Former Labour MP is released from jail and says his treatment was inconsistent with that of David Laws The former Labour MP Eric Illsley, who was jailed in February for wrongly claiming £14,500 in expenses, has been released, highlighting differences between his treatment and that of the former Lib Dem cabinet minister David Laws. Within hours of leaving jail, Illsley made pugnacious comments about his imprisonment, comparing it to the treatment of Laws. Laws is to be suspended from parliament for seven days but will ultimately be allowed to carry on with his career. Leaving prison on Friday Illsley said he had been made a scapegoat. A year-long inquiry ruled that Laws “seriously and extensively” broke the rules to claim rent which was paid to his partner over a period of seven years. He has already paid back nearly £60,000 and was forced to apologise to the Commons. In February, Illsley pleaded guilty to three charges of false accounting, admitting to dishonestly claiming payments for insurance, repairs, utility bills and council tax at his second home between 2005 and 2008. Speaking at his home in Pogmoor, the former MP for Barnsley told Radio 5 Live: “It does seem rather strange that I have done that and then the next person who was found to have broken the rules in relation to expenses is simply allowed to carry on with his career by apologising to the House. “I ask the question, why couldn’t I have been taken the same way?” “What a lot of people didn’t know, and still don’t know, is that only a handful of MPs were ever investigated. My case didn’t allow me to highlight the fact that I hadn’t done anything different from a lot of other MPs who had simply kept their heads down and carried on with their careers and were quite happy to see me as a scapegoat.” Illsley went to jail for claiming on a second home £100 more per week than he was entitled to, over a three-year period. He will serve out the rest of his 12-month sentence under home curfew. Eric Illsley MPs’ expenses David Laws House of Commons guardian.co.uk
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Former Labour MP is released from jail and says his treatment was inconsistent with that of David Laws The former Labour MP Eric Illsley, who was jailed in February for wrongly claiming £14,500 in expenses, has been released, highlighting differences between his treatment and that of the former Lib Dem cabinet minister David Laws. Within hours of leaving jail, Illsley made pugnacious comments about his imprisonment, comparing it to the treatment of Laws. Laws is to be suspended from parliament for seven days but will ultimately be allowed to carry on with his career. Leaving prison on Friday Illsley said he had been made a scapegoat. A year-long inquiry ruled that Laws “seriously and extensively” broke the rules to claim rent which was paid to his partner over a period of seven years. He has already paid back nearly £60,000 and was forced to apologise to the Commons. In February, Illsley pleaded guilty to three charges of false accounting, admitting to dishonestly claiming payments for insurance, repairs, utility bills and council tax at his second home between 2005 and 2008. Speaking at his home in Pogmoor, the former MP for Barnsley told Radio 5 Live: “It does seem rather strange that I have done that and then the next person who was found to have broken the rules in relation to expenses is simply allowed to carry on with his career by apologising to the House. “I ask the question, why couldn’t I have been taken the same way?” “What a lot of people didn’t know, and still don’t know, is that only a handful of MPs were ever investigated. My case didn’t allow me to highlight the fact that I hadn’t done anything different from a lot of other MPs who had simply kept their heads down and carried on with their careers and were quite happy to see me as a scapegoat.” Illsley went to jail for claiming on a second home £100 more per week than he was entitled to, over a three-year period. He will serve out the rest of his 12-month sentence under home curfew. Eric Illsley MPs’ expenses David Laws House of Commons guardian.co.uk
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Business, environment and ‘big society’ projects running months behind schedule only six months after they were published The government’s legislative agenda appears to have slipped in the last six months as it publishes business plans showing 87 revised deadlines and targets missed. The second publication of the government’s progress reports – an innovation devised by David Cameron to make government more efficient and transport – shows its business, environment and “big society” projects to be running months behind schedule only six months after their timetables were originally published. The documents also link for the first time the long awaited public services white paper – which it admits will eventually be six months late – has been held up by the “pause” and “listening exercise” taking place in the NHS reforms. First launched last November, the new regimes were heralded as a power shift from the centre to the people who would have a new ability to scrutinise the progress of government work. The No 10 website suggested the second round of plans had been reframed to reflect the government’s growing focus on social mobility and economic growth. “They also now include actions on growth and social mobility, and some minor presentation changes, including incorporating milestones into the main section of the business plans,” it says. The cabinet office was the department whose agenda had slipped the most with 17 rearranged targets. Next the business department with 11; education with 10, transport with 9 and Defra with 8. Delays include: • Plans for a new Public Data Corporation, to bring together all data services across government, are delayed from last month to the end of the year • Legislation to allow loans to be paid to people in further education have slipped from September 2011 to May 2012 • A white paper to reduce regulatory burdens on industry is delayed from May this year to October • The full establishment of the “big society” bank, using dormant bank account funds to invest in social enterprises, is delayed a year. An interim fund will be put in place. While the government reflected the well known pause in the NHS as it conducts a “listening exercise”, for the first time it made explicit there was a link between the newly imposed “pause” in the NHS reforms and the long awaited and much delayed wider public service reform white paper. It had been expected in January but now the business plan reveal it will be published in July. For the first time the documents acknowledge that it is on hold while the NHS reforms are on hold, suggesting that the two are inextricably linked. There has been some speculation that the link is Lib Dem opposition to privatisation. Not all date changes are delayed. A move towards individual voter registration, to tighten up the security of the electoral system, is being fast-tracked. Public services policy Health NHS Public sector cuts Health policy Education policy Allegra Stratton Polly Curtis guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Business, environment and ‘big society’ projects running months behind schedule only six months after they were published The government’s legislative agenda appears to have slipped in the last six months as it publishes business plans showing 87 revised deadlines and targets missed. The second publication of the government’s progress reports – an innovation devised by David Cameron to make government more efficient and transport – shows its business, environment and “big society” projects to be running months behind schedule only six months after their timetables were originally published. The documents also link for the first time the long awaited public services white paper – which it admits will eventually be six months late – has been held up by the “pause” and “listening exercise” taking place in the NHS reforms. First launched last November, the new regimes were heralded as a power shift from the centre to the people who would have a new ability to scrutinise the progress of government work. The No 10 website suggested the second round of plans had been reframed to reflect the government’s growing focus on social mobility and economic growth. “They also now include actions on growth and social mobility, and some minor presentation changes, including incorporating milestones into the main section of the business plans,” it says. The cabinet office was the department whose agenda had slipped the most with 17 rearranged targets. Next the business department with 11; education with 10, transport with 9 and Defra with 8. Delays include: • Plans for a new Public Data Corporation, to bring together all data services across government, are delayed from last month to the end of the year • Legislation to allow loans to be paid to people in further education have slipped from September 2011 to May 2012 • A white paper to reduce regulatory burdens on industry is delayed from May this year to October • The full establishment of the “big society” bank, using dormant bank account funds to invest in social enterprises, is delayed a year. An interim fund will be put in place. While the government reflected the well known pause in the NHS as it conducts a “listening exercise”, for the first time it made explicit there was a link between the newly imposed “pause” in the NHS reforms and the long awaited and much delayed wider public service reform white paper. It had been expected in January but now the business plan reveal it will be published in July. For the first time the documents acknowledge that it is on hold while the NHS reforms are on hold, suggesting that the two are inextricably linked. There has been some speculation that the link is Lib Dem opposition to privatisation. Not all date changes are delayed. A move towards individual voter registration, to tighten up the security of the electoral system, is being fast-tracked. Public services policy Health NHS Public sector cuts Health policy Education policy Allegra Stratton Polly Curtis guardian.co.uk
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Former Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy is trying to unite neuroscientists, government and advocacy groups to improve funding and research in brain science. (May 13)
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Former Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy is trying to unite neuroscientists, government and advocacy groups to improve funding and research in brain science. (May 13)
Continue reading …Boy, this just gets better and better, doesn’t it? So those reports of very high radioactive leaks, the ones TEPCO denied, were accurate if the reactor core was exposed. There was indeed a nuclear meltdown: Tokyo Electric Power Company says the No.1 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is believed to be in a state of “meltdown”. The utility company said on Thursday that most of the fuel rods are likely to have melted and fallen to the bottom of the reactor . Earlier in the day, it found that the coolant water in the reactor is at a level which would completely expose nuclear fuel rods if they were in their normal position. The company believes the melted fuel has cooled down, judging from the reactor’s surface temperature. But it suspects the meltdown created a hole or holes in the bottom of the reacto r causing water to leak into the containment vessel. It also suspects the water is leaking into the reactor building. But don’t worry – even thought it’s reached Level 7, it’s “still not as bad as Chernobyl”!
Continue reading …Boy, this just gets better and better, doesn’t it? So those reports of very high radioactive leaks, the ones TEPCO denied, were accurate if the reactor core was exposed. There was indeed a nuclear meltdown: Tokyo Electric Power Company says the No.1 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is believed to be in a state of “meltdown”. The utility company said on Thursday that most of the fuel rods are likely to have melted and fallen to the bottom of the reactor . Earlier in the day, it found that the coolant water in the reactor is at a level which would completely expose nuclear fuel rods if they were in their normal position. The company believes the melted fuel has cooled down, judging from the reactor’s surface temperature. But it suspects the meltdown created a hole or holes in the bottom of the reacto r causing water to leak into the containment vessel. It also suspects the water is leaking into the reactor building. But don’t worry – even thought it’s reached Level 7, it’s “still not as bad as Chernobyl”!
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It’s not enough for lefty radio host Randi Rhodes to say “Thomas Jefferson would bitch-slap Rush Limbaugh so hard.” On Tuesday, she insisted Ronald Reagan would be on Rush Limbaugh’s enemies list. Rhodes played a clip of Limbaugh saying of the Left “I don’t look at them as just simple opponents. That’s the prevailing view inWashington. Yea, they’re just the Democrats. And they’re going to win some and we’re going to win some…No no. ..The American Left with their designs on this nation are [the enemy].” Rhodes insisted “You know, it's a good thing Ronald Reagan's not around because he'd be on Rush's enemies list.because that was Ronald Reagan's quote. 'Make your political opponents just your opponents. They’re, not your enemies,' okay? They’re just Americans who you disagree with.” She added “So Mitch Daniels said, remember, we have no enemies, only opponents.” And Limbaugh was “ignorant that he [Rush] doesn't remember that Ronald Reagan had said that, and so now he is trashing Ronald Reagan, his freaking God, his hero, his messiah! It’s so sick! It’s so sick! And then of course anyone that doesn’t agree that the Left is an enemy is an enemy, too, and so on and so on, until there’s nobody left but Rush.” Casting people out for ideological impurity? This is a strange lecture coming from Randi, who lost one talk-radio gig for repeatedly denouncing left-winger Hillary Clinton in the spring of 2008 as a “big f—ing whore” and calling Geraldine Ferraro “David Duke in drag.”
Continue reading …Childbirth as depicted in the movies may be “all really lovely,” complete with flowers everywhere and “magically” made-up moms—but for actress Tilda Swinton, it’s “a truly, truly murderous business.” Never shy about being unconventional , Swinton says: “It’s violent. And if one doesn’t embrace that, if one can’t embrace it—…
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