London | May 24

AFP - A British stuntman became the world's first skydiver to land without a parachute on Wednesday, falling 731 metres (2,400 feet) to drop safely onto a crash-pad of cardboard boxes.

Wearing a specially-made "wing suit", Gary Connery leapt from a helicopter over Henley-on-Thames in southern England, aiming -- with his life hanging in the balance -- at a "runway" of 18,000 cardboard boxes.

After plunging at a speed of approximately 130 kilometres (80 miles) an hour the 41-year-old landed successfully onto the boxes, but the anxious crowd had to wait several minutes before he emerged from the pile.

Connery, who has appeared as a stuntman in films including "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" and the Bond movie "Die Another Day", said the experience had been "absolutely amazing".

"I'm in a strange space, if I'm totally honest," he told Sky News. "I guess I haven't digested what's just happened."

"(The landing) was so comfortable, so soft -- my calculations obviously worked out and I'm glad they did," he added.

The Guardian's Nick Hopkins reports that British defense chiefs are dusting off and updating contingency plans after being told by M.I.6 that there's still a "25-50% chance" that Israel will decide to attack Iran before the US elections in November, inevitably drawing in the US and UK.

Israel must weigh up whether President Obama is likely to take a harder line on pre-emptive action against Iran next year if he has won a second term.

"The Americans might hang out the Israelis to dry after the election, but not before," said a senior Whitehall source. "Obama would have to support Israel if there was an attack before November."

British contingency measures are mostly defensive: making sure British troops in Helmand, Afghanistan are properly prepared for the prospect of Iranian-sponsored attacks as well as by Talibanesque groups and moving UK minesweeping vessels to the Persian Gulf to help keep shipping lanes open if Iran mines the Strait. Hopkins reports that some cabinet ministers would strongly resist UK involvement in any missile or air strikes on Iran by the US if Israel does drag the allies into war. That resistance seems to extend into the British civil service and military establishments.

The Guardian has spoken to a number of Foreign Office and military officials in recent months, and all of them have expressed dread at the thought of a conflict with Iran.

One spoke of fear every time Obama and Cameron are left to discuss the issue and what may have been agreed. "We have our hearts in our mouth," said the source.

I wonder if US officials feel the same way? Probably.

Thomas K. Grose | London | May 18

National Geographic News - This summer at the largest urban mall in Europe, visitors may notice something different at their feet. Twenty bright green rubber tiles will adorn one of the outdoor walkways at the Westfield Stratford City Mall, which abuts the new Olympic stadium in east London.

The squares aren't just ornamental. They are designed to collect the kinetic energy created by the estimated 40 million pedestrians who will use that walkway in a year, generating several hundred kilowatt-hours of electricity from their footsteps. That's enough to power half the mall's outdoor lighting.

James Gallagher | May 16

BBC - Thousands of heart attacks and strokes could be prevented if the cholesterol-lowering drugs, statins, were more widely prescribed, research suggests.

The study of 175,000 patients, in the Lancet, said even very low-risk patients benefited from the medication.

The Oxford researchers says the NHS should consider giving statins to healthy people. The NHS drugs watchdog, NICE, is reviewing the evidence.

Sandra Laville | May 15

The Guardian - Former News International chief executive, her husband and four others charged in phone-hacking inquiry

Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News International, has been charged over allegations that she tried to conceal evidence from detectives investigating phone hacking and alleged bribes to public officials.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced that Brooks, one of the most high-profile figures in the newspaper industry, would be charged with three counts of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice in July last year at the height of the police investigation. Scotland Yard later confirmed she had been charged along with her husband, Charlie Brooks, and four others.

Brooks is accused of conspiring with others, including her husband, a racehorse trainer and friend of the prime minister, and her personal assistant, to conceal material from detectives.

Brooks and her husband were informed of the charging decision – the first since the start of the Operation Weeting phone-hacking investigation last January – when they answered their bail at a police station in London on Tuesday morning.

Alan Cowell & John F. Burns | London | May 15

NYT - Once among the most powerful figures in the British media, Rebekah Brooks, the former head of Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper empire and a close friend of Prime Minister David Cameron, faced charges on Tuesday that she, her husband and four others conspired to pervert the course of justice in the hacking scandal that has burrowed into public life here.

It was the first time that charges have been formulated since the police reopened inquiries into the affair in January 2011. The accusations brought the scandal to a watershed between criminal investigations, which have resulted in around 50 people being arrested and then set free on bail, and the prospect of trial before robed High Court judges.

From the Guardian's letters column:

The annual Sunday Times Rich List yields four very important conclusions for the governance of Britain (Report, Weekend, 28 April). It shows that the richest 1,000 persons, just 0.003% of the adult population, increased their wealth over the last three years by £155bn. That is enough for themselves alone to pay off the entire current UK budget deficit and still leave them with £30bn to spare.

Second, this mega-rich elite, containing many of the bankers and hedge fund and private equity operators who caused the financial crash in the first place, have not been made subject to any tax payback whatever commensurate to their gains. Some 77% of the budget deficit is being recouped by public expenditure cuts and benefit cuts, and only 23% is being repaid by tax increases. More than half of the tax increases is accounted for by the VAT rise which hits the poorest hardest. None of the tax increases is specifically aimed at the super-rich.

Third, despite the biggest slump for nearly a century, these 1,000 richest are now sitting on wealth greater even than at the height of the boom just before the crash. Their wealth now amounts to £414bn, equivalent to more than a third of Britain's entire GDP. They include 77 billionaires and 23 others, each possessing more than £750m.

The increase in wealth of this richest 1,000 has been £315bn over the last 15 years. If they were charged capital gains tax on this at the current 28% rate, it would yield £88bn, enough to pay off 70% of the entire deficit. It seems however that Osborne takes the notorious view of the New York heiress, Leonora Helmsley: "Only the little people pay taxes."
Michael Meacher MP
Labour, Oldham West and Royton

Things aren't very much different in the U.S. I wonder just how the collected wealth of the top 0.1%, say, compares to the national debt here.

Photo: REUTERS/Eddie Keogh

Given that the Conservatives have always tried to paint themselves as the "law and order" party and biggest friends of the police force, this is more than embarassing - it's a Tory disaster:

Thousands of off-duty police officers took to the streets in London on Thursday in a rare display of anger against government austerity, joining a protest by public sector workers including immigration officials, healthcare workers and prison officers.

Unions predicted some 400,000 public sector workers would walk out, a smaller protest than in November when Britain saw the biggest strike in years, but a significant show of discontent just after Prime Minister David Cameron's government took a drubbing at local elections.

The government said only about 150,000 had taken part and dismissed the action as "futile". Cabinet Office minister Frances Maude said, "public services were mainly unaffected".

However, the sight of some 30,000 police officers marching through London will be embarrassing for Cameron's centre-right Conservatives, who pride themselves on being the party of law and order.

Thirty thousand is close to a quarter of all the police officers in England and Wales. Mark my words, Cameron's headed for a Last Days Of Thatcher scenario - ousted by his own party's rats to save themselves.

A FOURTH WAY?

The Independent did a poll in late April of 2000 citizens. The results show that the three parties and their leaders are in bad shape in the public eye. The ruling Conservative-Liberal Democratic Coalition's popularity is dreadful. Only 27% like both the Conservative Party and its leader PM David Cameron. Liberal Democrats poll only 18% for the same questions. You'd think that Labour would benefit but the leader, Ed Miliband drags down the combined endorsement. Only 16% of the public like both Labour and Miliband.

Cameron is a failure on the economy and a BLiar lite war monger. Liberal Democrat Clegg jumped into bed with the Conservatives to become faux Deputy PM in the coalition government. People know who he is. Miliband is politically nondescript and opposed a robust investigation of BLiar's illegal Iraq invasion.

Who will step forward and lead in this time of crisis? An easy answer is - none of the above.

Rupert Neate | May 6

The Guardian - Lloyds Banking Group has become embroiled in a row over its investment in a company accused of involvement in the rendition of terror suspects on behalf of the CIA.

Lloyds, which is just under 40% owned by the taxpayer, is one of a number of leading City institutions under fire for investing in US giant Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), which is accused of helping to organise covert US government flights of terror suspects to Guantánamo Bay and other clandestine "black sites" around the world.

Reprieve, the legal human rights charity run by the British lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, alleges that during the flights, suspects – some of whom were later proved innocent – were "stripped, dressed in a diaper and tracksuit, goggles and earphones, and had their hands and feet shackled". Once delivered to the clandestine locations, they were subjected to beatings and sleep deprivation and forced into stress positions, a report from the International Committee of the Red Cross says.

CSC, which is facing a backlash for allegedly botching its handling of a £3bn contract to upgrade the NHS IT system, has refused to comment on claims it was involved in rendition. It has also refused to sign a Reprieve pledge to "never knowingly facilitate torture" in the future. The claims about its involvement in rendition flights have not been confirmed.

Reprieve has written to CSC investors to ask them to put pressure on the company to take a public stand against torture.

Some of the City's biggest institutions, including Lloyds and insurer Aviva, have demanded that CSC immediately address allegations that it played a part in arranging extraordinary rendition flights.

Mark Townsend | May 5

The Observer - Senior British diplomats introduced an extraordinary "licence to kill" law in an attempt to legalise retrospectively the colonial-era killing of 24 villagers by UK troops in Malaysia, the Observer can reveal.

The Batang Kali massacre took place on 12 December 1948, as British troops carried out a counter-insurgency operation against Chinese Malayan communists. The shootings took place after a 16-man patrol group of Scots Guards surrounded a rubber estate at Sunga Rimoh by the Batang Kali river. The bodies of several unarmed villagers were reportedly mutilated and the village was burned to the ground.

An informal investigation of the incident, carried out in 1949, exonerated all the soldiers involved. But claims of a cover-up by families of the victims have ensured that the killings in the village of Batang Kali remain one of the most contentious in British colonial history.

Some have described the episode as "Britain's My Lai," a reference to the murders of Vietnamese villagers by US forces in Vietnam. The campaign for a thorough investigation into the incident will reach a climax in London this week when a court will finally rule on whether to open an official inquiry into the killings. Although some of the Scots Guardsmen are still alive, the victims' families are not seeking criminal prosecutions.

Ahead of the hearing, the Observer has seen documents revealing that after the killings the British authorities hastily passed a regulation empowering troops in the country to use "lethal force" to prevent escape attempts.

May 5

BBC - Lord Justice Leveson has granted eight government ministers "core participant" status at his inquiry - allowing them advance sight of witness statements.

The ministers are David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Vince Cable, Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, Theresa May, Ken Clarke and George Osborne.

The inquiry is set to look at relations between the press and politicians.

Core participants can be represented by a barrister and can also seek to cross-examine witnesses and make opening and closing statements.

They must be considered to have potentially played a "direct and significant role" - or have a significant interest - in matters relating to the inquiry or to be potentially subjected to explicit or significant criticism during its proceedings or in its final report.

Last week, Labour called on Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt to resign after the inquiry published emails between his then adviser and News Corporation's head of public affairs about the company's bid to take over broadcaster BSkyB.

If the Cabinet ministers had been core participants then, they would have had advance access to the emails and could have argued that parts of the emails should have been blanked out before being made public.

CYA swinging into play, legally it seems.

Rob Edwards | May 2

The Guardian - Hundreds of sites across England and Wales could be contaminated with radioactive waste from old military bases and factories, according to a new government report.

Up to 1,000 sites could be polluted, though the best guess is that between 150 and 250 are, says a report on contaminated land by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc), released last month, but previously unreported.

This is far higher than previous official estimates, with evidence from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) last December suggesting that there were just 15 sites in the UK contaminated with radium from old planes and other equipment.

WaPo - Rupert Murdoch “is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company,” a British parliamentary committee said on Tuesday in a scathing report over News Corp.’s handling of the phone hacking scandal.

The report culminates months of investigation by a select committee and was far more damning toward the 81-year-old media titan than expected, saying that the chairman and chief executive of News Corp. had “turned a blind eye and exhibited wilful blindness” over the widespread malpractice at his now-closed News of the World tabloid.

“This culture, we consider, permeated from the top throughout the organisation and speaks volumes about the lack of effective corporate governance at News Corporation and News International,” the report said.

The committee approved the report on a majority of six votes to four, with the four members from Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative party staunchly objecting to the description of Murdoch as an unfit proprietor.

** Phone hacking: Full text of Commons culture select committee report

David Batty | Apr 26

The Guardian - Salvation Army findings contradict public perception that crime predominantly affects women who are being sexually exploited

Men account for more than two-fifths (41%) of adult victims of human trafficking in England and Wales helped by the Salvation Army, contrary to the public perception that the crime almost exclusively affects women.

The finding comes in a survey by the charity, which provides specialist support for the adult victims of trafficking on behalf of the Ministry of Justice.

The Salvation Army, which began the support service six months ago, also dealt with the first recorded case of an individual being trafficked to Britain to have their organs harvested. The case, involving an unnamed woman brought to the UK by an organised gang, is understood to be the subject of a police investigation, the Telegraph reports.

The charity's survey found that 45% of those it supported had been forced into sexual exploitation, 43% were involved in labour exploitation and 8% were trafficked into domestic servitude.

This contradicted a survey of English and Welsh adults carried out by YouGov, which found that respondents thought 29% of all trafficked victims in England and Wales were male, and 68% of all trafficked victims were sexually exploited.

BBC | London | April 24

BBC -

Labour has called for Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt to resign after Leveson Inquiry evidence appeared to show his support for News Corp's bid for BSkyB.

During evidence from James Murdoch, the inquiry discussed News Corp emails that appeared to show Mr Hunt had privately expressed support.

Labour leader Ed Miliband said Mr Hunt had acted as a "back channel" for the Murdochs and should step down.

Mr Hunt said he had "conducted this proces

Ian Cobain, Owen Bowcott & Richard Norton-Taylor | London | April 18

The Guardian - Review finds thousands of papers detailing shameful acts were culled, while others were kept secret illegally

Thousands of documents detailing some of the most shameful acts and crimes committed during the final years of the British empire were systematically destroyed to prevent them falling into the hands of post-independence governments, an official review has concluded.

Those papers that survived the purge were flown discreetly to Britain where they were hidden for 50 years in a secret Foreign Office archive, beyond the reach of historians and members of the public, and in breach of legal obligations for them to be transferred into the public domain.

April 11

AP -

A flamboyant and telegenic politician who until recently seemed destined for the top ranks of China's leadership was stripped of his most powerful posts on Tuesday and his wife named in the murder of a British businessman as Chinese leaders moved to stem a scandal that has exposed divisive infighting.

The announcement that Bo Xilai was being suspended from the Communist Party's Politburo and Central Committee and that his wife was a suspect in a homicide investigation put an end to a colorful political career. Media-savvy with a populist flair, Bo gained a nationwide following for busting organized crime and for reviving communist culture while running the inland mega-city of Chongqing.

Tom Whitehead & Martin Beckford | Strasbourg, France | April 10

The Telegraph - In a landmark victory for the UK, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said extraditing the terrorism “recruiting sergeant” Hamza and others would not lead to inhuman treatment in the US.

The Strasbourg court unanimously dismissed claims that conditions in American “supermax” jails were degrading but rather luxuries such as televisions, phone calls and arts and crafts “went beyond” what was provided in most European prisons.

Apr 8

The Guardian - In 2004, Fatima Bouchar and her husband, Abdel Hakim Belhaj, were detained en route to the UK, and rendered to Libya. This is the story of their imprisonment, and the trail of evidence that reveals the involvement of the British government

Just when Fatima Bouchar thought it couldn't get any worse, the Americans forced her to lie on a stretcher and began wrapping tape around her feet. They moved upwards, she says, along her legs, winding the tape around and around, binding her to the stretcher. They taped her stomach, her arms and then her chest. She was bound tight, unable to move.(they knew she was 4 1/2 months pregnant)

The Independent, By Charlotte Rachael Proudman, April 2

Today I received another telephone call from a young Muslim woman, Nasrin, who pleaded with me to help her obtain an Islamic divorce. After fleeing a forced marriage characterised by rape and physical violence, Nasrin applied for an Islamic divorce from a Sharia council; that was almost 10 years ago now. Despite countless emails, letters and telephone calls to the Sharia council as well as joint mediation and reconciliation meetings, the Sharia council refuse to provide Nasrin with an Islamic divorce. Why? Because of Nasrin’s sex. An Imam at the Sharia council told Nasrin that her gender prevents her from unilaterally divorcing her husband, instead the Imam told her to return to her husband, perform her wifely duties and maintain the abusive marriage that she was forced into.

Having represented Muslim women pro bono at Sharia law bodies across the UK to obtain Islamic divorces, I am all too aware of the gender discriminatory experience many Muslim women suffer at some Sharia councils and Muslim Arbitration Tribunals (‘Sharia law bodies’). Unfortunately their experiences have not been highlighted by the media. Instead some Sharia law bodies have been misrepresented by the media as being transparent, voluntary and operating in accordance with human rights and equality legislation. This is not the case.

David Shukman | April 2

BBC - A renewed attempt to develop ways of making power stations greener is set to be unveiled by the government.

For the second time in five years, £1 billion will be offered for schemes to trap and bury carbon dioxide.

An earlier competition collapsed after all nine entrants pulled out, most citing cost as the main problem.

After posting about a seeming resurgence of the Left in Europe on the back of austerity measures that are widely seen as penalizing the poor for the excesses of the rich, it'd be remiss of me not to mention George Galloway's surprise victory in a by-election in Bradford, England. The veteran polemicist and lefty took the supposedly safe Labour seat by a very convincing margin, knocking 20% off Labour's vote. In particular, Bradford's large Asian population voted in droves for Galloway.

Labour-supporting Asians are starting to switch their allegiance to Mr Galloway's Respect Party, which stood - among other things - on an anti-war platform. But it's Respect's message of protest that seems to resonate most.

One former Labour supporter, Shamsuddin Ahmed, says: "Let's get one thing straight. Mr Galloway's not going to make all the difference in this world, but what he is going to do is empower people to get up and take an active part in the political process and you can see that has now started in Bradford".

Traditionally, like many major towns and cities in England with large Asian populations, most ethnic voters have voted for the Labour Party.

But that support all but collapsed when Mr Galloway came to Bradford.

During his short campaign Mr Galloway said: "You don't have to put up with the political class that you've got, you can stand up and rise up and peacefully democratically change it."

For now, Respect is purely a party within Bradford - but it's growing fast and has had many approaches from people wanting to stand for the party in other cities.

The Scotsman reports that the question of Scottish independence - or to be precise, Scottish basing for UK nuclear subs, is to hit the DC think-tank circuit this week.

The Washington DC-based body, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. is holding a seminar on Tuesday entitled “The Scottish Question and the Future of UK Nuclear Forces”.

It stated: “A referendum on Scottish independence scheduled for autumn 2014 could have profound ramifications for the UK’s nuclear deterrent and for US-UK relations.

“The UK’s entire nuclear force, made up of Trident missiles on Vanguard-class submarines, is operated out of two bases in Scotland.

“In the absence of a suitable option for re-basing the submarines in England or Wales, the UK’s Royal Navy must consider a range of alternatives - including disarmament.”

A veteran US Congressional defence analyst recently suggested that an “aggressively neutral” independent Scotland “might not be too good” for American defence.

Robert L Goldich, who served for over 33 years as a defence analyst for the Congressional Research Service at the US Library of Congress, queried whether “a disintegrating United Kingdom” would continue to be a reliable defence partner for the US.

The UK's independent nuclear deterrent is a joke. The missiles are bought from the US, stored in the US, maintained in the US and could never in a million years be launched without express US permission. So of course it's the business of the US what Scotland does with its future, as long as that future might impede US hegemony by affecting an ally's ability to join the US in raining nuclear destruction on US enemies. Walker's solution, unless his opinions have changed since 2001 when his book was published, is to keep the nuclear bases in Scotland but make them a small bit of England, entirely under London's control. As a 2003 review of his book in Scottish Affairs (PDF) noted, Walker has "underestimated the strength of Nationalist opposition to nuclear weapons, the cause which motivated many people to join the SNP in the first place".

Patrick Wintour | Mar 16

Guardian Online - George Osborne will announce plans to pay lower salaries to public sector workers in poorer parts of the country in his budget next week.

The chancellor will argue that public sector pay should mimic the private sector and be more reflective of local economies. He intends to start the process in three Whitehall departments in the coming financial year, as part of a phased introduction.

Critics say the move will entrench economic divisions between north and south and depress regions of the country already struggling in the economic downturn.

It has not yet been decided if localised pay will apply only to new staff or to existing staff as well, but it was being stressed that no current employee would suffer a pay cut. Instead pay levels will gradually be adjusted to take account of costs, leading to larger pay rises in the south-east where some labour shortages exist.
 

The dismemberment/privatisation of the UK civil service continues...
Hey, does that mean members of Parliament should also suffer this pay differential? ;-)