NewsTrust - United Kingdom - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

Letters: Shale gas could fracture our renewables policy

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - Apr. 24 - It beggars belief that fracking is recommended to be extended and earthquakes the only risk taken into account ( Gas fracking gets the green light , 17 April). Other risks are not just theoretical; appalling consequences have already happened on a wide scale in the US. Fracking has been carried out in rural areas where people's off-grid water supplies have been made unusable by pollution. There have been cases where people cannot use water from the tap at the kitchen sink because methane comes with it, with the risk of explosions. Only half the chemical-laden water used in the process is recovered. It is then kept in lagoons on the surface where it is allowed to evaporate volatile toxic chemicals into the air. We cannot afford the risk to our water supplies. We don't have the open spaces which have been affected in the US. Even now we are faced with water restrictions and drought. We don't have the necessary huge quantities of water available to be used and made dirty for ever. The landscape ...

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A better understanding of Iran might save us from catastrophe

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Peter Beaumont - Mar. 11 (Opinion) - As Israel plays up the country's nuclear threat, the west should be seeking active dialogue with Tehran "Actions," said Samuel Johnson in his life of the English poet Abraham Cowley, "are visible." What are secret, Johnson added pointedly, are "motives". In the case of Iran's nuclear programme what we know of Tehran's actions and motives are the following. With some degree of "overall credibility" – according to the 2011 board of governors' report from the International Atomic Energy Agency – we know that Tehran, in all likelihood, made active studies of technologies associated with nuclear weapon design and payload design. By and large, the report believes, that activity ceased in 2003, coincident with the US-led invasion of Iraq. We know, too, because it has been even more visible, that Iran has come close to mastering the nuclear fuel cycle as well, including enrichment of uranium up to 20%. The problem with the present dangerous debate, as it has been framed ever-more closely ...

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Op-Ed Columnist: What Ails Europe?

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Feb. 26 (Opinion) - The two common explanations — call it the Republican narrative and the German narrative — are just wrong.

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The Austerity Debacle

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Jan. 30 (Opinion) - Britain is doing worse this time than it did during the Great Depression. Four years into the Depression, British G.D.P. had regained its previous peak; four years after the Great Recession began, Britain is nowhere close to regaining its lost ground.

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UK nuclear subsidies 'unlawful'

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:25:00 -0800

BBC News - Jan. 20 - 20 January 2012 Last updated at 08:25 ET By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News The Fukushima accident illustrates why governments pick up the bills for nuclear disaster Green energy campaigners are attempting to block new nuclear power sta

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David Cameron’s move to save the City, not the euro

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Anne Applebaum - Dec. 12 (Opinion) - .. no other European capital thinks quite like London, and no other European capital will think like London anytime soon.

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U.S. Senate Passes Iran Oil Sanctions as EU Blacklist Grows

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 20:51:00 -0800

Business Week - Dec. 02 - (Updates with oil settlement prices in 11th paragraph.) Dec. 2 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Senate took aim at the Iranian central bank in an effort to choke off oil exports, while the European Union stopped short of targeting crude as it tightened sanctions

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Escape from a WWII submarine

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 00:03:00 -0800

BBC News - Dec. 02 - 1 December 2011 Last updated at 19:03 ET By Tim Clayton Military historian HMS Perseus was launched in May 1929 Seventy years ago, off the Greek island of Kefalonia, the British submarine HMS Perseus hit an Italian mine, sparking one of the greatest and

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Central bank action: stunning move highlights sense of desperation

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Jill Treanor - Dec. 01 (Opinion) - European governments are desperately seeking a lender of last resort as sovereign debt exposure fears grow The stunning move by six central banks to announce emergency measures to push more dollars into the financial system shows just how desperate the authorities are to "ease strains in financial markets" that are making it difficult for some banks to operate as easily as normal. Jon Peace, head of European bank research at Nomura, said: "It is an evolution of the crisis from three years ago, when countries took on the risks of the banks. Back in 2008, there was a lender of last resort – countries bailed out banks. This time it is governments that need a lender of last resort – but there is no obvious lender of last resort." While the massive bank bailouts of October 2008 – in the month after Lehman collapsed – worked for a while in shoring up banks, confidence is again ebbing , even though the banks are much stronger then they were three years ago. This time the problems for banks is ...

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Op-Ed Columnist: The Technocratic Nightmare

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By David Brooks, New York Times - Nov. 18 (Opinion) - The European Union is an attempt to build an economic and legal superstructure without a linguistic, cultural, historic and civic base. No wonder it’s in crisis.

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Globalization Has Role In This Double Whammy

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By Simon Nixon - Aug. 10 (Opinion) - On the face of it, there's not much to link the London riots and the latest gyrations in global markets. The wave of violence and looting that has spread across the U.K. over the past few days has been mass criminality not a protest movement. And the global stock market rout was triggered by concerns over the euro zone, U.S. government debt and the global recovery rather than anything specific to the U.K. Indeed, the markets have singled out the U.K. as a haven, its debt now cheaper to insure than that of Germany. Even so, there's a link between the two phenomena—and it is an unsettling one. Both reflect the challenges of globalization. The creation of a rules-based multi-lateral trading system has been one of the greatest triumphs of the past 65 years. But the crash and the riots are evidence of the pressure this system is coming under from above and below.

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UK riots: political classes see what they want to see

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Aditya Chakrabortty - Aug. 10 (Opinion) - Like everyone else, I've spent most of the past week glued to news of the riots. In my case though, many reports have carried a tingle of nostalgia. You see, I grew up not far from the ground zero of the disturbances – in Edmonton, just north of where this week's violence began in Tottenham – and so the updates on looting and destruction have also summoned up memories of school trips, bus rides and teenage work experience. "Ah, yes," I would think while the radio burbled away over the weekend, "I know that (now burnt-out) carpet shop." Or: "Aren't there always boarded-up shops on Fore Street?"

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Urban riots: Thirty years after Brixton | Editorial

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - Aug. 09 (Opinion) - Conspiracy and deprivation are just part of the story behind today's rioting, which must be understood so it can be overcome Three days on, with youths skirmishing with police in Lewisham and attacking businesses in Hackney late on Monday , it is clear that Britain, and particularly London, is experiencing some of its most serious and most destructive urban violence since the Brixton and Toxteth riots of 1981. Thirty years on, some of the echoes of those traumatic earlier events are very strong: riots taking place against the backdrop of a royal wedding and an economic downturn; riots in some of the same locations, even in some cases the same streets; riots repeating many of the same patterns of events – including the looting of clothes and televisions – and all of it resulting in many of the same public and political responses. Some things, though, are different. One of these, much debated over the past 24 hours, is the role of technology. There was much speculation, back in 1981, about ...

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No Better in Europe

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 04:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Aug. 05 (Opinion) - We were hopeful last month that Europe’s leaders had bought themselves and the global economy time to address the fundamental economic problems eroding the finances and credibility of the 17-nation euro zone. As it has turned out, it took less than two w

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Phone hacking row shows News Corp is no ordinary news company

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Jay Rosen - Jul. 20 (Opinion) - Rupert Murdoch's news organisations are not in the news business. What they crave is influence Watching the phone hacking crisis crack wide open over the last few weeks has left me puzzled about its ultimate causes: what is it about News Corp that has produced these events? I don't think we understand very much about this. We can say things like, "Ultimate responsibility goes to the man at the top," meaning Rupert Murdoch, chairman and CEO. And that sounds right, but it still doesn't explain how any of it happened. "The key people are criminals, liars, or willfully blind..." We could say that, but then we would have to explain how so many of them ended up at one company. Puzzles like these have led many people to the conclusion that there's a culture inside News Corp, that is in some way responsible, and I basically agree with that. Mark Lewis, lawyer for the family of Milly Dowler, said after Rebekah Brooks resigned: "This is not just about one individual but about the culture of an ...

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France can be proud of its resistance to media deregulation | Agnès Poirier

Sat, 16 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Agnès Poirier - Jul. 16 (Opinion) - The phone-hacking scandal has shocked the French media, used to robust state regulation and strong privacy laws The last 30 years have seen the ever-popular concept of media deregulation gaining ground in countries such as the US and Britain. As recently as 2009, the then shadow minister Jeremy Hunt was still adamant that media regulation in this country was "heavy-handed" and "over-paternalistic", and that "big-bang" deregulation of the media would revive local news outlets. France, on the other hand, has at least partially resisted it. In France, unlike in Britain, the state not only directly funds and supervises public broadcasters but also regulates the output of private television by, for instance, implementing legally binding quotas. To quote one example, the resounding commercial success of Canal Plus in the 1990s meant that the broadcaster had to invest larger and larger sums of money (a fixed percentage of its profits) in cinema production. Imagine the British government telling ...

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Cameron, Coulson and the press: The irony of the prime minister's predicament

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Economist - Jul. 10 (Editorial) - Almost all prime ministers have a kind of moral half-life; their personal credibility starts off strong and then declines incrementally in office as they are buffeted by scandals and misjudgements. Gordon Brown is the only recent example of a prime minister who lost his moral authority in one go; the snap election fiasco in effect doomed his premiership after just a few months in office. I believe that, although Coulson-gate is the gravest moment of David Cameron's career (and could get worse), it still falls into the first category of prime ministerial crisis. It is an event that will sap his personal credibility, and therefore popular appeal, but it is not enough by itself to remove that credibility entirely and irrevocably. It is more like Tony Blair's tobacco-advertising scandal in 1997 than Mr Brown's botched flirtation with an early election a decade later. (The caveat is that we do not know where this story is going; there may yet be revelations that make the crisis more wounding for the prime minister.) The great irony of Mr Cameron's predicament is that he has managed to get himself embroiled in a crisis concerning something he has never really cared about: newspapers. It is an open secret in Westminster that the prime minister believes the influence wielded by print media is vastly overrated. If you want to reach and move voters, he reckons, television is the medium that matters.

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It isn't just the euro. Europe's democracy itself is at stake | Amartya Sen

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Amartya Sen - Jun. 23 (Opinion) - Greece illustrates the danger of allowing rating agencies, despite their abysmal record, to lord it over the political terrainEurope has led the world in the practice of democracy. It is therefore worrying that the dangers to democratic governance today, coming through the back door of financial priority, are not receiving the attention they should. There are profound issues to be faced about how Europe's democratic governance could be undermined by the hugely heightened role of financial institutions and rating agencies, which now lord it freely over parts of Europe's political terrain.Two distinct issues need to be separated. The first concerns the place of democratic priorities, including what Walter Bagehot and John Stuart Mill saw as the need for "governance by discussion". Suppose we accept that the powerful financial bosses have a realistic understanding of what needs to be done. This would strengthen the case for paying attention to their voices in a democratic dialogue. But that is not the same thing as allowing the international financial institutions and rating agencies the unilateral power to command democratically elected governments.Second, it is quite hard to see that the sacrifices that the financial commanders have been demanding from precarious countries would deliver the ultimate viability of these countries and guarantee the continuation of the euro within an unreformed pattern of financial amalgamation and an unchanged membership of the euro club. The diagnosis of economic problems by rating agencies is not the voice of verity that they pretend. It is worth remembering that the record of rating agencies in certifying financial and business institutions preceding the 2008 economic crisis was so abysmal that the US Congress seriously debated whether they should be prosecuted.Since much of Europe is now engaged in achieving quick reduction of public deficits through drastic reduction of public expenditure, it is crucial to scrutinise realistically what the likely impact of the chosen policies may be, both on people and the generating of public revenue through economic growth. The high morals of "sacrifice" do, of course, have an intoxicating effect. This is the philosophy of the "right" corset: "If madam is at all comfortable in it, then madam certainly needs a smaller size." However, if the demands of financial appropriateness are linked too mechanically to immediate cuts, the result could be the killing of the goose that lays the golden egg of economic growth.This concern applies to a number of countries, from Britain to Greece. The commonality of the "blood, sweat and tears" strategy of deficit reduction gives some apparent plausibility to what is being imposed on more precarious countries like Greece or Portugal. It also makes it harder to have a united political voice in Europe that can stand up to the panic generated in the financial markets.In addition to a bigger political vision, there is a need for clearer economic thinking. The tendency to ignore the importance of economic growth in generating public revenue should be a major item for scrutiny. The strong connection between growth and public revenue has been observed in many countries, from China and India to the US and Brazil.There are lessons from history here, too. The big public debts of many countries when the second world war ended caused huge anxieties, but the burden diminished rapidly thanks to fast economic growth. Similarly, the huge deficits that President Clinton faced when he came to office in 1992 melted away during his presidency, greatly aided by speedy economic growth.The fear of a threat to democracy does not, of course, apply to Britain, since these policies have been chosen by a government empowered by democratic elections. Even though the unfolding of a strategy that was not revealed at the time of election can be a reason for some pause, this is the kind of freedom that a democratic system does allow the electorally victorious. But that does not eliminate the need for more public discussion, even in Britain. There is also a need to recognise how the self-chosen restrictive policies in Britain seem to give plausibility to the even more drastic policies being imposed on Greece.How did some of the euro countries get into this mess? The oddity of going for a united currency without more political and economic integration has certainly played a part, even after taking note of financial transgressions that have undoubtedly been committed in the past by countries such as Greece or Portugal (and even after noting Mario Monti's important point that a culture of "excessive deference" in the EU has allowed these transgressions to go unchecked). It is to the huge credit of the Greek government – George Papandreou, the prime minister, in particular – that it is doing what it can despite political resistance, but the pained willingness of Athens to comply does not eliminate the European need to examine the wisdom of the requirements – and the timing – being imposed on Greece.It is no consolation for me to recollect that I was firmly opposed to the euro, despite being very strongly in favour of European unity. My worry about the euro was partly connected with each country giving up the freedom of monetary policy and of exchange rate adjustments, which have greatly helped countries in difficulty in the past, and prevented the necessity of massive destabilisation of human lives in frantic efforts to stabilise the financial markets. That monetary freedom could be given up when there is also political and fiscal integration (as the states in the US have), but the halfway house of the eurozone has been a recipe for disaster. The wonderful political idea of a united democratic Europe has been made to incorporate a precarious programme of incoherent financial amalgamation.Rearranging the eurozone now would have many problems, but difficult issues have to be intelligently discussed, rather than allowing Europe to drift in financial winds fed by narrow-minded thinking with a terrible track record. The process has to begin with some immediate restraining of the unopposed power of rating agencies to issue unilateral commands. These agencies are hard to discipline despite their abysmal record, but a well-reflected voice of legitimate governments can make a big difference to financial confidence while solutions are worked out, especially if the international financial institutions lend their support. Stopping the marginalisation of the democratic tradition of Europe has an urgency that is hard to exaggerate. European democracy is important for Europe – and for the world.GreeceEuropeUnited StatesEuroEuropean UnionEconomicsEuropean debt crisisAmartya Senguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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British fear 'American-style' healthcare system

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - Jun. 13 () - Two years ago, Britons were outraged when U.S. politicians like Sarah Palin , in the debate over healthcare reform , turned this country's National Health Service into a public whipping boy, denouncing it as "evil," "Orwellian" and generally the enemy of everything good and true.

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Britain Is Working

Tue, 24 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By David Brooks - May. 24 (Opinion) - A trip overseas offers a good impression of what a functioning democracy looks like.

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Britain's "Big Society": Sparking An Active Citizenry

Fri, 20 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By David Brooks - May. 20 (Opinion) - Here in Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron’s government is trying to foster that sort of society. Until Cameron, Britain — like the U.S. — had one party that spoke on behalf of the market (the Conservatives) and one party that spoke on behalf of the state (Labour). But Cameron is initiating a series of policies, under the rubric “Big Society,” that seek to nurture community bonds, civic activism and social capital.

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British boy wears skirt to school in protest

Wed, 11 May 2011 10:57:12 -0700

Dawn - By Afp - May. 11 - LONDON: A 12-year-old British boy wore a knee-length skirt to school in protest against a school uniform policy banning boys from donning shorts during warm weather, according to a report Wednesday. Chris Whitehead also addressed more than 1,350 pupils at morning assembly wearing the black skirt, which boys are permitted to wear due to a [...]

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Royal wedding worth the media frenzy?

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

CBS News - Apr. 26 (Opinion) - When Clarence House -- the royal house in London -- announced last November that Prince William had popped the question to Kate Middleton, a media frenzy began almost immediately, and many people worldwide have been gripped by wedding fever ever since.

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The Libyan mission is creeping, no doubt

Tue, 19 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Simon Tisdall - Apr. 19 (Opinion) - With Britain sending a 'military liaison advisory team' to Libya, how many more boots on the ground will follow?

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Poland's students go private in force

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Jeevan Vasagar - Apr. 06 - With the highest private-sector enrolment in Europe, the Polish university system could be a tempting model for Britain's coalition government After the fall of communism, one aspect of capitalism embraced with fervour in Poland was privatised education. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall there was just one private university, run by the Catholic church. Now more than a third of Poland's students are educated outside the state system. Around 300 private universities – some small enough to share premises with local schools – educate about 630,000 students a year, the highest private-sector enrolment in Europe. Unlike their fellow students at public universities, they have to pay fees, though both kinds of students are eligible for state-backed loans. And unlike public universities, their institutions do not receive any direct government funding. It must a tempting model for Britain's coalition government, which has cut funding to universities in England and plans to open up the market to ...

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