In keynote address to Conservative conference, prime minister sets out upbeat vision following week of sombre speeches by cabinet colleagues David Cameron invoked the spirit of the British bulldog and the days of empire as he pledged to provide the leadership to take Britain to better days. In an attempt to imitate the optimistic vision of Ronald Reagan’s Morning in America campaign , the prime minister said he would fight a climate of “sogginess” which says Britain faces certain decline. “Britain never had the biggest population, the largest land mass, the richest resources – but we had the spirit,” the prime minister said in his keynote speech to the Conservative conference in Manchester. Referring to the British bulldog, Cameron added: “Remember, it’s not the size of the dog in the fight – it’s the size of the fight in the dog. Overcoming challenge, confounding the sceptics, reinventing ourselves, this is what we do. It’s called leadership.” Tory strategists decided the prime minister would use his speech to set out an upbeat and optimistic vision after a week of sombre speeches by ministers and notably by the chancellor, George Osborne. Cameron echoed Osborne when he said Britain faced a long struggle to revive the economy. “People want to know why the good times are so long coming,” he said. “The answer is straightforward, but uncomfortable. This was no normal recession – we’re in a debt crisis. It was caused by too much borrowing by individuals, businesses, banks and, most of all, governments.” As Downing Street confirmed earlier on Wednesday, the prime minister amended this sober section of his speech to tone down an apparent instruction to people to follow the example of the government and to pay off their credit cards. Instead, he said: “The only way out of a debt crisis is to deal with your debts. That’s why households are paying down their credit card and store card bills.” Cameron challenged Labour, which accuses the government of imposing spending cuts too quickly and too soon, by putting his deficit reduction plans within the tradition of moderate “one nation Conservatism” embodied by his political hero, Harold Macmillan. “This is a one-nation deficit reduction plan from a one-nation party,” he said. Having established the economic challenge facing Britain, the prime minister started to outline his upbeat vision as he pledged to reject pessimism and promote “can-do optimism”. The Tories illustrated this approach by inviting young people who have taken part in the National Citizens’ Service initiative to address the conference. But he said there was a downbeat mood and he would fight it. “Frankly, there’s too much ‘can’t do’ sogginess around,” he told delegates. “We need to be a sharp, focused, can-do country. But as we go for growth, the last thing I want is to pump the old economy back up, with a banking sector out of control, manufacturing squeezed, and prosperity confined to a few parts of the country and a select few industries. “Our plan is to build something new and to build something better. We can do it.” The prime minister cited health and safety rules as an example of how Britain was being held back. “This isn’t how a great nation was built,” he said. “Britannia didn’t rule the waves with armbands on.” Picking up on his theme of the empire, he said he would try to revive the spirit that allowed Britain to find a new role after the collapse of its empire. “They said when we lost an empire that we couldn’t find a role. But we found a role, took on communism and helped bring down the Berlin Wall,” he said. “They called our economy the sick man of Europe. But we came back and turned this country into a beacon of enterprise.” In his concluding remarks, Cameron said: “Let’s turn this time of challenge into a time of opportunity. Not sitting around watching things happen and wondering why, but standing up, making things happen and asking: ‘Why not?’. “We have the people, we have the ideas, and now we have a government that’s freeing those people, backing those ideas. So let’s see an optimistic future. Let’s show the world some fight. Let’s pull together, work together. And together lead Britain to better days.” Cameron’s speech outlined how key government reforms would help: • In education, there will be an emphasis on “core and vital subjects”, he said as he hailed the new free schools established by the education secretary, Michael Gove. “Change really is under way,” he added. “For the first time in a long time, the numbers studying those core and vital subjects history, geography, languages are going up. “Pupils’ exams will be marked on their punctuation and grammar. And teachers are going to be able to search pupils’ bags for anything banned in school – mobile phones, alcohol, weapons, anything. It’s a long, hard road back to rigour, but we’re well and truly on our way.” • On welfare reform, Cameron promised to return sense to the labour market and get people back to work, with a focus on people on incapacity benefit. “Under Labour, they got something for nothing,” he said. “With us, they’ll only get something if they give something. If they are prepared to work, we’re going to help them, and I mean really help them. “If you’ve been out of work and on benefits for five years, a quick session down the jobcentre and a new CV just isn’t going to cut it. You need to get your self-esteem and confidence back. You need training and skills, intensive personal support.” • On planning, the government would listen to people’s concerns about the changes, he said, adding that the government would do nothing to harm the countryside. But he said that it was important to ease the planning process, adding: “To those who just oppose everything we’re doing, my message is this: take your arguments down to the job centre. We’ve got to get Britain back to work.” Conservative conference 2011 David Cameron Conservative conference Conservatives Economic policy Recession Economics Communities Nicholas Watt guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Daily Mail website incited abuse against Chris Huhne’s partner, court told
October 5, 2011 No Comment
Carina Trimingham seeks to add harassment claim to privacy action over series of artlcles The Daily Mail has been accused in the high court of inciting users of its website to be abusive to the partner of government minister Chris Huhne. William Bennett, a barrister acting for Carina Trimingham in a privacy action against Daily Mail publisher Associated Newspapers, told the court on Wednesday that the alleged prejudicial nature of a series of articles which appeared in the paper last summer left her feeling persecuted and harassed. Bennett requested that his client’s privacy action against Associated Newspapers be amended to include an alleged breach of the Protection from Harassment Act. The hearing was then adjourned after Mr Justice Tugendhat agreed to amend Trimingham’s claim, but said it was unrealistic to hear the additional action without giving Associated time to analyse and defend it. Associated’s barrister, Antony White QC, had earlier objected to the addition of the harassment claim and sought an adjournment at Trimingham’s expense. White said that he had no advance warning of Trimingham’s harassment claim and it was “unfair to be bounced on day two of the trial into a different claim without having had an opportunity to consider the particulars of the fresh allegations”. Trimingham’s privacy action relates to a series of eight articles about her relationship with Huhne, which she claims breached the Press Complaints Commission code of practice for journalists, which prohibits the mention of a person’s sexuality unless relevant. Bennett said the articles, one of which included a wedding photo from a previous marriage, also breached her rights to a “reasonable expectation of privacy”. He added that he had identified a further 39 articles containing alleged “homophobic prejudice” that were “likely to stimulate an abusive reaction” from Daily Mail readers and users of the Mail Online website. “Readers’ comments – all 58 of them are all abusive in character,” he claimed. “The Daily Mail incites its readers to be abusive because of the tone of its articles.” Bennett said his client was “subjected to vile abuse on the readers’ comments pages”. •
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The self-styled lord, whose home was used to film The King’s Speech, was the mastermind of an ‘advanced fee fraud’ scheme An entrepreneur whose lavish home was used in scenes from the Oscar-winning film The King’s Speech and for a less mainstream “porn disco” has been jailed for a multimillion-pound fraud. Self-styled “Lord” Edward Davenport, 45, was the mastermind of an “advanced fee fraud” scheme in which scores of businesses were ripped off. Davenport – who owns Sierra Leone’s former High Commission in west London – set up Gresham Ltd in 2005 and pretended it was a respectable business with 50 years’ experience of sourcing huge commercial loans. “To outward appearances it was long-established, wealthy and prestigious,” said Simon Mayo QC, for the prosecution at Southwark crown court. “It operated from expensive London premises and had a balance sheet showing significant assets. “It had a flattering corporate brochure and used headed notepaper that lent an image of corporate credibility. “That image, however, deliberately cultivated by these defendants, was entirely false. “In truth it was a company which had only been set up by Edward Davenport in late 2005. “It was essentially worthless. Its only business was fraud.” Davenport, of Portland Place, central London, was jailed last month for seven years and eight months along with his lieutenant, Peter Riley, 64, of The Old Bakery, Brentwood, Essex. They were convicted of a single count of conspiracy to defraud along with Borge Andersen, 66, of Roland Gardens, south Kensington, south-west London. Andersen was jailed for 39 months at the same court on 12 September. He was also disqualified from being a company director for seven years under Section 2 of the Directors Disqualification Act. Their convictions, following a three-month trial, can be reported for the first time after a judge lifted an order. Davenport hit the headlines last year when Westminster council banned him from using his historic home for activities including a “porn disco”, a sex party and pole dancing lessons. The five-storey, 110-room house was also used for film shoots, a fashion show, a wedding, a nightclub and a masquerade ball. His swimming pool was reportedly filled with Cognac so revellers could row through it. But the Serious Fraud Office arrested him in December 2009 after gathering evidence that Gresham had promised to fund loans worth £500m. From 2007 to 2009 Gresham Ltd had received more than £4.5m from unsuspecting clients. The fraudsters made their money by fooling clients into paying tens of thousands of pounds for due diligence and deposit fees. Across the world businesses were collapsing after entering into big deals on the false promise from Gresham that their money was only days away. In Austria, two victims had contractors waiting to start work with diggers after Gresham promised to find €32m (£27.4m) to fund a leisure resort. No money materialised. In India a businessman from Bellary Steels paid Gresham £285,000 to finance €183m. Nothing materialised and the victim “suffered crippling losses” of £825,000 and now owes €11m, the court heard. There were at least 51 victims. Davenport, known as “Fast Eddie” and pictured on his website with dozens of celebrities including Simon Cowell, the actor Hugh Grant, Sarah Ferguson and the justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke, kept his distance from the legwork and operated under a false name, James Stewart or Stuart. He launched the fraud, remained in overall charge and did not “leave many footprints in the snow for himself”, not wanting to risk his champagne lifestyle which included parties with the stars and a property in Monaco. Davenport, supported in court by his girlfriend and 78-year-old mother, was happy to give orders to Riley, the son of an alcoholic schoolteacher. Judge Peter Testar described Riley as “an accomplished conman” who could lie with incredible ease and skill to clients desperately waiting for their money. Riley blamed many of the delays on a lawyer in Monaco called Louis Martin. But Martin did not exist – it was Riley introducing one of many fictitious characters to aid the scam. Riley set up an email address for the non-existent Martin and to add credibility wrote emails from him in broken English. The judge said of the grandfather-of-one: “He strung along borrowers on a huge scale with bare-faced lies.” Of the victims, he added: “The stress and anxiety these people suffered were enormous and their lives have been grievously affected by this fraud. “Some of them will never recover from that … It was a professional and sophisticated fraud which had a great impact on the victims and each of these two defendants had a significant role to play.” Andersen, a Danish national, will be sentenced after his defence obtain medical reports for his various illnesses. He was “generally perceived as the most articulate and plausible of the fraudsters”, said Mayo. He made loan offers and provided bogus explanations for delays with money. According to internal Gresham accounts created by Riley, Andersen received £159,564 from the fraud, Riley £695,407, and Davenport £773,000. The court heard that £349,025 has vanished from the accounts and cannot be traced. Davenport and Riley were banned from being company directors for 10 years after their release and a confiscation hearing was listed for 2 May next year. Crime guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …The self-styled lord, whose home was used to film The King’s Speech, was the mastermind of an ‘advanced fee fraud’ scheme An entrepreneur whose lavish home was used in scenes from the Oscar-winning film The King’s Speech and for a less mainstream “porn disco” has been jailed for a multimillion-pound fraud. Self-styled “Lord” Edward Davenport, 45, was the mastermind of an “advanced fee fraud” scheme in which scores of businesses were ripped off. Davenport – who owns Sierra Leone’s former High Commission in west London – set up Gresham Ltd in 2005 and pretended it was a respectable business with 50 years’ experience of sourcing huge commercial loans. “To outward appearances it was long-established, wealthy and prestigious,” said Simon Mayo QC, for the prosecution at Southwark crown court. “It operated from expensive London premises and had a balance sheet showing significant assets. “It had a flattering corporate brochure and used headed notepaper that lent an image of corporate credibility. “That image, however, deliberately cultivated by these defendants, was entirely false. “In truth it was a company which had only been set up by Edward Davenport in late 2005. “It was essentially worthless. Its only business was fraud.” Davenport, of Portland Place, central London, was jailed last month for seven years and eight months along with his lieutenant, Peter Riley, 64, of The Old Bakery, Brentwood, Essex. They were convicted of a single count of conspiracy to defraud along with Borge Andersen, 66, of Roland Gardens, south Kensington, south-west London. Andersen was jailed for 39 months at the same court on 12 September. He was also disqualified from being a company director for seven years under Section 2 of the Directors Disqualification Act. Their convictions, following a three-month trial, can be reported for the first time after a judge lifted an order. Davenport hit the headlines last year when Westminster council banned him from using his historic home for activities including a “porn disco”, a sex party and pole dancing lessons. The five-storey, 110-room house was also used for film shoots, a fashion show, a wedding, a nightclub and a masquerade ball. His swimming pool was reportedly filled with Cognac so revellers could row through it. But the Serious Fraud Office arrested him in December 2009 after gathering evidence that Gresham had promised to fund loans worth £500m. From 2007 to 2009 Gresham Ltd had received more than £4.5m from unsuspecting clients. The fraudsters made their money by fooling clients into paying tens of thousands of pounds for due diligence and deposit fees. Across the world businesses were collapsing after entering into big deals on the false promise from Gresham that their money was only days away. In Austria, two victims had contractors waiting to start work with diggers after Gresham promised to find €32m (£27.4m) to fund a leisure resort. No money materialised. In India a businessman from Bellary Steels paid Gresham £285,000 to finance €183m. Nothing materialised and the victim “suffered crippling losses” of £825,000 and now owes €11m, the court heard. There were at least 51 victims. Davenport, known as “Fast Eddie” and pictured on his website with dozens of celebrities including Simon Cowell, the actor Hugh Grant, Sarah Ferguson and the justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke, kept his distance from the legwork and operated under a false name, James Stewart or Stuart. He launched the fraud, remained in overall charge and did not “leave many footprints in the snow for himself”, not wanting to risk his champagne lifestyle which included parties with the stars and a property in Monaco. Davenport, supported in court by his girlfriend and 78-year-old mother, was happy to give orders to Riley, the son of an alcoholic schoolteacher. Judge Peter Testar described Riley as “an accomplished conman” who could lie with incredible ease and skill to clients desperately waiting for their money. Riley blamed many of the delays on a lawyer in Monaco called Louis Martin. But Martin did not exist – it was Riley introducing one of many fictitious characters to aid the scam. Riley set up an email address for the non-existent Martin and to add credibility wrote emails from him in broken English. The judge said of the grandfather-of-one: “He strung along borrowers on a huge scale with bare-faced lies.” Of the victims, he added: “The stress and anxiety these people suffered were enormous and their lives have been grievously affected by this fraud. “Some of them will never recover from that … It was a professional and sophisticated fraud which had a great impact on the victims and each of these two defendants had a significant role to play.” Andersen, a Danish national, will be sentenced after his defence obtain medical reports for his various illnesses. He was “generally perceived as the most articulate and plausible of the fraudsters”, said Mayo. He made loan offers and provided bogus explanations for delays with money. According to internal Gresham accounts created by Riley, Andersen received £159,564 from the fraud, Riley £695,407, and Davenport £773,000. The court heard that £349,025 has vanished from the accounts and cannot be traced. Davenport and Riley were banned from being company directors for 10 years after their release and a confiscation hearing was listed for 2 May next year. Crime guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Pentagon cuts mean US can no longer bail out Nato, defence secretary says
October 5, 2011 No Comment
Leon Panetta exhorts allies to work together more or lose ability to mount missions such as that in Libya Budget cuts mean the US will no longer be able to make up for the significant shortfalls that have plagued Nato’s operations in Libya and Afghanistan, the US defence secretary, Leon Panetta, has warned. He also exhorted allies to work together or risk losing the ability to take on such missions. In a carefully calibrated speech just before the opening of a Nato defence ministers’ meeting in Brussels on Wednesday, Panetta praised the joint effort in Libya. But he said the allies must better share the security burden in order to survive global financial pressures that are slicing into defence spending. Panetta, who has held his post for just three months, stopped short of the blistering critique delivered by his predecessor, Robert Gates, in June. Then Gates questioned the alliance’s viability and bluntly warned that it faces a “dim, if not dismal, future” . Panetta echoed many of the same frustrations. “There are legitimate questions about whether, if present trends continue, Nato will again be able to sustain the kind of operations that we have seen in Libya and Afghanistan without the United States taking on even more of the burden,” he told Carnegie Europe . “It would be a tragic outcome if the alliance shed the very capabilities that allowed it to successfully conduct these operations.” With the Pentagon facing $450bn (£290bn) in budget cuts over the next 10 years, allies cannot assume that the US will be able to continue covering Nato’s shortcomings, Panetta said. And with other countries facing similar pressures, he said the countries must co-ordinate cuts and pool their capabilities in order to continue. “We cannot afford for countries to make decisions about force structure and force reductions in a vacuum, leaving neighbours and allies in the dark,” he said. America’s alliance with Europe emerged out of necessity in the cold war era, but it has lost support and many, particularly in the US, question its purpose. But while western states are no longer faced with the threat of a Soviet invasion, they do face escalating terrorist threats, possible cyberwarfare and rising nuclear worries about Iran. These have elevated fears and propelled the alliance into new and changing conflicts. A political awakening rippling across the Middle East has led to uprisings, including the one in Libya. And while the US took a larger role early on in the conflict to protect Libyan citizens, it scaled back its operations as coalition partners – including the UK, France, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Italy, Canada, Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates – took a bigger role. Now, with the ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in hiding and Libya’s rebel forces surrounding his Sirte stronghold, Nato can finally point to fragile progress in the six-month-old mission. France and the UK have now flown a third of the overall sorties and attacked 40% of the targets, Panetta said. The conflict, however, has reinforced the need to involve non-Nato allies to spread the burden. To face the growing threats, Panetta said, Nato must address some of the problems that have dogged the Libya and Afghanistan military campaigns. In Libya, he said, there had been a big shortage of intelligence and surveillance capabilities, including drones and experts who can interpret data and translate it into targeting lists. The US has had to shift drones from other critical regions in order to meet the needs of the Libya mission. Panetta also pointed to shortages of ammunition and supplies as well as refuelling tankers – all gaps the US had to fill. And he repeated US complaints that allies have failed to provide needed trainers and money to the war in Afghanistan. While the Afghan war is being run under Nato’s flag, the US has carried the bulk of the load – deploying nearly 100,000 troops there during the difficult years of the surge in order to counter Taliban violence. The allies, meanwhile, have struggled to maintain a force of about 40,000. “We are at a critical moment for our defence partnership,” Panetta warned, stressing the need for other nations to share the burden. “While these warnings have been acknowledged, growing fiscal pressures on both sides of the Atlantic, I fear, have eroded the political will to do something about them.” H added: “I am convinced that we do not have to choose between fiscal security and national security. “But achieving that goal will test the very future of leadership throughout Nato.” Nato Libya Arab and Middle East unrest Afghanistan Middle East Africa US military US foreign policy Europe guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Pentagon cuts mean US can no longer bail out Nato, defence secretary says
October 5, 2011 No CommentLeon Panetta exhorts allies to work together more or lose ability to mount missions such as that in Libya Budget cuts mean the US will no longer be able to make up for the significant shortfalls that have plagued Nato’s operations in Libya and Afghanistan, the US defence secretary, Leon Panetta, has warned. He also exhorted allies to work together or risk losing the ability to take on such missions. In a carefully calibrated speech just before the opening of a Nato defence ministers’ meeting in Brussels on Wednesday, Panetta praised the joint effort in Libya. But he said the allies must better share the security burden in order to survive global financial pressures that are slicing into defence spending. Panetta, who has held his post for just three months, stopped short of the blistering critique delivered by his predecessor, Robert Gates, in June. Then Gates questioned the alliance’s viability and bluntly warned that it faces a “dim, if not dismal, future” . Panetta echoed many of the same frustrations. “There are legitimate questions about whether, if present trends continue, Nato will again be able to sustain the kind of operations that we have seen in Libya and Afghanistan without the United States taking on even more of the burden,” he told Carnegie Europe . “It would be a tragic outcome if the alliance shed the very capabilities that allowed it to successfully conduct these operations.” With the Pentagon facing $450bn (£290bn) in budget cuts over the next 10 years, allies cannot assume that the US will be able to continue covering Nato’s shortcomings, Panetta said. And with other countries facing similar pressures, he said the countries must co-ordinate cuts and pool their capabilities in order to continue. “We cannot afford for countries to make decisions about force structure and force reductions in a vacuum, leaving neighbours and allies in the dark,” he said. America’s alliance with Europe emerged out of necessity in the cold war era, but it has lost support and many, particularly in the US, question its purpose. But while western states are no longer faced with the threat of a Soviet invasion, they do face escalating terrorist threats, possible cyberwarfare and rising nuclear worries about Iran. These have elevated fears and propelled the alliance into new and changing conflicts. A political awakening rippling across the Middle East has led to uprisings, including the one in Libya. And while the US took a larger role early on in the conflict to protect Libyan citizens, it scaled back its operations as coalition partners – including the UK, France, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Italy, Canada, Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates – took a bigger role. Now, with the ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in hiding and Libya’s rebel forces surrounding his Sirte stronghold, Nato can finally point to fragile progress in the six-month-old mission. France and the UK have now flown a third of the overall sorties and attacked 40% of the targets, Panetta said. The conflict, however, has reinforced the need to involve non-Nato allies to spread the burden. To face the growing threats, Panetta said, Nato must address some of the problems that have dogged the Libya and Afghanistan military campaigns. In Libya, he said, there had been a big shortage of intelligence and surveillance capabilities, including drones and experts who can interpret data and translate it into targeting lists. The US has had to shift drones from other critical regions in order to meet the needs of the Libya mission. Panetta also pointed to shortages of ammunition and supplies as well as refuelling tankers – all gaps the US had to fill. And he repeated US complaints that allies have failed to provide needed trainers and money to the war in Afghanistan. While the Afghan war is being run under Nato’s flag, the US has carried the bulk of the load – deploying nearly 100,000 troops there during the difficult years of the surge in order to counter Taliban violence. The allies, meanwhile, have struggled to maintain a force of about 40,000. “We are at a critical moment for our defence partnership,” Panetta warned, stressing the need for other nations to share the burden. “While these warnings have been acknowledged, growing fiscal pressures on both sides of the Atlantic, I fear, have eroded the political will to do something about them.” H added: “I am convinced that we do not have to choose between fiscal security and national security. “But achieving that goal will test the very future of leadership throughout Nato.” Nato Libya Arab and Middle East unrest Afghanistan Middle East Africa US military US foreign policy Europe guardian.co.uk
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Pioneering folk guitarist dies following two-year battle with cancer Bert Jansch, a leading figure in the British folk revival of the 60s and one of the most respected musicians of his generation, has died aged 67 following a long battle with cancer. A founding member of Pentangle, Jansch was also renowned as a guitar virtuoso and was sometimes hailed as a British Bob Dylan. Born in Glasgow on 3 November 1943, he released 23 solo albums, the last of which, The Black Swan (2006), featured collaborations with Beth Orton and Devendra Banhart. Jansch was the recipient of two lifetime achievement prizes at the BBC Folk awards – one for his solo achievements in 2001 and the other, in 2007, as a member of Pentangle. The band reformed in 2008. In June 2009, he discovered he had a golf ball-size tumour on one of his lungs following what was at first a routine visit to the dentist. Following treatment, he went on to co-headline a US tour with Neil Young. Jansch had recently been forced to cancel a live show in Edinburgh due to ill health and was living in a hospice in north London at the time of his death. Those he influenced included Jimmy Page, Nick Drake, Graham Coxon, Donovan, Bernard Butler and Paul Simon. According to fellow guitarist Johnny Marr: “He completely reinvented guitar playing and set a standard that is still unequalled today … without Bert Jansch, rock music as it developed in the 60s and 70s would have been very different.” Jansch told this newspaper last year : “I’m not one for showing off. But I guess my guitar-playing sticks out.” Bert Jansch Pentangle Folk music Caspar Llewellyn Smith guardian.co.uk
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Director general Mark Thompson may use his address to staff on Thursday to reveal plans to quit west London Mark Thompson, the BBC’s director general, is considering announcing that the BBC will quit its entire west London home – possibly selling it to a football club – as part of radical plans that could see more staff moved out of the capital. The corporation is also planning to concentrate out-of-London production into fewer locations, with a plan to shut down the factual department in BBC Birmingham being mooted. England’s second city was once a key BBC centre, and is home to programmes such as the BBC’s Chelsea Flower Show coverage. BBC chairman Lord Patten and Thompson are addressing corporation staff on Thursday to tell them the results of the long-awaited “Delivering Quality First” cost-cutting strategy , which will see nearly 2,000 more jobs going at the public broadcaster. The BBC’s best-known west London home, Television Centre, is up for sale and it is thought the corporation has been in talks with both Queen’s Park Rangers and Chelsea football club about the clubs moving to the site. Chelsea in particular is looking to develop a larger stadium in the west London area. Television Centre is home to what is now called the BBC’s Vision division, including TV channel controllers, commissioning executives and production departments such as drama and entertainment. The site is also home to studios used for programmes such as Strictly Come Dancing, which are operated as a standalone BBC commercial subsidiary. The corporation is vacating the doughnut-shaped TV Centre by 2015, with its several thousand staff due to move to the refurbished Broadcasting House in central London or around the country to sites such as Salford. There have also been rumours, which the corporation has previously denied, that BBC drama could move to Cardiff. However, because parts of TV Centre are listed, the football clubs have expressed an interest in the BBC’s adjacent White City offices instead, which could be knocked down. The White City building – part of the overall White City office complex – is where Thompson and BBC Worldwide are based. One source said that BBC executives are deliberating whether or not to reveal the latest developments in the sale of Television Centre and possible move from White City at Thursday’s announcement. There is also spare capacity at the BBC’s new headquarters in Salford, which is the new home of children’s, sport, learning, parts of Radio 5 Live, future media and technology and BBC Breakfast. It is understood that despite the upheaval of those departments, they will not escape the DQF cuts, and that some of the vacancies created by people choosing not to move from London to Manchester will not be filled. BBC sources say that the 2,500 job losses being proposed include the 650 cuts to the World Service already announced. It is expected that the remaining redundancies will be “back-loaded”, so there will only be a few hundred during the first year or so, with the rest to come after that. About 50% of the cuts are due to come from non-programming areas, with the remaining half from programming. BBC Birmingham is expected to be scaled back, although it is understood that daytime drama Doctors and The Archers will continue to be made there. According to sources, there is a proposal that BBC Birmingham’s factual department is to be closed and its responsibilities, such as Chelsea Flower Show, moved to BBC Bristol. •
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We were not ever trying to urge people to pay their credit card bills tomorrow, Downing Street says David Cameron has hastily rewritten his conference speech to remove any suggestion that he is either urging or instructing the public to pay off their credit card bills – a move that could dampen consumer demand and worsen the recession. The prime minister’s aides said the speech would now read: “That is why households are paying down the credit card and store card bills”. The pre-briefed version of the speech on Tuesday read: “The only way out of a debt crisis is to deal with your debts. That means households – all of us – paying off the credit card card and store card bills.” A Downing Street aide said: “We are putting our hands up on this. It has been misinterpreted, and the only way to deal with it is to change the wording. We are not going to carry on when it is fairly obvious that it needed to be clarified. “People at home who are struggling cannot afford to pay off their debts, so to have an instruction from on high to do so would have been wrong. We were not ever trying to urge people to pay their credit card bills tomorrow. It was intended as a metaphor or an observation, as opposed to an instruction.” Downing Street also denied that Treasury forecasts showed household debt was set to rise, saying these figures included mortgages. A variety of papers had written up the speech as a haughty instruction from Cameron to the public to pay off their debts for the sake of the economy. On Wednesday morning, economists suggested the plan for a collective pay-off of credit card debts, if interpreted literally, would be economically disastrous as well as politically inept. The episode shows the delicate balancing act Cameron faces in trying to offer some optimism in the middle of the deepening recession. The prime minister does not want the entire Tory message to be one of gloom, deficits and debt, but fears he will be regarded as out of touch if he strays from those areas of concern. Conservative conference 2011 Conservative conference David Cameron Economic policy Conservatives Borrowing & debt Credit cards Consumer affairs Economics Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk
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American freed by Italian court gives brief but emotional press statement in Seattle thanking ‘everyone who believed in me’ Amanda Knox has arrived home in Seattle saying she is “overwhelmed” to be back in the US following her acquittal of the murder of Meredith Kercher. Visibly emotional and shaking, Knox, who spent four years in an Italian prison, spoke briefly to supporters at a news conference after alighting at Seattle-Tacoma international airport shortly after 5pm local time. “I’m really overwhelmed right now,” she said. “I was looking down from the airplane and it seemed like everything wasn’t real.” Knox, 24, and ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, 27, were cleared on appeal on Monday of the 2007 killing of Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy. Knox sobbed and held her mother’s hand as her lawyer Theodore Simon said her acquittal “unmistakably announced to the world” that she was not responsible for the killing. After her parents offered their thanks to Knox’s lawyers and supporters, Knox spoke briefly, saying: “They’re reminding me to speak in English, because I’m having problems with that.” “Thank you to everyone who’s believed in me, who’s defended me, who’s supported my family. “My family’s the most important thing to me so I just want to go and be with them, so thank you for being there for me.” Knox’s father, Curt, later spoke to reporters outside his house, where there was a small welcome home party but no sign of his daughter. He said Amanda “needed her space” and had not agreed to any media deals. “She has been in a concrete bunker for four years.” Curt Knox said Amanda would like to return to the University of Washington at some point to finish her degree, but for now “the focus simply is Amanda’s wellbeing and getting her reassociated with just being a regular person again”. He said he was concerned about what four years in prison may have done to his daughter. “What’s the trauma … and when will it show up, if it even shows up?” he said. “She’s a very strong girl but it’s been a tough time for her.” Theodore Simon described the Knox family’s situation as a “gruelling, four-year nightmarish marathon that no child or parent should have to endure”. “Meredith was Amanda’s friend. Amanda and the family want you to remember Meredith and keep the Kercher family in your prayers,” he said. On Tuesday the family of Meredith Kercher said that they were back to “square one.” Monday’s decision “obviously raises further questions”, her brother Lyle Kercher said. “If those two are not the guilty parties, then who are the guilty people?” Rudy Guede’s conviction for the murder of Meredith Kercher is the only one that still stands. His sentence was cut to 16 years in his final appeal. His lawyer has said he will seek a retrial. The prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini, has expressed disbelief at the appeal verdicts of Knox and Sollecito and said he will appeal to Italy’s highest criminal court after receiving the reasoning behind the acquittals, due within 90 days. “Let’s wait and we will see who was right. The first court or the appeal court,” Mignini said. “This trial was done under unacceptable media pressure.” Anne Bremner, a Seattle defence lawyer and spokesman for Friends of Amanda Knox, said Amanda was looking forward to having a backyard barbecue, being outside on the grass, playing football and seeing old friends. Amanda Knox Meredith Kercher United States Italy Lee Glendinning guardian.co.uk
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