In a speech in Liverpool intended to relaunch his theme of the Big Society, as a ‘big advance for people power’, Mr David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that, as part of a scheme to ‘turn government completely on its head’, four community schemes were being set up in Liverpool (a museum project); the Eden Valley, Westmorland (a pub); Windsor (parks); and the London borough of Sutton (youth and green projects).
In a speech in Liverpool intended to relaunch his theme of the Big Society, as a ‘big advance for people power’, Mr David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that, as part of a scheme to ‘turn government completely on its head’, four community schemes were being set up in Liverpool (a museum project); the Eden Valley, Westmorland (a pub); Windsor (parks); and the London borough of Sutton (youth and green projects). The Academies Bill made its way rapidly through Parliament. Lord Taylor of Warwick resigned the Conservative whip after being charged with six counts of false accounting arising from parliamentary expenses claims. Lady Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5 from 2002 to 2007, told the Chilcot Inquiry: ‘The Iraq war heightened the extremist view that the West was trying to bring down Islam. We gave Bin Laden his jihad.’ Eunice Bowman, Britain’s oldest person, died a month short of her 112th birthday; her husband had died of tuberculosis in 1928. At Congham in Norfolk a competitor called Sidney clinched the World Snail Racing Championship by completing a course of 13 inches in three minutes 41 seconds.
Only one in ten policemen is free to deal with crime at any one time, according to a report by Sir Denis O’Connor, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary. Miss Louise Casey, the commissioner for victims of crime in England and Wales, said that help was unpredictable: ‘If you have had your lawnmower stolen, you probably don’t need three phone calls from Victim Support.’ The High Court ruled that Peter Sutcliffe, the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’, who was convicted in 1981 of murdering 13 women, would never be freed; he is currently held at Broadmoor hospital. A British tour company Goldtrail collapsed, leaving thousands of tourists in Turkey and Greece without flights home. British Airways cabin crew rejected the airline’s latest pay offer. The Exeter-based airline Flybe placed an order worth £850 million for 30 88-seat aeroplanes. Sixty bailiffs evicted protesters who had been camping in Parliament Square gardens since May. De La Rue, which prints banknotes, said its profitability was being hit by bad quality paper.
Mr David Cameron met President Barack Obama of the United States in Washington. He also met senators calling for an investigation into allegations that BP lobbied for the early freeing of Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi, who had been imprisoned for the bombing in 1988 of a Pan Am aeroplane over Lockerbie, killing 270 people. He said in a joint news conference with Mr Obama that he did not feel inclined to hold an inquiry into the Lockerbie case, and told the senators: ‘In my view he should have died in jail.’ Mr Cameron called the special relationship ‘a partnership of choice that serves our national interests’. BP succeeded in stopping oil from leaking into the Gulf of Mexico, as it had since 20 April, by shutting the valves on a cap placed over the ruptured well pipe. But Admiral Thad Allen, the US Coast Guard’s National Incident Commander, stipulated that BP should submit a plan to reopen the well in case oil was leaking from the sea floor. One well drilled to relieve pressure had reached a depth of 15,874 feet and the other 17,864. A US appeal court granted bail, pending his appeal, to Lord Black of Crossharbour, the former owner of the Daily Telegraph, jailed for six and half years in 2007. The actress Lindsay Lohan began a three-month sentence in Los Angeles after failing to attend alcohol education classes.
President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, at a conference in Kabul co-hosted by Mr Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary General of the United Nations, and attended by Mr William Hague, the British Foreign Secretary, agreed that Afghan forces would seek to take responsibility for security throughout the country by 2014. British non-combat forces might remain beyond that date. A suicide bomber in Iraq killed 43 members of the Sunni militia called Sahwa, which had turned against al-Qa’eda in 2006. Mexico City offered a free honeymoon to the first gay couple to marry in Argentina under a new law. Gunmen killed 17 people at a birthday party in the Mexican city of Torreon; since the end of 2006, more than 24,000 have been killed in drug-related violence in Mexico. North Korea executed by firing squad the Cabinet official in charge of talks with South Korea from 2004 to 2007. America imposed sanctions against North Korea over the sale and purchase of arms and import of luxury goods because of the sinking in March of a South Korean warship. In China, 35 million were affected by rainstorms, with 1.2 million driven from their homes by floods. The European Union criticised Hungary’s budgetary plans and the forint fell. Moody’s, the credit agency, downgraded Ireland’s status by a notch. Syria banned the wearing of the niqab in universities. CSH
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