18 June 2015
Week in Brief: UK NEWS
LABOUR LEADERSHIP: Alastair Campbell has indicated that he will not back anyone for the leadership of the Labour Party but will “happily lead the charge” against the new leader if he or she fails to perform. Following the nomination process, the shortlist is Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, Liz Kendall and Jeremy Corbyn. A group of senior Labour MPs has written to the party chairman proposing that the rules be changed to require the holding of a vote of confidence in the party leader if, say, thirty MPs request it. A party leader who lost such a vote would be removed.
PROPERTY PRICES: The average asking price for a home has now reached a record level of £294,351 (£613,922 in London) after a substantial jump over the last month.
ABSCONDING MOTHER: Rebecca Minnock, who absconded with her three-year-old son after a court ordered that he should live with his father, has now handed herself in. The child has been restored to the father. Ms Minnock’s mother and her mother’s partner have each been jailed for contempt of court for their role in concealing where she was hiding. Contempt proceedings against Ms Minnock will be heard later.
MAGNA CARTA: The Queen and 750 members of the American Bar Association (which originally funded the memorial) attended the rededication of the Rotunda at Runnymede to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta. There were speeches by David Cameron and Lord Dyson, the Master of the Rolls.
SNOOPING: The government has indicated that it will not support a proposal to shift the authorisation of snooping by British spies from politicians to the judiciary. The proposal, which is made in a report by David Anderson, QC, is supported by the Labour Party and a number of government backbenchers. Mr Anderson’s report also indicates that the security services are encountering resistance to requests for information from US technology companies.
It appears from the report that bulk data gathering by GCHQ has enabled jihadi leaders to be identified and targeted. Mr Anderson concluded that bulk data collection and analysis had an important role to play in national security.
TOWER HAMLETS: John Biggs, the Labour candidate, has been elected mayor of Tower Hamlets, an office which became vacant following the High Court disqualification of Lutfur Rahman on grounds which included unlawful religious influence.
DIESEL CARS: Four local authorities will be increasing the cost of parking permits for diesel cars. In Islington the supplement will be £100 per year. According to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders the high recapture rate of modern diesels will actually improve air quality so the extra charges are based on out of date science.
DEFENCE: The National Audit Office has expressed concern that new arrangements under which the private company Ascent trains new pilots for the RAF will not provide enough pilots. The contract with Ascent was signed in 2008 but cuts in defence spending have reduced the amount of training to be provided.
STABBINGS: An eighteen-year-old youth was stabbed and killed in an Islington park by an assailant riding pillion on a motorcycle in what is thought to have been gang-related violence. A supply teacher at a Yorkshire school, Mr Vincent Uzomah, was stabbed by a pupil in a row over a mobile phone. The teacher Mr Uzomah is in a stable condition.
DENTIST RELEASED: Stephen Nicholl, a Highly Street dentist who had been held in connection with the death of his wife, has been released without charge.
HACKING: Following the dropping of more charges, the only pending prosecutions under Operation Elveden are two retrials for making illegal payments to a police officer. So far the operation has only lead to one conviction.
EUROPEAN REFERENDUM: Tory opposition to the scrapping of the rules which limit the amount the government can spend on the European Referendum means that Mr Cameron had to rely on Labour abstentions to get the proposal through. Eurosceptics are concerned that substantial government expenditure could skew the poll. The government has conceded that the poll should not be held on 5 May 2016, the date of elections for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
TOP GEAR: the new Top Gear team is to be headed by Chris Evans. Neither James May nor Richard Hammond will be returning to the programme.
NATIONAL BIRD: The Robin has been elected British National Bird with 34% of the poll.
IMMIGRANT CULTURE: A High Court judge has been criticised for ruling that differences in cultural context had to be taken into account in deciding whether a child had been punished excessively.
FORCED MARRIAGES: A Cardiff businessman has become the first person to be convicted under the provisions of the Antisocial Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 which relate to forced marriage. He received four years imprisonment to be served concurrently with a sixteen year sentence for rape.
CALAIS: The Freight Transport Association has written to the Mayor of Calais asking for help in dealing with pressures resulting from the large number of would-be UK migrants currently camped there. Food worth some £2 million a month is being thrown away as the contents of lorries in which migrants have stowed away are rejected by customers. There are currently some 3000 would-be migrants to the UK camped at the port.
TERRORISM: Alaa Abdullah Esayed has been sentenced to 3½ years in prison for posting messages on Twitter encouraging people to join jihadi groups. There are concerns that a family group comprising three women and nine children has left Bradford to join Isis in Syria.
SIR TIM HUNT: Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Boris Johnson has called for Sir Tim Hunt to be reinstated at University College London where he had been forced to resign his professorship after a sexist joke. Physicist Brian Cox has also spoken out in favour of his reinstatement.
HEALTH SERVICE: a report commissioned by the health secretary estimates that the NHS is wasting £5 billion a year through inefficiency. The report, by Lord Carter of Coles, indicates that extensive savings could be made by standardising prices paid for equipment, managing money and medicines better and saving staff costs.
SIR CHRISTOPHER LEE: Christopher Lee, well-known for his portrayals of Dracula, has died aged 93.
CONSERVATION: Historic England has acknowledged getting it wrong by not opposing the proposed development on the Strand by King’s College London. A planning enquiry is to be held.
CRICKET: New Zealand beat England by three wickets in the third game of the five game one-day series to lead 2-1.
BIRTHDAY HONOURS: the Queen’s Birthday Honours included an honorary knighthood for the actor/manager Kevin Spacey, and a knighthood for the Welsh rugby player Gareth Edwards.
