Zac Goldsmith launched his business manifesto today with a promise to create a chief digital officer at City Hall to help solve some of London’s biggest challenges. ‘Man and the plan’
‘Man and the plan’
David Cameron has urged Londoners not to elect Labour’s Sadiq Khan as their next mayor, stated that they will become “lab rats” for party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s economic experiments.
Addressing a rally of Conservative activists, Mr Cameron sought to frame the election as an early verdict on Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party as well as a choice between Mr Goldsmith and Mr Khan.
He said “Sadiq Khan nominated Jeremy Corbyn to be leader of the Labour party and he doesn’t regret it. Never mind the fact he (Mr Corbyn) wants to give the Falklands back to Argentina or he thinks that nuclear submarines should patrol the Atlantic without any missiles.
“Ahead of the rally, the Conservatives launched a poster campaign depicting Mr Goldsmith as “your man in City Hall”.
The Conservative Party mayor candidate said he would set up a New York-style “office of data analytics”, which would look at statistics from across the City Hall empire to address crime, housing, transport and quality-of -life issues.
He would also launch an annual £1 million Mayor’s Tech Challenge to encourage businesses to come up with innovative ideas. Suggestions included a rental app which cuts out estate agents, saving landlords and tenants hundreds of pounds in fees, as well as releasing data to help construction companies cut freight traffic.
One of the Mr Goldsmith’s wide-ranging plans for London businesses will include setting up a new Business Advisory Group, with members nominated by the business community.
Mr Zac Goldsmith said he would also use TFL’s 560km network of railway routes, tunnels and bridges to rapidly deliver superfast broadband. He would insist the Government responds on Heathrow expansion in the summer as promised, would increase funding for promoting London and boost the capital’s image himself, including abroad.
Start-ups would be helped by cutting red tape, with affordable office space in all new developments, and putting adult skills funding into key areas like engineering, science and financial services, with firms able to import talent from overseas if needed. Mr Goldsmith says he will lobby to ensure 30 hours of promised free childcare reflects the cost of nurseries in London.
[Chatham House: David Cameron, Jean-Claude Juncker’in Avrupa Komisyonu’na başkan olmasına karşı yürüttüğü düşüncesiz kampanya, AB’nin nasıl işlediğini tam kavrayamadan yaptığı diğer tüm yanlış hareketlerle beraber kendi ayağına ateş etmiş ve İngiltere’yi Avrupa Birliğinden atılmanın eşiğine getirmiştir.]
Is the call for an additional contribution to the EU budget as outrageous as David Cameron has asserted, or simply the normal application of EU rules and mechanisms? In reality, it is a bit of both, but there is more to the story. – See more at:
When David Cameron emerged from last Friday’s European Council meeting, the indignation on show could not have been greater: ‘If people think I am paying that bill on 1 December, they have another think coming.’ He was responding to new figures revealed last week which call for an additional £1.7 billion contribution to the EU budget from the UK. In what is a routine recalculation, several other countries, including the Netherlands, have been asked to pay proportionately more than the UK, while Germany, France and 17 others will pay less.
Is this as outrageous as the prime minister has asserted, or simply the normal application of EU rules and mechanisms? In reality, it is a little bit of both, but there are three elements to the story.
The first is that most of the EU’s revenue derives from an income stream known as the GNI (gross national income) resource. GNI is a close relative of the more familiar term GDP (gross domestic product), differing largely because of how profits from abroad are counted. As such, it reflects relative prosperity and, thus, ability to pay – a widely accepted principle of taxation. The amount called from each member state is a fixed proportion of its GNI, though the true cost to the UK is then attenuated by the famous rebate negotiated in 1984 by Margaret Thatcher. Despite some of the headlines about a ‘tax on prosperity’, the principle that countries pay more when GNI rises has been accepted since the system was introduced over a quarter of a century ago. In some years the UK has benefited, in others it has had to pay, as have all other member states.
Second, the GNI resource was something that British negotiators pushed strongly for when it was first introduced, and that the UK has fought to retain ever since. Others have argued for a tax to be assigned to the EU, in much the same way as council tax in the UK or sales taxes in the United States are deemed to belong to the local tier of government. But the UK, along with other net contributors to the EU budget, notably Germany, has been adamant that there should be no such tax. The total amount called from the GNI resource is determined by the spending from the EU budget and, in this regard, acts as a residual resource to ensure that the EU budget always balances (as it is required to do by treaty). Spending is not entirely predictable because the rigorous controls which countries like the UK insist that the EU impose have meant that some projects only become eligible to receive funding much later than anticipated.
The third consideration is that this year’s calculations are unusual, because the statisticians who construct the GNI data recently completed a methodological review of how national accounts are compiled. These are once-in-a-decade exercises, intended to reflect new insights into how income is generated and advances in data collection. The results revealed that the UK, and a number of the others now being asked to pay more, have been underestimating their prosperity. Normally this would not be that significant, but one of the new factors taken into account is the scope of the hidden economy. In particular, new estimates have been made of the extent of the drug and prostitution markets, something that Germany was apparently already doing.
These data corrections are well-known to the UK authorities and the spicier bits of the new methodology made the news headlines over the summer. Nor is it a form of correction that the Treasury can plausibly claim not to have expected. Indeed, in the late 1980s, Italy revalued its GDP and GNI substantially after introducing new ways of estimating the size of its hidden economy. Overnight, Italy overtook the UK – known at the time as il sorpasso (the over-taking) – but also reportedly drawing the retort from Thatcher that the Italians could henceforth pay more towards the EU budget. Moreover, it is ingrained into Treasury officials that they should be alert to any statistical manipulation that would increase GNI, precisely because of this sort of effect. Therefore, the prime minister is either being disingenuous in claiming that the effects of the re-basing of GNI were unexpected, or he knew full well and decided, nevertheless, to exploit it for immediate political purposes.
Other countries and the European Commission insist that the rules are clear and that Britain will have to pay, implying little room for manoeuvre for the prime minister. Perhaps some fault will be discovered in the calculations, allowing a more palatable figure to emerge. There is also a possibility that enough pressure will be brought to bear on the net winners to persuade them to postpone or average out the introduction of the new GNI estimates, reducing the amount the new net losers will have to pay this year. However, tax-payers in other countries will wonder why their governments should agree to pay more to help the British prime minister mollify eurosceptics at home. Postponing the bills would also be tricky because the EU is legally banned from borrowing.
Leaving aside whether Cameron’s stance leaves wiggle-room to pay subsequently (though only after the Rochester and Strood by-election), the new dispute is revealing about his approach to the EU. It follows his ill-judged campaign to prevent Jean-Claude Juncker becoming president of the European Commission. Two conclusions can be drawn: first, that not enough effort is made to understand how the EU functions or to form alliances to head off potential trouble; and second, that there is too much of a tendency to shoot from the hip. This is a conjunction that can only add to the prospects of further imbroglios and a growing probability of a Brexit.
Professor Iain Begg
Associate Fellow, Europe Programme – Chatham House
MH17’s black box flight recorders have been handed over by pro-Russian rebels
British air accident investigators will retrieve data from the black boxes of crashed flight MH17, UK Prime Minister David Cameron has said.
According to BBC this follows a request by authorities in the Netherlands, where the Malaysia Airlines plane flew from before crashing in Ukraine.
The experts, based at Farnborough, will download data from the flight recorders for “international analysis”.
Some 298 people, including 10 Britons, were killed in the crash.
Mr Cameron tweeted: “We’ve agreed Dutch request for air accident investigators at Farnborough to retrieve data from MH17 black boxes for international analysis.”
Downing Street said information retrieved would be sent on to a Dutch and Ukrainian team for analysis.
The announcement comes after Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond joined other EU ministers in Brussels for talks about the shooting down of the Boeing 777-200 airliner in eastern Ukraine last Thursday.
Special room
The Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) confirmed it would be working on the flight recorders which have been handed over by pro-Russian rebels.
Malaysian Colonel Mohamed Sakri, who received the MH17 black boxes, said they were in the hands of the Dutch military and would be taken to the UK.
Analysis
Jonathan Sumberg, BBC transport reporter
Why are the black boxes being examined in the UK? The British Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) tell me they are one of only two so-called “replay units” in Europe with the necessary equipment to listen to what has been recorded on the cockpit voice recorder. The other is in France.
They have the kit to analyse in minute detail what can be heard in the last few minutes of flight MH17. The information is incredibly sensitive so investigators gather in a sealed room so that only those who should be listening can listen.
There are four speakers on the walls creating a surround sound – anything to help the investigators hear exactly what went on. They may even hear any explosion.
The AAIB will not tell me when they expect to get their hands on the black boxes. But investigators are confident that, depending on the extent of the damage, they can retrieve information from the boxes within 24 hours.
One of the boxes records technical information relating to the performance of the aircraft and the other takes down sounds such as pilots’ voices and, potentially, an explosion.
BBC transport reporter Jonathan Sumberg said it was unclear how useful the recorders would be.
Investigators will be able to collect information as long as there is no damage to the black boxes, which are designed to withstand a plane crash.
One former AAIB investigator told the BBC that the cockpit recorder might be able to detect the sound of shrapnel, which would distinguish between an explosive and something like engine failure.
BBC transport correspondent Richard Westcott said he had visited the room at Farnborough where the work is to be carried out.
He said: “It’s quite a phenomenal kind of laboratory where they go in. They seal the door, no-one can have any kind of device that will listen in to the conversation in the cockpit – because it’s obviously incredibly stressful if something like that gets out for families and so on – and then they will listen to what was actually happening on board.”
He added: “We were always going to be involved as a country, this is us doing our bit because we’ve got the right facilities.”
David Gleave, an aviation safety researcher at Loughborough University, said he did not think the data could have been tampered with, as has been suggested, in such a short space of time.
“In this case, if it was a missile attack, it’s likely there’ll also be lots of physical evidence so how would you remove that or tamper with it? There’s no point tampering with the boxes if you couldn’t remove the physical evidence as well,” he said.
Victim identification
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said a train carrying the bodies bodies of those who had died had arrived in Kharkiv, which is outside rebel territory in Ukraine, and the black boxes destined for the UK were on board.
Dutch officials later said that only 200 bodies had arrived in Kharkiv – not 282 as claimed by the rebels.
The first aircraft containing bodies are expected to arrive in Eindhoven on Wednesday.
A Metropolitan Police-led team of officers will go to the Netherlands to help with the process of identifying the victims.
A satellite image released on Tuesday shows the main crash site of MH17
Western leaders accuse Russia of arming the rebels, and believe they shot down flight MH17 with a ground-to-air missile.
But Russia has suggested Ukrainian government forces are to blame.
Experts who have visited the crash scene so far include four from the Ukrainian civil aviation department, one from Malaysia Airlines, two from Malaysia’s department for civil aviation and three Dutch pathologists, according to Michael Bociurkiw of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
Mr Hammond said EU ministers had agreed to a “clear political commitment to act in response to this outrage” by drawing up a list of people close to the Russian leadership who would be subject to sanctions.
“The cronies of Mr Putin and his clique in the Kremlin are the people who have to bear the pressure because it is only them feeling the pressure that will in turn put pressure on the Russian government,” he said.
“If the financial interests of the group around the leadership are affected the leadership will know about it.”
38-year-old was shot dead in front of his wife and children at home in 1989
Report by Sir Desmond de Silva QC published today reveals the killing might not have happened without the involvement of security agencies
Widow Geraldine has repeatedly called for a full public inquiry
David Cameron admitted there was collusion between police and loyalists responsible for the killing but only ordered a review of the case
David Cameron said the Government was ‘deeply sorry’ yesterday after a report into the murder of solicitor Pat Finucane found the security services colluded with the loyalist terrorists who killed him.
A review of the case by Sir Desmond de Silva, QC, found the father-of-three would probably not have been executed by the Ulster Defence Association without the encouragement of British agents.
Sir Desmond said state employees ‘furthered and facilitated’ the shooting of the 38-year-old, who was gunned down in front of his family in 1989.
But his finding that there was no evidence of an over-arching conspiracy involving ministers or security chiefs to target Mr Finucane sparked calls for a full public inquiry.
The widow of murdered Belfast solicitor Mr Finucane slammed a report into his death as ‘a sham… a whitewash… a confidence trick’.
Geraldine Finucane said Sir Desmond de Silva’s report was ‘not the truth’ and renewed her call for a full public inquiry.
In a Commons statement today, David Cameron admitted Mr Finucane might still be alive had police and state agencies not colluded in his murder.
The Prime Minister said the ‘appalling crime’ was the result of ‘shocking levels’ of state collusion and apologised on ‘behalf of the government and the whole country’.
The de Silva review into the 1989 killing found that state employees actively ‘furthered and facilitated’ the loyalist murder of Mr Finucane.
But the victim’s family have criticised the review, insisting only a full public inquiry will reveal the truth about his murder.
The 38-year-old was shot in front of his wife and children at home by loyalist paramilitaries from the Ulster Defence Association in 1989.
At a press conference after the review was published, Mrs Finucane accused the British Government of suppressing the truth while attempting to blame dead individuals and disbanded organisations while exonerating ministers, serving officers and existing security agencies.
Mrs Finucane said: ‘Yet another British government has engineered a suppression of the truth behind the murder of my husband, Pat Finucane.
‘At every turn it is clear that this report has done exactly what was required – to give the benefit of the doubt to the state, its Cabinet and ministers, to the Army, to the intelligence services and to itself.
‘At every turn, dead witnesses have been blamed and defunct agencies found wanting. Serving personnel and active state departments appear to have been excused.
‘The dirt has been swept under the carpet without any serious attempt to lift the lid on what really happened to Pat and so many others.
‘This report is a sham, this report is a whitewash, this report is a confidence trick dressed up as independent scrutiny and given invisible clothes of reliability. But most of all, most hurtful and insulting of all, this report is not the truth.’
Mr Cameron told the Commons said the review had found the Army and Special Branch had advance notice of a series of assassinations planned by the loyalist paramilitary group, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), but nothing was done.
The review found a ‘relentless’ effort to stop justice being done with Army officials giving the Ministry of Defence highly misleading and inaccurate information, Mr Cameron said.
Successive UK Governments are accused of a ‘wilful and abject failure’ to properly control secret agents within paramilitary groups.
Mr Cameron said: ‘It is really shocking this happened in our country. Collusion demonstrated beyond any doubt by Sir Desmond, which included the involvement of state agencies in murder, is totally unacceptable.
‘We do not defend our security forces or the many who have served in them with great distinction by trying to claim otherwise. Collusion should never, ever happen.
‘On behalf of the Government and the whole country, let me say again to the Finucane family I am deeply sorry.’
The review found no evidence that any Government was informed in advance of Mr Finucane’s murder or knew about the subsequent cover-up.
Sir Menzies Campbell, former Lib Dem leader, said he had never heard a statement in the Commons which filled him with more ‘revulsion’.
However, today Mr Finucane’s son John said he could not believe that there had been a public inquiry into newspapers hacking mobile phone messages but not into state involvement in the death of a British lawyer.
‘We’re talking about the murder of a lawyer in the UK,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
‘I rather flippantly announced last year that I thought it would have been easier if my father’s phone had been hacked rather than being killed. That’s not in any way to disrespect the victims of phone hacking.
‘But if we can have an inquiry into something as important as that, this case is the murder of a lawyer which the British government have admitted there was collusion, you don’t then deal with that, such a fundamental attack on democracy, by holding a non-statutory review behind closed doors.’
Mr Cameron has apologised more than once for the collusion between police and the loyalists responsible for the murder.
But Mr Finucane added today: ‘An apology is not in the correct running order. You don’t apologise for something but then not fully admit what it is you’re apologising for. I think that’s what the Prime Minister has done.’
The Finucane are unhappy that in 2001 the British government agreed during peace talks to meet honour for public inquiries into deaths. Of five recommended, four were held but in Mr Finucane’s case it was rejected.
Mr Funucane said: ‘The only case that’s outstanding is the case of my father. This review, we feel, is the embodiment of a broken promise of the British Government. We do feel that if they are sincere in dealing with this issue then they need to grasp this issue and they need to deal with it in a credible fashion.’
The loyalist paramilitaries shot Mr Finucane 14 times as he sat eating a Sunday meal at home, wounding his wife in the process. The couple’s three children witnessed the attack.
The former head of the Metropolitan Police in London, Sir John Stevens, has previously investigated collusion claims surrounding Mr Finucane’s death.
Shortly after starting the new inquiry, the Stevens team charged former Royal Ulster Constabulary Special Branch agent and loyalist quartermaster William Stobie in connection with the killing.
But in November 2001 the case collapsed and he was shot dead outside his home within weeks.
In September 2004 a loyalist accused of murdering the solicitor pleaded guilty to murdering him. Ken Barrett entered his plea at the beginning of his trial.
Prime Minister David Cameron, who ordered the de Silva review, will deliver a statement to the Commons
In 2004, retired Canadian judge Mr Justice Peter Cory, asked by the Government to investigate cases of suspected collusion, concluded that military and police intelligence knew of the Finucane murder plot and failed to intervene. He recommended a public inquiry.
That year, Barrett was sentenced to 22 years’ imprisonment.
In 2004, then Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy announced an inquiry under new legislation introduced in 2005.
The Finucane family opposed the Inquiries Act 2005, arguing it would allow government to interfere with the independence of a future inquiry because a government minister could rule whether the inquiry sat in public or private.
As a result, plans to establish an inquiry were halted by former Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain.
In October 2011, the Government ruled out a public inquiry into Mr Finucane’s murder but put forward a proposal for a leading QC to review the case. That review is to be published today.
Former Met Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens published the results of his four-year inquiry into Pat Finucane’s murder in 2003. The report confirmed that rogue elements in the security forces were involved in a deadly plot with loyalist paramilitaries to carry out a series of sectarian murders in Northern Ireland
ISTANBUL — Turkish President Abdullah Gul headed to Britain on Sunday for a three-day state visit aimed at seeking support from the Turkey’s ally in its bid to join the EU.
“I will underline the importance of England’s continued support in making sure negotiations are not blocked by artifical political obstacles,” Gul told journalists in Turkey before flying off to London.
Ankara opened membership negotiations with the EU in 2005 but progress has been slow, in part due to opposition from Germany and France.
Gul said in comments published in Britain’s Sunday Telegraph that his country is still keen to join the bloc even as the eurozone crisis spreads.
One of the key sticking points to entry is Cyprus, which has been divided since 1974 when Turkish troops invaded and its northern third in response to an Athens-engineered coup in Nicosia aimed at union with Greece.
Ankara refuses to recognise the internationally recognised Greek-Cypriot government and UN-sponsored talks aimed at reunifying the eastern Mediterranean island have so far been in vain.
Greek-Cypriot aeroplanes and boats arriving at Turkish entry points are routinely blocked, despite agreements with the EU to allow them access.
Turkey has threatened to freeze diplomatic relations with the EU when Cyprus takes on the rotating EU presidency for six months in July 2012 if there is no reunification deal.
“I am going to ask England, which is part of the Cypriot question as a guarantor country, to use all its weight to push for a solution,” said Gul.
During his visit, Gul will meet British Prime Minister David Cameron, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and opposition Labour leader Ed Miliband, as well as several members of the royal family.
It is the first state visit to Britain by a Turkish president for 23 years.
via AFP: Turkish president in Britain for EU bid support.
(Reuters) – A former top banker, weighing into a protest movement in Britain against abuses and excesses of modern capitalism, said on Sunday the market economy had lost “its moral foundations with disastrous consequences.”
Ken Costa, a former chairman of UBS Europe and Lazard International, spoke out after being appointed by Bishop of London Richard Chartres to lead an initiative aimed at “reconnecting the financial with the ethical.”
Britain has become preoccupied with the ethics of elite financiers since a group of protesters, unhappy at the excesses of modern capitalism and its huge inequalities in wealth, pitched tents outside St Paul’s Cathedral in London last month.
The controversy brought to a head by the St Paul’s protest has elicited comments from Prime Minister David Cameron and the head of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, raising questions about regulation, including a financial transaction tax.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Costa said he would look at “how the market has managed to slip its moral moorings.
“For some time and particularly during the exuberant irrationality of the last few decades, the market economy has shifted from its moral foundations with disastrous consequences,” he said.
While still regarding financial incentives as “both valid and effective,” he said there was a need to “rebalance the equilibrium between risk, responsibility and reward.”
The St Paul’s demonstration replicates others worldwide, but has spotlighted not only banker bonuses and directors’ pay but also relations between politicians, financiers and the Church and the role they should play in society.
On Sunday, leader of the opposition David Miliband entered the fray, writing in the Observer: “You do not have to be in a tent to feel angry.
“Many of those who earn the most, exercise great power, enjoy enormous privilege — in the City and elsewhere — do so with values that are out of kilter with almost everyone else,” Miliband said.
“Only the most reckless will ignore or, still worse, dismiss the danger signals.” He said corporate bosses should have to justify their rewards to an employee who sits on a committee deciding salary packages.
The Archbishop of York John Sentamu, the second most senior cleric in the Church of England, wrote in a regional newspaper over the weekend: “The ill effects of very large income differences between rich and poor are that they weaken community life and make societies less cohesive.”
A new survey showed that Britain’s top company directors received a 50 percent average pay rise while the majority of Britons are having to endure a pay freeze during a period of austerity imposed by the government to reduce high debt.
Zac Goldsmith launched his business manifesto today with a promise to create a chief digital officer at City Hall to help solve some of London’s biggest challenges. ‘Man and the plan’
