Despite being worth over a billion pounds to London’s real economy, attracting one a half million visitors from across London and the world, thirty thousand exhibitors, hundreds of events each year, the Earl’s Court Exhibition centers in West London that sustain thousands of jobs are threatened with demolition with plans to replace them with mostly extortionately priced homes.
This weekend a coterie of British businessmen including the arms dealer Rolls-Royce were jetted around Kazakhstan on board the private plane of its dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has ruled the large Asian republic for 23 years by filtering oil revenues into his private bank account and cracking down on dissent.
As Socialist and Democrat spokesperson on Justice and Home Affairs in the European Parliament, I know that the European Union has been pushing hard to create the first piece of international legislation on data protection – the Data Protection Regulation and Directive – which would help enshrine much needed citizen’s protections in the internet age.
I was rummaging through various links today and came to the UK Foreign Office White Paper on the Overseas Territories published in June 2012. This contains, on page 14, the following interesting statement in a section headed ‘Our Constitutional Relationship’.
The chorus of disapproval is starting to become deafening on payday lending. However Canada shows that another model of payday lender regulation is possible.
After the photo opportunities, early morning swims and talk of famous blues musicians last week in Lough Erne, the temptation is to think it’s all over for the UK’s Presidency of the G8.
Judging by yesterday’s announcements, the government believes the hype about shale gas. Like a love-struck teenager it seems blind to any downsides and is lavishing its beloved with gifts such as tax breaks and streamlined regulation.
Everyone knew there would be very little money to spare in Wednesday’s Spending Review and Thursday’s ‘Growth Statement’. The slow recovery of the national economy has put paid to any attempts to move away from ‘austerity’, so departmental cuts of up to 10 per cent came as no surprise.
Rob Pollard talks to Noushin Arefadib, a feminist who works for Centre for Social Research (CSR) in India, an NGO which seeks to eradicate female foeticide, facilitate social justice and empower women through their Gender Training Institute (GTI).
Today, at 6AM in a release barely more than a paragraph long, the Treasury announced that the British Geological Survey (BGS) had found 1300trn cubic feet worth of shale gas trapped in the rocks beneath Lancashire.
