Scottish government officials turn down invitation to US Lockerbie hearing

It's understandable why they would decline but still, it's disappointing. Staying at home only makes their decision look even more suspicious though speaking to the Senate has the potential to make matters even worse. What will be interesting is to hear BP's Tony Hayward discuss this issue. BP already confirmed that it did speak with government officials about the Libyan oil fields even though British PM Cameron said that was not the case while in Washington. BBC:

Scottish ministers and officials have turned down a request to attend a US Senate hearing next week over the release of the Lockerbie bomber.

Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill and the Scottish Prison Service's medical chief Dr Andrew Fraser were invited.

Senators also invited Westminster former justice secretary Jack Straw.

BP chief executive Tony Hayward was asked to attend after allegations that Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi's release was linked to an oil deal.

Megrahi was jailed for life for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 which killed 270 people, most of them Americans.

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Second henge unearthed in England

Archeologists have to be thrilled with this news.

The new "henge" - which means a circular monument dating to Neolithic and Bronze Ages - is situated about 900m (2,950ft) from the giant stones on Salisbury Plain.

Images show it has two entrances on the north-east and south-west sides and inside the circle is a burial mound on top which appeared much later, Professor Gaffney said.

"You seem to have a large-ditched feature, but it seems to be made of individual scoops rather than just a straight trench," he said.

"When we looked a bit more closely, we then realised there was a ring of pits about a metre wide going all the way around the edge.

"When you see that as an archaeologist, you just looked at it and thought, 'that's a henge monument' - it's a timber equivalent to Stonehenge.

"From the general shape, we would guess it dates backs to about the time when Stonehenge was emerging at its most complex.

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British economy facing inflation, limited growth and increased unemployment

But besides that everything is great.

The British economy faces a triple whammy of higher inflation, lower growth and rising unemployment, according to one of the Bank of England's most senior policy makers. Living standards over the next few years will rise only "minimally".

In an interview with The Independent, the Bank's chief economist, Spencer Dale, said that he did not expect inflation to return to its 2 per cent official target before the end of next year, about a year later than previously hoped, partly because of the hike in VAT to 20 per cent from January announced in the Budget.

And, although Mr Dale acknowledged that the emergency Budget had done much to avoid the risk of a UK sovereign debt crisis and a rise in interest rates, he also acknowledged that the Budget would mean lower growth. Mr Dale agreed that he would not be surprised if unemployment went higher in the next few months. For the next "three, four, five years, demand in the economy will be "incredibly anaemic" relative to previous recoveries.

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British economy closer to double dip as banks stop lending

Why should they? Politicians all over handed them money without strings attached and now expect the banks to show appreciation for being saved. We all know that when the tables are turned the banks would not hesitate to make demands in return for billions.

The disturbing part of the story is that the banks (and media) are again flogging a PWC study about how regulations are the cause of the banking problem. It's annoying to see this continue to receive attention because PWC is very active with the banking industry so they are not even close to being a neutral source. They're lobbying to help their customers. Reading this makes me wonder if this is the government's attempt to move backwards on regulation to make it an even easier ride for the banks. Saving them from ruin was probably not enough.

A green paper, to be rushed out by the chancellor and business secretary before next week's parliamentary recess, will acknowledge the scale of the lending rationing crisis, which could "abort" the fragile recovery.

As the Bank of England (BoE) published data showing yet another month when more loans had been repaid than had been granted, Cable admitted the level of anxiety in the government about the flow of funds to smaller companies. He said: "The green paper will acknowledge the scale of the problem and how the recovery could be aborted if we don't get on top of this.

"There is a fundamental policy conflict between efforts to make the banks safer and our wish to get them lending more freely to promote growth," Cable said.

He has been presented with research from the banks – which have given the work by PricewaterhouseCoopers the name "Project Oak" – showing that tougher capital rules and the end of emergency liquidity injections from the BoE could drain the banking system by £1 trillion in the coming years.

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British PM slams 'completely wrong' decision to release terrorist

It's hard to argue that point. Where we may differ is how this relates to BP. Outside of the normal apologist crowd few believe the release of the Lockerbie bomber was not directly linked to BP drilling off the coast of Libya. BBC:

UK Prime Minister David Cameron has insisted BP should not be blamed for the "completely wrong" decision to release the Lockerbie bomber.

Claims have been made that BP lobbied for the release, but Mr Cameron said the Scottish government was responsible for freeing Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi.

Mr Cameron has asked the UK's top civil servant to review government papers but ruled out US demands for an inquiry.

The Scottish government has denied any BP influence in the release last year.

Standing alongside US President Barack Obama, Mr Cameron said he had seen no evidence the Scottish government - which made the decision to free terminally ill cancer patient Megrahi on compassionate grounds - had been "swayed" by lobbying from BP.

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David Cameron promotes 'Big Society' for UK

Any by "big" he really means "small." Maybe it makes sense there but from afar is sounds like Reagan's New Federalism or as false as the Bush plan for Compassionate Conservatism. Strip away the spin and it's a program that somehow tries to glorify a budget that has been ripped to shreds by the brutal cost-cutting of the Conservative party. As the British economy falters due to the chopping, this will soon be known as the Big Lie.

Cameron denied his plans were a cover for public-spending cuts. Speaking on BBC Breakfast, before his speech at Liverpool Hope University, he said: "This is not about trying to save money, it is about trying to have a bigger, better society."

The communities secretary, Eric Pickles, said that "big society" was about getting more for less. Pickles, who accompanied Cameron to Liverpool, told Radio 4's The World at One: "Even at a time when money is tight it is still possible to find different ways of delivering. It is unashamedly about getting more for less. But it is about passing power down to folks so you can start to mould your own neighbourhood and put something back in."

Ed Miliband, the Labour leadership contender, told the same programme that "big society" heralded a return to Victorian philanthropy, with little role for the state. "This is essentially a 19th-century or US-style view of our welfare state – which is cut back the welfare state and somehow civic society will thrive," he said.

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Privatization in UK will pay handsomely, to the select few

Here's a country that is on the wrong track. The excessive austerity program is going to tip the economy back under and as they throw public services overboard to make finances look better there are a few lucky businesses that are about to cash in and strike gold. It's hard to imagine anyone there can honestly believe that private industry is going to improve the National Health Service (NHS) without driving up costs. What part of the American health care failure have they missed in recent decades? This is nothing other than a giant shell game and the UK is being had.

A government efficiency drive aimed at slashing spending in town halls and boosting productivity in the health service is likely to deliver billions of pounds of new business for private companies, the Guardian has learned.

Outsourcing firms are preparing for a bonanza of local authority contracts to provide everything from bin men to back office bureaucrats and have reported a doubling in the number of deals on offer this year. Private health companies are also expecting to earn billions of pounds from the planned overhaul of the NHS in which GPs would take over responsibility for spending £70bn.

Executives at Capita, the UK's largest outsourcing firm, said the number of opportunities for local authority contracts has already doubled this year and they see the healthcare market as "vast and potentially lucrative".

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British Conservatives prepare for deep-sea oil drilling

Drill, old boy, drill. It's a government built on oil men, for the benefit of oil men. The posh new PM called in Big Oil and asked them for a wish list and Shetland drilling was right up there. His team is a creepy lot that Dick Cheney might not even be seen with. Well, maybe not that extreme but you get the picture. It's a far cry from the nature-loving Cameron that we saw earlier but it's also what is to be expected from the right. How confident should the British public be in the budget hacking which is led by the former BP CEO who hacked the BP budget which led to the BP refinery catastrophe in Texas? Sure he can cut budgets but when you throw out the in house experts and outsource for cheaper solutions, it doesn't always work out so nicely. It's backwards thinking, but welcome to modern right wing politics.

This approach to the environment has seeped, like a slick, over Cameron's policies. He commissioned another oil man, Tim Eggar, to go and ask the world's oil companies what they want from his government. They won't let me see the findings. But we know oil companies received big tax cuts in the Budget, and the Government's subsequent energy policy paper says life needs to be made "simpler [and] clearer" for oil companies to drill in British waters. Even though it is our addiction to oil that is causing and worsening global warming, the paper says: "We need policies designed for hunting [oil]... We need policies that offer the right incentives to explore for and extract the remaining reserves of oil and gas, and to keep existing fields open for as long as possible."

It pledges to open the oceans off the Shetland Islands to deep-sea drilling. Yes – that's the deep-sea drilling you've seen in every newscast for the past month. Cameron is promising Big Oil tax breaks to drill, baby, drill.

At the same time, projects designed to provide alternatives to oil are being axed. The Financial Times headline put it bluntly: "Climate projects face axe from Cable." (Remember: Saint Vince is a former oil man himself, who worked for Shell through its worst atrocities, including working intimately with the Nigerian military as they were murdering democracy activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.) Some of the very best programmes are expected to go. For example, Mitsubishi and Siemens pledged to come to Britain to make offshore wind turbines if the Government made a £60m upgrade to our ports to make it possible – but Whitehall whispers are that it will be abandoned. Britain will miss out on a headstart in one of the great growth industries of the twenty-first century.

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Even the Queen has been hit by the economic crisis

That she has to start selling off property doesn't bother me at all though it's of particular interest to see how deep this recession is hitting. She was burning through a lot of her cash reserves for years but had probably also assumed, like others, that the real estate boom could carry her through tough times. She's not hurting financially but it's certainly interesting to see how much more widespread the crisis has been. Just wait until the Conservative programs kick in and then it will really get ugly.

The Queen has been forced to sell one of her country estates, raising almost £1m in cash and heightening concerns over the scale of the financial crisis sweeping her investments and crumbling palaces.

Hadley Hall, a 16th-century listed farmhouse set in 50 acres of Cheshire countryside, was last night auctioned off by the Duchy of Lancaster; the Queen's national property portfolio which provides the monarch with a private income.

The royal sale comes on the eve of the publication of the Duchy's accounts which next week will reveal the extent of the damage done to her private wealth by combined effects of the recession and the credit crunch.

Separate accounts published by the Palace this month showed how the Queen's reserve of public cash, saved to pay her rising staff bills and fund her role as head of state, had fallen from £35m to £1m in the past 10 years, forcing her to go cap in hand to the Treasury for an increase to the Civil List.

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Study: UK Conservative budget 'has increased chance of double-dip recession'

Of course it did. The Tories haven't even finished yet either. They're now talking about "injecting the free market" or some nonsense that really means "privatize" the National Health Service. What this always does is help a few select people cash in and the government no longer carries the numbers on their books so they can happily talk about the money saved. Sure, the government may save but the actual consumers will be crushed again with higher charges. Great savings there, boys. So the higher costs will be a great help for those suffering because of yet another recession. How much more savings can an already beaten down public take?

George Osborne's budget has increased the likelihood of a double-dip recession, the government's tax and spending watchdog told a powerful group of MPs today.

Cuts in public spending and higher taxes will have cut the forecast for growth and "logically increased the possibility of a double dip", said Geoffrey Dicks, one of three officials at the Office for Budget Responsibility, at the first meeting of the Treasury select committee in the new parliament.

The admission will be a blow to the chancellor who has denied his drastic austerity package increases the risk of the economy falling back into recession.

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UK recession even worse than previously thought

It won't be a surprise if other countries see similar reports. Once the full extent of the budget chopping kicks into full gear the statisticians in the UK will have even more recession numbers to examine. Without government spending now, the economy will only decline. The US really has been fortunate that Obama did not fall into the camp of budget choppers who seem to be in power these days. He should have gone for more and is probably going to struggle now getting this done in an election year but it was and will be the right thing to do. The Guardian:

The deepest recession in Britain's post-war history was even more severe than previously feared, the government said today.

Fresh information collected by the Office for National Statistics showed that the peak to trough decline in output was 6.4% of gross domestic product rather than the original 6.2% estimate.

The new figures confirmed that the six successive quarters of negative growth from spring 2008 until autumn 2009 were the toughest for the economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s, harsher even than the slump of the early 1980s.

Growth resumed in the final three months of 2009 as the UK economy responded to the emergency cuts in interest rates, the cheaper pound and higher government spending. The ONS made no changes to its estimate of a 0.4% expansion in the fourth quarter of last year or its 0.3% growth estimate for the first quarter of 2010, but said the role of government spending in the first three months of this year in underpinning the economy had been more significant than first thought.

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British banks cite PWC study that claims $1 trillion in costs if bank reform

If only the study they were promoting wasn't written by the consulting company that does millions upon millions in business with many of the banks who were bailed out during the banking crisis. I guess making that little link wasn't considered important enough to mention. How is it possible to overlook the fact that PWC includes was being paid handsomely by the dysfunctional bankers who caused the global recession?

Maybe someone could ask what PWC was actually doing with those customers who were supposed to have someone checking their books. But again, that industry is as corrupt and rotted as the banks themselves. Shouldn't the public be made aware of these connections? It's disappointing that The Guardian also failed to mention this very important business link in it's article.

The banks, through the British Bankers' Association (BBA), intend to tell the chancellor that when the Bank of England pulls the plug on these liquidity programmes some £400bn will be withdrawn from the UK's banking system. The schemes were put in place to help get money flowing between banks after the credit crunch, but are due to end in 2012.

The banks have also calculated that demands by international banking regulators in Basle that they bolster their capital will require the UK's banking industry to hold an extra £600bn of capital that might otherwise have been deployed as loans to businesses or households.

The banks are drawing on research conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, some of which was used to appeal to G20 leaders ahead of last month's meeting to delay regulatory changes, in setting out their concerns to the chancellor. The research claims that two percentage points would be sliced off UK economic growth because of proposed regulations, driving the country into a double-dip recession.

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Another British treasure hunter strikes it rich

Wow, what an amazing find.

A treasure hunter has found about 52,500 Roman coins, one of the largest such discoveries ever in Britain, officials said Thursday.

The hoard, which was valued at 3.3 million pounds ($5 million), includes hundreds of coins bearing the image of Marcus Aurelius Carausius, who seized power in Britain and northern France in the late third century and proclaimed himself emperor.

Dave Crisp, a treasure hunter using a metal detector, located the coins in April in a field in southwestern England, according to the Somerset County Council and the Portable Antiquities Scheme.

The coins were buried in a large jar about a foot (30 centimeters) deep and weighed about 160 kilograms (350 pounds) in all.

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UK Conservatives go back to self-regulation well

Because it's been working out so well, right boys? (And I do mean "boys" since the new government didn't think it was important to include women in the new team.) Not so surprisingly, the Tories missed the self-regulation failures related to Big Oil or Big Finance. It's amusing to listen to the right in the US or UK to go on about self-regulation and how government interference doesn't work, especially when faced with plenty of examples of how and why self-regulation does not work. The right can hope all they want that "business will do the right thing" but they won't.

In this case, how in the world does a government health minister think that potato chip manufacturers will curtail their sales efforts in the best interest of consumers? The UK is not far behind the US in terms of overweight and obesity rates so the last thing they need is for senior government ministers to believe that businesses see "healthy" as part of their business plan. They don't and they won't. Junk food producers make and sell junk food. It's their core business so why would they want to deliver anything healthy that might not sell as well? Wishful thinking is not a plan. The old "free from the burden of regulation" is about the most naive comment anyone could make these days.

In a move condemned by campaigners as the government "rolling over on their backs in front of the food lobby", Lansley told a conference of public health experts that he wanted a new partnership with food and drink firms. In exchange for a "non-regulatory approach", the private sector would put up cash to fund the Change4Life campaign to improve diets and boost levels of physical activity among young people.

The time had come, said Lansley, to accept that "lecturing or nannying" people to change their behaviour did not work. He said business people "understand the social responsibility of people having a better lifestyle and they don't regard that as remotely inconsistent with their long-term commercial interest".

Lansley added: "No government campaign or programme can force people to make healthy choices. We want to free business from the burden of regulation, but we don't want, in doing that, to sacrifice public health outcomes."

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British Conservatives now looking at NHS for budget cuts

It didn't take them long to eye the health care system. So far it's only talk but this crowd is only happy when they are destroying the system. It won't be a surprise if their next idea is to privatize the health care system as they're planning to do with the London airports. Because privatizing always works out so well for consumers in terms of higher costs. The Independent:

The announcement of £1bn of cuts in education on Monday has reignited a simmering debate inside the Conservative Party over whether the health budget should continue to be a "no-go area" at a time when other departments face reductions of up to 40 per cent.

One Tory backbench leader said yesterday: "MPs are getting a reaction in their constituencies about the cuts to the school-building programme. They are wondering why the NHS should be protected when the future of our children is apparently not."

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Another warning on British economy falling back into recession

The Tories bet the farm on chopping spending, as if that would somehow help trigger recovery. The current recovery is much too delicate for such harsh actions so it's more likely to force the economy backwards in the near term. The political debate continues over the issue of austerity though based on global economic history, there is no debate. At this point an "L" shaped recovery is the best case for the UK. The Independent:

"The recovery is likely to be characterised by a weak upward gradient, with a 'ratchet' effect and quarters of acceleration, deceleration and even decline," the IoD says.

The June survey of the service sector – comprising 70 per cent of the economy – by the Chartered institute of Purchasing and Supply (Cips) indicates that growth may have been stronger than expected in recent months, but future prospects may be dimmer than were previously hoped for.

Speculation about public spending cuts and the reality of the toughest Budget since the Second World War, delivered by the Chancellor on 22 June, has had a marked impact on consumer and business confidence.

The fall in the headline business activity index, from 55.4 to 54.4, was the third monthly drop since February's recent peak, leaving the balance at its lowest level since August. While still in positive territory – any reading above 50 indicates expansion – the trend is down. The Cips survey is regarded as a reliable leading indicator for the real economy, with about a six to nine-month lag.

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Majority of UK budget cuts to impact women

It's not a surprise that the Conservative government is doing their best to rip apart the modern state. What is somewhat surprising is that women are being negatively impacted so much more than men. Labour is right to fight back against this horrible move by the Tories. And as Labour has said, women already are being paid much less than men so why should they be forced to take the bulk of the cuts? The Guardian:Cooper accused the coalition government of sanctioning a budget whose impact fell disproportionately on women. The gender audit of the budget – structured by Cooper but conducted by the Commons library – showed that more than 70% of the revenue raised from direct tax and benefit changes is to come from female taxpayers.

Of the nearly £8bn net revenue to be raised by the financial year 2014-15, nearly £6bn will be from women and just over £2bn from men. Cooper said the proposed cuts of up to 40% in some departments' budgets, floated by the government at the weekend, would also be likely to disproportionately hit women, who make up a large section of the public sector workforce.

She told the Guardian: "Women are bearing nearly three-quarters of the Tory-Liberal plans, while men are bearing just a quarter. This is despite the fact that women's income and wealth is still considerably lower than men's. Read More......

UK government departments asked for plans to cut budgets by 40%

The dismantling of the state is in high gear. The Tories are sounding more like the Teabaggers with each passing day. Naturally - like Palin said for the US recently - defense budgets are somehow different and will hardly be scratched. This has something to do with the actual budget and economy but ultimately it has much more to do with the Tories burning desire to trash the modern system and take the country back 100 years. They're nastier and more brutal by the day, but with a posh accent and a smile or two. BBC:

The Treasury has told most government departments to prepare "illustrative plans" to cut spending by 40% - as well as the expected 25% - within the month.

Education and defence have been given some protection, and must produce plans to cut 10% and 20%. International aid and health budgets are being protected.

The full 40% plans are unlikely to be implemented but will inform future decisions on cuts, the BBC understands.

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UK's 'department for growth' has budget chopped, to lose 25% of staff

And there you have it. That pretty much sums up where things are going with the Tory government in the UK.

The government department that considers itself responsible for delivering growth across the economy is to become the first Whitehall operation to feel the pressure of the Treasury's job axe.

The 3,000 staff employed by Vince Cable's Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) will next week be told of a voluntary redundancy programme to cut part of the £38m of administrative costs as ordered by George Osborne.

Up to one in four staff in some BIS operations could be at risk, according to sources who say civil servants in Cable's department are readying themselves for savage cuts.

Officials insisted that rumours of 25% headcount reduction across the entire department were wide of the mark and pointed out that when the predecessor department, the Department for Trade and Industry, made cuts in 2005 some 8% of the workforce left. If that was replicated this time at least 240 jobs could be on the line.

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Mayor's pants drop during speech to school children

Politicians love being in the news though maybe not in these circumstances. I'm guessing he's going to go with at least a belt the next time or better still, buy some new clothes even though he's in the middle of a weight loss program.

Leicester's lord mayor has apologised after his trousers fell down during an educational event for schoolchildren.

Councillor Colin Hall was at Southfields library in the city to take part in a Global Education function.

When he stood to give a vote of thanks at Tuesday's event his trousers came loose and fell.

A spokesman for Mr Hall said: "The lord mayor has offered his deepest apologies to those attending the event for any offence caused by the accident."

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