On the brink of a planned national postal strike, Royal Mail announced it was recruiting 30,000 temporary staff to deal with the existing backlog and the normal Christmas rush, twice the number usually taken on. The Financial Services Authority published rules to make mortgage lenders assess strictly the ability of borrowers to make repayments, and to ban ‘self-certification’, which had allowed a million borrowers to take up mortgages without providing evidence of income. Five prison managers faced charges of gross misconduct after the Chief Inspector of Prisons found that prisoners at Wandsworth and Pentonville had been switched on the eve of inspections. Mr Peter Hain, the Welsh Secretary, asked the BBC not to allow Mr Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party, to appear on Question Time because ‘the BNP have accepted they are at present an unlawful body’. Mr Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, agreed to appear on the same panel. Police said they had received a complaint about an article in the Daily Mail by its columnist Jan Moir about the death of Stephen Gately, a singer in Boyzone, and the Press Complaints Commission claimed it had received 22,000 complaints; the article ended: ‘Under the carapace of glittering, hedonistic celebrity, the ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see.’ The schools select committee criticised Mr Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, for overriding its objection to the appointment of a Children’s Commissioner that it said would be ‘another Labour establishment choice’; Mr Barry Sheerman, the chairman of the committee, said: ‘Most of us know that Ed Balls is a bit of a bully and he likes his own way.’ Mr Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, told the Major Economies Forum that there were ‘fewer than 50 days to set the course for the next few decades’ by agreeing about climate-changing emission: ‘If we falter, the Earth will itself be at risk and, for the planet, there is no Plan B.’ During a live webchat session with a parents’ group, Mr Brown proved less certain in answering questions about his favourite biscuit; afterwards he announced via Twitter that he liked ‘anything with a bit of chocolate’. Suffolk Primary Care Trust sought an ambulance big enough to take Mr Paul Mason of Ipswich, whose weight has risen from 50 to 70 stone since 2006, to Chichester for treatment. Ludovic Kennedy, the television journalist, died, aged 89. Michael Shea, the former press secretary to the Queen, died, aged 71. The only goal scored by Sunderland in a game against Liverpool went in after bouncing off a beach ball thrown onto the pitch.
The Pakistan army said it was continuing its push into South Waziristan, a federally administered tribal area bordering Afghanistan, in an operation aimed at the Taleban and al-Qa’eda. Some 100,000 civilians had fled, army sources said. President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan agreed to a new round of elections in November after the Electoral Complaints Commission (which includes foreign members) reported that August’s fraud-plagued elections had in truth given him less than 50 per cent of the vote. America delayed its decision on sending 40,000 extra troops to Afghanistan until the election imbroglio be resolved. ‘It would be reckless to make a decision on US troop levels,’ Rahm Emanuel, the White House Chief of Staff, said, unless there was ‘a true partner in governing the Afghan country’. A suicide bomb in the Sistan-Baluchistan province of Iran, which borders Afghanistan and Pakistan, killed 42, including 15 members of the Revolutionary Guard; a Sunni group claimed responsibility for the bomb and a Revolutionary Guard commander, General Mohammad Pakpour, called on Pakistan to allow Iranian forces to pursue the perpetrators into its territory. President Barack Obama of the United States promised Sudan ‘incentives’ if it put an ‘end to conflict, gross human rights abuses and genocide in Darfur’. The Mo Ibrahim Foundation announced that its annual prize for African heads of state who had provided security, health, economic development and democracy for their people would not be awarded this year. Slovakia said it wanted the same opt-out from parts of the Lisbon Treaty that the Czech Republic is demanding, lest some of the 2.5 million Germans deported from Czechoslovakia after 1945 apply to the courts get their property back. The Vatican announced procedures under which groups of Anglicans would be able to become Catholics within a ‘personal ordinariate’ while retaining elements of their liturgy, and married Anglican clergy who joined Rome could be ordained as Catholic priests. Astronomers using the European Southern Observatory telescope at La Silla in the Atacama desert in Chile said they had found 32 new planets orbiting other stars, bringing the total so far discovered to more than 400. The furthest place in the United States (excluding Alaska and Hawaii) from a McDonald’s was named as a spot between the hamlets of Meadow and Glad Valley in South Dakota, 107 miles from the nearest Big Mac.
Comments