Ministers are looking at how benefits, or tax credits could be taken away under plans being drawn up in response to the riots Magistrates and crown court judges could be asked to dock benefits from convicted criminals under preliminary proposals being drawn up by the government in response to the riots, the Guardian can reveal. Ministers are looking hard at how benefits, or tax credits, could be taken away to show criminals that privileges provided by the state can be temporarily withdrawn. Under the proposals anyone convicted of a crime could be punished once rather than potentially facing separate fines – first by a magistrates court and then a benefit office. By giving powers to the courts to strip benefits, the Department of Work and Pensions would no longer be obliged to intervene directly in the criminal justice system. Sources indicate that a vast array of punitive options are being examined as Whitehall races to meet an October deadline to publish its post-riot response. Number 10 is actively looking at the withdrawal of child maintenance or child benefit from parents who allow children to truant, or repeatedly allow them to stay on the streets late at night. Ministers are also looking at ensuring prisoners released from jail without a job are fast-tracked on to the government’s Work Programme. Some councils have announced plans to evict families of convicted rioters from social housing. But ministers are increasingly wary of measures to evict families after a child has broken the law, pointing out that government has a duty to prevent hardship, and might anyway simply be required to rehouse them in more expensive bed-and-breakfast accommodation. David Cameron has also drafted in the victims’ commissioner, Louise Casey, to set out how the government should intervene with the 120,000 families identified as having deep-seated problems. Casey, best known for her invention of the controversial antisocial behaviour orders, oversaw a multi-agency approach to problem families from the Home Office. She has in the past expressed frustration at the lack of co-ordination between government agencies in their efforts to help chaotic families, and Cameron regards her as well placed to judge what went wrong or right with Labour programmes. Ministers have pointed to the failure of health officials – locally and nationally – to co-operate with efforts to identify problem families. Health officials claim they have a duty to patient confidentiality, but in fact are often best placed to identify early a family liable to go off the rails. In 2008 Gordon Brown promised to target “more than 110,000 problem families with disruptive young people”. Parents were to be put on intensive courses to help them supervise their children. In response to the riots, Cameron said he would require each family’s problems be addressed by the end of parliament. The latest official figures show that in 2009-10 only 3,518 families were actually in the intervention programme and it has helped only 7,300 families since being set up in 2006. The Department for Education has compiled a list identifying the whereabouts of problem families. But since coming to power the Conservatives have removed ringfencing from the programme. Westminster council is now being cited by ministers for running the most successful example of a family recovery programme. Set up in 2008, parents joining a six-month programme are required to sign a contract with the council to take part. A team is appointed for a family as a single contact point acting as the gateway to all public services. The agreement sets out the possible sanctions – eviction, parenting orders, care proceedings and other forms of court action – in the event of a repeated failure to co-operate with the programme. The council claims the average number of arrests for crime households dropped from 9 to 1.5 a month and antisocial behaviour was reduced by nearly half. The government is also looking at offering clear options to rehouse families where a gang member wants to leave a gang but fears retribution. Ministers want more councils to be open about the scale of the gang problem, and claim that until the pervasiveness of gangs is admitted, progress will not be made. Ministers are also looking at schemes in Boston and New York, where the police do much more after hours to help youngsters. They believe the crisis gives the police an opportunity to rethink its concept of community policing. Ministers also suggest the option of a public inquiry into the riots has not yet been irrevocably ruled out. So far the government has appointed a panel to hear voices from inner-city communities where the riots occurred. Cameron is instinctively opposed to a further expensive public inquiry so soon after he appointed the inquiry into the future of media regulation. UK riots State benefits Welfare Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Libyan leaders fear Gaddafi may flee south across the border into Niger
September 7, 2011 No Comment
Niger’s foreign minister warns that the country does not have the means to close the border Libya’s new leaders were urgently trying to stop Muammar Gaddafi fleeing south as neighbouring Niger said it would be impossible to close its border, and evidence emerged suggesting the fugitive dictator was last seen in the very southern-most part of Libya. As the National Transitional Council (NTC) announced it had sent a delegation to Niamey to discuss how to stop “any kind of infiltration” by Gaddafi or his family, Niger’s foreign minister said the former ruler had neither crossed nor asked to cross the border. However, a day after it emerged that Gaddafi’s personal security chief had been admitted to the country, Niger’s foreign minister Mohamed Bazoum told the BBC that it had not decided whether it would accept Gaddafi himself or hand him over to the International Criminal Court (ICC). “We have no means to close the border … It is too big and we have very, very small means for that,” he said. Fathi Baja, the head of political affairs for the NTC, said the group was determined to try to prevent the dictator fleeing to Niger or Algeria. “I think he’s near one of these borders … and he’s looking for a chance to leave. We’re asking every country not to accept him. We want these people for justice,” Baja told Reuters. The leader of the interim government’s manhunt, who said late on Tuesday that Gaddafi had last been seen three days before near the village of Ghwat, around 200 miles from the border with Niger. Hisham Buhagiar told Reuters: “We have it from many sources that he’s trying to go further south, towards Chad or Niger.” It was not possible to confirm whether this supported another claim made on Wednesdayby a spokesman for Tripoli’s new military council, according to which Libyan fighters had located Gaddafi at an undisclosed location in Libya and had surrounded him on all sides. Anis Sharif said authorities were waiting to decide whether to capture or kill him. “He can’t get out,” Sharif told the Associated Press, without giving any more detail of the presumed location. “We are just playing games with him.” In a signal of just how mired in contradiction and confusion the manhunt is, Libya’s new deputy defence minister Mohammad Tanaz said the NTC did not know where Gaddafi was. Finding him, he added, was not a “priority”. As fresh detail emerged of the convoys reported to have crossed the Niger-Libya border in recent days, the government in capital Niamey acknowledged that Gaddafi’s former aide Mansour Dhao had been allowed in to the country “for humanitarian reasons”. Bazoum said that at least three convoys had come in to Niger containing, he claimed, several pro-Gaddafi businessmen, as well as Agaly ag Alambo, a Tuareg rebel leader. There were fewer than 20 of them, he added, and they would be free to stay in Niger. The US said it believed senior Gaddafi regime figures had also crossed over the border, but not Gaddafi himself. In Ougadougou, Burkina Faso, president Blaise Compaoré denied reports it had offered asylum to the former Libyan despot. As the search for Gaddafi continued, lead rebel negotiator Abdullah Kanshil said his son Saif al-Islam had been spotted in the town of Bani Walid on Monday and was probably still there. “Saif was sighted two days ago,” he said on Wednesday in Boshtata, about 50km from the town. “He’s coming in and out.” Kanshil said that Bani Walid was made up of 52 villages, three of which were still occupied by pro-Gaddafi gunmen. It was also possible that Saif could be hiding in its numerous caves. Another “big fish” might also be in the town, Kanshil added. Pressed for details, he replied: “Another of the sons. The ugly one.” Peace talks appeared to break down on Tuesday. But Kanshil insisted: “There is a lot of progress today in the conference with the clan leaders in Bani Walid. They are safe and sound. A few people waved their guns and cursed at them [after talks yesterday] but the people of Bani Walid made they got home to their families.” Asked if would be necessary to take Bani Walid by force, Kanshil said: “No, we hope not. The people of Bani Walid are with the revolution. But there are 80 snipers there, that’s our worry. Some in caves, some on roofs of buildings, some walking in places.” Any decision on an attack rested with the National Transitional Council, he said. “They are the leadership.” Muammar Gaddafi Libya Niger Arab and Middle East unrest Lizzy Davies guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Sure, some of them have faced off before—but tonight’s Politico/NBC News debate marks the first time new frontrunner Rick Perry will join the fray, making it what Politico calls the “first Fall Classic” for 2012 GOP presidential hopefuls. And it’s the start of a busy month as the race…
Continue reading …Eyewitnesses are coming forward to talk about yesterday’s horrific shooting at an IHOP in Carson City, Nevada. The gunman has been identified as 32-year-old Eduardo Sencion, and witnesses say he was carrying an AK-47, which he reloaded at least once, according to the Reno Gazette-Journal . Three of the four people…
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43 dead including professional players from Germany, Sweden and Slovakia playing for the club in popular league tournament Russia is in mourning after almost the entire team of a top ice hockey club, including several foreign stars, died in a plane crash that killed 43 people. The medium-range Yak-42 aircraft crashed and burst into flames shortly after takeoff from an airport near Yaroslavl in western Russia at about 4pm local time. It was carrying the city’s Lokomotiv ice hockey team to a match in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, scheduled for Thursday night. TV showed emergency officials wading out to blazing lumps of wreckage in the Volga river, about 160 miles north-east of Moscow. Seven crew and 36 members of the team and coaching staff died. Among them were players from Germany, Sweden and Slovakia, as well as Brad McCrimmon, the club’s Canadian coach. Doctors were fighting to save the life of two survivors – crew member Alexander Sizov and Alexander Galimov, who plays for Lokomotiv and Russia’s national team. He is reported to have suffered terrible burns. Ice hockey is hugely popular in Russia and the disaster is comparable in magnitude to the Munich air disaster in 1958 that killed eight members of the Manchester United football team and several staff. Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s president, who is due in Yaroslavl on Thursday for a political forum, expressed his “deepest condolences to the loved ones of the Yaroslavl air crash victims, and to all Lokomotiv Yaroslavl fans”. David Kaminski-Morrow, an aviation expert at Flightglobal said the operator of the jet in question had come under scrutiny over safety standards from Russian and European regulators. The Yak-42, in use since 1993, took off in clear weather but reportedly struck an airport antenna. Russian media quoted a flight traffic controller saying the plane had failed to gain adequate height on takeoff. Witnesses said the plane rose no more than 10m before crashing and bursting into flames. The nose of the plane plunged into the Volga, leaving the rear part of the plane on dry land. It was the latest in a series of air catastrophes in Russia. A Tupolev Tu-134 crashed near Petrozavodsk killing 44 people in June and a Tu-154 ploughed into trees in Smolensk in April 2010, killing a Polish delegation of more than 90 people, including president Lech Kaczynski. Vladislav Tretyak, the president of Russia’s ice hockey federation, said he was devastated: “There were a lot of players who could have played in the national team, and in the future at the Olympic Games in Sochi [in 2014]. We will do our best to ensure that hockey in Yaroslavl does not die, and that it continues to live for the people that were on that plane.” Lokomotiv play in the Kontinental Hockey league, which is made of 20 Russian teams and one each from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Latvia and Slovakia. The 2011-2012 season began on Wednesday. Several members of the Lokomotiv team had previously played in the North American NHL, including Josef Vasicek, who played for the Carolina Hurricanes, Nashville Predators and New York Islanders; and Pavol Demitra who played for the Ottawa Senators from 1993-1996, the St Louis Blues, Minnesota Wild and Vancouver Canucks from 2008 to last year. Lokomotiv’s international contingent also included Stefan Liv of Sweden, Czech Republic player Jan Marek and Karel Rachunek, who played for the Ottawa Senators from 2000 to 2004. He also played for the New York Rangers and New Jersey Devils. Russia Plane crashes Europe Sweden Germany Tom Parfitt guardian.co.uk
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Backbench Conservatives say Lib Dems wield too much influence over David Cameron A row over scrapping the 50p top tax rate is threatening to spill over into a wider Tory rebellion over whether the Liberal Democrats are wielding excessive influence over David Cameron. Backbench Tories are angry at the way Lib Dems have delayed the date of election of police commissioners, challenged aspects of the free school programme, revived doubts about the health reforms and engineered the vote against abortion reforms. They also believe Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister and Lib Dem leader, is acting as a brake on Tory attempts to take a tougher line on the repatriation of powers from the European Union, complaining Cameron should be actively dismantling the ailing eurozone. The 50p tax row was sparked by a letter to the Financial Times from 20 leading economists who called on the government to cut the top rate at the earliest possible opportunity. Led by DeAnne Julius, they claimed the 50p rate “is clearly a self-defeating way for the Treasury to raise the money and a reduction in tax avoidance would be more effective”. Julius was later unable to produce anything more than what she herself described as anecdotal evidence to justify her claim. Conservative sources insisted they had not been behind the FT letter. Cameron will try to defuse the row over withdrawing the 50p tax rate on those earning £150,000 or more by waiting for the outcome of a review commissioned by the chancellor, George Osborne, into whether the tax is bringing in the expected revenue. The review is unlikely to amass sufficient data in time for the spring 2012 budget. Downing Street confirmed that the priority set out in the coalition agreement was to increase personal allowances for the lowest-paid over the parliament. But in a sign of the simmering tensions between the two parties over tax policy, the Tory communities secretary, Eric Pickles, broke ranks by saying he thought the 50p rate, introduced in April, was probably doing more harm than good. Pickles told the BBC: “I think there is a strong and reasonable case to say, ‘Come on, this is not actually contributing very much.’ On balance, it’s probably doing more damage than it’s doing good.” He said he did believe the top rate should be “got rid of” but stressed the timing was up to Osborne. Charles Walker, vice-chaiman of the backbench 1922 committee, said a majority of Tory MPs did want the 50p rate scrapped. Osborne has repeatedly asserted that the 50p rate is temporary. But he needs clear evidence to show it is not producing revenue before he can persuade the public, let alone the Lib Dems, to back off. The Lib Dem president, Tim Farron, said that ending the 50p rate now would be a moral outrage. At a time when Osborne is being forced to admit his tax revenues are going to be lower than expected, he would need to be able to show incontrovertibly that abolition of the 50p tax rate would have little impact on the deficit reduction programme. The coalition could not remove it at least until the end of the public-sector pay freeze in 2013. The increasingly assertive Lib Dems are demanding another wealth tax – possibly a “mansion tax” – if the 50p levy is dropped before the coalition pledge to lift the threshold for paying income tax to £10,000 is achieved. In the Commons, Tory MP Nadine Dorries complained that “the Liberal Democrats make up 8.7% of this parliament and yet they seem to be influencing our free school policy, health and many issues including immigration and abortion. Does the prime minister think it is about time he told the deputy prime minister who is the boss?” Tory MP Mark Reckless complained No 10 had listened to the Lib Dems in delaying the election of police commissioners until next October – and asked if he would now also listen to his own party over a referendum on EU membership. No 10 said Cameron had been assiduous in meeting his own party in recent days, spending time in the tearoom on Tuesday and holding a large dinner for Conservative MPs on Tuesday night. No 10 recognises that Clegg is running a differentiation strategy before his own conference, and has to be given some latitude. Yet there is a cooling in relations, symbolised by the decision not to repeat last year’s political cabinet held to discuss a joint approach to the conference season. Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, said: “If the chancellor really wants to know how effective the top rate of tax is he should immediately ask the Office for Budget Responsibility, not just HMRC, to produce a report genuinely independent of government.” The government’s current projections show the 50p rate for people earning above £150,000 will raise an additional £12.6bn over the next five years. Economic policy Tax and spending George Osborne Liberal-Conservative coalition Economics Patrick Wintour Polly Curtis guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Marijuana users are less likely to be obese, according to a new study that would seem to fly in the face of the legendary munchies that are almost synonymous with pot. Researchers were so surprised by the results that they examined a second sample, only to come up with the…
Continue reading …Downward mobility is rampant in the US, with a third of Americans who grew up in the middle class falling out of it as adults, according to a new Pew Study ( pdf ). “A middle-class upbringing does not guarantee the same status over the course of a lifetime,” the…
Continue reading …It’s zombie-killing fun for the whole family—well, the whole liberal family, assuming they approve of guns and killing. Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Fox News, and the Koch Brothers are just some of the big-name conservative zombies you must confront in Tea Party Zombies Must Die , a free online shoot-’em-up…
Continue reading …Top tax rate will raise £12.6bn more in revenue, official figures reveal
September 7, 2011 No Comment
Government’s own projections favour 50p tax rate for highest earners as pressure mounts on George Osborne to scrap it The 50p tax rate will raise an additional £12.6bn over the next five years even if people choose to leave the country to avoid it, according to the government’s own projections which will add to pressure on the Treasury not to scrap higher taxes. By 2015-16 the 50% tax rate for people earning above £150,000 will bring in £3.2bn more than if the tax rate had stayed at 40% – rising from £1.1bn this year and totalling £12.6bn over the five year period. Compared with a 45% rate, 50% will bring in an additional £5.3bn. The figures, contained in the government projections from last November and revealed in a parliamentary question tabled by the Conservative peer Lord Ashcroft, emerge as Osborne is coming under pressure from the City and economists to remove the 50p rate. In a letter to the Financial Times on Wednesday, 20 leading economists, including two former members of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee called for the top rate of tax to be removed claiming it was damaging growth and failing to generate significant revenues. The chancellor is believed to be reconsidering the higher tax band and has asked the HMRC to evaluate its impact after the self-assesment deadline for its first year, in January. It should report in time for the budget. Osborne has previously said that “there’s not much point in having taxes that are economically inefficient”. New figures have emerged amid calls from Labour for the government to commission independent research into impact of the higher tax band and signals from the Lib Dems that they would oppose the scrapping of the 50p rate. Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, said: “If the Chancellor really wants to know how effective the top rate of tax is he should immediately ask the Office for Budget Responsibility, not just HMRC, to produce a report genuinely independent of government.” Lord Oakeshott, the Lib Dem peer and close ally of Vince Cable, said: “This gives the lie to the special pleading form the super rich and the Tory right for a hand out to the top 1% of taxpayers. This official treasury estimate, including possible behavioural reactions, shows the 50p top tax rate raising £12.6bn over five years. Warren Buffet in America and business leaders in France and Germany are calling for shared sacrifice – why are Britain’s super rich so super selfish?” The Treasury prediction takes into account the fact that people could opt to maximise their pension contributions, form a company or even leave the country to avoid paying extra tax. However, the Institute for Fiscal Studies is poised to publish a paper suggesting that the impact of the 50p tax rate on the highest paid could trigger people to adapt to avoid paying the extra tax to the extent that it could even cost the country money. In its Mirrlees Review, to be published next week, it reports: “It is not clear whether the 50% rate will raise any revenue at all. There are numerous ways in which people might reduce their taxable incomes in response to higher tax rates; at some point, increasing tax rates starts to cost money instead of raising it.” The IFS paper suggests that anything above the original highest rate of 40% would prompt people to find ways to avoid paying it. However, deputy director Carl Emmerson stressed that their figures were passed on data from the 1980s that have a high degree of uncertainty. ” Even in 10 years time I don’t think there will be a definitive answer to what tax revenues in, say, 2010-11 would have been had the top rate of tax been 40p not 50p.” A Treasury spokesman confirmed that the chancellor has asked for an analysis of the revenue raised by the top tax rate. “The government is committed to a competitive tax system, but in reducing the deficit, we have always been clear that those with the broadest shoulders should carry the greatest burden.” Economic policy Economics Tax and spending Tax Income tax George Osborne Tax avoidance Polly Curtis guardian.co.uk
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