The Independent:
Mr Mandelson will leave his post as a European Trade Commissioner in Brussels and return to London to join the Cabinet for the third time in his career. He was forced out of Government under controversial circumstances in 1998 and 2001.
He will be given a peerage and take up his old job as Secretary of State for Business as Mr Brown reshapes his Government to reassure people he is tackling the international financial crisis
So an ex-MP that had to resign twice due to corruption gets a plum job in the cabinet, without having to go through that awful rigmarol of being elected by being given a peerage.
No wonder Labours reforms of the House of Lords is taking its’ time.
Protect the Human (Amnesty):
This autumn the Government wants to push through a Bill allowing police to lock people up for 42 days without charge if they are suspected of a terrorism-related offence. When the Counter-Terrorism Bill comes back to the House of Commons, your MP will have a chance to help defeat it: the Bill only passed by nine votes last time, so it will be close.
Allowing police to lock people up for a month-and-a-half without charge will undermine basic human rights to which everyone in the UK is entitled. It will also damage community relations, make intelligence gathering more difficult and possibly ruin the lives of innocent people. This Bill needlessly sacrifices important civil liberties but gains nothing in the way of security.
The only way to convince MPs to vote against 42 days is to show them how many of their constituents are against this unnecessary and counter-productive piece of legislation.
42 days detention is completely unneccesary, sign the petition, and a copy with just an MPs’ constituents signatures will them as well as full copy to the government.
BBC:
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair has announced his resignation after three years in the job.
He said London mayor Boris Johnson, who took over as chairman of the police authority on Wednesday, had told him he wanted a “change in leadership”.
Sir Ian said that “without the mayor’s backing I do not think I can continue in the job”.
Update:
“I am resigning in the best interests of the people of London and of the Metropolitan Police Service.”
It a bit fucking late for that, isn’t it.
Elsewhere:
Chicken Yoghurt – Sir Ian Blair resigns
Mike Power – The second Blair goes
Tory Troll – Boris Johnson, power politics and the end of Blair
Bloggerheads – Ian Blair resigns
Via
The Market Ticker:
If you think the cost of this bill is $700 billion, you’re wrong. The cost is actually infinite and the entire bill constitutes a giant money-laundering scheme.
Paulson can (and presumably will) buy up to $700 billion of these “assets”, then sell them. Let’s say he decides to buy them at 60 cents on the dollar and sell them for 10. You, the taxpayer, will eat the fifty cents, for an immediate cost of $350 billion dollars.
Having done so, he is then authorized to do so again, since the $700 billion is no longer on the government’s balance sheet.
In fact, he can do this without limit, other than possibly due to the federal debt ceiling, which of course Congress will raise any time we get close to it. Oh yeah, this bill does that right up front too. No need to bother with it the first time around.
Folks, $700 billion isn’t even close to the total cost of this monster.
I don’t know if the above is true or not as I’m not really understanding it all (does anybody?), but what would be cheaper is a suggestion by an American stopped in the street and asked about it on the news the other night, would be for the US government to give every citizen* a million dollars.
I reckon that would do a fuck lot more good than pouring bucketfuls of money down the drain like there’s no tomorrow.
*There’s only 303,824,640 US citizens.
Mr Angry:
I look back to just over three years ago to the Live 8 concerts, and I wonder if the Government completely misunderstood the stated aim of Making Poverty History. Because right now, it looks like they could be about to do just that.
