Legal aid cuts will exclude the most vulnerable from access to justice

Family, housing and immigration among the areas from which free legal advice may be withdrawn

Hundreds of thousands of people with family and housing law problems will no longer have access to free legal advice under government proposals announced today. Measures proposing the most drastic cuts to legal aid in its 60-year history would seek to reduce the number of civil law cases by 547,000 a year in what ministers describe as an attempt to save money and "discourage a culture of litigation".

"At more than £2bn per year, we currently have one of the most expensive legal aid systems in the world," said the justice minister, Jonathan Djanogly. "In civil legal aid and private family law people are too often willing to hand over their personal problems to the state … there is a lack of appreciation of the implications of going to court. The need to make savings provides us with the impetus and urgency for change."

The proposals, published in a consultation paper today, suggest the removal of whole areas of law from the scope of public funding. Divorcing couples will no longer be able to receive free legal representation for court cases, other than in cases where there is domestic violence or forced marriage, in a change ministers say should encourage mediation.

Government figures estimate the move will reduce the number of cases by 265,000 per year. People facing homelessness, housing disrepair and antisocial behaviour will still be able to gain free legal advice. But people with other housing problems will no longer get state help, despite a government statement acknowledging that these people are "more likely to be ill or disabled". This move means some 38,000 people per year will no longer able to access free legal help.

Other areas of legal advice previously covered by legal aid will be removed from public funding completely, including debt advice, social welfare and employment. Critics were swift to respond, saying the measures would hit the most vulnerable in society and prevent them from defending civil rights affected by cuts elsewhere.

National Firefighters Rally and Lobby of Parliament

Wednesday 17th November 2010 - 10.30 to 13.00

Support your local fire service

“Our Fire and Rescue Service faces the most serious attacks in living memory. The cuts proposed by the Government would decimate our Service and would hugely increase risk to Firefighters and to the public. At the same time Firefighters face a further series of attacks on pay, pensions, jobs and conditions of service. We will be going to Westminster on 17th November to tell MPs that our Service needs investment not cuts.”

FBU Website:  http://www.fbu.org.uk/

Oh yes, the Nick Clegg chant …

Nick Clegg is a wanker
he wears a wanker’s hat
and no one really likes him
cos he’s a massive twat
he’s hated by the left wing
he’s hated by the right
he’ll never be the PM
cos he’s a fucking shite

LONDON CALLING
NATIONAL DEMONSTRATION FROM ULU TO PARLIAMENT
09.DEC.10

Five Arsenal boys, one hotel bedroom and plenty of wrist action

Yep, it's Fifa time

Welcome to ultra-flexi-time: a slice of your life for half the price

Disabled people and lone parents face further upheaval to their benefits as an "ultra-flexible" work system, which allows people to sell their labour in small blocks of time, is placed at the heart of the government's welfare reforms. Lord Freud and Maria Miller, the welfare ministers, are examining changes to benefit rules to allow people to sign up for work for as little as two hours a week under the slivers of time initiative.

The government's decision to throw its weight behind the pioneering system comes as Tesco announces it is to throw open a slivers of time scheme to its 340,000-strong workforce. From today, any Tesco employee will be able to sign up for overtime for modest or longer periods of time at their workplace or at any Tesco store in their area.

Slivers of time, a social enterprise founded by the former BBC producer Wingham Rowan, is designed to tap into the pool of people who cannot work the usual hours expected even of the average part-time employee. It is aimed at parents with young children, disabled people who may not be available for work for most of the week, people who care for a dependent adult or the long-term unemployed who want to ease slowly back into work. "There are millions of people who need to work in a fragmented way," Rowan said. "Some of these people are real assets but they can be excluded from the labour market."

The government is keen to incorporate the slivers of time system into the new universal credit, the centrepiece of the welfare reforms unveiled last week by Iain Duncan Smith. Freud and Miller want to pilot the system for disabled and lone parents at jobcentres across Britain from next April with a view to rolling it into the running of the universal credit from 2013.

Its proponents claim the reform would mean that a disabled or lone parent would be able to book a few hours of work a week on their terms. Ministers believe current rules would have to be changed because the system has implications for the "earnings disregard" – the process by which benefits are reduced once earnings reach a certain level.

If you've ever wondered what it's like to get fucked for an hour and a half

ASK A CHELSEA FAN!

NUS starts campaign to oust leading Lib Dems

The National Union of Students will launch a "decapitation" strategy aimed at ousting Nick Clegg and other top Liberal Democrats from parliament in protest at the party's U-turn on student fees. The move aims to build on anger about coalition policies – which spilled over into violence on Wednesday – in Lib Dem-held constituencies with large student populations. The key targets will be Clegg in Sheffield Hallam, Simon Wright in Norwich South, Stephen Williams in Bristol West and Don Foster in Bath.

Aaron Porter, president of the NUS, said the campaign would aim to force out Lib Dems who break their pre-election pledge to oppose any rise in tuition fees. The move has echoes of the Lib Dems' own "decapitation strategy" in 2005, when the party threw resources into efforts to oust leading Tories with narrow majorities, including Michael Howard and Theresa May. Porter said the NUS will make use of a coalition idea for holding MPs to account that was championed by Clegg himself. The "right to recall" initiative, which has yet to became law, proposes that a by-election can be called if an MP is judged guilty of serious wrongdoing and 10% of constituents want him or her removed.

More likely is that the NUS could mobilise support against selected MPs ahead of the next election. Extra efforts will be made in the four target seats – with 1,000 students taking to the streets of Sheffield in an attempt to get 10% of Clegg's constituency to sign a petition. The Lib Dem leader, who held Sheffield Hallam with a majority of 15,284 at the May election, has around 10,000 students in his constituency. Others could be more vulnerable, such as Wright, who beat Charles Clarke in Norwich South by just 310 votes. Porter said: "It will serve to undermine the wafer-thin mandate this government has on university cuts and debt."

Head of Croatia's football federation to be sued over anti-gay remarks

The head of Croatia's football federation is facing legal action after telling a newspaper he would not allow gay players to represent the country. Vlatko Markovic said in an interview with the Vecernji list newspaper on Sunday that as long as he heads the federation, a gay player "certainly" will not feature for Croatia. Asked if he had ever encountered a gay footballer, he replied: "No. Fortunately, only healthy people play football."

  Healthy people

The gay groups Kontra and Iskorak have now said via their websites that they will sue Markovic in Croatia and report him to Uefa, saying his remarks violate Croatian and international laws. Markovic apologised for his comments today, saying that he was "sorry for a clumsy interpretation. It was not my intention whatsoever to insult or hurt anyone. I have nothing against members of any minority, least of all against those of same-sex orientation."

Croatian media reported that Markovic could be fined or suspended by the federation, whose statute bans any act of discrimination, if it receives an official complaint. Markovic has been president of Croatia's football federation for 12 years, and last year was awarded an Order of Merit by Uefa for his long and loyal service to the sport. Uefa says it is yet to open an investigation.

Cutting the number of MPs will only serve to weaken the House of Commons

Reduce the number of MPs and you automatically reduce the size of the gene pool, says Anthony King in today's Observer

“Tomorrow the House of Lords debates the blandly named parliamentary voting system and constituencies bill. Their lordships will probably focus their attention on the alternative vote, but they might care to spend a little time discussing the government's proposal to reduce the size of the House of Commons from 650 MPs to 600. 
 
The idea sounds attractive but is actually a very bad one. Nick Clegg, the bill's principal parliamentary proponent, claims that the number of MPs has inexorably crept up. Not so. The number of MPs is lower today than it was a decade ago and no higher than 20 years ago. There are more MPs now than there were immediately after the war, but in 1945 there were 640. An increase from 640 to 650 over six decades hardly constitutes hyper-inflation.

More to the point, if the number of MPs has increased marginally the number of their constituents – the people they are supposed to serve – has soared. At the end of the war, the average MP had roughly 66,000 constituents of all ages. By 1980, because of the increase in Britain's population, that number had risen to more than 88,000. It now stands at nearly 96,000. If the government gets its way, by the next election it will be 105,000 – an increase since the war of roughly 60%.

That by itself would result – and has already resulted – in MPs having heavier constituency workloads. But, of course, constituents nowadays expect far more of their MPs than they once did. Far more constituents email, phone and write to their MP. The "good constituency member" was once a relatively rare beast. Now all MPs are expected to be diligent – and may be punished if they are not.

Rock n Roll Desire ...

State school funding to be decided by Whitehall, bypassing role of local authorities

Funding for all state schools in England could soon be decided by Whitehall rules, officials have said. The Department for Education is considering introducing a "national funding formula" to decide the allocation of school budgets. Officials said this did not mean local authorities, currently responsible for allocating funds, would be sidelined. The proposals will be in the forthcoming education White Paper, the Financial Times reports.

Ministers are planning to consult with councils about the level of their involvement in the construction and operation of the formula, and officials stressed the government wanted to work closely with them. The consultation is expected to take at least one year to complete. The move follows government concerns that many local council formulas currently used to decide how to allocate the so-called dedicated schools grant are out of date and do not recognise changes in schools in recent years.

Officials said Education Secretary Michael Gove believed too often two schools in different areas, but with similar intakes of children, were getting different levels of funding. Speaking to the Financial Times, he said the current system was "opaque and illogical" and needed levelling out. Ministers are said to want budgets to more closely reflect pupils' needs and head teachers' priorities.

BBC education correspondent Tom Symonds said the proposals were radical and controversial. "This is like saying all schools will, in some ways, be freed from local authority control," he said. "Michael Gove's idea is to devolve power to schools but many people will see it as bringing much more power back to the centre because it will be a national system."

Symonds said he expected local councils across England to be "very upset" at losing the ability to set priorities at a local level. He added that the plans would mean lots of schools would see changes in their funding. "In some places, that will be something that's welcomed. In inner cities, deprived schools are seen to do quite well, as opposed to deprived schools in rural areas."

No losers? I think you’ll find there are, Mr Duncan Smith, and you’re one of them.

The government may be winning the war of words – but inconvenient facts will erupt before long, writes Polly Toynbee in today’s Guardian.

“Iain Duncan Smith's welfare plans were craftily presented, while laying mantraps for the opposition. Each day this week tasty morsels were fed to the press about punishments for scroungers and compulsory unpaid work, excoriating Labour's imagined laxness. Social security policy is notoriously incomprehensible, so people take at face value the claims that are made for "the greatest reform since Beveridge". But you can't bamboozle all of the people for long.

“Look, erectile dysfunction doesn’t come without its own problems, you know”

Polls showed unsurprising support for the plans. Who could oppose saving billions in welfare while getting people into work? Everyone agrees there must be tough sanctions to stop idlers and cheats. Who doesn't want to "reward work and support the vulnerable"? What's more, Duncan Smith will do this magic while simplifying a system of mind-boggling complexity, so no one need bother with the laborious details (most of the press didn't).

What's not to like? Except, just possibly, the nagging sense that it's all a bit too good to be true. If it was that easy, why wouldn't the big and equally tough brains of previous work and pensions secretaries, Labour and Tory, have done it? Were they all so much stupider than Duncan Smith? Unlikely.

Examine this Wizard of Oz, and few of his hyperbolic claims hold water. There will be "no losers", he says, but wait for them to emerge by the million. Nor is there evidence in his lack of detailed figures for how or why 300,000 children will be lifted out of poverty. The "no losers" claim reminds those close to Gordon Brown of similar protestations for his rather more modest 10p tax band abolition. Asserting something does not make it come true – and it gets found out.

Civil disorder

 Martin Rowson, the Guardian

McDonald's and PepsiCo to help write UK health policy

The Department of Health is putting the fast food companies McDonald's and KFC and processed food and drink manufacturers such as PepsiCo, Kellogg's, Unilever, Mars and Diageo at the heart of writing government policy on obesity, alcohol and diet-related disease, the Guardian has learned.

In an overhaul of public health, said by campaign groups to be the equivalent of handing smoking policy over to the tobacco industry, health secretary Andrew Lansley has set up five "responsibility deal" networks with business, co-chaired by ministers, to come up with policies. Some of these are expected to be used in the public health white paper due in the next month.

The groups are dominated by food and alcohol industry members, who have been invited to suggest measures to tackle public health crises. Working alongside them are public interest health and consumer groups including Which?, Cancer Research UK and the Faculty of Public Health. The alcohol responsibility deal network is chaired by the head of the lobby group the Wine and Spirit Trade Association. The food network to tackle diet and health problems includes processed food manufacturers, fast food companies, and Compass, the catering company famously pilloried by Jamie Oliver for its school menus of turkey twizzlers. The food deal's sub-group on calories is chaired by PepsiCo, owner of Walkers crisps.

The leading supermarkets are an equally strong presence, while the responsibility deal's physical activity group is chaired by the Fitness Industry Association, which is the lobby group for private gyms and personal trainers.

In early meetings, these commercial partners have been invited to draft priorities and identify barriers, such as EU legislation, that they would like removed. They have been assured by Lansley that he wants to explore voluntary not regulatory approaches, and to support them in removing obstacles. Using the pricing of food or alcohol to change consumption has been ruled out. One group was told that the health department did not want to lead, but rather hear from its members what should be done.

Even before the election, the Lib Dems had decided to abandon their pledge on tuition fees

The Liberal Democrats were drawing up plans to abandon Nick Clegg's flagship policy to scrap university tuition fees two months before the general election, secret party documents reveal.

As the Lib Dem leader faces a growing revolt after this week's violent protest against fee rises, internal documents show the party was drawing up proposals for coalition negotiations which contrasted sharply with Clegg's public pronouncements. A month before Clegg pledged in April to scrap the "dead weight of debt", a secret team of key Lib Dems made clear that, in the event of a hung parliament, the party would not waste political capital defending its manifesto pledge to abolish university tuition fees within six years.

In a document marked "confidential" and dated 16 March, the head of the secret pre-election coalition negotiating team, Danny Alexander, wrote: "On tuition fees we should seek agreement on part time students and leave the rest. We will have clear yellow water with the other [parties] on raising the tuition fee cap, so let us not cause ourselves more headaches."

The document is likely to fuel criticism among Lib Dem backbenchers and in the National Union of Students that the party courted the university vote in the full knowledge that its pledge would have to be abandoned as the party sought to achieve a foot in government. Within a month of the secret document, Clegg recorded a YouTube video for the annual NUS conference on 13 April in which he pledged to abolish fees within six years.

"You've got people leaving university with this dead weight of debt, around £24,000, round their neck," the future deputy PM said in the video that was screened at the conference on 13 April. Clegg also joined all other Lib Dem MPs in signing an NUS pledge to "vote against any increase in fees". The leaked document showed that during the preparations for a hung parliament the Lib Dems still intended to fulfil that commitment.

The Lib Dems, who are now under intense pressure after agreeing in government that tuition fees should be allowed to rise, said the document was designed to work out how to reach agreement with the Tories and Labour, who were "diametrically" opposed to them. As the party was isolated, the negotiators concentrated on trying to win ground where they could find consensus. Source say that, in government, they have succeeded in tackling the discrimination against part-time students identified in the secret document.

Well, when you put it like that

Labour endorses graduate tax

Labour is to endorse a graduate tax as its official policy after Ed Miliband overruled Alan Johnson, the shadow Chancellor, who has expressed grave doubts about the idea. In a speech yesterday, Mr Johnson prepared the ground for a personal retreat by saying that Labour disagreed with the Coalition Government's decision that graduates should pay all the cost of their university education under plans to allow tuition fees to rise to £9,000 a year from 2012. "This is the central issue now and it's why the Shadow Cabinet has agreed to look at whether a graduate tax can be a fairer and more sustainable alternative to the current mess as part of our policy review proposals," he said.

Mr Johnson, who introduced top-up fees as Higher Education Minister during the Blair government, is the first senior Labour figure to suggest the Opposition will come out in favour of a graduate tax since Mr Miliband became party leader in September. The issue has been discussed by the Shadow Cabinet and one member said: "We will go for a graduate tax."

Mr Miliband backed the move during Labour's leadership election but the party is divided over it. On the day after Mr Miliband was elected, Mr Johnson advised him in an article in The Independent on Sunday: "For goodness sake, don't pursue a graduate tax. We should be proud of our brave and correct decision to introduce tuition fees. Students don't pay them, graduates do, when they're earning more than £15,000 a year, at very low rates, stopped from their pay just like a graduate tax but with the money going where it belongs: to universities rather than the Treasury."

Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, considered a graduate tax but concluded that one would not bring in revenue for many years. Yesterday, Nick Clegg admitted he "should have been more careful" over his pre-election pledge to scrap tuition fees. He told ITV's Daybreak programme: "I guess the easiest thing for me would have been to say I've signed this pledge, I'm going to put my head in the sand, I'm not going to come up with a fair sustainable solution to universities and simply refuse to deal with it. I don't think that would have been the right thing."

Welfare reforms will expose families and children to the 'risk of destitution', say charities

Ian Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, faced a backlash from poverty campaigners today over plans to impose severe welfare penalties on people who are out of work and refuse to take up jobs

Oxfam's director of UK poverty, Kate Wareing, said: "Removing benefits and leaving people with no income will result in extreme hardship for them and their families. This sanction, and the proposals to force people to do unpaid work are based on stigma. Most people receiving benefits do want to work, and punishing them as if they are criminals repaying a debt to society is not a fair way to treat someone entitled to support."

Sally Copley, head of UK policy at Save the Children, said: "It is hard to see how Britain's poorest children are going to be helped using sanctions creating a climate of fear. It is children who will suffer when a single mum is told to take a job, but there is not suitable childcare available. It is the children who will suffer when the safety net is withdrawn for three months, living in homes where mums and dads already struggle to put a hot meal on the table or buy a winter coat. Breaking the cycle of poverty is important. Simplifying the benefits system is long overdue. But paying for this by welfare cuts for the poorest families is in no-one's interest."

Douglas Alexander, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said: "We support the underlying principle of simplifying the benefits system and providing real incentives to work. My concern is that [chancellor] George Osborne's recent actions reveal he doesn't support these principles – he has already both complicated the system and undermined incentives to work through changes such as the reduction in working tax credit. Some of the key aspects of Iain Duncan Smith's original plan already seem to have been cut and that could mean some people facing bigger barriers to getting back to work. And our overriding concern is that there is a fatal flaw at the heart of these proposals: without work they won't work."

Richard Hawkes, chief executive of disability charity Scope, said the reform effort was "encouraging" but unrealistic about the reality of people's lives. Citing the regime of sanctions planned, Hawkes said: "What about those disabled people who do play by the government's rules? Who try repeatedly to get work but are not successful? The sanctions the government is going to introduce will effectively penalise them, pushing them further into poverty, further away from work and ultimately creating more dependency on the state. The government needs to be clear in its aim of supporting genuine people today as well as introducing robust plans for the future."

The business sector warned that red tape could hamper efforts to create the new jobs required. Dr Adam Marshall, director of policy at the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), said: "Business will support moves to make work pay – because UK plc cannot function efficiently and effectively with millions of people permanently outside the labour market," he said. "Yet there are challenges too that must be addressed. If private sector companies are to create the jobs needed to employ local people, the government must make it easier for small and medium-sized firms to take on staff – by stripping away burdensome employment regulation, and by ensuring that everyone has the basic skills needed to hold down a job. Businesses will take it from there, and train up the specialist workforce they need to deliver growth."

Cameron condemns students blah blah blah

David Cameron vowed today that he would not turn back on trebling tuition fees and condemned the students who tried to ransack Conservative headquarters yesterday, saying the full force of the law should be used to prosecute violent protesters.

In a round of interviews in Seoul, where he is attending the G20 summit, Cameron said: "We won't go back. Look, even if we wanted to, we shouldn't go back to the idea that university is free." He also urged the police to learn lessons from yesterday's riot, saying there were 30,000 police officers in London yet only a thin blue line of extremely brave police officers was available to "to hold back a bunch of people intent on violence and destruction".

He also insisted he had a mandate to push through the reforms to higher education, saying: "I think the will of the public was expressed at the time of the election when they rejected debt and deficit and putting off these difficult decisions under Labour, and they chose a new approach and we've got to be true to that and stick to that".

He said he was very glad the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, had called for an inquiry into the policing of the event, saying: "I think we need to learn the lessons rapidly." He said there had not been remotely enough police officers, adding that there may have been failures of intelligence. "I think the police themselves have said that the problem here was about the planning, was about the intelligence, was about the resourcing of that particular operation."

But he added: "I am quite convinced that the reductions in police spending that we're making can actually be done without losing the visibility and the activity of the police officers on our streets." He disclosed he had been on the phone from Seoul to Conservative HQ in Millbank to check staff were safe. He said: "I thought it was extremely serious. I could see a line – a thin blue line – of extremely brave police officers trying to hold back a bunch of people who were intent on violence and destruction."

He also denied that the violence represented a return to the kinds of riots seen in the 80s under Margaret Thatcher. Asked if he feared the British social fabric was under threat, he said: "There have been protests – both peaceful protests and sometimes protests that have turned quite nasty – under all governments so I don't see it like that. Look, people who assault police officers or who smash windows or who break property they are breaking the law and, yes, those people I hope that they will be prosecuted. They should be.” He added: "Lawbreaking is not acceptable and I hope that the full force of the law will be used."

Nick Clegg was 'led astray' by Tories over tuition fees, says Harriet Harman

Harman attacks Clegg over tuition fees u-turn as students protest over cuts and threaten to unseat Lib Dem MPs who break pledges on higher education funding

Nick Clegg was today accused of having been "led astray" by the Tories over the coalition's plans for increasing tuition fees as students and academics marched on Whitehall in protest. Harriet Harman, the deputy Labour leader, sought to play on Liberal Democrat unease about the rise in the cost of university education after Clegg and his party made the abolition of fees a key plank of their election manifesto.

Thousands of students and academics from across the country gathered in London for today's demonstration, billed as the largest show of opposition to its austerity cuts since it came to power. Fury at the Lib Dem U-turn has sparked warnings from the National Union of Students (NUS) that students will attempt to oust Liberal Democrat MPs who vote for a tuition fee hike by trying to force a by-election in the constituencies of MPs who renege on a pre-election pledge to oppose any hike, using proposed recall legislation.

Clegg, who was standing in for David Cameron at prime minister's questions today, faced a total of 12 questions related to higher education funding. Cameron was in China. Harman said she hoped Clegg would go out and tell the students protesting outside parliament how "fair" the government's plan was.

Cameron in China

 

Ambulance and fire services could be turned into John Lewis-style mutuals, says Francis Maude

The Government has already unveiled plans to turn Government agencies into John Lewis-style mutual organisations where the staff have a stake in how they are run. Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, said the plans could be expanded to the fire and ambulance services.

Maude told The Daily Telegraph that he would probably stop short of trying to mutualise “the armed forces or the police”. He added: “Outside that, would you exclude all uniformed services? No, not necessarily. Ambulance services could easily be - I know there is one that is interested in doing it. We have to assume that this is applicable across the public sector unless there is a very pressing reason why the model won’t work.”

Staff would be given their annual budget and allowed to run the service themselves. Turning fire and ambulance services into mutual bodies would allow staff to hold their management to account and give them a better say in running the organisation. A similar scheme was already run by Central Surrey Healthcare, a not-for-profit organisation that provides community nursing to the people in central Surrey.

Maude said there would be “a genuine co-ownership, genuine mutual model. There is no profit share, there is no ‘tradeable’ share, although they all own a share”. The benefits were felt among staff, who felt they had a stake in the workplaces. He said: “They are paid on exactly the same basis as they were before. Their financial motivation is exactly the same and yet their mindset has been utterly transformed. They would say they are working harder but we are much happier, more fulfilled; the ability to make a difference, to see what needs to be done and make things happen.”

Lord Young, a former Trade minister under Margaret Thatcher, is already looking at how to turn public bodies which charge fees - such as the Driving and Vehicle Licensing Agency or Companies House - into mutual organisations. Staff would then be allocated shares allow them to share in the agency's success. The shares would then be sold or handed back when they leave. Lord Young is expected to provide more details about his plans later this month.

The tools of welfare reform are being sharpened in the Tories’ divide-and-rule box

Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms suggest that unemployment is the fault of lazy people. The argument does not consider structural conditions nor recognise that many people are not working because there simply are no jobs for them; instead it implies that people are not working because they are lazy. It also maintains a narrow definition of work. For example, single parents looking after children perform socially valuable work but this is not recognised as such.

There is also some confusion over the actual nature of welfare. Welfare was intended to help people who needed it. It was not created as something for which people should have to work. Its advocates want to force people to work and demand that those who refuse to take any kind of work, no matter how meaningless or degrading, will lose benefits. This assumes that poor people should lose the right to choose.

It is not clear that this will foster the sense of individual responsibility that its advocates champion either. People on welfare share the problem of unemployment, but many, especially those who will be turfed from ISA on to JSA, are also victimised by violence, abuse, mental illness, disability and emotional problems. Such people may feel defeated and crushed, and achieving some success in meaningful activity might well help them.

Yet it is difficult to see how forcing people to do soul-destroying jobs through this scheme will help their self-esteem or produce a sense of social responsibility. People resent being forced to do meaningless jobs that will not help them but are merely intended to create the impression that they are not “getting something for nothing.” It would be more useful to create real jobs that would allow people to earn a decent living and feel a sense of pride. Similarly, structural explanations that explain why jobs are scarce are more useful than fanciful stories about the laziness of poor people.

I find that many of those who support these plans misunderstand the situation. What they see as the causes of poverty – apathy, lethargy, lack of hope – are more often its effects. This reform offers emotional appeal and easy answers to complex problems. Affluent people usually see the system as one of unlimited opportunities and believe poverty is due to failure to take advantage of those opportunities. Having profited from the system, they believe in it and express a self-congratulatory view: “we worked hard and deserve our success”; the failure of others to achieve similar success must be the fault of those individuals themselves.

The explanation always shifts the cause of unemployment away from structural factors to the moral character of the claimant. This is the most useful tool in the Tory’s divide and rule box. By diverting working class ire towards the “undeserving” poor, highlighting the depravity of the benefit claimant who squanders his or her pittance on a consoling six-pack of beer, the rich and big corporations can enjoy their vast wealth undisturbed.

The myths swallowed by George Osborne

George Osborne fails to understand that the value of lost output in Britain is vastly greater than the cost of public debt, writes George Irvin in the Guardian

MPs on the Treasury select committee have criticised George Osborne for "misleading the public" by suggesting that Britain was close to bankruptcy. Britain's budget deficit is at present equivalent to 12.7% of GDP. The national debt has been rising, as has the cost of debt service, currently running at about just over £42bn per annum or about 3% of GDP. According to George Osborne, unless drastic austerity measures are imposed as per the government spending review, the international financial markets will lose confidence in Britain. But the chancellor's argument in favour of drastic budgetary retrenchment is a mixture of fact and myth. Below are some typical myths.

Myth 1: Debt repayment is a cost to the country
About 80% of public borrowing is from the domestic market, what economists call the "non-bank public". To those who buy them – either directly or through things like pension funds – British bonds are an asset on which holders receive a payment totalling £34bn per annum. The remaining 20% is either held by government departments or is owed to foreigners. Most public borrowing appears as a liability on the government side of the ledger, but as an asset on the ledger of domestic bondholders.

Myth 2: The taxpayer pays
We are told repeatedly that the cost of servicing public debt is paid by current and future taxpayers. But anyone who believes that has grasped the wrong end of the stick. The reason the government has had to borrow ever larger amounts since 2008 is that, in a recession, tax receipts fall while transfer payments (such as jobseekers' allowance) rise. So it is the lack of tax receipts that leads to the borrowing, not excessive borrowing that leads to more taxes. As the economy recovers, tax receipts rise and borrowing falls.

A somewhat more sophisticated argument used mainly by "financial economists" (the sort who advise Osborne) is that when government debt-financed spending rises, the public cuts its consumption by an equal amount in the expectation that future taxes will rise. This is what economists call the "Ricardian equivalence" hypothesis, first proposed by David Ricardo in the early 19th century and popularised by Robert Barro and other members of the "rational expectations" school of economics which enjoyed brief credibility in the 1970s. Bluntly, there is little empirical support for this hypothesis. (See Elmendorf, DW; Mankiw, NG (1998). "Government Debt, NBER Working Paper 6470".)

The same is true of the oxymoron "expansionary fiscal contraction"; the IMF's World Economic Outlook (October 2010) could find only two episodes out of 15 of advanced economies expanding as deficits were cut.

Long-term jobless 'could face compulsory manual labour'

Long-term benefit claimants could be forced to do compulsory manual labour under proposals being put forward by the government, it has emerged. Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith is set to outline plans for four-week placements doing jobs like gardening and litter clearing. "The message will go across - play ball or it is going to be difficult," said Mr Duncan Smith. Details will be unveiled in the Welfare Reform White Paper expected shortly.

Boom boom!

Under the plan, claimants thought to need 'experience of the habits and routines of working life' could be put on the month long, 30-hour a week placements. Anyone refusing to take part or failing to turn up on time to work could have their £65 Jobseekers' Allowance stopped for at least three months. The Work Activity scheme is said to be designed to flush out claimants who have opted for a life on benefits or are doing undeclared jobs on the side. Reports suggest it will target people believed to be sabotaging efforts to get them back into work.

The Welfare Reform White Paper, set to be unveiled in the coming week, will set out Mr Duncan Smith's plans for a universal credit to replace the range of benefits currently claimed by the jobless. Under the scheme, job advisers would be given powers to require tens of thousands of claimants to take part in community work for charities or local councils. A Department for Work and Pensions spokesman said: "We will shortly be bringing forward further proposals on how to break the cycle of dependency blighting many of our communities and make sure work always pays."

Mr Duncan Smith said his plans were designed to reduce welfare dependency and make work pay. He said: "One thing we can do is pull people in to do one or two weeks' manual work - turn up at 9am and leave at 5pm, to give people a sense of work, but also when we think they're doing other work. The message will go across; play ball or it's going to be difficult."

The UK has 5m people on out-of-work benefits and one of the highest rates of workless households in Europe, with 1.9m children living in homes where no-one has a job.

Leaked document shows how one London council will cut spending by targeting children, the old and the lonely

Streetlights will be switched off at night. Roads will be swept less often. Home repairs for council tenants will be refused. Libraries and children's centres will close. Potholes will no longer be fixed. Fees for swimming and sports will increase. And luncheon clubs for pensioners, playgroups for children, youth clubs and breakfast clubs will all be cancelled.

The devastating reality of the cuts being planned by councils across the country has been laid bare in a secret document, seen by the Observer on condition the council is not revealed, which details every single service likely to disappear in one inner London local authority. Every council will have a similar document: a map of misery for the next four years.

The London council report has been drawn up by officials in response to the government's comprehensive spending review, which laid out heavy cuts for local authorities. It illustrates just how much local communities are likely to be disrupted. It lists the potential risks of the cutbacks, including "deterioration of estates leading to antisocial behaviour" and "reduction in overall standards of cleanliness for litter, detritus and fly-tipping".

Anna Turley, deputy director of the New Local Government Network think-tank, warned that the spending review was going to be "devastating" for local government. "We are starting to see how this will affect people's lives," she said.

The London report provides a strong illustration of what is to come. A cabinet member at the London council said: "The invisible services – the support in the home behind closed doors that is enormously expensive – will have to remain. Those are the people with the highest needs. So we have no choice but to cut the more visible, popular services that will bring protests – the luncheon clubs, the play services, the youth groups, the breakfast clubs. And those lunches are important because they are really good at reducing isolation."

Cheeeese!!

Martin Rowson, the Guardian

Ken Clarke to close six jails as he insists inmate numbers will fall

Around 5,000 prison cells will be lost and 10,000 jobs across the Prison Service will be axed under a government plan to shut six jails in England and Wales. The Ministry of Justice is reportedly preparing a list for establishments for closure as part of an overhaul of sentencing policy designed to reduce the number of offenders behind bars.

A consultation green paper outlining the reduction, a reversal of the Labour government's plan to increase prison accommodation from the current 88,000 places to 96,000, is due to be published next month.

The proposal comes after George Osborne's demand for a 23% cut in the ministry's budget by 2014/15 in the spending review. Justice secretary Ken Clarke hopes he can reduce the prison population by 3,000 by 2014, rather than the previous government's forecast that an extra 8,000 places would be needed. He reportedly intends to achieve this by reforming sentencing, transferring mentally ill offenders to NHS units, and repatriating more foreign national offenders.

Jails that may be vulnerable to closure include Shepton Mallet in Somerset, Shrewsbury, North Sea Camp in Lincolnshire and Dartmoor in Devon; larger inner-city prisons such as Wandsworth and Pentonville in London are thought to be still viewed as important.

Colin Moses, chairman of the Prison Officers' Association, called for a policy of smaller jails instead of closures. "We do not believe at this time that there should be any prison closures until we have had a root and branch review of the prison estate," he said. "We believe smaller prisons deliver the things Ken Clarke is talking about, such as good offender behaviour programmes."

There are doubts over whether there are sufficient NHS facilities available to take offenders, and whether large numbers of foreign national prisoners can be returned; last year only 41 of almost 8,000 convicted were returned.

Meanwhile, the chief inspector of prisons, Nick Hardwick, told the Times that he believed that inmates were being treated very badly. "You look at the conditions some people are in and what's happening to them and the lack of care they are getting and you think, 'This is just a disgrace'," he said. Not enough focus was put on trying to stop offenders returning to crime, with many inmates sitting around playing cards even in workshops, he said.

The justice ministry said last night: "We expect that by the end of the spending review period the number of prisoners will be around 3,000 lower than it is today, equivalent to 2008 levels. "We are looking at the sentencing frameworks for adult and young offenders, as well as the full range of penalties available in the criminal justice system. Long-term decisions on prison capacity programmes will be taken in the light of these policy developments."

Bryan Ferry presents the Olympia exhibition

Labour goes with the Coalition over benefit reforms

If you were expecting a fight from Labour over welfare reforms, forget it.

Douglas Alexander, the new shadow work and pensions secretary, today moved to clarify Labour's stance on welfare by saying he will back phased reform of housing benefit and stressing the party's support for stricter incapacity benefit tests. He also said he was broadly supportive of plans for a universal credit, the centrepiece of Iain Duncan Smith's welfare white paper, due to be unveiled next week, but set a series of tests for his support. The universal credit will unify most benefits and tax credits into a single payment.

   
In his first interview since taking on what is likely to be a central political battleground, Alexander told the Guardian his preference was a Danish model of the state guaranteeing work, and then obliging people to take the job or lose benefit. "This is a form of conditional welfare. Real guarantees of work, but real sanctions if the offer is not taken up."

Duncan Smith, he said, had by contrast been obliged by the Treasury to follow an American punitive model of simply cutting benefit, regardless of whether work was available. In return for his £2bn universal credit scheme, Duncan Smith had agreed to £18bn of welfare cuts, many of which will reduce disincentives to work. Alexander and Duncan Smith are due to clash on welfare in a Commons debate on Tuesday.

Labour has been criticised, including by its former party general secretary Peter Watt, for appearing to be siding with the feckless poor against the hard-working squeezed middle, so appearing less credible on how to tackle the deficit. But Alexander listed a series of welfare reforms he was willing to accept, including changing access to disability living allowance, driving out fraud, temporary changes to the upgrading of some benefits, and testing the availability for work of incapacity benefit claimants.

Berlusconi government to ban street prostitution

According to  Barbara Saltamartini, the party’s  equal opportunities spokeswoman, Silvio Berlusconi’s government "has reached a further milestone"! The Italian prime minister yesterday chaired a meeting that … wait for it … approved a bill outlawing prostitution.

Mara Carfagna (above), the former topless model who is Berlusconi's equal opportunities minister, told the website Clandestinoweb a package of security measures will now go to parliament that included a ban on prostitution in all public places. "The aim is to cut off the oxygen to criminal organisations that profit from the bodies of women who are often very young and, in the overwhelming majority of cases, foreign," she said.

It emerged last week that three associates of the prime minister were formally under investigation on suspicion of profiting from prostitution. They include his TV network's best-known newscaster, a talent scout who supplies many of its showgirls, and a former dancer who was Berlusconi's dental hygienist until he plucked her from obscurity to be a regional MP for his Freedom People movement. I’m not making this shit up!

Among those who have been questioned is an 18 year-old Moroccan girl who said that she had visited the prime minister's home outside Milan. She has acknowledged receiving €7,000 from Berlusconi, but denies any sexual involvement with him. A 27 year-old ex-prostitute who has also given a statement to prosecutors, said however that she had twice provided sexual services for the prime minister at €5,000 a time. Opposition critics noted the new measures would not apply to call girls, but only to streetwalkers.

"If it weren't so terribly serious, you'd die laughing", said Senator Donatella Poretti of the Italian Radicals.

Rowan Williams enters the fray

Dr Rowan Williams says that government spending cuts threaten to remove vital services, particularly in rural areas, while church and voluntary groups are already at full stretch.

His comments, which followed private talks with the Prime Minister, reinforced his warning that the Big Society agenda must not be simply “an alibi” for public spending cuts. Dr Williams met Mr Cameron for talks with other faith leaders in Westminster earlier this week, although Lambeth Palace declined to give further details of the subjects discussed. Shortly after the election, Dr Williams said he could only give “two and a half cheers” for the Big Society because he was concerned that the plan to give voluntary and charitable organisations a greater role running public services meant the government was “washing its hands” of its responsibilities.

Speaking at a Church of England conference on faith in the countryside, Dr Williams suggested that his fears were proving well-founded. “Conversations earlier this week in Westminster suggested that a number of people driving the Big Society have not really thought through what the implication might be - certainly for the rural setting,” he said. Rural communities, in particular, face a “huge problem” with high rates of depression and suicide among farm workers, which will only worsen if funding for mental health services is withdrawn, he said. One in four mental health jobs in areas including Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire are said to be at risk.

Dr Williams said churches did not need to be told to get involved in helping their local communities, but required more government commitment and resources to expand their work. Voluntary groups are already taking up the burden of supporting rural residents who find themselves isolated, while “the Church can provide extremely significant support and help”.

“It is absolutely true that a certain amount of what gets talked about as Big Society shaped stuff is precisely what has been gong on already,” he said. “What it needs is not so much exhortation as capacity building. The challenge therefore is how do we get government – local and national – to build capacity in the countryside for groups like the churches to go on serving as they are already serving?”

Nigel Farage re-elected as leader of UKIP

Nigel Farage has been re-elected as leader of the UK Independence Party. Mr Farage, who led UKIP from 2006 to 2009, took just over 60% of votes in a ballot of party members. He beat fellow MEP David Campbell-Bannerman, economist Tim Congdon and former boxer Winston McKenzie. He will take over from Lord Pearson of Rannoch, who stood down after only nine months in the job.

The leader of the party in the European Parliament, Mr Farage was injured in a light aircraft crash on 6 May - the day of the general election. He then failed in his attempt to get elected to Westminster in the seat of the Commons Speaker John Bercow. All 18,000 members of UKIP had a vote in the postal ballot.

The party has long campaigned for the UK to pull out of the European Union, but failed to make its hoped-for breakthrough in May's election. However, its share of the vote did increase by nearly 1% as it polled more than 919,000 votes.

Vatican warns of ‘wayward’ religious sect Opus Angelorum

The Vatican has warned Catholic bishops around the world to monitor carefully a secretive traditionalist sect which prays to angels to combat demons, whereas anyone with half an ounce of sense knows you pray to God for that sort of thing – doh!

Opus Angelorum, which means "the work of angels" in Latin, was founded by an Austrian housewife who died in 1978. She claimed to have identified the angels and demons who were battling for the control of human beings. The Church said some members of the sect were carrying out "activities that disturb the ecclesiastical community".

The BBC's David Willey in Rome says Opus Angelorum first attracted the attention of the Vatican 30 years ago, after the death of its founder, a woman from the Austrian Tyrol called Gabriele Bitterlich. She claimed to have been in contact with an archangel and to have written down the names of hundreds of angels and demons. The sect - which operates mainly in German-speaking Europe, Brazil and India - claims that women who have had abortions are possessed by the devil.

The activities of Bitterlich's followers, including dozens of Catholic priests and nuns, eventually attracted the attention of the Vatican which ordered an investigation. According to a letter sent by the head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in 1992 members of Opus Angelorum agreed to follow the doctrine of the Church in return for official recognition.

"In particular, [its] members were not to make use of the 'names' of angels derived from the alleged private revelations attributed to Mrs Gabriele Bitterlich and they were not to teach, spread or make use of the theories originating from these alleged revelations," Cardinal William Levada said. “Furthermore, they were reminded of the duty to follow strictly all liturgical laws, in particular those relating to the Holy Eucharist."

However, several members of the sect, including some priests, "have not accepted the norms given by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and seek to restore what, according to them, would be the 'authentic Opus Angelorum'", the letter warned. "The Congregation has learned that very discreet propaganda in favour of this wayward movement, which is outside of any ecclesiastical control, is taking place, aimed at presenting it as if it were in full communion with the Catholic Church."

'Yes I have a young girlfriend. It seems perfectly natural to me'

No, not Berlusconi, surprisingly

Bryan Ferry and some woman with a mattress on her back

Major museums blocked from using reserves totalling £285m

Tens of millions of pounds held in the reserve accounts of Britain's major museums – much of it donated by private donations and bequests – is frozen by the Treasury, despite the arts being in the midst of the biggest funding crisis in a generation.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), acting under rules imposed by the Treasury, stipulates the net expenditure each year for the 20 major museums it funds. It also determines how much of their reserves they can access. This pot of money totals £285m across many of the country's most high-profile bodies, including the National Gallery and National Maritime Museum, but the organisations in question are being refused repeated requests to access it.

Most recently, the National Gallery and the National Maritime Museum have been refused requests to access their significant reserve monies by the DCMS, according to an investigation published in The Art Newspaper. "One of the consequences of major museums being non-departmental public bodies is that they must adhere to Treasury guidelines," said Michael Dixon, chairman of the National Museum Directors' conference. "This goes back to accounting regulations introduced in 2000 by Government,"

In 2008, the National Maritime Museum trustees voted to spend £3.5m from its own reserves on gallery refurbishments, but this was subsequently blocked by the DCMS. Minutes from a trustee meeting in September of that year said that "with no access to its reserves, the museum will not be able to deliver the exhibitions or gallery renewal it has planned". The museum's managers said the new freeze was of "great concern, as it significantly reduces their own independence as trustees and may well deter donors". They also called the Treasury a "shadow trustee".

DCMS reportedly then agreed to allow the museum to spend just £300,000 in the current financial year out of £3.5m earmarked for gallery refurbishment. Although the comprehensive spending review increased the proportion of reserves that museums could access to 50 per cent, according to The Art Newspaper there was still confusion over the rules surrounding the National Gallery's campaign to purchase Titian's 1556-59 Diana and Actaeon.

Initially, the Treasury ruled that the gallery could not use its reserves, before internal accounting at DCMS eventually allowed the purchase to take place. The National Gallery played down its inability to access its own coffers, saying that "much of [our] income is either restricted to particular activities by the wishes of the donor, or designated by the trustees for future picture purchases".

A spokeswoman added: "Access to museum reserves is restricted by government accounting rules. This effectively means that museums have had to get permission from their sponsor department in order to spend from their reserves." A spokesman for the DCMS said: "We will be providing our national museums with the freedom to access up to £150m of their historic reserves over the next four years. This is an important step towards delivering on the Coalition commitment to providing greater administrative freedoms for national museums and will, we hope, encourage the museums to renew their efforts to attract further philanthropic donations."

Gap between rich and poor pulls UK down in UN human development stakes

Britain lags behind France and Germany in human development, according to a report compiled by the United Nations and has slipped down the league table to 26th place over the past five years. The UN said high levels of inequality were leading to slower progress in the UK than in other western European countries, with only Portugal recording a lower score on the international organisation's human development index (HDI).

While the UK's HDI of 0.849 meant it was ranked as a country with "very high human development", the score was only good enough for 26th place in a list headed by Norway, Australia and New Zealand. Germany was 10th, France 14th, while crisis-stricken Greece, Spain and Ireland all scored more highly than Britain. The UN said human development in the UK was below the average for the 30-plus countries that are members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, a club for rich nations based in Paris.

The report looks at income, education and health to gauge progress and found that in the three decades from 1980 per capita incomes were up 86%, life expectancy rose by over six years to 79.8 years and the mean number of years of schooling increased by almost two years. However, Finland and Belgium, which both had similar levels of human development to the UK in 1980, saw more rapid improvement.

For the first time this year, the UN introduced an equality-adjusted HDI in an attempt to measure the impact of differences in income, life expectancy and access to education across the population. This found that the UK's 2010 HDI of 0.849 fell by 10% to 0.766 when inequality was taken into account, a bigger fall than in either Germany or France.

The Gini coefficient – a measure of income inequality – shows that the gap between rich and poor in the UK is one of the highest in the OECD.

Silicon Valley in the East End – just next to the pie and mash shop

London's East End can be transformed into a world-leading technology city to rival Silicon Valley in California, David Cameron will claim today. Google, Facebook, Intel and McKinsey & Co are among companies which will invest in the East End, helping new small firms in the Old Street and Shoreditch areas to grow into multimillion-pound global businesses, he will say. The Prime Minister will publish a blueprint for technology designed to make Britain "the most attractive place in the world to start and invest in innovative technology companies".

                                            Residents relish the thought

The Government will pledge £200m of equity finance and £200m for new technology and innovation centres, one of which could be in the Olympic Park. Mr Cameron will also announce the creation of US-style visas for foreign entrepreneurs who start businesses in the UK and a review of copyright laws to make them "fit for the internet age" after Google said it could never have set up in Britain.

Speaking in east London, Mr Cameron will say: "We're not just going to back the big businesses of today, we're going to back the big businesses of tomorrow. We are firmly on the side of the high-growth, highly innovative companies of the future. Don't doubt our ambition. Right now, Silicon Valley is the leading place in the world for hi-tech growth and innovation. But there's no reason why it has to be so predominant."

Google will create an "innovation hub" creative space for its researchers to work with developers and academics, while Facebook will create a permanent home for its programme bringing together talented developers and entrepreneurs and Intel will set up a new research laboratory.

Holy Shit II: Church of England cleric compares supporters of women bishops to Nazis

A senior cleric in the Church of England has compared the ordination of women bishops to the Nazi invasion. The Right Rev Wallace Benn, the Bishop of Lewes, told the Reform conference of conservative Anglicans: “I feel very much increasingly that we’re in January of 1939. We need to be aware that there is real serious warfare just round the corner.” His analogy angered Jewish groups as it was in that month that Hitler outlined his intent to kill Europe’s Jews.

James Smith, chairman of the Holocaust Centre, said the comparison “belittles both the scale of the suffering the Nazis caused and the scale of the moral challenge they represented”. He added: “The Christian Church, with the exception of a few brave clerics, abjectly failed to respond appropriately to the Holocaust at the time, and has yet to fully address the implications of that failure.” Sally Barnes, of the campaign group Women and the Church, said: “I am really sorry that a man who is a Christian is talking in these terms.”

Bishop Benn later attempted to clarify his remarks and said: “I was thinking in terms of the storm clouds being on the horizon.” He said he intended his remarks to be Churchillian rather than thinking of Hitler. The issue of women bishops continues to drive divisions within the Church of England but it is not due to be debated by its council until next year.

US midterm election results herald new political era as Republicans take House

Democrats pummelled at polls but retain Senate as Tea Party notches string of high-profile victories across US

Barack Obama was today facing a harsh new US political reality in the wake of one of the worst Democratic defeats in recent history. In midterm election races across America, Republicans pummelled their opponents, capturing the House of Representatives and a fistful of Senate seats. It was a remarkable comeback from two years ago, when many experts expected the party to endure a long time in the political wilderness in the wake of Obama's emphatic 2008 presidential election victory.

Instead, Obama faces a hard political lesson after a hammering that wiped away the last vestiges of the euphoria that swept him to the White House. The political momentum has swung to the rightwing Tea Party movement, which energised the Republican base and notched up a string of high-profile victories.

Polling station in the Van Nuys neighbourhood of Los Angeles

The loss of the House is the first major setback Obama has faced in his relatively untroubled political rise from a community worker in Chicago to the presidency, and means that Nancy Pelosi – its first female Speaker – will give way to the Republican John Boehner. The swap of a liberal San Franciscan woman for a conservative Ohio man is a symbol of the deep shift in US politics heralded by the midterm results.

One consolation for the Democrats was that they held control of the Senate – but with only a slim majority after losing six seats. However, the party won key races in West Virginia and Nevada, where the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, also pulled off a surprise victory against the Tea Party darling Sharron Anglein in one of the most bitterly-fought contests of the campaign.

Holy shit!

Jack and the Beanie

more photos at
PLANETPMC | SPORT

UK – France Summit 2010

YES WE CAN-CAN

Swiss poised to vote on controversial immigrant law

Switzerland is poised to vote on a controversial law that will allow for all immigrants – EU citizens included – to be automatically expelled from the country if they commit a crime.

Even benefit fraudsters and burglars are targeted by the proposed new law, which polls show is likely to be passed in a referendum scheduled for November 28. The pro-expulsion campaign involves posters featuring a black sheep being kicked out of the country by several white sheep. The referendum will be held almost exactly a year after a previous plebiscite banned minarets on mosques.

The pro-expulsion campaign involves posters featuring a black sheep being kicked out of the country by several white sheep

The referendum proposal began to gain traction two years ago when three foreign-born men from the Balkans beat a young carnival reveller to death in Locarno. Switzerland's parliament, fearing repercussions from the EU and the wider world, has released an amended "counterproposal" with a list of serious crimes that would qualify a foreigner for expulsion. But the Swiss People's Party, which has spearheaded the campaign for the law, is against any "dilution" of the proposals. "Switzerland can't become a land of milk and honey for foreign criminals," said Walter Wobmann, an MP.

'My passion for women is better than being gay’

Thus spake Berlusconi, prime minister of Italy, dismissing as a storm in a tea cup reports that prostitutes had attended sex parties at his Sardinian villa.

A prostitute was reported to have told police of her involvement in "bunga-bunga" sex parties at Mr Berlusconi's home. The prostitute, 28, who has not been named, was questioned in connection with a separate investigation into alleged cocaine dealing. Mr Berlusconi laughed off a political storm that has raged since a teenage Moroccan belly dancer said last week she had witnessed similar parties in his Milan home. "Better to have a passion for beautiful women than to be gay," he told a business audience.

The allegations have triggered an explosion of references to the phrase "bunga-bunga". The term, which refers to a joke often told by Mr Berlusconi, has dominated news bulletins, appeared in newspaper cartoons and featured widely in discussions among Italians. The alleged escort said men and women cavorted at a party last summer at Villa Certosa, Mr Berlusconi's multi-million-pound property on the Costa Smeralda.

It is claimed she was recruited by Italy's best-known showbusiness agent, Lele Mora, who is one of three people being investigated for allegedly aiding and abetting prostitution in relation to an alleged call-girl ring in Milan. Karima Keyek, the teenager who is also known by her stage name of Ruby Rubacuori, claimed she too was introduced to the prime minister through Mr Mora. She says Mr Berlusconi gave her €7,000 and jewellery when she attended two of his parties earlier this year, but denies having sex with him.

The 74 year-old billionaire is under intense pressure to respond to claims that he ordered police in Milan to release Miss Keyek from custody late one night in May after she was accused of stealing money and valuables from a friend.

While some Italians have been angered by claims of abuse of office, others have delighted in satirising the alleged "bunga-bunga" parties. The phrase is said to come either from the punch-line to one of the premier's bawdy jokes. Another theory is that it refers to an "erotic ritual" that Mr Berlusconi learnt about from his friend, Col Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader.

Government set to concede defeat over prison voting

Prisoners are to get the right to vote as the Government is poised to throw in the towel in a long-running legal tussle with the European Court of Human Rights, it emerged today. It is understood that the Coalition is to confirm that it is ready to change the law to remove the voting ban on more than 70,000 inmates of British jails. The move comes after government lawyers advised that failure to comply with a 2004 ECHR ruling could cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions of pounds in litigation costs and compensation.

Prime Minister David Cameron was said to be "exasperated and furious" at having to accept that there was no way of keeping the UK's 140-year-old blanket ban on sentenced prisoners voting. There was no official confirmation of the decision to drop the ban, but a representative of the Government is expected to signal the move in a statement to the Court of Appeal tomorrow.

No decision is thought to have been taken on exactly how the change will be implemented and which inmates are to be given the right to vote. The Daily Telegraph reported that the ban could be retained for murderers and others serving life sentences and that judges may be given responsibility for deciding which criminals should be allowed to vote when they are sentenced.

The paper quoted an unnamed senior Government source as saying: "This is the last thing we wanted to do but we have looked at this from every conceivable angle and had lawyers poring over the issue. "But there is no way out and if we continued to delay then it could start costing the taxpayers hundreds of millions in litigation."

Jack Wilshere signs new long-term contract with Arsenal

Arsenal’s brightest prospect and planetpmc favourite Jack Wilshere has committed his future to the club after signing a new "long-term" contract. The 18-year-old, who has established himself in the first team this season, has been with the club since the age of nine and made his England debut against Hungary in August. He became Arsenal's youngest ever league player in September 2008, and the youngest player to represent them in Europe aged 16 and 329 days in November of the same year.

Jack Wilshere with Marouane Chamakh, one of his ‘quality team-mates’

The exact length of the deal has not been revealed, but the manager, Arsène Wenger, said: "It's such great news that Jack has committed his long-term future to the club. Jack is a fantastic footballer with a huge amount of potential, and we have all seen with his performances so far that he is a very gifted player, who could be an extremely influential player at the top level of the game. At still only 18 years of age, there is still so much more to come from him and we're all excited by the fact that Jack Wilshere will be an Arsenal player for years to come."

Wilshere added: "I've got a long way to go before I can become the player I dream of becoming and I'm sure I'll keep making the odd mistake, but it is a massive help for me having a special manager like Arsène Wenger and so many quality team-mates and the unbelievable Arsenal fans around me. I believe there is a lot more to come from me."

Cameron: "We are heading for a fucking car crash"

Tensions were running high within the Coalition Government last night over whether to retain the control order regime for terrorist suspects.

Ministers have repeatedly delayed a final decision on the controversial policy inherited from Labour, as they attempt to reconcile competing political pressures and security advice. The problems in resolving the situation have become so intense that David Cameron was yesterday reported to have warned colleagues: "We are heading for a fucking car crash."

A Home Office investigation into control orders, under which suspects face severe restrictions on their movements, is understood to have concluded that the system should stay in place. And the head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, recently backed their retention. He argued: "Terrorist threats can still exist which the criminal justice system cannot reach."

But the move would spark uproar among Liberal Democrats, who campaigned strongly against controls on people who have never been found guilty of a criminal offence. Several senior Tories, including the Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke, support Nick Clegg in his opposition to control orders. Their stance is being backed by Lord Macdonald, a former director of public prosecutions, who is over-seeing the Home Office review.

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat Energy Secretary, reiterated his party's hostility to the policy. "Let us see what happens in terms of the review, but I very firmly believe that the values we have in this country of a fair trial – you should know what you are accused of, you shouldn't be locked up or put under house arrest. It is not the sort of thing that we have traditionally done in this country and I want to get to a situation where we do not have to do that," he told the BBC yesterday.

Theresa May, the Home Secretary, insisted yesterday that no decisions had been taken on the review. She said: "What I am clear about is that we do need to take some steps to rebalance national security and civil liberties, but of course commensurate always with ensuring we can keep this country safe." In an apparent rebuke to Lord Macdonald, she pointed out that the final decision over whether to retain control orders would be taken by the Government.

Andrew Mitchell referred to standards watchdog

John Mann, the Labour MP for Bassetlaw, has referred Mitchell to John Lyon, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, after the Sunday Times reported that Mitchell had intervened on behalf of Anthony Ward, who was seeking to lift a ban on operating in western Ghana.

Mann said: "The reports that Andrew Mitchell lobbied on behalf of 'Chocfinger' raise serious questions to answer about the secretary of state for international development's conduct. Was Mr Mitchell acting in the best interests of the British government or a donor that has subsidised his parliamentary office and funded the Conservative Party? I have personally referred him to the parliamentary commissioner for standards to ensure that the British people get answers to these important questions."

Well done, sir.

ARCHIVEpmc: Tory minister intervened on behalf of 'Chocfinger'

Council plans 'Big Society' reward points

WARNING: This article is likely to make you explode.

For critics of David Cameron's "big society" vision it has been an obvious question: what would make hordes of previously inactive citizens leap to their feet to volunteer to fish trolleys from canals or look after elderly neighbours? Now one local authority believes it has the answer: "big society reward points" redeemable in supermarkets, high street shops and restaurants in return for good deeds.

Windsor and Maidenhead council hopes to join forces with a commercial rewards scheme such as Nectar – whose points can be redeemed in Sainsbury's, Homebase and Argos among others – or RecycleBank, whose vouchers can be spent in outlets including Marks & Spencer and McDonald's. The council, one of four chosen by the government to lead the big society "vanguard", hopes the system could eventually be rolled out nationwide.

Officers are still working out the practicalities, but it is likely residents would get a loyalty card similar to those available in shops. Points would be added by organisers when cardholders had completed good works such as litter-picking or holding tea parties for isolated pensioners. The council says the idea is based on "nudge theory" – the thought that people don't automatically do the right thing but will respond if the best option is highlighted. Points would be awarded according to the value given to each activity. Users could then trade in their points for vouchers giving discounts on the internet or high street.

The points would be given free by the commercial partner in return for the publicity and marketing opportunities, with the local authority picking up the relatively small cost of administering the scheme. The scheme might be extended to reward improved behaviour in areas such as school attendance and healthy living, according to the Conservative council's leader, David Burbage. Although he ruled out offering rewards for losing weight or quitting smoking, he said: "We're not picky really … Anything that works, we'll give it a go.

"Where people are doing stuff in the community or contributing to local public services we would see no reason why we couldn't also extend that reward approach to promoting that positive activity. If you found one shopping trolley and picked it out of a river you might get less points than if you spent the day planting trees. We think it has a lot of promise to get people involved. We have high ambitions. If it works here then there's no reason why it can't work elsewhere."

You fucking prick.