At home, where he’s unpopular in the polls but less so around the dinner table, Sarkozy has circumvented the 35-hour week by slashing taxes on overtime, freed up universities, downsized the state functionary community (and mentality), spurred small businesses, cut public spending and set in motion a radical reform aimed at creating a 21st-century army.
By comparison, Gordon Brown in Britain, he of Heathcliffian moodiness, and Angela Merkel in Germany, she of grand coalition paralysis, look second-tier.
David Cameron called for United States-style bankruptcy protection laws for businesses yesterday as part of a Conservative rescue plan for the economy. Speaking at the CBI, the Conservative leader said that thousands of jobs could be lost unless companies were given breathing space to try to raise new finance. The US bankruptcy rules, under the Chapter 11 system, give firms court protection as they try to agree a deal with their creditors.
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A Chapter 11-style regime would give businesses in trouble the chance to raise new money by offering rescue financiers priority over other creditors. Rescue proposals would need only the backing of the court and a majority of shareholders - meaning that they could not be blocked by creditors.
Rising food and fuel costs pushed UK inflation up to an 11-year high of 3.8% in June from 3.3% in May, figures show.
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The RPI inflation measure - often used as a benchmark in pay negotiations - rose to 4.6% in June from 4.3% in May.
Commenting on the figures, Chancellor Alistair Darling called for wage restraint in order to help rein in price growth.
"We saw what happened in the past when inflation got out of control and people found that every penny they got in a wage increase was swallowed up by food and fuel prices going up," said Mr Darling.
Scottish ministers have moved to head off accusations of political vindictiveness after an administrative blunder was blamed for the reneging on cash pledges to community organisations.
More than 20 groups across Scotland were told on Friday afternoon they had been successful in their applications for funding from the Scottish Government's equality unit only to be told hours later that a decision had "not actually been made" by the Communities Minister Stewart Maxwell and that "all the letters which were sent out were done so prematurely".
Civil servants claimed they had simply been preparing drafts so they could move quickly once a decision had been reached and that those who had been wrongly told could discuss the matter.
However, following allegations by one recipient, Mike Dailly, of the Govan Law Centre, that the U-turn was politically motivated and that he would pursue legal action if the promised £250,000 did not materialise the government pledged yesterday that all those who received the first letter would get the funding.
The London consensus persistently overlooks the extent to which Scotland is a small, closed society, a bit like North Korea only less democratic. It has its own media and its own political culture.
Snigger if you like. Tell me she's kitsch. Tell me those breasts, that wig, those rhinestones, that log-cabin stuff are irrelevant to musical quality. Tell me that no life could be the homespun fairytale she sells us. But what a voice! And still I believe that there's something real about Dolly Parton, something good at the centre of what she seems to represent.Get real, Matthew! Gay icons are so last year.
The director general, Mark Thompson, and nine other corporation bosses earned £4.96m in 2007-08, a rise of 17 per cent on the previous year. Most BBC employees received pay increases of 4 per cent over the same period, broadly in line with inflation. Mr Thompson's salary rose from £788,000 last year to £816,000, while that of Mark Byford, his deputy, rose from £437,000 to £513,000.
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Jana Bennett, the director of BBC Vision, saw her salary rise by £103,000, to £536,000. She was criticised for her role in the "Crowngate" affair, after a trailer for a documentary wrongly suggested that the Queen had stormed out of a photoshoot at Buckingham Palace. An independent report into "Crowngate" criticised Ms Bennett for "showing a lack of curiosity" after being told of the blunder. Her bonus was reduced by several thousand pounds to reflect the damage caused by the phone-in scandals involving Comic Relief, Children In Need and Saturday Kitchen. Mr Thompson said that Ms Bennett's bonus, which was reduced to £23,000, represented "a significant discount to reflect what had happened".
Jenny Abramsky, the outgoing director of audio and radio, who is leaving the BBC with a pension of £4m – thought to be a record for the British public sector – was paid £419,000, a 27 per cent increase from £329,000. Her bonus was £19,000.
Ashley Highfield, who has since left his post as future media executive director, saw his overall pay rise by £107,000 to £466,000. This came after the corporation went £36m over budget on its website.
... In October, Mr Thompson announced that the BBC would lose up to 1,800 jobs, after receiving a smaller than expected licence fee settlement from the Government.
That figure has since risen to 2,500.
Britons must stop wasting food in an effort to help combat rising living costs, Gordon Brown has said as he travelled to the G8 summit in Japan.
The PM said "unnecessary" purchases were contributing to price rises, and urged people to plan meals in advance and store food properly.
A government study found the UK wastes 4m tonnes of food every year, adding £420 to a family's shopping bills.
Gordon Brown was "disappointed" by the decision of MPs – including his two parliamentary aides and 33 of his ministers - to throw out a series of proposed reforms to their expenses, the prime minister's spokesman said today.
Although Brown was said to support the proposed changes, he did not attend the Commons to vote and his two parliamentary private secretaries, Austin and Basildon MP Angela Smith, both voted against the reforms.Mr Brown obviously thinks that we are idiots.
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Government whips were then seen nodding Labour MPs through the aye lobby when they voted on a backbench amendment, tabled by former minister Don Touhig, to preserve their expenses.
Gordon Brown has said the delayed 2p rise in fuel duty is something that will be looked at "very, very carefully" over the next few weeks.Well, big deal! As oil has risen to $146 a barrel, the increases in the price of petrol already in the pipeline [sorry about that] will dwarf 2p per litre.
The Ministry of Defence has signed contracts worth £3.2bn to build the UK's biggest ever aircraft carriers.
The 280-metre-long HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales will be capable of carrying up to 40 aircraft.
The contracts will create or secure 3,000 jobs at Govan, in Glasgow, 1,600 at Rosyth, in Fife, 1,200 in Portsmouth and 400 in Barrow in Furness.
It's not just the fact that the Navy won't have enough surface ships to protect the carriers or that traditional military aeroplanes will have been rendered redundant by pilotless drones, or even that the extremely expensive new strike fighters will not be available on time so that Harriers (yes, the vertical take-off aircraft that don't need massive new carriers) will be used instead.
Meanwhile, ageing and dangerous Nimrods will be kept in the air, while troops are shuttled out in ancient RAF Tristars to Afghanistan where there is a desperate shortage of helicopters needed to avoid the troops having to rely on lightly-armoured landrovers for transport. (See here.)
But, hey, as long as spending money on carriers keeps the shipyards going and Labour MPs in a job , then it must be for the best in this best of all possible worlds.
Jonas Björkman, of Sweden, a Wimbledon veteran, even began collecting the rain.
"I just got to thinking that the rain is so much a part of the fabric and romance of the place, why not start collecting it?" he said.
"I go out and scoop off what I want with a polystyrene cup and decant it into an ice-cream tub to take back to the locker-room. I've got an entire puddle taken from near the Fred Perry statue after an unforecast downpour on the second Tuesday of the 1996 championships that I'm particularly proud of.
"I've got some drain-overflow that Goran Ivanisevic walked through on his way off court during his famous 2001 semi-final against Tim Henman, which is obviously a bit of a collector's item. And I've also got nearly two gallons of water which pooled in the covers during the violent electrical storm which interrupted my first-round match against Mark Petchey in 1994 – which is obviously very personal to me. At the moment, the collection is carefully labelled in plastic vats in my garage in Monaco, but eventually I'm hoping to be able to display it all properly in a cabinet in the sitting-room. It'll be something to show the grandchildren."
Children and Young Persons Bill
Education and Skills Bill
Health and Social Care Bill
Housing and Regeneration Bill
Local Transport Bill
Special Educational Needs Bill
That's really important in mixed doubles because it's part of the guy's job to target the girl, hit the ball hard to her side of the court and try to frighten her a bit. The idea is to stop the woman going for her shots because, if you can take her out of the game, then the court suddenly becomes a lot bigger.
"Most Holyrood Labour ministers were surly, glottal-stopped, class-hating mediocrities."
"It is clear that vexatious complaints will continue to dominate the headlines as long as I remain Labour's Scottish Parliamentary Leader. I cannot ask Labour supporters in Scotland for further forbearance."
For 27 years I was prisoner 46664 of the apartheid regime in South Africa. For 18 of these years I lived in a small cell in Robben Island. My nights were spent sweating against rough woollen sheets. My days were spent working in the lime quarry. I received one letter every six months. This was a hard time. And yet, there was an upside. For I had no telephone. Bono never called.
An expenses overhaul aimed at restoring public confidence recommended that MPs be banned from claiming for furniture, televisions and other household items on the co-called John Lewis list. Claims for new kitchens, bathrooms and other renovations would also be banned.
But a report from the House of Commons members estimates committee (MEC) suggests that MPs should be allowed to claim up to £19,600 a year for the cost of living away from home. This tax-free allowance would cover items such as rent, mortgage interest payments, hotel bills and running costs such as utility bills, council tax and repairs. Receipts would be needed for all claims "however small" from 2009-10.
It would replace the existing system where MPs can claim a second homes allowance of up to £23,000 a year, with receipts needed for claims over £25.
In addition, MPs would be able to claim a flat-rate of £30 a day without receipts, up to a maximum of £4,200 a year, for food, taxis and incidental expenses.
SAN FRANCISCO — Reagan has his highways. Lincoln has his memorial. Washington has the capital (and a state, too). But President Bush may soon be the sole president to have a memorial named after him that you can contribute to from the bathroom.
From the Department of Damned-With-Faint-Praise, a group going by the regal-sounding name of the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco is planning to ask voters here to change the name of a prize-winning water treatment plant on the shoreline to the George W. Bush Sewage Plant.
... the championships are attended by people who regard house prices as acceptable - if not sparkling - dinner party conversation, and whose worldview tends toward the sheltered. If Tim Henman was the boy they'd like their daughter to bring home, Andy Murray is kind of how they imagine crack addicts to be.
Federer did indeed step out in a cardigan yesterday and even though the day was — remarkably, perhaps uniquely for a first day of Wimbledon — coming up to the boil, he kept it on for at least half the warm-up. Is that cool, or not?
It looked a very nice cardy, if you happen to be a cardy sort of man, a cardy you could easily stroll to the fridge in, relax in front of the television in; even, God help you, play a round of golf in. Federer pushed the sleeves back to the elbows for the dashing, “just about to do the washing-up” look.
And now for the amazing bit. He took it off without undoing the buttons. Imagine that. He pulled it over his head as if it were a pullover. Dreadful thought — perhaps the buttons don’t undo.
Two former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers took the first "perp walk" of the credit crisis, as the FBI paraded them in front of the world's media to face charges of misleading investors and insider dealing.
Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin were marched yesterday from the FBI's New York headquarters to appear before a judge in Brooklyn.
And prosecutors promised that these are just the most high profile arrests in their ongoing investigation of wrong-doing following the collapse of the mortgage markets. More than 400 people, mainly local brokers accused of foisting unsuitable mortgages on unsophisticated borrowers, have now been indicted, including 60 people on Wednesday alone.
Is means-testing to be applied to the central heating scheme? Answer: installations have been taking place in record numbers.
Are restrictions to be applied to the availability of free bus travel? Answer: the eligibility criteria will not change.
Would 400,000 pensioners be liable to local income tax? Answer: a "majority" of pensioners - says another handy poll - support a local tax.
A COUNCIL meeting in West Lothian is to be postponed because too many members will be away on an official visit to Texas.
The full council was due to meet on September 16, but since that date was drawn up plans have been put in place for several elected members and council officials to visit Grapevine, Texas, as part of a recently established twinning agreement.
Luiz Felipe Scolari wants to make Deco, the Portuguese international, his first signing at Chelsea. Talks have taken place with agent, Jorge Mendes, who represents both manager and player. The Barcelona midfielder will cost £10m. The 30-year-old has other options, not least Internazionale, who are now coached by another of Mendes's clients, Jose Mourinho, but he is understood to favour a move to the Premier League.
The European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, called on the Irish government to suggest possible "solutions" at an EU summit in Brussels next week. He said: "I believe the treaty is alive. Eighteen member states have already approved the treaty and the European Commission believes that the remaining ratifications should continue."Pissing against the wind. But not everyone:
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A group of countries, led by France, which assumes the EU presidency next month, is expected to try to minimise the importance of the Irish "no" vote. If other countries ratify the treaty, they argue privately, Ireland will be obliged to have a second vote.
However, another senior European commissioner, speaking off the record, said: "There will be no repeat vote in Ireland. That means the treaty is dead. It's part of a general disenchantment with the EU. We would have had similar results if there had been referendums in other European Union states."
A Pyrrhic victory (IPA: /ˈpɪrɪk/) is a victory with devastating cost to the victor. The phrase is an allusion to King Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose army suffered irreplaceable casualties in defeating the Romans at Heraclea in 280 BC and Asculum in 279 BC during the Pyrrhic War.
Scottish MPs would be banned from voting on new laws for England under Conservative plans to rebalance the British constitution.(Well not quite, actually - see below.)
The Daily Telegraph understands that David Cameron is preparing to throw his weight behind a plan to give English interests more explicit recognition at Westminster.Mr Clarke:
The Tories will next month publish the report of a review led by Ken Clarke, the former Chancellor, which has drawn up new proposals in the wake of the creation of the Scottish Parliament.
... is said to have advised allowing all MPs to vote on English legislation at the initial second reading stage of parliamentary scrutiny. But only English MPs would get to vote during the detailed committee stage of the legislative process, where real changes can be effected.Well so what, I hear you say. Scottish MPs are not usually appointed to the committees looking at English bills (although in the good old days English MPs sometimes had to be dragooned onto committees looking at Scottish bills in order to ensure that the membership adequately represented the party distribution in the Commons as a whole). And, anyway, this arrangement is only likely to be adopted if the Tories gain power - in which case the scope for using Scottish votes to block amendments at report stage would be severely limited.
At the third and final reading, all MPs could once again vote, but a new parliamentary undertaking would prevent any party using Scottish votes to block amendments made by English MPs.
Shadow Chancellor George Osborne today found himself having to defend Mrs Spelman during a trip to Washington.
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Caroline Spelman is someone of enormous integrity and honesty, so I think her statement speaks for itself and her character speaks for itself.
The Republic of Ireland is set to reject the Lisbon Treaty, destroying ambitions to salvage a draft European constitution.
Rejection by only one of the European Union’s 27 member states would mean that the treaty — ratified by five parliaments so far — would fall.
Ireland has been the only country to put the treaty to a referendum. According to an opinion poll published today in The Irish Times, 35 per cent of people surveyed intend to vote “No” in next Thursday’s ballot, more than double the 17 per cent figure in the newspaper’s last survey three weeks ago. Support for the treaty has fallen from 35 per cent to 30 per cent, with 28 per cent undecided and 7 per cent intending to abstain.
Very public schoolboy.
Most peculiar. Why do grown men change their hairstyles, especially for the worse? Answer (from a sad voice of experience) - Because they're going bald.
Extraordinary, isn't it? Immobile, fixed, solid - it is, as my English teacher would put it, an immutable constant, an unchanging point around which the impressionable wax and wane.
OK, that may be a more apt description of Iago than the foreign secretary's hair, but the central tenet remains: David's hair is, if you look at it carefully, ... a truly astonishing work of physics. In its unmoving tidiness and solidity it is like a plastic black cap, of the sort placed on an Action Man's head. Truly, I have stood behind this man in a rainy Welsh field (in a non-stalking way, honest) and even then, when one's own blow dry was shot to hell and back, Miliband's hair remained as unyielding as a stubborn PM maintaining a tenuous grip on the No 10 doorframe. Even his brother Ed's hair has looked a little ruffled in its time, so clearly this is not a genetic trait, but a unique gift.
Maths exam standards have declined significantly over the past 50 years, with generations of teenagers facing undemanding questions that do not test their independent reasoning abilities, a report said yesterday.
Maths also suffers from an image problem, with pupils avoiding it because it is considered "geeky", according to the report published by the centre-right thinktank Reform.
Elizabeth Truss, deputy director of Reform and one of the authors, said: "In today's Britain it is acceptable to say that you can't do maths, whereas people would be ashamed to admit they couldn't read.
"We need a cultural revolution to transform maths from geek to chic."
A new website that will enable the people of Scotland to see - at-a-glance - how Scotland is performing was launched today.
The Scotland Performs website will allow people to find out whether the Scottish nation is becoming wealthier, safer, healthier, greener and smarter.
Visitors to the Scotland Performs website will be presented with highly visual and easy to understand pages. They will have quick access to information about the quality of life in Scotland, and where thing are getting better and where things are getting worse.
ALEX Salmond has taken the first formal move to try to wrest control of at least some of the UK's oil revenues from the UK Treasury.
The First Minister has written to Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, asking for a share of the estimated £4 billion to £5 billion in extra income which the UK government is due to make in tax from the rapidly escalating price of oil.
Mr Salmond has also called for the creation of a Scottish oil fund, putting money aside for the time when the oil runs out.
But Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, made it clear yesterday he has no intention of dividing the extra oil tax revenue from the rest of government income, stating that some tax increases were going up while others were going down and the whole lot had to be seen as one package.
A pint of beer at Harare's cricket ground is Z$800 million. A 13-amp plug on Tuesday cost me Z$1.3 billion. Photocopying a two-page document came to Z$269 million. The Z$10 million note, introduced at the beginning of the year to reduce the snaking queues outside the banks, will not buy so much as a banana.If you read the article, please do not expect me to explain how much is a quadrillion ...
The world's most populous nation is becoming more carnivorous. In 1980, when the population was still under one billion, the average Chinese person ate 20kg (44lbs) of meat; last year, with an extra 300 million people, it was 54kg. The country as a whole now chomps through more than 60m tonnes of meat a year, roughly equivalent to 240 million cows, or 600 million pigs, or 24 billion chickens. It is a worldwide trend that is taking grain away from the world's poor. The consumption of meat in developing countries is rising by more than 5% a year.
The programme of action will be supported by a package of £94 million over the next three years. Health Boards will receive a 3.8 per cent increase in funding for drug treatment services. Funds are also spent on tackling drug use from other general budgets allocated by Government to local authorities.
Leonard Cohen Special
Next week, one of the most influential singer-songwriters in musical history performs live for the first time in fifteen years, at the start of a world tour that will bring him to Britain. In his decade and a half away from the stage, Leonard Cohen has endured psychological crisis, spiritual transformation and the loss of much of his money in a financial fraud. But his songs - including Suzanne and Hallelujah - have remained indelible in his recordings and numerous cover versions. In a Front Row Special, Leonard Cohen talks to Mark Lawson about song-writing, God, money, and stage-fright.
It is excellent news that the Government has appointed Sir Michael Parkinson to be "dignity ambassador" for elderly people in care.
Cameron, after visiting Crewe, flew on to Ayr racecourse, where the party’s Scottish conference was under way. North of the border the Conservatives have just one MP. The decrepit band of blue rinses gathered for the Scottish conference were a stark reminder of the hurdles that still lie between him and the keys to No 10.
The health minister Ann Keen is this weekend revealed to have insured her 70-year-old husband’s life for £430,000 – and to have claimed the premiums on parliamentary expenses.
Keen took out a joint HSBC “first death” policy with her husband Alan, also a Labour MP, which meant if one of them died the other would get the payout.
The £867 monthly premiums were submitted as part of their parliamentary expenses. The couple are already entitled to generous payouts if one of them dies under the Commons pension scheme.
The future historians of the nerd ascendancy will likely note that the great empowerment phase began in the 1980s with the rise of Microsoft and the digital economy. Nerds began making large amounts of money and acquired economic credibility, the seedbed of social prestige. The information revolution produced a parade of highly confident nerd moguls — Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Larry Page and Sergey Brin and so on.
Among adults, the words “geek” and “nerd” exchanged status positions. A nerd was still socially tainted, but geekdom acquired its own cool counterculture. A geek possessed a certain passion for specialized knowledge, but also a high degree of cultural awareness and poise that a nerd lacked.
Geeks not only rebelled against jocks, but they distinguished themselves from alienated and self-pitying outsiders who wept with recognition when they read “Catcher in the Rye.” If Holden Caulfield was the sensitive loner from the age of nerd oppression, then Harry Potter was the magical leader in the age of geek empowerment.
David Cameron today drops his biggest hint that a future Conservative government would scrap the 30-year-old Barnett Formula.
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Asked if it was time to get rid of the formula, Mr Cameron says: "This cannot last forever, the time is approaching ... If we replace the Barnett Formula with a needs-based formula, Scotland has very great needs and Scotland will get very great resources."
SFT has always been conceived as being representative of the whole public sector, and, if it is to deliver its efficiency potential, it has long been recognised that this original ambition must be crystallised in SFT's governance.
There is however always a balance to be struck between appropriate representation and governance, and effective management.
For the immediate next phase SFT will be moved forward more efficiently under direct oversight of Scottish Ministers. However, once its more detailed business case is confirmed, it could be overseen by an Infrastructure Board for Scotland, possibly made up of senior representatives from across the public sector and chaired by the Cabinet Secretary. The purpose of the IBfS would be to oversee SFT delivering its strategic objectives, and to input to the future strategic direction of SFT.
SFT Finance and Investment will be a separate private sector classified entity in which SFT D&D has a minority share. Careful structuring of the constitutional documents will be required for this entity to ensure the public sector can exert appropriate influence whilst not undermining its private sector classification. Its potential organisational form has not been assessed in detail, although the flexibility and transparency of a Limited Liability Partnership ( LLP) structure is initially attractive. It is anticipated that it is likely to fall to be regulated by the FSA. It will have its own management team who will report to the LLP members committee.
The details of how investment will be raised from the private sector has not been explored in any detail as part of this SBC.
A massive government database holding details of every phone call, e-mail and time spent on the internet by the public is being planned as part of the fight against crime and terrorism. Internet service providers (ISPs) and telecoms companies would hand over the records to the Home Office under plans put forward by officials.
The information would be held for at least 12 months and the police and security services would be able to access it if given permission from the courts.
The proposal will raise further alarm about a “Big Brother” society, as it follows plans for vast databases for the ID cards scheme and NHS patients. There will also be concern about the ability of the Government to manage a system holding billions of records. About 57 billion text messages were sent in Britain last year, while an estimated 3 billion e-mails are sent every day.
JOE Jordan knows better than most people that players need to seize opportunities to play in an FA Cup final or else likely regret it for ever more. The Portsmouth first-team coach challenged his players to rise to the occasion last week, and, no matter the debilitating fatigue, keep their concentration until the very end.
His words won't help soothe the frustrations of Kevin McNaughton, Gavin Rae and Steven Thompson, the trio of Cardiff City Scots whose hopes of glory were shattered by Kanu's winner.
... giving Holyrood power over elections may be the only way of ensuring that a repeat of last year's election-night chaos doesn't cause a serious breakdown in relations between the Scottish parliament and Westminster. The present divided responsibility exacerbates electoral tension and invites Holyrood politicians to blame London for anything that goes wrong. This is not the way to introduce stability to the constitutional settlement.
I can't understand why the MPs on the Scottish Affairs Committee, who yesterday ruled out any transfer of authority, can't see this.
... the speed of ships is being cut as it is cheaper to use more ships travelling slowly than fewer ones going faster.
The central banks of Norway, Sweden and Denmark have joined forces in a stunning move to rescue Iceland, offering a credit line of €1.5bn (£1.2bn) to beat back speculators and shore up the battered krona.
The solidarity gesture is a powerful signal to hedge funds betting on Iceland's downfall that they are up against the international system. The swap accord doubles the foreign reserve cover of the Icelandic government at a stroke.
Iceland's central bank said the deal was a "precautionary measure" to stabilise the currency, which has crashed 25pc this year.
Stefan Ingves, head of Sweden's Riksbank, said the accord aimed to restore stability after months of mayhem. The Icelandic krona surged 3.7pc on the news.
... ageism is the only “ism” that one can brazenly get away with these days. You cannot satirise someone's race, gender or disability - but a codger? Fill your boots. I'll admit to ageist moments myself, such as when I'm tutting in the queue for the cash machine and the elderly person at the front is bent double over the keyboard slowly pressing every single option key and always, always requests a receipt. Or driving in the middle lane of the motorway, invariably wearing a flat cap, at 25mph.
"Scottish Labour's policy on an independence referendum is a little clearer tonight, if only a little. The party's MSPs met this afternoon and seem to have agreed that they might support an SNP referendum bill or they might not, depending on what was in it. The decision could be interpreted as a brilliant manoeuvre to combine political flexibility with strength of purpose or as yet more mental gymnastics."
BBC Parliament's ratings are usually so low that individual programmes often do not register in the audience data published by research body Barb.
However, it posted an average weekly reach - the number of people watching at least three consecutive minutes - of 437,000 viewers for the week ending April 27.
A resurgent wild turkey population has caused problems in Boston, where the 1.5m-tall turkeys are known to chase joggers and schoolchildren, often in mobs. Wildlife officials advise fighting back with a broom or open umbrella. Don't be a victim. Be the dominant turkey.Oh aye, like I constantly carry a broom or umbrella around. You don't see many joggers running with a brush. Still, I don't suppose that it is a problem I am likely to encounter in Edinburgh's douce Stockbridge.
Nobody understands. I don’t know why.
It’s perfectly simple. The Scottish Nationalists want independence, and we don’t. So, they want a referendum, and we don’t want a referendum. But, although we don’t want a referendum, we reckon that if there is one, we want it soon, so that people are more likely to want what we want them to want. Which is to say, not to want anything.
So, in saying that we want one now, we want the SNP to say that they don’t want one now. And they will, because they want to get what they want. And that’s what we want. Because, if they have one when they want, they might get what they want. And who would want that?
I don’t know why Gordon is confused. He must be some kind of idiot.
Youths who persistently misbehave and intimidate others in their communities should be "harassed themselves", Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has said.
She said she wanted police in England and Wales to "turn the tables" on those who would not "live by the rules".
This could include repeated home visits and checks to identify benefit fraud or council and road tax non-payment.
There's a further development on this story. It appears that there may be substantial obstacles in the path of Wendy Alexander's back-up plan - to table her own bill.
Firstly, she would require the support of at least one other party to table such a bill. Secondly, if there is the prospect of a Government Bill on a comparable topic - then a member's bill is ruled out.
Given that SNP ministers plan their own Bill for a referendum in 2010, this would appear to be a problem.
3.9 The final proposal [for a Member's Bill as opposed to an Executive Bill] is then published in the Business Bulletin for one calendar month, whilst the consultation summary or (as the case may be) statement of reasons is made available via the “Proposals for Members’ Bills” page of the Parliament website. During this period, any member may notify support for the proposal, this being recorded in the bulletin. If, at the end of the month, at least 18 other members, drawn from at least half the parties or groups represented on the Parliamentary Bureau, have indicated their support, the member has the right to introduce a Member’s Bill. This is unless a Minister has indicated either:
that the Executive will introduce legislation (which could be a Bill or a statutory instrument) to give effect to the proposal within the same session (i.e. the period, usually of four years, between general elections to the Scottish Parliament), or
that Her Majesty’s Government will introduce such legislation within the same or next session (a session at Westminster meaning a Parliamentary year, rather than the span of years between UK general elections).
I willingly confess that I was ignorant of these requirements. But then I'm not the leader of the Scottish Labour Party in Parliament and I didn't plan to introduce a Member's Bill.
Oh, and Big Gordon is unhappy, as Brian Taylor explains.
Between June 7, when the tournament kicks off with joint hosts Switzerland playing Czech Republic, and the final on June 29, the two channels will show 27 live games on BBC1 or ITV1, plus a further four on the digital channels BBC3 and ITV4.
Of those, 23 will kick off at 7.45pm in the middle of prime time, necessitating the rescheduling of soaps and other shows.
It's all part of his “fightback” and, we must assume, some sort of masterplan.
Actually, we could have done with more of a plan. He refused to tell us any details of how he’s saving our economy. Indeed, his only actual plan seemed to be that he wants to get out more and meet us. He wants to listen. He wants to empathise. He also wants to apologise. The man for whom sorry has been the hardest word now, suddenly, can’t stop talking about his mistakes, about the 10p tax cut, the general election that wasn’t, blah blah blah.
It’s all a bit much: if he knocks on your door, you might want to hide.
"What part of 'exceptional' do you find it difficult to understand?"There are not many politicians in Scotland who would be so bold. And poor old Gordon looked a bit flummoxed. You can see the whole interview here by clicking on the button on the bottom right; the interview runs from about 15 minutes in.
After ten years of absence from British playgrounds, Opal Fruits are set to make a return.
Mars, the manufacturers, is bringing back the sweets for a limited period in conjunction with the supermarket chain ASDA.
The fruit chews that were "made to make you mouth water" were replaced by Starburst in 1998, the name under which they had been exported to the US in the seventies.
