New Unite leader hits out at £361,000 severence payment given to predecessor and vows to end such large payoffs Britain’s largest trade union, Unite, is facing a “golden goodbye” pay row after its former leader was paid more than £500,000 last year, including a £361,000 severance payment. Derek Simpson, 66, who stepped down as joint general secretary last year, received the payout as his successor was attacking the government for overseeing “obscene” remuneration at state-owned companies such as Royal Bank of Scotland. According to Unite’s annual return for 2010, Simpson received £510,659, the bulk comprising of £361,347 in severance pay. He also received £97,677 in gross salary, and more than £51,000 in housing benefit and car allowances. Simpson’s colleague and joint general secretary, Tony Woodley, did not receive a payoff and was paid a total of £136,289. He is still employed by Unite on £20,000 a year. Simpson and Woodley’s successor, Len McCluskey, said he was shocked by the payment. But he stressed that Simpson’s payoff was drawn up under the financial system used by the Amicus union, which merged with the T&G in 2007 to form Unite. The Amicus and T&G finance functions were not combined until late last year. “It was absolutely unbeknownst to me or the Unite executive,” said McCluskey. “It occurred under a different regime with a union that no longer exists and operated under different governance.” At a meeting on Monday, Unite’s executive requested a legal opinion on the settlement, although it is understood that the payoff follows precedent for previous Amicus leaders. McCluskey said there would be no similar payments under his regime, but the union was powerless to intervene in Simpson’s case. “It is inappropriate but there is little that I can do about it. There will be no such agreements in Unite going forward.” Technically, it is not within our jurisdiction. This is a decision taken by a previous union and therefore we can do nothing other than pass comment and make certain that Unite does not engage in such practices.” McCluskey is a critic of bankers’ bonuses and in January said: “As ordinary workers cope with fuel and food price rises, these obscene and unfair rewards are a reminder that in Cameron’s Britain, we really are not all in this together.” He admitted that the revelation could damage Unite’s standing in the debate over public spending cuts. “There is no doubt that it will not be viewed in a favourable light by our members or potential members. “We have to get the message across that this happened in a previous union. This is a new union with a new vision and new, democratic ways of operating. And we are committed to working in a proactive way with working people.” Unite’s return shows that the union has 1.5 million members, of whom only 1.2 million pay subscriptions. Woodley’s concern over faltering membership has seen him take a new full-time post as the executive officer for organising. This week McCluskey announced plans to launch a cut-price “community membership” for students and the unemployed in a riposte to David Cameron’s big society policies. According to the return, Unite generated an income of £141.6m last year but spent £171.9m, pushing the union into a deficit of £30.2m. Simpson could not be reached for comment. His last year in office was dominated by the battle between British Airways and its cabin crew, which saw 22 days of strikes and cost the carrier £150m. Simpson infuriated BA at one point in negotiations by sending out live twitter updates. At the time Woodley described the tweets as “unfortunate, to say the least”. Unite Pay Banking David Cameron Conservatives Dan Milmo guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …New Unite leader hits out at £361,000 severence payment given to predecessor and vows to end such large payoffs Britain’s largest trade union, Unite, is facing a “golden goodbye” pay row after its former leader was paid more than £500,000 last year, including a £361,000 severance payment. Derek Simpson, 66, who stepped down as joint general secretary last year, received the payout as his successor was attacking the government for overseeing “obscene” remuneration at state-owned companies such as Royal Bank of Scotland. According to Unite’s annual return for 2010, Simpson received £510,659, the bulk comprising of £361,347 in severance pay. He also received £97,677 in gross salary, and more than £51,000 in housing benefit and car allowances. Simpson’s colleague and joint general secretary, Tony Woodley, did not receive a payoff and was paid a total of £136,289. He is still employed by Unite on £20,000 a year. Simpson and Woodley’s successor, Len McCluskey, said he was shocked by the payment. But he stressed that Simpson’s payoff was drawn up under the financial system used by the Amicus union, which merged with the T&G in 2007 to form Unite. The Amicus and T&G finance functions were not combined until late last year. “It was absolutely unbeknownst to me or the Unite executive,” said McCluskey. “It occurred under a different regime with a union that no longer exists and operated under different governance.” At a meeting on Monday, Unite’s executive requested a legal opinion on the settlement, although it is understood that the payoff follows precedent for previous Amicus leaders. McCluskey said there would be no similar payments under his regime, but the union was powerless to intervene in Simpson’s case. “It is inappropriate but there is little that I can do about it. There will be no such agreements in Unite going forward.” Technically, it is not within our jurisdiction. This is a decision taken by a previous union and therefore we can do nothing other than pass comment and make certain that Unite does not engage in such practices.” McCluskey is a critic of bankers’ bonuses and in January said: “As ordinary workers cope with fuel and food price rises, these obscene and unfair rewards are a reminder that in Cameron’s Britain, we really are not all in this together.” He admitted that the revelation could damage Unite’s standing in the debate over public spending cuts. “There is no doubt that it will not be viewed in a favourable light by our members or potential members. “We have to get the message across that this happened in a previous union. This is a new union with a new vision and new, democratic ways of operating. And we are committed to working in a proactive way with working people.” Unite’s return shows that the union has 1.5 million members, of whom only 1.2 million pay subscriptions. Woodley’s concern over faltering membership has seen him take a new full-time post as the executive officer for organising. This week McCluskey announced plans to launch a cut-price “community membership” for students and the unemployed in a riposte to David Cameron’s big society policies. According to the return, Unite generated an income of £141.6m last year but spent £171.9m, pushing the union into a deficit of £30.2m. Simpson could not be reached for comment. His last year in office was dominated by the battle between British Airways and its cabin crew, which saw 22 days of strikes and cost the carrier £150m. Simpson infuriated BA at one point in negotiations by sending out live twitter updates. At the time Woodley described the tweets as “unfortunate, to say the least”. Unite Pay Banking David Cameron Conservatives Dan Milmo guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …As News Corp continues to reel from the phone hacking scandal, its independent directors are wondering whether it’s time for a leadership change, insiders tell Bloomberg . The independent directors—who make up 9 seats of the 16-member board—complain that they’ve been given too little information about the scandal and…
Continue reading …In case you missed it, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony announced on Friday that they’re splitting up . Up next: the expected deluge of gossip. Was J.Lo cheating on her hubby? Bossip notes that “word on the Latino streets” is that she was having some extramarital fun with telenovela star…
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Grim footage of Sadiq Hamed Shwehdi’s infamous execution also emerges from Benghazi Muammar Gaddafi had already ruled Libya for 15 years in June 1984 and he had a fearsome reputation for brutality towards his enemies. But the grim scene that unfolded in the eastern city of Benghazi was a spectacular first even for him. It was blazing hot day. Thousands of schoolchildren and students were bused into Benghazi’s basketball stadium, where they saw a frightened young man with curly hair and beard, kneeling with his hands bound behind his back, pleading for his life before people’s prosecutors. Sadiq Hamid Shwehdi, 30, was accused of plotting to assassinate the leader of the revolution. The court described him as “a terrorist from the Muslim Brotherhood, an agent of America”. In this grainy, recently re-discovered film, Shwehdi is seen alone in the centre of the stadium, sobbing as he confesses to his crime of joining the “stray dogs” – in the chilling terminology of the regime – before being sentenced to death. In the crowd, a young woman in olive green fatigues shouts and waves her clenched fists. Later, in a nauseating display of zeal, she pulls at Shwehdi’s legs as he writhes on the makeshift gallows, the basketball scoreboard clearly visible in the background, until he stops struggling. Huda “the hangman” Ben Amer went on to become a Gaddafi favourite and fled Benghazi after this year’s uprising. “Many Libyans saw the original live broadcast of the trial at the time and still remember it, but this is the full video and audio – and it has not been seen since then,” said Peter Bouckaert, the Human Rights Watch researcher who unearthed the material. Until now only fragments of the original were available. Shwehdi’s brother Ibrahim handed over four Beta video tapes to be digitised and preserved for posterity. Bouckaert worked with Tim Hetherington, an American war photographer who was killed in April covering the siege of Misrata. Together they pored over hundreds of still photographs taken from a state security office that was burned and looted by protesters. Many show Gaddafi looking young and relaxed in the early days after the 1969 revolution, hobnobbing with his hero, the then Egyptian president Gamal Abdel-Nasser. Another set of images records a last visit to Benghazi by the ageing King Idris, the pro-western monarch overthrown by Gaddafi and fellow officers as they emulated Nasser. This jerky, gruesome footage also captures a moment of international intrigue in the years when Libya became an obsession for the US, with Ronald Reagan dubbing Gaddafi the “mad dog” of the Middle East. Shwehdi’s execution followed a daring assault on Gaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziya compound in Tripoli the previous month, an attempted coup planned by the National Front for the Salvation of Libya which the regime claimed was backed by the CIA. Shwehdi’s cousin Magdi was killed in the raid. Two thousand people were arrested and 12 were hanged publicly in their home towns, some during the Ramadan holiday. “Shwehdi’s execution was ordered by a state-managed kangaroo court,” said Ashour Shamis, a London-based dissident who helped plan the coup, which was doomed when its military commander was killed. Shwehdi and the others were trained in Morocco and Sudan. Some entered Libya from neighbouring Tunisia, where the operation was overseen by security chief Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, who went on to become the country’s president. “He was an ordinary Libyan who felt disgust for the Gaddafi regime,” said Shamis. “He gave up his studies and a comfortable life in America to return to Libya. He knew he was risking his life.” Other hangings were broadcast, and re-broadcast, on Libyan state TV. Cases of torture, demolition of homes and mass detentions were also reported that year. Human rights abuses persisted even as Gaddafi began to mend fences with the wider world and, eventually to come in from the cold. In 1996, 1,200 inmates, many of them Islamists, were killed in a notorious massacre in Tripoli’s Abu Salim prison. No Libyan official has yet been called to account over that. Protests involving the lawyer representing the victims’ families proved to be the spark for the Benghazi uprising. Gaddafi, his son, Saif al-Islam, and intelligence chief Abdullah Senussi are wanted by the international criminal court (ICC) on charges of crimes against humanity committed in the initial unrest in February. “This film will not be relevant to the ICC case because that only covers a limited time period,” said Bouckaert. “But we felt that it was important to preserve this traumatic part of the heritage of the Libyan people. It is also part of the legacy of my friend Tim Hetherington because it was the last project he was working on before he was killed.” Muammar Gaddafi Libya Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East Africa Human rights Ian Black guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Halliburton says the expansion of oil and natural gas drilling in North America helped boost company earnings by nearly 54% in the second quarter. Revenue also hit a company record for the period. The Houston oil services giant reported earnings of $739 million, or 80 cents per share today, with…
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Concluding instalment in Hogwarts franchise postponed to make way for Beginning of the Great Revival: The Founding of a Party The wizard Harry Potter is being forced to make his farewell as a pirate in Beijing because China is holding back the official version of the concluding episode in the Hogwarts franchise in favour of an epic celebrating the 90-year-old Communist party. Counterfeit DVD hawkers are selling poor-quality copies of the Deathly Hallows 2 in the capital days after its release in foreign markets. The original will not be screened for a fortnight, at least partly due to the priority put on the big-budget political epic Beginning of the Great Revival: The Founding of a Party, which brings together more than 150 Chinese stars, including Hollywood icon Chow Yun-fat, in a two-hour tale of the Communist party’s roots. With its depiction of the romances and idealism of a young Mao, the story aims to attract a new audience to the party, which marked its 90th anniversary on 1 July. With enormous political prestige at stake, China’s film authorities have gone out of their way to ensure success for the movie, which premiered last month. The biggest potential foreign rivals have reportedly been delayed to allow a clearer run at the box office. Deathly Hallows will be released on 4 August; Transformers: Dark of the Moon on Thursday , three weeks after its release in the US. To protect the domestic film industry, only 20 foreign films are approved for release in China each year. Film industry observers say it is customary for the authorities to give preferential treatment to Chinese revolutionary and historical films. “This practice is long-standing. Unlike the US, films are not treated just as consumer products in China. More importance is given to their role in shaping opinion and educating the public,” said Li Hongyu, a film journalist for the South Weekend newspaper. “But the situation is better than it was 10 years ago. At least the Communist party no longer requires its members to go to the cinema for certain movies.” Harry Potter fans have joked that their best option was to help the Communist party achieve its goal – purportedly 800 million yuan (£77.5m) – ahead of time. “The fans of Transformers and Harry Potter should join forces and encourage their dads, mums, uncles, aunts, grandfathers, grandmothers, etc to see The Beginning of the Great Revival. Then we won’t wait until August,” blogged Gudushizhe88 on the Baidu Tieba web forum. The official Xinhua news agency says the historical extravaganza earned $46m during its first three weeks – not far from the record pace the authorities had aimed for. Critics insist this is due to block-ticket buying by state-run firms and local governments, such as the northern city of Changchun, which reportedly bought tickets for 100,000 party members. The true figures may never be known. Popular websites have been ordered to disable their ratings and comments sections. Some netizens have posted photographs of doctored tickets for different films – such as Kung Fu Panda 2, Fast Five and the latest Pirates of the Caribbean – that were sold in the name of “Great Revival” in an apparent attempt to manipulate audience numbers. China Film Group, which produced the movie, denied that cinemas had been pressured to bump up the box office numbers. Even if official sleight of hand conjures up impressive box office figures for the communist epic, the marketing magic of Harry Potter could yet prevail – at least on the black market. “Harry Potter brand new. Good copies. Just 10 yuan,” said an illegal hawker outside Beijing’s Silk Market as he pulled out a large bundle of pirated movies, including the latest Pirates of the Caribbean, Cars 2 and The Mechanic. Great Revival was not among them. Additional reporting by Cecily Huang China Harry Potter Science fiction and fantasy Jonathan Watts guardian.co.uk
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Cuts will lead to smallest British army in more than a century but armed forces will see modest spending increases from 2015 After months of fierce debate, the Treasury and Ministry of Defence have promised Britain’s armed forces modest spending increases in the future in return for deep cuts in the army to help plug a budget black hole estimated to be £43bn. Liam Fox, the defence secretary, announced long-awaited cuts, in addition to those made in last year’s defence review, which will lead to the smallest British army in more than a century and the closure of a number of RAF bases. The army will shrink from its present size of about 101,000 to 82,000 by 2020. The defence review had already cut the army by 7,000 by 2015 when British troops will no longer have a combat role in Afghanistan. Though Fox did not say so in his statement to MPs, defence officials made clear that the fresh round of cuts would mean the end of a number of infantry battalions, probably including some whose soldiers have fought recently in Afghanistan. Partly to compensate for the loss of regular soldiers, Fox said he wanted to increase substantially the number of fully-trained reserves of all three branches of the armed forces – the navy, army and air force. He said he wanted to bring Britain more into line with other countries including the US. One of the reserves’ priority tasks would be “homeland security”. Defence officials indicated that the aim was to increase the number of fully trained reservists from a little more than 20,000 to 35,000 by 2015. Beefing up the reserves would cost an estimated £1.5bn. However, Fox made clear his aim was for a “total force of around 120,000 broadly in the ratio 70:30 regular to reserve”. The Treasury said the armed forces will benefit from a 1% real terms increase – that is, taking inflation into account – in their equipment budget from 2015 to 2020 at a cost of £3bn. It is rare for government departments to be offered such increases in advance but the prime minister has backed pleas from defence chiefs for increases in real terms in their budget once the current four-year spending review period is over. The £3bn will pay for 14 new Chinook helicopters, three new US Rivet spy planes, upgrading the army’s ageing fleet of Warrior armoured vehicles, and more unmanned drones for the RAF. The gap between the actual defence budget and weapons programmes promised by previous governments has been estimated at £38bn. Defence officials said on Monday that Bernard Gray, the new head of MoD procurement, had identified an additional £5bn worth of underfunded liabilities. The army will be centred around multi-role brigades, with 19 Light Brigade based in Northern Ireland broken up with some of its constituent parts – including The Black Watch – assigned to other brigades. RAF Leuchars will close, leaving RAF Lossiemouth as the only remaining air force base in Scotland. Leuchars will become an army barracks housing some of the 20,000 British troops who are due to leave Germany by 2020, Fox announced. Most of the changes will take place after 2015, when the next general election is due, Fox said. He described it as “an incredibly complex decision and it has inevitably been a balancing act”. The shadow defence secretary, Jim Murphy, described the government’s announcement as “strategic shrinkage by stealth”. He told Fox: “The army has been slashed to cover up the funding gaps left by the rushed defence review.” Fox had announced cuts to the army of 19,000 – just under a fifth of the entire force – in just 10 months, he said. When in opposition, the Conservatives had promised thousands of extra troops, Murphy said. General Sir David Richards, chief of the defence staff, said in a statement: “If we get it right, this will result in a modern, hard-hitting joint force still capable of operating at the divisional level across the full spectrum of conflict. It will deliver armed forces of which we can all be proud.” The National Audit Office, parliament’s financial watchdog, for the fifth year running, said it could not approve the MoD’s accounts. It said £5.3bn worth of assets could not be accounted for, including more than 4,000 Bowman radio sets used for secure communications. Fox’s statement came as the MoD announced that a British soldier from 1st Battalion The Rifles was killed in an explosion in Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand province in Afghanistan. The soldier’s death took the number of British troops killed in Afghanistan since 2001 to 377. Defence policy Liam Fox Tax and spending Military Richard Norton-Taylor guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Not a good idea: Tossing Molotov cocktails, fireworks, and “large quantities of gasoline” down a mine shaft. A group of Brigham Young University students learned that lesson the hard way Saturday, and about a dozen of them were injured in the process. The group started off tossing Molotov cocktails down…
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Lloyds, RBS and Barclays take £5bn hit as stock and commodity prices plummet, while US urges Europe to be more decisive More than £5bn was wiped off the value of three of Britain’s biggest banks on Monday as global financial markets took fright at the deepening crisis in the eurozone. Stocks fell heavily in Europe and North America while gold rose to a new record of more than $1,600 (£995) an ounce amid concerns that Thursday’s emergency summit of EU leaders would once again fail to resolve the debt problems of the single currency’s weak members. Officials from eurozone countries were on Monday trying to resolve the row between Angela Merkel and the European Central Bank (ECB) over a possible Greek debt default after a day of turbulence that saw bank shares tumble in late trading. Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the ECB, is resisting pressure from the German chancellor for Greece’s private sector creditors to bear some of the losses of a default, but senior policymakers admitted that it was now vital Thursday’s talks in Brussels come up with a credible plan that will restore market confidence after shares, government bonds and commodities all suffered sharp losses. Sources said one option was to convert much of Greece’s debts into longer-term bonds, an approach used during the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s. Lloyds, Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays were the biggest fallers on the FTSE 100, all losing at least 6% of their value as jittery investors digested the results of Friday’s stress tests on European banks , mulled the prospect of the US
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