Modern Studies News Review

MODERN STUDIES NEWS REVIEW

Number 87 – february 2010

28/01/10: POWER-SHARING TALKS COLLAPSE: Gordon Brown’s mission to rescue Northern Ireland’s power-sharing assembly collapsed in failure after 3 days of round-the-clock talks. The Prime Minister left Belfast, leaving Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party to trade insults over who was to blame.

28/01/10: TALEBAN BUY-OFF PLAN: Britain is ready to pay millions of pounds into a $500 million fund to buy off Taleban gunmen who have been fighting British troops in Afghanistan’s HelmandProvince.

29/01/10: GLASGOW CONSIDERS BRINGING BACK THE TRAMS: Radical plans to bring back tramcars and introduce congestion charging are being considered as part of a bid to make Glasgow one of Europe’s greenest cities. Carbon emissions would be cut by 30% over a ten-year period if the plan was approved. Glasgow had an extensive tramcar network which first opened to the public in 1872 when the trams were horse-drawn. They were much-loved by Glaswegians and sorely missed when the service ended in 1962. Some ended up in museums but the majority were scrapped.

29/01/10:FOUR SENTENCED TO DEATH IN CHINA: Four people were sentenced to death following riots in China’s restive XinjiangProvince last year. The 5th July violence began as Uighurs attacked Han Chinese. Nearly 200 people, mostly Hans, were killed.

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29/01/10: BLAIR ADMITS: “I MADE MISTAKES ON IRAQ” Former Prime Minister Tony Blair confessed to the Chilcot Inquiry on the Iraq War that he had made significant mistakes in both the build-up to the Iraq War and its aftermath although he insisted that the overall policy was right. His advisors are believed to have pushed him to show a measure of contrition (wrong-doing). Sadly, he didn’t. There was also criticism of those questioning Mr Blair saying their questions lacked “investigative rigour” – in other words, they gave Mr Blair an easy time of it. (See Item 4 below)

01/02/10: CRIPPLING LOCAL GOVERNMENT BUDGET CUTS HIT EDUCATION: Crippling council budget cuts are threatening the delivery of the Scottish Government’s flagship new curriculum – A Curriculum for Excellence. The proposed budget cuts range from 2% to 10% in some areas with average savings of around 6%. Scottish councils will have to find savings of £270 million in the next financial year as they face their toughest cuts since devolution.

02/02/10: OUTRAGE AS POPE BENEDICT ATTACKS THE UK’s EQUALITY LAWS: Pope Benedict sparked a furious reaction from equality campaigners by saying that UK legislation designed to protect against discrimination threatened religious freedom and violated natural law. His remarks were interpreted as an attack on the Sexual Orientation Regulations that forced Catholic adoption agencies to consider gay couples as potential adoptive parents. He said “In some respects (equality legislation) actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed”. Equality campaigners severely criticised Pope Benedict’s comments saying that equality legislation was a good thing as it allowed lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people to be treated the same way as anyone else and did not curb the freedom of religious groups. The Pope will visit the UK in October.

04/02/10: CLARE SHORT ACCUSES PRIME MINISTER OF MINISTERIAL MISCONDUCT: Clare Short, a former member of Tony Blair’s Cabinet, appeared before the Chilcot Committee and accused the former Prime Minister, of being “deceitful” with Cabinet, Parliament and the public over the Iraq War. She also

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accused the former Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, who gave the “green light” to war, of failing to tell the Cabinet the truth about his reservations about the legality of an invasion. When Miss Short tried to ask questions in Cabinet, she was “jeered at” and Mr Blair told her to “be quiet”. By this point, she said Cabinet government had broken down and ministers were reduced to having “little chats”. If Miss Short’s evidence is true, Mr Blair was guilty of deceiving his colleagues and the country and took Britain into a war on the false premise that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction which could be deployed within 45 minutes. She added “That was in my view a lie, a deliberate lie. It was one of the big deceits”.

05/02/10: THE EXPENSES SCANDAL: The first criminal charges to result from the MPs’ expenses scandal were announced today by the Director of Public Prosecutions. Scotland Yard detectives referred 6 files to the Crown Prosecution Service and more are expected to follow in the coming weeks. They believe that the evidence in some of the cases is overwhelming and are confident that a number of MPs will be charged with criminal offences. They include Labour MPs Jim Devine, Elliot Morley and David Chaytor who could end up serving a 7-year jail sentence for theft. Local Government Minister John Denham was ordered to pay back £42,500 and is stepping down at the next election. Liam Fox, the Shadow Defence Secretary was told to repay nearly £25,000 while Andrew MacKay and his wife Julie Kirkbride, Conservative MPs for Bracknell and Bromsgrove, have repaid more than £60,000 (The couple had no home that was not paid for by the taxpayer). Almost 400 MPs and former MPs have been ordered to repay more than £1.12 million.

08/02/10: TOYOTA FORCED TO RECALL 8 MILLION CARS: Japanese car manufacturer Toyotawas forced to recall over 8 million cars over fears of accelerator pedal defects in several models. They also warned 300,000 Prius drivers that the brakes on their cars may fail in icy conditions or on bumpy surfaces. Even Toyota’s top-of-the-range hybrid Lexus has suspected braking problems. Several people have already died due to acceleration or brake problems with their Toyota cars.

08/02/10: YOUNG SCOTS FACE REJECTION AS UNIVERSITY APPLICATIONS SOAR BY 31%: Thousands of young Scots will miss out on a place at university later this year after new figures showed applications rising by almost one third as a result of the recession – the highest increase on record.

08/02/10: NUMBER OF SCOTS TRAINEE TEACHERS TO FALL BY 40%: 1,500 teacher-training places are to be cut from Scottish universities. Most of these will be centred on teacher training in primary schools.

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09/02/10: SCOTLAND’S FIRST ISLAMIC TERRORIST WALKS FREE: Mohammed Atif Siddique walked from the Court of Criminal Appeal a free man after spending 4 years in prison for terrorist offences. However, his case has raised concerns about whether Section 57 of the Terrorism Act (2000), which seeks to strike a balance between civil liberties and state security, has tilted too far in favour of defendants in terrorist cases. For a conviction under Section 57 a defendant must be shown to have had the intent to commit a crime rather than simply accessing terrorist-related material to satisfy his curiousity. It was this which allowed Mr Siddique to go free.In a statement read out by his lawyer, Mr Siddique suggested that he had been targeted because of his Islamic faith. “Our law should bring to account those who plan acts of terror and not criminalise young Muslims for thought crime and the possession of propaganda”. The Terrorism Act (2000) is to be reviewed with the intention of eliminating further legal loopholes.

09/02/10: GREECE ON THE VERGE OF BANKRUPTCY: German Chancellor Angela Merkel tried to calm fevered speculation that Germany was preparing to lead a bailout of Greece amid a split in the European Union (EU) on how to handle its sickest member country. If the Greek economy collapses, it could trigger a domino effect, toppling other weak members of the Eurozone. There were calls for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to examine the Greek economy with a view to finding a solution rather than leaving it to the EU.

09/02/10: OBAMA PUTS PRESSURE ON IRAN: President Obama accused Iran of trying to build a bomb after the country’s scientists began enriching uranium closer to weapons grade in defiance of the United Nations. He threatened to hit Iran with fresh UN-backed sanctions possibly within weeks.

10/02/10: KRAFT CUTS CADBURY JOBS: The American company Kraft announced that 400 jobs would be going with the closure of a Cadbury factory in Bristol which Kraft had promised to keep open.

11/02/10: THE FINAL COST: The cost of bailing out Scotland’s two biggest banks, the Royal Bank of Scotland and Halifax Bank of Scotland, emerged for the first time as a staggering £470 billion – three times the size of the Scottish economy.

11/02/10: EVIDENCE SHOWS MI5 KNEW ABOUT TORTURE: Secret evidence released on the 10th revealed that MI5 knew about the inhuman and degrading treatment by the US authorities of former GuantanamoBay prisoner Binyam Mohamed. UK Foreign Secretary David Milliband attempted to block the release of the information by the Court of Appeal saying that the judges had charged in to a sensitive area and had jeopardised UK intelligence-sharing with the US.

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12/02/10: SALMOND REFUSES TO BACK STURGEON: Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond refused five times to back Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s judgement after it was revealed she made a controversial decision to ask a judge to keep a convicted fraudster out of jail. She made this request in a letter to Sheriff Alan MacKenzie about her constituent Abdul Rauf, who defrauded £80,000 from the Department of Work and Pensions. As a result, Ms Sturgeon’s political career was left hanging in the balance.

18/02/10: AMBASSADOR CALLED IN OVER FAKE PASSPORTS: The British Foreign Office summoned the Israeli Ambassador and Prime Minister Gordon Brown promised a full investigation into the use of fake British passports by a suspected Mossad hit squad in Dubai who were there to kill a Hamas leader. (Mossad is the name of the Israeli intelligence service). The situation threatens to sour British-Israeli relations.

18/02/10: DISPUTE OVER THE FALKLAND ISLANDS: Argentina has threatened to stop a British oil rig from drilling off the Islands’ coastline. The British Geological Society says the area around the Falklands could contain a wealth of oil, but how much can be recovered & who will have the drilling rights ? The Falklands belong to Britain but Argentina has long disputed this. The two countries went to war over the Islands’ ownership in 1982, a war which Britain won. The islands are 800 miles off the Argentinian coast and 8,000 miles from the UK. What were thought to be barren islands of little or no value would suddenly become an attractive proposition if oil deposits were discovered.

22/02/10: BROWN ACCUSED OF BULLYING STAFF: The Prime Minister’s fitness to govern was called into question after allegations that 10 Downing Street staff had called an anti-bullying charity. The chief executive of the National Bullying Helpline said she personally had taken a call from staff in the PM’s office who believed they were working in a “bullying culture” and that it had caused them some stress. Downing Street staff tried to play down the allegations calling them “malicious” and suggested that Mr Brown’s occasional outbursts were because of his passion for the job. Unfortunately, an internal survey of Cabinet Office staff showed that one third wanted to leave and 6% wanted to quit “as soon as possible”. Less than half the staff said that they felt it was safe to speak up.

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23/02/10: CALL FOR EDUCATIONAL REFORMS IN SCOTLAND: Figures showing that almost two thirds of the pupils in Scotland leave primary school unable to read or write properly have been acknowledged as “worrying” by Scotland’s Education Secretary Mike Russell and led to calls for widespread reform to the education system. An official Scottish Government report into literacy found 60% of pupils in S2 had failed to reach satisfactory levels in reading and writing with pupils in deprived areas even less likely to succeed.

24/02/10: PRIME MINISTER APOLOGISES TO CHILD EMIGRANTS SENT ABROAD: Gordon Brown apologised for the UK's role in sending more than 130,000 children to former colonies where many suffered abuse. The Child Migrants Programme, which ran from the 1920s to the 1960s, sent poor children to a "better life" in countries such as Australia and Canada but many were ill-treated and ended up in institutions or as labourers on farms. The Prime Minister expressed regret for the scheme in the House of Commons.

More than 130,000 children, aged between 3 and 14 were sent to Commonwealth countries. As they were shipped out of Britain, many were wrongly told their parents were dead, while parents were given very little information about where their children were going.

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