And it wasn't even close. Time will tell how modern the "new" Tories are but for now, it's pretty clear people have had enough of (new) Labour. London Mayor Ken Livingston, despite his own bizarre rants, had remained popular but the Tories were much more successful with getting voters to the polls. Livingston lost 53%-47% to current Tory MP Boris Johnson.
New Labour took a beating at the polls yesterday with results not seen since the early 1970s. The years of Blair-spin finally caught up to Labour and Gordon Brown is not really the type that can ignite the troops. Much like the US, the UK economy is melting down with debt (personal debt is even higher than in the US) and voters are in a sour mood.
Blair extended Thatcherism and added a smiling face to the greed-is-good policies so it's hard to say just how well the Conservatives will do once they take over. Would the Tories really have avoided war in Iraq? Would their foreign policy look different than the Bush-loving Blair's policies? Doubtful. Would their fiscal policies be that much different? A bit, but doubtful as well. With the Blairite-New Labour goofiness with religion and demands for extended detention in so-called terror cases, it's not the stark difference that would have existed a few years before Blair. The Conservatives will surely push Gordon Brown out soon but how different actual policies will be is another story.
"Banks have come to realise in the recent crisis that they are paying the price for having designed compensation packages which provide incentives that are not, in the long run, in the interests of the banks themselves, and I would like to think that would change," King said.
Last week the director-general of the CBI, Richard Lambert, said the bonus culture in the City and Wall Street had been responsible for much of the excessive risk-taking that led to the collapse of the US mortgage and housing markets.
King said yesterday, however, that the hubris of which the City had been guilty had now disappeared, as banks were having to raise capital from their shareholders and cut jobs to repair their balance sheets. "I don't think there is much hubris around today. I hope we do not return to this hubris ... it is important that people learn the lessons from this crisis."
I'm sure the banks are learning a good hard lesson as we throw more bailout cash at them without strings. They must be all a quiver with fear. The bankers are no doubt selling their third and fourth houses on Craigslist, right there with their with their yachts and Bentley.
While it may seem odd that so many banks are scrambling around the world for cash, I can somewhat live with it. Raising capital from foreign governments that will now have a role in a major bank is unsettling if you think this out into the future, but it could be worse. What is much more problematic is that these banks continue to be fed by taxpayers in the US and UK (and no doubt elsewhere) to prevent them from having to raise even more capital.
The banks have no issue with raising more capital to pay for their problems so why are taxpayers - who are already suffering due to banking problems - bailing out banks? It's obvious they get much better terms from taxpayers during this process but what taxpayer wouldn't want to see some friendly terms given back in their direction? To hell with the gamblers in the banking industry, but politicians on both sides of the pond are much too proper to say what everyone in the real world is already thinking. Maybe the voters will just say to hell with the politicians who are going along with this and vote them out.
Impressive. How many times over the course of the last two bubbles have we heard this talk? Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has had their own multi-billion dollar run-in with subprime write downs so now, surprisingly like Lehman Brothers who also have been in trouble, they are forecasting a soft landing. What are the odds of such a statement coming from a troubled institution who desperately needs positive spin? No conflict of interest there.
Forget about the billions that have been wiped away from the books. Ignore the retirement plans that have gone up in smoke. Don't even think about the bank lending that has pushed away possible clients. Pretend that people and businesses are not over-extended with credit and that the US economy - the traditional global economic engine - is not imploding. Got that? Forget about every reality that you see around you and then yes, it's easy to see that a soft landing is ahead. No one else sees the soft landing, but they're all just being negative. I hear prosperity is just around the corner too.
Could you even imagine Bush publicly calling for this in the US despite massive funding to the banks? When pigs fly, I suppose.
Banks were urged by Gordon Brown today to pass on last week's interest rate cut to customers, and to 'come clean' about their bad debts, to help ease market uncertainty.
Amid continuing financial uncertainty, the Bank of England cut the base rate last week for the third time since December, but the cost of borrowing could continue to rise, putting thousands of homeowners under strain. Last night, Chancellor Alistair Darling said that the present turbulence was 'the biggest economic shock since the Great Depression'. He plans to meet lenders to discuss new measures to ensure those lower interest rates are passed on to mortgage holders.
This is a really interesting new program which differs from previous tidal energy prospects. For years governments (from both main parties) pushed this aside, opting for whatever the big energy companies were offering, such as nuclear or more disruptive tidal energies. The UK has especially strong tidal currents making it an ideal location for generating power underwater. Great read from The Independent here and a story and more photos of the project here. Could this be a fit for the US? Who knows, but this goes to show that we need to move beyond what the traditional big energy businesses want to promote. Just because they say something won't work (read: take money and focus from their business) doesn't mean it's true. We ought to be providing more funding for new ideas of alternative energies and not only from the largest businesses.
The Bank of England said it would offer five billion pounds of three-day funds later on Monday in an exceptional fine-tuning operation designed to bring overnight interest rates down.
"This action is being taken in response to conditions in the short-term money markets this morning," the Bank said in a statement.
Thankfully the British Home Secretary has come to his senses. John posted about this earlier in the week when the government was preparing to send Kazemi back to Iran where he feared a death sentence, like his boyfriend, for being gay. It's almost beyond belief that it had to come to this. How could any government even think of deporting someone under such circumstances?
A gay teenager who faces the death penalty if he is forced to return to Iran has won a temporary reprieve after the Home Secretary halted his planned deportation and agreed to reconsider his case.
The Government's surprise intervention yesterday follows an international outcry over the plight of Mehdi Kazemi, 19, who lost his asylum claim in Britain even though his former boyfriend had been arrested by the Iranian state police and executed for sodomy.
The British teachers union, thankfully, is not as enthusiastic about teaching the glories of invading a country and killing tens of thousands of civilians. How long before this tripe ends up in US schools, though it's probably already part of the program for home schoolers and in the deep South. The British school program has been provided by the UK Ministry of Defence.
At the heart of the union's concern is a lesson plan commissioned by an organisation called Kids Connections for the Ministry of Defence aimed at stimulating classroom debate about the Iraq war.
In a "Students' Worksheet" which accompanies the lesson plan, it stresses the "reconstruction" of Iraq, noting that 5,000 schools and 20 hospitals have been rebuilt. But there is no mention of civilian casualties.
In the "Teacher Notes" section, it talks about how the "invasion was necessary to allow the opportunity to remove Saddam Hussein" but it fails to mention the lack of United Nations backing for the war. The notes also use the American spelling of "program".
Addressing whether the MoD should be providing materials for schools, Mr Sinnott said that he did not object, as long as the material was accurate, presented responsibly and contained a balanced view of opinions.
The union has protested to the Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, who has referred the complaint to the MoD. In a letter to Mr Balls, Mr Sinnott said: "I have to say that were the MoD pack to be distributed and followed without the legally required 'balanced presentation of opposing views' there would, in my view, be very serious risk of a finding of non-compliance with section 406 (of the 1996 Education Act) at least.
Just a guess, but there might be a security issue at the British Home Office. Just maybe. Fortunately it was encrypted.
The disc was found by technicians when the computer was taken into a small IT repair company for service.
The laptop had been bought on eBay and taken to Leapfrog Computer repairs in Westhoughton, near Bolton, Greater Manchester, on Tuesday morning.
An engineer took the notebook apart and found a disc marked "Home Office Confidential" hidden beneath the keyboard. Lee Bevan, the managing director of LeapFrog Computers, said: "This seemed like just another IT repair ... the customer said he had bought it on eBay and seemed quite innocent. It was just an ordinary laptop and it was only when we opened up the keyboard that we found the disc - it had the words Home Office and Confidential written on it.
"The disc appeared to be hidden deliberately underneath the keyboard. We put the disc in the drive to see what it was, but it was encrypted.
Please. If Porsche and the rest of the German automakers would quit this attitude and start producing cars that polluted less it would be much better for everyone. Germany has already forced the EU to allow automakers to get away with heavy gas guzzlers and now the luxury car maker is whining about about gas guzzlers having to pay more money to drive in London.
Somehow it's hard to sympathize with drivers who are paying well over $100 to fill their tank (if not closer to $200) on top of the $100,000+ they pay for the SUV. We're not talking about people who have to buy a big truck out of necessity for work to pay their bills. Driving a beast like this is a luxury that they chose on their own. If they can afford those costs so easily, they can afford to pay for their pollution. Porsche ought to spend more money on building environmentally friendly cars and less money on lawyers and lobbyists who bully others into global warming.
The Brits have been much more interested in removing wasteful packaging compared to other countries so it's good to see Cadbury respond with their new environmentally friendly Easter eggs this year. It's a start...
The confectionary group hopes to sell 30-35m eggs in the run up to Easter, several million from the unboxed range.
Mark Barthel, of packaging campaign and consultancy group Wrap, said: "This is good news for both the consumer and the environment but also for Cadbury, as cutting waste also means cutting costs."
Last summer Cadbury announced a "Purple goes Green" pledge to reduce carbon emissions by 2020. It includes a pledge to cut packaging by 10%.
The "Velib" program in Paris has been an enormous success with 20,000 bikes stationed around Paris and more to come. Since the launch, big city mayors from around the world (including Bloomberg from New York) have visited Paris to check out the new system that allows people to cheaply rent bikes instead of driving or using other public transport. (They are priced more for point-to-point transport and less for casual riding around town.) Great idea.
Saudi Arabia's rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday.
Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced "another 7/7" and the loss of "British lives on British streets" if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence.
Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE.
He was accused in yesterday's high court hearings of flying to London in December 2006 and uttering threats which made the prime minister, Tony Blair, force an end to the Serious Fraud Office investigation into bribery allegations involving Bandar and his family.
The threats halted the fraud inquiry, but triggered an international outcry, with allegations that Britain had broken international anti-bribery treaties.
London's transport authority has refused to display a poster featuring the 16th-century "Venus" by German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder, saying it is overtly sexual.
The painting, which depicts a golden-haired, milky-skinned woman cocking her hips behind a transparent veil, is one of 70 works due to go on display at London's Royal Academy of Arts on March 8.
Saudi Arabia's rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday.
Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced "another 7/7" and the loss of "British lives on British streets" if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence.
Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE.
As bad as the news is in the UK, keep in mind that their currency is much stronger than the 98 pound weakling US dollar so purchasing gas for the UK is cheaper. (The US dollar is used globally for buying and selling oil.) Also keep in mind that oil, though slightly down yesterday, has slipped back into the 90's closing yesterday at $93. The more the Bank of England cuts the lending rate while oil is this high, the higher the rate of inflation and the same applies to the Federal Reserve in the US.
The Office for National Statistics said factory gate inflation rose at its fastest annual pace in more than 16 years, after the annual rate shot up to 5.7% last month from 5% in December.
The rise was driven by an all-time high annual inflation rate in ingredients for home-produced food of 36%, mainly due to soaring wheat costs. Bread prices rose by 7.5% last year, while milk, cheese and eggs surged by 15%.
Record oil prices which topped $100 a barrel pushed crude oil costs up by 70% over the year - the highest rate in nearly eight years. Even stripping out volatile items such as food, drink, tobacco and petrol, core output price inflation increased by the fastest monthly rate since records began in 1986.
Obviously athletes are going to be there to compete in whatever it is that they do, but to specifically order the team to not discuss anything that may be politically sensitive is pathetic. I think China will be just fine regardless of what an athlete from a foreign country might say, but the UK Olympic association sure is taking a hit on the issue of freedom of speech. This is not exactly what I would expect from an otherwise democratic country that values freedom of speech. If China is unable to handle a few words in English by foreigners (and I believe they can) then they have much bigger problems. What an incredibly stupid and cowardly idea by the BOA.
Oxford University is launching a study in the British prison system to investigate the links between anti-social behavior and diet/nutrition. The initial studies have shown there could be a connection and changes could reduce (not eliminate) violent behavior in a significant portion of the population.
Mark Walport, head of the Wellcome Trust, which is funding the three-year study, said: "If this study shows that nutritional supplementation affects behaviour it could have profound significance for nutritional guidelines, not only within the criminal justice system but in the wider community – in schools, for example. We are all used to nutritional guidelines for our physical health but this study could lead to revisions taking account of our mental health."
The theory behind the trial is that when the brain is starved of essential nutrients, especially omega-3 fatty acids, which are a central building block of brain neurons, it loses "flexibility". This shortens attention spans and undermines self-control. Even though prison food is nutritious, prisoners tend to make unhealthy choices and need supplements, the researchers say.
