit, he said: "Several years after the crash, we still have a big headache."
He said there was a yawning mismatch between the banks and the needs of business ...
"And although the approval rate of bank loans is high – 75% for SMEs [small and medium-sized enterprises] – business remains frustrated by lack of access to capital of all kinds.
"The small number who actually get rejected are outnumbered by those who never try, perhaps scarred by recent experience or simply scared of what might go wrong.
"For those who do get a loan, the frustration is often about cost and conditions."
He said: "Banks are trying to reduce risk. But business lending, especially to SMEs, is risky. Exporting to emerging markets is risky. Innovation is risky.
"I hardly need to tell a room full of successful business people that a flight from risk is a flight from business."
He argued: "Britain's recovery is being imperilled by the parlous state of the very institutions that caused the crisis in the first place.
"Wherever I meet groups of business people around the country I am given fresh anecdotes about how hard it is to deal with the banks, how few choices there are, how swift and arbitrary the treatment can seem.
"I hear this weekly in my constituency surgery. I hear it from academics, business titans and even the right-wing tabloid press, usually the first to scold politicians like me for interfering in business." ...
Gdn 07 Mar 2012
More than half care home residents denied basic care
Some older people routinely have to wait up to three months for formal checks for painful conditions such as bed sores, according to figures from the health care watchdog.
A quarter were not given a choice of male or female staff to help them use the lavatory and more than a third of care homes surveyed admitted delays in getting medication to residents.
Campaigners blamed NHS bureaucrats showing a “lack of interest” and failing to provide expert assessments for conditions as basic as incontinence ...
Tel 07 Mar 2012CQC survey
A4e: one customer's experience of structured job searches
During his first appointment with an A4e adviser, Webb was told he would have to attend weekly two-hour sessions, titled "structured job searches".
He expected "an individual, tailor-made service", but found he was "just expected to sit in front of a computer for two hours" in the company of about eight other people, and "go through job sites".
His adviser's motivation, he claims, appeared to be "to get you to fill out as many job applications as you could within a two hour period. He wasn't bothered about what you were applying for."
On two occasions Webb was called to A4e's Lincoln offices for meetings, but the people he was meant to see were absent.
One of these visits involved a round trip by foot of 90 minutes; the other, petrol and parking costs of about £8.
"When you're getting £135 a fortnight, that's a lot of money," ...
Gdn 06 Mar 2012Champagne culture at Emma Harrison's A4e
A4e employee forged signatures to boost job placement numbers
Tesco sets out to raise service standards and create 20,000 jobs
The company is already part of the government's controversial work experience scheme, which ran into criticism and was subsequently altered so young people would not lose their benefits if they left early.
Tesco has so far offered 1,500 work experience placements with a similar number to follow.
After protests that the company was using benefit claimants as unpaid labour, Tesco said the second 1,500 would have the choice of staying in the scheme and keeping their benefits or being paid by Tesco, with a view to being offered a permanent job if all went well.
Any jobs created in this fashion would be part of the 20,000 announced on Monday.
Tesco also plans to expand its apprenticeship programme to provide another 10,000 places, either for existing staff or new starters.
Again, any new jobs will be part of the overall total.
David Cameron welcomed the announcement as "a massive confidence boost for the UK economy" from the country's biggest private sector employer ...
Gdn 05 Mar 2012
Whitehall defends dual health roles of chairman of NHS watchdog
Scrutiny of the role played by Lord Carter as chairman of the NHS Co-operation and Competition Panel (CCP) ... is also embarrassing for Labour, which elevated Lord Carter of Coles to the House of Lords under prime minister Tony Blair ...
On its website, US-owned McKesson says it has contracts with more than 90% of NHS organisations, as well as with other private health companies.
However, it is likely to cause further concern about companies that are seen to benefit from a widespread programme of private involvement in public services ...
McKesson has operated in the UK since 1990, employs 450 staff in the UK, and boasts that its NHS HR and payroll IT system is the world's largest.
Gdn 04 Mar 2012
Police privatisation plans defended by senior officers
The usual ACPO suspects - including Sir Ian Blair - are over-enthusiastic about the proposals, presumably spotting an entrepreneurial opportunity.
The £1.5bn contract, which could be worth up to £3.5bn if other forces sign up, makes clear that nearly every police service is on the table except for those involving the powers of a warranted officer, including arrest. It will be up to each participating force which services are privatised.
What Sir Ian doesn't understand is that 'outsourced' workers cannot be both responsible to the chief constable, and to G4S (or whoever the contractor is).
A "bidder's conference" is due next week. It is expected that the contract would come into force early next year.
Bob Jones, chair of the finance committee of the West Midlands police authority and a former chair of the authority and the national organisation of police authorities, said that the trial was "very much" driven by central government, particularly Home Office minister Nick Herbert, and Cabinet Office minister and paymaster general Francis Maude.
Jones said he was one of five members of the police authority who voted against the trial, because he was unhappy that conditions they had requested were not met, including certainty about the success of other private police trials and more clarity before private companies bid for contracts about what roles they should play.
"I haven't got a problem with the principle, providing it's properly accountable, well managed, it brings benefits and there are protections for staff – providing it's basically in the interests of the West Midlands," said Jones.
"Given the dire financial position, it does need to be explored, but I don't think it's being explored in a proper business-like manner." ...
Gdn 04 Mar 2012The police: a chance to modernise
Sir Ian Blair writes ...
There are two important caveats.
First, there is a limit: there should be a minimum but sizable number of fully warranted officers who give each force the flexibility to respond to major, unexpected emergencies.
Second, outsourced services must still form part of the chief constable's public accountabilities ... [Gdn]
Police are linked to blacklist of construction workers
The police or security services supplied information to a blacklist funded by the country's major construction firms that has kept thousands of people out of work over the past three decades.
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has revealed that records that could only have come from the police or MI5 have been discovered in a vast database of files held on 3,200 victims who were deemed leftwing or troublesome.
The files were collected by the Consulting Association, a clandestine organisation funded by major names in the construction industry.
... the extraordinary nature of the information held has only now emerged, following an employment tribunal for one of the victims, Dave Smith, a 46-year-old engineer who had a 36-page file against his name and was victimised repeatedly for highlighting safety hazards on sites, including the presence of asbestos.
David Clancy, investigations manager at the ICO, told the central London tribunal adjudicating on Smith's claims against construction giant Carillion that "there is information on the Consulting Association files that I believe could only be supplied by the police or the security services" ...
Gdn 03 Mar 2012Blacklisted electrician hounded by company
Trade Unionist Threatened With Terrorism Act
Blacklisted workers stage protest
Firms vetted workers on blacklist
Boss compiled workers' blacklist
Action promised on blacklisting
'Big society' bank to leverage £600m investment
Knighted by Gordon Brown around the same time as Fred Goodwin, Sir Ronald's main claim to fame is the BUSM pensions saga. That's another dodgy appointment you've made, Dave.
Sir Ronald Cohen, the Apax founder who chairs the venture, has talked to hedge funds, private equity firms and other institutions in the US and Europe about how to multiply the launch funds.
In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph to mark his departure as chairman of social venture capital fund, Bridges Ventures, after 10 years, he said:
“We have the ability to try to achieve a multiplier on our capital in vehicles of different forms.”
He believes the initial £600m funding – £400m from unclaimed assets in dormant UK bank accounts and a further £200m from UK banks – can be leveraged to meet acceptable returns both financially and socially.
Sir Ronald did not detail how the multiplier might work, nor by how many times he would like the initial fund to multiply. But he believes Big Society Capital can be a force for social change in deprived parts of the UK.
“What we have developed over the past 10 years [with Bridges] is this principle that the financial return is the locomotive, because you’ve defined very clearly the social target you get carriages with social benefits,” he said.
Tel 03 Mar 2012Sir Ronald Cohen: using private equity to prevent 'rioting in the streets'
Sir Ronald Cohen
Brown’s moneyman and envoy
'Private equity stole our pensions'
Revealed: government plans for police privatisation
The breathtaking list of policing activities up for grabs includes investigating crimes, detaining suspects, developing cases, responding to and investigating incidents, supporting victims and witnesses, managing high-risk individuals, patrolling neighbourhoods, managing intelligence, managing engagement with the public, as well as more traditional back-office functions, such as managing forensics, providing legal services, managing the vehicle fleet, finance and human resources ...
Gdn 02 Mar 2012Police Federation vice-chairman says privatisation could destroy service
Key extract of contract note
'Bluelight’ Emergency Services eTendering
David Cameron could have ridden Rebekah Brooks's ex-police horse, Downing Street admits
The Man on the White Horse is Il Duce from Chipping Norton
It emerged this week that Mrs Brooks was lent a retired police horse by the Metropolitan Police for two years.
The horse, called Raisa, was stabled at her farm in the Cotswolds from 2008 to 2010, before it was handed back to Scotland Yard ...
An aide close to the Prime Minister confirmed for the first time that Mr Cameron had gone riding with Mrs Brooks' husband Charlie, a racehorse trainer and an old friend from his Eton schooldays.
The source said that it was "possible" that one of the horses could have been Raisa, because Mr Brooks had lent a number of horses to Mr Cameron over the years.
The aide said: "It is possible. He used a number of Charlie's horses." ...
The aide added: "He has no recollection of ever going riding with Rebekah Brooks." ...
Tel 01 March 2012White horse
John Yates faces champagne quiz
John Yates, Andy Hayman, Peter Clarke should all be incarcerated in one of Her Majesty's hostelries. Instead they turn up to the Leveson Inquiry - Yates by video link from Bahrain where he has an 'advisory' post to one of the regions' uglier regimes - and render a passable immitation of old lags in the local nick telling plod they're innocent.
A News of the World journalist was told to “call in all those bottles of champagne” to get inside information about a terrorist plot from a senior policeman, the Leveson Inquiry heard today.
John Yates, Scotland Yard's former head of counter-terrorism, admitted he "may well" have drunk champagne with crime reporter Lucy Panton, but denied he did her any favours in return ...
Ind 01 Mar 2012John Yates, Andy Hayman, Peter Clarke appear
Is Rupert Murdoch a fit and proper person to run a company?
Bahrain doctors jailed for treating injured protesters
As Jesus said, you're ruining it for tourists
At last, the police have become efficient.
They may have stumbled slightly with their investigation of News International, but they haven't made the same mistake with the people sitting around by St Paul's ...
Ind 01 Mar 2012The government's anti-avoidance tax rule is a toothless tiger
George Osborne drafts new law on corporate tax dodgers
A properly punitive approach to bank reform
Police cover-up of phone hacking revealed to Leveson inquiry
Bryant: phone hacking may be worst corporate corruption case for 250 years
Capitalism is only trustworthy once the cronies have been shown the door
By his employment of Andy Coulson and Emma Harrison, Cameron has demonstrated his woeful lack of any judgment or moral compass. Cronies are second nature to this vacuous little man, whose statements indicate a person who has to respond to every passing bandwagon, and does so with the same lack of judgment. Grabbing a headline is the sole objective.
It is on ... the issue of trust that Cameron was guilty of ignoring the real problem ... the real debate about trust in business hinges on the issue of crony capitalism.
Does it exist? And, if so, what are you going to do about it?
Tory MP Jesse Norman, who popularised the phrase, explained the problem in a pamphlet last year.
"The free-market west, most notably the US and the UK, has sleepwalked into a species of financial crony capitalism that has disguised economic reality, shielded underperformance, cosseted poor management and leached away value," he wrote.
He's right. Financial services is riddled with rent-seekers.
Employees in the investment banking industry have loaded the dice in their favour so that bonuses are distributed even when returns on capital fail to match the cost of that capital; shareholders – which in large part means people saving for a pension – are the losers.
Norman's position is clear enough.
"Attacking crony capitalism is not anti-business, it is pro-business."
But where does Cameron stand? ...
One suspects that what has really happened is that big business has caught the whiff of Conservative backbenchers' call for a dose of real capitalism – meaning a challenge to vested interests – and has sought to head off the danger ...
Obs 26 Feb 2012Crony Capitalism
Crony capitalism
David Davis offers a forensic critique of the corporate state.
It doesn’t matter which [Whitehall] department you choose. Their approach is too often dominated by the concerns of big business.
The Ministry of Defence’s disastrous record in public procurement is partly a product of an overly cosy relationship with a few suppliers.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change’s clumsy environmental policies stem from close contacts with half a dozen enormous companies, unlike in Germany, whose cheaper and more effective environmental policy is dominated by local initiatives.
Wherever you look in Whitehall the government is too close to big business and has been for decades.
If it is not addressed, Britain’s crony capitalism will inflict huge damage to our interests, economy, industry and society.
The gap between achievement and reward will widen. Social mobility will continue to fall.
It will also continue to stifle growing businesses, destabilise our banking sector, and poison our politics.
It is not an easy problem to solve, but the government can lead the way by showing it is not afraid of a little competition.
Prospect 22 Feb 2012
A4e got welfare-to-work contract despite 'abysmal' record
We learn three things from this interchange: A4e and their ilk are parasites, the target of 30 per cent is delusional, and New Labour started this expensive extract from 'thirs face of power' government.
The record of the welfare-to-work company A4e has come under scrutiny from MPs, as they questioned why a company with an "abysmal" record of delivering previous government programmes had been awarded new contracts to provide the government's flagship Work Programme when it launched last summer ...
Details of large dividends received by Emma Harrison, A4e's chair, also emerged during questioning of the company's chief executive officer, Andrew Dutton.
He confirmed that all of the company's UK turnover last year, estimated at between £160m and £180m, derived from government contracts, and of the £11m paid in dividends to the company's five shareholders, 87% went to Emma Harrison ...
... Richard Bacon, Conservative MP for south Norfolk ... said that the company had successfully got 9% of clients into work in the Pathways to Work programme, a much lower figure than the 30% they were expected to deliver.
The permanent secretary for the Department for Work and Pensions, Robert Devereux ... pointed out that most of the welfare-to-work providers had underperformed during the previous scheme ...
Gdn 09 Feb 2012Work programme on track
A4e fraud
A4e and the British Heart Foundation
Unemployed win victories over A4e bullies
A4e pays £1m to former chief executive
A4e Waste Of Taxpayers Money
A4E – More from the poverty pimps
A4e – War Criminals, Fraudsters and Bullies
Work in progress
Dole Scum
A4E – The Initial Interview
A4e
Destabilizing our Healthcare
The Key Findings From Our Report
The following is extracted from an email sent by the NHS Support Federation received on 07 Feb 2012
Commercial providers plan to expand on the back of the new opportunities for more private/NHS partnerships.
The UK's two largest providers of private inpatient care believe that the pressure on the NHS to make savings will mean a boost for the self-pay and insurance market.
BMI/GHG and HCA International are planning to help NHS trusts raise their income by developing their own private patient units - one of the commercial opportunities created by the government’s controversial health bill.
There is strong interest in contracts to run entire NHS hospitals. Circle won a race against 11 bidders, the first contract of its kind, to manage the Hinchingbrooke NHS hospital.
That contract began last week (1st February) and is part of a market opportunity worth billions.
Our report identifies clear dangers from becoming more reliant on the private sector to treat NHS patients.
Public statements from providers like Ramsay Health indicate that they would be willing to walk away from contracts which weren’t creating enough profit.
Four of the companies analyzed in the report have large investments from private equity companies, which could force changes in a company’s business strategy to suit their own profit motives but undermine the care of NHS patients.
Circle and BMI are both backed by private equity firms and have structured their assets so that property can be disposed of when the market is right or have property already managed as a separate business.
This approach is widely considered to be a major reason for the financial mess that care-home provider Southern Cross found itself in.
The business record of some of the new providers also raises doubts about their suitability as partners in the NHS.
Our report highlights companies with connections to corporate fraud and illegal kidney transplantation - which brings into question whether some commercial companies would uphold the values of the NHS, as would be their duty under the NHS constitution.Full Report
The NHS is a professional service ripe for re-engineering
"Our healthcare system is on an unsustainable trajectory"
Ali Parsa has a 'rose tinted' view of the British economy: new entrants are being encouraged into services like the NHS - and the schools - solely in order to break national pay agreements and the power of the unions. There is no other agenda. The NHS is for Cameron, what the Miners' Strike was for Thatcher
In Britain, we spent about £40bn on healthcare in 2000. Around 10 years later, we are spending near to £120bn.
Economic value is defined as quality divided by price. We have tripled the denominator of the value equation.
Yet it is hard to claim the nominator – defined as clinical results and patient experience in healthcare – has kept pace.
We have been here before in Britain. When any sector has become unsustainable, we have brought down barriers to entry, stopped artificially pumping up the outdated, and allowed new entrants to come up with new solutions and flourish ahead of our global competitors.
As a result, we have in our small country of 60 million people some of the world's most successful telecommunication, retail, financial, creative and professional services ...
Our healthcare system is on an unsustainable trajectory. The solution is fundamental innovation that increases quality and reduces costs.
We need charities, mutuals, private companies and public sector organisations all to participate to give us the greatest chance of rejuvinating our NHS for future generations ...
Gdn 08 Feb 2012Yes, Hinchingbrooke hospital will be run privately. No, that's not a bad thing
Hinchingbrooke has a debt of nearly £40m on a turnover of £105m. The debt is real and has been subject to a public interest report by the Audit Commission.
But it is not a failing trust. The hospital provides great quality services to the local people.
When the debt emerged in 2006 thousands marched in the streets and 55,000 wrote to Downing Street, demanding the hospital remain open.
An NHS bailout was not an option.
It would have been unfair for other patients and other NHS hospitals to have to find the money to pay off the debt.
So we asked the NHS and the private sector to make the Hinchingbrooke services sustainable, and pay off the debt ...Dr Stephen Dunn is director of policy and strategy at NHS Midlands and East, which oversaw the franchising of Hinchingbrooke. He is also the author of The Economics of John Kenneth Galbraith published by Cambridge University Press. [Gdn]Gdn 02 Feb 2012Ali Parsa: The banker bringing the market to the NHS
... I am visiting the John Lewis of hip replacements. A hospital group, half-owned by its staff, which is being hailed by the Government as a model for the future of the NHS.
Its boss is Ali Parsa, who arrived in Britain aged 16 as a refugee from Iran and went on to make a fortune as a Goldman Sachs banker.
He set up Circle in 2004 and later this month will sign the contract to take control of Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire – the first time a private healthcare group has been handed an NHS hospital to run. More are expected to follow ...
... what's really different about the Circle model is the ideology behind it. The belief that staff – if given the power and the financial interest – are better at identifying improvements and efficiencies than managers or people sitting in the Department of Health.
Circle maybe a mutual, but its accounts reveal that it is still very much a money making venture, complete with offshore companies in Jersey.
Mr Parsa is unapologetic about this and unsentimental about employee ownership – which he says is not about being philanthropic but purely about getting better results ...
Ind 21 Feb 2011NHS & Circle: Smart People & Hinchingbrooke
Vultures circle at Hinchingbrooke Hospital
'Slight risk' staff at Hinchingbrooke Hospital could TUPE to private sector
Hinchingbrooke hospital: being handed over to fat cats
Stephen Hester's bonus is a sideshow; the real issue is what's become of our £45bn
The von Mises Institute got it right: the RBS should have been allowed to fail
If we accept that for the forseeable future the taxpayer's equity cannot be sold at anything other than a thumping great loss, what should be done?
One approach, which is the one that would be adopted in the private sector, is simply to admit the money is lost, salvage what little is left – no more than £10bn realistically – and move on.
That's the way capitalism is meant to work. Sitting on an unrealised loss just prolongs the agony and gets in the way of efficient capital allocation.
But of course it is politically unacceptable to admit the money has gone ...
The Government must either find ways of realising its capital, or it must nationalise outright and set RBS on a different path.
Tel 30 Jan 2012RBS top bankers set to share £30m bonus pot
They are in line to take a big share of the bank's controversial £500m bonus pot.
The five are Michael Lyublinsky, head of investment bank's US arm; Scott Eichel, who runs securitised products and US credit; Peter Rading, co-head of fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC); Peter Nielson, who leads markets globally; and Brian Reid, who runs research and strategy ...
Over the past three years, Mr Lyublinsky, Mr Eichel, Mr Rading, Mr Nielson and Mr Reid have consistently ranked among the top five paid people at RBS – earning much more than Stephen Hester, the bank's chief executive.
Tel 30 Jan 2012Europe’s Transition ... to Oligarchy
Fractional Reserve Banking
Fiat Money Systems
Hester's RBS pay deals worth over £11m since 2008
Shareholder interest is a thing of the past
We used to have debt-free money
Bailed-out RBS spends millions on Washington lobbyists
According to the documents, the bank spent $4.13m from October 2008 to December 2011 on lobbyists as it tried to influence three different areas of legislation.
The bank sought influence over consumer protection ... the amount capital banks must hold as well as demands that banks publish the ratio of the highest paid bankers to average wages ...
The documents, which were released by the US government and list lobbying activity in the US, show the lobbyist, client, amount spent and subject of the lobbying, as per US rules.
Under the parameters of the government's proposed changes to lobbying rules in the UK, released last week as part of a discussion paper, none of the equivalent details will be available in Britain ...
Gdn 27 Jan 2012
RBS chief Stephen Hester to get £963,000 bonus
While Nick Clegg hides behind the previous government, the bonus reflects the essential nature of corporate state Britain, and the banks' place at the top table. The threat of resignations was apparently sufficient to ensure the Coalition's subservience to corporate interests, while at the same time denying single parents free access to the services of the Child Support Agency, the latest in a long line of actions by the coalition in punishing the marginalised, who - btw -played no part in the creation of the financial bubble which collapsed in 2008, leading to the current crisis. The fact that the anomolous UKFI supports such bonuses is a further confirmation of the coalition's subservience to banking finance.
RBS announced on Thursday that Mr Hester is to get £963,000 in shares based on the bank's closing share price on Wednesday 25 January 2012 ...
RBS is 82% owned by the taxpayer.
BBC business editor Robert Peston has learnt that the bonus came due to fear about resignations on the RBS board.
"I am reliably told that they feared Mr Hester and much of the board would have quit, if the payment had been vetoed by the government as the majority shareholder," said our business editor ...
For the past two years, part-nationalised RBS and Lloyds Banking Group have paid no cash bonuses of more than £2,000.
The firm has announced thousands of job cuts, although it recorded a £2bn profit in its most recent trading period compared with a £1.6bn loss in the same period in 2010.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has said ministers are "constrained" by contractual arrangements agreed by the last government at the time of Mr Hester's appointment regarding his bonus ...
BBC NEWS 25 Jan 2012RBS chief Stephen Hester in line for £7m payout despite bonus cut
In a statement on Thursday night, RBS said Mr Hester would get a bonus of £963,000 as the taxpayer-backed lender bowed to political and public pressure to ensure its chief executive was not handed more than £1m.
However, the bank admitted Mr Hester was still potentially eligible for an award under a long-term incentive plan (LTIP) worth as much as £4.8m.
This means his total pay package for last year including his £1.2m salary and £420,000 pension could reach £7.38m.
If Mr Hester were to receive his maximum LTIP grant it would take the total value of the awards made to him since he took over as chief executive in October 2008 to about £27.5m.
The actual value of these awards is likely to be substantially lower than this due to the collapse in RBS's share price over the last 12 months.
Tel 26 Jan 2012Hester's £35.5m pay deal fuels renewed anger
RBS chairman waives share award
Treasury feared Hester and board would quit
RBS boss bonus 'capped below £1m'
RBS risks row over 'unacceptable' Stephen Hester £1m bonus
Companies paid £1,800 to meet ministers at networking events
There's something very masonic about the Chemistry Club
The chief secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, policing minister, Nick Herbert, and climate change minister, Lord Taylor, have all addressed the exclusive invite-only events, organised by a networking business called the Chemistry Club, and usually hosted at the high-end Sartoria restaurant in Mayfair, London.
Senior MPs from backbench committees have also attended the events, as have senior civil servants and special advisers from the Treasury, Home Office, Ministry of Defence, Department of Energy and Climate Change and other key departments.
Among the public sector employees to have attended the networking evenings is Ben Moxham, David Cameron's special adviser for energy and the environment and a former employee of BP, who was at an event on climate change in November.
The club charges senior executives from energy companies, consultancies and technology businesses between £1,300 and £1,800 per person for each event, although it invites some from the public sector to attend for free.
Senior executives from companies including BP, Shell, and the Russian oil giant Gazprom have attended the company's climate change events, while Apple, Google and Citigroup executives were among those at other networking evenings.
Gdn 24 Jan 2012The Chemistry Club
Lobbying
Will highly paid investors curb pay of highly paid bosses?
Vince Cable launches an empty vessel
To curb the excesses of executive pay, Vince Cable has passed the buck back to shareholders.
Investors will be given the power to formally veto companies' future pay policies - although, as is the case now, if shareholders dislike how businesses have implemented the agreed policy, their votes will not be binding ...
For about 10 years shareholders have had much more influence on pay in the boardroom.
This has coincided with a quadrupling in top executives' pay, whereas company share prices as measured by the FTSE100 index have gone nowhere and average earnings for the rest of us have increased just a few percentage points a year.
So will giving shareholders increased authority over executive pay serve as a brake on bosses remuneration ...
Arguably, the top fund managers - those who vote the shares we hold in our pensions or assorted long-term savings schemes - are disincentivised to be too aggressive in limiting corporate pay rises, because they are on the same gravy train.
That is why Mr Cable also wants more "diversity" in the board room - more "lawyers, public servants and academics" ... to introduce the views of the wider world into discussions about how and how much an executive should be rewarded.
You tell me if "lawyers, public servants and academics" represent a revolution in the variety of views likely to be represented in the boardroom ...
BBC NEWS 23 Jan 2012Fitting brakes to the pay merry-go-round
UK 'subsidising nuclear power unlawfully'
The complaint, by the Energy Fair group, also says that the UK's carbon floor price and feed-in tarriffs amount to state aid for the nuclear industry.
State coffers would also have to meet cost overruns on nuclear waste disposal, they argue.
Dorte Fouquet of the German legal firm BBH, who drew up the complaint, said that EU energy policy was based on having an open market with a level playing field.
"The commission has repeatedly underlined that distortion of the market is to a large extent caused by subsidies to the incumbents in the energy sector," she said.
"This complaint aims to shed some light on the recent shift in the energy policy of the United Kingdom where strong signals point to yet another set of subsidies to the nuclear power plant operators." ...
BBC NEWS 20 Jan 2012New nuclear has 'lots of support' locally - EDF Energy
UK breaks promise on nuclear power subsidies
Energy Fair
Covert lobby groups for business to be exposed
Campaigning groups and charities which seek to influence government policy may have to declare themselves as lobbyists under plans to be unveiled by ministers today.
The Government is concerned that some of the groups are being used as "fronts" for industries seeking to influence policy covertly.
There is particular concern over single-issue health charities – often funded by the pharmaceutical industry – that have pressured the Government to back drugs and treatments provided by their sponsors ...
Among recent examples of industry using front groups was the charity Toast (The Obesity Awareness and Solutions Trust), which claimed to be "completely independent" and "derived its income from individual donations and membership fees".
However, an investigation revealed that almost all of its funding came from a dieting company called LighterLife ...
Ind 20 Jan 2012Anger at Tories over lobbying 'whitewash'
... it's business as usual
More heat than light on lobbying
Taxpayers foot the bill for loss-making banks' lobbying
Britain's two state-owned banks have hired eight separate lobbying and public affairs companies at a cost of hundreds of thousands of pounds a year, The Independent has learnt.
The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), which is 83 per cent owned by taxpayers, paid six firms last year despite losing more than £750m in six months.
It also employs its own team of internal corporate lobbyists to influence ministers.
Lloyds Banking Group, which is 41 per cent owned by the Government, retained two lobbying companies.
It reported £3.3bn of pre-tax losses in the six months to June.
Neither RBS nor Lloyds would specify exactly what the firms were doing on their behalf, but the extent of their use will fuel concerns that the banks are using taxpayers' money in an attempt to water down banking reforms and planned caps on executive pay.
It comes despite a ban by ministers on other recipients of taxpayers' money hiring public affairs firms to lobby other arms of Government ...
Ind 11 Jan 2012
Big donors 'buying policy'
Sir Christopher Kelly said the perceived influence of rich businessmen over politicians is undermining public trust in Westminster.
He cited the Coalition’s planning reforms as an example of a policy that raised suspicions after The Daily Telegraph disclosed that property developers were thousands of pounds for access to senior Tories.
Such preferential treatment leads to increasing concerns that there is “no smoke without fire”, the chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.
“There is no doubt that significant donors do have preferential access to political decision makers,” he said.
“The thought that anyone would give such a large sum of money to a party solely for altruistic reasons is quite a difficult one.
"The risk is policy being influenced in other, more subtle, ways because some people have access because they have given donations.
“There is a risk of it [influencing of policy by donors] happening and more importantly there is a public perception that it does happen.” ...
Tel 06 Jan 2012Rewarding party donors ...
Roll up, roll up as David Cameron revives political honours
Slowly but surely, and with hardly any fanfare, David Cameron is reviving political honours.
Downing Street is delighted that few people appear to have noticed that, over the past year, Cameron has restored this important piece of prime ministerial patronage ...hoddle1Gdn 31 Dec 2011
31 December 2011 09:16AM
I'm surprised Andy Coulson has not received an honour.
Rabbit8
31 December 2011 10:02AM
A pity Giles Fraser was missing from this list ... of course it is not that kind of society ....
parrotkeeper
31 December 2011 10:36AM
Is there anyone surprised that he gave a knighthood to to the hedgefund executive Paul Ruddock who made millions from the collapse of Northern Rock and has given over half a million pounds to the Tories?
No, nor was I.House Of Lords 'Bloated And Dysfunctional'
The number of peers appointed over the past year has had "negative effects" on the functioning of the House of Lords, a report warns.
The chamber has become "bloated and dysfunctional" and a temporary halt on Lords appointments was needed, according to the Constitution Unit at University College London.
Its report, which suggests peer numbers have become "critical" since May 2010, has been backed by 14 senior Lords from the three major parties.
The House of Lords current membership stands at 831 - with Prime Minister David Cameron adding 117 new peers in less than a year.
Tony Blair averaged 37 peer appointments during his time in office and Gordon Brown only 12 a year.
The report suggests the volume of appointments under Mr Cameron has damaged the chamber's functioning and any further increase risks making the House unworkable.
Constitution Unit deputy director Meg Russell said: "It is unusual for a group of such senior figures to come together on a cross-party basis to call for change, but there is huge concern in the House of Lords about this issue ...
Sky.com 20 Apr 2011New Year honours include an award for tycoon jailed over stock market scandal
Controversy over honours for Conservatives’ 'friends in the City’
Cameron accused over ... Paul Ruddock knighthood
Want to hurt Sir Fred?
New Year honours list
Criticism Of The Current Honours System
Bid to evict St Paul's protest camp begins at high court
The City of London Corporation has lost control of St Paul's Cathedral, the high court will hear on Monday, with members of an activist camp "setting rules and policing behaviour" in the churchyard.
A trial, lasting up to four days, will determine whether Occupy London protesters can stay on the land outside the building or not.
The movement is fighting the corporation's eviction attempts.
It says members are acting within article 10 and article 11 of the Human Rights Act – freedom of expression and freedom of assembly – and has produced several defendants to contest the corporation's claims in court.
But David Forsdick, counsel for the corporation, will tell Mr Justice Wilkie that these rights do not "contemplate or justify a semi-permanent campsite" ...
Gdn 18 Dec 2011Occupy London
'Economic justice is the number one moral issue in the Bible'
Revealed: how City fees are eating into our pensions
Tax avoidance trade puts Square Mile in spotlight again
David Cameron: the Church must shape our values
The Sermon on the Mound
Revealed: bankers' secret meetings with ministers
The City doesn't need to convince George and Danny of its importance.
The full list of contacts between bankers and ministers, revealed through a request under the Freedom of Information Act by The Independent, shows that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander and the Financial Secretary to the Treasury Mark Hoban held meetings with Mr Hester of RBS, Mr Diamond, and Douglas Flint of HSBC in the nine days after the release of the Vickers report in September as they lobbied against the plans.
The largest banks have warned that the reforms could harm the economy and threatened to move their headquarters out of Britain.
Mr Hester attended a meeting with Mr Alexander on the very day the report was published.
Mr Hoban held his own meeting with Mr Hester two days later.
The Financial Secretary also met separately with the chief executives of Lloyds, Barclays and HSBC in the same week.
This was followed over the next month with further meetings and phone calls between Mr Hoban and senior bankers.
There was also a meeting between the Commercial Secretary to the Treasury, Lord Sassoon – himself a former investment banker for SG Warburg – and Naguib Kheraj, the vice-chairman of Barclays on 4 October ...
Ind 16 Dec 2011Revolving-door culture leaves government full of clever bankers
The FSA's reasons for not pursuing Fred Goodwin make interesting reading
One of Turner's recommendations is that the rules be changed so that directors of failed banks can be automatically banned or fined.
But, the existing burdens of proof are the ones that will be used during the ongoing investigation into HBOS ... Gdn 14 Dec 2011
Plenty of talk about cracking down on lobbying – but still there's no action
Three months before last year's election, David Cameron described commercial lobbying as the "next big scandal waiting to happen".
He said it had "tainted our politics for too long" and "exposes the far-too-cosy relationship between politics, government, business and money".
Tough words, but not yet matched by action. The Coalition agreed to bring in a statutory register.
But took the affair that led to the resignation of Liam Fox as Defence Secretary in October to push the issue back to the top of the agenda ...
Firm proposals on a register were promised by November but failed to materialise.
There appears to be a wrangle going in Whitehall over how transparent ministers and officials should be in listing their contacts with lobbyists ...
Ind 06 Dec 2011Vicious dictatorship which Bell Pottinger was prepared to do business with
Caught on camera: top lobbyists boasting how they influence the PM
Evidence of a lobbying industry out of control
Police include Occupy movement on ‘terror’ list
The Occupy movement is listed alongside threats posed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), Al Qaeda and Belarusian terrorists ...
uk.news.yahoo.com 05 Dec 2011
Animal test firms given your NHS data
The Prime Minister will use a keynote speech to outline far closer “collaboration” between the health service and life science companies, giving them more freedom to run clinical trials inside hospitals.
He will say that the controversial industry has the potential to be a powerhouse of Britain’s 21st century economy, but that it is stifled by excessive regulation at present ...
One senior executive at a leading drugs company well-known for using animal testing said:
“You can look at the NHS as one massive database with 60 million people in it.” ...
In his speech in London tomorrow, Mr Cameron will also outline plans for an “early access” scheme enabling cancer sufferers and other seriously ill patients to receive cutting-edge drugs up to a year before they are fully licensed.
Tel 04 Dec 2011
RBS report won't examine role of Goodwin and McKillop in bank's collapse
The report is being published a year after the FSA closed its original investigation into the bank's collapse, which it signalled with a 12-line press release.
Following intense pressure, including a long-running campaign by The Telegraph, the FSA agreed to publish the document, with oversight by City grandees Sir David Walker and Bill Knight.
However, publication of the 480-odd-page report is likely to spark calls for an independent investigation into the roles of the individuals at the top of the Scottish bank.
One City source said: "When you do get to see it, it will be what it doesn't say that will be more interesting than what it does say." ...
Ind 03 Dec 2011Revolving-door culture leaves government full of clever bankers
What we need to know now about Lord Turner's embarrassing U-turn
FSA's refusal to publish RBS report just shows how out of touch it is
Cable demands details of FSA's secret report
Osborne must prise open the secret FSA
RBS chairman said directors 'failed to live up to their duties'
RBS taken to brink of collapse by 'bad' decisions
Sir Fred Goodwin in the clear
US cables put FSA under fresh pressure to release RBS report
Britain's economy needs a big push but the Tories can only nudge
Until the OECD officially predicted a double-dip British recession today, the spurt of hype and guesswork preceding George Osborne's autumn statement was just about doing its work.
The airwaves crackled with news of the £30bn jump-leads to be attached to the national infrastructure plan, to be part-funded by pension funds, and coalition high-ups talked up 500 projects, including 50 or so "top priority" schemes that will get their money as soon as possible: electrification of the TransPennine rail line between Manchester and Leeds; upgrades to the M25, M3 and M56; work on the good old Kingskerswell bypass.
All was sweat, cement and national renewal: a vision worthy of Stalin's Russia – without quite so much death ...
Using pension funds for national investment, [Richard Murphy] told me, could be done much more efficiently than the Osborne plan.
In exchange for the vast sums granted in pension tax relief – £38bn at the last count – we could be compelling funds to put money into the very infrastructure projects the government is so keen on – and with no need for a mouthwatering rate of return to draw them in.
The same logic, he says, applies to credit easing, the roundabout method Osborne is using to persuade banks to supply businesses with money.
Again, were we to insist on a quid pro quo for pension tax relief we could channel funds into a national investment bank and send credit directly to those businesses.
But that's all surely too ambitious for Whitehall, and far too dirigiste for the free-marketeers at the top of government ...
The coalition seems to be locked into an economic tragedy ...
Gdn 28 Nov 2011The creation of the cowardly state
The 'cowardly state' is also the corporate state. Because the nature of the neoliberal state has had to be veiled off from the hoi polloi - the 'third face of power' - government has actually got bigger in the service of corporate capital - which is the antithesis of the 'free market' - since corporate capital no more pursues 'free markets' than Stalin did.
The economic crisis we are now facing is the legacy of Thatcher and Reagan because they introduced into government the neoliberal idea that whatever a politician does, however well-intentioned that action might be, they will always make matters worse in the economy.
This is because government is never able, according to neoliberal thinking, to outperform the market, which will always, it says, allocate resources better and so increase human well-being more than government can.
That thinking is the reason why we have ended up with cowardly government ...
What began as an economic idea has now swept across government as a whole: we have got a class of politicians who think that the only useful function for the power that they hold is to dismantle the state they have been elected to govern while transferring as many of its functions as possible to unelected businesses that have bankrolled their path to power ...
Tax Research UK 15 Nov 2011Courageous State
GCHQ to offer British firms expertise in cybercrime
Recall that the new chair of the Press Complaints Commission - Lord Hunt - told Roy Greenslade: " ... the greater challenge is with the bloggers ... "! [Gdn]
• Government plans are part of cyber security strategy
• Barclays and BT among 15 blue-chip firms to share information
• Substantial sums could be paid for GCHQ in-house software
GCHQ is to get a huge increase in funding, and the Ministry of Defence will benefit too.
Though it does not provide specific spending details, the ideas in the strategy include:
• Creating within two years a new cybercrime unit within the National Crime Agency ...
• Sending new guidelines to courts and police highlighting the extra powers now available to them. They include using "serious crime prevention orders" that ban criminals from owning more than one mobile phone, limiting them to one email address and restricting their access to the internet ...
• Encouraging all police forces to recruit more so-called cyber specials ...
• Creating a new Cyber Defence Operations Group at the Ministry of Defence ...
Ministers have looked at the US firm, In-Q-Tel, which is funded by the CIA to help government and industry.
Set up 13 years ago, it is a not-for-profit venture that has provided technology to firms such as Google, and made millions of dollars for the US government by doing so.
The strategy is quite explicit about the implications for GCHQ, saying options include ... "working with private sector partners to explore the potential commercial applications for GCHQ's unique expertise" ...
Gdn 25 Nov 2011
Health watchdogs to target 250 home help agencies
Hundreds of home help agencies will be inspected by the health watchdog next year amid growing concerns that vulnerable elderly people are being abused and neglected in their own houses ...Tel 23 Nov 2011It's called the "Fuck You Buddy" dystopia.
It starts with the rich believing that they are not part of society, but something quite separate.
It blossoms when a Prime Minister tells us "There's no such thing as society".
It gets even worse when New Labour introduce centralist targets into the public services to prepare them for commodification.
Messrs Friedman, Pinochet, Reagan and Thatcher have got their wish: methodological individualism morphed into the new social Darwinism, topped-up with overtones of the Nazi's 'life unworthy of life'.Health watchdog branded unfit for purpose ...
Revealed: growing crisis in UK home care sector
The corporate state v Ivan Illich's 'conviviality'
The title of the page - 'Caring for the elderly the free market way' - is wrong.
Nearly half a million older people receive care in their own homes paid for by the local authority.
There is actually nothing free market about it.
This is, in fact 'Caring for the elderly the corporate state way'.
Government - central/local - is without the resources necessary to offer the level of care actually needed.
The reasoning goes that taxpayers would revolt at the levels of taxation needed, and/or, the markets would revolt at the levels of taxation needed.
So the answer is not the private sector, but the outsourced sector: not quite the same thing.
Which in the case of old people is the care agencies, to whom care is outsourced.
But central/local government controls the funding.
The 'conviviality' route - the Ivan Illich route - remains unexplored, partly because it would come against the big 'success' neoliberals have achieved: the 'autonomous individual - aka, the 'Fuck you buddy' dystopia; and partly because of its twin success in the world of work - depressed wages and precarity - also militates against 'conviviality'.
These are the reasons why David Cameron's fake - democratic centrist - version of conviviality, the 'Big Society', is a stillborn joke.
But Channel 4 News has seen evidence the system is struggling to cope ...
Our investigation revealed a complex - and failing - system.
Workers describe acute time pressures that force them to cut corners.
Care agencies report that councils demand ever-shorter visits and cheaper services.
Councils themselves are feeling the squeeze of cuts - and many of their duties towards older people are discretionary, not a legal duty, making older people's services an obvious target for cost-cutting ...
C4 News 22 Nov 2011Public concern at work
St Paul's still suffering huge losses because of protest camp
Have the protesters attacked 'young children and the disabled'? And if they have why have their been no arrests?
Visitor numbers are down by half and a leading stage school has cancelled its carol concert over the safety fears.
How do you 'wade through a tent', btw?
Italia Conti, whose former pupils include Patsy Kensit, Bonnie Langford and Pixie Lott, had spent years planning the carol concert to mark the centenary of its foundation.
But it decided that the health and safety concerns surrounding the camp were too great to risk for its congregation which would have included young children and the disabled.
St Paul's will now lose the booking fee of more than £10,000 which is on top of the £100,000 a week it is losing from reduced attendance fees ...
A spokesman for St Paul's said: "It is very sad. We had put an awful lot of work into the concert but I think people are just put off by having to wade through the tents."
Tel 18 Nov 2011City property deals benefit a developer linked to lord mayor
Goldman Sachs conquers Europe
... by putting a senior adviser at Goldman Sachs in charge of a Western nation, it has taken to new heights the political power of an investment bank that you might have thought was prohibitively politically toxic ...
It is not just Mr Monti. The European Central Bank, another crucial player in the sovereign debt drama, is under ex-Goldman management, and the investment bank's alumni hold sway in the corridors of power in almost every European nation, as they have done in the US throughout the financial crisis.
Until Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund's European division was also run by a Goldman man, Antonio Borges, who just resigned for personal reasons.
This is The Goldman Sachs Project. Put simply, it is to hug governments close ...
The Project is to create such a deep exchange of people and ideas and money that it is impossible to tell the difference between the public interest and the Goldman Sachs interest ...
Ind 18 Nov 2011
NHS reforms: American consultancy McKinsey in conflict-of-interest row
A global consultancy firm seeking to profit out of the fallout from the shake-up to the NHS is being paid £250,000 a year by the government for advice on the transition towards health secretary Andrew Lansley's vision of the service.
The American firm, McKinsey Inc, with estimated revenues of £4.1bn a year, has been advising the Department of Health on how best to manage the radical changes since March.
McKinsey is also one of a group of private consultants that have united to provide paid-for advice to GPs as they prepare for life after the reforms ...
McKinsey's advisory services emerged in a freedom of information release published on the department's website.
The job description says: "Consultancy services in support of the NHS transition programme".
The company was one of 57 external "organisation and change" management consultants paid almost £5.5m by the government in the last financial year ...
Gdn 05 Nov 2011
St Paul's holy smokescreen lifts to reveal true battlefield
Like the majority of City of London councillors, most members of the committee owe their seats not to the will of those who live within the city boundaries but to the highly unusual, some say anachronistic, voting system that extends votes to corporate interests.
While the few thousand residents of the City each have one vote, businesses have tens of thousands of votes between them, reflecting numbers of employees.
Reformers complain that there is no official requirement for companies to consult with employees in any way on the use of the votes.
When the vote was taken last week to pursue the eviction, the only dissenters were two councillors representing residents rather than companies.
One of the dissenters, Brian Mooney, told the Guardian on Tuesday that he had warned that going down the legal route "would hand the moral and PR high ground" to the protesters
He said: "A little bit of imaginative negotiation could perhaps have defused the situation and maybe even resolve it.
"My view was that the western free-market economy wasn't going to be brought down by an encampment on the steps of St Paul's, and although it's a nuisance and is unsightly and has negative knock-on effects, actually in the greater scheme of things one could live with it." ...
Gdn 02 Nov 2011St Paul's protests: how the legal land lies
Archbishop of Canterbury backs new finance tax
The price of Greek democracy
Is the Church inside or outside the establishment?
Occupy London
"The nasty church ... "
"The nasty church has joined with its kin the nasty party to look after their kin - the nasty rich."
Blogger whitecross, Guardian, 31 Oct 2011The Bishop of London clocked at number 75 in a list of the top 100 environmentalists compiled by The Independent on Sunday, according to the Wikipedia biog. It also indicates that he does not allow his anti-aviation credentials to come in the way of the use of air travel when he is working. Wiki
Presumably he has the same lax attitude towards the Sermon on the Mount when St Paul's cathedral announces it cannot function without daily takings of £20k. How the police are going to clear Occupy London without violence, he doesn't say.According to the church's website, their financial strategy at present involves "a mix of styles and approaches" having "scaled down holdings in UK company shares and invested more in global company shares and private equity." .
In acknowledgement of the UK's newest and principle religion (shopping) its extensive property portfolio includes retail parks, great chunks of high street and the MetroCentre mall; pre-Westfield the biggest shopping centre in Europe.
It also operates highest end retail units in London's Savile Row, and for a mere £85, one can lunch on a steak and a glass of red at the Royal Lancaster, the luxury hotel it owns on London's Hyde Park .
The Mayor of London's love and dedication to high-finance and the City is known and outspoken, and the City of London Corporation is best summarised by the Penguin Rough Guide to London:"with its Lord Mayor, its Beadles, Sheriffs and Aldermen, its separate police force and its select electorate of freemen and liverymen, the City of London is an anachronism of the worst kind. The Corporation, which runs the City like a one-party mini-state, is an unreconstructed old boys' network whose medievalist pageantry camouflages the very real power and wealth which it holds." Huffington PostBishop of London branded hypocrite ...
Mark Field, Tory MP for Cities of London and Westminster, said: “While no one expects anti-capitalism to be a 24-hour activity, I would have hoped the protesters would show a little more respect for the sanctity of St Paul’s.” ...
Nick Herbert, the policing and justice minister, said the Government was examining whether the law was working effectively in light of the continued protest.
He told BBC1’s Politics Show: “Everybody agrees there should be a right of peaceful protest in our country. People have an entitlement to make their view known.
"It’s fundamental to our democracy and the coalition is committed to protect that.
“But we saw – for instance in Parliament Square – where there was a permanent encampment which had gone on for years and was very disruptive to the enjoyment of Parliament Square by others.
“And if necessary we will take action to deal with other invasions of private property that involved permanent encampments."
He added: "You do have the right to protest but you don’t have the right to go and live somewhere and that’s why we do need to look again at whether the law is operating effectively.”
Tel 31 Oct 2011MF Global files for bankruptcy after European debt bets
If the 99% are Evicted, it Will be by the 1%
Is Occupy London a part-time protest?
Sermon on the Mound
St Paul's showdown: lawyers act to clear Occupy London camp
"Blessed are the peacemakers ... ...
Lawyers will serve notice on activists camped out around St Paul's Cathedral as early as Monday, as police also finalise plans to forcibly remove them if senior officers are convinced they are causing disruption ...
The prime minister said: "I'm all in favour of the freedom to demonstrate, but I don't quite see how the freedom to demonstrate has to include the freedom to pitch a tent almost anywhere you want to in London.
"These tents, whether they are in Parliament Square or St Paul's, I don't think it is the right way forward." ...
Gdn 28 Oct 2011
St Paul's Cathedral canon resigns
Church 0 - 1 Corporate State
In a statement to the Guardian, Fraser, who was appointed canon in May 2009, confirmed his resignation, saying:
"I resigned because I believe that the chapter has set on a course of action that could mean there will be violence in the name of the church." ...
Gdn 27 Oct 2011
Alarm at private police operating beyond the law
Hundreds of privately contracted police officers are working for forces across the country despite being unaccountable to the watchdog responsible for investigating deaths in custody, public complaints and allegations of wrongdoing, an investigation by The Independent has found ...
MPs last night condemned the Government for failing to extend the IPCC's statutory powers despite the increased outsourcing of traditional police roles to private firms including Reliance Security and G4S.
The use of privately contracted officers is rapidly expanding into areas such as call handling and ID parades as police forces grapple with budget cuts.
South Wales, Lancashire and Cleveland are among those already outsourcing frontline police jobs.
The Independent has established that G4S has more than 300 staff working in 30 custody suites in three police forces, while Reliance Security employs 690 staff across 13 forces.
A number of forces also buy in temporary extra manpower to assist in dealing with serious crimes such as murder investigations, manhunts and major protests through G4S Policing Solutions' database – which has 17,000 former police officers and support staff on its books ...
Ind 24 Oct 2011
Undercover police and the law: the men who weren't there
I wonder how many Jim Suttons there are 'garnering intelligence' outside St Paul's Cathedral?
... Jim Sutton ... purporting to be an ardent activist who got by as a cleaner was in reality an undercover police officer who had been infiltrating political movements for some time as part of a long-standing operation to garner intelligence on campaigners.
His real name was Jim Boyling and he was employed by a covert Scotland Yard unit specialising in monitoring political activists.
Revelations about the deployment of police spies in protest groups have provoked much controversy this year, but the latest allegations may be the most damaging.
Police chiefs now stand accused of authorising their undercover officers to give false identities in a deliberate manipulation of the legal system.
They are under pressure to explain how often they may have sanctioned their officers to deliberately mislead judges and magistrates and break the law in their courtrooms.
One undercover officer who is prepared to speak out says that the [Jim] Boyling case was not a one-off.
Pete Black, who worked alongside Boyling in the covert unit monitoring political campaigners, told the Guardian that undercover operatives were often prosecuted under their fake identities, as it helped to foster their credibility as genuine campaigners ...
Gdn 19 Oct 2011Undercover detective accused of 'corrupting' trial
Trial collapses after undercover officer changes sides
Protest
Security firm to serve school meals
Security group G4S is to start dishing up school dinners and cleaning hotel rooms following a £5.2 billion takeover deal unveiled today.
The group - better known for running prisons and transferring cash - has snapped up Denmark's ISS in a deal creating a business with a vast workforce of around 1.2 million people.
West Sussex-based G4S currently makes 80% of its revenues from security work but after the deal around 45% will come from services such as cleaning offices and washrooms, portering and catering.
ISS ... boasts ... contracts with Citigroup and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
It also provides catering services in schools, hospitals and colleges, cleans over 2.5 million hotel bedrooms a year and runs switchboards, reception and mailrooms for businesses.
G4S, which is to provide guards at the London Olympics and recently won a contract for court services in the north of England, said the tie-up will lead to cost savings of £100 million a year by 2014 and will transform the group, which currently employs 635,000 people.
In the UK, both companies employ about 40,000 staff. The combined revenues of the group will be £16 billion, more than double the £7.4 billion of G4S in 2010.
G4S, which was already the FTSE 100 Index's biggest employer, will have a total of 1.2 million employees - making it one of the biggest private employers in the world ...
Ind
Troubled Dexia helped fund £5.8bn of PFI projects
Demonstrating that the crisis in the eurozone can have repercussions in the UK, the bank has played a role in projects such as widening the M25 and financing university accommodation ...
It is possible that the bank has sold out or refinanced some of these projects ... since then.
The bank, which needed to be bailed out by France and Belgium during the 2008 banking crisis with €6bn (£5bn) of taxpayers' money, is now hoping to be able to restructure its operations in an "orderly manner and under the best conditions".
The market is concerned about its potential losses in Greece (where it has €3.4bn of exposure) which in turn has created problems for the bank when raising funds on the money markets ...MasistiosGdn 04 Oct 2011
4 October 2011 9:43AM
So here's an interesting scenario;
Government A borrows £1 billion from bank X for a PFI scheme.
Private Company B borrows £1 billion from bank X to match fund that PFI scheme.
Government A says to private company B - "wow, thanks for your cooperation; we'll give you back your £1 billion plus interest plus £700 million profit over 15 years".
So far, for a £2 billion PFI scheme, government A has promised to pay £2.7 billion over 15 years.
BUT
Bank X is now being bailed out by the taxpayer. Bank X can decide which of its debts are 'bad' and therefore, which ones to write off.
SO
Private company B can say to Bank X - "hey, you know, £1 billion is a lot for us to pay back; how about slipping us on to your ol' bad debt list ?"
"Sure" say bank X "no problem - we'll get the taxpayer to stump it up as a part of the bailout scheme".
SO NOW
Government A (the taxpayers thereof) are committed to paying £3.7 billion for a £2 billion PFI scheme.
AND
Private Company B - gets to keep the £700 million profit AND the £1 billion they would have used to pay back their loan to Bank X.
Is that how it works?
Think I'll become a banker or a PFI partner. I'm certainly fed up with being a taxpayer!
City's influence over Conservatives laid bare by research into donations
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has mapped, for the first time, donations to the Tories from business to the year ending 30 June.
Using analysis from the Electoral Commission and Companies House databases, the researchers found City donations in the 12 months to July accounted for 51.4% of the £12.2m of funds received by Central Office. Hedge funds, financiers and private equity firms contributed £3.3m – 27% – while 50 City donors paid more than £50,000. All donors contributing this amount or more become members of the Leader's Group and qualify for a face-to-face meeting with the prime minister.
The largest contributor across all the business sectors studied by the bureau was hedge funds which donated £1.38m (11.4%). Three of the City's biggest name hedge fund bosses – Michael Farmer, Lord Stanley Fink and Andrew Law – together contributed £636,300. Fink is the party treasurer. The top financier donor was David Rowland, who contributed £1.1m. Rowland has a colourful City career and was forced to resign as party treasurer before he even took up the job because of links to tax havens. He now controls Banque Havilland – which used to be the crashed Icelandic Kaupthing bank business – in Luxembourg and the hedge fund Blackfish Capital Management.
Outside the City, the sector that donated most was industry, including manufacturing and defence. This sector contributed £913,411 (7.5%).
Gdn 30 Sept 2011Cameron's £50,000 price tag finds 70 people willing to pay up
Tory party funding
NHS hospitals crippled by PFI scheme
Under the PFI deals, a private contractor builds a hospital or school.
It owns the building for up to 35 years, and during this period the public sector must pay interest and repay the cost of construction, as well as paying the contractor to maintain the building.
However, the total cost of the deals is often far more than the value of the assets.
As a result, Mr Lansley says, the 22 trusts "cannot afford" to pay for their schemes, which in total are worth more than £5.4billion, because the required payments have risen sharply in the wake of the recession ...
The public payments for PFI deals are typically linked to inflation and therefore the cost to taxpayers has increased by up to a third since the beginning of the credit crisis, according to the National Audit Office ...
Gdn 21 Sept 2011NHS told to abandon delayed IT project
PFI fiasco: the hospitals under threat of closure
The Biggest, Weirdest Rip-Off Yet
Government to 'prop up' PFI deals
The Great Debt Deceit
Taxpayer may have to pay £170bn for PFI schemes
City runs rings round taxpayers in PFI refinancings
Sharp business people outwitting Whitehall over PFI refinancing deals
PFI schemes 'to cost NHS £53bn'
The man who treats public services as a pension fund for fat cats
British arms company worked for Gaddafi's government
The British wing of an American arms company was upgrading the communication equipment of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's most feared army unit when the revolution against his rule broke out, documents unearthed in Tripoli show ...
Amnesty International UK Arms Control Programme Director Oliver Sprague said he was "not remotely surprised" that further documents had been unearthed showing "the substantial role played by the UK in arming the Libyan regime."
"By the time the UN imposed an arms embargo on the Gaddafi government earlier this year, Libya was one of the UK's best arms customers in the region, with our government allowing the sale of virtually any item on the UK military list," he said.
"These weapons should never have been sold. It demonstrates serious shortcomings in the way the UK government applies its own rules to supposedly prevent arms exports where it's likely the equipment will be used in human rights violations.
"Now, with the UK seemingly rushing to promote further arms sales to the region, we need to see the government putting into place much more robust risk-assessment procedures over arms exports."
Arms campaigners are particularly concerned that next week's DSEi in London - the world's largest arms fair - will herald a return to "business as usual" within the arms industry targeting notoriously authoritarian regimes as potential lucrative cusotmers.
Yesterday The Independent revealed how the state owned Royal Bank of Scotland and the government's foreign trade department, the UKTI, are speaking tomorrow at a London Chamber of Commerce event titled: "Middle East - a vast market for UK defence and security companies."
Ind 07 Sept 2011Companies ejected from London arms fair for 'promoting cluster bombs'
Amnesty International
CAAT
Campaign Against the Arms Trade
HRW - Arms
Wikipedia
Sourcewatch
Arms Trade - Guardian
Investors 'using tax havens to cash in on PFI contracts'
Under the PFI ... the Treasury can keep the costs off its balance sheet, but in a highly critical report, the cross-party committee says the PFI became "the only game in town" after 1997, and Whitehall officials failed to ensure the taxpayer was getting value for money.
In particular, the committee criticises the Treasury for assuming PFI contractors would pay tax, when many are based in offshore tax havens.
Innisfree, one of the largest investors in PFI, told the committee that 72% of its shares were held by investors based in Guernsey.
Some of the 700-plus projects have changed hands several times since their inception, often making healthy gains for the original contractors.
The accounts committee said:
"We suspect that initial investors are able to make excessive profits from selling PFI shares, yet we lack the information to know for sure."
The committee calls for the controversial scheme to be brought within the scope of the Freedom of Information Act, so that the public can judge whether they are getting value for money and contractors can no longer hide behind commercial confidentiality.
According to written evidence submitted to the committee and published alongside the report, the firm behind the PFI project for Calderdale Hospital in west Yorkshire was involved in nine transactions between 2002 and 2010.
In the appendix to the report, the PAC identifies 91 PFI projects held in overseas tax havens, including 33 owned by HSBC Infrastructure, an offshoot of the high-treet bank, based in Guernsey ...
Gdn 01 Sept 2011
Government must count £35bn in PFI debt
Another of Gordon Brown's 'gifts' to the nation
The MPs found that the cost of capital for a typical PFI project is over 8pc – double the long-term government gilt rate of approximately 4pc.
An estimated £60bn of capital investment is already committed by private investors in PFI projects, including the building of schools, hospitals and other infrastructure projects.
When the Committee launched its investigation into PFI in March 2011, 61 new projects were being procured with an estimated investment value of £7bn.
The majority of PFI debt does not appear in official debt data. The Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) has estimated if it were, Britain's national debt would increase by £35bn or 2.5pc of GDP.
Despite the "significantly higher cost of finance", the Committee said it had not found "evidence of savings and benefits in other areas of PFI projects".
Instead, they found that the "design innovation was worse in PFI projects and we have seen reports which found out that building quality was of a lower standard in PFI buildings." ...
Tel 18 Aug 2011Treasury 'in dark' over 'excessive' PFI profits
''We were taken for a ride on PFI''
Hospitals to cut services to pay for £60bn private finance deal
The man who treats public services as a pension fund for fat cats
Is Gordon Brown “economically illiterate”?
PFI
PFI
Hacking 'discussed' under Andy Coulson
Phone-hacking was "widely discussed" at the News of the World under former editor Andy Coulson, according to documents released today.
The papers published by the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee include a letter written by the newspaper's former royal editor Clive Goodman ...
Mr Goodman's letter was written in March 2007 in support of his appeal for wrongful dismissal for his part in the phone-hacking scandal.
In it, he stated: "This practice was widely discussed in the daily editorial conference, until explicit reference to it was banned by the editor."
He also stated that he had been promised by Mr Coulson and the paper's then legal manager Tom Crone that he could have his job back if he did not implicate anyone else when he was prosecuted by police for intercepting the messages of royal aides.
"Tom Crone and the editor promised on many occasions that I could come back to a job at the newspaper if I did not implicate the paper or any of its staff in my mitigation plea. I did not, and I expect the paper to honour its promise to me," he wrote ...
Ind 16 Aug 2011
Drinks industry takes a hold on government alcohol policy
Minutes of meetings of the group before and after the election, seen by The Independent, show that drinks industry representatives in attendance rose from an average of one or two at each meeting in 2009-10 to some six or seven in 2010-11.
Among the members of the cross-government group, chaired by the Home Office's director of drugs, alcohol and partnerships, are representatives of Heineken, Bacardi, Molson Coors, the British Beer and Pub Association, the Wine and Spirit Trade Association and the supermarket Morrisons.
Experts said the Government was right to consult the industry about its plans but was wrong to include it on policy-making committees.
It created an insuperable conflict of interest as "making money from alcohol sales is at odds with reducing harm" ...
Ind 01 Aug 2011
British to Expand Inquiry Into Murdoch Media
Scotland Yard will expand its investigation of The News of the World and its parent company, police officials said Saturday, adding a new inquiry into possible instances of computer intrusion to the current accusations of phone hacking and payments to police officers ...
... a former British Army intelligence officer, Ian Hurst, said in a statement that he had been contacted by investigators over allegations that he had made “in regards to my family’s computer being illegally accessed over a sustained period during 2006.”
Mr. Hurst had worked in Northern Ireland, running undercover operations.
The BBC reported this year that his computer had been hacked and sensitive e-mail had been provided to The News of the World ...
NYT 30 July 2011New police investigation will probe computer hacking
Miliband 'went to News International parties'
Tom Crone and Colin Myler raise the stakes
The News of the World executives had originally rejected Taylor's claim for damages altogether.
But in May 2008, they changed their tune abruptly, when Taylor's lawyers got hold of the "For Neville" email.
They offered £50,000, then £150,000, if Taylor would drop the case.
In June 2008, when Crone and Myler went to get permission from James Murdoch for an even bigger payout, the offer went up to £350,000, then £400,000.
According to earlier testimony from Taylor's lawyer, the NoW team demanded a special confidentiality clause: that the court file would be sealed and Taylor was not to reveal that a confidential settlement of any kind had been made.
This served to hush up the existence of the deal. James tried to persuade the MPs that such a deal was perfectly normal.
In a scandal where, it had seemed, the stakes could go no higher, Crone and Myler's defiant statement has raised them to new heights.
James Murdoch's whole corporate future has been called into question in the most dramatic fashion.
Gdn 22 July 20117/7 victims fear police passed numbers to News of the World
The dangers of ranging too widely
James Murdoch misled MPs
How an email 'for Neville' became a turning point
Labour accused of hypocrisy over Murdoch contacts
News International shunned by Team GB's Olympic 2012 athletes
Steve Whittamore
How News International worked towards its own downfall
What's wrong with comparing Murdoch to Hitler? They both bought into social Darwinist theories.
The one promoted physical and mental destruction on an unparalled scale; the other is promoting potential economic, social, and environmental destruction on an unparalled scale.
'Financial Terror' Inequality, Consumerism & Biodiversity Trashing Democracy, Society, Environment
What made Rupert so certain of Brooks's great talent and flair, when it remains imperceptible to everyone else?
Not, surely, her love of news-papers, a love that Rupert is supposed to share yet quite quickly resulted in the summary execution of a long-established title, and left three others wounded.
If one is to accept Brooks's own narrative, then she does not have a journalistic bone in her entire body.
Good journalists are curious about the world. They are curious, especially, about journalism.
Yet this woman claims to have edited a couple of national newspapers without ever considering how her team might have been getting the stories she was splashing with such enthusiasm.
How did Brooks impress Rupert, then? The only possible conclusion is that Brooks was "working towards the Führer".
The phrase is borrowed from the historian Ian Kershaw, who coined it to explain how Hitler motivated others to formulate policies without considering anything at all except how they would play with him.
(This is not, by the way, an invitation to extend a metaphor and compare Murdoch to Hitler. "Working towards the Führer" is just the most apposite way of describing a culture that places competitive second-guessing at its core, thereby risking a race to the bottom.) ...
Gdn 20 July 2011This scandal has exposed the scale of elite corruption
Ed Llewellyn: The old school chum in trouble for not communicating
Yesterday was a good day to slip out the news that David Cameron's chief of staff, Ed Llewellyn, is one of three special advisers working in Downing Street on a salary of £140,000 a year ...
... Mr Cameron's old school chum ... is now doubly in the line of fire after John Yates ... revealed that Mr Llewellyn was the Downing Street official who asked him not to talk to Mr Cameron about phone hacking.
This is the second time in less than two weeks that Mr Llewellyn's name has entered the phone-hacking saga.
It has also emerged that The Guardian's deputy editor, Ian Katz, passed a warning about the News of the World ex-editor Andy Coulson to Mr Cameron's adviser Steve Hilton, who passed it on to Mr Llewellyn.
Under Mr Coulson's editorship, he was told, the NOTW had hired a private detective with a criminal record.
Mr Llewellyn apparently did not pass the message on – and Mr Coulson was hired to be Mr Cameron's top spin doctor ...
Ind 20 July 2011Latest Updates on Phone Hacking Scandal
The Commons Home Affairs Committee "deplores" ...
10 questions from the Guardian to Downing Street
Hacking crisis edges closer to Cameron
Chief of staff at Downing Street 'rejected the offer of Scotland Yard briefing'
Rupert Murdoch: 10 things we learned from the phone-hacking hearing
1. Murdoch calls the editor of the Sunday Times in London "almost every Saturday" – but only to see what stories were being lined up for the next day's edition, not, perish the thought, to influence the paper's editorial direction.
That would be contrary to the legal undertakings he gave when he bought the paper in 1981.
2. Murdoch would speak to the editor of the News of the World about only once a month. When asked what he would say, Murdoch replied: "What's doing?"
3. The editor he sees most is Robert Thomson, the editor of the Wall Street Journal, with whom he shares an office building in New York.
4. He works 10 to 12 hours a day.
5. When visiting prime ministers at Downing Street, he goes in by the "back door" to avoid photographers.
"I do what I'm told," he said, claiming the arrangement was at the behest of No 10.
6. Murdoch's young children by his second wife, Wendi Deng, played with the offspring of Gordon and Sarah Brown.
He "very much hopes" that he will be friends with the Browns again.
7. He has a habit of knocking the table when making important points, to the irritation of his son James, who asked him to "stop gesticulating".
8. Murdoch didn't close the News of the World for commercial reasons; instead he shut the title down because it had lost the trust of its readers.
9. He wears a vest under his shirt.
10. Tuesday 19 July 2011 was the most humble day of his life.
Gdn 19 July 2011
Murdochs Say Top Executives Didn’t Know of Phone Hacking
It's always the little people at the bottom who are at fault in 2011.
Sir Paul said (Neil) Wallis's role with the police was “very minor.”
People at the top are astonishingly ill-informed as to what's taking place on their watch.
“I had no reason to connect Wallis with phone hacking,” he said.
But, in an indication of the close ties between Scotland Yard and the Murdoch empire, Sir Paul said 10 of the 45 people working Scotland Yard’s press office had previously worked for News International ...
NYT 19 July 2011John Yates: How the wrong company caught up with a high-flier
"A few unfortunate decisions" - this phrase is indicative of the 'moral compass' problem afflicting most people at the top of public life in 2011
"No question John would have made the top job if he'd continued the way he was going," said one Yard source.
"There's a real feeling here that the Met have lost a good copper because of a few unfortunate decisions."
His departure followed revelations that Mr Wallis, who was arrested last Friday, was hired by the Met at a time when the force faced growing criticism over its failure to properly investigate criminality at the Sunday tabloid ...
Ind ; 19 July 2011'No 10 told me not to disclose Neil Wallis job', says Met Chief Sir Paul Stephenson
"It's embarrasing" - the context in which this phrase is used is indicative of the 'moral compass' problem afflicting most people at the top of public life in 2011
He conceeded that he now regretted hiring Mr Wallis, the former News of the World Deputy Editor, saying he was “embarrassed” by the appointment.
"Just let me say, with the benefit of what we know now, I'm quite happy to put on the record I regret that we went into that contract, quite clearly, because it's embarrassing," he said.
Tel 19 July 2011Police examine bag found in bin near Rebekah Brooks's home
Detectives are examining a computer, paperwork and a phone found in a bin near the riverside London home of Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News International.
The Guardian has learned that a bag containing the items was found in an underground car park in the Design Centre at the exclusive Chelsea Harbour development on Monday afternoon.
The car park, under a shopping centre, is yards from the gated apartment block where Brooks lives with her husband, a former racehorse trainer and close friend of David Cameron.
It is understood the bag was handed in to security at around 3pm, and that shortly afterwards Brooks's husband, Charlie, arrived and tried to reclaim it.
He was unable to prove the bag was his and the security guard refused to release it.
Instead, it is understood that the security guard called the police ...
Initial suspicions that there had been a break-in at the Brooks's flat have been dismissed.
David Wilson, Charlie Brooks's official spokesman, told the Guardian that Charlie Brooks denies that the bag belonged to his wife ...
Gdn 18 July 2011Murdochs Say Top Executives Didn’t Know of Phone Hacking
Profile of Sean Hoare, the News of the World journalist and whistleblower
"There's an expression: 'the culture of dark arts'. You were given a remit - just get the story, that's the most important thing," Hoare said.
"I've stood by Andy and been requested to tap phones, to hack into them and so on. He was well aware that the practice exists. To deny it is a lie. It's simply a lie.
"It was always done in the language of, 'Why don't you practise some of your dark arts on this', which was a metaphor for saying, 'Go and hack into a phone'.
"Such was the culture of intimidation and bullying that you would do it because you had to produce results. And, you know, to stand up in front of a Commons committee and say, 'I was unaware of this under my watch' was wrong."
Hoare claimed that hacking was "endemic" in the newspaper industry and said he was speaking out because he felt it unfair that royal correspondent Clive Goodman had been painted as a rogue reporter acting alone ... in 2005, Coulson sacked him.
Hoare's immersion in the showbiz life had led him to become dependent on drink and drugs.
"I was paid to go out and take drugs with rock stars - take drugs with them, take pills with them, take cocaine with them. It was so competitive.
"You are going to go beyond the call of duty. You are going to do things that no sane man would do," he told The Guardian ...
Tel 19 July 2011Tabloid Hack Attack on Royals, and Beyond
Troubles That Money Can’t Dispel
As Mark Lewis, the lawyer for the family of the murdered girl, Milly Dowler, said after Ms. Brooks resigned,
“This is not just about one individual but about the culture of an organization.”
Well put. That organization has used strategic acumen to assemble a vast and lucrative string of media properties, but there is also a long history of rounded-off corners ...
According to The Guardian ... News Corporation paid out $1.6 million in 2009 to settle claims related to the scandal.
While expedient, and inexpensive ... it was probably not a good strategy in the long run.
If some of those cases had gone to trial, it would have had the effect of lancing the wound.
Litigation can have an annealing effect on companies, forcing them to re-examine the way they do business.
But as it was, the full extent and villainy of the hacking was never known because the News Corporation paid serious money to make sure it stayed that way.
And the money the company reportedly paid out to hacking victims is chicken feed compared with what it has spent trying to paper over the tactics of News America in a series of lawsuits filed by smaller competitors in the United States ...
NYT 17 July 2011Tabloid Hack Attack on Royals, and Beyond
Murdoch’s empire: some predictions
IPCC to probe four senior officers
Ex-NOTW whistleblowing reporter found dead
Murdoch Aides Long Tried to Blunt Scandal
London Mayor Last Year Dismissed Hacking Allegations as ‘Codswallop’
John Yates resigns over Neil Wallis links
Chipping Norton Set’s final hurrah
It was the highlight of the summer season for the Chipping Norton Set.
Rupert Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth and her PR tycoon husband Matthew Freud threw a party of decadent opulence and excess that saw the political and media elite flock to their 22-bedroom Cotswolds mansion Burford Priory yet again.
Just 24 hours later, the news broke that murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler's mobile had been hacked by Rupert Murdoch's News of the World newspaper and his global empire was plunged into disarray ...
As a jazz band played in the landscaped gardens of the £6??million property, Mr Freud, who was wearing leather trousers, greeted guests, including Education Secretary Michael Gove and Culture Minister Ed Vaizey.
They drank champagne in the company of former Labour Cabinet Ministers Peter Mandelson, David Miliband, James Purnell and Douglas Alexander ...
MoS 17 July 2011Metropolitan police commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson has just announced his resignation
He 'had no knowledge of' ... 'no reason to believe' ... 'was unaware that' ...
7.41pm: In his statement, Stephenson said:I have taken this decision as a consequence of the ongoing speculation and accusations relating to the Met's links with News International at a senior level and in particular in relation to Mr Neil Wallis who as you know was arrested in connection with Operation Weeting last week.Gdn 17 July 2011
Firstly, I want to say what an enormous privilege it has been for me to lead this great organisation that is the Met. The recent example of the heroism and bravery of Met officers in chasing armed suspects, involving the shooting of one of my officers, is typical; but is in danger of being eclipsed by the ongoing debate about relationships between senior officers and the media. This can never be right.
Crime levels in the Met are at a ten year low. You have seen the Met at its glorious and unobtrusive best on the occasion of the royal wedding; the professional and restrained approach to unexpected levels of violence in recent student demonstrations; the vital ongoing work to secure the safety of the capital from terrorism; the reductions in homicide; and continuing increased levels of confidence as the jewel in our crown of Safer Neighbourhoods Teams serve the needs of Londoners.Sir Paul Stephenson & Neil Wallis
Stain From Tabloids Rubs Off on a Cozy Scotland Yard
Inside was a treasure-trove of evidence: 11,000 pages of handwritten notes listing nearly 4,000 celebrities, politicians, sports stars, police officials and crime victims whose phones may have been hacked by The News of the World, a now defunct British tabloid newspaper.
Yet from August 2006, when the items were seized, until the autumn of 2010, no one at the Metropolitan Police Service, commonly referred to as Scotland Yard, bothered to sort through all the material and catalog every page, said former and current senior police officials.
During that same time, senior Scotland Yard officials assured Parliament, judges, lawyers, potential hacking victims, the news media and the public that there was no evidence of widespread hacking by the tabloid.
They steadfastly maintained that their original inquiry, which led to the conviction of one reporter and one private investigator, had put an end to what they called an isolated incident ...
New York Times 17 July 2011Tabloid Hack Attack on Royals, and Beyond
George Osborne, the new Macavity
Murdoch’s empire: some predictions
IPCC to probe four senior officers
Ex-NOTW whistleblowing reporter found dead
Murdoch Aides Long Tried to Blunt Scandal
London Mayor Dismissed Hacking Allegations as ‘Codswallop’
John Yates resigns over Neil Wallis links
Sir Paul Stephenson faces questions of health spa stay
Met chiefs on drinking terms with former NoW deputy editor
Hayman had lunch with Coulson during phone hacking investigation
Met police put pressure on Guardian
Three police officers ...
John Yates evidence on phone hacking mocked by MPs
Police lunch date under scrutiny in hacking case
The police are also in the dock
News of the World 'paid police for stories'
Senior MP's secret links to Murdoch
The MP who will lead the attack on Rebekah Brooks and Rupert and James Murdoch this week over their roles in the phone-hacking scandal has close links with the media empire, it is revealed today.
John Whittingdale, the Conservative chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport committee, admitted he was an old friend of Mr Murdoch's close aide, Les Hinton, and had been for dinner with Ms Brooks.
The Independent on Sunday has also learnt that Mr Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth, seen as the future saviour of the company, has also met Mr Whittingdale a number of times.
Among her 386 "friends" on Facebook, the only MP she lists is Mr Whittingdale. He is also the only MP among 93 Facebook "friends" of Mr Hinton.
Ind 17 July 2011Blame the bullies
How the outsiders took control
George Osborne, the new Macavity
Sir Paul Stephenson faces questions of health spa stay
New body blows for Rupert Murdoch
The Metropolitan Police want to know why a series of emails, dating back to 2006, were only made available to detectives in January, prompting the current inquiry that has led in the past two weeks to the closure of the News of the World, the resignations of executives Rebekah Brooks and Les Hinton, the arrest of Andy Coulson and the scrapping of News Corporation’s proposed takeover of BSkyB.
The source said: “News International appears to have covered up this scandal.
"That is potentially a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
"It would have to be proved that James Murdoch, Rebekah Brooks or any other senior executive knew the information handed over in 2011 was actually in the system in 2006 and suppressed it.
"The way they are sacking people at the moment, you can’t rule out further information coming out."
News International has confirmed that a series of emails had been read by senior executives – a source declined to say who – before being sent in 2007 to an outside law firm where they remained for four years before being handed to police ...
Sir Paul Stephenson ... will be asked [by the home affairs select committee] why he employed Neil Wallis, the former deputy editor of the News of the World who was arrested last week, as a media adviser ...
Tel 16 July 2011Met chiefs on drinking terms with former NoW deputy editor
NoW phone hacking scandal: live
The MPs against the Murdochs
Hayman had lunch with Coulson during phone hacking investigation
Murdoch attacks Gordon Brown
In his first interview about the crisis that has engulfed his media empire, Murdoch said some MPs' comments on the scandal were "total lies" and singled out Brown for criticism over the former prime minister's accusation that News International was guilty of "law-breaking on an industrial scale".
The media baron said Brown "got it entirely wrong" when he alleged that Murdoch's British papers had used "known criminals" to get access to his personal information when Labour was in power.
"The Browns were always friends of ours" until the Sun withdrew its support for Labour before the last general election, he told the Wall Street Journal, his flagship US paper.
On Twitter, Murdoch's biographer Michael Wolff said he "seemed genuinely distressed about Gordon Brown not liking him anymore." ...
Gdn 15 July 2011The great Murdoch conspiracy
Ex-PM Gordon Brown blasts 'industrial criminality' ...
You sacrificed your morals to Rupert Murdoch long ago
Gordon Brown's shock that his family medical records were hacked
Gordon Brown 'targeted by Sunday Times' - 110711
Brown 'scrapped 10p tax band to woo Murdoch' - 300311
Where the Sun don’t shine
David Cameron under fire over Andy Coulson's visit to Chequers
Number 10 disclosed Coulson's visit to Chequers as it published details of all of Cameron's contacts with media proprietors and executives since the election.
Cameron told MPs on Wednesday that he would publish details of the contacts since he became PM.
He has since decided that this should cover all contacts since he became Tory leader, though only the details since May 2010 were published on Friday.
Nick Clegg also published details of all his meetings with proprietors and executives since his appointment as deputy prime minister ...
Gdn 15 July 2011The great Murdoch conspiracy
Cameron's 26 meetings in 15 months with Murdoch chiefs
Cameron fails to solve his Coulson problem New Statesman 08 July 2011
Coulson arrested over tabloid scandal blnz.com 07 July 2011
David Cameron: Andy Coulson should be prosecuted if he lied over phone hacking Telegraph 13 July 2011
Cameron's defence on Coulson: the 'second chance' Guardian 08 July 2011
Rusbridger: 'I warned David Cameron over Coulson link' BBC NEWS 08 July 2011
Cameron defends Andy Coulson Guardian 05 October 2010
Coulson taints Cameron - 050910 Independent 05 September 2010
Tories reject call to axe Coulson BBC NEWS 10 July 2009
Andy Coulson, Holding court with Cameron PR Week 03 July 2008
The right man for the job Guardian 01 June 2007
Three police officers cannot persuade MPs that they investigated the hacking scandal with proper zeal
Seldom has a Commons committee hearing touched such unintended heights of absurdity.
Three of the senior police officers who gave evidence sounded like three schoolboys who have not done their homework, and have no excuse for not having done it, yet protest in the most innocent tone that they have done everything any reasonable person could have expected ...
Since leaving the police force, Mr Hayman has become a journalist working for News International, the very company he had previously investigated with what struck many people as a conspicuous lack of zeal ...
Mr Hayman sounded like a cabbie who has driven 20 miles in the wrong direction, and then rounds on his passengers when they ask whether he knows where he is going.
But this comparison is unfair to taxi drivers ...
Mr Vaz wondered if Yates of the Yard had “actually offered to resign”: an idea which sent this distinguished police officer ballistic.
“If you’re suggesting I should resign because of what the News of the World has done,” Yates of the Yard declared, that was completely “unfair”.
On the contrary, the public “should be feeling extremely reassured” by the way the Metropolitan Police has handled the matter.
The third officer, former Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke ... confirmed the impression that the police live in a world of their own ...
Tel 12 July 2011Murdoch facing BSkyB defeat
John Yates evidence on phone hacking mocked by MPs
Latest Updates on British Phone Hacking Scandal
Just 170 hacking victims contacted
NotW accused of paying police to track stars' phones
Yates's evidence ... 'unconvincing'
British Tabloid Sought Phone Data of Investigators
Shortly after Scotland Yard began its initial criminal inquiry of phone hacking by The News of the World in 2006, five senior police investigators discovered that their own cellphone messages had been targeted by the tabloid and had most likely been listened to.
The disclosure, based on interviews with current and former officials, raises the question of whether senior investigators feared that if they aggressively investigated, The News of the World would punish them with splashy articles about their private lives. Some of their secrets, tabloid-ready, eventually emerged in other news outlets.
Those damaging allegations, about two of the senior officers’ private lives, involved charges that one had padded his expense reports and was involved in extramarital affairs and that the other used frequent flier miles accrued on the job for personal vacations ...
NYT 11 July 2011Government backs Labour call for Murdoch to ditch BSkyB bid
Rupert Murdoch accused as News Corp investors sue in US
Shareholders sue News Corp
Police chiefs to tell MPs that it was a cock-up not a conspiracy
News Corp investors attack Murdoch
MET Statement
Attack on Brooks comes back to haunt Miliband
A senior News International journalist warned Labour that the company's papers intended to "turn on Ed Miliband and his staff" days before allegations were published in The Sunday Times and The Sun about his strategy director Tom Baldwin ...
Ind 11 July 2011Cameron prepares to delay Sky bid as Lib Dems threaten to back Labour
Hunt sends BSkyB takeover back to Ofcom
Why I had to leave The Times
For Years, the Tabloids’ Sting Kept British Politicians in Line
Usefully, the NYT make the point that Dacre's bog roll is just as poisonous
However much they might deplore tabloid methods and articles — the photographers lurking in the bushes; the reporters in disguise entrapping subjects into sexual indiscretion or financial malfeasance; the editors paying tens of thousands of dollars for exclusive access to the mistresses of politicians and sports stars; the hidden taping devices; the constant stream of stories about illicit sex romps — politicians have often been afraid to say so publicly, for fear of losing the papers’ support or finding themselves the target of their wrath.
If showering politicians with political rewards for cultivating his support has been the carrot in the Murdoch equation, then punishing them for speaking out has generally been the stick.
But the latest revelations in the phone-hacking scandal appear to have broken the spell, emboldening even Murdoch allies like Prime Minister David Cameron to criticize his organization and convene a commission to examine press regulation ...
NYT 09 July 2011
So what dare we hope for from Ofcom?
There is not much to be said in favour of Ofcom, the so-called regulator which has to decide whether Rupert Murdoch's bid for total control of BSkyB can be given the green light – whether in the words of their brief he is "fit and proper" to gain overall ownership ...
Ofcom is a quango of highly-paid grey men headed by a former New Labour groupie, one Ed Richards, who receives a salary of more than £300,000.
Few people will have heard of him, and under his leadership Ofcom has done little to reverse the dramatic decline in the quality of television programmes.
When it comes to deciding whether Murdoch is "fit and proper", Ofcom is in a difficult position as only last year they approved Mr Richard Desmond, a man who has made a fortune out of pornography, as the new controller of Channel 5.
If Desmond is deemed to be fit and proper, can Ofcom turn down Murdoch – a man who, in comparison, seems almost respectable?
Ind 09 July 2011
Met and CPS criticised for 'rubber stamping' first phone-hacking inquiry
Is the first time a game keeper has turned poacher?
The new report is expected to criticise the former director of public prosecutions, Lord (Ken) Macdonald, who advised the Yard on the scope of its original investigation.
Macdonald was head of the CPS during the initial inquiries in 2005 and 2006 ...
The [Culture, Media and Sport select] committee is likely to claim the CPS simply "rubber stamped" the Yard's request to restrict the remit of its original investigation which was confined to only a handful of victims.
The criticism is potentially embarrassing as Macdonald is now advising News International ... on how it handles legal claims brought by phone-hack victims ...
Gdn 09 July 2011Ed Miliband will urge MPs to halt ... BSkyB takeover
I warned No 10 over Coulson appointment ... Ashdown
James Murdoch could face criminal charges
The Butler University law professor Mike Koehler, an FCPA expert, said:
"I would be very surprised if the US authorities don't become involved in this [NI] conduct."
He said the scandal appeared to qualify as ... [a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act] ... case on two counts.
First, News Corp is a US-listed company, giving the US authorities jurisdiction to investigate allegations.
"Second, perhaps more importantly, the act requires that payments to government officials need to be in the furtherance of 'obtaining or retaining' business.
If money is being paid to officials, in this case the police, in order to get information to write sensational stories to sell newspapers, that would qualify," he said ...
Gdn 08 July 2011News of the World closed down: live
Cameron strives to call the tune ...
James Murdoch
'Fit and proper' test thrusts Ofcom into the spotlight
The 1990 Broadcasting Act states that the regulator “shall not grant a licence to any person unless they are satisfied that he is a fit and proper person to hold it”; and “shall do all that they can to secure that, if they cease to be so satisfied in the case of any person holding a licence, that person does not remain the holder of the licence.”
In its only public statement on the test, Ofcom said on Wednesday:
“In the light of the current public debate about phone hacking and other allegations, Ofcom confirms that it has a duty to be satisfied on an ongoing basis that the holder of a broadcasting licence is ‘fit and proper’.
“It is clearly not for Ofcom to investigate matters which properly lie in the hands of the police and the courts, however we are closely monitoring the situation and in particular the investigations by the relevant authorities into the alleged unlawful activities.” ..
Tel 08 July 2011Ofcom monitors hacking developments
Police probe suspected deletion of emails by NI executive
Cameron Orders Two Inquiries ...
Chris Bryant: NoW closure bid to protect Rebekah Brooks
The Labour MP said:
"This is designed to try and protect Rebekah Brooks, and I believe that if she had a shred of decency after what we have heard about Milly Dowler's phone being hacked, which happened on her watch as editor, she should have resigned by now.
"Everything that's been announced today just goes to show that there's been a cover-up, that Parliament has been misled, that police have been corrupted, that police investigations were undermined.
"This strategy of chucking first journalists, then executives and now a whole newspaper overboard isn't going to protect the person at the helm of the ship." ...
Former deputy prime minister Lord Prescott, one of the alleged victims of phone hacking, said that closing the paper would not resolve the problems at News International.
"Cutting off the arm doesn't mean to say you've solved it. There is still the body and the head and the same culture and that's why there has be a public inquiry into it," he said.
"I cannot accept for a moment that at the top of the company, Mr Murdoch - certainly Rebekah Brooks - didn't know what was going on ...
Ind 07 July 2011BSkyB deal could collapse in wake of phone-hacking scandal
Police probe suspected deletion of emails by NI executive
Coulson arrested
BSkyB deal delay to cost City advisers millions
British Tories Squirm as They Feel the Heat in Murdoch’s Embrace
Big questions for News International
This is all part of the Murdoch masterplan
Public opinion and time are against Rupert Murdoch's News Corp
This grubby scandal takes on a dark new significance
The police are also in the dock
An acquisition that must not proceed
News Corp bid for BSkyB may be scuppered by 'fit and proper' owner test
Panic in No 10 as the decision day for BSkyB takeover bid looms
The Murdoch Style, Under Pressure
News of the World 'paid police for stories'
News international has uncovered e-mails that indicate payments were made to the police by the News of the World, during the editorship from 2003-7 of Andy Coulson.This whole saga has revealed the murky world of the Corporate State as Mussolini would have understood it. The intimate links between politicians, the police and News International is the direct antithesis of democracy, since the role of News International is to divert attention away from the reality of 'government' by bankocracy, the IMF and the WEF, into the fake world of the celebrity, er, 'culture'.
The e-mails, which appear to show that Mr Coulson authorised the payments, have been passed to the police ...
BBC NEWS 06 July 2011Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp turned over the e-mails to Scotland Yard as part of a broader inquiry into phone hacking and the close relationship between the News of the World and the police. Coulson’s predecessor Rebekah Wade, who is now C.E.O. of Murdoch’s U.K. newspaper group, admitted in 2003 to paying police officers, though she has since said she can’t recall any specific instances of payments. [VF]Phone hacking: families of war dead 'targeted'
News of the World surveillance of detective ...
Cameron promises NotW phone hack probe
Phone-hacking debate ... panel verdict
News Corp’s bid for BSkyB jeopardised
Brooks’ past link with Milly private detective
News of the World’s Andy Coulson Condoned Police Payoffs
Social media v the News of The World
A promise by Murdoch is meaningless
The i reported - 01 July 2011 - that BSkyB 'held it's summer party last night at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office'.
The people one should feel sorry for, in the shame of the Government genuflection to Rupert Murdoch – or maybe it should be simply contempt – are the independent directors appointed to preserve the separated Sky news from his interference.
The link between corporate capitalism and government hardly needs a more obvious demonstration than this misuse of government premises by an organ of News International, coming as it did only hours after the coalition's craven failure to refer it to the Monopolies Commission.
We have been down this course so often before that it is hardly worth repeating just how meaningless any promises of independence by Murdoch are.
As far back as his takeover of the News of the World in 1969, he promised that the chairman, Sir William Carr, would stay on as chairman to ensure traditions were maintained. He was out within three months ...
Murdoch doesn't exercise interference by issuing memos; he exercises control by appointing people who will second-guess his will, and his prejudices ...
Ind 01 July 2011Empire of the Sun
The Australian-born American citizen Rupert Murdoch commands just under 40% of the UK newspaper market, and just under 40% of the vast BSkyB.
Now, with Mr Hunt's help, he is set to increase that second figure to 100%, and to merge the two operations, creating unique opportunities for bundling up paper and TV advertising and sales.
Even in Berlusconi's Italy there are restrictions on broadcasters moving into print.
No well-functioning democracy should allow one man to frame its window on the world.
But then the institutions of British democracy have hardly been functioning well of late in relation to Mr Murdoch ...
Gdn 30 June 2011
Government complacent about level of UK corruption
The true extent of corruption in Britain is much more widespread and deep-rooted than the government recognises, but the official agencies that crack down on the problem are being weakened or dismantled, a campaign group warns.
The anti-corruption group, Transparency International ... is publishing the most extensive study into corruption in Britain after two years of research, highlights four areas of particular concern – prisons, parliament, political parties and sport.
"Since the problems that exist are often unrecognised, the response is inadequate or there exists a culture of impunity," say the campaigners.
The group says that the prison service has a "significant problem" with prison officers who smuggle drugs and mobile phones into jails for inmates ...
Transparency International believes that mechanisms to control the conduct of politicians "have been cast aside in the aggressive cut and thrust of modern-day politics" leading to scandals such as MPs' expenses and "continuing worries" over lobbying by commercial firms.
The group cautions that "there is a particular danger that hasty institutional changes and cuts in specific areas of government expenditure may, as an unintended consequence, create an environment that greatly increases the risk of corruption".
It says that it is "seriously concerned" that ministers plan to abolish the Audit Commission, the watchdog that monitors local government and NHS spending, and "that plans for its replacement seem ill thought-through".
Eric Pickles ... wants private auditors to take over this work instead ...
Gdn 15 June 2011Audit Commission to be abolished
Transparency International
'Spy cameras' are used to target student protesters
Police are using CCTV images taken on university and college campuses, sometimes with the collusion of university authorities, to "spy" on student demonstrators as young as 16, it was claimed yesterday.
University lecturers are demanding an independent investigation into the "over zealous" use of surveillance techniques against students during the policing of demonstrations against fees rises and public spending cuts.
A motion tabled for the University and College Union's (UCU) conference this weekend condemns what it terms attempts to "criminalise protest" through "state surveillance of higher education and further education institutions for elicting intelligence regarding protest activities" ...
Ind 30 May 2011
Jody McIntyre wheelchair complaint: Tuition fees police cleared
The Directorate of Professional Standards at the Metropolitan Police said violent disorder had been taking place and officers were "under sustained attack and were required to use force to protect themselves".
"Whilst there is evidence that Jody McIntyre was inadvertently struck with a police baton, the investigation found that the actions of officers were justifiable and lawful given the volatile and dangerous situation," the force added in a statement.
"His removal from his wheelchair was also justifiable given the officers' perceived risk to Jody McIntyre." ...
... Mr McIntyre said he found it "stunning that their justification for their violence towards me is that I was in the way of a violent attack on a crowd of protesters, which included children".
"Remarkably, the report even contains the suggestion that I threw myself from my wheelchair," he added ...
BBC NEWS 27 May 2011Disabled student insists Met police treated him brutally
Police left mentally ill prisoner to take fatal overdose
Police warned not to misuse anti-terror laws to round up innocent people
David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, cautioned police while ruling yesterday that six men arrested during the papal visit last year were never involved in any plot to kill the Pope.
The half-dozen Westminster street cleaners, who were all Muslims of North African origin, were seized at gunpoint on the basis of a "barely credible" tip-off, Mr Anderson found ...
Mr Anderson expressed particular concern "in the context of international high-profile events such as the London Olympics".
"Constant vigilance is required to ensure that the legal boundaries of those powers are respected, as they were in this case," Mr Anderson concluded ...
Theresa May, the Home Secretary ... said she was "pleased that he finds that the police exercised the powers afforded them under the Terrorism Act 2000 lawfully and appropriately in seeking to prevent what they had reasonably suspected was a potential terrorist plot".
Ind 17 May 2011'Pope plot' men not involved in terrorism
Police raid five squats before royal wedding
The Terrorism Act 2000
'Pope plot' men not involved in terrorism
Careful who's listening to your jokes; you could end up in preventive detention!
The six men, all Westminster street cleaners, were seized after allegedly being heard discussing an attack.
They were later released without charge amid unconfirmed reports that a canteen joke had been misunderstood.
Scotland Yard counter-terrorism officers launched "Operation Grid" and arrested the six men on 17 September last year on suspicion of plotting to harm the Pope during a visit which began the day before ...
BBC NEWS 16 May 2011
Osborne to target workers' rights
Workers are set to receive less protection against redundancy, dismissal and workplace discrimination as the Chancellor George Osborne tears up sections of employment law so businesses can dispose of their staff more easily ...
The Chancellor told the Institute of Directors' annual convention in London that he will publish a "detailed timetable for the wholesale review of employment law in this country", to tackle the "costly impact of our employment laws and regulations".
Mr Osborne attacked the trade unions as "the forces of stagnation" who "will try to stand in the way of the forces of enterprise" ...
Ind 12 May 2011
Activists battle police over right to protest
Defend the Right to Protest ... held a rally outside Westminster Magistrates' Court yesterday to show support for the 138 members of UK Uncut who face charges of aggravated trespass after occupying Fortnum & Mason on 26 March.
The group, which is planning a further demonstration against Scotland Yard, has received support from MPs ... and ... trade unions and public figures ...
Many of those who attended yesterday's rally expressed particular concern about the arrests around the royal wedding.
A total of 55 people were arrested on the day of the wedding and nearly 25 people were arrested before most planned demonstrations had even taken place.
The majority were either detained on conspiracy to cause a public nuisance, or were held under Section 60 stop-and-search rules on the day itself.
Almost all of them were released without charge once the events drew to a close ...
Ind 10 May 2011
Ian Tomlinson unlawfully killed
THE FOREMAN: ... Mr Tomlinson suffered internal bleeding which led to his collapse within a few minutes and his subsequent death. At the time of the strike and the push, Mr Tomlinson was walking away from the police line. He was complying with police instructions to leave Royal Exchange Buildings, the passage. He posed no threat.
Gdn 03 May 2011
Immigration officials have turned HIV patients into prisoners
The problems began when doctors refused to treat an HIV-positive detainee because the guard to whom he was handcuffed refused to uncuff him.
An incident report was filed and sent to the medical director.
Officials from the UK Border Agency then installed restraints on the windows at the hospital's sexual health clinic to ensure that detainees could not escape.
HIV specialist Ben Holden, a consultant at the hospital, said:
"The unit is now a prison for us all. Our windows only open two inches but UKBA have installed chunky locks on them. We were told they would bring removable window restraints but these are permanent.
"No detainee has ever absconded or attempted to abscond. As doctors we believe that to keep immigration detainees restrained or locked in is discriminatory. I don't want to be part of a process that treats people in a less than human way." ...
Gdn 29 Apr 2011The asylum seekers who survive on £10 a week
BMA
Refugee Council
Police raid five squats before royal wedding
Scotland Yard's denial that the raids were in any way linked to the police preparations for the royal wedding came a week after senior officers made clear they would be taking pre-emptive action, including raiding squats and making arrests, in advance of the wedding to ensure that no criminal activity took place on the day ...
One legal source pointed out that it was highly unusual for so many raids on squats to be carried out in one day. "The Heathrow squat has been there peacefully, supported by many people in the community, for more than a year," said the legal source.
John McDonnell, the MP for Hayes and Harlington ... raised a point of order in the Commons to question the timing of the incidents, saying they appeared to be "some form of pre-emptive strike before the royal wedding" ...
Gdn 28 Apr 2011Man arrested in Cambridge
A Fairytale Wedding? What Nonsense!
Britain: next in line to go bust, or a model of fiscal rectitude?
On total Government debt as a proportion of GDP, the UK is only the ninth worst performer in Europe. Our debts totalled 80 per cent of GDP by the end of last year, compared to 143 per cent, 96 per cent and 93 per cent for Greece, Ireland and Portugal respectively. In Italy, the figure was 119 per cent, while France came in at 82 per cent. Even that model of fiscal rectitude, Germany, was worse than us, at 83 per cent.
Ind 27 Apr 2011
Police raid five squats before royal wedding
Scotland Yard's denial that the raids were in any way linked to the police preparations for the royal wedding came a week after senior officers made clear they would be taking pre-emptive action, including raiding squats and making arrests, in advance of the wedding to ensure that no criminal activity took place on the day ...
Gdn 28 Apr 2011A Fairytale Wedding? What Nonsense!