Shelter warns that many disreputable landlords are taking advantage of the major changes sweeping the property market Slum landlords of the type that enjoyed a boom in the 1980s are again doing brisk business because of major changes sweeping the property market, say housing experts. Millions of people are being priced out of buying a property as mortgage availability becomes scarce and they struggle to raise a deposit. Latest figures suggest mortgage lending is now a third of what it was at the height of the boom in 2007. A dearth of social housing, which is under acute pressure as local authority budgets are cut, is also contributing to a lack of affordable accommodation. An increasing number of people have no option but to rent, creating intense competition in the private rental market. There are now 3.4 million households living in the private rented sector in England, a 40% rise over the past five years and the biggest increase on record, according to new analysis by Shelter. The trend has alarmed the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH) whose officers are charged with ensuring the nation’s housing stock meets adequate standards. “People who are in relatively secure jobs but can’t afford to buy are moving into the rented sector,” said Stephen Battersby, president of the CIEH. “People who have traditionally used the private sector will drop further down the ladder into the hands of the more exploitative, neglectful landlords, if not those who are downright criminal.” The government claims three quarters of private tenants report they are happy with their accommodation, but experts point out that this leaves some 800,000 who have concerns, many with the way they are treated by their landlords. In the past year, Shelter says it has seen complaints about landlords increase by 23%. Almost nine out of 10 environmental health officers say they have encountered landlords harassing or illegally evicting tenants from their homes. And almost all environmental health officers say they have encountered landlords who persistently ignore their responsibilities, with half believing they do this to make as much money as possible “A chronic shortage of social housing and more people priced out of the housing market means that renting is fast becoming the only option for thousands of people in this country,” said Campbell Robb, the chief executive of Shelter. “Yet our figures show a worrying increase in the number of people seeking help regarding problems with their landlord. It would appear that rogue landlords could be cashing in on this growing market.” Housing charities warn there is very little policing of landlords and the condition of their properties. In 2009, the English Housing Survey identified 1.5m homes in the private rented sector as “non-decent”. Of these, 970,000 failed the Decent Home Standard. This has led the CIEH to call for a national register of landlords. “It’s a public health issue that affects us all,” said Battersby. “The NHS is spending £800m a year because of poor housing, factor in social costs and it’s £1.5bn.” Environmental health officers working for Local Housing Authorities (LHAs) are responsible for monitoring standards in private properties rented out to benefit claimants. But, according to new evidence obtained by the CIEH under the Freedom of Information Act, four fifths of LHAs have never carried out a prosecution of a landlord. Cutbacks have prompted fears that this situation is unlikely to improve given the amount of time and manpower a prosecution involves. But experts fear the need to tackle the issue of rogue landlords in the private sector will become more urgent in the coming months. The localism bill currently before parliament allows local authorities to discharge their duties to homeless people by using private rented accommodation, rather than social housing, without the applicant’s agreement. Changes to the amount of housing benefit paid to claimants will also have an impact. “With cuts to housing benefit and changes to the homelessness safety net, we are concerned there will be an influx of people pushed to the bottom end of the private rented sector which will lead to an imbalance between supply and demand for properties,” Robb said. “This could see some rogue landlords exploiting the lack of accommodation, with the most vulnerable tenants left with little choice of who to rent from.” Housing Housing benefit Jamie Doward guardian.co.uk
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Kevin McKenna finds happy faces – and even a few union flags – as he joins the crowds to see Edinburgh’s own royal wedding The bride, as ever, looked radiant in a beautiful little off-the-shoulder number and the groom looked simply delighted. Then a white stretch limo pulled up and disgorged the ushers and a gaggle of bridesmaids, all pink and giggly. A lone piper greeted them at the door of the MacDonald Hotel then guests who had been sipping beers and Bacardis at the cafes on Holyrood Road followed them. It was the wedding day of local couple Paul and Sharon, and they didn’t seem in the least fazed by the thousands heading in the other direction for the union of a royal and a rugby star in the Canongate. The Edinburgh Evening News had predicted a crowd of only 2,000, but there looked to be at least double that gathered 10-deep in the Edinburgh sunshine and stretching most of the way up the Royal Mile. Earlier, I had sought to secure one of the little commemorative union flags that most people in the crowd seemed to be sporting. For this was Edinburgh’s Old Town – perhaps the only place in Scotland where you can wave the red, white and blue without making an exhibition of yourself. In the days before the wedding of the Princess Royal’s daughter, some had tried to induce outrage at the cost of the event to the public purse. They had chosen the wrong target, though. Anne is Scotland’s favourite royal and seems cast in our image and likeness. She doesn’t seem to brook any nonsense and you can imagine her helping the servants bring the coal in of a winter night. Besides, she’s patron of the Scottish Rugby Union and attends all Scotland’s matches in a tartan skirt. Zara herself seems a fresh and sonsie young woman who has emulated her mother as a world-ranking equestrian. The occasion had a down-to-earth feel – even, dare I say it, couthie. Two of Mike Tindall’s ushers were family members while three came from his rugby background. One was Peter Phillips, Zara’s brother. The groom’s brother, Ian, was also among their number. And there was also a little human touch becoming of Anne: as she watched the couple set off for Holyroodhouse she firmly linked arms with Tindall’s elderly father, Phil. The choice of the Canongate Kirk as the venue for the nuptials struck some as unusual and iconoclastic, but it wasn’t really. This 17th-century chapel, one of the most handsome in the city and commissioned by James VII, is the parish church of the Palace of Holyroodhouse and of the Scottish parliament. Indeed, did the Queen not worship there just the other week? She was also welcomed to this church 59 years ago, not long before her coronation. In the Canongate kirkyard, perhaps one of the most beautiful urban resting places in Scotland, lie the remains of David Rizzio who loved a queen once then paid for it with his life. There, too, are the bones of Robert Fergusson, a great Scottish poet who inspired Robert Burns, and the philosopher Adam Smith is interred just ahead of him. One of the best views in Edinburgh lies just beyond. The spirit of another, whose remains do not lie in the Canongate, nevertheless haunts the Royal Mile. Before his life of Samuel Johnson, James Boswell wrote his Edinburgh Journals based on his nocturnal adventures in this most historic of streets. This was 18th-century Scotland’s Sunset Strip and housed many of the capital’s shebeens and whorehouses. Boswell, it seemed, visited every one. He would have chuckled at the procession of Daimlers ferrying the entire top tier of Britain’s aristocracy to a church he once sashayed past while royally inebriated. I digress. Across the road, Caroline and Lesley from Kirkcaldy were enjoying their day in the sunshine. Like many others in the throng, they would not regard themselves as great supporters of the royal family, but when the Queen whisked by with a wave, there were tears. “She’s a lovely woman, I hope she enjoys her granddaughter’s wedding,” said one. Thomas was there with three young children, his bronzed features belonging to someone who works outside for a living. Did he not resent the reputed £500,000 cost of the occasion? “Not a bit of it,” he said. “This is the Queen’s parish and she does a lot for this country. I wouldnae begrudge her a penny.” It had just gone four o’clock when Zara and her new husband emerged from their nuptials. Everyone cheered. Soon she would arrive back at Holyroodhouse and be serenaded by the Royal Scots Association pipe band. As a sidenote, though, she will not take her husband’s name and become Mrs Tindall. Zara Phillips it was, and still is. “Who do you think made the dress?” asked Lesley. I told her it looked suspiciously to me like a Stewart Parvin number, having seen the couturier’s triumphant 2010 show at London’s White Gallery. She regarded me with renewed suspicion. “Are you havin’ a laugh?” Royal wedding Monarchy Weddings Scotland Mike Tindall The Queen Prince William The Duchess of Cambridge Kevin McKenna guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Three months after the Royal Wedding, the Windsors are gathering for a royal wedding: Zara Phillips, Queen Elizabeth’s oldest granddaughter, today will marry British rugby star Mike Tindall in a quiet ceremony in Edinburgh, reports the BBC . The ceremony marks the first royal wedding in Scotland since the second marriage…
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Launch of Google+ sees the online giants in a fight for the highly lucrative hearts and minds of internet users It is one month since the launch of Google+, a belated attempt at a social networking tool that invites users to follow friends’ activities in their news feed and share favourite content by marking it “+1″. If this sounds familiar, it shows the extent to which Google is playing catchup with Facebook, which is brewing a public offering next year that could value the firm at $100bn and, critically, has positioned itself as the gateway to the web for many of its 750 million users. Much of this pressure is down to the abrasive ambition of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Even Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, has conceded that Google has been late to the social networking space, with identity and personalisation now critical to the social experience for consumers, and the lucrative commercial opportunities that advertisers expect. But with Google’s proven commercial success nudging its market value towards $200bn, and data vaults that hold the browsing histories of most of the online population, is Google really on a downward trajectory, and is the era of search really ending? Ben Gomes has worked on every aspect of Google’s core search product and is leading exploration into the social navigation of search. Despite Google’s forays into everything from video communities to mobile operating systems, he insists that at its heart Google is still a search company. It was search, he said, that fuelled the explosion of web content and, unsurprisingly, Gomes doesn’t see social data as a replacement for search but as a layer that accesses the information in a different way. “We saw a symbiotic evolution of the web and search because people could find what they wanted more easily,” said Gomes, who joined Google in 1999. “We see social as a layer in search that provides you with more relevant information in certain situations, so if you were looking at product reviews, those of your friends would be marked in the results. But the most important thing in search is still the search term, and how your computer understands that.” Though Google+ is an intelligent attempt at a social networking tool, it seems a typical Google product in that it is brilliantly, heavily engineered but lacks the human focus required for a social network – the fuel that has propelled Facebook to 750 million users. With data from so many consumers informing so many Google products, why isn’t there more personalisation? “In most cases ‘personalisation’ just means giving you what you wanted in the first place,” said Gomes. “If two friends search ‘malt’ but one likes beer and one whisky, they will see different results. And if that kind of personalisation didn’t work, you’d just think search was broken.” The issue of personalised search results based on our browsing history has become contentious. With news, for example, how can users be presented with an objective view of a story from multiple sources if Google serves up sites or perspectives that the user is known to like? “Diversity of results is something deeply baked into the algorithm tools we use, so that we hopefully give a broad perspective,” said Gomes. “But if you are interested in a topic you’d tend to do a very specific query anyway, and our first goal is to give you the information you want.” Facebook rigidly maintains that social context is historically and socially relevant. “Anthropologically, we have been informed and influenced throughout time by the people around us, and that’s equally true on Facebook as it is offline,” said Facebook’s advertising chief, David Fischer. “Now we look at the networks people communicate in … “There are important opportunities for marketers in getting their messages out through those friends and family connections. The social graph contains not just people, but brands, universities [and] institutions that people chose to connect to.” This network of social, professional and commercial relationships may have always existed, but it is their accessibility as expressed online that is unprecedented. One of Facebook’s biggest successes – and a strategy Google has strictly enforced on Google+ – has been encouraging real names on to the site , making its network and data far more valuable. This is creating a living record, said Fischer, and building it in a meaningful way. “There’s no decision that a person takes in their lives that is not a better decision when it is informed by the people around them that they trust.” Several hundred research scientists at Google are studying how web users access, interact with and share information. How will Google refine its mission of organising the world’s information? “We often see the future already exists in the present in some form, so the things just getting interesting now will be very important,” said Gomes. He describes a relationship where users expect Google to synthesise answers from different sources to provide an expert response and expects the most noticeable changes to be made to the mobile homepage, which can take advantage of multiple sensors such as location to provide “richer interaction models”. That might include speech recognition – already vastly improved from even two years ago – and localised artificial intelligence that improves suggestions as it learns about the user. Gomes claimed that instant access to information through Google has made conversations smarter, citing the time he went to see Kafka’s Metamorphosis and read up about the production. “My experience of the play was richer and I took away more because the combination of me plus the internet made me seem like someone who, in the past, would have been regarded as an expert. I became the kind of person I would previously have looked up to.” Yet though Google and Facebook are both keen to burnish their scientific credentials, ultimately the real battle is over cold, hard cash. Google made 97% of its revenues, or $32.3bn, in the past 12 months from advertising. eMarketer, meanwhile estimates that Facebook’s largely ad-generated revenues will grow from $0.74bn in 2009 to $5.74bn in 2012 – yet the site has hardly begun rolling out truly personalised, targeted advertising. If there is any of Google’s lunch to be eaten, it is here. Social networking Google Facebook Mark Zuckerberg Eric Schmidt Internet Search engines Jemima Kiss guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …David Cameron warned over ‘inflaming far-right sentiment’ by Nobel chairman
July 30, 2011 No Comment
Thorbjørn Jagland says Europe’s leaders are ‘playing with fire’ if they use right-wing rhetoric when discussing multiculturalism Europe’s leaders, including David Cameron, have been warned to adopt a more “cautious” approach when discussing multiculturalism. The Norwegian chairman of the Nobel peace prize committee has told them they risk inflaming far-right and anti-Muslim sentiment. Thorbjørn Jagland, a former prime minister of his country, said leaders such as the British premier would be “playing with fire” if they continued to use rhetoric that could be exploited by extremists. Four months ago in Munich, Cameron declared that state multiculturalism had failed in Britain, a view immediately praised by Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP, as “a further huge leap for our ideas into the political mainstream”. Marine Le Pen, vice-president of the far-right National Front party in France, also endorsed Cameron’s view of multiculturalism, claiming that it corroborated her own party’s line. Jagland’s comments come in the wake of the Oslo bomb and the massacre on Utøya Island that left 77 people dead. The killer, Anders Behring Breivik, said he was inspired by the right-wing English Defence League. Breivik sent his manifesto, published online hours before the attacks, to about 250 British members of the BNP, the EDL and the Stop Islamisation of Europe group. Jagland, who is also secretary general of the Council of Europe, told the Observer : “We have to be very careful how we are discussing these issues, what words are used. “Political leaders have got to defend the fact that society has become more diverse. We have to defend the reality, otherwise we are going to get into a mess. I think political leaders have to send a clear message to embrace it and benefit from it. “We should be very cautious now, we should not play with fire. Therefore I think the words we are using are very important because it can lead to much more.” Jagland has also urged leading politicians to change their terminology. He said the word “diversity” was better than multiculturalism because the latter had become defined in different ways by different groups. “We also need to stop using ‘Islamic terrorism’, which indicates that terrorism is about Islam. We should be saying that terrorism is terrorism and not linked to religion,” said Jagland. Over the years before his attacks, Breivik developed an ultra-radical stance that initially incorporated the forced repatriation of Muslims from Europe, but ultimately targeted Norway’s centre-left government, which had encouraged multiculturalism. During his court appearance on terrorism charges, the 32-year-old said he had acted to prevent the “Muslim takeover” of Europe. It hasemerged that during a 10-hour interrogation, Breivik told police that he also considered attacking other government and Labour party targets in Norway. Police attorney Paal-Fredrik Hjort Kraby revealed that Breivik had again asked interrogators how many people he had killed and “showed no emotion” when they told him. As Norway struggles to come to terms with the killings, with the first of the dead being buried on Friday, the process of establishing whether Breivik is insane, as his lawyer has asserted, is due to begin. Psychiatrists said the process would involve months of observation, interviews and analysis, insisting that it is hard to fake mental illness. It has also emerged that more than 250 people were picked up by boats from the waters off Utøya Island as Breivik conducted his 90-minute shooting rampage. About 650 people were on the island, of whom at least 68 were killed, most of them teenagers. During Cameron’s Munich speech, which combined a passage on terrorism with one on integration, the prime minister talked extensively about “Islamist extremism” as being the source of terrorism. Breivik saw David Miliband, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair as worthy of assassination because, according to his 1,500-page manifesto, they had a “friendly attitude” to immigrants. Jagland says he has sympathy with Cameron’s attempt to robustly promote a shared set of British values as an alternative to multiculturalism, if not with his delivery. “We are not searching for a society where we have only different cultures. We also need to have something that holds us together, to respect common values,” he said. Jagland, who last year gave the Nobel peace prize to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, who was represented by an empty chair at the ceremony in Oslo, added that the immigration debate also needed to be less negative. David Cameron The far right Anders Behring Breivik Norway Nobel peace prize Mark Townsend guardian.co.uk
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General Abdel Fattah Younis shot dead by Islamist-linked militia within the anti-Gaddafi forces, says senior opposition minister Efforts by insurgents to topple Muammar Gaddafi are in disarray after a senior Libyan opposition figure admitted that rebel soldiers were responsible for the murder of their most senior army commander. The transitional government’s oil minister said that General Abdel Fatah Younis had been shot dead by Islamist-linked militia within the anti-Gaddafi forces, provoking fears of future unrest and instability among those fighting the old regime. The revelation will raise doubts over the wisdom of the British government’s decision last week officially to recognise the rebel transitional government, declaring that it had proved its democratic credentials. Only a day later, the bullet-riddled and burnt bodies of Younis and two of his aides were found dumped on the outskirts of Benghazi, the rebel capital. Labour’s former defence secretary Bob Ainsworth said that the murder and the identities of the killers were evidence that the government had not thought through its policy in Libya. “One of the biggest risk factors in this was our lack of understanding of the people we were working with and I think that lack of understanding still stands,” he said. Bob Stewart, the Tory MP and former British United Nations Commander in Bosnia, said he feared the Libyan conflict would end with “a government we don’t like and us getting the blame”. Labour MP John McDonnell called for a peace conference between Gaddafi and the rebels to be enforced. “The government are treading on a path that is extremely uncertain,” he said. “They are dealing with people of whom they have very little knowledge and this is just an example of the potential there is for disunity.” In Tripoli, Gaddafi’s spokesman, Moussa Ibrahim, mocked British support for the rebels, declaring: “It is a nice slap [in] the face [for] the British that the [rebel] council that they recognised could not protect its own commander of the army.” He alleged that al-Qaida elements were behind the killing, stating that “by this act, al-Qaida wanted to mark out its presence and its influence in this region”. Former Liberal Democrat leader Lord Ashdown urged the government not to change its policy. “We are obviously not in the best place we could be, but this is what you have got to expect,” he said. “If you want to do this according to international law, this is what it looks like. This is messy, this is unpleasant and inelegant to watch, but it is no worse than doing it ourselves.” Younis was killed in mysterious circumstances on Thursday. Initially, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, president of the National Transitional Council, the rebel’s government, claimed the murder had been carried out by Gaddafi-linked forces That was starkly contradicted by oil minister Ali Tarhouni who confirmed Younis had been killed by members of the Obaida Ibn Jarrah Brigade, a group linked to the rebels. Tarhouni told reporters Younis was being brought back to Benghazi when he was shot. A militia leader who had gone to fetch him from the front line had been arrested and confessed that his subordinates had carried out the killing. “It was not him. His lieutenants did it,” Tarhouni said, adding that the killers were still at large. the Foreign Office was seeking confirmation from Jalil over the claim. The authorities have yet to say where Younis was killed, or when, or how it was that his body vanished for 24 hours. Neither is it clear why he was being brought back to Benghazi. Reports in rebel-controlled Libya also contradict the official version, with radio stations reporting that Younis was killed not on the road but after being kidnapped in a hotel room in the rebel capital and that the general had been under arrest that morning, accused of holding secret talks with Gaddafi regime officials. Adding to the sense of crisis engulfing the rebels , Gaddafi launched his heaviest assault yet on the besieged city of Misrata using tanks, infantry and artillery against rebel front lines. The commander of the frontline Hatin Brigade, Sedek Sheltad, saidseven fighters were dead and more than 50 wounded. “There is a big war now between the Gaddafi soldiers and the revolutionaries,” he said. “The field hospital is full, there is no more space.” Nato has employed tactical bombing in all but name, but despite dozens of airstrikes around the oil town of Brega, and successive rebel assaults, government forces remain in control. The onset of Ramadan on Monday and its requirement to fast in daylight hours is likely to bring battlefield movement to a halt. Libya Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East Africa Muammar Gaddafi Chris Stephen Daniel Boffey guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …President Obama’s crack campaign staff, normally oh-so-tech-savvy, got a little crazy with Twitter yesterday—and @BarackObama is down about 37,000 followers as a result. The president again used his account yesterday to keep up the pressure on Congress to reach a debt ceiling deal, tweeting, “The time for putting…
Continue reading …Rescue workers have found five more bodies at two Ukrainian coal mines where accidents occurred, raising the death toll to 25. Twelve other miners remain missing. The accidents in the eastern region shocked the country and highlighted the dangers of the nation’s mining industry. It is believed to be one…
Continue reading …Casey Anthony might want to take Larry Flint’s $500,000 offer seriously: The taxpayer-funded tab in the investigation into daughter Caylee’s disappearance and Anthony’s subsequent murder trial has hit almost $700,000, according to new figures released yesterday, and various agencies are looking to Anthony to pony up. A hearing…
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Marriage to England rugby player Mike Tindall reignites some of the fervour of Kate and William’s big day • Zara Phillips and Mike Tindall: their wedding in pictures For the second time this year the royal family dusted off their gladrags to watch one of their own marry a commoner. All eyes were on the Queen’s granddaughter Zara Phillips when she arrived at Canongate Kirk on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile for her marriage to the England rugby player Mike Tindall. Thousands lined the narrow city street hoping to catch a glimpse of Zara, once considered a royal rebel due to her low-cut tops, daring miniskirts and tongue piercing. But as she stepped from the car outside the church she revealed an ivory silk faille and silk duchess satin gown by British and Edinburgh-trained designer Stewart Parvin. The Queen also wore a Parvin outfit in apricot with matching straw hat by Rachel Trevor Morgan. As the moment of the wedding drew near, royals began arriving from the nearby Palace of Holyroodhouse. As they stepped from their chauffeur-driven limousines they were welcomed by the Queen’s pipe major, Derek Potter, who played a simple tune on the bagpipes. Among the first to arrive were Prince Edward and Sophie, Countess of Wessex, followed by Prince Andrew and his daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie. They were all cheered by the waiting crowds as they emerged from their cars, but the loudest roar was reserved for Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, as well as Prince Harry. As William and the former Kate Middleton walked into the church they acknowledged the crowd with a brief wave. The last of the senior royals to arrive were Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, who again were cheered loudly by the thousands camped behind crash barriers. The couple were soon followed by the Queen and Prince Philip, who received an enormous roar from the well-wishers, which was acknowledged by both of them with a short wave before they were greeted, like all members of the royal family attending the service, by the Rev Neil Gardner, presiding over the service. The mother of the bride, Princess Anne, and her husband Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence arrived just before this group to take their places in the church. All the royal men were dressed in morning suits, while the women wore stylish gowns. Some of the most famous names from English rugby were also in attendance, reflecting Mike Tindall’s standing in the game as a former captain. Current national coach Martin Johnson stepped off one of the many buses taking guests to the ceremony. Johnson strolled into the grounds of the church, pausing to shake the hands of friends and colleagues he spotted just outside the building’s entrance. His predecessor Sir Clive Woodward was also on the guest list, along with Zara’s godfather, former Formula One racing champion Sir Jackie Stewart. A touch of pop glamour was added when Una Healy – a member of girl group The Saturdays – walked into the church. The spectacle had a party atmosphere as the crowd waiting opposite the church cheered and clapped whenever a face they recognised walked into the 17th century church. And when their view of the guests arriving was obscured by the coaches they jokingly shouted at the drivers to back up. Like most modern brides Zara is expected to say she will “honour” her groom rather than “obey” during the exchange of vows. Tindall proposed to Zara in December at their £800,000 regency townhouse in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, after they had been together for the previous seven years. The England rugby star staged his stag do in Miami while Zara – one of Britain’s leading equestrian competitors – held her hen party at a spa in Portugal. The wedding reception will be held in the grounds of the palace – the official Scottish home of the Queen – a few hundred metres from the kirk. Monarchy Royal wedding Mark Smith guardian.co.uk
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