Speaking during Welsh Questions in the House of Commons, Jenny Willott, who is a long time supporter of the need for minimum alcohol pricing, asked Wayne David MP, the Under-Secretary of State for Wales, what discussion the Wales Office had had with other Government Departments and with Welsh Assembly Government on introducing a scheme. 

Mr David said that discussions were ongoing on the issue but failed to give any details or a commitment that the issue would be taken forward. 

Commenting later, Jenny Willott said: "The Labour Administrations both in Westminster and in Wales have continued to drag their feet on this issue, despite increasing evidence that minimum alcohol pricing can help reduce violent crime.  

"While the vast majority of pubs and clubs in Cardiff encourage responsible drinking, their efforts and their co-operation with the police is often undermined by supermarkets selling dirt cheap alcohol which is consumed before people even go into the pubs and clubs.  

"A minimum alcohol price would help combat the availability of dangerously cheap spirits that encourages binge drinking and leads to the chaos seen in towns and cities across the UK every Friday and Saturday night. 

"The Government needs to act now. They have dragged their feet for far too long on this issue and it has had a devastating impact on our city centres and our communities."

I've been taking photos for Oxfam today at an event at Blackburn Cathedral which discussed the challenges facing Pakistan, and the importance of its stability to us here in the UK. Guest of honour was Shakar Arbab, a programme officer with Oxfam Pakistan, and a very nice man he was too. It was a nice opportunity to squeeze even more portraits in as well...

Think back a few years when nurses` leaders began the push for their new applicants to be graduates and that the messy business of  dealing with patients` actual physical and bodily requirements could be undertaken by lower or virtually unqualified  auxilliaries.  Who heard of teaching assistants actually taking classes fifteen or so years ago?  Police Community Support Officers are on the streets where many would argue trained police officers should be.  The educational requirements for PCSOs are very low but so are their wages.  And there you have it.  Powers that be sniff out jobs which they believe do not need high paid well trained personel.  And so to the courts.  With the sorry story of the Crown Prosecution Service in London and a surplus of unemployed lawyers it seems ridiculous to infuse this mess with staff not legally qualified however eager they might be. They will be regulated by IPS, a regulatory company established by ILEX to take responsibility for the regulation of Legal Executives. ILEX is the professional body representing 22,000 qualified and trainee Legal Executives and is an Approved Regulator under the terms of the Legal Services Act 2007.

As many doctors have commented on nurse prescribers taking many primary care functions; if they want to do these tasks let them study medicine.Not surprisingly IPS chief executive Ian Watson said the standard was sufficient to ensure competence.  Legal Aid is available to provide legal representation for defendants under certain conditions.  This does not extend to legal executives being paid by the state to defend miscreants.  The only justification for this lowering of standards is not to provide a high class service but to save money.  But don`t wait for any member of the government to admit this.  And the bosses at CPS are like service men and women; they will do their jobs as well as they can and keep their criticism until they are no longer in harness.  Haven`t we heard similar previously from senior policemen, ex chairmen of this or that quango, former generals and of course former cabinet members.  Plus ca change..............

Comments

...it was hard not to suspect, as you watched the infuriating dozen, stunned by the prospect of physical labour, resentful of any advice, childish and utterly unmotivated by the presence of a television crew or the knowledge that even their greatest perceived sufferings would be over within 48 hours, that the natives might just be revolting.

With great disapproval she quoted one ‘native' as saying "I won't do any job that I find uninteresting."

Given the nature of journalism, you cannot blame me for having a little wonder about Mangan's own attitude to the prospect of physical labour or work that she found uninteresting. And so it was that I came upon a short biography of the woman herself. I was more than a little amused to read, in her apparently self-written biography, that:

Lucy Mangan was educated in Catford and Cambridge. She spent two years training to be a solicitor, then left the law as soon as she qualified. She took a placement with the Guardian in 2003 and hung around until they gave her a job

So it seems that Lucy Mangan, too, joined the ranks of the unemployed when she found her job was not interesting enough. Except not quite. Clearly what these young unemployed men need to do is to move to London, and find some way to live for free while doing a placement at a national newspaper. Either that or they should, as Lucy seems to believe, accept their god damn station in life.

Correspondence reveals Ashcroft's written undertaking to become a permanent UK resident and the intense lobbying on his behalf by his friend and former Tory leader William Hague

When Lord Ashcroft of Chichester sat down to pen his memoirs, he wasted no more than a few paragraphs on those vexed events of March 2000 which saw him rejected for a peerage for a second time, nor on the manner in which his close friend and ally William Hague managed deftly to reverse that misfortune.

It had been a political decision, he wrote. Tony Blair, the prime minister, "was personally blocking my nomination", and there were no legitimate grounds for such a rejection. He went on to describe how a furious Hague rode to the rescue, calling Blair during an EU summit in Lisbon to tell him that it was "disgraceful", and that he saw the matter as a "major constitutional issue". "In the face of William's protests," Ashcroft declared, "Blair backed down and I got my peerage."

It did seem like a remarkable and rapid volte face at the time. One Labour backbencher even warned: "At the rate Ashcroft is going, he will be a member of the royal family by Christmas." But the publication today, by the Commons public administration select committee, of hitherto private correspondence about Hague's nomination of Ashcroft for a peerage reveals a rather different picture.

Not only had Blair told Hague that he personally did not object to the tycoon's nomination, it shows that the question of where Ashcroft lived - and, critically, where he paid his taxes - was at the heart of the decision by the political honours scrutiny committee to reject him for a peerage.

The correspondence also shows that the then Conservative chief whip, James Arbuthnot, had reason to believe that after receiving his peerage Ashcroft was planning to remain a non-dom, despite the "clear and unequivocal assurances" he had given prior to receiving it, which led others to understand he would become a full UK taxpayer.

Although Hague insists he discovered that his old friend was a non-dom only a few months ago, the letters also make clear that he was said to have been made aware of the details of a final decision by a senior civil servant, Sir Haydn Phillips, which resulted in Ashcroft being able to declare himself to be a "long-term" rather than "permanent" resident. It was this decision that allowed Ashcroft to live, secretly, as a non-dom for the last 10 years.

Neither Ashcroft nor Hague have ever discussed this correspondence.

But the documents show in great detail how officials were debating the differences between residence and domicile, the name of the Inland Revenue forms Ashcroft should be completing, and how the scrutiny committee had made clear time and again that his seat in the Lords was approved only on condition of him becoming a permanent UK resident.

The first of the letters released today relate to the first time Ashcroft was rejected for a peerage, in May 1999, when Blair wrote to Hague to inform him of the decision. Three days later Hague wrote back, telling the prime minister he was aware Ashcroft had been turned down, in part, because he was a tax exile, and that it was "incompatible for someone who chose to be out of the country for the majority of the year to be a working peer". Hague confirmed that Ashcroft "is indeed non-resident for tax purposes", but was committed to becoming resident by the next financial year, and added: "This decision will cost him (and benefit the Treasury) tens of millions a year in tax yet he considers it worthwhile."

The following month Ashcroft's rejection was reported in the media, although the reasons for the decision were not immediately made public. Six months after that, however, when settling a libel action against the Times, the multimillionaire made a public pledge to return to the UK. An agreed statement, published on the front page of the newspaper, stated: "Mr Ashcroft has told the Times that he recognises the public concern about foreign funding of British politics, and that he intends to re organise his affairs in order to return to live in Britain."

The following February, with Hague about to make a second attempt to obtain a peerage for Ashcroft, the businessman's lawyers, Allen & Overy, wrote to Arbuthnot, who was lobbying on his behalf. This letter, published by the Guardian last month, showed that the lawyers had been advising him "on the methods and implication" of his public commitment to return to live in the UK, and that "several possible courses of action are under consideration".

A few days later, Hague wrote to Lord Thomson of Monifieth, chair of the honours scrutiny committee, saying that Ashcroft "is taking the necessary action to fulfil his undertaking to resume residency", and that he was keen to make use of the businessman "as a working peer within the House of Lords". The same day, Arbuthnot sent a copy of the Allen & Overy letter to Sir Anthony Merifield, secretary to the honours scrutiny committee.

It was clearly not enough. On 22 March Thomson wrote to Blair to inform him that Hague must be in a position to provide "firm evidence" that Ashcroft had made an "irrevocable decision" about becoming a UK taxpayer if he were to be recommended for a peerage. That letter prompted Blair to write to Hague the following day, informing him that Ashcroft had been rejected for a second year in succession. Blair enclosed Thomson's letter calling for "firm evidence" from Hague on his friend's residence and tax status.

It was to be a frantic day of telephone calls, hurriedly dashed-off missives and what is described as an affidavit from Ashcroft, as it became clear that something would need to be done - quickly - if the Tory treasurer was to obtain the peerage, and the seat in parliament, that he clearly desired. Hague and Ashcroft talked over the telephone, and Ashcroft quickly provided a written undertaking in which he gave the Tory leader his "clear and unequivocal assurance" that he had decided to take up "permanent residence in the UK again before the end of this calendar year". This, he added, is a "solemn and binding" undertaking.

Jonathan Powell, Blair's chief of staff, then told Hague's parliamentary private secretary that the prime minister had no objections to Ashcroft's peerage. Later that night, Hague wrote to Blair, enclosing a copy of Ashcroft's undertaking.

Even then, the scrutiny committee was not completely satisfied. Four days after Ashcroft delivered up his written undertaking, Thomson again wrote to Blair, reiterating the committee's concern that candidates for a peerage could not fulfil their responsibilities unless they became resident in the UK "and so, in [Ashcroft's] case also, a UK taxpayer". Thomson adds that the written undertaking handed over by Hague meets the committee's requirements - but only providing Ashcroft's assurances are put into the public domain.

The next day, the honours secretary at Downing Street wrote to Tina Stowell, Hague's deputy chief of staff, explaining Ashcroft's peerage had been approved as a result of the written undertaking containing Ashcroft's "clear and unequivocal assurance" he would take up permanent residence in the UK. And three days after that, Ashcroft's peerage was announced by No 10, along with a note detailing the assurance that he had given.

That weekend in a Sunday Telegraph interview, Ashcroft said he wished to be known as Lord Ashcroft of Belize. The party leadership decided this was not such a good idea, and dismissed the comments as a joke. Ashcroft later made clear that he had been totally serious.

By now, it seemed, nothing remained but to dot a few i's and cross a few t's. Just to be certain nothing went wrong, however - and to avoid any suggestion that "we could not police the undertaking" - in mid-April Merifield wrote to Phillips, the civil servant responsible for sending out the letters patent - the government instrument formally conveying Ashcroft's peerage. These documents, Merifield suggested, should perhaps not be sent until Ashcroft actually took up UK residence.

In May Merifield wrote to Phillips again, and this time his tone was distinctly more firm. The scrutiny committee, he made clear, did not want the letters patent issued until Ashcroft had taken up permanent residence in the UK. He even suggested that the businessman might provide copies of his letter to the Inland Revenue, along with the two relevant forms, "IR Form P86 (Arrival in the UK) and IR Dom 1 (Domicile).

The following month Merifield was replaced as secretary to the committee by another civil servant, Gay Catto. Phillips wrote to Catto, enclosing a draft letter for Arbuthnot, "who has acted as an intermediary with Michael Ashcroft". That letter, which followed a number of conversations between Phillips and Arbuthnot, says that "Mr Ashcroft does not believe his domicile for tax purposes is relevant to the question of his peerage". It added that Ashcroft had promised to become a long-term, rather than permanent, resident.

Catto replied to Phillips, after consulting the scrutiny committee, and pointed out its members "are somewhat concerned" that his proposed letter to Arbuthnot does not mention the second of the two Inland Revenue forms mentioned by Merifield. "In their view the undertaking given by Ashcroft did involve domicile," she says.

Phillips wrote ba]]> http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/mar/18/lord-ashcroft-unequivocal-assurance-peerage http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/mar/18/lord-ashcroft-hague-pressure-builds

Papers reveal Tory campaign to keep peer's tax privileges

William Hague was said to be aware 10 years ago of a deal struck by senior Tories that eventually resulted in Lord Ashcroft secretly remaining a non-dom after obtaining his peerage, according to official documents released today.

Hague, the former leader of the Conservative party who had been lobbying for the billionaire to secure a seat in the House of Lords, has repeatedly insisted that he was only told earlier this year that Ashcroft was a non-dom, and therefore not paying full UK tax on all his earnings.

But previously confidential parliamentary correspondence published today showed that Hague's chief whip, James Arbuthnot, was instrumental in lobbying for Ashcroft not to have to give up tax privileges on his massive overseas earnings - despite assurances given by Hague that he would pay "tens of millions" to the Treasury.

The papers also include a letter from Arbuthnot which suggests that Hague was fully aware of the deal between the Cabinet Office and Ashcroft.

This raises fresh questions for Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, who was forced to speak about the issue today for the first time after some of the documents were leaked to the BBC. He has denied being aware of the full details of the deal.

After a decade of refusing to clarify his tax status, Ashcroft revealed three weeks ago that he was a non-dom, appearing to contradict assurances made on his behalf by Hague, who fought hard to secure his seat in the Lords 10 years ago.

The political honours scrutiny committee repeatedly made it clear that Ashcroft's elevation was dependent on him giving a promise that he would return to the UK and become a UK taxpayer. The peerage was agreed after Ashcroft gave a "solemn and binding undertaking" in writing that he would become permanently resident in the UK. Instead of becoming a permanent resident, however, he became a "long term resident" - a distinction that allowed him to avoid paying UK income tax on all his worldwide earnings.

The correspondence released today by the public administration committee revealed for the first time that Arbuthnot was deeply involved in the negotiations that led to the downgrading of Ashcroft's undertaking.

Arbuthnot, who was said to be acting as an intermediary for Ashcroft, insisted that the billionaire - under the terms of the assurances he had given - could take up his seat in the Lords despite not being domiciled in the UK for tax purposes.

Sir Hayden Phillips, a senior civil servant, eventually agreed with Arbuthnot in July 2000 that Ashcroft needed only to become a long-term resident in order to comply with the undertakings he had given. In turn, Arbuthnot replied within hours, saying: "I confirm that I agree with your understanding of the position." He added: "The leader of the opposition is satisfied that the action adequately meets the terms of Michael Ashcroft's undertaking to take up permanent residence in the UK."

The terms of that deal shocked members of the political honours scrutiny committee. Lady Dean, one of the two surviving members of the committee, said today: "We were continually of the view that Lord Ashcroft would maintain his undertaking to take up permanent residence ... It looks like the commitments and undertakings given were not carried through."

The papers released today also show the scrutiny committee was determined that Ashcroft should honour the assurances he had given. The secretary of the committee had even suggested the businessman might be asked to show copies of Inland Revenue forms as proof that he was a full UK taxpayer; the IR Form P86, denoting arrival in the UK, and IR DOM1, proving he had become domiciled and would pay full tax. It repeatedly asked for evidence that this had been done before the undertaking was revised. The documents also show that all parties emphasised Ashcroft should live in the UK to become a full working peer and attend parliament regularly. But his Lords records show he has not spoken in a debate in the last year and has attended only 15% of votes.

A spokesman for Hague insisted tonight that he had delegated the issue to his chief whip. "He didn't know any of the details [in 2000]. He asked James Arbuthnot to deal with the issue and make sure Downing Street was satisfied. He did. That was it," he said. However, Hague did concede today that he should not have promised that Ashcroft would pay tens of millions of tax.

The foreign secretary David Miliband said that the letters proved that Hague was "intimately" involved in the process. He said: "It is now clear there has been a decade of deception at the top of the Conservative party and I repeat my call ... that David Cameron sacks Lord Ashcroft."

Monetary policy committee member Andrew Sentance calls rate of international recovery 'impressive'

An impressive bounce-back by the global economy from its deep recession a year ago will boost the chances of Britain exporting its way to economic recovery, a Bank of England policymaker said last night.

Andrew Sentance, one of the nine members of the Bank's monetary policy committee, said that the UK was already being helped by an improvement in global trade and output.

"The turnaround in the global economy over the last year has been quite impressive, given the scale of the shocks from the financial crisis," Sentance told the annual conference of the British Chambers of Commerce.

"This should give us grounds for encouragement that continued growth in the global economy will provide a supportive backdrop for recovery in the UK - even if some of our important markets, such as the economies of the euro area, may be turning around more slowly.

Sentance added that the global pick-up was the result of three main factors - a recovery in confidence, growth in Asia and other emerging markets, and the impact of ultra-loose economic policy. "As confidence builds and private spending recovers, it is likely to be appropriate to gradually withdraw at least some of this policy support for demand, without jeopardising growth prospects."

His remarks came as the CBI reported that a stronger performance by UK exporters was compensating for the continued weakness of domestic demand for industrial goods. The employers' organisation's monthly snapshot of industry found that 40% of firms reported export demand to be below normal, while 22% said it was above normal. The balance of -18% was an improvement on the -23% recorded last month. "Despite the gloomy headlines surrounding the release of the latest UK trade figures last week, the UK economy is benefiting from the revival in world trade and activity," Sentance said.

Larry Elliott

No party has created a vision for post-banking-crisis capitalism. Next week the chancellor, now his own master, can do so

In less than two months, Labour may no longer be in government. Even if, by some turn of events, Labour succeeds in remaining in office, Alistair Darling may no longer be chancellor. So it is entirely rational to see his budget next week as at best a stopgap event and at worst an almost irrelevant one, likely to be eclipsed by the almost inevitable emergency package the next government will seek to bring in.

And yet. No budget is ever wholly insignificant, least of all in troubled economic times. Budget day remains one of the few moments in the year when the public pays attention to politics. Moreover, any budget delivered on the eve of an election is still, to put it as neutrally as possible, an unrivalled opportunity to shape the forthcoming campaign.

But what kind of shaping? That is the real question. In 1987, when Nigel Lawson cut income tax by 2p just before the election, and in 1992, when Norman Lamont took 5p off the basic rate, the shaping took the form of the time-honoured tax giveaway. Gordon Brown's last pre-election budget in 2005 - the one in which he boasted hubristically of presiding over the longest period of growth since 1701 - was full of electoral goodies too, like free bus travel for the over-60s and a hike in the stamp duty threshold for first-time house buyers.

Bank bail-outs and borrowing mean that Darling has much less room next week for largesse of that sort. Nevertheless, yesterday's downward revision in the government borrowing figures provides a slightly bigger platform for the targeted help to industry and to those in work that the Treasury is said to be planning. With receipts up, unemployment down, and borrowing scaled back, it begins to look as if Darling's budget may be a larger fiscal opportunity than seemed likely in December. One should never rule out the possibility of a rabbit being produced out of the hat next Wednesday, especially something aimed at the rich that requires David Cameron to give an instant commitment to either back it or scrap it.

Yet the word is that this will not be an earth-shaking budget. These are not propitious economic times, and this is not by temperament the chancellor for anything that smacks of vulgar electioneering. This week's Ipsos-Mori survey for the Royal Society of Arts revealed that the public may not yet be ready for tough choices on cuts. Yet ministers fear that the public reaction to next Wednesday's speech may be that Darling is not facing up to the issues.

Perhaps surprisingly there are also no signs at present that Brown is pressing Darling to deliver giveaways. After the cabinet storms of the past year, the chancellor has won the political space to be his own master. His public reputation has risen unspectacularly but inexorably. Darling is now a trusted figure, a rare Labour asset at a time when trust in politicians is generally thin on the ground. The televised election debate that was announced this week between Darling, George Osborne and Vince Cable will have the Tories, not Labour, on the defensive.

Events have played to Labour's argument that cuts should not be made until the recovery is more secure. This week's unemployment numbers and yesterday's borrowing figures were a reminder that economic statistics can be unexpectedly good. April's first quarter growth figures, however, could be unexpectedly bad. Amid such volatility, Darling's caution inevitably goes down better than the more overtly politicised style adopted by Osborne.

The signs are that the general election will resolve into a Gold Cup-style contest between Time for a Change in the blue colours and Better the Devil You Know in the red. Yet if there is to be any point to a fourth term, Labour has to aim higher. Next week's budget may prove to be New Labour's, as well as Darling's, final opportunity to command the public debate for a long time. For that reason, Darling should seize this chance to say something brave and true that his party and his voters will remember for years to come. He can't neglect the more immediate practical and electoral demands of the occasion, of course. But next week it could be the larger message that matters as much as the measures.

All parties, Labour included, are struggling to give themselves and the voters a clearer vision of the kind of capitalist society they wish Britain to become in the next generation. This is, in spite of the difficulty, the question of the hour, the question that should be at the top of the agenda in the first general election after the worst economic crisis for 80 years. Labour cannot go back to the nationalising, public sector dominated vision of the 1970s, much though many in the trade union leadership would like that. It will not embrace the doctrinaire privatising and individualist vision of the 1980s, which it rejected. But it should not any longer sustain the Thatcherism-with-a-human-face vision that felt like the limit of the possible in the 1990s, though there are still positive lessons to be learned from it. No party has yet made the 2010's, post-banking-crisis, capitalist vision its own. Darling has the chance to do this on Wednesday.

Ever since the credit crunch and the bank collapse, Labour has been inching unevenly towards this new vision of capitalism. Darling himself has played a part, in his Callaghan lecture last year, as has Peter Mandelson. But the "what kind of capitalism" question goes well beyond the narrower issue of the proper role of government that Darling has so far addressed. It extends to questions such as ensuring the place of science, the environment and manufacturing in a balanced economy, the structure of the banks, the principles of a good business, the nature of corporate governance, mutualism and workplace consultation, the principles governing salary levels - and much else besides. It's about doing things differently. Labour has a very long way to go here.

It would help if Labour rid itself of its addiction to often irrelevant American thinking and looked more consistently to European models. Next to the sign above their desks that always says "It's the economy, stupid", Labour's manifesto writers could have one saying "like Germany, stupid". But if Labour wants Britain to be more like Sweden, Canada or Germany, rather than Greece, Italy or the US - and it should - then it needs to say so much more clearly, and to say how we get from here to there over the next quarter-century. If Labour is serious about offering a manifesto of genuine national renewal in May, as it claims, then there is no better place to start than when all eyes and ears are on Alistair Darling next week.

o PM criticised as official advice stays under wraps
o MPs call for more scrutiny of intelligence staff

Gordon Brown today broke a promise to publish new guidelines for British intelligence officers dealing with the torture and abuse of detainees held abroad after MPs and peers privately warned that existing guidance was unsatisfactory.

The prime minister was locked in a bitter dispute tonight with the parliamentary body set up to monitor the intelligence agencies over his refusal to publish its criticisms of the new guidance.

The Guardian has learned that members of the intelligence and security committee have expressed serious concern to Brown about the lack of clarity and "ambiguities" in the new guidance on interrogation techniques drawn up for MI5, MI6, and military intelligence officers after revelations in the Binyam Mohamed case.

The committee was assured by Brown last week that the guidance - and its own criticism of it - would be published before a Commons debate on the issue today.

His failure to do so drew sharp criticism from a committee whose members are hand picked by the prime minister. The dispute is compounded by a row between the committee and the government about plans for more effective overall scrutiny of MI5, MI6, and GCHQ, the government's electronic eavesdropping centre.

Michael Mates, the senior Conservative on the committee, told the Commons that the dispute was not "a matter of national security in any shape or form". Publication of the committee's criticisms had been put off was "because certain people think it is embarrassing", he said.

A Whitehall spokesman said that the committee's criticism had "raised a number of issues that need further consideration". The guidance is now unlikely to be published before the general election.

Brown has promised to publish the new guidance, drawn up after evidence, notably in the case of British resident and terror suspect Binyam Mohamed, that British security and intelligence officers were involved in the torture and cruel and inhuman treatment of detainees.

The government has already declined to publish previous guidance in force when Mohamed and other British citizens and residents say they were abused and tortured. "If they cannot get the new guidance legal, what does it tell us about the old guidance?" said the former shadow home secretary David Davis.

William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, and Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, called for a "judge-led inquiry" into the affair.

The government also came under fire yesterday over a Foreign Office report that said Britain had to continue to work with foreign security agencies against terrorism even if they do not share UK standards on human rights. The UK could not afford the "luxury" of co-operating only with agencies in countries that did not abuse or torture detainees, the report said.

"This clearly leaves the door open to UK complicity in torture," Human Rights Watch, an independent group, said yesterday. Sending the message to abusive governments that torture is acceptable in the name of fighting terrorism "runs counter to the absolute prohibition on torture which imposes obligations on states not only to refrain themselves from committing such abuse, but also to working towards the prevention and eradication of torture worldwide", the group said.

Back to Mike White, who links to an interesting court ruling reported in the Daily Mail, market leader in turned-on crossness, which upholds the right of conscience of Catholic adoption agencies not to permit adoptions by gays. I must admit I’ve some sympathy with this view although I wouldn’t have any, if gays didn’t have recourse to other agencies. 

Mr Justice Briggs said because an exemption in the 2007 Sexual Orientation Regulations allowed gay charities to restrict their help to homosexuals, it was right that Catholic Care should also be allowed to discriminate. The judge added that the good work carried out by the charity outweighed the importance of European anti-discrimination legislation…However, he sent the case back to the Charity Commission to reconsider in light of his ruling, which means it could yet find reasons to force the adoption agency to close.

Can you describe what happened at the summit that took place February 21-23 in Cancún, Mexico, with the creation of a new Community of Latin American and Caribbean States?

In Cancún, all of the Latin American nations agreed to build a new organization that would begin a process of integration of Latin America and the Caribbean, without the United States and Canada. This is really a very important achievement because it means that Latin America is no longer the backyard of the United States. You must remember the Monroe Doctrine, which said, "What is good for America is good for Latin America." So, now we are seeing a change in Latin America, saying "What is good for Latin America is what we Latin Americans think is good." That is the big message, and the big accomplishment. Now we must see it as a process. It's not something that's going to be accomplished in one year. No, it's going to be a process. It will take time, and there will be a lot of contradictions. It's not going to be easy. But the first step has been taken.

How do you see this Community existing alongside the other regional bodies, like the Organization of American States (OAS), the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA)?

For the OAS, it's a really great challenge. In the future, this integration of Latin America and the Caribbean will be in place in reality; then, the power of the OAS and the United States in the region will decrease. In the case of UNASUR, it is the other way around. For example, in UNASUR, we already have a treaty that establishes UNASUR, and one of our main goals as UNASUR is to build this process of integration. When we agreed to create the UNASUR, we always said that this was a step in order to accomplish the big process of integration. So, there is no contradiction. There is only a process of how you begin to build it. When it comes to ALBA, it is a process of political alliance. The countries are there not because of geographical circumstances, but because they are anti-neoliberal. That is the main reason. ALBA works inside the OAS. ALBA works inside the UNASUR, with the countries that are part of South America. ALBA will work inside this new broader alliance. What's good about this broader alliance is that all members of ALBA are part of it.

What has been the vision of the ALBA?

ALBA has changed in the process; that is my personal point of view. At the beginning, it was something against the process of the Free Trade Area of the Americas [FTAA]. At the beginning, it was a way to respond to what the FTAA was. Then the FTAA really died in Mar del Plata, but ALBA continued to exist and grow, because Evo Morales came into the government, and then we have the cases of Ecuador, Nicaragua, Dominica, and so on. Now you have an ALBA point of reference for several issues, not only regional issues that have to do with cooperation or trade, but also global concerns like climate change. So ALBA is an alliance. The name has changed, from "Alternative" to "Alliance." They have the same initials, but now there has been a change. We realized that now we were developing something different.

What have been the major advances of the ALBA?

The major advance has been to unify, to articulate and to coordinate the policies of progressive, anti-neoliberal governments. Then you have cooperation, solidarity, and fair trade between states.

And how has it affected Bolivia?

In many ways, but the main way is political. To be part of a broader political alliance--in a world that is globalized and dominated by the United States, especially in our region--is to have space around you, political space. And then, of course, Venezuela has participated very strongly when it comes to cooperation and trade in the cases of the importation of diesel or the export of textiles. [Bolivia's] trade preferences with the United States were lost, and if we hadn't had another market to sell those textiles, around 10,000 jobs would directly have been lost, and probably 20,000 to 25,000 jobs would have been indirectly lost. The possibility of maintaining that market, but redirecting it to Venezuela, and to grow in textile exports, has allowed us to not only keep those jobs, but to begin to create new jobs and new companies which have more participation by small producers. That is one of the main accomplishments.

Shifting to the crisis in Honduras with the overthrow of President Manuel Zelaya, what should the international community do about Honduras now, in terms of recognition of the new government?

The position of Bolivia is that we cannot recognize it, because to recognize it would mean that, in the end, we accept that a coup d'état is something that you can allow - if after that coup d'état the putschists call an election. That is not acceptable. Our position is that we do not recognize the government. They have violated the Democracy Charter of the OAS. That is the charter that the United States promoted, but now they do not want to respect it when it comes to Honduras.

What was the role of the United States in how events unfolded?

The United States has one of its main military bases in Honduras, so it is impossible to have a coup d'état in Honduras without the United States knowing in advance. Second, the United States did not act as it would have acted in other cases. They did not block the government of Micheletti. They were obliged to agree to expel Honduras from the OAS, but in reality, they worked to have a way out so that those who committed the violation were not sanctioned by the international community. And that is what we are seeing now. This sends a really bad message to the opposition to progressive governments in Latin America, because they can say: "Hey, we can do what we did in Honduras. We can lead a coup d'état, and we'll be criticized; maybe we'll be isolated in some way. But in the end, look what has happened: You can manage to move on."

On the domestic front, now that the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) has secured a strong majority in the Legislative Assembly, what will be at the top of its political agenda?

We have a new Constitution, but in order to implement it, we need a lot of new laws--laws that have to do with judicial power, the environment, land, international relations, foreign investment. The second issue is that we need to industrialize the country, which imports most of what it consumes other than food. Third, we need to provide access to all public services to the whole population. It is not enough to say that access to water is a human right. You have to guarantee electricity; you have to guarantee telecommunications; you have to guarantee mobility--things that, now in Bolivia, are not yet solved.

You mentioned industrialization. What are the roles for both the private sector, including international capital and foreign governments, like that of Venezuela, in Bolivia's industrialization strategies?

First of all, we encourage associations between states that have the purpose of solidarity, and in which that investment does not just exploit raw materials but transforms them and adds value inside the country. In some cases, we can do this in association with other states, but in other cases, we need foreign investment. The issue is the rules under which we are going to allow this foreign investment--how much they are going to leave for the country, how much they are going to have as profit, who is going to own it, the transfer of technology, the transformation of raw materials inside the country. Those are the key issues that Bolivia has synthesized into the words "When it comes to foreign investment, we don't want bosses; we want partners." If they can accept that rule, they are welcome. We will no longer accept the relations that we had before.

Lastly, can you describe what you see as the most important forms of popular participation that exist in Bolivia today?

The most important is the participation of social movements. If we weaken the organization of social movements, the process in Bolivia can go backward. The second mechanism is the referendum. This is the first government in the history of Bolivia that has had so many referendums. So, direct referendums are very important. Another is to now have people elect judges of the Su]]> http://www.paxmundi.info/2010/03/18/bolivia%e2%80%99s-new-political-space/ http://simongoldie.blogspot.com/2010/03/liberalism-emerging-consensus.html

Climate Change IV - A THUMB (OR TWO) IN THE SCALES?

I was sent away to learn the corn trade to a firm called Lamprey & Son in Banbury. The old office and shop building still stands next to the town hall and looks much the same today although it has long been converted to other uses.

One day the boss showed me a really beautifully made, brass, Victorian pocket balance that fitted into a polished wooden case which would slip into your pocket. On one end of the beam was a small pot about as big as a good-sized egg cup. The other side of the beam was milled with serations and graduated with a sliding weight which moved along it. If you filled the pot up with a sample of grain and struck it off level, you could slide the weight along until it balanced with the contents of the pot and read off the bushel weight of the grain from the scale.

Bushel weight is a good indicator of quality. Plump, full grains weigh heavier than thin ones. A bushel of reasonable quality barley would weigh 4 stones (56 lb or half a hundredweight) and a bushel of good wheat 5 stones (70lb). So the little pot contained a very small part of a bushel. The sample might represent a parcel of grain which could be anything from 5 or 6 tonnes up to over 100.

The boss let me try this out and in two or three goes I was getting a very consistent reading. He then did the same with the same sample and got a considerably heavier bushel weight. Eventually he showed me the trick. The strike or straight edge, which was used to level off the contents of the pot, had two sides. One was like a ruler and the other had a piece of dowel along it. If you used the dowel side, it pressed a few more corns into the pot than the straight edge. With the effect of scale, this made the sample look considerably heavier and better quality. Even with a correctly drawn sample, a small change in procedure or instrumentation could significantly bias the result. "That's how they did it in the old days days, boy" he said with a wink "buying or selling, you see, boy". I should add that this was shown to me as an antique curiosity and was not any part of the trading practices of the firm in my day!

The kit which is used to "sample" the temperature of the climate is remarkably unchanged and about the same vintage as that rather splendid little balance. It is called a Stevenson Screen and was actually designed by the father of Robert Louis Stevenson, the author of "Treasure Island". It is a standard sized wooden box with louvred sides to allow free circulation of the air around the instruments and keep them out of direct sunlight. Hence the expression "in the shade" when referring to temperature. The thermometer might be a traditional mercury maximum/minimum type or more modern sensors. Stevenson Screens were traditionally painted with whitewash.

It is doubtful whether a character like ANTHONY WATTS could exist in state-controlled Britain. He is an American meteorologist and weather forecaster for commercial TV and radio stations. For his living he depends upon his customers' satisfaction with the accuracy of his forecasts. He also supplies custom-built weather stations, TV graphics systems and video equipment to broadcasters all over the world. So he is an expert who makes his living from weather but is neither a civil servant (who can be made to toe an official line) nor dependent on tax-funded grants (which require applicants to be politically correct). So he has a certain independence of mind and demonstrates that rugged individualism and tenacity of purpose which used to be the stuff of all-American heroes in many films of my youth.

He noticed that the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Weather Service (NOAA/NWS - roughly equivalent to the UK Meteorological Office) had made a small change to its Stevenson Screens. He wondered whether this change would affect the temperatures recorded. Back in 1979 the NWS had stopped using whitewash and started painting the Stevenson Screens with white, semi gloss, latex paint. Whitewash essentially gave a coating of calcium carbonate whilst latex paint used the pigment titanium dioxide which has significantly different infra-red properties.

In 2007, having a little time on his hands, he set up a trial to see what the differences might be. He used three Stevenson Screens - one unpainted, one painted with the latex semi gloss used by the NWS and one painted with historically correct whitewash. He also used a modern stacked plate aspirated thermometer as an additional control. His results showed that the latex paint raised the maximum recorded temperature within the screen by 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit and the minimum recorded temperature by 0.8 degrees Fahrenheit when compared with the whitewashed Stevenson Screen. So that is an average upward bias of 0.55 degrees Fahrenheit. Not very much, you might think but the whole scare about global warming is based on a claimed, observed temperature rise of only 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit in a century.

Anthony Watts then decided to have a look at the NWS's Stevenson Screens in his locality to see if they were being painted to the official specification. What he found was disquieting. In one case, heat-generating radio equipment had been installed inside the screen, near to the temperature sensors. In other cases the weather stations were near to the outlet vents of air conditioning systems or close to other heat sources - all of which would tend to bias the recorded temperatures upwards.

So he conducted further investigations, eventually recruiting a team of volunteers to observe and photograph as many of the 1221 weather stations as possible all over the United States. 865 of them were visited. NEARLY NINE OUT OF TEN WEATHER STATIONS PROVED TO BE OUTSIDE THE SPECIFICATIONS LAID DOWN BY THE U.S. AUTHORTIES THEMSELVES.

They were near to artificial heat sources, on top of concrete or tarmac surfaces, close to buildings, in the steamy warmth of sewage farms and so on. ALL OF THE OBSERVED FAULTS WOULD TEND TO RAISE THE RECORDED TEMPERATURES. It is a fascinating story of one man's determination to get at the truth and can be read in full at SurfaceStations.org . Anthony Watts also has a regularly updated blog wattsupwiththat.com which is one of the most widely read, independent sources of climate information. I particularly like the fact that contrary views are welcomed. Whilst they are vigorously debated, they are treated with respect and normal courtesy - unlike some blogs pushing the official line.

To return to my analogy of that corn merchant's balance - the few cubic feet of air inside a Stevenson Screen stand proxy for a huge amount of the earth's atmosphere. Weather stations are often hundreds of miles apart. So th]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/bUee/~3/ZdEJkft0zZM/climate-change-part-4-guest-post.html http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LettersFromATory/~3/kqPfZ4MhRTU/ 1. Next Left reports on the ‘Rumble in the Lib Dem Jungle'.

2. Ambush Predator thinks it is time to confront the Righteous.

3. Dick Puddlecote suspects that the Conservatives want to steal our souls.

4. Man In A Shed is worried that voters are, like the BA cabin crew, in a state of denial.

5. Tory Outcast bemoans Baroness Ashton's performance over Israel.

Labour MP Chris Bryant was caught posing in his pants on the Gaydar dating website seven years ago, but now his career is thriving. And he is about to get married in the first civil partnership ceremony in the Houses of Parliament

The only thing I previously knew about Chris Bryant was that he once appeared on the gay dating website Gaydar in his underpants. Not a very fetching pair of underpants either: white Y-fronts that would not have been out of place in C&A circa 1972. Lithe, toned - he is a committed gym-goer and House of Commons swimming champion - but with a very dodgy taste in pants.

That was in 2003 and it's not a great thing to have on a Labour MP's CV. Google him now and about half the pictures you get are still that image. Yet here he is, seven years later, still lithe and toned and glowing with athleticism but in an immaculate suit and occupying a vast, polished, art-filled space in the Foreign Office as minister for Europe, eager to bang the drum for the EU and point out the uneasiness of the Conservative position. Bryant's advance suggests that we may finally be growing up a bit where sex and public life are concerned, and he will celebrate that fact a week tomorrow when he marries his partner Jared Cranney in what will be the first civil partnership ever held in the Houses of Parliament.

"When I was born, it was illegal to be gay in Britain and until the last 13 years progress was painfully slow," says Bryant. "Jared and I are really looking forward to getting married in Parliament, as so many straight couples have before us, because it's Parliament that has made it possible. Some people talk of 'broken Britain', but Britain is in many ways an infinitely better place than it was 13 years ago, when we didn't even have an equal age of consent. I saw Peter Tatchell's 1996 list of what had to be achieved by a Labour government - civil partnerships, gays in the military, adoption, equal age of consent - and every single one of them has been done. Civil partnerships are symbolic of the social change Labour has brought about."

How Bryant made it through the underpants debacle fascinates me, and after a tour d'horizon of the great European questions - Turkish accession, a joint army, whether the Tories will ever try to bring us out - I wheedle my way round to the subject. "I think of it now as a scar," he says. "It was a wound but it's a rather charming scar now. I had a period when I barely slept and it was horrible, but I'm very lucky in having a supportive set of friends - MP friends and others - and they looked after me."

At the time, the media predicted that he wouldn't survive, and there was much talk of deselection as MP for the rock-solid Labour seat of the Rhondda, but he says that was never likely. "That was just hyperbole [in the media], but it was pretty unpleasant. People were being doorstepped. You can't retaliate in any way; you're completely powerless. You just have to let it happen. It took a long time to stop because the pursuit of other people - exes and family members - by journalists went on for quite a while, and that's when you remember there's collateral damage to other people in your family." Do people still mention it? "Only David Cameron. He brought it up in the chamber," he says, referring to an oblique reference the Conservative leader made to him in the Commons in November last year.

It's fascinating that the Rhondda chose Bryant - gay, a former Anglican priest, and someone who had dallied with the Conservatives as a student - in the first place. Had he been surprised to be picked to fight the 2001 election? "I fell off the chair," he says, "and my opponents [for the nomination] certainly did. I had promised my then partner that I wouldn't get selected, but I did. He was very worried that I'd disappear into politics and he'd never see me again, and becoming an MP didn't do much for that relationship."

Fifty-two people applied for the candidature and a local councillor was hot favourite to win, but Bryant says hard work and knocking on the doors of every one of the constituency's 700 Labour members produced the unlikeliest of upsets. "Eight of us were put on the shortlist and there was a hustings. I did my 'I am what I am' moment, and got a standing ovation. I thought it was better to get selected on an honest basis."

Bryant is a youthful 48, a keen rugby player as well as a swimmer, energetic, competitive, combative. I see him in action at the London School of Economics, answering tough questions about European policy, and he gives no quarter, relishing the cut and thrust of the debate that follows his lecture on the perils of euroscepticism. "The euroscepticism that is prevalent in parts of British society - and which has seized hold of the opposition like a severe bout of influenza - undermines the British interest at every turn," he tells his audience. "It's an act of false patriotism." He calls himself an internationalist, and traces the roots of that outlook back to his Welsh father's decision to take a computing job in Spain in the 1960s - an unusual move back then. His family lived in Bilbao and Madrid before returning to the UK, where Bryant read English at Oxford before going on to theological college and being ordained as a Church of England minister.

Had he always intended to be a priest? "No," he says, "but the years from 12 to 18 were quite tough at home because Mum drank and it wasn't very happy, and the people who were most supportive of me were Christians [his school, Cheltenham College, had an Anglican ethos]. It's not that they said 'Go and be a vicar', but I remember the first Sunday at Oxford I decided to go to church and it continued. There was a bit of me that felt I'd survived all of this with a degree of strength, and that wasn't because I was a wonderful person, so it should be something I shared with other people and put to the use of the wider community. Now I hear myself saying it, it sounds hideously patronising and glutinous."

Gradually he realised that being gay and being a priest were incompatible. "When I was ordained [in 1986], the view on homosexuality was 'Don't ask, don't tell', and, anyway, I wasn't really certain where I was going, but by 1991 I thought, hang on I'm gay, and the church had changed its position a bit - it had decided the Bible doesn't really like gays. There was a new document produced, and I remember the Bishop of Oxford saying, 'I've never laid hands on a gay man' a week after he'd ordained me. I thought there are battles I want to fight; this isn't a battle I want to fight all my life; I want to go and do something where I can be open and honest about myself and have a partner and all of that."

He left the priesthood - though remains what he calls a "heterodox" Christian, rejecting the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection but holding firm to the teachings of Jesus - for the uncertain world of politics. He worked for Labour MP Frank Dobson, was a councillor in Hackney, became chairman of the Christian Socialist Movement, wrote biographies of former Labour chancellor Stafford Cripps and actor-turned-politician Glenda Jackson, came remarkably close to winning Wycombe for Labour in 1997, and was the BBC's head of European affairs, lobbying on the corporation's behalf in Brussels, before landing one of the safest Labour seats in the country.

Bryant is frequently called ambitious, and his prominent role in trying to usurp Tony Blair in a party coup in September 2006 was attributed to his having been left on the backbenches, but he insists he has changed. "There was a time when I had an ambition that was all about rising to great office, and it made me a pretty odious member of the House of Commons," he says. "I was running at the gate like a ]]> http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/mar/18/chris-bryant-gay-mp-civil-partnership http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/mar/18/budget-giveaway-borrowing-figures-improve

City brushes aside Treasury denials and predicts extra £2-3bn pre-election spending as figures show fall in net borrowing

Alistair Darling tonight ruled out a pre-election giveaway budget despite the release of new borrowing figures showing a smaller hole in the government's finances than previously feared.

The Treasury stamped on speculation that improved tax receipts would enable the chancellor to produce headline grabbing measures in Wednesday's package to kick-start Labour's election campaign.

"With one month of the financial year remaining, today's figures are broadly in line with our pre-budget report forecasts," a Treasury spokesman said after borrowing figures for February showed net borrowing at £12.4bn against the £14.8bn expected by the City. "They continue to show strong growth in government spending, reflecting our continued support for the economy."

Despite the official caution, the City is expecting Darling to pump an extra £2-3bn into the economy next week, with the emphasis on measures that will boost long-term growth prospects. Analysts believe the chancellor may also freeze petrol duty to try to prevent petrol prices rising above 120p a litre during the election campaign.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies, Britain's leading expert on tax and spending, said the budget deficit for 2009-10 was likely to be £166bn - £12bn less than Darling predicted in December's pre-budget report. But with separate data released today showing Britain's credit-starved companies still struggling, the IFS warned there was little scope for generosity.

Rowena Crawford, a research economist at the IFS, said: "As the chancellor prepares for next week's budget he will doubtless be pleased by today's figures. Tax receipts were higher than the same month last year - with growth in receipts of income tax, national insurance and capital gains tax being particularly strong relative to his December 2009 pre-budget report forecast - and there have been downward revisions to figures for borrowing in earlier months of this financial year."

In the first 11 months of the 2009-10 financial year, public sector net borrowing stood at £131.9bn, up from £66.5bn in the same period last year. The Treasury said in December's pre-budget report that it expected the full-year figure to be £178bn.

Crawford said: "Overall the figures from the first 11 months this year suggest that borrowing is on course to come in at £166bn, which would be £12bn lower than Mr Darling forecast in the pre-budget report. Despite these figures, the overall state of the public finances - and the fact that lower borrowing this year might not translate into lower borrowing going forwards - means the chancellor should not announce a significant permanent net giveaway in next week's budget."

Lower than expected unemployment and the return of VAT to 17.5% helped to restrict the level of borrowing last month, even though the deficit was still the highest for any February since modern records began.

Government receipts were 3.6% higher last month than in February 2009, the fastest rate of growth since April 2008, when the economy was just slipping into recession.

Weak lending figures from the Bank of England, however, put the durability of economic recovery in doubt. Threadneedle Street said credit to businesses had shrunk by £6.5bn in January, almost double the decline of £3.4bn in December. Despite pressure from the government, lending by banks to the corporate sector was at its lowest since July 2009.

Howard Archer, UK economist at IHS Insight said the survey made "grim reading" and underlined concerns about tight credit conditions.

"Lack of access to credit for smaller businesses remains a particular problem," Archer said, adding that the Bank might be forced to return to return to quantitative easing if the economy faltered.

Justice is a public health concern too. Offenders meeting victims can cut the trauma crime causes

It was when the man sitting opposite him in HMP Pentonville casually referred to "the first time we met" that Will Riley finally erupted - because the businessman had not encountered Peter Woolf at a drinks reception but when the prolific burglar broke into his home and attacked him. "I was like a fire hydrant going off," Riley recalls. "I shouted at him that he had crushed every belief I had that I could handle myself and protect my family. "

For Woolf, this was the moment his perspective shifted irrevocably. "I wanted the ground to swallow me up, I felt so ashamed. So I went on the defensive, then Will started listing the effect I'd had on him - so many things I hadn't given a thought to before."

The men were brought together by a process of "restorative conferencing", a model of restorative justice that holds the offender directly accountable to the people he has harmed, often in front of others he trusts, including members of his family or community.

Though many lobbyists would argue that it puts victims' experience at the heart of the criminal justice system, where it belongs, that too readily lends itself to reinterpretation as retributive tabloid shorthand. More aptly, it can be said that restorative justice offers a controlled environment in which the anger, trauma and guilt surrounding an offence can be discharged by victim and offender, resulting in a - not necessarily instantaneous and certainly not simplistic - coming-to-terms for both.

Eight years later, Woolf has not reoffended, and is working as a restorative conference facilitator, while Riley was so inspired that he went on to found Why Me?, an organisation that campaigns for conferencing to be made available to all victims of crime. Yet, despite numerous glowing evaluations in Britain and abroad, as well as copious government lip service, only a handful of the 10.7m crimes with an identifiable victim committed last year were resolved with a restorative element. But with the shadow prisons minister, Alan Duncan, last month making a commitment to implement the scheme nationally if elected, that may be about to change.

Restorative justice is the most effective tool the criminal justice system doesn't use. Four different evaluations of pilot schemes by the Ministry of Justice have found an average fall of 27% in reoffending rates, while the Restorative Justice Consortium estimates that for every £1 spent on conferences it saves the taxpayer £8 through the reduction in reconviction.

Just as important, the schemes are hugely popular among victims, with a takeup rate of 77% and a satisfaction rate of 85%. Most compelling, compared with a control group of victims, those who had been through restorative justice were 32% less likely to show high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder. In New Zealand, where legislative provision for restorative practice was enshrined in 2002, the impact on reconviction and incarceration, particularly for young offenders, has been marked.

Of course, the purpose of any criminal justice system is to adjudicate, not ameliorate. Still, as Baroness Stern argued this week in her report on rape prosecution, a focus on conviction should not come at the expense of consideration for victims. According to Karin Madsen, who runs a pioneering centre in Denmark using restorative techniques with victims of sexual violence, the authorities can forget that victims have an immense need for information, which is excluded by a court system that requires defendants to counter allegations rather than explain their behaviour. Restorative justice humanises the cold instrumentalism of punishment.

Critics on the right display an unhelpful tendency to equate the restorative model with cleaning off graffiti instead of serving time. But it wasn't conceived of to divert serious offenders from custody. While many community sentences do now have a restorative flavour - and, yes, that can include graffiti removal - it's the specific nature of public confrontation and shaming involved in conferencing that has most impact.

Liberal sceptics are suspicious of this public element, but it is very different in intent and execution from the kind of punitive, unstructured shaming that results with an antisocial behaviour order (asbo). The Australian academic John Braithwaite, a leading advocate for restorative methods, believes that current criminal justice practice creates shame that is solely stigmatising and thus counterproductive, as it serves to symbolically exclude the criminal from law-abiding society long after their sentence has been served, making reoffending more likely. Reintegrative shaming, on the other hand, allows offenders to acknowledge wrongdoing, then offers ways to expiate that shame while encouraging others to readmit the offender to society.

Restorative justice is about balance: between therapeutic and retributive models; between the rights and responsibilities of offenders and the needs of victims; between a community's desire for local solutions and the state's duty to punish. Most fundamentally though, it recognises that justice should be as much a public health concern as a rational legal process.

For two weeks now Full Fact has been trying to find out the basis of Gordon Brown's claim that 300,000 businesses in the UK have been provided with direct cash-flow help from the Government.

In a piece published on 4 March, Full Fact examined the claim made by the Prime Minister in a speech to the Welsh Labour party. Despite numerous requests, emails and phone calls neither BIS, HMRC, Downing Street, The Treasury nor the Labour party were able to say where the figures came from.

But with Mr Brown again using the claim during yesterday's PMQs, Full Fact has revisited the investigation, but to no avail.

Despite assurances our request was being looked into, there has been no response from the Labour party. Downing Street insisted it was a matter for the Treasury. The Treasury press team, apparently now questioning the need to respond to requests from online media outlets, insisted this was not a press inquiry and referred us to the ever-engaged public inquiry line.

So nearly two weeks, and a helluva lot of phone calls later, we are no nearer to an explanation. Our search for the facts behind the figure is not over, we are determined to provide you with the information. Stay tuned for the next update.

I am *seriously* loving this sunshiney stuff....not only has it meant I've been able to play my guitar outside but I've also been out Kayaking on the river Dart for the first time this year! Woohoo!

Despite having an ‘orrible cold I had a really good fun weekend of gigs, thanks very much if you came along to either (or both!) and hope you had as much fun as well did.

So kicking off my weekend was a trip to the lovely Blue Walnut Cafe in Torquay to do some percussiony bits and bassy stuff for local singer/songwriter Nicky Swann. It's been a little while since I've played the Blue Walnut so it was lovely to be back!

Nicky and I were also joined by Tim the fiddle man and who kindly stepped in at very short notice. This was our first time playing together and thankfully we all seemed to make a pretty good sound between us!

Thanks to Nicky's hard work promoting the gig lots of peeps turned out which made the evening oodles betterer. We also had a support act on before us in the form of fellow Totnes person Keith Jones who did a grand job!

Big thankies to Giles for snapping away with his snazzy new camera and proving these pics!

So the following night (Sunday) I was off to Mama Stone's to do an acoustical gig with Dan Crisp. I was very excited indeed, not only that this would be the first Mr Dan gig of 2010, but I'd also been promised the use of the in-house Cajon. But when we got there nobody could find the bloomin thing!! Grrr! But armed with a Conga drum and various shaky things I managed to have lots of fun non-the-less... here's another iPhone Youtube vid (so expect lots of dodgy sound!)

This Sunday (March 21) Dan and I will be at Mama Stone's again, but this time around we'll be joined by the lovely Alan Bray on bass for a big band sound (...that is a larger sound, not that we've started playing swing music or anything crazy...) Looking forward to it!

This week I've got loads of bits and bobs to keep me out of trouble and with my trip to Germany not too far away now I'll be spending most of this week planning and organising various things such as merch and set lists. I've got four gigs lined up and this time I'll be visiting Munich for the very first time - which means I'll finally be able to utilise that very important phrase I learnt in my German book about drinking Mulled Wine in Munich - horrah!

Well that's all folks, hope you have a bloomin marvelous week and I'll see you next time!

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TITAN 510 electronic cigarette starter kit.

I've been "smoking" – or actually vaping – the electronic cigarette now for six weeks. And I am still very happy about this purchase. Moreover, the inevitable has happened – real cigarettes have become incredibly disgusting.

About a month after I started vaping (i.e. smoking the e-cigarette, inhaling the vapour), I decided to try what had happened to my tasting senses, so I asked a friend of mine to roll a ciggie for me. He used Drum rolling tobacco and, contrary to my fears, it tasted almost okay. It had some strange taste I hadn't had for quite a while, but it didn't exactly taste terribly.

But that was just a beginning. The night was long and both of my e-cigarette batteries ran out. So, when I got home, I knew I had one Marlboro Lights somewhere, and decided to relieve my nicotine addiction with that, as the batteries were charging.

Oh. My. God. I have never ever tasted anything that bad. It was really, really disgusting. Imagine I had smoked those things on and off for 18 years and never known they taste that terrible. I could almost understand non-smokers who hate cigarette smell. I could definitely understand ex-smokers who hate the smell. It was really, really gross. I thanked God when first battery was charged and I could vape again.

After that, I also tried Mayfair Menthol. Interestingly, that wasn't that bad. Perhaps probably because the menthol taste and smell prevailed over the tobacco taste and smell. Or perhaps the tobacco there is better than the one Marlboro has. But it wasn't ideal either.

So, my electronic cigarette or nicotine inhalator is really a magic thing. Maybe the only downside is that I vape too much, as I can literally smoke anywhere. But still, the best purchase in ages.

Soldiers marching on Red Square in Moscow. Under the flag of Soviet Union.

Sometimes I really think that this world needs to be stopped immediately, so that I and the rest of the people blessed with brains and the ability to use them, could just step off. The fact that British soldiers are going to march in Moscow at the 9th May parade, under portraits of the mass murderer of millions and in the capital of the country that was Adolf Hitler's staunch ally, is really something beyond my wildest imagination.

But, apparently, according to AFP and numerous other agencies, it is going to happen:

British troops will in May march on Moscow's Red Square to mark the 65th anniversary of the end of World War II, the first time they have marched on the historic square, the British embassy said.

The British troops will be taking part in a massive parade to mark the end of the war being organised in Moscow on May 9, which the Russian authorities are promoting as a major international event.

The troops from the central Air Force band and a Welsh Guards marching battalion will be taking part with their US and French counterparts in the event, the British embassy said in a statement.

Could this decision be any more cynical? Moscow has, for the last 65 years, constantly been trying to change history by falsifying and abusing it, lying, denying, not to mention imprisoning people who have dared to not accept the "real history", and, moreover, threatened other countries that do not accept Moscow's vision of the "real history". The Soviet Union occupied its neighbours for 45 years, claiming it liberated those countries, and even today continues to maintain this position.

Moreover, the Soviet Union was Adolf Hitler's nazi Germany's staunch ally from 1939-1941 – the same Hitler that Britain and its finest sons and daughters heroically fought against during the World War II. Not to mention the cold war from 1945-1992, when all the Free World, which includes (hopefully also today) the United Kingdom, fought against the communist tyranny initiated by that same Moscow.

Yes, I am saying "that same Moscow". Because today's Moscow, today's Russia is exactly the same empire of tyranny and evil that was Soviet Union. Because the sad fact is, British soldiers are, on 9th May, 2010, going to march under portraits of Joseph Stalin. That evil Soviet dictator who mass murdered tens of millions of people in both Russia and the countries occupied. It is indeed incredibly cynical and even idiotic that Russian authorities, who claim to have moved on from Soviet era, who claim to have at least some sort of democracy and liberty, still hang up portraits of this butcher and celebrate him despite of all the crimes he committed.

It's outrageous. It's outrageous that in 2010 something like this can happen. It's outrageous that in 2010 the soldiers from the country that once was one of the flagships of the Free World, fighting for democracy and liberty, are now being made, by imbecile politicians, apparently, to neglect all those principles and forced to march in the capital of the country that beams evilness, under the portraits of one of the greatest mass murderers of the 20th century.

Gordon Brown, you're disgusting.

TITAN 510 electronic cigarette starter kit.

I've been "smoking" – or actually vaping – the electronic cigarette now for six weeks. And I am still very happy about this purchase. Moreover, the inevitable has happened – real cigarettes have become incredibly disgusting.

About a month after I started vaping (i.e. smoking the e-cigarette, inhaling the vapour), I decided to try what had happened to my tasting senses, so I asked a friend of mine to roll a ciggie for me. He used Drum rolling tobacco and, contrary to my fears, it tasted almost okay. It had some strange taste I hadn't had for quite a while, but it didn't exactly taste terribly.

But that was just a beginning. The night was long and both of my e-cigarette batteries ran out. So, when I got home, I knew I had one Marlboro Lights somewhere, and decided to relieve my nicotine addiction with that, as the batteries were charging.

Oh. My. God. I have never ever tasted anything that bad. It was really, really disgusting. Imagine I had smoked those things on and off for 18 years and never known they taste that terrible. I could almost understand non-smokers who hate cigarette smell. I could definitely understand ex-smokers who hate the smell. It was really, really gross. I thanked God when first battery was charged and I could vape again.

After that, I also tried Mayfair Menthol. Interestingly, that wasn't that bad. Perhaps probably because the menthol taste and smell prevailed over the tobacco taste and smell. Or perhaps the tobacco there is better than the one Marlboro has. But it wasn't ideal either.

So, my electronic cigarette or nicotine inhalator is really a magic thing. Maybe the only downside is that I vape too much, as I can literally smoke anywhere. But still, the best purchase in ages.

Soldiers marching on Red Square in Moscow. Under the flag of Soviet Union.

Sometimes I really think that this world needs to be stopped immediately, so that I and the rest of the people blessed with brains and the ability to use them, could just step off. The fact that British soldiers are going to march in Moscow at the 9th May parade, under portraits of the mass murderer of millions and in the capital of the country that was Adolf Hitler's staunch ally, is really something beyond my wildest imagination.

But, apparently, according to AFP and numerous other agencies, it is going to happen:

British troops will in May march on Moscow's Red Square to mark the 65th anniversary of the end of World War II, the first time they have marched on the historic square, the British embassy said.

The British troops will be taking part in a massive parade to mark the end of the war being organised in Moscow on May 9, which the Russian authorities are promoting as a major international event.

The troops from the central Air Force band and a Welsh Guards marching battalion will be taking part with their US and French counterparts in the event, the British embassy said in a statement.

Could this decision be any more cynical? Moscow has, for the last 65 years, constantly been trying to change history by falsifying and abusing it, lying, denying, not to mention imprisoning people who have dared to not accept the "real history", and, moreover, threatened other countries that do not accept Moscow's vision of the "real history". The Soviet Union occupied its neighbours for 45 years, claiming it liberated those countries, and even today continues to maintain this position.

Moreover, the Soviet Union was Adolf Hitler's nazi Germany's staunch ally from 1939-1941 – the same Hitler that Britain and its finest sons and daughters heroically fought against during the World War II. Not to mention the cold war from 1945-1992, when all the Free World, which includes (hopefully also today) the United Kingdom, fought against the communist tyranny initiated by that same Moscow.

Yes, I am saying "that same Moscow". Because today's Moscow, today's Russia is exactly the same empire of tyranny and evil that was Soviet Union. Because the sad fact is, British soldiers are, on 9th May, 2010, going to march under portraits of Joseph Stalin. That evil Soviet dictator who mass murdered tens of millions of people in both Russia and the countries occupied. It is indeed incredibly cynical and even idiotic that Russian authorities, who claim to have moved on from Soviet era, who claim to have at least some sort of democracy and liberty, still hang up portraits of this butcher and celebrate him despite of all the crimes he committed.

It's outrageous. It's outrageous that in 2010 something like this can happen. It's outrageous that in 2010 the soldiers from the country that once was one of the flagships of the Free World, fighting for democracy and liberty, are now being made, by imbecile politicians, apparently, to neglect all those principles and forced to march in the capital of the country that beams evilness, under the portraits of one of the greatest mass murderers of the 20th century.

Gordon Brown, you're disgusting.