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25 May 2013

The Spectator — Thu, 23 May 2013 03:00:00 +0000

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A senior figure in the Conservative party with strong social connections to David Cameron, the Prime Minister, was reported by the Telegraph and Times to have said that Conservative constituency associations ‘are all mad swivel-eyed loons’. Lord Feldman, the party’s co-chairman, said it was not he. Mr Cameron sent an email to party activists saying: ‘I am proud of what you do. And I would never have around me those who sneered or thought otherwise.’ The rumpus erupted as Conservative voters defected to the UK Independence Party, and Conservative MPs became impatient with the leadership of Mr Cameron. It followed a rebellion by 116 Conservative backbenchers, who had voted for an amendment regretting the absence from the Queen’s Speech of a bill paving the way for a referendum on the EU. It preceded a Commons votes on the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, which the government won only through a deal with Labour, with 133 Tories voting against it. The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland voted to allow actively homosexual men and women to become ministers.

Sir David Nicholson, criticised over the hospital scandal in Mid Staffordshire, is to retire as the chief executive of the NHS next year. The FTSE 100 index reached 6,803.87, its highest finish since late 1999. The annual rate of inflation, measured by the consumer prices index fell to 2.4 per cent in April from 2.8 per cent in March; as measured by the retail prices index, 2.9 per cent from 3.3 per cent. The operating profits of the Royal Mail, shortly to be privatised, rose to £403 million. The Ashmolean acquired Millais’s portrait of John Ruskin in the Trossachs, painted in 1853 when Effie Ruskin was transferring her affections to Millais. The WRVS changed its name to the Royal Voluntary Service.

Britain offered Afghan interpreters who worked on the frontline for a year or more a five-year visa. The BBC apologised for a Newsnight report last year about the charity Help for Heroes that gave the false impression it was responsible for shortcomings in support offered to wounded servicemen. The Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry opened a new recovery centre for Help for Heroes at Tidworth, Wiltshire. The European Commission is to ban refillable bottles or dipping bowls of olive oil on restaurant tables from next year. Gandhi’s sandals sold for £19,000 at an auction at Ludlow Racecourse, Shropshire.

Abroad

In Syria there was fierce fighting over the town of Qusair, controlled by the opposition to President Bashar al-Assad for several months, as government forces were given support by Hezbollah fighters. In Iraq, a bomb outside a Sunni mosque killed at least 41, and three days later, car bombs intended to kill Shia left at least 60 people dead. Ten policemen abducted on another day were found murdered. Hundreds of Islamist fighters were said to have fled from a Nigerian government offensive in the north-east, into Niger and Cameroon. Spain deported Noureddine Ziani, a Moroccan, to Morocco, on the grounds of a ‘threat to national security’; his supporters claimed it was for his championing Catalan independence. The King of Spain gave up his 136-foot yacht, Fortuna. In Tunisia a man died of the so-called novel coronavirus, which has killed about 20 in Saudi Arabia and Birmingham.

In France, President François Hollande passed into law a bill legalising same-sex marriage, but another big demonstration against it was planned for 26 May, with a poster headed ‘Manif Monstre’ showing Christiane Taubira, the minister of justice, as King Kong. Since Miss Taubira is black, there were then accusations of racism. President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan ordered an inquiry into why his country gave Russia nul points in the Eurovision Song Contest after Russia had given the maximum 12 points to Azerbaijan’s entry.

Germany objected to a European Commission proposal to impose a 47 per cent import duty on Chinese solar panels, €21 billion worth of which it exported to Europe in 2011. President Barack Obama of the Unites States sacked Steven Miller, the head of the Inland Revenue Service, which has been accused of focusing scrutiny on groups supporting the Tea Party. Yahoo agreed to buy Tumblr, the New York-based blogging service, for $1.1 billion in cash. A tornado swept through a suburb of Oklahoma City, killing at least 24. Inhabitants of the East Coast of America braced themselves as a once-in-17-year swarm of cicadas began, which will outnumber them by 600 to one. CSH

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18 May 2013

The Spectator — Thu, 16 May 2013 03:00:00 +0000

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David Cameron, the Prime Minister, flew to Sochi, on the Black Sea, to talk with President Vladimir Putin, principally about Syria. He then flew to Washington, to support the American tour by Prince Harry and hold talks with President Barack Obama. They said that Britain and America wanted to strengthen the moderate opposition in Syria somehow. In a joint press conference, Mr Obama also said: ‘The UK’s participation in the EU is an expression of its influence.’ Mr Cameron tried to placate Tory MPs by rushing out a draft EU referendum bill, in the face of an amendment in the Queen’s Speech debate expressing regret at the absence of such a bill in the government programme. EU officials investigating price-fixing raided the London offices of BP and Shell. Ed Miliband, the leader of the opposition, bravely ran into the middle of the road to save a woman who had fallen off her bicycle.

Abu Qatada said he would go to Jordan for trial voluntarily if Britain ratified a new treaty to prevent evidence obtained through torture being used against him; Theresa May, the Home Secretary, said that Britain would press ahead with its own plans. Seven men — Akhtar Dogar, Anjum Dogar, Mohammed Karrar, Bassam Karrar, Kamar Jamil, Assad Hussain, and Zeeshan Ahmed — were found guilty at the Old Bailey of rape and assaults against girls as young as 11, organised from Oxford. Seven other men had already been jailed for up to 18 years for rape and trafficking in underage girls around Telford in Shropshire; although all were of Pakistani ethnicity and all the girls were white, police said that the crimes were not racially motivated. Lord Ahmed resigned from the Labour party on the eve of a party hearing on reports of his having blamed Jews for his imprisonment in 2009 for dangerous driving. Chris Huhne, the former Cabinet minister, and Vicky Pryce, his former wife, were both released from prison after serving 62 days of an eight-month sentence.

The FTSE 100 index rose above 6,600, its highest since 2007. IAG, which owns Iberia and British Airways, made losses of £531 million in the first quarter, thanks to the performance of the Iberia side of things. Moody’s downgraded the Co-operative Bank to ‘junk’ status. Bryan Forbes, the film director, died, aged 86. Geza Vermes, the eccentric scholar of the Dead Sea scrolls, died, aged 88. Andrew Simpson, the Olympic sailor, died when his catamaran capsized, aged 36. A BAE pilotless aircraft designed for passengers flew from Preston to Inverness, controlled from the ground. Goldeneye ducks were found to be refusing to spend the winter in Britain because it has grown too warm.

Abroad

Nawaz Sharif claimed victory for his Pakistan Muslim League in the general election. Two car-bombs killed 46 people in the Turkish town of Reyhanli on the Syrian border. A video circulated seeming to show Abu Sakkar, the leader of the Syrian rebel Independent Omar al-Farouq Brigade, cutting out the heart of a dead Syrian soldier and taking a bite; ‘I swear to God we will eat your hearts and your livers, you soldiers of Bashar the dog,’ says the man in the video. President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria declared a state of emergency in three northern states in response to Islamist attacks. Boats evacuating Rohingya Muslims in the path of a cyclone in western Burma were overcome by the seas and perhaps 100 were feared dead. Pope Francis canonised 813 Christians who refused to adopt Islam and so were beheaded by Turks invading Otranto in 1480.

A woman was rescued after 17 days trapped under the ruins of a clothing factory complex in Dhaka where at least 1,127 are now known to have died. Police began a criminal investigation into the explosion at the West Fertilizer Company in Texas that killed 14 people in April. The Gerb party led by Boiko Borisov narrowly won the Bulgarian elections but with too few seats to form a credible coalition. In China hundreds were arrested for passing off rat meat as lamb.

France fell into its second recession in four years. The US Internal Revenue Service apologised for exerting extra scrutiny of tax-exempt groups that had the words ‘Tea Party’ or ‘patriot’ in their names before last year’s elections. Angelina Jolie announced that she had had a double mastectomy to prevent breast cancer, to which she was genetically predisposed. Tata Steel wrote off a £1 billion loss from its European assets. The UN urged people to eat more insects.

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11 May 2013

The Spectator — Thu, 09 May 2013 03:00:00 +0000

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The UK Independence Party gave the government and opposition a jolt by doing well in the elections for 34 English councils, increasing its number of councillors from eight to 147 and gaining a projected national vote share of 23 per cent (compared with 25 per cent for the Conservatives, 29 per cent for Labour and 14 per cent for the Liberal Democrats). In a parliamentary by-election at South Shields, the Lib Dems were driven into seventh place, with only 352 votes, with Labour retaining the seat with 12,493 and Ukip coming second with 5,988. Nigel Farage, the leader of Ukip, grinned a good deal and said ‘Send in the clowns,’ throwing back at him Kenneth Clarke’s pejorative description of Ukip supporters. Lord Lawson, the former chancellor of the exchequer, called for Britain to leave the EU, saying that it would be financially beneficial.

Nigel Evans, the Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons, was arrested by police investigating complaints from two men of a rape and a sexual assault. He was bailed until 19 June, but he requested not to sit during the debate on the Queen’s Speech. Lord Patten, the chairman of the BBC Trust, said that the corporation might have to pay compensation to the 13 women whom the broadcaster Stuart Hall, aged 83, admitted indecently assaulting between 1967 and 1985. During a trial at the Old Bailey, the court was told that Eddy Shah, the former newspaper owner, aged 69, had sexual relations with a girl when she was aged 14 and 15 in the 1990s. Jimmy Tarbuck, the comedian, aged 73, was arrested and questioned about an alleged assault of a young boy in the late 1970s.

In the Queen’s speech the government promised another Dangerous Dogs Bill and a single state pension of £144. The Queen will not attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Sri Lanka in November, and will be represented by the Prince of Wales. There were 22 serious incidents involving people trying to use the new 111 health helpline, according to Pulse, the GPs’ magazine. Commercial call-centre staff from Wrexham flew to Auckland, New Zealand, to work during the day there to cover night shifts back home. Sir Alex Ferguson, aged 71, is to retire as manager of Manchester United at the end of the season, after 26 years.

Abroad

Israel made two air attacks on Syria, which it said were meant to stop the dispatch of Fateh-110 missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hundreds of Syrians fled coastal areas around Baniyas, where government forces were accused of carrying out massacres. Carla Del Ponte, a member of a UN commission investigating the use of sarin gas in Syria, said on television: ‘The first indications we got … were about the use of nerve gas by the opposition.’ John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, visited Moscow for talks with President Vladimir Putin abut Syria. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, visited China. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, visited China separately.

The number of those known to have died in the collapse of a clothing factory complex in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, on 24 April rose to 705. In Dhaka, 27 people died as police dispersed demonstrations organised by Hefazat-e Islam, a coalition of Islamist groups. In Pakistan, Imran Khan fell 15 feet on to his head from a platform while electioneering, and was kept in hospital for several days. Two Iranians convicted of possessing explosives were sentenced to life imprisonment by a Kenyan court. A bomb was thrown into a Catholic church in Arusha, Tanzania, during its official opening, killing one and wounding dozens; four Tanzanians and four Saudi Arabians were arrested.

Unemployment in America fell to 7.5 per cent in April, its lowest since December 2008. Three women who disappeared between 2002 and 2004 were rescued from a house in Cleveland, Ohio, and a 52-year-old former school bus driver and his two brothers were arrested. A newly-wed bride and four women friends were burnt to death when a stretch limo burst into flames on the San Mateo bridge in San Francisco. A handgun manufactured by a 3D printer was successfully fired at Austin, Texas. The European Central Bank cut its main interest rate from 0.75 to 0.5 per cent. Giulio Andreotti, seven times prime minister of Italy between 1972 and 1992, died, aged 94. A tornado in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna damaged hundreds of houses and snatched cows from fields. CSH

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4 May 2013

The Spectator — Thu, 02 May 2013 03:00:00 +0000

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In the run-up to local elections, Kenneth Clarke, the Minister without Portfolio, described the UK Independence Party candidates as ‘clowns’. RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire, assumed control of ten Reaper drone aircraft in use over Afghanistan. Irfan Naseer, 31, from Birmingham, the ringleader of a plot to use eight suicide bombers in attacks that could have killed thousands, was sentenced to five life sentences; of ten others charged, four men who admitted an offence of travelling overseas for terrorism training were sentenced to three years, and six men to between four and 18 years. Six men from the West Midlands pleaded guilty to planning to bomb an English Defence League rally at Dewsbury; five took a homemade bomb to the rally but arrived too late. The government signed a treaty with Jordan in the hope of easing the deportation of Abu Qatada. Theresa May, the Home Secretary was to apply directly to the Supreme Court for a hearing of its case against a ruling by the Court of Appeal against the deportation. Mahmood al Zarooni, the trainer at the Maktoum family’s Godolphin stable at Newmarket, was banned for eight years after 11 horses tested positive for anabolic steroids.

Max Clifford, the publicist, was charged with 11 cases of indecent assaults against teenaged girls and women between 1966 and 1985. An independent investigation into claims of historical child abuse at children’s homes in north Wales found evidence of 140 alleged cases. A Sinn Fein motion calling for legalisation of same sex marriage was defeated in the Northern Ireland Assembly by 53 votes to 42. A headmistress found hanged at her school in Worcestershire had feared it would lose its ‘outstanding’ rating in an Ofsted inspection. Luis Suarez, the Liverpool striker who bit an opponent, was banned for ten matches.

Michael Fallon, the business minister, outlined plans to privatise the Royal Mail in the next 12 months. The newspaper industry made counter-proposals on press regulation to those sewn up by Nick Clegg on 18 March; the new idea envisaged a royal charter without legislative control. Of 11 national papers, the Guardian and the Independent declined to back the new plan. Britain avoided a triple-dip recession in the first quarter of 2013 when preliminary figures from the Office for National Statistics indicated a rise of 0.3 per cent in gross domestic product. The funeral of Lady Thatcher cost about £3.6 million, Downing Street said, including police and other security costs of £3.1 million. The double yellow lines painted last month on both sides of an alley in Swindon, with a gap of 13 inches between them, were repainted black.

Abroad

The United States reacted cautiously to claims that chemical weapons had been used in Syria. Five car bombs in Shia-majority provinces of southern Iraq killed at least 18 in a day; a week of violence between Sunni and Shia had left 200 dead. The owner of an eight-storey building housing clothing workshops in Dhaka, Bangladesh, that collapsed, killing more than 400, appeared in court. Primark, one of whose suppliers used the building, said it would compensate victims and orphans. President Ian Khama of Botswana was given stitches in his cheek after being clawed by a captive cheetah.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving brother of the two suspected in the Boston Marathon bombings, was charged with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction. New York police said that he had told interrogators that he and his older brother had meant to drive to New York in a car stolen after shooting a policeman dead, and launch an attack with five pipe bombs and a pressure-cooker explosive device. But they ran out of petrol. President Barack Obama said that the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, must close; he had promised in 2009 to close it within a year. As part of an investigation into poisoned letters sent to President Obama, a senator and a judge, a Mississippi man was charged with making and possessing ricin for use as a weapon; an Elvis impersonator previously charged was freed.

Enrico Letta, aged 46, formed a government in Italy at the head of a coalition between his own centre-left Democratic party (PD) and Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right People of Freedom (PDL) party. Unemployment in Spain reached 27.2 per cent of the workforce, with youth unemployment at 57.2 per cent. Willem-Alexander, aged 46, was enthroned as king of Holland after the abdication of Queen Beatrix, aged 75. A Swiss and an Italian climber were involved in a brawl with 100 Sherpas 24,500ft up Everest.

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27 April 2013

The Spectator — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 03:00:00 +0000

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George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, visited Glasgow to cast doubt on the probability of an independent Scotland being allowed to continue to use the pound: ‘Why would 58 million citizens give away some of their sovereignty over monetary and potentially other economic policies to five million people in another state?’ The government borrowed £120.6 billion in the financial year 2012–2013, £300 million less than in the previous year. Fitch became the second agency to downgrade Britain’s credit rating by a notch from AAA. The Co-op pulled out of buying 632 branches of Lloyds Banking Group, put up for sale to meet European competition rules. The government planned to sell its one-third stake in Urenco, the uranium enrichment company. The Football Association charged Luis Suarez, the Liverpool striker, with violent conduct after he bit Chelsea’s Branislav Ivanovic on the arm during a game.

James McCormick was convicted of fraud at the Old Bailey after making £50 million out of selling so-called bomb detectors that were nothing but novelty toys to countries such as Iraq and Thailand. PC Osman Iqbal, aged 35, of the West Midlands Police, was charged with conspiring to manage a brothel, conspiring to launder money and possession of Class A drugs with intent to supply; nine others were charged with him. Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, undertook to assuage opposition on his own benches by amending proposed legislation to allow house extensions without local authority permission. Stoke-on-Trent put on sale 35 run-down houses at £1 each to people earning between £18,000 and £30,000. A poster depicting Margaret Thatcher as the Blessed Virgin Mary in Rubens’s Assumption was banned from the London Underground, not on grounds of blasphemy but because of ‘public controversy’ over the late prime minister’s reputation.

The number of cases in the South Wales measles outbreak rose above 886, and a man of 25 who caught the disease died. Thousands of people marched through Stafford, protesting at plans to remove services such as an accident and emergency department from Stafford Hospital. London councils warned that the capital would be short of 118,000 school places by 2016, when it will have 1.25 million children to educate. A law is to be passed against discrimination on grounds of caste, Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, announced. Eleven horses from the Maktoum family’s Godolphin stable tested positive for anabolic steroids. The Conservators of the River Cam issued stab vests to water bailiffs, after tempers ran high between punt operators.

Abroad

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, aged 26, wanted by police for his part in the bombing at the Boston Marathon, which killed three and left many people missing limbs, died in a shootout after the people of Boston had been confined to their homes for 24 hours. His brother Dzhokhar, aged 19, was arrested hiding in a boat in a back yard, and suffered bullet wounds to the throat. Ethnically Chechen, the brothers had come with their family from Kyrgyzstan to America via Dagestan. Dzhokhar, a medical student, gained US citizenship in 2012. At the request of the Russian government, the FBI officials had interviewed Tamerlan in 2011 about his radical Islamist connections.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said it had thwarted a plot hatched with the help of al-Qa’eda elements in Iran to derail a train from Toronto to New York; two men were arrested. General Salim Idris, the head of the Syrian rebel military council, appealed for western aid to take back oilfields from Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qa’eda affiliated militia. Brigadier General Itai Brun, an Israeli military official, said that the Syrian government was believed to have used sarin against rebel forces. Spanish police arrested an Algerian in Zaragoza and a Moroccan in Murcia suspected of links with al-Qa’eda in the Islamic Maghreb. A car bomb at the French embassy in Tripoli injured two guards. Richie Havens, the folk singer and guitarist who became widely known after opening at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, died, aged 72.

An earthquake in Sichuan left 100,000 without food or shelter. Giorgio Napolitano, aged 87, became the first Italian president to be sworn in for a second term, and berated MPs for failing to form a government eight weeks after the general election. In the face of large street demonstrations the French parliament approved the legalisation of same-sex marriage. Bill Gates was criticised in the South Korean press after shaking hands with President Park Geun-hye with one hand in his pocket. The Dalai Lama said he would be happy if his successor was a woman because ‘biologically, females have more potential to develop affection or love’. CSH

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20 April 2013

The Spectator — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 03:00:00 +0000

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With the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, the 2,300 invited to attend Lady Thatcher’s funeral in St Paul’s cathedral included the three surviving former prime ministers, members of her cabinets, the leader of the opposition, F.W. de Klerk, June Whitfield, Joan Collins, Dame Shirley Bassey and Sir Terry Wogan. Mikhail Gorbachev did not attend, because of ill health, Lord Kinnock because of a previous funeral engagement, the Argentine ambassador for an unstated reason and Sally Bercow, the Speaker’s wife, because she didn’t want to. Much time had been spent discussing whether the BBC should play on its singles hit chart programme ‘Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead’, which had been downloaded by those who held the memory of Lady Thatcher in disdain. The chimes of Big Ben were silenced for the funeral.

Tony Blair, the former Labour prime minister, criticised the state of the party in the New Statesman. ‘The guiding principle should be that we are the seekers after answers, not the repository for people’s anger,’ he wrote. The London School of Economics unsuccessfully demanded that the BBC should not show a Panorama programme presented by John Sweeney, who had covertly joined a student group visiting North Korea. The annual rate of inflation in March remained the same, at 2.8 per cent, as measured by the Consumer Prices Index, but rose to 3.3 per cent from 3.2, as measured by the Retail Prices Index. Unemployment rose to 2.56 million in December to February, 70,000 higher than in the previous three months. The national minimum wage for adults is to rise by 12p an hour to £6.31 from October. James Harding, the former editor of the Times, was appointed as the BBC’s director of news. Sir Colin Davis, the conductor, died, aged 85. The Premier League commissioned Hawk-Eye to provide it with goal-line technology.

Haroon Aswat, accused of trying to establish a training camp in Oregon with Abu Hamza, should not be extradited from Britain to the United States, the European Court of Human Rights ruled, as it might make his paranoid schizophrenia worse. The trust that runs Stafford Hospital was put into administration by the health regulator Monitor. Cases of measles in the outbreak in Swansea rose to 765; temporary clinics immunised 2,500 children but 5,000 were thought to remain unimmunised. Double yellow lines were painted along an alley in Swindon, leaving a gap of 13 inches.

Abroad

North Korea was expected to test a missile, after weeks of bellicose language. John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, visited Seoul, Tokyo and Beijing for talks. The foreign ministers of the G8 group of nations said that, if North Korea ‘conducts another missile launch or nuclear test, we have committed ourselves to take further significant measures’. Cases of H7N9 avian influenza in China rose to 60, with 13 deaths. A Chinese fishing vessel that ran aground on the Tubbataha reef in the Philippines was found to be carrying 400 boxes of dead pangolins.

Two bombs near the finishing line at the Boston marathon killed three people and wounded more than 170. The bombs were made from pressure-cookers filled with bits of metal. ‘Any time bombs are used to target innocent civilians it is an act of terror,’ President Barack Obama commented. A letter containing ricin, 1,000 times more poisonous than cyanide, was sent to a Republican senator. Golfing authorities at Augusta declined to disqualify Tiger Woods from the Masters despite his admitting that, contrary to the rules, he had made a penalty drop, after his ball bounced into the water, two yards from the place he had played the ball before. The cost of a bailout for Cyprus rose to €23 billion, meaning that it would have to raise €13 billion to secure aid from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, instead of the €7.5 billion expected. Gold fell by 13 per cent in two days, its sharpest fall for 30 years.

Three times as much opium was produced in Helmand last year as when British troops went there in 2006, and the UN predicted that this year’s crop would be even bigger. Five UN agencies appealed to world powers to end the ‘cruelty and carnage’ in Syria, where 70,000 had died since the conflict there began. Iran was struck by an earthquake measuring 7.8, with its epicentre 50 miles from the desert city of Khash, near the Pakistan border. Nicolas Maduro was elected President of Venezuela in succession to his mentor Hugo Chavez. In 4,144 EU tests on beef products, 193 were found to contain horse DNA, a rate of 4.66 per cent.
- CSH

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13 April 2013

The Spectator — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 03:00:00 +0000

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Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister from 1979 to 1990, died aged 87. She had suffered a stroke while reading in her room at the Ritz hotel, where she had been staying since being discharged from hospital at the end of 2012 after a minor operation. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, cancelled talks in Paris with President François Hollande and returned to Britain. News broadcasts and newspapers were dominated by coverage of her political career. Seven policemen were injured when perhaps 200 people gathered at Easton, in Bristol, celebrating the death and setting fire to dustbins after dark. Both Houses of Parliament were recalled for a day in tribute to Lady Thatcher, a life peeress since 1992. On 17 April she is to be accorded, not a state funeral, but one with military honours, of the kind given to Diana, Princes of Wales, with a procession from St Clement Danes to St Paul’s cathedral, to be followed by a private cremation. The Queen is to attend the service at St Paul’s.

Sir James Crosby, the former chief executive of HBOS, asked for his knighthood to be removed in light of the Banking Standards Commission report’s description of him as the ‘architect’ of the strategy that led to the bank’s downfall. The British Library was given legal power by a statutory instrument to store every British website and exchanges on Facebook and Twitter. Paris Brown, aged 17, resigned as a so-called youth police and crime commissioner a week after being appointed by Ann Barnes, the real police and crime commissioner of Kent, when tweets surfaced from the past, such as: ‘Everyone on Made In Chelsea looks like a f—ing fag.’ Kent police investigated whether any offence had been committed. On Dartmoor, 100 firemen fought 1,500 acres of wild fires.

Children’s heart surgery resumed at Leeds General Infirmary after Sir Bruce Keogh, the medical director of NHS England, who had suspended operations last month, declared that he had made his decision because ‘Leeds had not submitted good data’. Cases of measles rose to 620 in the Swansea area. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs refused to ban neonicotinoid pesticides blamed by some for killing bees. No horses died in the Grand National, won by Auroras Encore at 66-1, ridden by Ryan Mania, who had a heavy fall the next day at Hexham and spent two days in hospital. A power station at Beckton in east London is to burn ‘fatbergs’ that congeal in London’s sewers.

Abroad

North Korea warned foreigners in South Korea to put in place measures for evacuation in case of war. ‘The situation on the Korean peninsula is heading for a thermonuclear war,’ said Pyongyang’s Asia-Pacific Peace Committee. Japan, while doubting the veracity of any statement by North Korea, deployed defensive anti-missile batteries around Tokyo. The Bank of Japan pursued vigorous quantitative easing to double the supply of yen in the market and drive down its value to boost exports. A red lotus-painted bowl from the Kangxi period (1662–1722) fetched £6.2 million in an auction in Hong Kong.

Mario Monti, still the ruler of Italy, following its failure to form a government since February’s general election, issued a decree that promised payment of €40 billion of debts over the next year by the public administration to private contractors. The prime minister of Portugal said that to meet its bailout obligations, the government would have to make cuts in health, education and social security, after a court ruled that cuts to public-sector pay and pensions were unconstitutional. President Hollande of France gave all members of his Socialist party government a week to publish full details of their wealth after Jérôme Cahuzac, the budget minister until mid-March, admitted that he had lied about a Swiss account he had held for 20 years.

The British Foreign Office warned of a terrorist attack on Mogadishu, the Somali capital, against which al-Shabaab, the Islamist terrorists, remained active. A Nato air strike killed 11 children and a woman in the eastern Kunar province of Afghanistan. Shia Muslims in the town of Qatif, in Saudi Arabia’s eastern oil-producing province, rallied in protest at the arrest of a sheikh in connection with alleged spying by Iran. Iran began mining uranium at two sites and suffered an earthquake of 6.3 magnitude, destroying a dozen villages near its sole nuclear power station. Indonesia considered a law to prohibit black magic. CSH

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6 April 2013

The Spectator — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 03:00:00 +0000

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Housing benefit for council and housing association tenants was reduced by 14 per cent for those deemed to have one spare bedroom and by 25 per cent for those with two or more spare bedrooms. Council Tax Benefit, claimed by 5.9 million families, was transformed into Council Tax Support, supplied by local authority schemes. The Financial Services Authority was replaced by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority. In the National Health Service, GP-led groups took control of local budgets and a new board called NHS England began to oversee day-to-day running of services. The introduction of a 111 health helpline throughout England was delayed after some pilot schemes proved unsatisfactory, with callers holding on for hours. A policewoman sued a petrol station after tripping over a kerb there while investigating a 999 call in the middle of the night. Robbers were caught on closed-circuit television gathering cash after blowing up a cash dispenser at a petrol station at Weyhill, Hampshire. Oxford won the Boat Race to make it 77 wins to Cambridge’s 81. The BBC broadcast live the instructions of the Oxford cox, Oskar Zorrilla, to his crew, such as ‘Be fucking tenacious.’

Children’s heart surgery at Leeds General Infirmary was suspended by Sir Bruce Keogh, the medical director of the NHS, after figures suggesting a high mortality rate were drawn to his attention, and Professor Sir Roger Boyle, the director of the National Institute of Clinical Outcomes Research, had raised concerns about junior staff being left in charge. But Dr John Gibbs, a former cardiologist at Leeds and now chairman of the Central Cardiac Database, said: ‘We have not even got the data statistically analysed yet. It is not fair to the public to leak provisional data.’ Surgery was suspended 24 hours after a High Court ruling kept the unit open. Wild fires stretched for three miles on the dry and windy moors north of Fort William.

France and Germany declined an invitation from the British Foreign Office to take part in its review of the relations between the EU and member states. David Miliband, who is resigning as an MP to go to work in New York, also resigned as a non-executive director of Sunderland football club after the appointment as its chief coach of Paolo Di Canio, who once described himself as ‘a fascist, not a racist’. Richard Griffiths, the actor best known for his performances in Withnail and I and The History Boys, died, aged 65. South Yorkshire Police and Barnsley Metropolitan Council banned all unaccompanied under-16s from the town centre between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. In Uckfield, Sussex, a rabbit that eats Weetabix was found to be the world’s biggest, at 3st 8lb.

Abroad

North Korea, three days after cutting a military hotline to the South, said it was entering a ‘state of war’ with South Korea. It said it would restart its nuclear complex at Yongbyon. Earlier it had reappointed Pak Pong-ju, who was sacked as premier in 2007. The UN General Assembly adopted a treaty to control trade in conventional arms, by a majority of 154 votes to three, with 23 abstentions, including Russia and China.

Michalis Sarris resigned as finance minister of Cyprus after completing negotiations for a €10 billion bailout. Russia said it would not compensate Russian savers in the Bank of Cyprus and Laiki bank, who stood to lose 60 per cent of their savings if their deposits exceeded €10,000. Cypriots were prohibited from withdrawing more than €300 a day from any bank or taking more than €1,000 abroad. Unemployment in the eurozone reached an average of 12 per cent, with Greece and Spain recording levels of 26 per cent. The United States had lost nearly two million clerical jobs since 2007, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and gained 387,000 new managers.

In Syria, 6,005 people were killed in March, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based group. India rejected a legal bid by the Swiss company Novartis to patent a new version of its cancer drug, Glivec. The drug costs about £1,710 a month, but the generic equivalent is available in India for £115. Nelson Mandela, aged 94, stayed in hospital with pneumonia. The supreme court in Kenya upheld the victory of Uhuru Kenyatta over Raila Odinga in the presidential elections. About 180 people spent an afternoon trapped on an ice floe that drifted from the Latvian shore into the Gulf of Riga. –CSH

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30 March 2013

The Spectator — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 03:00:00 +0000

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David Cameron, the Prime Minister, in a speech designed to show that Britain was no longer to be a ‘soft touch’ for immigrants, said that people from the European Union would have to show they had a ‘genuine chance of getting work’ in order to claim UK unemployment benefits for more than six months. The UK Border Agency was to be abolished, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, told the Commons, because its performance was ‘not good enough’, and ‘the number of illegal immigrants removed does not keep up with the number of people who are here illegally’. The agency would be split up and returned to the Home Office, with one half focusing on the visa system and the other on immigration law enforcement. David Miliband, the former foreign secretary, announced that he was leaving politics to become head of the International Rescue Committee charity in New York.

In its annual report on counter-terrorism, the Home Office said that more than 500 people, including those who held extreme far-right views or were inspired by al-Qa’eda, had been put through a counter-terrorism deradicalisation programme called Channel. It also said that hundreds of European jihadists had gone to Syria to fight. Thousands in Scotland and Northern Ireland were left without electricity for days when snow formed deep drifts and ice brought down pylons. Castle View School in Canvey Island, Essex, banned triangular flapjacks after a boy was hit in the face by one.

The government response to the Francis report on failings at Stafford Hospital decided to place a duty of candour on NHS boards, to set up a new ratings system for hospitals and care homes, and to make trainee nurses spend up to a year working as healthcare assistants. During a television interview, Eddie Mair questioned the integrity of Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, asking him if he hadn’t lied when Michael Howard, the then Tory leader, asked him about an affair. ‘You’re a nasty piece of work, aren’t you?’ he asked. Boris Berezovsky, aged 67, the Russian oligarch and critic of President Vladimir Putin, was found dead at his house near Ascot in Berkshire. An app invented by Nick D’Aloisio, aged 17, was acquired by Yahoo, which gave him a job in a deal said to be worth millions of pounds.

Abroad

An answer to the Cyprus banking crisis that did not require a vote in its parliament was found by the European Union, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Laiki bank was closed down, with deposits of more than €100,000 moved into a ‘bad bank’, smaller deposits being moved to a restructured Bank of Cyprus. Capital controls were to be introduced to stop money being taken out. Anyone with more than €100,000 in either bank would have 30 or 40 per cent expropriated. This was expected to raise the €5.8 billion required towards a €10 billion bailout. European bank shares fell after Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister who played a role in the Cyprus scheme, suggested it could be a model for future bailouts. President Nicos Anastasiades was said to have threatened to resign during negotiations in Brussels.

In Syria, Moaz al-Khatib resigned as head of the opposition National Coalition, but before he went he took Syria’s official seat at an Arab League summit in Qatar. Colonel Riad al-Asaad, who was instrumental in setting up the Free Syrian Army, had a leg amputated after an explosion in the rebel-controlled town of Mayadeen. Israel agreed to resume passing on tax revenues it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. Buddhist monks joined in attacks on Muslims in Burma. Giulio Terzi, the foreign minister of Italy, resigned after two marines were returned to India to stand trial for killing fishermen instead of pirates. Hundreds of thousands marched through Paris in protest against a bill to legalise same-sex marriage. Pope Francis visited Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI at Castel Gandolfo.

France doubled to about 600 the number of its troops deployed to protect French citizens as rebels seized Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic. At least 13 South African troops were killed fighting the rebels. China agreed to buy 24 fighter jets and four submarines from Russia. Armoured personnel carriers were used in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, to drag buses out of snowdrifts when a month’s snow fell in 24 hours. The number of dead pigs found in a fortnight in the river Huangpu at Shanghai rose to 16,000. –CSH

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23 March 2013

The Spectator — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 03:00:00 +0000

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In what he called a ‘fiscally neutral’ Budget, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, confronted a reduced forecast of gross domestic product for 2013 from 1.2 per cent to 0.6 per cent and a further delay until 2017-18 in reducing the burden of public sector debt, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility. Most government departments would have to cut a further 2 per cent of their spending over the next two years, saving about £2.5 billion. Changes in state pensions, introduced a year earlier than expected, would save the Treasury almost £6 billion a year by 2016-17, some of it to be used for infrastructure spending. The Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee would be given a new remit beyond inflation targets and ‘intermediate thresholds’ countenanced. An onslaught on ‘aggressive’ tax avoidance was promised. Employers were offered an allowance of £2,000 from National Insurance payments. Corporation tax would come down by another 1 per cent to 20 per cent by 2015. An automatic rise in duty of beer was cancelled and beer duty reduced by 1p. A planned fuel duty increase in September was cancelled and a shale gas field allowance planned. The slight increase to £10,000 for the personal tax allowance would come into effect in 2014, a year earlier than expected.

Working parents were promised up to £1,200 a year per child towards child-care costs. Unemployment rose by 7,000 to 2.52 million between November and January. The Department for Communities predicted that 12,769 Romanians and Bulgarians would enter Britain after restrictions are lifted on 31 December. Eric Joyce, the MP for Falkirk, was ‘prohibited from purchasing and being served alcoholic beverages’ in Parliament after spending a night in a police cell after a brawl during at the Commons Sports and Social Club.

MPs voted for a Bill bringing in regulation of the press under a royal charter. Newspapers that did not join the new scheme would be vulnerable to exemplary damages if they were found to be at fault in future. This was all agreed upon by tripartite talks in the middle of the night and adopted by David Cameron, the Prime Minister, who had previously described statutory regulation as ‘crossing the Rubicon’. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, visited Chichester rather than attending the inauguration of the Pope, two days before his own enthronisation; he was represented in Rome by Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York. The largest civil service union went on strike for a day. Two men went on trial, charged with plotting to kidnap and behead the singer Joss Stone. Pork DNA was found in halal chicken sausages at a Church of England primary school in Westminster, the council said.

Abroad

Banks in Cyprus faced insolvency when the government announced a levy on money held in accounts in order to meet German demands that an EU bailout for the country should be reduced from €17 billion to €10 billion. The government said that a levy of 9.9 per cent would be imposed on balances of more €100,000, and 6.75 per cent on those of less. Not a single Cypriot MP voted for the measure. The banks had to be kept closed for several days to avoid a run.

Pope Francis, formerly Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, said during his inaugural mass in St Peter’s Square that all human beings, not Christians alone, had a vocation of ‘protecting all creation’. The National People’s Congress made Li Keqiang the premier of China in succession to Wen Jiabao by 2,940 votes to three, and confirmed Xi Jinping as the new president, in succession to Hu Jintao. President Barack Obama of the United States visited Israel. Australian scientists found that lorry drivers who drank coffee had fewer crashes.

At least 48 were killed in a series of bombings in Baghdad on the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Computers belonging to banks and broadcasters in South Korea were simultaneously paralysed in a suspected cyber attack. Two Italian marines, charged with murdering two Indian fishermen, whom they said they’d mistaken for pirates, were allowed to return to Italy to vote, but did not return. The Indian Supreme Court then ruled that the Italian ambassador, Daniele Mancini, who had stood surety for the accused, had no diplomatic immunity in the case and must remain in India. –CSH

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