Just one more step to go now: The Senate passed the debt ceiling bill this afternoon as expected and sent it along to President Obama for his quick signature, reports MSNBC . The legislation, which passed 74-26, allows the ceiling to be raised just ahead of the midnight default deadline. It…
Continue reading …Anders Behring Breivik says he’ll identify the terror cells he was working with, but first, he’s got some demands. Modest stuff like cigarettes, civilian clothing, and the resignation of the entire Norwegian government. “They are completely impossible to fulfill,” his lawyer, Geir Lippestad tells the AP . He says his client…
Continue reading …You know those copies of USA Today that sometimes get left outside your hotel room door? Apparently they’re not free, at least not at the Hilton Garden Inn Sonoma County Airport, which one guest learned to his dismay. Now Rodney Harmon has filed a federal class-action lawsuit against the Hilton…
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As guardian.co.uk launches 3 million new album pages, Alexis Petridis offers tips on how to write the perfect review A few months back, the Daily Express took it upon themselves to review PJ Harvey’s most recent album , Let England Shake. They must have noted that it had been hailed elsewhere as not merely a good album, a highlight of an already stellar career, but an important work that underlined the matchless power wielded by a unique artist uncoupled from musical trends, determined not to repeat herself, in an increasingly homogenous and repetitive rock and pop world. Understandably, they clearly put their best man on the job, the better to unpick Harvey’s dense mesh of musical influences and literary and historical allusions for the benefit of their immigration-fearing readership. “You might not be able to pick her out of a police lineup, but there’s no lack of respect for PJ Harvey,” he opened. “The album moves away from her usual style, but let’s just say it’s not our bag. 2/5.” Read Alexis’s review of his favourite-ever record Of course, the Daily Express isn’t the first place you’d look for an in-depth examination of a cutting-edge experimental rock album, but these 38
Continue reading …The sticky situation between supermodel Linda Evangelista and her French billionaire babydaddy just got stickier: Evangelista wants $46,000 a month in child support from Francois-Henri Pinault, who reportedly has never spent a penny on their 4-year-old son, Augustin James. Complicating matters: Pinault is also father to a daughter who…
Continue reading …British police have arrested yet another former News of the World employee in connection with its phone hacking investigation. This time it’s ex-managing editor Stuart Kuttner, who for 22 years served as the public face and perennial defender of the tabloid, the Guardian reports. The 71-year-old went in for a…
Continue reading …The Rust Belt has suffered through decades of decline and job losses, but now a $650 million steel plant, bringing 350 new jobs, is going up in Youngstown, Ohio—and you can thank fracking for the revival, reports the Wall Street Journal . The rise of hydraulic fracturing—the process of…
Continue reading …There were already rumors that Charlie Sheen’s Two and a Half Men character would be killed off , and now Deadline confirms it. Production begins on the ninth season next week, and the website reports that the two-part season premiere will feature the funeral for Sheen’s character, Charlie Harper, which will…
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Government publishes list of 291 people paid more than £150,000, with some on extra allowances up to £60,000 Generous side deals that allowed two senior NHS executives to add up to £100,000 to their salaries have been condemned by the government as “relics of the past”. Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, said that such deals would be banned in the future as the government reins in public sector salaries under George Osborne’s plan to eliminate Britain’s structural deficit by 2015. Maude spoke out after the Cabinet Office published the details of the salaries of all public servants, including those working in quangos, earning £150,000 or more. The figures show that Sir David Nicholson, the chief executive of the NHS whose basic salary is between £275,000 and £279,999, was given a “gross benefit in kind” of between £55,000 to £59,999 to help pay for a rented flat in London and what were described as associated expenses. The Department of Health, which said Nicholson’s “main residence” was in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, when the benefit was first disclosed, said he stopped receiving the extra payment in May 2011. David Flory, deputy chief executive of the NHS and whose basic salary is between £245,000 and £249,999, received an extra £35,000 to £39,999 for accommodation and travel expenses for living away from home. Maude said: “These kind of deals are relics of the past. It is absurd to expect that people can be paid the same amount in the public sector as they are paid in the private sector. People come in [from the private sector] to do jobs at senior levels in the public sector because they have an opportunity to make a big difference in the public sector, where they can work on a huge canvas. “These [deals] are a feature of the past and not the future. They were made when money was thought to grow on trees.” The list, published on Tuesday, shows that 291 people earn £150,000 or above in the current financial year. This is down on 345 in 2010, creating a saving of 16%. The figures were published after Maude announced earlier this week that he had made £3.75bn savings by cutting back on what he described as inefficiencies and unjustifiable costs in central government. The figures show that Sir Gus O’Donnell, the cabinet secretary, is paid between £235,000 and £239,999. But he is paid less than Joe Harley, the director general of IT at the Department of Work and Pensions, who is paid £240,000 to £244,999. There are 10 members of the Olympic Delivery Authority on the list who are paid up to £2.1m between them. Dennis Hone, the ODA’s chief executive, is paid the highest salary – between £310,000 and £314,999. Howard Shiplee, the director of construction at the ODA, is paid between £285,000 and £289,999. John Armitt, the ODA chairman is paid between £250,000 to £254,999 for working three and a half days a week. But Armitt receives no pension. Sir Roy McNulty, the ODA’s deputy chairman, earns between £40,000 and £44,999 for an average of three to four days a month. But he also had no pension from the ODA. The salaries paid to the members of the ODA dwarf the salaries of Britain’s military top brass. Sir David Richards, the chief of the defence staff, is paid between £235,000 and £239,999. The chiefs of the three services are paid slightly different salaries: • Sir Mark Stanhope, chief of the naval staff, is paid between £185,000 and £189,999. • Sir Stephen Dalton, the chief of the air staff, is paid between £175,000 and £179,999. • Sir Peter Wall, chief of the general staff, is paid between £170,000 and £174,999. Public sector pay Public sector pensions Public services policy Francis Maude Nicholas Watt guardian.co.uk
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Party prepares for conference fight as unions promise to resist proposals aimed at reducing their voting power Labour leader Ed Miliband is facing a tense battle with trade union leaders after tabling plans to lessen their influence within the party, by reducing their voting power at party conference to below 50% and diluting their sway over leadership elections. The move, revealed to the Guardian by union sources, is part of a plan to democratise the party and make big union general secretaries more accountable. It will face stiff opposition over what unions see as an attempt to weaken their historic links to Labour. Discussions about the proposals, part of the Refounding Labour Project, will come to a head in the next month before the annual party conference opens in Liverpool on 25 September. The plans are likely to especially rankle with unions after it was their support that helped the younger Miliband defeat his brother David in the Labour leadership election. Miliband has told the unions that he is not going to back down on his plans to make the party more democratic, and maintains that to do so will require changes to Labour’s internal democracy and the role that unions play. A source involved in drawing up the proposals said: “We cannot go on with a system in which unions have 50% of the vote at conference, and just three general secretaries of three unions control four-fifths of that union vote. Currently, the union leaders are playing hard ball but they need to wake up. “Ed has said he wants to do this through consensus, but he is not going to give the unions a veto about change. We are not going to concede.” Miliband has already angered unions with proposals for members of the public to be allowed to register as individual party supporters, a new category, and be given a vote in the election of party leader. He is also facing resistance to a plan that affiliated unions hand over a list of their three million political levy payers so that the party, constituencies and future leadership candidates can contact them directly, and build stronger links between local parties and individual union members. The unions insist that the party should not communicate with their members directly, but instead through their representatives. In a submission to the Refounding Labour project, the affiliated unions cite data protection issues, claiming it might breach laws on political campaigning to hand over the data. The Refounding Labour project is being overseen by Peter Hain, the experienced shadow Welsh secretary. Leaders of affiliated trades unions have put forward rival plans to restore the power of Labour’s annual conference as the sovereign policy-making body, and remove MPs’ separate voting section for the party leadership. Union resistance is so set that Miliband may be forced to postpone plans to put some key reforms to conference, and wait for a report into the future funding of political parties due to be published in October by the committee on standards in public life. That report, commissioned by the government, could propose caps as low as £50,000 on individual donations to political parties, so having radical implications for relations with the unions. A senior union figure involved in the talks said: “We are fed up with being treated as an embarrassment by successive Labour leaders. We have put forward our own proposals to make conference the source of legitimate party policy.” The unions are proposing a small change that would allow more groups to be affiliated to the party and vote in the union section at conference. Miliband has put a range of proposals to union leaders, including giving the 102-strong national policy forum a third or a fifth of the vote at conference, so reducing the union share to 40%. Alternatively, he has suggested informally, there could be a voting role at conference for elected representatives – MPs or councillors. Since 1993, the unions have held half the conference vote, constituencies the other half. Three giant unions – Unison, the GMB and Unite – together hold almost four-fifths of the union section of the vote. Miliband’s negotiators are also suggesting that union delegates to party conference be elected, or allowed to vote only if they have a union mandate. A party negotiator said: “If we are going to have a conference which has more power, then it has to come to decisions in a way that the leader feels he can defend. The easiest thing to do would be to leave everything as it is, let the unions defeat us, and continue to ignore the vote.” As well as suggesting the new membership category of registered supporter, Miliband also wants a ban on people having multiple votes in a leadership contest by virtue of being both a party member and political levy payer. The unions, through the Trade Union and Labour Party Liaison Organisation (Tulo), which brings together unions affiliated to the party, opposes the concept of registered supporters. “We should not widen participation by creating a lower class of membership,” it said. The liaison organisation instead suggests that MPs lose the right to a third of the vote in the electoral college that elects the Labour leader, and claims this “should not be considered an attempt to downgrade the role of parliamentarians in a leadership election”. It insists that union executives be allowed to retain the right to recommend a leadership candidate to their membership. But Tulo is also opposing to direct communication between Labour representatives and members of affiliated trades unions. It said: “Whilst superficially attractive this fails to account for the legal and cultural factors that make such an arrangement extremely difficult … a direct relationship would call into question the legal separation between trade union political activity and the Labour party with unknown consequences.” It adds: “A relationship of that kind sits uneasily with notions of collective engagement.” Tulo also claims that “while many political levy payers are are happy to support the political activities of their union, they share the same antipathy towards politics as the public in general”. Miliband cannot afford a politically high profile defeat on the issue since he has already suffered one setback when he was outvoted on the national executive committee in his choice of party general secretary. Miliband’s aides say he is going to be able to work effectively with the victorious candidate Iain McNicol, the GMB’s political officer. But the contest left bad blood over how the two sides lobbied hard for their candidate, including in the case of national executive members, the threatened loss of union funding. Ed Miliband Labour Trade unions Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk
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