Labour leader risks angry response in TUC speech from some public sector leaders but will defend historic links with party The Labour leader Ed Miliband will on Tuesday urge union leaders not to rush into premature strikes over government plans to cut their members’ pensions, as he warns unions in the private sector they risk irrelevance unless they can recruit more members. His remarks in a speech to the TUC annual conference in London will anger some leaders of public sector unions not affiliated to the party, following his disavowal of the strike action they mounted in June. Miliband knows he faces an acutely difficult political challenge if he disowns strike ballots organised by the main unions affiliated to the party such as Unite and Unison. He is already locked in talks on reforming the union role inside the party, which are due to come to a head next week. Those big unions are likely to call ballots on industrial action if talks with government fail at the end of next month. Miliband will defend Labour’s historic link with the unions, saying: “Of course, there are times when you and I will disagree. You will speak your mind. And so will I.” He will claim the union party link “is secure enough, mature enough, to deal with disagreement”. His draft speech says: “The relationship between party and unions is not about romance or nostalgia. It is about respect and shared values. It is a relationship in which we listen to each other when we disagree. And we always know that what unites us is greater than what divides us.” He will praise moderate “unions that stand up for their members”, including those at car plants who negotiated with management and “made some sacrifices” to secure jobs. But he will distance himself from the heavy union rhetoric of mass civil resistance against the cuts by saying: “The reality is that, away from the headlines, the new offer you are already making to members is about getting on, not getting even. “The challenge for unions is this: to recognise that Britain needs to raise its game if we are to meet the challenges of the future and to get private sector employers in the new economy to recognise that you are relevant to that future.” He will remind them that just 15% of the private sector workforce are members of trade unions. Ahead of his leader’s speech, the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, accused the government of seeking to provoke a strike and praised the responsible approach of Unison general secretary Dave Prentis. Asked if Labour would support fresh co-ordinated public sector strikes, Balls told the BBC: “We will urge the government to negotiate. Of course, you can never say in advance that there is never a justified strike, that would be ridiculous, but what we have got is a government trying to provoke confrontation. “I think there will be millions of people, including millions of people who will lose on their pensions, men and women in their 50s, who will say, if I am treated deeply unfairly I am going to act, but that is the wrong way to make these kind of changes in our country.” Miliband’s speech will call for a new, more balanced economy and say that Labour would have had to make tough spending decisions if it had returned to government. He will acknowledge that the last government did not spend every penny wisely, and will echo the call by Balls for a plan B to get the economy growing again. Len McCluskey, the new Unite general secretary, claimed Miliband was trying to break free from the “uber-Blairites” that still existed in his shadow cabinet. He said: “I don’t want him to say that strikes are wrong, I want him to say that he understands. If he can’t come out in favour of the strike, he certainly should understand the resentment and the fear that people have.” Miliband’s opposition to the June strikes had been had been “100% wrong”. He added: “He’s taken over a Labour party, he wants to quell the dissidents of his own ranks in the shadow cabinet and in other arenas who are uber-Blairites who are still trying to snap at him, and he has to navigate his way through what is a coalition of ideas, including the trade unions.” On the economy, Miliband will claim Britain is at “a fork in the road”. He will say: “Unless we are willing to challenge many of the assumptions on which economic policy has been based for a generation, we will fail the next generation.” He will argue that “financial services are important to Britain and will continue to be so, but unless we broaden our economic base and introduce reforms to tackle irresponsibility of bankers, we will be exposed to crisis as we were in 2007. “While jobs must be our priority, we must ensure they are decent jobs at decent wages and opportunities are extended to all our young people. We need to reward entrepreneurship and wealth creation, but if we just shrug our shoulders about inequality – not just between the top and the bottom, but for the squeezed middle too – it will cause further problems for both our society and our economy.” Ed Miliband Trade unions TUC Labour Hélène Mulholland Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Jamie Dimon, CEO Of JPMorgan Chase, Calls International Bank Rules ‘Anti-American’
September 12, 2011 No Comment
The United States should consider pulling out of the Basel group of global regulators, Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, said in an interview with the Financial Times. Dimon said he was supportive of forcing banks to have more capital but argued that moves to impose an additional charge on the largest global banks went too far, particularly for U.S. lenders. He was quoted as describing new international bank capital rules as “anti-American”. “I’m very close to thinking the U.S. shouldn’t be in Basel anymore. I would not have agreed to rules that are blatantly anti-American,” he said in the interview. “Our regulators should go there and say: ‘If it’s not in the interests of the U.S., we’re not doing it’.” The Basel III capital rules are designed to increase the safety of the financial system by making banks build up risk-absorbent “core tier one” capital to at least 7 percent of risk-weighted assets. The biggest, including JPMorgan, have to reach 9.5 percent. Dimon also criticised liquidity rules, arguing that regulations that viewed covered bonds as highly liquid but discounted government-backed, mortgage-backed securities in the United States were unfair. He added that other details hit investment banking activity core to U.S. banks hardest because of the threat that Asian banks, in particular, could take U.S. market share due to the combination of U.S. domestic and global rules. “I think any American president, secretary of Treasury, regulator or other leader would want strong, healthy global financial firms and not think that somehow we should give up that position in the world and that would be good for your country.” (Writing by Stephen Mangan; Editing by Dale Hudson) Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions.
Continue reading …‘Price is Right’ Model Lawsuit: Latest in a History of Harassment Claims
September 12, 2011 No Comment
Former Price is Right model Lanisha Cole filed a lawsuit Sept. 7, alleging wrongful termination and sexual harassment by the show’s producers. She is the latest in a long line of women to lodge similar complaints in the classic game show’s history. In a 20-page civil complaint, Cole names producers Michael G. Richards and Adam
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By JENNY BARCHFIELD, Associated Press PARIS — A nuclear waste site in southern France had an explosion Monday that killed one person, seriously burned another and slightly injured three others, France’s nuclear safety body said. The Nuclear Safety Authority said no radioactive leaks have been detected in the blast at 12:37 p.m. (1037 GMT, 6:37 a.m. EDT) at an oven in the Centraco nuclear site. The accident was under control within the hour, the agency said in a statement. Centraco is located on the grounds of another nuclear site, Marcoule, in the Languedoc-Roussillon region near the Mediterranean Sea. “According to initial information, the explosion happened in an oven used to melt radioactive metallic waste of little and very little radioactivity,” the statement said. “There have been no leaks outside of the site.” Those injured were not contaminated with radiation, and the outside of the building that houses the oven showed no sign of damage or contamination either, the agency said in a separate statement. Officials from France’s EDF power company, whose subsidiary operates Centraco, stressed that there was no nuclear reactor on the site and that no waste treated at the site of the explosion came from a reactor. Spokeswoman Carole Trivi said a fire broke out after the explosion, but it has since been brought under control. The cause of the blast was not immediately known, and an investigation has been opened, Trivi said. The material at Centraco comes from nuclear sites and therefore is mildly radioactive, spokeswoman Carole Trivi said. She said the site treats mostly waste from EDF’s own power plants, as well as a small amount of material from hospitals or medical research labs. Nothing comes from weapons manufacture, she said. Staff at the plant reacted to the accident according to planned procedures, the Nuclear Safety Authority said in the statement. The local Midi Libre newspaper reported that no quarantine or evacuation measures had been immediately undertaken. A separate statement from France’s Nuclear and Alternative Energy Commissions added that the site of the explosion remains sealed and its ventilators were operating. Centraco is located on the 300-hectare Marcoule site, which also houses a research center and four industrial sites, including one that makes Mox, a fuel made from plutonium and uranium. The head of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, said his organization’s “incident and emergency center was immediately activated and has sent requests for detailed information.” France is the world’s most nuclear-dependent country in the world, with the lion’s share of its electricity coming from the 58 nuclear reactors that dot the country. France is also a major exporter of nuclear power, treats nuclear waste from around the world, and state-owned nuclear giant Areva is one of the country’s most prominent companies. The kind of soul-searching about using nuclear power that swept the world following Japan’s March 11 tsunami and the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant have been largely absent in France, which has stuck firmly to its pro-nuclear policy. In June, President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged that France will stick to a plan to invest euro1 billion ($1.37 billion) in future nuclear reactors. By contrast, neighboring Germany took eight of its older reactors off the grid in the wake of the Japanese disaster and lawmakers have voted to shut the country’s nine remaining nuclear plants by 2022. Still, French environmentalists have long called for the end to the country’s nuclear program, and the Europe Ecology-Greens party urged transparency in responding to Monday’s accident. __ Associated Press writers Sarah DiLorenzo and Cecile Brisson in Paris contributed to this report.
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It’s Monday, and we’re still here to help by letting you peek into the recording booth when the Engadget HD podcast goes to mp3 at 5:30PM . We’re back at our regular time, so take a peek at the live stream, chat and list of topics after the break. Continue reading Join the Engadget HD Podcast live on Ustream at 5:30PM Join the Engadget HD Podcast live on Ustream at 5:30PM originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 12 Sep 2011 17:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Clambering exhausted but triumphant from the water, the comic actor has completed his epic eight-day, 140-mile journey Having conquered a gippy stomach, painful wetsuit rash and fear of swans, the comic actor David Walliams clambered exhausted but triumphant from the water in London on Monday after completing his epic charity swim along 140 miles of the river Thames. The Little Britain star’s Sport Relief Big Splash Challenge took eight days, during which his 110,738 strokes burned off an estimated 65,574 calories and raised £1,093,325 – and counting – as he ended his journey early on Monday evening . Crowds gathered along the river’s banks, their cheers buoying him through the final strokes of his 15 miles from Teddington Lock to Westminster bridge. The tidal stretch was always destined to be toughest leg of the challenge, even without the remnants of hurricane Katia licking the water and whipping up strong gusts. As he stepped from the river, with hundreds chanting “David, David” he told the crowd: “I’ve just swum the length of the Thames. I feel quite tired.” Asked what his lowest point was, he replied: “Feeling like my arse was going to explode.” During a celebrity reception, including the comics Lenny Henry and Miranda Hart and the actor Barbara Windsor, Walliams was presented with a pint of Thames water as a memento. “Norovirus in a bottle,” quipped Henry. The Olympians Sir Steve Redgrave and swimmer Mark Foster draped him in a union flag as he was welcome by a guard of honour. Not since a disorientated juvenile northern bottlenose whale took a wrong turn and ended up in the city in 2006 has an object afloat in the murky Thames attracted quite so much attention as the sight of Walliams’s capped head and muscular forearms powering his way to the finish line. “Come on David,” yelled supporters, their admiration in no small way enhanced by Walliams’s determination to continue despite unappealing news on day two that torrential rain had forced Thames Water to dump 500,000 cubic metres of sewage into the very waters he would be swimming through. “We’re not public health experts, but I wouldn’t recommend swimming in it,” said Thames Water’s Richard Aylard, shortly after Walliams had been informed of this unexpected development. Swallowing Thames water – with the attendant risks of contracting E coli , salmonella and hepatitis – is not desirable but proved unvoidable for a front-crawl swimmer who reached speeds of up to three miles an hour. Then there’s the risk of Weil’s disease, carried by rat urine and which last year claimed the life of the Olympic rower Andy Holmes. Despite a battery of inoculations and precautionary antibiotics, Walliams was almost sunk after succumbing to Thames Tummy two days after pushing off from the Cotswold town of Lechlade, the start of his journey. “Perhaps best not to go into further details,” he cautioned during one rest stop after divulging he was suffering diarrhoea, vomiting and low energy levels. Illness was a serious threat to the swim. Instead of refuelling with carbohydrate-heavy foods such as pasta, fish and chips, pizza and porridge he was managing to keep down only toast, flat cola and some glucose tablets. But supported throughout by his Dutch model wife Lara Stone, 27, he battled on with legions of wellwishers lining his route, armed with sugary treats and homemade cakes to build up his stamina. “I am very proud,” said Lara, kissing him in front of the crowd. The actor admitted that the challenge was a lot harder than he had envisaged and at times he feared he had “bitten off more than he could chew”. “I used to like swimming” he joked. As well as the intense physical strain the swim was also psychologically demanding, he said, sending him “slightly loopy” at times. “You’re alone with your thoughts for a very long time. Sometimes 11 or 12 hours. I sometimes had slightly delusional thoughts, paranoid thoughts. I kept thinking someone was going to drop a brick on me from a bridge. I don’t know why”. The actor has been overwhelmed by the support he has received. “It’s been amazing and the public have been fantastic because you know the weather hasn’t been great but people have been out to cheer me on,” he said, just before setting off from Kew Bridge on Monday afternoon.His rescue of the pet labrador Vinny, who was struggling to get out of the river near Cookham Lock in Berkshire, further augmented his hero status, prompting Walliams’s mother Kathleen to pronounce him “a sort of nation’s sweetheart”. “I’m very very proud of him,” she said. “Saving the dog. That was great,” he said. “The British public love dogs.” He was also grateful because the incident kept up the media coverage. Having survived without being menaced by swans – “when they’re coming towards you, fluffing their wings and hissing when you’re in the water, it’s quite scary” – Walliams is now likely to hang up his trunks. He has already swum the Straits of Gibraltar and the Channel, as well as cycling from Land’s End to John O’Groats, all for charity, leading his friend and stalwart swim supporter, the comedian Jimmy Carr, to comment he was “turning charitable endeavour into a personality disorder”. The actor confesses he is uncertain what compels him. “I must be a masochist,” he has said. But, at the lowest points, he focused on why he was doing it. He would conjure up the image of a 12-year-old orphan, called Philip, whom he met living in a centre in Kenya funded by Sport Relief, and who wants to be a pilot. “He’s living in the most desperate circumstances, yet he still has great aspirations. I think about him and not wanting to let him down,” he said. Supporters can sponsor Walliams at http://www.sportrelief.com/walliams David Walliams Television Swimming Fitness Swimming Rivers Caroline Davies guardian.co.uk
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Somali pirates suspected of taking woman hostage after her husband was shot dead during robbery The Kenyan military has joined the search for a British woman who was kidnapped after gunmen shot dead her husband at a beach resort in the east African country. The Foreign Office , which has refused to release or confirm the couple’s names for fear of endangering the abducted woman, is continuing to call on her captors to release her. The two Britons, both thought to be in their 50s, were the only guests staying at the sprawling and secluded Kiwayu Safari Village, close to the Kenyan border with Somalia , when the attack happened in the early hours of Sunday morning. Kenyan police are not sure whether the raid was the work of pirates or the Somali Islamist insurgent group al-Shabaab . Shortly after midnight on Sunday, at least five gunmen arrived at the beach by speedboat and stormed the couple’s palm-thatched hut, thought to be the furthest from the hotel’s reception. After ordering the Britons to hand over their valuables, the attackers shot the husband and bundled his wife into a speedboat. She has not been seen since and her kidnappers have yet to make a ransom demand. Eric Kiraithe, a Kenyan police spokesman, said the police and the military were now combing the area. The beach, which is usually empty except for a scattering of guests, was swarming with helicopters, police officers and armed guards on Monday afternoon. Guards had been told not to let anyone into the crime scene or to speak to journalists without police permission. Many hotel owners and locals on nearby Lamu island said they had often thought that the resort – only an hour by boat from the Somali border – was vulnerable. “On Lamu, we have always known they were in a more risky position but we never thought an attack like this would happen,” said hotel owner Muhidin Athman. “It’s going to have a bad effect on everyone working in the area.” The search for the missing woman is being carried out by air, boat and road and has been widened to include a 300‑mile (500km) area along the coast and up to the border with Somalia. It has not yet stretched over the border into Somalia, an area described by the Kenyan authorities as lawless and under the control of militant Islamists. Kenyan police have mentioned both Somali pirates and Islamist terrorists as possible perpetrators but are not ruling out local bandits or robbers. Police Commissioner Mathew Iteere said it would have been very easy for the attackers to get into the couple’s hut because it had a cloth door. He told a press conference it was possible that the husband had “resisted”, which may have been why he was shot. He said that if the attackers were hoping for a ransom for the wife, it was likely they would get in contact. The FCO has deployed a consular team from the high commission in Nairobi and is working with the Kenyan authorities to secure the missing woman’s release. It has also repeated its warning against “all but essential travel to within 30km of Kenya’s border with Somalia” and reminded travellers that two western nuns and three aid workers were kidnapped in the area between November 2008 and July 2009.The Kiwayu Safari Village, which was opened in 1973, has taken its website offline . A brief statement reads: “Sorry the website is unavailable due to the tragic events. Our thoughts and prayers are with the affected family.” Kenya Africa Somalia Sam Jones guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media Another week, another day for Eleanor Clift to get ganged up on as the lonely representative of the “left” on PBS’s The McLaughlin Group . This week one of the topics was Gov. Rick Perry’s statement during the GOP debate that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme . Naturally, Mort Zuckerman, Pat Buchanan and Rich Lowry all came to his defense. ZUCKERMAN: Yes, well you know there was a cartoon in The New Yorker and somebody was asking Bernie Madoff, “What was your inspiration?” He said “Social Security.” I’m not making that up. Okay, so that’s in fact what you have in Social Security is we all know, you have millions of people who are going to be beneficiaries over the next several decades, and the funding still isn’t there. And nobody’s being willing to address this, either by postponing the age at which you get it. So in one sense it is clearly a false basis for the financial structure of it. After McLaughlin chimes in and claims the money is not going to be there for young people as well and who also calls Social Security a Ponzi scheme, then we get treated to Pat Buchanan with yet more fearmongering. BUCHANAN: But John, there is no trust fund. They say, look at the trust fund out in Virginia, they borrowed it and spent it. There’s an IOU out there. He’s telling the honest, though, hard truth! Is is smart politically? Romney is stomping all over him for having said it. After some back and forth over whether Perry made a political mistake with what he said, we get this from the National Review contributor and Sarah Palin fan-boy, Rich Lowry. LOWRY: The Ponzi language is not what’s most dangerous to him. If he goes into a general election saying it’s a failure and unconstitutional, then it will be hard to defend. But no one believes in the financing of Social Security over the long term. But it is a mistake for Romney to take this on now. Late in the segment, Eleanor Clift finally got a chance to weigh in and talked about lifting the cap on taxable income to shore up the funding and the difficulties those who do manual labor would have with increasing the retirement age. Of course they all had a good laugh when she mentioned, heaven forbid, any of them possibly having to pay more in taxes. Heaven forbid any of these overpaid rich white men should think they might have to participate in some “shared sacrifice.”
Continue reading …Tim Pawlenty didn’t wait long to throw his weight behind a candidate in the GOP primary race. The former Minnesota governor told Fox News today that he is endorsing Mitt Romney, adding, “I think he’s going to be a transformational and great president for this country.” And we know what…
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Home secretary chooses candidate favoured by Tories to lead UK’s biggest police force, ignoring advice from experts Bernard Hogan-Howe was appointed as commissioner of the Metropolitan police on Monday after the home secretary, Theresa May, ignored recommendations from two official panels that the government critic Sir Hugh Orde should get the job. May hailed the new commissioner as a “tough, single-minded crime fighter”. Hogan-Howe, the former chief constable of Merseyside police, said: “It is my intention to build on public trust in the Metropolitan police service and lead a service that criminals will fear and staff will be proud to work for.” Final interviews for the £260,000-a-year Scotland Yard job were conducted on Monday morning by May and Boris Johnson, the London mayor. They picked Hogan-Howe to become the most senior officer in British policing ahead of three other police chiefs: Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers; Tim Godwin, the acting Met commissioner; and Stephen House, chief constable of Strathclyde police. The Guardian has learned that two official panels that formed part of the selection process, and who interviewed the four candidates, had both assessed Orde as the best choice. However, his public criticism of the government’s proposed radical reforms of policing is thought to have cost him the job. The first panel to reach a conclusion was convened by the Home Office and comprised top civil servants and experts. It was chaired by Helen Ghosh, who serves as permanent secretary at the Home Office, and met on Friday 2 September. Last Tuesday, a special panel of the Metropolitan police authority (MPA) met and also ranked Orde as best for the job, placing Hogan-Howe second. In the last two searches for a Met commissioner, in 2005 and 2009, the home secretary has accepted the panel’s recommendations. By law, the selection of the Met commissioner is the responsibility of the home secretary, who merely has to have “regard” for the views of the mayor and the MPA. Minutes after the appointment, a senior source with close knowledge of the Met claimed there were doubts about the appointment. “You have to hope he is successful. But it is a risky appointment. As commissioner, you have to build a team; he does not have that reputation, he believes he is always right,” he said. “He polarises opinion. The Met is not Merseyside.” The source added that Hogan-Howe’s known closeness to the Conservatives meant “the appointment was a political choice; he has been cosying up to the Conservatives. The Met will remain in turmoil”. But an experienced senior officer said Hogan-Howe had impressed since becoming temporary commissioner, telling junior officers what he wanted in “jargon-free and clear language.” Another added: “He is a bright bloke, very able with a good range of experience. He is a moderniser, committed to diversity. It’s a good choice.” When Sir Paul Stephenson resigned in July amid the phone-hacking scandal, May inserted Hogan-Howe into the Met as acting deputy commissioner. Hogan-Howe, who led the Merseyside force from 2004 to 2009, had left the police service to work for Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, where part of his brief was monitoring the Met. He therefore had to be sworn in as a constable, a requirement of holding such high office. Johnson said Hogan-Howe had cut crime by 40% in three years while in Merseyside and had an excellent record in tackling gangs. The mayor said: “Bernard Hogan-Howe has made it clear that this will be a new more transparent era for the Met, making the police more accountable to the public. ” The new commissioner will face a daunting set of challenges. The mayor demanded quick results ahead of his battle for re-election next May against Labour’s Ken Livingstone and former Met deputy assistant commissioner, Brian Paddick, standing for the Liberal Democrats, where policing will be a key issue. Johnson said: “I believe the public will begin to notice a number of positive changes over the next few months.” Ironically, Hogan-Howe in part owes the job to Orde, who managed to persuade the home secretary to oppose Downing Street’s plan to bring in Bill Bratton, the former US police chief, to run the Met. As relations between top officers and the Conservatives plunged to an all-time low, Orde criticised the government over plans for elected crime commissioners, funding cuts and its response to the August riots. He also dismissed the prime minister’s idea that the Met could be run by a foreign police chief as “stupid”. Hogan-Howe had applied for the commissioner’s job in 2009, but failed to make the shortlist, when the final two candidates were Orde and Stephenson. The change of government helped his cause this time around. Supporters say he is pragmatic about the need to listen to politicians. Critics are less kind. Stephenson and the Tory mayor’s team clashed over the British tradition that police chiefs have “operational independence”. Hogan-Howe will be expected by his peers in policing to preserve that principle while needing to keep politicians placated. He becomes the third Met commissioner in three years. Under Johnson’s administration, first Sir Ian Blair and then Stephenson resigned. The new commissioner also faces the challenge of next year’s Olympics in London, knitting together his top team and motivating his own rank-and-file officers, and dealing with large budget cuts while trying to cut crime. Metropolitan police London Police Theresa May guardian.co.uk
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