Britain is to lend Ireland up to £9 billion.
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Britain is to lend Ireland up to £9 billion. ‘Ireland is a friend in need,’ George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer told the House of Commons, ‘and it is in our national interest that we should be prepared to help them at this difficult time.’ British loans could be made via three routes: bilaterally through the European Union; through an agreement under the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism; and through the International Monetary Fund. Theresa May, the Home Secretary, said that the number of workers coming from outside the European Union would be capped at 43,000, about 5,600 fewer than last year’s figure; meanwhile figures for foreign students entering Britain last year stood at 362,000. Foreign-born workers now hold 13 per cent of all British jobs, twice the rate in 1997. Four men were arrested in connection with the discovery of a man dying in the back of a van in Sunningdale, Berkshire, 40 minutes after it was stopped by police.
Prince William and Kate Middleton are to marry at Westminster Abbey, it was announced, on Friday 29 April, which will be a bank holiday. The wedding is to be paid for privately by the royal family and the Middletons. The Rt Rev Pete Broadbent, the go-ahead Bishop of Willesden, was made to ‘withdraw from public ministry until further notice’ after saying, ‘I managed to avoid the last disaster in slow motion between Big Ears and the Porcelain Doll’ and adding, ‘I give the marriage seven years.’
Mr Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, told his MPs that being in opposition was ‘frankly, crap’. He said that Peter Hain, the shadow Welsh secretary, would report to next year’s conference on a review of policy, party organisation and Labour’s relationship with trade unions. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, gave a ‘firm deadline’ for British combat troops to be ‘out of Afghanistan by 2015’. General Sir David Richards, the Chief of the Defence Staff, defended the government’s defence cuts: ‘I consider it an acceptable risk to be without a carrier strike for the next decade,’ he said. Fifty-four new ‘working peers’ were announced, including Julian Fellowes, the writer of Downton Abbey, Dame Joan Bakewell, the broadcaster, Patience Wheatcroft, the journalist, and Rachael Heyhoe-Flint, the cricketer. A Latvian student was banned by a judge from entering central London after running away from expensive restaurants where he racked up £5,880 of unpaid bills.
Abroad
Brian Cowen, the Prime Minister of Ireland, promised a general election in the new year. He had accepted €85 billion in loans and agreed to publish a four-year economic plan and produce another austerity budget by 7 December. The rescue attempt by the EU and IMF left the markets jittery, and the euro fell against the dollar. Old pressures on Greece increased, with new pressures on Portugal and Spain. Portugal held a general strike. Economic growth in the United States in the third quarter was at an annual rate of 2.5 per cent, not 2 per cent as earlier thought, according to the Commerce Department.
North Korea fired dozens of artillery shells on to Yeonpyeong island off the coast of South Korea, killing four, in response to military manoeuvres. The United States sent an aircraft carrier. North Korea had earlier disclosed a new uranium enrichment facility. At least 378 died in a crush on a footbridge at Phnom Penh, Cambodia, during the annual water festival. In the Buner district of Pakistan, 14 women died during a funeral by falling into a sewage tank. In New Zealand, 29 miners are presumed dead after two explosions. Cuba, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Morocco and Russia said that they would not send representatives to the Noble peace prize ceremony, which China is preventing Liu Xiaobo, the imprisoned winner, from attending. Aung San Suu Kyi, the freed Burmese democracy advocate, was able to meet her son, Kim Aris, aged 33, after 11 years.
The Pope, in a book-length interview with Peter Seewald, said that the use of a condom, for example by a prostitute intending to avoid transmission of HIV, could be a step towards moral responsibility. He created 24 new cardinals, four from Africa. A military coup failed in Madagascar. Gambia broke off diplomatic relations with Iran. Iran called a public holiday in Teheran because of air pollution. Mexico advised migrants driving home for Christmas from the United States to form convoys against bandits. The Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Institute found that brown trout shrank by a tenth of their length in hard winters. CSH
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