Recession is a good time to exploit cheap labour, says Cameron aide | Business | The Observer. The prime minister's adviser on enterprise has told the cabinet that the economic downturn is an excellent time for new businesses to boost profits and grow because labour is cheap, the Observer can reveal. Lord Young, a cabinet minister under the late Baroness Thatcher, who is the only aide with his own office in Downing Street, told ministers that the low wage levels in a recession made larger financial returns easier to achieve.
His comments are contained in a report to be published this week, on which the cabinet was briefed last Tuesday. Young, who has already been forced to resign from his position once before for downplaying the impact of the recession on people, writes: "The rise in the number of businesses in recent years shows that a recession can be an excellent time to start a business. "Competitors who fall by the wayside enable well-run firms to expand and increase market share. A Downing Street spokesman said Young was merely stating a "factual point and nothing else". Kenya: Evil and the empire | Editorial. For a long time the denial was total, with even archival staff told that the damning files about Kenya belonged to somebody other than the Foreign Office.
After the papers were finally dragged into the daylight, Whitehall accepted that the racially tinged barbarism they documented was a very bad business. It continued to fight litigation, however, because of supposed fears about the impossibility of a fair case, half a century on from the Mau Mau revolt. Last year, a judge dismissed this concern, pointing to "voluminous" evidence dutifully logged by a regime that ruled with the filing cabinet as well as the iron rod. A last-ditch Foreign Office attempt to bat the issue remained in play, but now the government seems ready to shift from fighting to folding, by moving to settle with victims of British abuse.
But is there any broader purpose in stirring up the distant past? Kenyan Mau Mau: official policy was to cover up brutal mistreatment | Huw Bennett. Situated largely in the Kikuyu, Embu and Meru areas of Kenya's central highlands, the Mau Mau rebellion consisted of a diverse movement rather than a cohesive organisation. Support for the rebellion came from those who objected to Britain's imperial presence, from agricultural workers denied land ownership, and from Nairobi's unemployed. The Kikuyu, Embu and Meru populations stood at about 1.4 million, and early intelligence assessments deemed the vast majority suspect.
Among all the conflicts experienced by Britain during its end of empire, Kenya is now regarded as the most violent. There were two major reasons for this. The conflict was above all a civil war within the Kikuyu, Embu and Meru ethnicities. The claimants in the court case offer a small glimpse into the experiences of thousands of people over 50 years ago. Atrocities and torture during armed conflicts always raise a vital question: were the abuses caused by "rotten apple" deviants, or by policy? Kenyan Mau Mau victims in talks with UK government over legal settlement | World news. Kenyan Mau Mau war veterans celebrate the UK high court ruling of 5 October 2012 allowing them to proceed with compensation claims against the British government. Link to video: Mau Mau torture case: Kenyans win ruling against UK government The British government is negotiating payments to thousands of Kenyans who were detained and severely mistreated during the 1950s Mau Mau insurgency in what would be the first compensation settlement resulting from official crimes committed under imperial rule.
In a development that could pave the way for many other claims from around the world, government lawyers embarked upon the historic talks after suffering a series of defeats in their attempts to prevent elderly survivors of the prison camps from seeking redress through the British courts. The Foreign Office knows that compensation payments to Mau Mau veterans are likely to trigger claims from other former colonies. Official papers from the time confirm that prisoners suffered appalling abuses. Royal Society scientists angered by Prince Andrew's election as fellow | Science. Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, who has been elected a fellow of the Royal Society. Photograph: Ray Tang/Rex Features After more than 350 years of largely happy association with assorted royalty, Britain's pre-eminent scientific institution, the Royal Society, faces unprecedented dissent from members after Prince Andrew was elected to become a fellow.
While the objections to the prince centre mainly on his slightly chequered career as a royal, a small number of the 1,450 or so Royal Society fellowship are asking the wider question of whether it is time for an institution based on science to end the practice of honouring people on the basis of heredity. The controversy has been fuelled by the way the prince was elected to be a royal fellow, a status he shares with princes Philip, Charles and William, Princess Anne and the Duke of Kent, while the Queen is the organisation's patron. The ballots sent out to ordinary fellows provided only one box to tick, supporting the measure.
David Cameron defends choice of fellow Old Etonian for No 10 policy unit | Politics. David Cameron has defended his decision to appoint a fellow Etonian, Jo Johnson, as the new head of the policy unit in Downing Street, taking to six the number of ex-pupils from Britain's most exclusive public school in his inner circle. Amid criticisms from within the Tory party over the appointment of so many Etonians to posts at the heart of his government, the prime minister said that the younger brother of the London mayor had an "immense brain" that would strengthen the policy unit. In his most detailed comments on the appointment, Cameron told the World at One on Radio 4 on Wednesday: "I appoint people because they are good enough to do the job and they are the right person for that job. I have people around me who have all sorts of different backgrounds and all sorts of different schooling.
The question is: are you going to be good enough to do the job? Wollaston tweeted a link to a report of Norman's remarks, saying: "Words fail me. " Young Margaret: Love, Life and Letters – TV review | Television & radio. I think enough time has passed now, it is nearly three weeks since she died. Time to furl the white flags of respectfulness, return to the lobbing of molotov cocktails and abuse, re-remember her for the monster she was.
I'm not talking so much about shutting down industry, and swaths of the country; milk-snatching, poll-taxing, cosying up to dictators and apartheid, all that. I just mean she was a ghastly person, who made one's skin creep a bit. Young Margaret: Love, Life and Letters (Saturday, BBC2) is a good – if not entirely intentional – reminder. We're looking at her, as the title suggests, in her youth, before the above. It gets more interesting after Margaret goes to Oxford, because here she makes her first forays into politics. Boys make it interesting. After Oxford, a job at a plastics firm in Manningtree, and more letters to Muriel. Maybe even more shocking is her treatment of her old dad, Alf. Sadder still is a letter from him, to Muriel. . • Watch this: TV highlights. New £5 note replaces Elizabeth Fry with Sir Winston Churchill | Business.
Sir Winston Churchill will appear on the next Bank of England banknote, joining a select list of "eminent British personalities" including Florence Nightingale and William Shakespeare. The wartime leader's face and famous "blood, toil, tears and sweat" quote on £5 notes will be a lasting legacy for departing Bank governor Sir Mervyn King, who made the final decision on Churchill. Announcing the choice at Churchill's former home, Chartwell, King suggested £5 notes may even become known as "Winstons". "It seems entirely appropriate to put Sir Winston on what is probably our most popular note," he said.
"Our banknotes acknowledge the life and work of great Britons. Churchill's portrait from a photograph taken in 1941 will probably appear on £5 notes from 2016 although plans have yet to be finalised, the Bank said. Members of the public can put forward suggestions, although the Bank will only consider figures who have made an "indisputable contribution to their particular field of work".
BoJo and JoJo: How Boris and his younger brother Jo (or 'Johnson Minimus') have a sibling rivalry to eclipse even the Milibands. By Andrew Pierce PUBLISHED: 21:48 GMT, 25 April 2013 | UPDATED: 23:11 GMT, 25 April 2013 Ever since one certain flamboyant blond became London Mayor, speculation has been incessant (and, of course, regularly fuelled by the man himself) that it wouldn’t be long before a Johnson moves into No 10 Downing Street. But few people expected that rather than Boris Johnson himself, his little-known younger brother, Jo, would get there first.
Indeed, the 41-year-old’s appointment as the head of David Cameron’s policy unit took most people in Westminster by surprise. Cradle-reared competitiveness: From left, a young Jo Johnson on the knee of father Stanley, followed by Rachel, Leo and Boris. Their childhood was one of 'cut-throat meal-time quizzes' Both boys attended Oxford and were members of the infamous Bullingdon club, Jo (right) in 1993 and Boris before him (left) in 1987 The thinking is that if his brother is part of Team Cameron, Boris won’t want to be seen as a critic.
The anti-Thatcher feeling in 'less important' parts of the country should not be dismissed - Comment - Voices. Why should Tyneside, for instance, be considered "less important" than Sussex? One of the signal achievements of Tony Blair's administration was to devolve power to the regions and to assist the economic regeneration of the great cities of Britain, and it's hard to remember what it used to be like. Thankfully, we have Charles Moore to remind us. One Nation Conservatism? I don't think so. I was born and bred in the North of England, and I was working in South Wales when Thatcherite policies began to bite, so the sense of alienation, that the concentration of power and wealth was solidified in London and the south-east, that we had, in fact, become a two-speed country, was all-pervasive.
That's one of the reasons why there haven't been mass anti-Thatcher demonstrations on the streets of Liverpool or Glasgow in recent days. Conservative commentators have stressed in recent days that it's merely a "tiny minority" of Britons who felt antagonistic towards Mrs Thatcher. Charles Moore on ‘Relatively Less Important’ Areas of the UK | David L Rattigan. Thatcher biography reveals adviser's early warnings | Politics.
Margaret Thatcher was condemned by one of her closest advisers within two years of arriving in No 10 for bullying weaker colleagues and abusing her seniority, the official biography of the late prime minister reveals. In a searing memo, which foresaw many of the weaknesses which led to her downfall nearly a decade later, Sir John Hoskyns warned Thatcher that she was breaking every rule of man-management and had created an "unhappy ship" which threatened her position. The memo is published in the first volume of the authorised biography of Thatcher, written by the former Daily Telegraph editor Charles Moore, which is published on Monday. The biography also reveals: • The full extent of the Thatcher government's negotiations through a secret back channel with the Provisional IRA during the 1980 and 1981 republican hunger strikes at the Maze prison.
. • Thatcher thought of sacking Geoffrey Howe, her first chancellor who eventually triggered her downfall in 1990, as early as 1981. Thatcher funeral: goodbye to all that | Editorial. The distinction between a ceremonial and a state funeral is a subtle one, certainly hard to grasp yesterday as the flag-draped coffin of Margaret Thatcher was drawn on a gun carriage to the steps of St Paul's, where the military pallbearers stood in wait for a prime minister for the first time since Winston Churchill nearly 50 years ago. The Queen was there then, and now. This was not the only lingering echo of the war, for gathered inside Wren's glorious cathedral were the last of the generation that grew up during it and, in a few cases, bore arms in it.
Outside, the streets were thickly lined with the respectful, the curious and a few of the critical. The pomp and circumstance, like the unplanned recall of parliament last week, might have been intended to embed Lady Thatcher's place in history as a national hero beyond dispute. "We are all Thatcherites now," David Cameron told the BBC's Today programme, as if it defined her legacy. A funeral designed to elevate Margaret Thatcher above politics | Jonathan Freedland.
If it's true that Margaret Thatcher's name will be remembered long into the future, these will be among the pictures that will recall her memory. A coffin draped in the union flag, borne slowly by gun carriage through a (mainly) hushed London; servicemen serving as pallbearers; the Queen standing in silent respect as a mourner; the cathedral flooding with sunlight as the doors opened for the coffin's exit; the crowds outside raising three cheers as they caught sight of it.
And that's exactly what the planners of this magnificent spectacle wanted. For there will be no clue in such a montage of images that there was any controversy or doubt about such a send-off. On the contrary, future generations will gaze on this archive footage much the way we look at pictures from the 1965 funeral of Winston Churchill now: they will assume this was an uncomplicated tribute to a woman who had served as little short of a national saviour.
No such normality was intended from this event. 'A Cynical Attempt to Prove He's Human': Osborne’s Tears at Thatcher’s Funeral Unleash Torrent of Mockery. George Osborne overcome with emotion at Thatcher's funeral (Twitter) Pictures of Chancellor George Osborne crying at the funeral of Margaret Thatcher have led to a flood of mocking tweets from social media users. The chancellor's erratic behaviour has been the subject of much speculation today, with Osborne shown laughing prior to the start of the funeral service. His odd behaviour was pointed out by Channel 4 broadcaster Jon Snow, who tweeted: "Just seen George Osborne on a bus going up Fleet Street toward St Paul's he pointed at me through the darkened window. " A number of people noticed that before the service started, Osborne found something highly amusing. Elliott Clarkson said: "So far I've seen clips from St Paul's of John Major laughing, George Osborne laughing and Boris Johnson laughing.
Joe Tarpey said: "What are you laughing at George Osborne? " However, Osborne's tears of morth soon turned to tears of sadness as the service at St Paul's Cathedral got underway. Wow! "Wow!