Madoc has just received this reply:

Dear Mr Batcup

Thank you for your e-mail and further comments regarding 'Question Time' on 25 February. Please accept our apologies for the delay in replying. We know our correspondents appreciate a quick response and are sorry you've had to wait on this occasion.

I understand you were unhappy with the choice of panellists for this edition and that you felt there was a lack of questions related to fundamentally Welsh issues.

'Question Time' aims to generate lively weekly debate on various topical issues and to represent a broad range of views within each programme. However, it cannot do this and ensure strict political balance within the five-person panel each week. Given that it's working within a limited timeframe there will always be more question the audience would like to hear asked, and more panellists featured, than the programme can provide within individual broadcasts.

However the programme does seek to achieve balance over a reasonable period and has a firm commitment to political balance over the series as a whole.

This provides some scope for different balance from one week to another, and also for introducing variety in the guests and issues featured.

If you would like to take part in the audience and put forward a question you can find more information on how to do this on the programme's website here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/question_time/1858613.stm

Viewers can also share their views on each edition on the 'Question Time' section of the 'Have Your Say' blog here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/haveyoursay/2010/03/your_views_on_question_time_th_1.html

I'd also like to assure you that we've registered your comments on our audience log for the benefit of the programme makers and senior management within the BBC. The audience logs are important documents that can help shape future decisions and ensures that your points, and all other comments we receive, are circulated and considered across the BBC.

Thanks again for contacting us.

Regards

Stuart Webb
BBC Complaints

I think every one of us can see that this is nothing more than the standard template letter that the BBC keep on file to answer any complaint they receive ... though with one or two blanks filled in. And of course that doesn't make the BBC particularly different from any other large organization.

-

Before looking at Madoc's response, there are a few points that I'd like to make. The first is that the BBC seem to place considerable importance on what they call their "audience log". This seems to imply that they take rather more notice of the quantity of complaints they receive than their quality. So I would invite anybody reading this who agrees with what Madoc has said to write or email the BBC even if that involves making exactly the same points. This is the link:

     www.bbc.co.uk/complaints

I believe that the BBC are trapped in a particular way of looking at politics and current affairs that leaves their central organization largely unaware of the extent of the concerns of people in Wales in particular.

To illustrate this, the edition from Belfast on 11 February this year is still available on iPlayer. As we can see, the programme took particular care to represent all sides of the political spectrum on Northern Ireland, as well as having a UK perspective through Shaun Woodward, the SoSNI. And although some questions were specifically about Northern Ireland, a good number of them were about other issues such as UK involvement in torture, expenses corruption in Westminster, the Greek economy, and the pay of celebrities employed by the BBC.

To my mind this shows that the BBC took considerably more care to fulfill their obligations with respect to Northern Ireland than they do with respect to Wales.

•  On one hand, we should expect at least some matters of concern to Wales to be discussed on a programme aired throughout the UK. People elsewhere in the UK need and would surely want to be informed of what's happening in Wales. So if it's right that, say, the devolution of policing and justice to Northern Ireland was discussed on that programme, surely we should expect some aspects of what is or might be devolved to Wales to be discussed when the programme is broadcast from Wales.

•  On the other hand, it is of course right that UK and world issues are discussed in addition to matters that concern Wales. But even so, the majority of the panel should be composed of people who can contribute different shades of specifically Welsh opinion on these issues when the programme is broadcast from Wales. And this should be true whichever nation or region the programme is broadcast from.

As for Scotland, all we have to do is wait until Thursday, since the next edition of Question Time will come from Glasgow. I'm willing to bet that the BBC will take care that the composition of that panel and the questions asked will show more regard for Scotland than the programme from Cardiff did for Wales.

-

As might be expected, Madoc is not one to be fobbed off by such a cursory answer. None of us would be. This is his response to the BBC's letter:

Dear Mr. Webb

Your reply is wholly unacceptable, and I intend to take the matter further. You have answered none of my questions, but only given a bland reply which deals with none of the issues. The cursory nature of the reply and its general vagueness clearly indicate to me that you have not considered the matter in any detail. You do not deal with the particular issue of Wales, nor with the fact that none of the questions on the programme related to Wales, while two were wholly or largely to do with England. This programme could have been broadcast twenty years ago - there was no-one from the Welsh Assembly and indeed no mention of it, or of any decisions made in Wales. This approach gives the BBC no credibility whatsoever in terms of appropriate treatment of Welsh matters, and informing a wider UK audience about the situation in Wales. If your response is any indication of the way in which the BBC intends to cover the Westminster elections then it gives rise to great disquiet.

I believe that the programme represented a flagrant breach of the concerns laid out by the BBC well over ten years ago. I refer in particular to the BBC's programme response to Devolution published in December 1998, and the BBC Trust impartiality report: BBC network news and current affairs coverage of the four UK nations authored by Professor Anthony King and published in June 2008. The Question Time programme and your response typify the concern expressed by the BBC at the time in its response of 1998:

"... the BBC has sometimes appeared insensitive to political, administrative, cultural and linguistic differences across the UK, giving the impression of a London-based organisation dismissive of the more geographically distant parts of the UK. There have been errors of judgement, and, on occasions, of accuracy."

In the King Report it was pointed out that:

"... the review highlights concern that BBC network news and current affairs programmes taken as a whole are not reporting the changing UK with the range and precision that might reasonably be expected given the high standards the BBC itself aspires to. There are specific concerns as to accuracy and clarity of reporting, the balance of coverage, and missed opportunities of drawing on the rich variety of the UK and communicating it to multiple audiences. As examples, political coverage is seen as unduly focused on Westminster in volume and style; there is seen to be a general bias in favour of stories about England or telling stories from an England perspective; and there is evidence that several stories in the nations which may have been significant to the UK were not taken up by the network."

The BBC Trust's comment was:

"However, we are concerned at Professor King's assessment that the BBC is not reporting the changing UK with the range that might be expected, given the fact that audiences have expressed a desire to learn more about other parts of the UK in the BBC's coverage. This echoes a wider concern expressed to the Trust that audiences see the BBC as too preoccupied with the interests and experiences of London, and that those who live elsewhere in the UK do not see their lives adequately reflected on the BBC. It is not acceptable that a BBC funded by licence fee payers across the whole country should not address the interests of them all in fair measure."

In its document of 1998, the BBC, said that it would introduce certain measures to 'enable the BBC to provide accurate and well judged news for its audiences in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland but also to allow it to offer al]]> http://syniadau--buildinganindependentwales.blogspot.com/2010/03/question-time-bbcs-initial-response.html http://fairdealphil.blogspot.com/2010/03/cameron-throws-red-meat-to-his-tory.html
This week our local Euro-MP Glenis Willmott is rightly questioning why Cameron's Conservatives have allied themselves with a right-wing - some would say extremist - organisation.

The Conservative Leader wants us to believe he has the judgement to lead our country - but he can't see a problem getting into bed with a right-wing party which takes part in controversial marches said to celebrate the wartime Latvian SS.

I would have thought the very name Latvian Fatherland and Freedom Party would have set alarm bells ringing with David Cameron who wants us to believe he has the judgement necessary to lead our country...

But David - or do we have to call him 'Dave' now - clearly did a deal with the unsavoury right-wing Euro-sceptics in his Party when he became Tory Leader.

Just about the only promise Cameron has kept is to abandon the British Conservatives long-held links with the moderate European Peoples Party, and join a new rag-bag coalition of right wing nutters - including the Latvian Fatherland and Freedom Party, amongst others.

By abandoning the EPP - the party of Sarkozy and Merkle, the UK Conservatives are isolated in Europe. Given the chance, they would isolate Britain in Europe.

You don't have to take my word. Ask life-long Conservative MEP Edward McMillan Scott who defected to the LibDems at the weekend.

McMillan-Scott put it in his own words in a telling article in The Observer in which he describes the Conservatives under David Cameron as not a nice party.

]]> http://fairdealphil.blogspot.com/2010/03/cameron-throws-red-meat-to-his-tory.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cartoon/2010/mar/20/david-cameron-british-airways-strike David Cameron will offer himself as the man to confront the spectre of strikes

Martin Rowson

]]> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cartoon/2010/mar/20/david-cameron-british-airways-strike http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/20/steve-eisman-maverick-trader-financial-crisis

The financial crisis was predictable, but only a handful saw it coming. Of those, even fewer were bold enough to bet against the market. And the boldest of them all was an unknown trader

The willingness of a Wall Street investment bank to pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars to dispense investment advice to grown-ups remains a mystery to me to this day. I was 24, with no experience of, or particular interest in, guessing which stocks and bonds would rise and which would fall. I'd never taken an accounting course, never run a business, never even had savings of my own to manage. I'd stumbled into a job at Salomon Brothers in 1985, and stumbled out, richer, in 1988, and the whole thing still strikes me as totally preposterous - which is one reason the money was so easy to walk away from. I figured the situation was unsustainable. Sooner rather than later, someone was going to identify me, along with a lot of people more or less like me, as a fraud.

When I sat down to write my account of the experience - Liar's Poker - it was in the spirit of a young man who thought he was getting out while the getting was good. Unless some insider got all of this down on paper, I figured, no future human would believe that it had happened.

Up to that point, just about everything written about Wall Street had been about the stock market. My book was mainly about the bond market, because Wall Street was now making even bigger money packaging and selling and shuffling around America's growing debts. This, too, I assumed was unsustainable. I thought that I was writing a period piece about the 1980s in America, when a great nation lost its financial mind.

What I never imagined is that the future reader might look back on any of this, or on my own peculiar experience, and say, "How quaint." How innocent. Not for a moment did I suspect that the financial 1980s would last for two full decades longer. That a single bond trader might be paid $47m a year and feel cheated. That the mortgage bond market invented on the Salomon Brothers trading floor, which seemed like such a good idea at the time, would lead to the most purely financial economic disaster in history.

In the two decades after I left, I waited for the end of Wall Street as I had known it. Yet the big banks at the centre of it just kept on growing, along with the sums of money that they doled out to 26-year-olds to perform tasks of no obvious social utility. At some point, I gave up waiting. There was no scandal or reversal, I assumed, sufficiently great to sink the system.

Then came Meredith Whitney, with news. Whitney was an obscure analyst of financial firms for Oppenheimer & Co who, on 31 October 2007, ceased to be obscure. On that day she predicted that Citigroup had so mismanaged its affairs that it would need to slash its dividend or go bust. By the end of the trading day, a woman of whom no one had ever heard had shaved 8% off the shares of Citigroup and $390bn off the value of the US stock market. Four days later, Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince resigned. Two weeks later, Citigroup slashed its dividend. From that moment, when Meredith Whitney spoke, people listened.

I confess some part of me thought, if only I'd stuck around, this is the sort of catastrophe I might have created. The characters at the centre of Citigroup's mess were the very same people I'd worked with at Salomon Brothers; a few of them had been in my training class there. At some point I couldn't contain myself: I called Whitney. This was back in March 2008, just before the failure of Bear Stearns, when the outcome still hung in the balance. I was curious to know where this young woman who was crashing the stock market with her every utterance had come from.

She'd arrived on Wall Street in 1994, landed a job at Oppenheimer & Co and then had the most incredible piece of luck: to be trained by a man who helped her to establish not merely a career but a world-view. His name, she said, was Steve Eisman.

Having never heard of Eisman, I didn't think anything of this. But in late 2008, when the biggest Wall Street investment banks were under threat from the fallout over sub-prime mortgages - loans made to borrowers who don't qualify for ordinary mortgages, and so have a higher risk of default - I called Whitney again. By then, there was a long and growing list of pundits who claimed they had predicted the catastrophe, but a far shorter list of people who actually did. Of those, even fewer had the nerve to bet on their vision. I wanted to ask Whitney, as I was asking others, if she knew anyone who had anticipated the sub-prime mortgage cataclysm, thus setting himself up in advance to make a fortune from it.

Whitney rattled off a list with a half-dozen names on it, mainly investors she had personally advised. At the top was Steve Eisman.

Eisman entered finance about the time I exited it. He'd grown up in New York City, graduated with honours from Harvard Law School. In 1991 he was a 30-year-old corporate lawyer. "I hated it," he says. "My parents worked as brokers at Oppenheimer securities. They managed to finagle me a job. It's not pretty, but that's what happened."

Eisman started in equity analysis, and quickly established himself as one of the few analysts at Oppenheimer whose opinions might stir the markets. Wall Street people came to view him as a genuine character. His short-cropped blond hair looked as if he had cut it himself. The focal point of his soft, expressive, not unkind face was his mouth, mainly because it was usually at least half open, even while he ate. It was as if he feared that he might not be able to express whatever thought had just flitted through his mind quickly enough before the next one came, and so kept the channel perpetually clear. It was the opposite of a poker face.

The growing number of people who worked for Eisman loved him, or were at least amused by him, and appreciated his willingness and ability to part with both his money and his knowledge. Important men who might have expected from Eisman some sign of deference or respect, on the other hand, often came away outraged from encounters with him. One head of a large US brokerage firm listened to Eisman explain in front of several dozen investors at lunch why he, the brokerage firm head, didn't understand his own business, then watched him leave in the middle of the lunch and never return. ("I had to go to the bathroom," Eisman says. "I don't know why I never went back.") After the lunch, the guy announced he'd never again agree to enter any room with Eisman in it.

By pretty much every account, Eisman was a curious character. And he'd walked on to Wall Street at the very beginning of a curious phase. The creation of the mortgage bond market, a decade earlier, had extended Wall Street into a place it had never before been: the debts of ordinary Americans. And Oppenheimer quickly became one of the leading bankers to the new sub-prime mortgage industry, in no small part because Eisman was one of its leading proponents. "I took a lot of sub-prime companies public," he says. "And the story they liked to tell was, 'We're helping the consumer, because we are taking him out of his high interest rate credit card debt and putting him into lower interest rate mortgage debt.' And I believed that story." Then something changed.

Vincent Daniel had grown up in Queens, without any of the perks Steve Eisman took for granted. Yet if you met them you might guess that it was Vinny who had grown up in high style. Eisman was brazen and grandiose and focused on the big kill. Vinny was careful and wary and interested in details. His father had been murdered when he was a small boy and he viewed his fellow man with intense suspicion. It was with the awe of a champion speaking of an even greater champion that Eisman said, "Vinny is dark."

Vinny's résumé made its way to Eisman, who was looking for someone to help him parse the increasingly arcane sub-prime mortgage accounting. They'd met twice when Eisman phoned him out of the blue. Vinny assumed he was about to be offered a job, but soon after they started to talk, Eisman received an emergency call on the other line and put Vinny on hold. Vinny sat waiting for 15 minutes, but Eisman never came back on the line.

Two months later, Eisman called him back. When could Vinny start? Eisman never said why he'd hung up,]]> http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/20/steve-eisman-maverick-trader-financial-crisis http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/mar/20/new-tories-cameron-conservatives-election

If the Conservatives win the election, most of their MPs will be first-timers, part of a new elite that includes more women, gay and non-white candidates than ever before. From the chick-lit author to the black farmer, Julian Glover investigates how deep the reinvention really runs

Sir Tufton-Bufton is in for a shock. Whether or not the Conservative party finally wins this spring, the coming election will bring an extraordinary purging of the Commons. In the wake of the expenses scandal, almost 150 MPs are quitting and many more may lose their seats. If David Cameron takes office with a majority, most of his MPs will be first-timers, part of a new Tory elite that includes more women, more non-white and more out gay candidates than ever before - along with a sprinkling of media darlings whose only previous response to the words "Conservative party" might have been to ask why they hadn't been invited.

This gilded intake is the product of much strong-arming by Cameron's team, desperate to show that his party has changed. But beneath the surface gloss, opinion varies as to how deep the Conservative reinvention really runs: there will still be scores of public schoolboys, and even quite a few old Etonians, among the new crop, and most candidates are still male. At one recent selection, candidates were asked to confirm with a single word that they will vote to repeal the hunting ban. Perhaps old money has just taken to wearing Paul Smith jeans rather than Harris tweed.

But the figures still say a lot. At present there are 18 female Tory MPs; if Cameron gets a majority, there will be more than 60. There will be at least 10 - maybe more - Tory MPs from ethnic minorities, which doesn't sound a lot until you remember that between 1906, when Sir Mancherjee Bhownaggree lost his seat, and 1992, when Nirj Deva won, every Tory MP was white and almost all of them male.

Cameron must be kicking himself that several of the candidates who most represent change, such as community activist Shaun Bailey, whom Tories are desperate to see win in Hammersmith, were picked early on to fight seats where victory is far from certain. No one imagined then that the expenses crisis would create far safer vacancies, several of which have gone to established party insiders.

Nonetheless, it is striking that Chippenham is being fought not by any old Tory backwoodsman out of the pages of Horse & Hound, but by Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones, the self-appointed "black farmer" turned would-be MP. He was born in Jamaica and brought up in a Birmingham terrace house. Selected in 2006, he was the early embodiment of Cameron's vow to change his party, fighting the Lib Dems in a marginal seat in which just 722 out of 87,977 people described themselves as non-white in the last census. Cameron cited him in a recent pre-election speech as proof that Tory reinvention is real: "The young black British boy, looking at parliament, looking at Britain and thinking, 'What's my role? Do I belong? How am I going to get on?' can look at the Tory party, yes, the Tory party, and say: 'They've got to the top of British politics, I belong here, and so can I'."

Up to a point, David. Emmanuel-Jones was a beneficiary of the A-list, which sought to fast-track preferred candidates, but that faded away after internal opposition. Only a third of A-listers eventually made it into winnable seats and many of those are marginals. Since then, the party has tried holding open primaries - meetings where any local voter can attend and vote - and in two places all-postal primaries, in which every elector was sent a ballot paper. GP Sarah Wollaston won this way in Totnes after Tory grandee Anthony Steen was forcibly retired after pronouncing the public jealous of his "very, very large" house. Yet many traditional candidates have still got through.

If parliament is to be representative, then its new generation must represent the country. That familiar disconnection between politicians and people is, after all, one of the reasons the expenses catastrophe occurred. "It will do the Tory party a power of good to get rid of the useless, appalling characters who packed the Commons," says the political commentator Peter Oborne. "They had long since lost any sense of public duty. Why would anyone want to have anything to do with a party that contained the likes of Anthony Steen and Andrew McKay [also forced to stand down after his expenses claims were made public]?"

But there are big questions about the sort of people being selected in their place. Oborne is pleased people "who are not known at Westminster, are not lobbyists and are proudly provincial" are standing, but the reality is many new Tories have emerged from a very old Tory womb.

In Somerset, the son and daughter (Jacob and Annunziata) of the former Times editor William Rees-Mogg are both standing. East Surrey may be about to get its first black MP, Sam Gyimah, who may live up to his billing as a future cabinet minister, but to get there he was president of the Oxford Union. A few days later, Tories in Stratford-on-Avon selected Nadhim Zahawi, whose family originally came from Kurdistan. He helped found the successful polling firm YouGov and once worked for Jeffrey Archer.

Many - but by no means all - of the new candidates are the sort of people who always got selected, wealthy and well-educated middle-class professionals. To be truly representative, the party needs to reflect not just ethnic and sexual diversity, but social and economic difference, too - and here the story is less clearcut. "Has the party just substituted white barristers for black barristers, and straight accountants for gay ones?" asks Tim Montgomerie, founder of the ConservativeHome website, which has been tracking the new intake.

Out delivering leaflets in the marginal seat of Reading East, Nick Herbert says: "The change is visible and real. You can't be a successful party unless you have candidates from all backgrounds." But: "No one thinks the journey is complete."

Elected for Arundel in 2005, Herbert was dismayed at first when one national newspaper captioned a picture of him "Gay eurosceptic". "I didn't want to be typecast. I am an MP who happens to be gay." Recently, though, he has come to believe that "it is important to talk about such issues, to encourage people not just in politics but in all walks of life".

The change in attitudes to homosexuality has been rapid in all parties, but most of all, perhaps, among the Tories. No out Conservative stood for parliament until David Gold, the unsuccessful candidate for Brighton Pavilion in 2001 and now candidate in the key south London seat of Eltham. These days, Tories joke that they may soon need a straight A-list to help openly heterosexual candidates into parliament.

That is an exaggeration, but it is likely that there will be more out lesbian and gay Tory MPs by the summer than Labour and Lib Dem ones. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/mar/20/new-tories-cameron-conservatives-election http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/bUee/~3/ZYcbL7NiaTw/last-of-6-nations_20.html

Another Saturday and the last three matches of the 6 Nations. We have Wales v Italy at the Millenium Stadium (KO 2.30pm), Ireland v Scotland at Croke Park (KO 5pm) and France v England at the Stade de France (KO 7.45pm).

All matches will be broadcast on BBC TV, the Red Button and online.

Scotland meet second the top of the standings in Ireland and England meet the top in France. It should be an exciting afternoon's rugby.

Here's a wee rugby story from one of my loyal readers. Do hope you enjoy it.

I had a business friend from the Borders who was also very keen on Rugby. As he worked in the West Country, he went to an England v Ireland match in Bristol where he fell in with three Irishmen who were obviously fairly senior executive types.

Coming out of the ground, a policeman was waiting by their car which was parked on the apron in front of a fire station. He said that without a word being spoken, two of these Irishmen started to fight. The policeman came over to sort it out whilst the third man ran to the car and drove off. By the time the policeman arrived, the other two were already shaking hands!

We don't think like that on this side of the water, do we?

]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/bUee/~3/ZYcbL7NiaTw/last-of-6-nations_20.html http://sluggerotoole.com/index.php/site/huge-coup-for-wrightbus-from-ballymena-to-battersea/ From the Evening Standard's Londoner's Diary

*LORD Foster’s architectural firm has been dropped from Boris Johnson’s project to design a new Routemaster bus, despite having won the design competition back in 2008. The Mayor’s Transport for London (TfL) has instead awarded an £8 million contract to design and build five of the new buses by 2012 to Northern Ireland-based Wrightbus.
Getting rid of the unloved bendy buses and the reintroduction of a modern version of the hop-on, hop-off Routemaster were among the central planks of Boris’s mayoral campaign in May 2008, some of which he famously conducted from the rear platform of one of the few remaining in service.
His predecessor, Ken Livingstone, was much derided for getting rid of the Routemasters in 2005, having previously said that “only a ghastly, dehumanised moron” would do such a thing. 
In December 2008, the mayor announced Foster + Partners and Aston Martin as joint winners alongside bus-design firm Capoco. Foster’s design featured cream leather seating, wooden floors and a glazed roof. But a TfL spokesman has now told the Architects’ Journal: “Neither the Foster nor the Capoco concepts will be used.”
Wrightbus’s working design, which will be unveiled next month, is understood to have a limited “open” platform to the rear and two staircases. 

]]> http://sluggerotoole.com/index.php/site/huge-coup-for-wrightbus-from-ballymena-to-battersea/ http://sluggerotoole.com/index.php/site/for-the-catholic-world-read-ireland/ As the Washington Post observes, the world will be watching to see if the Pope in his letter to the Irish church tears away the veil of secrecy over the full extent of clerical cover-up and admits some blame of his own. Honesty demands that Joseph Ratzinger himself, the man who for decades has been principally responsible for the worldwide cover-up, at last pronounce his own mea culpa," says Hans Kung, the world’s most famous Catholic theologian, harrassed by JP2 for his liberal thoughts.  It seems to me the Pope is between a rock and a hard place of his own making. Does the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. the old Holy Office he headed, hold all the details of the thousands of cases? If so, will he promise full disclosure? If he does, he exposes his own cover-up; if he doesn’t, he continues it. If neither as is likely, the pressure for full disclosure will be mightily boosted by anti-climax and his very authority put seriously at risk. The BBC’s Rome correspondent David Willey, no callow secularist and the veteran of six papacies “has never seen a graver crisis affecting the very credibility of the leadership of the world's longest surviving international organisation, the Roman Catholic Church.” Willey believes the Irish letter was held up because of the emergence of the Munich case which points straight to Joseph Ratzinger himself. It’s the old Watergate question: what did he know and when did he know it?. .

David Willey "From Our Own Correspondent"

The other day a senior Vatican official, Monsignor Charles Scicluna - an amiable priest from Malta who holds the title of Promoter of Justice - actually gave a lengthy official interview about how headquarters in Rome have been reacting to the huge growth in the number of cases of clerical abuse reported to the Pope during the past decade alone.  He also gave numbers: during the past decade the Holy Office received details of 3,000 Catholic priests reported by their Bishops to Rome for sexual misconduct or, even worse, crimes.
Sixty per cent of these cases involved homosexual acts, 30% related to heterosexual behaviour and only 10% - or 300 priests - were, he said, "actual cases of paedophilia." This was, of course, too many, Monsignor Scicluna admitted, but he added: "The phenomenon is not as widespread as has been believed."

So how many cases and how many to come?  3000 reported to Rome says the reverend Promoter, “7000 in the US, 700 new cases” says the (unsourced ) Guardian report which quotes another veteran reporter and prominent lay Catholic Clifford Longley with an even more expansive verdict than Willey's. 

"It is such a big story because everything about it is extreme," says the religious affairs author and journalist Clifford Longley. "It is the worst crisis for the Vatican since the middle ages."Longley says the church survived nazism, fascism and communism and will outlast the EU, the UN, the US. "Bad though this crisis is, it has survived much worse. At the start of the 16th century the Vatican was little better than a shit-hole."

There

is a sharp distinction between his attitude while a cardinal and his activities as pope that could yet leave an indelible stain on the reign of Benedict XVI.  In 2005 he was elected days after declaring that the time had come to sweep "the filth" from his church. By then he had read – and was disgusted by – files on more than 3,000 clerical abuse cases that were channelled to his department by a decree issued four years earlier by John Paul II.
Most of the cases dealt with by the Vatican department in recent years resulted in the accused being removed, if not defrocked. The problem for Benedict is that, as in many other theological respects, he changed his mind. The US Vatican-watcher John Allen this week published in National Catholic Reporter an extract from the transcript of a conference in Spain that showed that, as late as November 2002, Ratzinger dismissed the American abuse scandals as the result of a "planned campaign" in the media.

I can find only one voice in the press joining the valiant band of Slugger commenters defending the Church’s behaviour, Damian Thomson in the Daily Telegraph.

Many Catholics – and I am one of them – believe that the Pope has been stitched up over this Munich case.

]]> http://sluggerotoole.com/index.php/site/for-the-catholic-world-read-ireland/ http://chrisandglynisabbott.blogspot.com/2010/03/dismay-at-decision-to-close-st-peters.html http://chrisandglynisabbott.blogspot.com/2010/03/dismay-at-decision-to-close-st-peters.html http://politicsfornovices.blogspot.com/2010/03/who-needs-friends.html http://politicsfornovices.blogspot.com/2010/03/who-needs-friends.html http://jonathanwallace.blogspot.com/2010/03/not-so-blaydon-born-as-was-thought.html http://jonathanwallace.blogspot.com/2010/03/not-so-blaydon-born-as-was-thought.html http://spiderplant88.wordpress.com/2010/03/20/tom-miller-doesnt-care-about-you/ http://spiderplant88.wordpress.com/2010/03/20/tom-miller-doesnt-care-about-you/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jocksplace/~3/q-LxK7qTF18/non_party_political_message_oxford_east_clp http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jocksplace/~3/q-LxK7qTF18/non_party_political_message_oxford_east_clp http://cllrmikebarker.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-kid-on-block.html http://cllrmikebarker.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-kid-on-block.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/i8R-sdxJJ8g/10749076320 ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/i8R-sdxJJ8g/10749076320 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/474oYliAeXA/10749021444 ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/474oYliAeXA/10749021444 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/LofWlIRKQrc/10748997473 ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/LofWlIRKQrc/10748997473 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/I9UpfcRzc3w/10748824180 ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/I9UpfcRzc3w/10748824180 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/Qsyq_Fge5MI/10748761060 ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/Qsyq_Fge5MI/10748761060 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/gQ61IfXeiOI/10748605500 ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/gQ61IfXeiOI/10748605500 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/NteXW6e0sA0/10748560419 ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/NteXW6e0sA0/10748560419 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/VJ6edpyBL6A/10748555298 ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/VJ6edpyBL6A/10748555298 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/Ci8NBxP0B0k/10748488917 ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/Ci8NBxP0B0k/10748488917 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/_BreOMy-5aE/10748489446 ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/_BreOMy-5aE/10748489446 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/NUNfCbLcbLE/10748487509 ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/NUNfCbLcbLE/10748487509 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/jxFRopVkgUI/10748447887 ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/jxFRopVkgUI/10748447887 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/vJbSU2YeEzQ/10748403107 ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/vJbSU2YeEzQ/10748403107 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/CJLu1YaLIwo/10748369067 ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/CJLu1YaLIwo/10748369067 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/qj8LJmqjXBU/10748357200 ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/qj8LJmqjXBU/10748357200 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/0vleMvdhgkM/10748304293 ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/0vleMvdhgkM/10748304293 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/E0kTcJAxozQ/10748295657 ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/E0kTcJAxozQ/10748295657 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/L4HWFt4DW_k/10748287913 ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/L4HWFt4DW_k/10748287913 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/P1SymFG4NKs/10748219195 ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/P1SymFG4NKs/10748219195 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/EPMRJMTpKQE/10748137658 ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/EPMRJMTpKQE/10748137658 http://jonathanwallace.blogspot.com/2010/03/not-so-blaydon-born-as-was-thought.html http://jonathanwallace.blogspot.com/2010/03/not-so-blaydon-born-as-was-thought.html http://kevsoft.co.uk/?subaction=showfull&id=1269036352&archive= £10 million is being given to help out post offices in Scotland and Wales but surprise surprise none for England.]]> http://kevsoft.co.uk/?subaction=showfull&id=1269036352&archive= http://paulstott.typepad.com/i_intend_to_escape_and_co/2010/03/a-saturday-accumulator.html Ok - so you've lost all you money at Cheltenham this week.

What better response than to find a good six team accumulator for todays football? I have £2 on the following:

Everton to beat Bolton
Notts Forest to beat Peterborough
QPR to beat Swansea
West Brom to beat Preston
Charlton to beat Gillingham
Celtic to beat St Johnstone

]]> http://paulstott.typepad.com/i_intend_to_escape_and_co/2010/03/a-saturday-accumulator.html http://mudhook.wordpress.com/2010/03/20/parliamentary-candidates/ ]]> http://mudhook.wordpress.com/2010/03/20/parliamentary-candidates/ http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/20/bskyb-football-television-ofcom

BT and Virgin Media ready to start price war as Ofcom forces Sky to cut the fees it charges other broadcasters

The cost of watching Premier League football and a host of other sports is set to tumble as watchdog Ofcom tries to ease the grip held by Rupert Murdoch's satellite empire on the nation's television viewing habits.

Rivals including BT and Virgin Media are expected to mount a price war against BSkyB when the regulator forces it to cut the fees it charges other broadcasters for its Sky Sports channels this week. The price cuts should be in force in time for the next season.

BT has hinted that it would charge just £15 for sports programming and that some of its high-value customers could get Sky Sports free if they sign up to BT Vision, the company's hybrid Freeview-plus-broadband television service. Other internet service providers such as TalkTalk - which owns Tiscali TV - will also be able to bundle cheaper Sky Sports programming in the biggest shake-up of the pay-TV market for almost 20 years.

The move is likely to raise concerns among sporting bodies that it could reduce the cash they can raise through selling television rights, potentially hitting investment in grassroots facilities. It is also likely to lead to Sky launching a legal challenge, but Ofcom is expected to press ahead with the price caps regardless, to prevent the broadcaster clogging the whole process up in the courts for years. Sky fought against regulatory demands that it reduce its controversial 17.9% stake in ITV, for instance, for more than two years before eventually trimming its shareholding.

Ofcom's pay-TV review has taken three years, making it one of the longest-running reviews in British regulatory history. One of the companies that originally sparked the inquiry - Setanta - has since gone bust.But it represents a last chance for the regulator to prove its mettle - and consumer protection credentials - before a general election whose result could spell a dramatic reduction in Ofcom's remit. Perhaps already sensing that change is in the air, last week Ofcom's director of communications Julian Eccles quit to join the FA.

Conservative leader David Cameron has made it plain that if his party wins the election it will strip Ofcom of its policymaking powers. Speaking earlier this month, shadow culture minister Ed Vaizey said Tory media policy was driven by a "deregulatory approach" but insisted he "liked Ofcom". "We felt there was a leadership vacuum from DCMS [the department of culture, media and sport] so Ofcom was driving policy. With a new and energetic Conservative government you would get leadership on media policy and Ofcom would return to its regulatory role," Vaizey said. Ofcom refused to comment.

Last summer, in its initial findings, Ofcom decided Sky must be forced to wholesale its premium channels, dropping the price of Sky Sports 1 and Sky Sports 2 from the £13.48 it charges Virgin Media to somewhere within the range of £9.41 and £11.24 per channel, while a bundle of both channels and Sky Movies - which costs Virgin £23.40 per subscriber - should come down to between £16.98 and £20.43, a 27% discount on current prices. Later this week the regulator will make its final judgment on the exact figure.

• Ofcom
• BSkyB
• BSkyB
• Sports rights
• Regulators
• Conservatives
• David Cameron
• BT
• Virgin Media

Richard Wray

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]]> http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/20/bskyb-football-television-ofcom http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/mar/19/conservatives-candidates-profiles-election

Profiles of the new generation of Conservative candidates. All photographs by Nadav Kander

Audio slideshow: the new Tories

Charlotte Leslie, 31
Bristol NW. ­ Lab maj: 2,781
Ex-BBC production for the Weakest Link and the Holiday Programme; edits Crossbow maga­zine for centre-right think­tank the Bow Group.
"I realised that what I'd thought was Charlotte­ism - my view on the world - aligned with the principles of Conservatism. I've never liked authority stamping on what individuals want to do."

Charlotte Vere, 40
Brighton Pavilion. ­Lab ­maj: 5,867
Entrepreneur; former chair of mental health network Big White Wall.
"I have been a Conservative for life. It's about having a strong sense of social responsibility, a view that opportunity is for everybody, believing that a more effective government is better than a bigger government - and ideally paying as few taxes as possible."

Claire Perry, 45
Devizes. Con maj: 12,259
Grew up in Somerset; ex-City worker; former adviser to George Osborne.
"Rural Britain has suffered massively under Labour. We have had the most urban-minded government ever. They don't get what life is like outside SW6."

Dom Raab, 35
Esher and Walton. Con maj: 7,727
Son of a Czech refugee, former member of British karate squad and ex-chief of staff to ­Dominic Grieve QC MP.
"I wrote a book on civil liberties. I'm very much against ID cards. There's a commitment in the party to defending our freedom as a nation and ending the creeping mission of the European Union."

Dr Sarah Wollaston, 47
Totnes. Con maj: 2,693
A GP in rural Devon; won Britain's first open primary in ­August 2009, replacing a Tory casualty of the expenses scandal.
"I came into this by accident. We have the smallest hospital in the country, in Dartmoor, and four years ago it was facing closure. I said, 'I'm going to become an MP.' The Conservatives said they would support ­community hospitals, and I feel passionately about the NHS. That's what brought me into this."

Esther McVey, 42
Wirral West. Con maj: 569
Founder of a women's business network and MD of media consultancy firm Making It.
"I worked for the BBC, Channel 4 and hosted GMTV with Eamonn Holmes. I had a fabulous time, but after 14 years, I realised the media only highlighted what was ­going on. Really ­affecting change was in politics."

Helen Grant, 48
­Maidstone & the Weald. Con maj: 12,922
London-born family lawyer, brought up in Carlisle. Under-16 judo champion.
"I spent the early part of my life on a ­council estate. I'm part of a changing face of the Tory party. Together we are a truer and ­better reflection of modern Britain."

Joanne Cash, 40
­Westminster North. Lab maj: 2,120
Media barrister, grew up in Northern Ireland. Recently resigned as a Conservative candidate following a clash with another party ­member, but was reinstated shortly after.
"I hate being called a 'Cameron cutie'. It's demeaning. I know that some people mean it humorously... it isn't funny. You wouldn't do that to a man, and it's pretty awful that the media still feel the need to categorise women by their looks. Why the sense of ­ownership of a female candidate that you don't get with men?"

Keely Huxtable, 28
Birmingham Northfield. Lab maj: 7,879
Birmingham-born schools governor and Guide leader.
"My parents are ­traditional Labour ­voters. But in my politics class we would debate the free market and one teacher said, 'Keely, you're such a Tory!' That was a shock. I've always believed in a small state, and giving people power over their own lives."

Louise Bagshawe, 38
Corby and East ­Northamptonshire. Lab maj: 1,517 Bestselling author of books including ­Passion and Glitz.
"I've always been a die-hard Thatcherite. I believe in optimism, sunshine and liberty: all the classic things ­Conservatism stands for. My first books were somewhat racy, but the party has modernised and ­nobody cares."

Maria Hutchings, 48
Eastleigh. Lib Dem maj: 534
Campaigner for ­children with special needs; famously ­challenged Tony Blair on TV over the closure of her autistic son's school.
"I always believed ­Labour were there for the most vulnerable people in society, but Tony Blair's politics had become all about political correctness. Whereas David Cameron had a wall with photos of Ivan. He talked as a person who had been through the same experiences I had."

Nick Boles, 44
Grantham and ­Stamford. Con maj: 7,308
Openly gay; head of David Cameron's ­implementation team.
"A hundred years ago, many people in Britain thought ­homosexuality was a sin. Perhaps it's not surprising that it's taken Conservatives a bit longer to realise it isn't. I suspect the party took longer to get its head around the idea of women ­being completely equal, but we were the first to elect a woman leader. Once we embrace change, we do it fully and put it to good work."

Paul Uppal, 42
­Wolverhampton SW. Lab maj: 2,114
Birmingham-born Sikh businessman; early supporter of Cameron; fighting the seat repres­ented by Enoch Powell.
"My family came from Kenya. We had to start from scratch. My view on immigration is that, yes, you want a ­positive contribution, but people also want to feel they have control; that they are contributing to the UK. It's just common sense."

Philippa Stroud, 44
Sutton & Cheam. Lib Dem ­maj: 2,689
Executive director of Centre for Social Justice; influential in Broken Britain programme. Committed Christian who spent 18 months in Hong Kong helping ex-Triad gangsters to quit drugs. One made her wedding dress.
"It was the Conserv­ative poverty-fighting agenda that got me into politics. The left's ­solutions haven't worked. We talk about strengthen­ing families, getting people off our streets."

Priti Patel, 37
Witham. Con maj: 7,241
Director of business ­consultancy; first ­female Asian Conserv­a­tive candidate. Her parents were driven out of Kenya by Idi Amin; supports capital punishment.
"I've always thought the day the Conservatives get elected again will be the day they have people that look and sound like me. Yes, there have been some bigoted views, but you come across that in any walk of life."

Rory Stewart, 37
­Penrith and the Border. Con maj: 10,795
Academic, author and diplomat.
"I was a member of the Labour party at university, but joined the Tories last year after the expenses scandal. I was frustrated with the government over foreign policy. I realised the best way to change things is to stand for parliament."

Shaun Bailey, 38
­Hammersmith and Shepherds Bush. ­ Lab maj: 3,673
Raised by Jamaican mother in London. Youth worker and gymnast.
"I come from a poor community. My ­politics are of the street. If I get to the House of Commons and don't get thrown out, I'm doing something wrong."

Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones, 52
Chippenham. Lib Dem maj: 2,183
Born in Jamaica, brought up in Birmingham, one of nine children. Runs a farm in Devon and launched the Black Farmer food range.
"I was not political as a young man. Small Heath in Birmingham is a classic inner-city area where there isn't much hope. It was the era of Enoch Powell. It's only when I started to succeed in life that I became a ­Conservative. We need to create an entrepreneurial culture."

• Conservatives
• General election 2010

Becky Barnicoat

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]]> http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/mar/19/conservatives-candidates-profiles-election http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/20/unthinkable-dishing-duopoly

Head-to-head clashes don't always produce the best results - and maybe Nick Clegg can emerge as the two-legged equivalent of Imperial Commander

It was billed as a classic two-horse race, because everybody loves a duel. Human beings have been stirred by the clash of champions ever since Achilles and Hector battled it out on the plains of Troy. Yesterday it was the same in the shadow of the Cotswolds when 57,000 punters turned up in the rain for what Frank Keating hymned this week as jump racing's own tumultuous one-on-one. At Cheltenham yesterday everyone seemed either for Kauto Star, the majority, or Denman, all the rest. Around the country the same. Either you were for one or you were for the other. Two tribes. Two possible outcomes. No other options. And then, what happened? That's right, another horse won. And not some freaky, fluky Foinavon-style 100-1 long shot either. Imperial Commander was always a true, in-form, thoroughbred contender. Yesterday he was always in the race too, undistracted when Kauto Star stumbled and fell; unfazed when AP McCoy tried to drive Denman home three fences out. At the end, Imperial Commander surged past the tiring Denman and won with something to spare. The wrong result? Only if you believe the only true contest is a head-to-head clash. If you prefer a pounding pack of contenders, this Gold Cup was for you. Who knows? Yesterday may even prefigure an unexpected outcome to Britain's other much-anticipated spring contest. Can Nick Clegg be the two-legged equivalent of Imperial Commander? In a good year anything is possible - even under first past the post.

• Cheltenham Gold Cup
• Kauto Star
• Denman
• Nick Clegg
• Horse racing
• General election 2010

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]]> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/20/unthinkable-dishing-duopoly http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/mar/20/quangos-job-spare-time

Fancy a job as a museum trustee or on the state honours committee? Being a quangocrat could be a great way to put your spare time and skills to good use, says Phil Chamberlain

If you'd like to decide which civil servant gets a gong, want to regulate architects or have a calling to become a museum trustee, then maybe the life of a quangocrat is for you.

Over the years ministers have regularly pledged a bonfire of these unelected bodies which regulate much of modern life. However, they show no sign of dying off and someone's got to run them. So what kind of people fill these posts - and, more pertinently, are they people like you?

The opportunities lie not in those lumbering behemoths such as the utility regulators but in the many boards, trusts, disciplinary panels, oversight committees and other loose change of the democratic process. The job will be part-time and the pay might be amount to no more than travelling expenses, but in today's portfolio working it could be a wise career move and a way of learning skills and tapping into different networks.

Former City lawyer Janet Gaymer is the Commissioner for Public Appointments. She is charged with making sure the most senior quango officials are appointed fairly. "I like to call it the ultimate in flexible working," she says.

The government's official count of what it calls non-departmental public bodies (NDPB) stands at 766. It calculates they employ 110,000 people and control £46bn in expenditure. However, that definition is drawn rather narrowly and some Whitehall watchers put the figure at more than 1,000 organisations with spending at £64bn. On top of that are hundreds of local health, housing and education trusts.

The Cabinet Office's public appointments website lists more than 40 vacancies at the moment, many of which involve becoming members of local health bodies.

There are also opportunities listed on the Appointments Commission portal.

If military history is your thing then the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth needs three new trustees. This will involve about 10 days' work a year and reasonable expenses are paid. But hurry, as the deadline for applications is 22 March. Such posts come up regularly. The Royal Armouries in Leeds has just closed the deadline on appointing a board member, while Tate Gallery is considering applications for a trustee. The person selected for that post will work alongside London School of Economics director Sir Howard Davies and media supremo Elisabeth Murdoch.

Gaymer says: "There is a huge range of organisations out there so almost anything you might be interested in is likely to have a body involved in that field. It is an excellent chance to add to your CV and a real opportunity to learn something new. People from the private sector tell me that they go back into their organisations with new ways of thinking."

Alternatively you could play an overseeing role in Whitehall. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for International Development need people on their audit committees to make sure they are financially responsible.

The deadline for those jobs is the first week of April. More fun, but unfortunately just closed, would have been working on the State Honours Committee, which considers which civil servants should get a gong.

There are all sorts of regulatory committees that require specialised knowledge. The Human Genetics Commission advises the government on the developments in this field. For this you get £148.59 a day.

There are four spaces on the powerful Science Advisory Council, for people with knowledge of climate change, food supply chains, biodiversity and environmental economics. This pays £237 a day as well as money for preparation time.

More high-powered jobs can pay up to £700 a day. The Press Complaints Commission has just appointed a lay member to work 1.5 hours a week and sit through two meetings every six weeks. For that they will get £11,500 annually.

Of course, as Professor David Nutt, former chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, found out such jobs are not for life if the advice you give is the sort the government doesn't want to hear.

If you are looking for the inside track on making your application, the civil service has produced a 380-page booklet advising quangos how to recruit. It acts as a handy, if typically verbose, guide on how to write your application form.

While David Cameron is the latest politician to promise a cull of public-sector quangos, the private sector is expanding its own versions.

Sarah Ward looks after lay members for the headhunting firm Parn. It has some 140 professional organisations signed up and when they have a vacancy she sends out the details to the individuals on their books. "We are definitely getting more professional bodies seeing the importance of regulation and setting up things like disciplinary bodies," she says.

"Sometimes the work is voluntary and sometimes they will just get expenses. Often it is a day rate, which could be £200-£250. The work might be just a few days a year or for an intense period of time."

Parn members range from the British Dental Association to the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants and Institute for Learning.

For those seeking positions the draw is professional development and developing skills. The organisations are often looking to be able to demonstrate independent, skilled oversight.

"Diversity doesn't tend to be a requirement," says Ward. "They just want someone with an outside perspective."

Janette Gulleford is managing director of a training company and sits on several regulatory bodies. "I wanted to use my skills and experience for the benefit of other organisations," she says. "When you have been working in your organisation for a long time you need another experience to lift you up a gear."

At the Association of Accounting Technicians Gulleford contributed to a working party on reviewing and revising disciplinary regulations while at the Institute for Learning she served as a member of the disciplinary committee.

It does appear that once you've got one quango appointment under your belt, others easily follow. It means membership can be rather monocultural. According to the government a third of appointments to NDPBs are women, 6.9% are from ethnic minorities and 3.5% are disabled.

They aren't great figures and it is something Gaymer would like to see improved. And the way to do that is for people to apply for the jobs.

"I hate to see waste," she says. "I know there is a huge pool of talent out there and we could be making better use of it.

"If you think you have something to offer then please apply and be assured that the appointment system is transparent and fair."

The Queen's representative in Wiltshire

The letter was short, polite and didn't brook much argument - much like its sender. I had written to the Queen to ask if I might be considered for the post of Lord Lieutenant in my home county of Wiltshire.

We currently have a fine Lord Lieutenant called John Bush, whose job is to be the Crown's official representative in the county. The unpaid role dates back to Henry VIII, and then the main task was to raise fighting forces. Nowadays, they arrange local Royal visits and stand in for the Queen at events.

A more ancient, though still active, post is that of high sheriff. The holder is the crown's representative in all judicial and policing matters.

Each county has its own Lord Lieutenant and high sheriff and the application process is opaque in a very British way. The royal website says men and women from all backgrounds are appointed, though there appears to be no evidence to back up this claim. A brief survey offered a parade of similar-looking mature white men with letters after their names.

These are modern times and I thought Her Majesty might like another option, so I went straight to the top.

I crafted a letter, which tried to be civil without being obsequious, and highlighted my skills while glossing over the lack of military background.

My reply (pictured), from a correspondence officer, said: "Her Majesty has taken careful note of your comments. As a constitutional sovereign, the Queen acts on the advice of her ministers, and I have, therefore, been instructed to send your letter to the right honourable Gordon Brown MP, the prime minister, so that he may know of your approach to Her Majesty on this matter and may consider the points you raise." Which is by far the politest rejection I have ever received.

This left applying to become a high sheriff, who at least get chosen on a yearly basis rather than for life. Wiltshire's current high sheriff, Robert Floyd, cheerfully told me he would be happy to put my name forward.

At a special meeting of the privy council earlier this week the Queen was, as is traditional, due to prick the winner's name on a roll of paper with a silver bodkin.

I've had the tin star made up in anticipation, but the palace hasn't phoned yet. No doubt they'll get round to it soon. Phil Chamberlain

As a culmination of his political thinking, the eminent historian Tony Judt, paralysed by motor neurone disease, makes an impassioned plea for a new arrangement of society

Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For 30 years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose. We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth.

The materialistic and selfish quality of contemporary life is not inherent in the human condition. Much of what appears "natural" today dates from the 1980s: the obsession with wealth creation, the cult of privatisation and the private sector, the growing disparities of rich and poor. And above all the rhetoric which accompanies these: uncritical admiration for unfettered markets, disdain for the public sector, the delusion of endless growth.

We cannot go on living like this. The crash of 2008 was a reminder that unregulated capitalism is its own worst enemy: sooner or later it must fall prey to its own excesses and turn again to the state for rescue. But if we do no more than pick up the pieces and carry on as before, we can look forward to greater upheavals in years to come. And yet we seem unable to conceive of alternatives.

It's difficult to feel optimistic about the upcoming election. Voters are invited to choose between two major parties: one - New Labour - that has governed for the past 13 years and is responsible for the political and financial crisis facing the country; the other - the Conservatives - who are largely to blame for "breaking" the society they now promise to fix. Neither party conveys any sustained understanding of what is wrong with Britain today and both propose remedies which would do little to address the underlying challenges.

Social inequality on a scale unmatched in western Europe; dependence on and deference towards the most irresponsible financial sector in the world today; an over-mighty state, in thrall to private media influence and increasingly deaf to the concerns of civil libertarians and lawyers; a governing class drunk on "reforms", "innovations" and the presumptive merits of the private sector: these should be at the heart of public conversation in Britain today.

We need to rethink the state, and rearticulate the language of social democracy. Social democrats should cease to be defensive and apologetic. A social democratic vision of the good society entails from the outset a greater role for the state and the public sector. The welfare state is as popular as ever with its beneficiaries: nowhere in Europe is there a constituency for abolishing public health services, ending free or subsidised education or reducing public provision of transport and other essential services. We have long practised something resembling social democracy, but we have forgotten how to preach it.

In the early years of this century, the "Washington consensus" held the field. Everywhere you went there was an economist or "expert" expounding the virtues of deregulation, the minimal state and low taxation. Anything, it seemed, that the public sector could do private individuals could do better.

Today there has been a partial awakening. To avert national bankruptcies and wholesale banking collapse, governments and central bankers have performed remarkable policy reversals, liberally dispersing public money in pursuit of economic stability and taking failed companies into public control without a second thought. A striking number of free-market economists, worshippers at the feet of Milton Friedman and his Chicago colleagues, have lined up to don sackcloth and ashes and swear allegiance to the memory of Keynes.

This is all very gratifying. But it hardly constitutes an intellectual revolution. Quite the contrary: as the response of the Obama administration suggests, the reversion to Keynesian economics is but a tactical retreat. Much the same may be said of New Labour, as committed as ever to the private sector in general and the London financial markets in particular. To be sure, one effect of the crisis has been to dampen the ardour of continental Europeans for the "Anglo-American model"; but the chief beneficiaries have been those same centre-right parties once so keen to emulate Washington.

In short, the practical need for interventionist governments is beyond dispute. But no one is rethinking the state. There remains a marked reluctance to defend the public sector on grounds of collective interest or principle. It is striking that in a series of European elections following the financial meltdown, social democratic parties consistently did badly; notwithstanding the collapse of the market, they proved conspicuously unable to rise to the occasion.

If it is to be taken seriously again, the left must find its voice. There is much to be angry about: growing inequalities of wealth and opportunity; injustices of class and caste; economic exploitation at home and abroad; corruption and money and privilege occluding the arteries of democracy. But it will no longer suffice to identify the shortcomings of "the system" and then retreat, Pilate-like, indifferent to consequences. It is incumbent on us to reconceive the role of government. If we do not, others will.

If we had to identify just one general consequence of the intellectual shift that marked the last third of the 20th century, it would surely be the worship of the private sector and, in particular, the cult of privatisation. With the advent of the modern state (notably over the course of the past century), transport, hospitals, schools, postal systems, armies, prisons, police forces and affordable access to culture - essential services not well served by the workings of the profit motive - were taken under public regulation or control. They are now being handed back to private entrepreneurs.

What we have been watching is the steady shift of public responsibility on to the private sector to no discernible collective advantage. Contrary to economic theory and popular myth, privatisation is inefficient. Most of the things that governments have seen fit to pass into the private sector were operating at a loss: whether they were railway companies, coal mines, postal services, or energy utilities, they cost more to provide and maintain than they could ever hope to attract in revenue. For just this reason, such public goods were inherently unattractive to private buyers unless offered at a steep discount. But when the state sells cheap, the public takes a loss. It has been calculated that, in the course of the Thatcher-era UK privatisations, the deliberately low price at which longstanding public assets were marketed to the private sector resulted in a net transfer of £14bn from the taxpaying public to stockholders and other investors.

To this loss should be added a further £3bn in fees to the bankers who transacted the privatisations. Thus the state in effect paid the private sector some £17bn to facilitate the sale of assets for which there would otherwise have been no takers. These are significant sums of money - approximately the endowment of Harvard University, for example, or the annual gross domestic product of Paraguay or Bosnia-Herzegovina. This can hardly be construed as an efficient use of public resources. The outcome has been the worst sort of "mixed economy": individual enterprise indefinitely underwritten by public funds. In Britain, newly privatised NHS hospital groups periodically fail - typically because they are encouraged to make all manner of profits but forbidden to charge what they think the market might bear. At this point the hospital trusts (like the London Underground, whose PPP collapsed in 2007) turn back to the government to pick up the bill. When this happens on a serial basis - as it did with the nationalised railways - the effect is creeping de facto nationalisation with none of the benefits of public control.

The popular cliché that the bloated banks which brought international finance to its knees in 2008 were "too big to fail" is of course infinitely extendable. No government could allow its railway system simply to "fail". Privatised electric or gas utilities, or air traffic control networks, cannot be allowed to grind to a halt through mismanagement or financial incompetence. And, of course, their new managers and owners know this.

Shifting the ownership on to businessmen allows the state to relinquish moral obligations. This was quite deliberate: in the UK between 1979 and 1996 (that is, in the Thatcher and Major years) the private sector share of personal services contracted out by government rose from 11% to 34%, with the sharpest increase in residential care for the elderly, children and the mentally ill. Newly privatised homes and care centres naturally reduced the quality of service to the minimum in order to increase profits and dividends. In this way, the welfare state was stealthily unwound to the advantage of a handful of entrepreneurs and shareholders.

Governments, in short, now increasingly farm out their responsibilities to private firms that offer to administer them better than the state and at a saving. In the 18th century this was called tax farming. Early modern governments often lacked the means to collect taxes and thus invited bids from private individuals to]]> http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/mar/20/tony-judt-manifesto-for-a-new-politics http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/20/editorial-budget-stimulus-alistair-darling

Darling should go for stimulus on Wednesday - but aimed at the investment in the economy, not shopping

The weekend before a budget is normally full of horse-trading between cabinet ministers and fevered speculation in the media. Yet this time around the gossip mill is becalmed and expectations are being assiduously managed. Money is too tight for the kind of spendfest one might otherwise expect from a budget less than 50 days before an election; at the same time, the polls are too tight and the economy too fragile for the kind of great squeeze on public finances that David Cameron, some bond investors and quite a few Treasury officials want.

On that basis, Wednesday will probably yield a budget-lite. True, Alistair Darling will have a few billion extra quid to dispense, from the supertax on City bonuses and from the borrowing figures not being quite as disastrous as forecast (although a deficit for this year of £166bn is plenty bad enough). But that money might well be used partly to bring down the public debt, and partly to go on measures to boost job creation. Oh, and the Treasury could unveil some kind of state bank to invest in infrastructure - a great idea in principle that risks being a great disappointment in execution, with a few hundred million taken from existing tiddler initiatives all wrapped together and given a swanky new name.

Mr Darling will be able to take some credit in his speech for unemployment not having rocketed. And he should certainly argue that state intervention of the kind that George Osborne has consistently opposed - whether that be nationalising broken banks, or pumping more money into the economy, or the quantitative-easing programme - has prevented a rerun of the Great Depression. The chancellor has managed this economic disaster about as well as could be reasonably expected, and his budget speech should reflect that - and how different things might have been with Mr Osborne in charge.

For a knackered government under pressure from full-throated fiscal conservatism and the markets, all the above might sound like enough. But it is not, for two reasons. First, the economy remains exceedingly fragile. Next month might well see confirmation that national income shrank in the early, snow-bound part of this year. The worst of the credit crunch has passed, but small and medium-sized businesses are still finding it unnaturally difficult to get finance. The government's stimulus measures are all being withdrawn, yet record-low interest rates and a devalued currency are not enough on their own to pull the economy into a sustainable recovery. There is, then, a case for continuing the fiscal stimulus - but of a different kind from that which Labour has offered so far.

The measures unveiled since the collapse of Lehman Brothers were aimed primarily at keeping consumption going: a big cut in VAT, in stamp duty on homebuying, a whopping £2,000 subsidy for new cars. As emergency interventions, these helped reflate the economy - but they did not restructure it. Yet that is what the UK needs to get away from the overreliance on financial services and the housing market, and to create more private-sector jobs north of Watford.

Mr Darling should go for stimulus - but aimed at investment in the economy of the future rather than shopping. The state investment bank which Treasury officials have been talking about could help achieve this goal. It should be given a serious amount of cash - drawn from public and private sources through, say, a modest levy on future profits made in the banking sector - and a strict mandate of backing those industries deemed of strategic importance to Britain's future (green technology, where the UK might claim a comparative advantage). The Lib Dems back the idea and the Tories pay lip service to it, so Labour has sufficient cover to launch such an organisation. It would give some substance to the government's new-found zeal for industrial activism - and it would turn Wednesday's budget into something that could not be so readily dismissed as lightweight.

• Alistair Darling
• Budget
• Economic policy
• Tax and spending
• Economic growth (GDP)
• Economics
• Quantitative easing

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Two articles this week in their quite different ways have symbolised the problems involved in the British Airways dispute - those by Simon Jenkins (Ground this munificent man and his lobbying machine, 17 March) and Seumas Milne (An assault on unions is an attack on democracy itself, 18 March). Yet neither faces the fundamental truth behind the dispute, ie the global battle for survival that encompasses all airlines. The entire business is in a crisis similar to that which has transformed the global car industry - too many companies chasing a rapidly changing market, affected by increasing global fuel and environmental problems and internal investment conflicts that have been completely changed by the banking and financial collapse.

BA's management has long failed to face up to these challenges with imaginative leadership in which it could have carried its workforce (and trade unions) with it in effective and positive style. The current attempt by Willie Walsh and his team to conceal the realities behind a crude anti-union strategy will become self-defeating. The trade union leadership may not be blameless, but they are not responsible for this latest crisis - though much of the media have descended to a crude, ill-informed dose of sheer anti-trade unionism.

Any government with imagination should recognise the global crisis facing all airlines and open international discussions on options for a more rational multinational airline regulation embracing pricing, environmental issues, travellers' needs and a more rational co-operation with all who work in the airlines and their unions. There are some obvious parallels here with what happened to the global banking business. It is also yet another glaring example of a lack of imaginative leadership in all camps at all levels.

Geoffrey Goodman

London

• British Airways
• Trade unions
• Willie Walsh
• Airline industry
• Recession

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Congratulations on your initiative to get people involved in the election (Welcome to the first e-election, G2, 17 March). For democracy to be real, people need to know how the system works and how to have an effective voice. Democracy Matters is a new alliance of civil society and learning providers to promote education for effective citizenship, which includes the WEA, the National Association of Voluntary & Community Action, and many others. Politics is too important to be left to professional politicians and lobbyists. We are pressing all party leaders to support our efforts to provide practical political education and to implement the Duty to Promote Democracy in partnership with local organisations. Our website, DemocracyMatters.info will go live on Monday to offer more opportunities for people to take part in our democracy.

Titus Alexander

Convener, Democracy Matters

• Politics and technology
• General election 2010
• Internet

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Simon Hoggart clearly hasn't been to Brussels or Strasbourg for a while (EU? It's just an abusive imps' tea party, 13 March). The European parliament now counts among its members at least nine former prime ministers or presidents of EU member states. It is also a breeding ground for new talent, with senior MPs from the three biggest UK parties having started their political careers in the European parliament.

This week alone European parliament committees have voted on legislation concerning food labelling, organ transplants across the EU and security of gas supplies, all of which may have a significant impact on the UK in years to come. And over the coming weeks, MEPs will be deciding on a whole raft of legislation affecting the financial services sector as the EU looks to respond to the financial crisis of recent years.

As to the incident with the Earl of Dartmouth MEP, his microphone was cut off, not because of his views on Arctic policy, but because of a series of personal attacks on Baroness Ashton - who was sitting yards away in the chamber - which I, as vice-president of the parliament, considered unparliamentary. Simon Hoggart should know that even the great Erskine May on behaviour in the Commons now leaves to the Speaker the discretion to determine what constitutes unparliamentary language in that place.

Perhaps instead of dismissing the European parliament as a "tea party with pretensions", Mr Hoggart should leave the Westminster tea rooms and pay a visit to the European parliament in Brussels. He would be very welcome.

Diana Wallis MEP

Vice-president of the European parliament

• European Union
• European commission
• House of Commons
• Lady Ashton

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Anyone involved in education - and that means all of us - must lament the spending cuts in higher education announced this week (University budgets to be slashed by up to 14%, 18 March). These will inevitably mean a decline in the quality of university education and in the number of places available to students. It is teaching that will be hardest hit. The argument of Hefce's chief executive to the contrary is disingenuous, unless one admits to a massive waste of public money over the past decade.

In 1976 the founders of the University of Buckingham, Britain's only independent university with a royal charter, foresaw the dangers of a university system funded by the state and thus under government control; and they have been proved right. Buckingham has shown that a university can thrive without the support of public money and at the same time benefits from controlling its own affairs. Here our numbers are growing, our staff/student ratio is the best in the country, and our students are consistently the most satisfied (National Student Survey, 2006-09).

Since it seems that further cuts in public spending are inevitable after the general election, it is surely time that others looked at the Buckingham model.

Julian Lovelock

Sub-dean of humanities, University of Buckingham

o The announcement of the funding for universities highlights the disastrous effects of the decision to prioritise the Stem subjects (science, technology, engineering and maths). The cultural vandalism of the marginalisation of arts and humanities has been widely and correctly deplored. The effect on the social sciences has attracted less attention. Our members at LSE are world leaders in the crucial areas of, to pick a few examples: child protection; financial regulation; government IT procurement; health service management; international human rights law; and young people and the internet. It would be rash of anyone to say we know enough about any of these subjects or that teaching the next generation about them is not vital for our social and economic future.

This settlement will make it more difficult for LSE to maintain its contribution to those social developments that are, or should be, the central concern of government. Promising streams of research that will sustain community wellbeing will be abandoned; the education of highly skilled professionals will be throttled.

Staking up a stem is vital, but unless the stem is well rooted in knowledge about social, economic and political conditions it will fall over. Equally, growing a healthy plant and cutting off its flowers of artistic and cultural production before they can be enjoyed is senseless.

Mike Cushman

UCU secretary, LSE

• Higher education
• University funding
• University teaching
• London School of Economics and Political Science
• Science
• Engineering general
• Mathematics
• Recession
• General election 2010
• Students

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]]> http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/mar/20/inevitable-harm-university-cuts http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/mar/20/gordon-brown-bananas-simon-hoggart

It seems the PM can't win when it comes to owning up. But did his confessed love for bananas mask a dig at David Miliband?

o We, the press and public, are terrible hypocrites. We're forever demanding that politicians tell us what they really think, then as soon as they do, we accuse them of making outrageous gaffes. Remember when Boris Johnson said something rude about the sainted Jamie Oliver? You'd imagine he'd accused the Duke of Edinburgh of people-trafficking instead of making a slightly disobliging remark about a TV chef. "Gaffe" of course is political talk for "something everyone assumes is true, but prefers to ignore".

We demand politicians admit when they've made mistakes. So this week Gordon Brown did exactly that, and found himself on the receiving end of far more abuse than he'd ever have suffered if he'd continued manipulating the figures. Admittedly the correction had to be dragged out of him like a reluctant tapeworm, and as always, he found a way of suggesting that his misleading remarks had covered a greater truth. But even so, we should be grateful instead of jeering. It might even encourage the others.

By the way, did you notice how on Woman's Hour Brown said that he loved bananas, and couldn't get enough of them? Do you think this was a sly dig at David Miliband, whose leadership hopes were thought to have ended in 2008 when he was photographed holding a banana at a silly angle? Was the implication that real men can handle their bananas, unlike other feeble, fey, fruit-challenged politicians?

o I fulfilled a small ambition this week and drank some Le Pin, the Bordeaux wine which, with Château Pétrus, is the most expensive claret. It's said that the vigneron inspects every single grape before it's used. The tipple was very nice, as it should be at £33,000 a case - before tax and duty.

The tasting was at Bordeaux Index, a fine wine brokers in the diamond quarter of Hatton Garden - aptly enough, since any moment you expected masked raiders to drive a 4x4 through the windows and grab two bottles before screeching off.

I almost never drink really expensive wine, because nearly all the recommendations I make are for low- to medium-priced bottles. So it was exciting to try something that is normally drunk only by the kind of people who can buy football clubs with their loose change. The Pétrus, for example, is £33,500 a case, or £2,792 a bottle, which is £37.22 per centilitre, or "a dirty glass" as we call it. A pub would charge you £465 for a standard measure. Plus tax and duty. I took a generous slug and had the extraordinary sensation of £150 sliding down my throat.

Were the wines worth it? Not for any normal human, although they were only from 2000, and will go on improving for decades. But wine, unlike most other investments, only keeps its value as long as it's untouched. Some will never be drunk, so their value will go on increasing, purely because of the contents, which may well have turned into vinegar before anyone pulls the cork.

o Wine has fashions like anything else, and I was intrigued to learn that the real aficionados now prefer the old style of champagne glass, the bowl shape that was supposed to be modelled on Marie Antoinette's breast. Mind you, she was a chunky lass, and anyone drinking from such a vessel would get speedily hammered.

Adam Brett-Smith of Corney & Barrow, a man whose judgment in these things is close to faultless, tells me he prefers the bowl - now most associated with Babycham - to the long thin flute. It's easier to pour, it gives a quicker hit of bubbles, and you don't get your nose stuck. Now Dom Pérignon and Karl Lagerfeld have got together and produced, for some ridiculous sum, a champagne glass that is allegedly modelled on Claudia Schiffer's breast. A quick trawl of the internet shows that Ms Schiffer's bosom, while delightful, is of a perfectly normal shape, so if moulded and turned through 90 degrees, would create a rather impractical, unbalanced glass.

o Watching the BBC4 show Fat Man in a White Hat, I was fascinated to see Paul Bocuse, the greatest self-promoter in French cuisine. In his restaurant there are not only murals of the great man, but even of his parents, gazing down on the gaff from heaven. As the set meal costs EUR210 and the cheapest wine is EUR100, you're looking at a minimum of £452 to dine with this gastronomic Lenin.

We ate there once, many years ago, as part of a package trip offered by the Observer, for whom I then worked. We'd had lunch at Les Frères Troigros, so were embarrassingly unhungry when we arrived at Bocuse for dinner. His face was on the napkin rings and the menus, his portrait was in all the many rooms - almost every available surface was covered with the Bocuse visage. Then he arrived to work the room. French diners leapt to their feet, murmuring "Maître!" as he reached their table. Thank heavens he didn't come to ours, or else he would have noticed that I had tucked half my main course under a pile of puff pastry, to hide the fact that I just couldn't finish it.

o This week I watched a cyclist approach a 6pm commuter train in which even the standing room was jammed. The indicator made it plain that bikes weren't allowed, but that didn't stop him wheeling on to the train. Instead of yelling at him to get off, the other passengers shuffled to create room, making their journeys much more uncomfortable and even dangerous, if the train braked suddenly. The incident combined British hatred of making a fuss with cyclists' ruthless determination.

Next day, also during rush hour, two young women brought their bikes on to a packed tube train, and went only one stop. You'd think they could have cycled the distance, but apparently that's asking too much.

• Gordon Brown

Simon Hoggart

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The digital economy bill is a highly controversial bill. Many of us believe that it threatens to severely infringe fundamental human rights, by allowing the disconnection of internet accounts for alleged copyright infringement, and also by new 'website blocking' laws that could result in new ways to suppress free speech and legitimate activity. There are also dangers to business, through restrictions on provision on open wifi networks, that could damage our economy.

But our worry today is that none of this will be properly debated by parliament. Last week, Harriet Harman MP failed to give the commons any reassurances that this important, complex and controversial Bill will be properly scrutinised by our elected MPs.

Democracy and accountability will be sidestepped if this bill is rushed through and amended without debate during the so-called 'wash-up' process. The thousands of people we know to be contacting their MPs with concerns will find their faith in politicians even further undermined.

For these reasons we are writing to ask that those most controversial parts of the bill - clauses 11-18, covering 'technical measures' and court orders for website blocking - either be properly debated, or be taken out of the Bill and subjected to genuine democratic scrutiny in a new parliament.

Signatories:

Anthony Barnett, openDemocracy
Billy Bragg
Lord Errol
Bridget Fox, Liberal Democrat PPC, Islington South & Finsbury
Jo Glanville, Editor, Index on Censorship
John Grogan MP
Andrew Heaney, Director of Regulation, TalkTalk
Julian Huppert, Liberal Democrat PPC, Cambridge
Julia and Simon Indelicate, The Indelicates
Jim Killock, Executive Director, Open Rights Group
Nicholas Lansman, Secretary General, ISPA
Graham Linehan, screenwriter
Caroline Lucas, Leader, Green Party
Baroness Miller
Peter Tatchell, human rights campaigner
Tom Watson MP
Lord Whitty, Chair, Consumer Focus

• Digital Britain
• File sharing
• Piracy
• Internet
• Law and technology

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• Read the letter in full

A group of senior public figures have called on the government to abandon its plan to push through controversial digital economy bill before the election, amid claims that the move could "sidestep" the democratic process.

Earlier this week the government revealed that it wants to force the digital economy bill - which includes the controversial "three strikes" rule to cut off the internet connections of those accused of illegal file sharing - into the statute books in the next few weeks.

While it usually takes far longer to create an act of parliament, thanks to the public debates held by MPs, the secretary of state for business, Lord Mandelson, plans speed up the process by making use of a controversial parliamentary technique known as the "wash-up".

Under those rules, party whips bypass the usual debating process and make a series of horse trades in order to get proposals into law before parliament dissolves ahead of a general election.

That proposal has already caused concern, but today a coalition including a cross-party group of MPs and peers - as well as figures from the business world and entertainment industry - said that short circuiting the democratic process could have disastrous side effects.

In an open letter the group suggests that the controversial nature of the legislation - which it says "threatens to severely infringe fundamental human rights" and could introduce "website blocking" measure that impede free speech - must face the full scrutiny of parliament before it becomes law.

Among the signatories are musician Billy Bragg, human rights activist Peter Tatchell and writer Graham Linehan, who helped create comedy series including Father Ted and The IT Crowd. They are joined by a number of activists and campaigners, as well as politicians drawn from Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party.

"Our worry today is that none of this will be properly debated by parliament," says the letter. "Last week Harriet Harman failed to give the Commons any reassurances that this important, complex and controversial bill will be properly scrutinised by our elected MPs."

"Democracy and accountability will be sidestepped if this bill is rushed through and amended without debate during the so-called 'wash-up' process. The thousands of people we know to be contacting their MPs with concerns will find their faith in politicians even further undermined."

The plans, which first became public last autumn, have caused controversy at almost every turn.

As well as the three strikes rule and measures to take down websites accused of infringing copyright - which could potentially result in the closure of major web destinations such as YouTube - Lord Mandelson has also sought the power to alter copyright law without the assent of parliament.

In addition, it has also been suggested that the bill's measures to prosecute the owners of internet connections used for illegal file sharing could hit anybody who provides web access - such as universities, libraries and cafes, as well as those individuals who leave their home Wi-Fi connections open.

While the made it through three readings in the House of Lords, it was not without serious objections. Lord Puttnam, the film producer, said he had faced "an extraordinary degree of lobbying" over the proposals, while others questioned the revelation that an amendment used language British music industry body the BPI.

Earlier this week BPI chief Geoff Taylor said that it was imperative that the legislation is passed before the election.

"It is vital for the future of the UK's creative sector that the digital economy bill becomes law before the dissolution of parliament," he said.

However, the open letter suggests that the bill's most controversial elements must receive proper debate or be removed from the bill entirely and left until after the forthcoming election.

• Digital Britain
• File sharing
• Wi-Fi
• Internet
• Piracy
• Law and technology

Bobbie Johnson

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]]> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/mar/19/digital-bill-open-letter http://news.scotsman.com/politics/Bullish-Alex-Salmond--sticks.6167796.jp http://news.scotsman.com/politics/Bullish-Alex-Salmond--sticks.6167796.jp http://news.scotsman.com/politics/Banker39s--580000-pension-39unjustifiable39.6167821.jp http://news.scotsman.com/politics/Banker39s--580000-pension-39unjustifiable39.6167821.jp http://news.scotsman.com/politics/First-Minister-unveils-5m-loan.6167822.jp http://news.scotsman.com/politics/First-Minister-unveils-5m-loan.6167822.jp http://news.scotsman.com/politics/High-praise-for-William-Wolfe39s.6167802.jp http://news.scotsman.com/politics/High-praise-for-William-Wolfe39s.6167802.jp http://news.scotsman.com/politics/Law-Society-given-a-wigging.6167807.jp http://news.scotsman.com/politics/Law-Society-given-a-wigging.6167807.jp http://news.scotsman.com/politics/Prime-Minister--urged-to.6167736.jp http://news.scotsman.com/politics/Prime-Minister--urged-to.6167736.jp http://news.scotsman.com/politics/Tories-unveil-plans-to-keep.6167621.jp http://news.scotsman.com/politics/Tories-unveil-plans-to-keep.6167621.jp http://news.scotsman.com/politics/Deselection-looms-for-Scots-.6167808.jp http://news.scotsman.com/politics/Deselection-looms-for-Scots-.6167808.jp http://news.scotsman.com/politics/Class-size--limits-39as.6167759.jp http://news.scotsman.com/politics/Class-size--limits-39as.6167759.jp http://news.scotsman.com/politics/SNP39s-new-bid-for-place.6167803.jp http://news.scotsman.com/politics/SNP39s-new-bid-for-place.6167803.jp http://news.scotsman.com/politics/Court-threat-for-politician-No.6167824.jp http://news.scotsman.com/politics/Court-threat-for-politician-No.6167824.jp http://keeptonyblairforpm.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/middle-east-quartets-march-19-statement-in-moscow/ ]]> http://keeptonyblairforpm.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/middle-east-quartets-march-19-statement-in-moscow/ http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/03/and_thus_it_beg.html http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/03/and_thus_it_beg.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LettersFromATory/~3/hSrnZabZ_hM/ 1. Tim Worstall gives Dennis McShane a lesson in Nazism and communism.

2. Obselete is dismayed by the moral panic over Mephedrone.

3. Nanny Knows Best explains why travelling by train can be such a nightmare.

4. The Adam Smith Institute looks forward to Wednesday's Budget.

5. Red Rag says we should scrap the right to strike.

]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LettersFromATory/~3/hSrnZabZ_hM/ http://mole45.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/dont-laugh-i-got-this-tonight/ ]]> http://mole45.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/dont-laugh-i-got-this-tonight/ http://mole45.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/new-labour-news-flash/ ]]> http://mole45.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/new-labour-news-flash/ http://toryvanman.blogspot.com/2010/03/labours-worthless-army.html
So it seems Labours army of overpaid paper shuffling, paper clip counting, copper bottomed pension civil servants have wasted £25 billion of our money because of a failure to reform outdated procurement and outsourcing practices.

Why these people still have jobs is beyond me but with Labour in charge having wastes of space in non jobs is a good way to massage job figures.

Time to cut the waste and get rid of these burdens!!!

]]> http://toryvanman.blogspot.com/2010/03/labours-worthless-army.html http://cllrmikebarker.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-kid-on-block.html http://cllrmikebarker.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-kid-on-block.html http://jimjay.blogspot.com/2010/03/apropo-of-profit-motive.html John Lewis staff, this week it seems the Co-op bank has done rather well in the harsh economic climate. From the Guardian;

The Co-op is paying its 5 million members - up 1.5 million over the last year - a dividend of £55m, 16% higher than in 2008...

The group, which traces its roots to the founding of the co-operative movement in Rochdale in 1844, today reported a 38% jump in new current accounts as consumers deserted the bigger banks in droves in the wake of the financial crisis. It gained 140,000 new customers, taking the total to 1.2 million, and doubled its share of the current account market to 4%...

Operating profits at the financial arm, which owns brands such as the online bank Smile, rose 21% to £177m. The Co-op, which now has 330 bank branches and customer deposits of £32.5bn following the merger with Britannia, is hoping to make further inroads into the mortgage market, of which it has 3-4%, with the launch of new products starting with a three-year tracker mortgage at 2.49% tomorrow...

[Peter Marks, the chief excutive said] "These are record results in what has been an historic year for the Co-operative Group... it seems, our business model has never been quite so relevant. Our Financial Services business has continued to flourish in spite of the global recession."

Just thought I'd point out there are other business models, and they can work. That's all.

]]> http://jimjay.blogspot.com/2010/03/apropo-of-profit-motive.html http://www.brianrobson.org.uk/2010/03/19/lee-green-lives-first-meeting-on-wednesday/ http://www.brianrobson.org.uk/2010/03/19/lee-green-lives-first-meeting-on-wednesday/ http://freethinkingeconomist.com/2010/03/19/a-league-of-ordinary-gentlemen-on-blond/ http://freethinkingeconomist.com/2010/03/19/a-league-of-ordinary-gentlemen-on-blond/ http://markreckons.blogspot.com/2010/03/other-reckonings-19th-march-2010.html http://markreckons.blogspot.com/2010/03/other-reckonings-19th-march-2010.html http://andrewrunning.blogspot.com/2010/03/east-lothian-labour-party-in-complete.html http://andrewrunning.blogspot.com/2010/03/east-lothian-labour-party-in-complete.html http://sluggerotoole.com/index.php/site/and-the-conspiracy-to-murder/ Of the seven people originally arrested in Ireland in connection with an international investigation into a conspiracy to murder Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, only two have been charged - one man with an immigration offence, another with making a menacing phone call to another Muslim man in the US.  RTÉ reports their appearance in court today.

Abdul-Salam Mansour Al-Jehani, who was arrested on 15 March in Waterford, pleaded guilty this morning. Detective Sergeant Donal Donohue told the court he had arrested Al-Jehani, who is originally from Libya, for not having proper identity documents and charged him under the 2004 Immigration Act. The court heard he previously applied for asylum in the Netherlands under his real name but had been refused and when he came to Ireland in 2001, he applied for asylum under a false name. In October 2008, he was granted leave to remain in Ireland until July 2011.

]]> http://sluggerotoole.com/index.php/site/and-the-conspiracy-to-murder/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/mh0SGi_2tBU/10745675952 ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/mh0SGi_2tBU/10745675952 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/GlHGCdkZC88/10745603776 ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/GlHGCdkZC88/10745603776 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/N58IWozex_I/10745464754 ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/N58IWozex_I/10745464754 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/4Q5Rkbeovng/10745428146 ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/4Q5Rkbeovng/10745428146 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/dqUHxq0V7Lg/10745277738 ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/dqUHxq0V7Lg/10745277738 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/S1IPM9oJKpc/10745244140 ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/S1IPM9oJKpc/10745244140 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/BaWR2d4r8tE/10745183830 ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TweetminsterLivestream/~3/BaWR2d4r8tE/10745183830