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Friday 4th July 2008
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We will tell you what to eat, drink and how much
We will tell you what you can say or do!
We will bug your bins and keep an eye on you
We will access your emails and listen in on you telephone conversations
Surveillance Britain, the EU and Common Purpose
We dictate every aspect of your lives!
Only in Screwed Up Britain!
A Down's syndrome man and Special Olympics champion who has been working for free for years is now being charged a fee to wash councillors' dishes.
Virgil Taylor has been helping to wash up, wipe tables and set up trolleys in a restaurant used by town hall staff for 17 years as part of subsidised adult care services.
Every week Mr Taylor - who won a gold medal at the Special Olympics in Glasgow in 2005 - has attended 10 sessions run by the William Knowles Centre in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset.
But now savage cuts have ended the subsidies and the 34-year-old will have to pay £2.50 per session for the 'privilege' of cleaning up after councillors.
'I couldn't believe it. It just left me shocked and confused.' The mother-of-six has now written to Weston MP John Penrose to protest.
Mrs Taylor said: 'I save the Government a lot of money keeping him with me and I would not have it any other way.
'I am an honest person and the underhanded way we have been treated sickens me.
'Those at the council should hang their heads in shame.'
Cllr Ian Peddlesden, North Somerset Council's executive member for community services, adult services and housing, said: 'I believe most people receive other allowances that would cover these charges.
'The introduction of the fees was the result of the review we carried out after we won the elections last May.
'They pay for transport and also lunch if care service users spend whole days at sessions.
'This is the first complaint I have received about this.'
A council spokesman added: 'A non-attendance charge will only be applied for repeated failure to attend. It will not apply for planned absences.' News Source
Self-regard is not a quality generally in short supply in the world of Westminster politicians.
Yet Keith Vaz's ego has the capacity to take even many of his Labour colleagues by surprise.
He once described himself as 'a leading member, if not the leading member, of the Asian community in this country'.
In one leaked piece of correspondence, he was said to have written: 'We know who you Eurosceptics are and we're coming to get you in your constituencies.'
An early attempt at entering Parliament as Labour's candidate in Richmond and Barnes ended in failure, as did a bid to become Euro MP for Surrey West the following year.
He was selected as Labour's candidate in Leicester East for the 1987 election - possibly in part thanks to his outspoken support for hugely controversial 'black sections' in the Labour Party.
Vaz's supporters may have been disappointed when, on entering Parliament, he reversed his support for 'black sections'.
Appointed Europe Minister in 1999, allegations of sleaze and chicanery began to emerge soon afterwards.
Corrupt
The next year, the Parliamentary standards watchdog was called in to investigate allegations of undisclosed payments to Mr Vaz from businessmen in his constituency.
He was cleared of nine of the 28 allegations of financial wrongdoing-accused of blocking investigation-into 18 and censured for one - failure to register payments of £4,500 from a solicitor he went on to recommend for a peerage.
In 2002, another inquiry into whether a company connected to Mr Vaz had taken money from the billionaire Indian Hinduja brothers came to a more damning verdict.
It concluded he had 'committed serious breaches of the code of conduct and a contempt of the House' and recommended that he be suspended from the Commons for a month.
He was effectively shoehorned into the post by the Government, which claimed there was not enough time to go through the usual procedure of asking a crossparty group of MPs to come up with a nominee.
Critics say he has used the post for grandstanding and showboating. Only this week, he was criticised by commentators for inviting Cherie Blair for a high-profile appearance before his committee to discuss policing and knife crime, despite her limited expertise on the subject.
Even before the latest controversy, MPs suspect that his ambitions still run deep. 'The rumour running around Labour MPs was that he would be offered a knighthood for his vote on 42 days,' said one MP who knows him.
'I think he wants to be a knight. He sees that it's unlikely he will ever be a minister again and he would like to be a peer of the realm. Continued
Brown now leads the most unpopular Labour government in history, according to a new "poll of polls" for The Independent.
The public approval ratings of his administration have sunk below the worst achieved during Labour's darkest days in power in the 1960s and 1970s, when the governments led by Harold Wilson and James Callaghan were engulfed by economic crises.
The figures will alarm already despondent Labour MPs because they call into question the Brown camp's claims that the Prime Minister can mount a successful political fightback if he steers the country through the current economic storm. Aides hope that he would then get the credit for enabling Britain to emerge from the global problems in a stronger position than its rivals because of his record during his10 years as chancellor.
John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, who compiled the "poll of polls", said: "It is probably safe to say that Labour is now in a larger electoral hole than any previous Labour government, and that only John Major's Tory government ever had even less polling support. So much for New Labour's claim that it would avoid any repeat of Labour's record in the 1970s." Continued
The most senior judge in England tonight gave his blessing to the use of sharia law to resolve disputes among Muslims.
Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips said that Islamic legal principles could be employed to deal with family and marital arguments and to regulate finance.
He declared: 'It is possible in this country for those who are entering into a contractual agreement to agree that the agreement shall be governed by a law other than English law.'
But his remarks - which give the green light from the highest judicial office to the informal sharia courts already operated by numerous mosques - provoked a storm of criticism.
In a couple of lines, rashly committed to paper, Labour Chief Whip Geoff Hoon throws huge doubt on the Government's oft-repeated claims that no MP was bribed to support Gordon Brown in the Commons vote on 42-day detention.
'Just a quick note to thank you for all your help during the period leading up to last Wednesday's vote...' he wrote to Labour's Keith Vaz, who had mysteriously switched from opposing the Government to supporting it.
'I trust that it will be appropriately rewarded!'
What can that mean, if not that Mr Vaz - who has been censured in the past for misconduct - was expected to benefit from changing his mind?
Mr Hoon says this was just a 'jokey remark'. But who's laughing? Not the people of Britain, who are sick of the stench of corruption in our public life.
Indeed, the more we learn of last month's vote, the more unpleasant it smells.
Detention without charge is a deeply sensitive issue, touching on the vital balance between national security and civil liberties.
Indeed, it's an issue so highly charged the Shadow Home Secretary felt compelled to resign over it.
It is certainly not a matter to be decided on promises of rewards for individual MPs or - in the case of Ulster's Democratic Unionists - untold millions of taxpayers' money to be spent in their constituencies.
May we now know precisely what was offered, and to whom, in return for supporting Mr Brown? If our MPs' votes have an 'appropriate' price, at the very least we should be told what it is. News Source
Tory frontbenchers are among those with shares in companies accused of propping up the violent – and now illegal – regimein Harare.
Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve heads a list of Tory MPs with sizeable shareholdings in companies accused of propping up Robert Mugabe's regime, The Independent on Sunday can reveal today.
The controversy will also hit Mr Cameron's attempts to consign sleaze to history.
In February, in echoes of Tony Blair's vow in 1997 to be "purer than pure", the Tory leader said: "Any arrangements we enter into are ones we are prepared to protect and defend in a court of public opinion." In June, he said: "Anyone who flies under the Conservative banner carries a wider responsibility to the reputation of the party."
But in recent months Mr Cameron has been hit by scandals involving MPs Derek Conway, Caroline Spelman, the party's chairman, and MEPs.
While the seven MPs at the centre of the Zimbabwe row have not broken any rules, critics have asked if it was morally right to own shares in firms giving a lifeline to Mr Mugabe. The MPs' investments have been described as "blood shares" which they should sell immediately in protest at the violence during the presidential elections. Continued
Parliament’s reputation took a battering tonight after MPs threw out plans to overhaul their expenses, insisting on their right to buy kitchens, televisions and sofas on the taxpayer.
Plans for rigorous external audits, a reduction of the threshold of receipts from £25 to zero and a ban on furniture or home improvements were all thrown out by MPs who voted against the proposals by a majority of 28.
The Tories have accused the government of “sabotaging” attempts to tighten the system — by rejecting a review which Gordon Brown had previously endorsed.
The vast majority of MPs — 146 of the 172 — who voted to keep the “John Lewis list” were Labour, including 33 ministers. There were bad tempered scenes in the division lobbies culminating in a shouting match between George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, and Ian Austin, Gordon Brown’s aide. Tories sources said Mr Osborne accused Mr Austin of behaving in a shameful way while David Cameron was sworn at by a Labour MP.
A raft of Cabinet ministers, including Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, Shaun Woodward, the Northern Ireland Secretary and Andy Burnham, the Culture Secretary voted for the “wrecking” amendment to stop the reforms. The Prime Minister did not turn up to vote.
Andrew Mackay was the most senior Tory to vote against reforms, joining Sir Nicholas and Ann Winterton, who have recently been embroiled in a housing scandal. Half of MPs failed to vote.
The £24,000 allowance for maintaining a second home will now remain in place and the major elements of a six month review, set up after Tory MP Derek Conway was found to be wrongly paying his son, will be ditched. MPs will now be subject to internal checks, while more generous proposals for MPs offices were approved. London MPs will also get a new capital-weighting allowance of £7,500. Continued
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More than a quarter of MPs employ family members at the expense of the taxpayer, it was revealed today.
No fewer than 177 MPs, including three Cabinet ministers, admitted to paying relatives out of their generous staffing allowance.
Six other ministers are on the list, while 10 MPs employ more than one family member.
The Rev Ian Paisley employed three relatives, including his son who is a prominent Northern Irish politician in his own right.
And one husband-and-wife couple, Peter and Iris Robinson, also of the Democratic Unionists, employ four relatives between them - two sons, a daughter and a daughter-in-law.
Labour MP Clive Betts also revealed that he employs his boyfriend, James Thomas, as part-time parliamentary assistant.
And Tory Northern Ireland spokesman Laurence Robertson employs both his wife, from whom he is separated; and his current girlfriend.
There are no rules to prevent the employment of relatives, and there is no suggestion that any of the MPs have broken any regulations.
But the practice was brought into the limelight earlier this year when Tory MP Derek Conway was exposed for overpaying his son out of expenses.
Mr Conway was later stripped of the Tory whip and suspended from the Commons for ten days.
The true number of MPs employing relatives will be higher, because signing the register will not be compulsory until 1 August.
For example, it emerged earlier this week that David Marshall, who has just stepped down as an MP sparking a by-election in Glasgow, employs a relative named Christina. But he is not on the voluntary list published yesterday. Continued
Council tax rebels face having their bank accounts frozen rather than being sent to jail under plans revealed yesterday.
Ministers want to allow town halls to refer defaulters to the civil county courts, rather than magistrates.
The county courts would be able to use powers - such as freezing and seizing money in banks and building societies - which are currently used to chase rent arrears and unpaid credit card bills.
Despite improvements in recent years, more than £600million of council tax went uncollected last year.
Local Government Minister John Healey today described the custodial sanctions used against hundreds of people a year for non-payment as an 'anomaly'.
Officials are now looking to allow town halls to refer householders who refuse to pay their council tax to the civil county courts, rather than magistrates.
The county courts would be able to use methods such as freezing and seizing money in banks and building societies, as are used to chase rent arrears and unpaid credit card bills.
County court judgments can also affect a person's credit rating and, therefore, their chance of securing a mortgage or loans.
The proposals, being drawn up by the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Ministry of Justice, will be set out in a report by the end of the summer. Continued
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Town hall bosses spent £82,358 hiring private detectives to hunt people who owe money on overdue library books and school transport.
Norfolk County Council has chalked up the bill over three years, including £9,190 to recover library books, DVDs and CDs.
The detectives also searched for anyone with outstanding education course fees, owners of abandoned vehicles, served writs and did surveillance to check the validity of insurance claims against the council.
Bosses admitted they had used the investigators to look online for those who owed them cash but had moved away.
Library users in Norfolk have paid £1.4million in fines for overdue books in six years. The county lends more than 6.5million books a year. Continued
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For some motorists, the very idea would be enough to make them curse out loud.
A car clamping company has sparked outrage after introducing an extra £100 fine - if victims swear at their predicament.
Bulldog Services already charges £125 to release a clamp but now also adds the extra £100 on top if the 'customer' becomes abusive.
The firm claims the charge is to cover the cost of sending extra staff to the scene to deal with irate motorists.
But one 32-year-old woman - who was hit with the new 'swear box' charge this week in Bath, Somerset - described it as 'outrageous'.
The shopper, who wishes to remain anonymous, said: 'It is outrageous that they can get away with this kind of behaviour and that they can treat people like this.'
The woman and her husband, from Bath, Somerset, called Bulldog Services when they returned to their car and found it clamped outside the a Comet store in the city.
When a clamper turned up the woman claims her husband swore at her in frustration - but the attendant immediately hiked the release fee by £100.
She says no extra clampers were called to the scene and the extra charge is unjustified.
'My husband turned to me and swore but it was in no way directed at the attendant,' she said.
'It is not fair that they can prey on innocent victims and demand money from them.'
A spokesman for the company said he could not comment on individual cases but said the charge was necessary to protect staff.
He said: 'The charge is enforced to stop abusive behaviour towards the attendants.
'If it is necessary to call someone out to deal with difficult customers then they will have to pay.'
A Comet spokeswoman said: 'As the signage in the car park clearly states, the car park is solely for the use of Comet customers for up to one hour. Anyone in breach of this is liable to be clamped. Continued
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Police sergeants are too scared to challenge constables because they fear being accused of bullying, an official report has revealed.
The investigation exposed what some officers said were declining standards in the police, including untidy and lackadaisical constables who "get away with blue murder".
A team from Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) uncovered a series of incidents which were at odds with the picture of policing painted by chief constables and the Home Office.
One chief superintendent told the inspection team: "The sergeants do not have the necessary fibre to challenge the constables.
"This is due to the culture of counter-bullying, where constables who are challenged take a grievance out against the sergeant who challenged them, stating they have been bullied in the workplace."
Inspectors witnessed a number of incidents which led them to express concern about the "conduct and professionalism" of police officers.
They included a trainee constable spending 15 minutes deciding whether or not to wear a fluorescent jacket at a car crash and a newly-qualified constable refusing to go to the scene of a dangerous dog loose in a garden because he was "not going to put himself in danger". Continued
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Up to 18,000 females, including girls as young as 14, are working in brothels across Britain after being smuggled into the country to meet the booming demand for prostitutes.
Police, unveiling the results of the largest ever crackdown on people smuggling yesterday, revealed that nearly five times more women than previously thought are working under duress in massage parlours and suburban homes.
Operation Pentameter 2, a six-month campaign by police forces across the country, resulted in the release of 154 women and 13 girls put to work as part of a lucrative trade dominated by organised crime gangs, which increasingly co-operate via the internet to maximise earnings from their victims.
The campaign, which saw the arrest of 528 suspected traffickers and the closure of 822 brothels and premises being used to sell sexual services, also revealed an increasing use of young British women, who are trafficked within the UK after being groomed by older men who lure them to towns away from their homes. The Home Office highlighted one recent case in Sheffield where 33 victims had been recruited by men in public places and taken away for sexual exploitation. Continued
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A soldier who risked his life to defuse a bomb which could have destroyed part of the East End is being honoured by the Queen at Buckingham Palace today.
Staff Sergeant Douglas Leak is being presented with the Queen's Gallantry Medal for dismantling the unstable 250kg German bomb on a building site in Bethnal Green.
The citation also commends the young father, who has served in Iraq and Afghanistan, for neutralising a record six bombs in a year, including one by the Dartford Crossing and one in Docklands, risking his life each time.
More than 100 residents had to be evacuated when the Second World War bomb was discovered by workmen building flats just off Roman Road last May.
Sgt Leak, later promoted to Staff Sgt, rushed to the scene from the Saffron Walden HQ of 33 Engineer Regiment (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) and spent the next four days there, snatching just a few hours' sleep at a fire station.
After identifying the type of bomb and fuse, he spent nearly two days building banks of earth to protect surrounding homes, offices and a railway line in case it exploded.
Then, although the slightest friction could have detonated the bomb, he spent two hours drilling a hole in the fuse by hand and injecting a saline solution to jam the mechanism. Only then did he retreat 200 metres behind the defensive walls and direct a colleague with a remotecontrol robot to make cuts in the bomb casing so the explosive could be steamed out. Continued
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A woman who took out loans of more than £6,000 under false names to pay for Alzheimer's drugs her grandmother needed was spared jail yesterday.
Fiona Bartlett, 41, fraudulently applied for 18 loans in a desperate attempt to pay for a £250-a-month drug after her grandmother was refused NHS funding.
The mother of two had already borrowed more than £20,000 from the loan company she worked for, Provident Personal Credit.
But when she was unable to borrow any more in her own name, she created fictitious customers.
Magistrates in Basingstoke, Hampshire, heard that Bartlett's grandmother, Creamley Walker, who is in her 90s, had been prescribed Aricept - which can slow the progression of Alzheimer's - when she was living in Kent.
But when she moved to Basingstoke to be cared for by Bartlett, she was no longer able to get the drug on the NHS.
Instead, doctors at Southampton General Hospital prescribed tranquillising drugs.
Bartlett said that without Aricept, her grandmother became terrified and was reduced to the mental state of a toddler.
The family sought a second opinion through a private consultation and Mrs Walker was prescribed Aricept again.
When Bartlett could no longer keep up the repayments on the false loans she took out to pay for the drug, she was forced to come clean to her bosses.
Nicholas Bates, defending, described his client as 'very brave' in coming forward to admit her offences.
He said the crimes were not committed so his client could enjoy a 'champagne lifestyle', but were solely to fund her grandmother's treatment.
Urging the magistrates not to send his client to prison, Mr Bates told the court that Bartlett has 13-year-old twin boys, one of whom suffers from Asperger's Syndrome and requires a significant amount of care.
He added that Bartlett had already started repaying the £6,297 owed to her employer.
Bartlett, who has a previous conviction for a similar breach of trust, admitted submitting false loan applications.
She was given a community punishment order and fined £50. Continued
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Lawyers warned that family and marital disputes settled by sharia could leave women or vulnerable people at a serious disadvantage.
Tories said that equality under the law must be respected and warned that outcomes incompatible with English law should never be enforceable.
Lord Phillips spoke five months after Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams surrounded himself in controversy with a lecture in which he suggested Islamic law could have official status and that it could govern marital law, financial transactions and arbitration in disputes.
The Lord Chief Justice said today of the Archbishop's views: 'It was not very radical to advocate embracing sharia law in the context of family disputes.' Continued
The number of employees in company pension schemes has dropped to a record low.
But the ranks of public sector workers enjoying gold-plated packages have expanded, new figures show.
The Government's Office for National Statistics said the number of people in company plans fell by 400,000 in 2007, to 3.6million.
It is the lowest figure since records began in 1991. But there was a surge in the number of public sector workers enjoying secure, taxpayer-funded retirement packages.
The 100,000 increase took the total to 5.2million, the highest since 1991. The report underlines claims of a 'pensions apartheid' between public and private sectors.
Record numbers of corporate final salary schemes are being closed as firms try to reduce their liabilities, with workers living longer.
The switch to less secure substitutes has raised fears that millions could face comparative poverty when they retire. Continued
A Female killer left her jail cell to romp with an inmate — after putting hair extensions on her pillow to make it seem she was still there.
Cunning Kemi Adeyoola, 20, serving 20 years for murdering a pensioner, stuck another pillow under her blanket as her “body”.
It conned staff on night rounds into thinking she was asleep in her bed.
A huge escape alert was triggered next morning when the cells at all-women Bronzefield Jail in Ashford, Middlesex, were unlocked and millionaire’s daughter Adeyoola was missing.
She was eventually discovered under a bed in the other prisoner’s cell at the nick — where House of Horrors monster Rose West, 54, is caged. Adeyoola told jail chiefs she went to the cell to try to find a TV.
Negative equity is poised to claim one of its most famous victims yet. In Connaught Square, the Georgian residency of Tony and Cherie Blair, house prices are falling faster than a rat down a Grade II-listed drainpipe.
Estate agents say that the Blairs – who are believed to have mortgaged themselves to the hilt to acquire their five-bedroom Bayswater home – would be lucky to get the £3.65m they paid for No 29 in 2004 were they to sell the property now.
A smaller three-bedroom home on the north-east corner of the square has just had its asking price slashed by nearly £500,000 after more than four months sitting in a stagnant market.
The value of the Blairs' other Bayswater property in Archery Mews, a house adjoining their Connaught Square home, may have already fallen below the £800,000 they paid for it last year. Adrian Mason, sales manager of the Mayfair office of Jackson-Stops & Staff, who have cut the price of the Connaught Square three-bed property from an initial value of £2.6m, says these are difficult times for the square: "It [the reduced property] has been on the market for more than four months and we have had to reduce it a second time to £2.15m. It is being offered as vacant Continued
Another Gimmick!
If they were serious, every school would be fitted with detector arches and not one mobile arch in one area in one street of one town!
Pupils on their way home from school were targeted yesterday as part of Scotland Yard's crackdown on knife crime.
Officers set up the airport-style security scanner in the centre of Purley, Surrey, to stop and search the uniformed youngsters after they had left school for the day.
Around 20 police and community support officers were involved in the operation.
The searches were part of Operation Blunt 2, which was launched six weeks ago in the wake of a spate of teen killings in the capital.
Yesterday the Met announced officers have stopped and searched nearly 27,000 youths since the operation began and seized 528 knives.
There have been 1,214 arrests, 813 of which were for possession of weapons and a further 217 for knife-related crimes.
GCSE student Ben Kinsella, 16, who was stabbed to death at the weekend, became the 17th teenage murder victim in London this year.
Boris Johnson said of the operation yesterday: 'It is not a short-term whirlwind offensive against knives. It is a sustained visible long-term operation and it is vital to recognise that we cannot hope to succeed by police work alone.' News Source
Fears are mounting of a vicious backlash after a man was knifed in the back as rival teenagers clashed in Loxford Park.
The 35-year-old was stabbed in the kidney after stepping into a 30 boy-strong fight at around 8.30pm on Monday.
Police closed the park, in Loxford Lane, as the victim limped to the nearby Ilford Community Centre to escape the attackers.
Det Chief Insp April Casburn said the victim is recovering in hospital.
She said: "A group of Asian boys were playing football and were approached by a group of black boys and one white boy.
"The Asian group produced a cricket bat and the other boys ran off.
"An Asian man inquired what was happening and when the boys returned they pulled out two knives. He was then stabbed in the back."
A police helicopter searched for the culprits as officers quizzed neighbours.
Community centre chairman Bashir Chaudhry said: "A neighbour came over to try to stop the bleeding. The man was lying face down and blood was everywhere."
Cllr Filly Maravala appealed for peace and said rumours are flying in the neighbourhood of a revenge attack. Continued
A project which dramatically reduced youth crime is in danger of being scrapped due to lack of funds.
Today Nu-Gen founder Nathan Levy said his summer course for disadvantaged young people, due to start at the end of the month, was unlikely to go ahead because he had failed to find £31,000 from backers.
Last year around 125 youths, aged between 11 and 19, many of them young offenders, took part in summer activities and education in Redbridge.
Mr Levy, one of the Evening Standard's Influential Londoners, said it resulted in a 56 per cent drop in violent crime in the area.
He warned that the loss of the course would be "a recipe for disaster" for local youths. "They will be in danger, as well as a danger to the community. This gives them a positive outlook, discipline and a sense of belonging."
Mr Levy, 30, gave up a property career to become a youth mentor and a schools adviser on knife crime after his younger brother Robert was stabbed to death in 2004 in Hackney.
Nu-Gen's activities include sport, fashion design and music. It also offers advice on jobs and training.
Last year, the scheme was funded by a school which is unable to provide money this year. Redbridge council said it was "willing to meet the group to discuss funding sources". News Source
His outraged mother Joan, of Winscombe, said: 'Virgil does not get paid for his time at the Town Hall. But I would never stop him going as it makes him feel useful and he is so proud when he puts his uniform on.
'He does this for nothing but he loves it and that is the most important thing.
'How and why should he pay? The £2.50 per session will really eat into his savings.'
The family heard about the new fees in a letter from the council three weeks ago, she said, adding: 'Other parents and I have been given less than a month's notice.'
Mr Taylor will even be charged for non-attendance, his mother said.
Shocked: Virgil and his mother Joan with the council letter announcing the new fees.
Three of David Cameron's frontbenchers are among six Conservatives – and one Liberal Democrat – with investments together worth more than £1m in firms trading in Zimbabwe. The revelations will embarrass the Tory leader, who has sought to take the moral high ground over the crisis in Zimbabwe.
Mr Cameron has called on all companies and individuals with "any dealings" in Zimbabwe to examine their consciences and ensure that they are not keeping Mr Mugabe in power.
The companies include Anglo American, the mining giant rebuked last week for pushing ahead with a new £200m platinum mine in Zimbabwe, Rio Tinto, Standard Chartered, Barclays, Shell and BP.
Grieve insisted the shares had been declared in the 'proper way'
Over the last 20 years, he has veered from one extreme of his party to the other - moving from the hard-left Campaign Group of MPs to become one of Tony Blair's most unctuous New Labour supporters.
But consistency, alas, has never been Keith Vaz's strongest point.
Two years after being elected in Leicester East in 1987, he marched publicly with Muslim constituents who wanted Salman Rushdie's head over his Satanic Verses book.
It later emerged that at the same time, he was telephoning the author to offer his private support.
Once an arch Eurosceptic, he became such a strong pro-European that as Europe Minister, he threatened to hound Eurosceptics out of the Labour Party.
Impersonating a frog
won't change the sleaze Vaz!
Backbench MPs today challenged Gordon Brown's edicts on pay restraint by trying to award themselves a bumper pay rise plus perks.
Rebels were demanding an inflation-busting 4.4 per cent rise - and also trying to halt a crackdown on expenses.
Chancellor Alistair Darling delivered a stern warning on the need to set an example to other public sector workers who are being held to around two per cent. "I very firmly believe that MPs have to show restraint," he said. "We should not be asking other people to do what we are unwilling to do. MPs have to vote in a way that shows we understand what people are feeling and the need to keep inflation down."
Mr Darling urged MPs to back a clean-up of the Commons expenses system. MPs were voting tonight to set their salary and perks. Downing Street wants them to accept 2.2 per cent on their £61,181 salary.
A separate vote is being held on proposals to axe the socalled "John Lewis list" of goods MPs can buy at the public expense. The Government is also opposing a £4,500 pay rise for 26 inner London MPs. Outer London MPs face seeing their allowance for running a second home cut from £23,000 to around £10,000. Another key vote is over whether they should keep the addresses of their second homes a secret.
The pay curb and expenses crackdown has angered some MPs. But Tony Lloyd, the chairman of Labour backbenchers, has pointedly refused to back the rebels. News Source
Schools and local authorities are to be made accountable for tackling drug abuse, pregnancies and obesity among pupils under measures to improve "wellbeing".
Schools Secretary Ed Balls will today publish guidance which requires teachers to track pupils using 18 new indicators, including levels of bullying, neglect and home life.
The Department for Children, Schools and Families insisted schools were not being asked to solve society's problems. But headteachers said schools could not be held responsible for the "ills of all society".
Mr Balls said: "Good schools have always supported the development of their pupils in the round, and helped them achieve success in their exams and good qualifications as a result.
"In fact, I have never been to a school that is doing a great job in looking after the wider needs of its pupils without seeing the benefits to their learning."
All schools would be bound by the so-called "duty to cooperate" with police, social services and other professionals, he added. But National Association of Head Teachers' general secretary Mick Brookes expressed concern over the responsibilities being put on schools.
He said: "We see an increasing apparent responsibility for the ills of all society being planted onto schools. The danger of that is of course that they will be distracted from their core task which is good quality education." News Source
The rat population is exploding in areas where fortnightly bin collections have been introduced.
Calls to pest controllers in these districts have more than doubled, a survey reveals.
Sightings of vermin like rats have risen 23 per cent, bringing increased risk of disease.
The fortnightly collections, coupled with a wet, warm summer and a threatened two-day strike by binmen this month, can only mean the pest population will soar, said insurance firm esure after its survey of 1,000 homeowners nationwide.
Critics say the new collection rota – with household waste like food collected one week and recyclables the next – means that bin bags full of rotting food can lie outside homes for up to 14 days, attracting maggots, flies, rats, squirrels and foxes. Families that forget to put their bins out face having the waste festering for a month.
About half the councils in England have opted for fortnightly collections, despite warnings two years ago from Government scientists. And collections could even be cut further, to once a month.
Councils say the system helps to boost recycling, which is vital to avoid fines from the EU under a directive requiring huge cuts in the amount of waste sent to landfill.
But the survey found that the proportion of households calling out pest controllers rose from two per cent to five per cent after fortnightly collections were introduced. There was an increase in wasp sightings from 40 per cent to 79 per cent of households, squirrels from 26 per cent to 49 per cent, mice from 24 per cent to 41 per cent and rats from 15 per cent to 27 per cent.
The head of home insurance for esure, Mike Pickard, said: “It is clear that fortnightly rubbish collections are posing health risks and should be abolished. Pest and vermin infestations can not only cause damage to the home but in more serious cases, can spread disease.”
Shadow Local Government and Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said: “There have been numerous scientific warnings that cutting weekly rubbish collections poses a huge health risk. Yet Labour has chosen to ignore them. The Government needs to wake up. The spread of diseases from rodents is of serious concern.”
Government In Denial
But the Local Government Association said: “This report has to be taken with a large dollop of salt. The biggest independent research commissioned by the Government found no evidence that alternate weekly collections have any health impact for residents.
“Britain is the dustbin of Europe with more rubbish thrown into landfill than any country on the Continent. Throwing rubbish into landfill hurts the environment and costs the council taxpayer, with councils having to pay billions in landfill tax.” News Source
The sister of murdered teenager Ben Kinsella today called for the reintroduction of national service to combat knife crime.
Former EastEnders' actress Brooke, 24, said violent boys should be made to channel their aggression productively in the armed forces because current measures such as weapon amnesties were not tough enough.
In an interview broadcast on GMTV this morning, she said: 'If these young boys want to pick up a weapon and fight then we let them go over to national service and fight for a good cause.'
Ben, 16, was chased and stabbed to death by a gang of four youths at around 2am on Sunday in Islington, North London, after being caught up in a fight at the nearby Shillibeers pub.
He is the 17th teenager to be murdered in the capital this year. Miss Kinsella, one of four siblings, revealed on GMTV how she kissed her brother goodbye and promised to catch his killers as his life slipped away in hospital.
In an emotional interview she said: 'I took his hand and kissed him goodbye, telling him I loved him and I was so very sorry - but that I would always be proud of him. He looked like an angel. He had a lot of stab wounds but thankfully they hadn't touched his face, for which I will be eternally grateful. He just looked so beautiful.
'I'm haunted by the fact that Ben's killers are the last faces he saw. And if it takes me forever, I will find them and try to face them in court.' Continued
Brooke Kinsella
Menace: Rat population is on the increase, what's lurking in and near your bin?
People who smoke herbal cannabis strain 'skunk' are 18 times more likely to develop psychosis than those using resinous 'hash', according to a study.
Super-strength drug skunk now comprises three quarters of the cannabis market in the UK, according to Home Office figures.
A study presented at the annual meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists looked at different types of cannabis, including skunk and hash, also called resin.
Psychiatrist Dr Marta Di Forti and colleagues compared cannabis use between 112 patients who had experienced their first psychotic episode, and 75 healthy people acting as controls.
Those with psychosis were twice as likely to have used cannabis for longer, three times more likely to have used it every day and 18 times more likely to use skunk than those who used hash.
Both groups of people were from south east London.
Skunk has higher concentrations of the active ingredient delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) - which is linked to psychosis - than hash.
Dr Di Forti said: "Of those people coming to us with first episode psychosis, more than 80% had used skunk. Continued
(Recap: 24th June 2008)
A senior aide to Boris Johnson has quit after saying Caribbean immigrants should "go home" if they do not like London.
James McGrath, the Mayor's deputy chief-of-staff, claimed his remarks, which appeared on the internet, had been taken out of context.
But Mr Johnson decided that his political strategist, who played a key role in his election, would only provide "ammunition" to critics if he stayed in his post.
City Hall insiders said Mr Johnson understood that the remarks could be damaging to his attempts to be seen as a mayor for all Londoners. One said: "Boris is not a racist and he's damned if he's going to be portrayed as one by a careless remark."
In an interview with journalist Marc Wadsworth, posted on a "citizen journalism" website, Mr McGrath was challenged with the suggestion by the writer Darcus Howe that Mr Johnson's election cou ld cause an exodus of Caribbean immigrants.
He responded: "Well, let them go if they don't like it here." The 34-year-old Australian later posted a comment on the website, thelatest.com, in which he said: "The columnist suggested that older people from the Caribbean might migrate back to their homelands if Boris Johnson became Mayor.
"I felt that this suggestion was ridiculous and intended as a slur and responded by saying with words to effect of 'let people go if they don't like it here'. To imply that I meant that all black people who didn't support Boris Johnson should leave the country is utterly absurd and incorrect. And I would ask please that this insinuation is immediately retracted."
The Mayor defended him against allegations of racism but had already decided that he would have to go. Continued
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The man behind David Cameron‘s infamous hug-a-hoodie speech was attacked and ended up with a cut lip after he bravely tried to stop some of the tracksuit-wearing thugs stealing a scooter.
Danny Kruger, who wrote the Tory party leader's address urging a softer approach to youth violence, was targeted along with the owner.
The aide had been with his wife viewing a flat in Camden, north London, when the man renting the property saw his moped being stolen.
Two thugs were riding the scooter and 'half a dozen of their friends pelting along behind ' injured Mr Kruger revealed.
‘Like the pair of prats we were, the owner and I tackled youth crime,’ he said.
'When we caught up with the pedestrians, between us the owner received a black eye and me a cut lip, and no moped.
‘My main memory of this incident is rather horrid - the spit-filled mouth of the little rat-faced boy who punched me.
‘Short, white, in a grey-hooded tracksuit, he shouted at me with all the rage of Cain - the most astonishing indignation.'
But the speechwriter, who has now left the job to run an arts group for prisoners, defiantly defended Cameron‘s speech despite being beaten up.
‘Love is a neglected crime-fighting device.
‘Of course we need punishment, both for its deterrent value which is clearly effective in many cases and for the sake of natural justice,’ said Kruger.
‘But for an increasing number of kids, punishment is actually the fulfilment their pain is seeking.'