• Press F5 for the latest or use our auto-refresh button below • Email paul.doyle@guardian.co.uk with your thoughts • Follow Paul on Twitter if that’s your thing • Follow all tonight’s latest scores across Europe On England: “It looks like Downing playing for Liverpool and Young playing for Manchester United is a wing-wing situation for England,” chortles Erlend Andenaes. In other news , Armenia have just taken the lead in Slovakia, meaning Ireland could remain in the runners-up spot tonight following their jammy draw in Russia. Half-time: England are doing enough. After a desultory half hour Downing and Young combined for a fine goal and confidence has coursed through them ever since. They’ve been far from brilliant, but they’ve been better than Wales. 42 min: Wales’ limitations as an attacking force are being exposed now, as despite their attempts to rebel against their apparent fate, England, becalmed by the goal, are comfortably on top, without dazzling. 40 min: Young produces a superb cross after a short corner, but Rooney fails to connect with an attempted header just five yards out. 38 min: Bale attempts a solo burst from deep, but runs into trouble and England launch the ball back forward quickfast. Hennessey is forced to charge off his line to boot it clear just before Rooney could latch onto it. 36 min: Downing has his dander up and that’s bad news for Taylor, who’s starting to look decidedly dizzy. GOAL! England 1-0 Wales (Young 35′) Unsurprisingly the wingers were responsible for the break-through. Downing twisted and darted past Ledley down the right and then cut the ball back into the centre, where Young arrived to drive low into the net from eight yards. 32 min: Gunter dispossess goals deep in his own half and then races forward … and completely loses his head, attempting to blast the ball into the top corner from 30 yards. Keep their composure in such situations and Wales could shock England. 30 min: Wales are working extremely hard to subdue England, a few forays down the flanks from Downing and Young being the only signs of English penetration. The midfield trio of Lampard, Milner and Barry is not, would you believe, offering any ingenuity. 27 min: The Welsh have a solid centre so England can only make any ground down the wings. Young jinks and tries to tempt Gunter into committing himself but the defender holds his ground, though Young still manages to deliver a dangerous cross, which Rooney meet and volleys way, way over. 25 min: A lapse of concentration from Cole gives Wales a corner. The visitors must be beginning to sense an upset given England’s drabness so far. But they’ll have to come up with something better than the weak corner that they’ve just delivered. 23 min: In a nutshell, this has been a typical England Wembley performance so far. Uninspired. 20 min: England are too proud to rough up Wales’ main man. Milner gets a deserved booking for clattering into Bale. 19 min: England have truly twigged that Downing has Taylor on toast, so are feeding him regularly. A fine cross towards Rooney from the Liverpool man prompts Hennessey to scamper off his line to claim. Meanwhile, this from Robin Hazlehurst. “Fancy updates from Norn Iron’s match in Estonia?” chirps Robin. “I’m watching it live on Estonian TV – I would have gone but the game actually sold out. 30 minutes gone, NI had most of the possession but not too many real threats, and Vunk has just put Estonia ahead with a cracking first-time strike from outside the box. Worth looking up. The Irish have now got the vunk on – oh and Estonia have just scored from 30 yards, Kink this time. Vunk and Kink, what a strikeforce.” 17 min: Taylor buys a Downing feint all too easily but the winger overhits his cross. However, encouraged by the ease with which Downing got to the by-line, England work it down the right again, and this time the cross demands an urgent headed clearance. 14 min: Morison gives Terry a bit of the Grant Holt treatment, outrunning and then outmuscling the England captain to reach a long ball first. And then boom a rash shot miles over from 25 yards and an acute angle. “You know, the fact that the crowd applauded a successful sideways pass from Lampard to Cole in the sixth minute tells you everything that is wrong with the English game,” intones Phil Sawyer. “Have our expectations really sunk so low?” Well, in days of yore they’d have been baying at every player to launch it into the mixer, so perhaps that is progress? 12 min: Wales are beginning to emerge as an offensive force, having weathered England’s rather feeble storm. Collison embarks on a fine run through the middle before being halted by an impressive Terry challenge. Cahill attempts to mop up but only goes an spills a bucket of dirty water all over the box, allowing Ramsey to fire off a shot from the edge of the area. A terrible shot, as it turned out. 11 min: As soon as Bale gets the ball, which is rarely, England players converge on him. Young proves the point, by chopping the Spur down mid-way inside the England half. Bale swings in the resultant freekick and Williams nods several yards wide. 9 min: England are dominating possession, and channelling most of their attack down their left, seemingly having identified Gunter as a weak link. Cole is getting a lot of space but so far has not made optimal use of it. 7 min: Blake diverts a Cole cross behind for a corner. Terry meets Young’s delivery but heads behind, then complains about Williams’ holding him even though he had a handful of Williams’ short too. 5 min: You could call England’s start ponderous or composed, depending on your mood. But Lampard, for one, appears to have had enough of the slow sideways passing so launches on long for Rooney to chase. Williams misjudges it but Hennessey hurtles off his line to intercept before Rooney can impose punishment. 3 min: So it’s all England so far, but most in the English half too. In other words, nothing much is happening yet. Or, “the sides are just feeling each other out”. 1 min: England set the game in motion. Immediately they begin stroking the ball around at a somewhat leisurely pace. They eventually work their way down the left before Gunter intervenes, poking the ball out of play from beneath Cole’s feet. 7:42pm: Not to be outdone, some avenging Welsh fans boo (a particularly dreary rendition of) God Save the Queen. 7:41pm: The Welsh anthem is greeted by boos and whistles by a sizeable contingent of heroic Englishmen in the crowd. Well done lads, that’ll learn ‘em. 7:39pm: So much for the kick-off delay. The teams waddle out onto the pitch to moderate applause: Wembley still only seems about half-full … 7:35pm: Word from Wembley is that congestion outside the ground is so bad that kick-off is likely to be delayed. Next year’s Olympics are going to be a right old lark, aren’t they? Preamble: England are on their worst winless streak at home for 30 years and you wouldn’t rule out another bout of Wembley paralysis, and not simply because creaking Frank Lampard has returned to the starting line-up. In the only other change from Friday’s easy victory in Bulgaria, Fabio Capello has drafted in James Milner, both because Theo Walcott has a “knock” and because Wales’ best player, Gareth Bale, needs to be carefully tracked. Can’t leave anything to chance when you’re hosting the team ranked 117th in the world. Bale produced his best ever performance for his country as Wales’ ended an epic slump by beating Montenegro last Friday but two of the other star performers in that match, David Vaughan and Craig Bellamy, got yellow cards booked and are therefore suspended. That was particularly harsh on Bellamy, who was booked for an imaginary foul, but others might say that it’s impossible to be too harsh on Craig Bellamy so there you go. The absent duo are replaced tonight by Jack Collison and Andrew Crofts. Steve Morison was the only Norwich player to look out of his depth when they took on Chelsea at Stamford Bridge last week but after a fine performance against Montenegro he may be fancying his chances of giving John Terry a tougher game this time, possibly having got tips off Grant Holt, who tormented the England captain in that narrow Norwich loss. In all likelihood, however, most of the action is going to be around the Welsh box, which means at least someone in red is going to have to replicate the magnificent defiance of Richard Dunne in Moscow this afternoon if Wales are to avoid defeat. Teams: England: Hart; Smalling, Cole, Cahill, Terry; Barry, Downing, Lampard, Milner; Young, Rooney. Wales: Hennessey; Gunter, Blake, Williams, Taylor; Ledley, Crofts, Ramsey; Collison, Morison, Bale Euro 2012 qualifiers England Wales Euro 2012 Paul Doyle guardian.co.uk
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Shahrvand-e-Emrooz shut down after mocking president’s relationship with ‘wise man’ Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei The picture looks like a 16th-century Persian miniature. The wise man on the right is lecturing his companions who kneel dutifully in front of him, listening to his sermon. But something is not quite right. On second look, it becomes clear that all the characters are in fact recognisable to modern-day Iranians. Indeed, the wise man is none other than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s confidant, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei . And in an obvious satire of the country’s political leaders, it is Mashaei who counts the president among his obedient followers – not the other way round. The image appeared on the front page of an Iranian magazine, Shahrvand-e-Emrooz , a month ago. But now it seems the Iranian regime has taken offence, and it is widely believed the picture was the reason behind the enforced closure of the magazine on Monday. Shahrvand-e-Emrooz was previously shut down, along with several other titles, after the unrest that followed the 2009 elections, but resumed publication recently. Another publication, Roozegar , was also closed on Monday. The picture highlights the concerns among Iranian conservatives over Mashaei’s growing political influence . Supporters of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, believe that Mashaei, whose daughter is married to the president’s son, is attempting to undermine clerical power in Iran. Opponents of Mashaei, who favours cultural openness, say he has the president under his “spell” and have accused his team of anything from corruption to sorcery . Several of Mashaei’s close allies and some senior aides to the president have been arrested in recent months. Ahmadinejad’s unwavering support for Mashaei has infuriated conservatives and has even cost him the support of Khamenei. In the past six months, a power struggle has developed between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei, which is widely believed to have stemmed from Mashaei’s influence. Analysts believe Ahmadinejad had been grooming Mashaei to succeed him in the next presidential elections, due in two years, but that has now become unlikely. Khamanei is also believed to have chosen to get along with Ahmadinejad rather than orchestrate a feud over Mashaei in an effort to avoid unrest during the elections. Iran’s opposition believes that by focusing on Mashaei and his relatively liberal views, Ahmadinejad is trying to find a way to attract votes and preserve his dwindling power. Analysts say Ahmadinejad and his team are casting their eyes on the period after Khamenei’s death. Tehran’s regime has given more space to opposition newspapers in recent weeks in a move to appease them in the runup to parliamentary elections. But it would appear that Shahrvand-e-Emrooz and Roozegar have gone too far in pushing the limits in criticising the government. In the picture, Mashaei who appears to be in a Safavid dynasty-era costume, is sitting close to Hamid Baghaei, Ahmadinejad’s executive deputy, who is shown as a handsome male companion. Iranian bloggers have also joked about Ahmadinejad’s relationship with Mashaei, which is often described as affectionate. Roozegar is believed to have been closed for publishing an interview with an Iranian politician analyst, Morad Saghafi, who referred to the 2009 post-election unrest. Reporters Without Borders on Tuesday condemned the closure of the publications and the ongoing imprisonment of Iranian journalists and bloggers. “Despite some conciliatory gestures, the Iranian authorities continue to crack down on the media and journalists, closing the weekly Shahrvand e-Emrooz and the daily Roozegar yesterday,” it said. Iran remains one of the world’s worst jailers of journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, which campaigns for press freedom. Iran Press freedom Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Middle East Newspapers Newspapers & magazines Saeed Kamali Dehghan guardian.co.uk
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Moat inquest told family should have been involved, and hear that gunman had previously attempted suicide Raoul Moat’s elder brother told an inquest he believes police made a mistake in not allowing him to speak to the fugitive gunman during a stand-off in which he died. Within days of Moat’s release from Durham prison in July last year, he shot and injured 22-year-old Samantha Stobbart, the mother of his child, and killed her new boyfriend, 29-year-old Chris Brown. He also shot and blinded PC David Rathband, an unarmed officer sitting in a patrol car. Moat had been on the run for a week before the six-hour stand-off with officers in Rothbury, Northumberland, in which he died. He shot himself after he was twice Tasered by police. Officers used an untested XREP Taser that had not been approved by the Home Office. On the second day of the inquest in Newcastle on Tuesday, Angus Moat, a 41-year-old tax officer who has a different birth father but the same mother as the 37-year-old bouncer, said he had spoken to a senior officer about becoming a third party intervener alongside the police negotiators. He admitted he had not spoken to his brother for seven or eight years, as they had drifted apart. Angus Moat suggested police should have thrown Raoul a mobile telephone if he was not able to speak face-to-face. He said he “should have been involved” in attempts to “talk Raoul down”. Angus Moat said during the week his brother was on the run, their mother had spoken to the press and said Raoul would be better off dead, but he had not agreed. He described their mother as “severely mentally ill and incapable of being a parent”, as he said she had bipolar disorder. When asked during the inquest at Newcastle crown court if his brother could have been similarly afflicted, he replied: “Most definitely. I think he had an undiagnosed case of bipolar brought on by stress, being in prison, losing his business and his home.” He said his brother had attempted suicide in 1999 by taking a drug overdose and had been treated in hospital. Asked by John Beggs, a barrister acting for Northumbria police, if his comments stemmed from the fact that Raoul Moat did not have any close contact with family members over seven or eight years, he said: “It is a factor, but not principally.” He told the inquest jury: “I’d have told him to think of his kids. “Raoul thought everybody in his own family was against him and I wanted to show him that was not the case. “I thought if I could speak to him it could change the way he was feeling and the way he would act. I thought the presence of some of his family members might change things.” He said Raoul responded to aggression and threat, “but he also responded to kindness and friendship”. He added: “I thought it could potentially be the end of my brother’s life and I did not want that to happen. I knew he would be in a lot of trouble but I did not want him to die. My view was that going to prison for the rest of his life would be better than death.” The inquest earlier heard the gunman had said he would “take the shoot-out” rather than go back to jail. He left a message on a dictating machine three or four days before he was cornered by police marksmen. In the message, he described losing the only two people who mattered to him – his grandmother and his former girlfriend, Stobbart. He said: “Just take the shoot-out and everybody’s happy.” Superintendent Jim Napier of Northumbria police, in charge of the criminal investigation into Moat’s rampage, said the message had affected the way in which the stand-off was handled. “It is a personal disappointment I never got to see Mr Moat account for his crimes,” he told the hearing. The inquest had heard that while in prison, Moat had warned Stobbart he would “go crazy” after she ended the relationship. Police say this was the catalyst for his murderous rampage. The 11 members of the jury will focus on the events on 9 and 10 July, when Moat was found. There will be questions about weapons used, how police managed the incident, how officers dealt with the dead man and how he acted, the jury was told. Among the questions to be addressed are whether the XREP Taser should have been deployed. The hearing continues. Raoul Moat Police Crime Gun crime Helen Carter guardian.co.uk
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Two opinion polls put US president’s approval rating at new career low, with faltering economy the dominant issue for voters Barack Obama’s popularity has sunk to a new low, according to two new polls, adding to pressure on him to come up with a radical and workable jobs plan that might reverse his fortunes. Just 43% of people surveyed in a Washington Post/ABC opinion poll published on Tuesday approve of the job the president is doing overall – a new career low. This was mirrored by a Politico/George Washington University poll that put Obama’s approval rating at 45% , a drop of 7% since May, reflecting attitudes towards his handling of the debt standoff with Republicans in Congress. The dominant issue is the faltering economy, particularly unemployment, which is stuck at 9.1%, and Obama needs to produce some fresh job creation ideas when he addresses a joint session of Congress on Thursday night. “The poll figures are not good for him but we are still looking at 14 months before the next election,” Norm Ornstein, a political analyst at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, said on Tuesday. “An awful lot can happen in 14 months … I would not write him off.” Orstein said: “If anything can serve as a wake-up call – as if we haven’t had enough alarm calls already – these polls ought to do it.” He added that he felt Obama needed to become “more feisty” in dealing with the Republicans. The president, speaking in Detroit on Monday, said part of his plan would be to create big infrastructure projects such as rebuilding crumbling roads and bridges in the US, something he has been talking about since his 2008 White House campaign. The president may opt for projects he thinks Republicans in Congress will agree to, or go instead for proposals he knows they will block, allowing him to portray them as obstructionist. One of his would-be Republican challengers, Mitt Romney, in Las Vegas today, proposed an alternative approach to Obama in which economic revival would be left to the private sector rather than the federal government. In a 160-page book setting out proposals for getting people back to work, Romney advocates keeping taxes low and even reducing some, while cutting federal regulation and scrapping Obama’s healthcare reforms. Voters traditionally begin to pay more attention to politics after the Labor Day weekend, and this week will help shape the race for the White House. As well as Obama’s attempt to win Congressional support for a job stimulus package, the Republican candidates seeking to replace him as president are scheduled to debate in California on Wednesday night. It will be the first time Texas governor Rick Perry, who is well to the right of his party, will share a platform with the others seeking the Republican nomination. Although he only joined the race last month, Perry has quickly established himself as the frontrunner. The Politico poll puts him on 36%, with Romney, the previous favourite, on 17%. Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul are each on 10%, with the remainder in single figures. The televised debate will present a first opportunity for much of the US public to appraise Perry. Ornstein, who works for the AEI but describes himself as a ‘bastion of conservativism’, said though Perry is very smooth, many Republicans remain uneasy about him. “I think just as interesting as Perry is how the other candidates react to him. Romney has to change his approach … Perry is not used to debating when people push back,” said Ornstein. “Whether Romney has it in him to be an attack dog is an interesting question.” Barack Obama US elections 2012 Republican presidential nomination 2012 Republicans United States Democrats Rick Perry Mitt Romney Ewen MacAskill guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media Under Gov. Rick Perry (R) this year, Texas slashed state funding for the volunteer fire departments that protect most of the state from wildfires like the ones that have recently destroyed more than 700 homes. Volunteer departments that were already facing financial strain were slated to have their funding cut from $30 million to $7 million, according to KVUE . The majority of Texas is protected by volunteer fire departments. There are 879 volunteer fire departments in Texas and only 114 paid fire departments. Another 187 departments are a combination of volunteer and paid. For that reason, aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) could be more important than ever to the state where wildfires have recently been raging. At a press conference Monday, Perry promised to seek federal disaster relief and said that FEMA would be in the state by Wednesday. While the Texas governor has been highly critical of FEMA in the past, he told CBS’ Erica Hill Tuesday that now was not the time to worry about reforming the agency. “The issue is taking care of these people right now,” Perry insisted. “We can work our way through any conversations about how to make agencies more efficient, how to make Department of Defense equipment, for instance, more available. There are a lot of issues we can talk about, but the fact of the matter is now is not the time to be trying to work out the details of how to make these agencies more efficient. Let’s get people out of harm’s way.” Click here to view this media
Continue reading …England riots to cost taxpayers at least £133m in policing and compensation
September 6, 2011 No Comment
Cost of compensation and policing starts to emerge as Boris Johnson says prisoners must not be abandoned The riots in England will cost more than £133m in policing and compensation for businesses hit by the violence, the home affairs select committee has been told. London’s mayor Boris Johnson also told the committee that the huge numbers jailed after the unprecedented inner-city violence must not be abandoned in prison, but helped to turn their lives around. Johnson said he agreed with the justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke, who wrote a Guardian article on Monday revealing that almost 75% of the adults charged across the country with riot offences had previous convictions. He blamed a “feral underclass” and a broken prison system for failing to rehabilitate them. “One thing I do think the justice secretary is right to highlight is the importance, if you arrest such a huge number of people as we have and you put them into the criminal justice system, then you cannot simply abandon them … you have to make sure they are educated in there,” he said. But while the prime minister, David Cameron, has stressed emphatically that gangs orchestrated the riots, the committee was told by the Metropolitan police that the latest analysis suggested just 19% of those arrested had any gang affiliations. Current analysis also shows that only 21% of those arrested were under 18. For the first time a clear picture emerged of the costs of the rioting: in London, the bill for policing has reached £74m, and the cost for police forces outside the capital is set to exceed £50m. This includes a bill for Manchester of around £10m – made up of £5m in policing and potentially the same amount in payments under the 1886 Riots Damages Act (RDA) to individuals whose properties are damaged by rioting. Johnson revealed that in London the Metropolitan Police Authority had already received 100 applications for compensation under the RDA, totalling £9.3m – a figure which is likely to increase – bringing the cost of the riots to around £133m. Sparked by the fatal shooting by police of 29-year-old Mark Duggan in Tottenham, north London, the riots are now the subject of several inquiries, including the home affairs select committee hearings, an inquiry by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) and internal reviews by the Metropolitan police. The committee was told that the assistant commissioner Lynne Owens is evaluating the police response in Tottenham after Duggan’s death, particularly the events outside the police station on the Saturday night when the dead man’s family gathered in the hope of speaking to a senior officer. The family heard about Duggan’s death from a news report rather than from the police, and had arrived at the station demanding answers. Godwin said: “There was some confusion in terms of who was going to tell his family. We regret that. A commander has been to see the family to apologise. We need to look at the whole management that took place in Tottenham. Good decisions were taken and there were some misunderstandings and we need to get to the bottom of it.” Godwin said the relationship between the Metropolitan police and the IPCC needed to be examined – referring to an apparent blurring of roles as to who has the duty to inform the family in a police fatal shooting. However, in written evidence the IPCC said it was never its duty to inform a family of a death. Godwin – who is one of four candidates for the post of Metropolitan police commissioner – told the committee he wished he had had more officers on duty when the riots erupted in Tottenham, on the Saturday evening, before spreading across the capital: “Sometimes you realise how thin the blue line is,” Godwin said. “The debate … would have been different if people had been left in hospital after being seriously injured by baton rounds. I take pride in the fact that we filled up prison places instead of hospital beds, and I think that’s the British way,” he said. UK riots London Boris Johnson Crime Police Prisons and probation UK criminal justice Sandra Laville Vikram Dodd Helen Carter guardian.co.uk
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News of the World’s former legal manager, Tom Crone, contradicts News Corp executive’s evidence to select committee James Murdoch knew about an explosive email that would have proved that phone hacking at the News of the World was not confined to “one rogue reporter”, MPs have been told. The former legal manager at the now-defunct tabloid, Tom Crone, openly contradicted evidence given by Murdoch to a parliamentary committee in July by telling the same committee today that he was “certain” he told the News International chief of the existence of this email during a meeting in 2008. According to Crone, the meeting lasted 15 minutes and was also attended by the then News of the World editor, Colin Myler, who concurred with the former legal affairs manager’s versions of events. Murdoch immediately dismissed Crone’s claims in a robust statement. He said he stood by his original testimony to the select committee and had not been aware that phone hacking extended beyond the former royal editor Clive Goodman and the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, both of whom had been convicted and jailed in relation to phone-hacking charges more than a year earlier. “Neither Mr Myler nor Mr Crone told me that wrongdoing extended beyond Mr Goodman or Mr Mulcaire,” said Murdoch. He added: “As I said in my testimony, there was nothing discussed in the meeting that led me to believe that a further investigation was necessary.” The continuing war of words between Murdoch and his two former executives almost certainly means he will be recalled to appear before the committee for a more forensic scrutiny of his original evidence. The culture, media and sport committee was today taking evidence from Crone and Myler and two other former News International executives as part of its investigation into allegations of “cover-up” of the scale of phone hacking at the Sunday paper. Crone said it was made clear to Murdoch during the 15-minute meeting what the email “was about” and “what it meant”. He said the email was documentary evidence that at least one other reporter was aware of phone hacking and that this was why they needed to settle out of court with the former Professional Footballers’ Association boss Gordon Taylor, who had taken civil action against the publisher in relation to the alleged interception of his voicemails by the paper. The email only emerged during the process of discovery by Taylor’s lawyers. “Up to then there was no evidence that News of the World were implicated. The first I saw of that was that was the ‘for Neville’ email which reached us in spring 2008. We went to see Mr Murdoch and it was explained to him what this document was and what it meant,” said Crone. It was at that meeting that Murdoch authorised Crone to reach a settlement with Taylor, who was eventually paid £425,000, the committee heard. Crone also insisted that there was no “cover-up” by the company, as the email had been provided to them by the Metropolitan police after it was seized from private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who was jailed with Goodman in 2007 for hacking into the phone messages of members of the royal household. A confidentiality clause included in the settlement was insisted upon by Taylor’s lawyers to avoid sensitive information about his personal life becoming public, said Crone. He said the size of the payout to Taylor was “good legal management” designed to avert further litigation from other public figures who had been named in Glenn Mulcaire’s court case and was not about buying his silence. In a bruising clash with committee member Tom Watson – the Labour MP who has led the charge over phone hacking – Crone denied that Murdoch demanded a confidentiality clause and authorised the large financial settlement in order to prevent the exposure of “widespread criminality” at the News of the World. The former legal manager said his priority was to avoid cases being launched by four other individuals whose phones Mulcaire had admitted hacking. “The imperative or the priority at the time was to settle this case, get rid of it, contain the situation as far as four other litigants were concerned and get on with our business,” said Crone. Crone also said that the former editor of the paper, Andy Coulson, was keen to keep Goodman employed even if he was convicted and jailed for phone-hacking offences. And MPs were told that Goodman received a payout of about £240,000 despite being found guilty and being jailed for the offences in 2007 because of a “sense of family” towards staffat News International. The former head of legal affairs at News International, Jon Chapman, said the former chief executive of the company, Les Hinton, had “wanted to do it on compassionate grounds because of the Goodman family”. Chapman separately admitted that Rupert Murdoch had got it wrong when he said legal firm Harbottle & Lewis had made a “major mistake” when it did not report any evidence of illegal activities at the News of the World. However, he defended his former paymaster by saying he had not been properly briefed on Harbottle & Lewis’s review of internal emails. •
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Ken Clark says decision to allow sentencing to be televised will increase public confidence in justice system Judicial sentencing is to be televised, the justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke, has announced. . The ban on filming in law courts will now be overturned, Clarke confirmed, as the government hopes to improve transparency and public understanding of the courts. The issue had been due to go for consultation with senior judges but in recent days Downing Street had moved to circumvent this consultation process and support the change. Announcing the decision on Tuesday, Clarke said: “The government and judiciary are determined to improve transparency and public understanding of courts through allowing court broadcasting. We believe television has a role in increasing public confidence in the justice system. “Broadcasting will initially be allowed from the court of appeal, and government will look to expand to the crown court later. All changes will be worked out in close consultation with the judiciary.” Filming will be of judges’ summary remarks only – victims, witnesses, offenders and jurors will not be filmed. The televising of court is currently banned by acts of parliament and so legislation will be required to allow cameras into court. A shift towards televising court has always been hampered by the spectre of OJ Simpson’s trial in the US which degenerated into prime-time entertainment. Television companies have been pressing for greater access to the highlights of court cases, and a consultation on the shift was undertaken by the previous Labour government but was eventually discarded. Now the present government has revived the plans, believing a judicial pronouncement should become more of a moment of public reckoning. Officials believe transparency would aid public understanding of the court process and the idea has gained momentum in the aftermath of the riots. After a Guardian report saying the prime minister was set to announce the change in the coming weeks, Clarke told Sky News on Tuesday morning he could see “no good reason” why television cameras should not be allowed in court to “record and give to the public the remarks of the judge”. By the afternoon, the government had decided to push ahead. Clarke also announced that new information on the performances of courts will be published in future to allow everyone to see how their local courts are working. This will include: • court-by-court statistics for the time taken for cases to be processed, from offence to conviction, allowing people to compare the performance of their local courts. • details on how many trials were ineffective and why they were ineffective. • anonymised data on each case heard at local courts and the sentences given. • details of how many people have been convicted or released from prisons in each area and how often they re-offended afterwards. From next May justice outcomes will be placed alongside crime data on police.uk so people can see what happens next after crimes are committed in their areas. When the country’s most senior court – the supreme court in Westminster – was opened in September 2009 it was fitted with cameras. As things stand it is the only court where footage is routinely available for broadcasters on request and has been televised live. It allows visitors to watch appeals and judgments on televisions around the building without sitting in the courtrooms, but it is seen to be a different case since supreme court hearings do not involve witnesses being cross-examined or juries. Cameras have been allowed in some Scottish courts under tight restrictions since 1992. The appeal of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi against his conviction for the Lockerbie bombing was televised in 2002. Writing in the Guardian in December, the head of Sky News, John Ryley, suggested the trials of six MPs who were accused of misusing their parliamentary expenses were prime examples of public interest trials that would have benefited from being televised. Last month he renewed his call for televised sentencing in an open letter to Clarke Sadiq Khan, Labour’s shadow justice secretary, welcomed the announcement that certain aspects of court proceedings will be televised. “Allowing the broadcast of judges’ sentencing remarks could make the sentencing process more transparent and understandable,” he said. “However, it will be extremely important to ensure that careful controls are in place to protect jurors, victims and witnesses. We do not support the televising of anything that might make jurors, victims and witnesses vulnerable to intimidation. “Our criminal justice system relies on victims and witnesses coming forward to give evidence and nothing should be done to jeopardise that. “It is important that our justice system is open and accessible. If done well and responsibly, this could be an important step in achieving that.” Cameras in court Kenneth Clarke UK criminal justice Allegra Stratton guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Jailed rioters need help to turn their lives around, says Boris Johnson
September 6, 2011 No Comment
Testifying before home affairs committee investigation into last month’s riots, mayor of London says those jailed for their part in disturbances must not be abandoned in prison London’s mayor, Boris Johnson, has said the huge number of people jailed after the riots cannot be abandoned in prison, and must be helped to turn their lives around. Testifying before the home affairs committee investigation into last month’s riots, which blighted 22 out of the capital’s 32 boroughs, Johnson said the cost to London alone was around £75m. He agreed with the justice secretary, Ken Clarke, who wrote a Guardian article blaming a “feral underclass” which a broken prison system had failed to rehabilitate. Johnson told MPs that with more than 2,000 people arrested and more than 1,000 convicted in London alone, it was vital that in prison everything was done to help those convicted turn their lives around. “One thing I do think the justice secretary is right to highlight is the importance, if you arrest such a huge number of people as we have and you put them into the criminal justice system, then you cannot simply abandon them there, you have to make sure they are educated in there.” Johnson said that 75% of those arrested had criminal records, while 83% had previous contact with police: “What was going to make you more likely to riot? It was previous contact with the police, and that’s the problem that we need to tackle.” The prime minister, David Cameron, lay great stress on gangs being behind the riots. But Johnson said just 20% of the 2,300 arrested so far had gang affiliations. The Conservative mayor, who faces a battle for re-election next year, said police were not asking to use weapons such as baton rounds and water cannon, and he dismissed the notion floated by Cameron that social media could be blocked in the event of future disturbances. Johnson said monitoring such sites helped police to gather intelligence. He said London had brought a high level of violence and disorder under control within days, while other cities such as Paris had failed to quell their riots for months. The mayor praised the leadership of the Metropolitan police and told the committee chairman, Keith Vaz, that the violence had surprised him and police chiefs. Johnson said: “It is self-evident, Mr Vaz, that there was a difficulty, there was a crisis on the Saturday, Sunday, Monday evenings, that caught everyone unawares. There is no doubt about that.” Johnson left the committee hearing to take part in interviews for the vacant post of Metropolitan police commissioner. The mayor said the four candidates were outstanding and the new head of Scotland Yard would be announced on Monday. Tim Godwin, the acting Met commissioner, is one of those candidates and he told the home affairs committee he wished he had more officers on duty when the first riots erupted in Tottenham, north London, on a Saturday evening, before spreading across the capital on Sunday and Monday evenings. “Sometimes you realise how thin the blue line is,” Godwin said, referring to the famous phrase about British policing. Rejecting calls for a change in the style of British policing, Godwin said the debate after the riots would have been different if people had been left in hospital after being seriously injured by baton rounds: “I take pride in the fact that we filled up prison places instead of hospital beds, and I think that’s the British way,” Godwin said. Godwin has worked on trying to slash the reoffending rates, and he told MPs he agreed with Clarke’s comments in the Guardian: “I think this is a wake-up call for the criminal justice system. “We have in London been seeking to speed up justice, make it more relevant, make it more relevant to communities, and that’s something that we need to do. “The amount of people who have previous convictions does pose questions for us.” Godwin said the speedy arrests and jailing of offenders had helped deter any repeat of the riots, and police revealed 500 officers were still working on hunting down the looters and that 20,000 hours of CCTV footage still had to be viewed. UK riots Boris Johnson Prisons and probation London Crime London politics Metropolitan police Police Vikram Dodd guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media (h/t Heather at VideoCafe ) It is a truism rarely acknowledged in this country: the single most important infrastructure investment we can make for the future is in education. I’m not talking about retrofitting the buildings or constructing more classrooms. No, we provide for the future by educating our young people, preparing them to become productive members of society. Study after study shows that the higher one’s education level is, the higher the median income and the less likely one is to suffer unemployment . But we’re not doing that. No, in these austerity times, politicians clamor to cut services and jobs. Teachers are demonized . Vouchers are touted as the answer, when it’s simply a way to privatize profits away from public schools . Hell, some GOP would be happy if we eliminate the Department of Education altogether . A rare and welcome progressive appearance on the Sunday shows, Rep. Maxine Waters bemoans the disconnect between what politicians say we need to focus on and what they’re really doing about it: To tell you the truth, the plight of education in this country is shameful. Just a few days ago I learned that more cities, more states are reducing the number of education days down to four instead of five. And I could not help but stop and think, “Is this America? Is this the country that said and continues to say that education is a top priority?” Why are we not investing more in education? Why do we have dropouts? Why do we have educational systems that are failing? Why is it that we have a situation where many of our young people will not be able to compete in this high technological society because they’re not properly educated? And so, no, we do pay lip service to education. We don’t really invest in it, and that’s got to change. But let me just say this, Americans want to work. This joblessness is not only hitting the middle class, but it is hitting all classes. It is absolutely unconscionable what is happening in the minority communities. When we look at this no jobs haven’t been created in August and we find in the African-American community it has increased from 16 percent, 15.9, 16 percent, up now 16.7 percent, and now we’re going to talk about cutting government by $1.5 trillion, this new 12 committee membership that we have after the raising the debt ceiling debate? And that means that we’re going to lose more jobs, that means more people are going to be unemployed. The African-American rate will probably go up to about 20 percent. I don’t know how our country can sustain that kind of… Of course, David Gregory interrupts her at this point, because Lord know, the plight of the African American community doesn’t concern him. But then again, he has the gall to say that we only play lip service to the importance of education. You know, the same guy who only pays lip service to journalism and who spent the better part of the last two years telling his viewers that Americans cared about the deficit when poll after poll proved him a lying hack with a corporate agenda.
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