Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, was forced by the presence of protesters to have a cup of tea instead of delivering a speech in Islington on nuclear energy. After his cup of tea he said that energy policy was ‘back on the agenda with a vengeance’ while ‘round the world you can hear the heavy sound of feverish rethinking’. The government is expected to produce a preliminary White Paper on the matter next spring. Even before it was published, a report on pensions by a commission headed by Lord Turner was discounted by Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in a leaked letter. Later remarks by Mr Brown, still before the report’s publication, threw doubt on a deal struck between Mr Alan Johnson, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, and public-sector unions, guaranteeing them retirement at 60. Muggers under 17 should ordinarily be given community sentences instead of being jailed, if they used only ‘minimal force’, according to the Sentencing Guidelines Council, made up of senior judges under the chairmanship of Lord Phillips, the Lord Chief Justice. The Independent Police Complaints Commission is to investigate whether Sir Ian Blair, the head of the Metropolitan Police, misled the public after the shooting dead of Mr Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell Underground station on 22 July. A video emerged of naked Royal Marines of 42 Commando fighting, and one being knocked unconscious by a kick in the face from an NCO. A brother and sister of Omar Sharif, a British suicide bomber who killed three and injured 65 in Tel Aviv in April 2003, were cleared of failing to alert the authorities before the attack. Three Shiite Muslims from Northolt, Middlesex, on a pilgrimage to Karbala in Iraq, were shot dead in a suburb of Baghdad.
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