THE scientist at the centre of the “climategate” email scandal has revealed that he was so traumatised by the global backlash against him that he contemplated suicide.

Professor Phil Jones said in an exclusive interview with The Sunday Times that he had thought about killing himself “several times”. He acknowledged similarities to Dr David Kelly, the scientist who committed suicide after being exposed as the source for a BBC report that alleged the government had “sexed up” evidence to justify the invasion of Iraq.

The European Union's Emissions Trading System (ETS) is failing to deliver vital green investment after a collapse in carbon prices, MPs warn in a report out today.

The environmental audit committee is calling on the government to introduce measures such as a new carbon tax to push the price of carbon from its level of €15 (£13) a tonne to what the MPs see as a more credible price of €100.

Scores of MPs caught up in the Parliamentary expenses scandal will walk away from the Commons with a £30million payday – courtesy of the taxpayer.

Even after being hit in the pocket by returning money falsely claimed in allowances, most of them will end up with a substantial gain.

On the day they receive their final demand to settle their ‘fines’, the MPs will be given golden handshakes of up to £65,000, with the average lump sum being £48,662.

So 72 of the 73 MPs standing down at the Election after being told to return expenses will be left in credit. Some will be £64,000 better off.

...unlike the IPCC whose integrity is unquestionable - DOH!

London: In a rare outburst of emotions, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown wept in public when he spoke about the death of his daughter Jennifer and expressed fears of a premature and similar fate of his son Fraser, who has cystic fibrosis.

Brown's wife Sarah, who was present there, also sobbed in an extraordinary display of emotion during an interview of the Premier by Piers Morgan for a TV programme.

Giacometti’s life-sized sculpture L'homme qui marche I (Walking Man I) fetched £65,001,250 ($US104,327,006) after just eight minutes of bidding at Sotheby’s.

The winning bid, which opened at £12million, was made over the phone by an anonymous buyer.
The sculpture, considered to be one of the most important by the 20th century Swiss artist, was estimated to sell for between £12 million and £18 million.

Furious bidding saw more than ten rivals escalate the price, eventually hitting the £65 million mark.

A Sotheby’s spokeswoman said it was the highest for any work of art ever sold at auction.

A secret plan to foster an internal coup against Saddam Hussein was drawn up by the Government two years before the invasion of Iraq, The Independent can reveal.

Whitehall officials drafted the "contract with the Iraqi people" as a way of signalling to dissenters in Iraq that an overthrow of Saddam would be supported by Britain. It promised aid, oil contracts, debt cancellations and trade deals once the dictator had been removed. Tony Blair's team saw it as a way of creating regime change in Iraq even before the 9/11 attack on New York.

The document, headed "confidential UK/US eyes", was finalised on 11 June 2001 and approved by ministers.

Doubts over Labour's new 50p top rate of tax mounted today as a Treasury minister suggested the amount of money expected to be raked in had been 'significantly reduced'.

City Minister Lord Myners conceded 'behavioural changes' - the wealthy leaving Britain or simply finding ways to dodge the new tax - meant the Government had scaled down the anticipated revenue.

Christopher King considers the spurious foundations of the US economy and business relationships with the rest of the world, and argues that complacency and ignorance on the part of the British government – and the greed of business leaders – are letting the Americans have a free lunch every day.

A receptionist at a GP’s surgery has been left unable to walk properly after having the swine flu jab.

Alison Dygnas, who as an NHS worker was advised to have the vaccination, also experienced the paralysis in her face, had slurred speech and found eating difficult.

Doctors believe the jab triggered a rare condition affecting the nervous system known as myasthenia gravis.

Banks are turning the screw on customers with the highest interest rate on personal loans for almost a decade, giving them record profit margins.

The rates have soared to an average of 12.4per cent despite the fact the Bank of England base rate remains at a 300 year low of 0.5 per cent.

The last time personal loans cost this much was in 2001 when the base rate was a much higher 6 per cent.

The figures, combined with evidence of sky high rates on credit cards, overdrafts and mortgages, suggest the banks are making customers foot the bill for the industry's mistakes.

Naked body scanning will now be compulsory at two of Britain’s biggest airports after the government announced people who refuse to let security thugs ogle their genitalia will be treated like terrorists and barred from flying.

“It is now compulsory for people selected for a scan to take part, or they will not be allowed to fly,” reports the BBC.

That ’s right – no optional pat down as we were told, if you think that having strangers leer over your naked body is an invasion of privacy and refuse, you’ll be treated the same way as a suspected terrorist.

Stuart Littlewood considers the failure of the Iraq Inquiry rigorously to question former Prime Minister Tony Blair about his decision to join the US in committing aggression against Iraq, and reflects on Blair’s use of the inquiry as a platform to promote aggression against Iran.

Classified medical records relating to the death of government scientist Dr David Kelly could be made available to the public.

The Ministry of Justice said a review to overturn a 70-year ban on post-mortem reports, photographs and other medical documents is under way.

Consumers were today warned to be on their guard against fraudulent emails telling them they were due to receive a tax refund.

HM Revenue & Customs thinks around 20,000 of the scam emails have been sent during the past week alone, as fraudsters try to cash in on people's preoccupation with tax in the run-up to the self-assessment deadline.

The emails tell people that they are due a tax refund and ask them to fill in an online form giving their bank account or credit card details so that the rebate can be paid.

The fraudsters then use the information to either empty victims' accounts or spend up to their credit limit, before passing on their details to other criminal gangs.

Sensational claims that Gordon Brown has physically attacked his staff in a series of outbursts in Downing Street - and once in America - have rocked the Government.

Well-placed sources say the Prime Minister has been accused of hitting a senior adviser, pulling a secretary out of her chair and hurling foul-mouthed abuse at aides while distraught over an alleged snub by President Barack Obama.

Cigarettes are set to be sold in plain packaging without logos in a bid to further strip smoking of its 'glamourous' image.

The Government will unveil the latest stage of its effort to half the number of smokers in Britain by 2020, which could result in a ban on people smoking in private places where children are present.

The UK Jewish Chronicle is apparently stupid enough to unveil the ferocity of Zionist lobbying within the British Government and its corridors of power. The Jewish weekly is happy to outline the relentless measures that are being taken by Jewish lobbyists in order to Zionise the British legal system and its value system.

Gilad Atzmon comments on an editorial in Britain’s top Zionist newspaper in which the paper’s editor, Stephen Pollard, and its chief political editor, Martin Bright, appeared to be threatening British Prime Minister Gordon Brown with electoral defeat unless he restricts the application of universal jurisdiction to ensure that suspected Israeli war criminals can travel to the UK without risk of prosecution.

”In plain language the Jewish Chronicle is suggesting that Gordon Brown, as far as the Jews are concerned, is basically finished. I wonder how long it will take for the British people to wake up and say enough is enough? How long will it take before they say NO to Israeli and Zionist infiltration of their politics, laws and values?”

Children as young as five are being told to fill in Big Brother-style forms which let councils snoop on intimate details about their home lives.

The questions - which have been attacked as exploitative - ask about junk food, television habits, family time and even whether the youngsters 'like themselves'.

Results are stored on a database, allowing families deemed to be 'at risk' to be referred to social services or doctors.

Despite the deaths of up to 700,000 Iraqis and 179 British troops, Mr Blair said he felt 'responsibility but not a regret' as he concluded his six hours of evidence to the Chilcot inquiry.

There was uproar and shouts of 'liar' and ' murderer' as bereaved relatives in the public gallery of the QEII conference centre in Westminster realised they were not going to receive the apology for which they had waited all day.

There was no hint of remorse.

Indeed, Mr Blair even suggested the world should be grateful to him.

Christopher King argues that Britain's Iraq Inquiry “appears now to be part of a general unravelling of the Blair conspiracy" and has underlined that UK politicians cannot be trusted. He says the lesson of Iraq lies not in whatever the inquiry might report but in the necessity for British people to take on oversight of the political process themselves.

Tony Blair is today set to dodge questions about secret letters he sent to George Bush promising to 'be with you' in the invasion of Iraq.

The Government was last night refusing to agree to the release of the letters and other key documents as the former Prime Minister faced what is being described as his 'Judgment Day'.

Crucial evidence about the reasons Britain went to war against Saddam Hussein is being kept secret it has emerged – leading to accusations that the Iraq inquiry has been “gagged”.

In an apparent breach of the Inquiry terms, Sir John Chilcot, head of the probe, expressed his “frustration” that he was unable to refer to key documents while questioning Lord Goldsmith, the former Attorney General, about why he gave the “green light” for war.

The Home Office has created a new unit to oversee a massive increase in surveillance of the internet, The Register has learned, quashing suggestions the plans are on hold until after the election.

...

Officials envisage communications providers will maintain giant databases of everything their customers do online, incluing email, social networking, web browsing and making VoIP calls. They want providers to process the mass of data to link it to individuals, to make it easier for authorities to access.

Airline passengers will have no right to refuse to go through a full-body search scanner when the devices are introduced at Heathrow airport next week, ministers have confirmed.

The option of having a full-body pat-down search instead, offered to passengers at US airports, will not be available despite warnings from the government's Equality and Human Rights Commission that the scanners, which reveal naked bodies, breach privacy rules under the Human Rights Act.

The gulf between rich and poor has grown wider under Labour than at any time since the Second World War, according to a devastating report to be published today.

It paints a picture of a country shaped by inequality and an enduring system of class, with the children of the poor destined to live much harder and shorter lives than those of the wealthy.

Tony Blair and Jack Straw brushed aside repeated warnings from Government lawyers that they would not have a 'leg to stand on' if Britain invaded Iraq.

Devastating evidence at the Iraq inquiry yesterday revealed that every senior legal adviser at the Foreign Office believed the conflict was in breach of international law.

Taxpayers face a £250,000 security bill to protect Tony Blair from attack at the Iraq Inquiry.

Intelligence officers have picked up 'domestic chatter' suggesting his appearance warrants a high state of alert.

Thousands of anti-war protesters are expected to form a gauntlet of hate for the former Prime Minister on Friday as he attempts to justify Britain's involvement in the controversial conflict.

Explosive evidence showing the Government was 'clearly advised' the Iraq war was illegal will be disclosed at the inquiry into the conflict this week, it was revealed today.

Sir Michael Wood, who was the Foreign Office's chief legal adviser, is expected to reveal he believed the war was unlawful without a second United Nations resolution.

Elizabeth Wilmshurst, a senior FCO lawyer who quit in protest at the invasion, will also say she was not 'a voice in the wilderness' in having doubts about its legality.

The cost of car insurance has soared in the last 12 months and is set to rise again this year, new research revealed today.

Car insurance premiums have risen by an average of 20 per cent in the last year are expected to go up another 15 per cent during 2010.

The body of former United Nations weapons inspector Dr Kelly was found in July 2003 in woods close to his Oxfordshire home, shortly after he was exposed as the source of a BBC news report questioning the Government’s claims that Saddam Hussein had an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, which could be deployed within 45 minutes.

Lord Hutton’s 2004 report, commissioned by Mr Blair, concluded that Dr Kelly killed himself by cutting his wrist with a blunt gardening knife.

Fears of a terrorist attack on Hillary Clinton when she is in Britain next week prompted the UK terror threat level to be raised, according to a leading expert.

Professor Richard Bonney believes the arrival of the U.S. Secretary of State in London next week is why the official level has gone from substantial to severe.

But here’s the really surprising part: it’s planning to ask the right questions.

— What are the implications of the disclosures for the integrity of scientific research?
— Are the terms of reference and scope of the Independent Review announced on 3 December 2009 by UEA adequate (see below)?
— How independent are the other two international data sets?

This is very heartening news for taxpayers, rationalists, and everyone who believes in the integrity of the scientific process.

Police in the UK are planning to use unmanned spy drones, controversially deployed in Afghanistan, for the "routine" monitoring of antisocial motorists, protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers, in a significant expansion of covert state surveillance.

The UK terror threat level is being raised from "substantial" to "severe", Home Secretary Alan Johnson has said.

Based on a cold and a mild scenario next week I have tried to estimate how cold January is likely to look at the end of the month, following December which was the coldest since 1996.

1) Cold weather winning next week:

It turns out that January would be the coldest, based on the Central England Temperature data set, since 1987, with a forecast CET of around 0.94C (compared to the January mean of 4.2C).

2) Milder weather winning next week:

The CET figure would be around 2.05C. This would still mean January would be the coldest since 1987.

Ed Bott, who has forgotten more about Microsoft than many people know, says in a vehement blogpost at ZDNet that:

"Any IT professional who is still allowing IE6 to be used in a corporate setting is guilty of malpractice. Think that judgment is too harsh? Ask the security experts at Google, Adobe, and dozens of other large corporations that are cleaning up the mess from a wave of targeted attacks that allowed source code and confidential data to fall into the hands of well-organized intruders. The entry point? According to Microsoft, it's IE6."

By Bott's measure, we'd have to conclude that there's a lot of malpractice going on in UK government. More than 750,000 workstations in the NHS and 500,000 in the Department of Work and Pensions use exactly that combination.

Plans by Labour to introduce a 'broadband tax' will affect three million households who have no intention of using the internet.

A hike in VAT is ‘inevitable’ after the election as the government grapples with a mounting debt crisis, experts warned yesterday.

The Treasury will have to lift the tax from 17.5 per cent to 20 per cent to raise an extra £12 billion of revenue a year, according to analysts at consultancy Oxford Economics.

The next Government may also have to delay the state retirement age to 68 in order to cope with the biggest debt crisis since the Second World War, the report said.

Labour has created 4,300 new crimes since taking power - including a ban on swimming in the wreck of the Titanic and on the sale of game birds shot on a Sunday.

Gordon Brown has been the worst offender in this unprecedented 'legislative splurge', with his Government creating new offences at the rate of 33 a month.

Stuart Littlewood highlights the BBC’s chronic pro-Israel bias, from allowing untruths about Israel’s onslaught on Gaza in 2008-09 to go unchallenged, to its failure to provide accurate context about the Israeli township of Sderot, to its routine willingness to give disproportionate airtime to Israeli spokesmen and lobbyists.

”[The BBC] gives a disproportionate amount of air-time to pro-Israel figures such as the Israeli ambassador, the regime’s spokesman Mark Regev, the chief rabbi and assorted politicians who wave the flag for Israel...

Companies offering cash for gold jewellery in a recent flurry of TV adverts are paying a fraction of the items' true worth.

The firms, which have latched on to increases in the price of gold, are 'shockingly bad value', according to consumer group Which?

Three pieces of new jewellery purchased by Which? for a total of £729 drew offers from the firms of as little as £38.57 for the lot.

One company refused to return a £399 necklace free of charge, as promised, on the inaccurate pretext that it was not gold at all.

British soldiers in Afghanistan are to be issued with guns inscribed with references to passages from the Bible - risking handing a propaganda victory to Muslim extremists.

The sights for the Sharpshooter assault rifle, bought this week to boost the fight against the Taliban, are etched with the characters JN8:12.

This is a reference to chapter 8 verse 12 in the book of John, which reads: 'When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life".'

Direct flights from Yemen to the UK are to be banned, Gordon Brown announced today.

A new “no fly” list will also be used to ban terror suspects from boarding flights to the UK as part of a package of measures to improve security following last month’s failed Detroit plane bombing, he said.

The list will be complemented by a larger list of people who will be subject to enhanced security checks before boarding a plane to Britain.

Ministers blamed for 'stupendous incompetence' after taxpayers left with huge bills for bungled projects

Today in the Observer, business columnist John Naughton describes in exquisite detail the blinkered pig-ignorance of Business Secretary Peter Mandelson's plan to de-fund basic research in favor of "prioritising research that would contribute to Britain's future prosperity." That is, he's only going divert funding to those small, incremental technologies that have well-understood, overhyped revenue models, leaving out the visionary basic science that has historically accounted for the largest payouts for industry and government. If Mandelson's criteria had controlled spending 50 years ago, no one would have wasted money on go-nowhere egghead flights of fancy -- like the laser.

Billy Bragg is refusing to pay his taxes unless the Government curbs the 'excessive' bonuses at the Royal Bank of Scotland.

The singer-songwriter and political activist is urging the public to withhold tax payments to 'convince the Treasury to act'.

RBS, which is 84 per cent owned by the taxpayer following a string of bailouts, is expected to pay up to £1.5billion in bonuses to its investment bankers.

Bragg, 52, has launched a Facebook campaign in protest and is urging people to write to Alistair Darling about the huge payouts at the part-nationalised bank.

Downing Street officials were ordered to round up ‘obviously sick children’ for a photo call on a hospital visit by Tony Blair during the 2001 General Election.

Labour Party general secretary Peter Watt tells how he prepared for the visit to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn, Norfolk.

‘En route I got a call from one of the PM’s team asking if I could make sure that there were half a dozen “obviously sick” children for Tony to meet,’ he says. ‘I spent several hours scouring hospital wards for poorly looking kids ... and had them in position seconds before Tony turned up.’

Tom James’s heroic decision to attend a comrade's funeral despite his own horrific injuries from Afghanistan inspired the nation.

The 20-year-old fusilier is determined to return to duty with the Army and fight again for his country.

Yet in a heartfelt interview he has described the war against the Taliban as hopeless - and said British troops should be brought home. Gordon Brown, he suggests, is simply afraid to admit defeat.

More than £400million a year is being raised by police and town halls targeting minor 'middle-class' crimes.

They are hitting millions of people with tickets for speeding, parking, litter and even putting out bins on the wrong day.

The 'offenders' are being caught using a range of increasingly advanced surveillance techniques, including spy cameras.

The amount raked in from 'soft crimes' includes £330million in parking fines, £100million from speeding tickets and £12million from spot fines for offences such as over-filling a dustbin so its lid will not close.

Hospitals have been accused of putting patients at risk by agreeing cut-price energy contracts that allow their gas supplies to be cut off with just a few hours' warning.

The pressure group Health Emergency said it was "beyond belief" that St Bartholomew's in central London and 100 other NHS establishments had signed interruptible contracts.

A “SECRET and personal” letter from Jack Straw, the then foreign secretary, to Tony Blair reveals damning doubts at the heart of government about Blair’s plans for Iraq a year before war started.

The letter, a copy of which is published for the first time today, warned the prime minister that the case for military action in Iraq was of dubious legality and would be no guarantee of a better future for Iraq even if Saddam Hussein were removed.

It was sent 10 days before Blair met George Bush, then the US president, in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002. The document clearly implies that Blair was already planning for military action even though he continued to insist to the British public for almost another year that no decision had been made.

The head of the Met Office yesterday insisted that its recent forecasts had been "very good indeed", and blamed the public for not heeding snow warnings.

John Hirst also defended his £200,000-a-year salary as chief executive of the national forecaster, saying that his pay reflected the success of the organisation.

Mr Hirst dismissed complaints that the Met Office failed to alert the public about the extent of this week's snowfall as not "based in fact", and accused people of ignoring its warnings.

Families face record winter gas bills averaging £360 as power companies reap a huge windfall from the big freeze.

The 'big six' energy suppliers have refused to pass on a steep fall in wholesale prices to customers.

They are collecting a profit bonanza of £846million in a single month by charging over the odds to keep homes warm.

I have been sent a very interesting article from the BBC website that gives a list of MOT failure rates across the UK in 2008 for cars first used in 2004. The figures give average MOT failure rates for individual models of cars and small vans, as well as breaking them down by year of manufacture.

VOSA has had an increased amount of pressure placed on them over the last 18 months to release this data so that used car and van buyers can see which cars are statistically more likely to fail an MOT later in life. The VOSA revealed 1,200 pages of detailed statistics on MOT failures following a freedom of information request made by the BBC in July 2008.

Stuart Littlewood takes the British government to task for failing to deliver aid it pledged to beleaguered Gaza, for the lack of any sense of urgency or determination "to actually deliver real help into the living (and dying) hell that our so-called friends in Tel Aviv have created", and for making Britain "appear complicit in prolonging the criminal devastation” of Gaza.

For just as they were about to begin a long slide down the slope, they were beckoned by two police community support officers.

The boys were asked why they were not in school and then quizzed about damage to a nearby fence.

They politely told the officers they knew nothing about the fence, but instead of simply being allowed to carry on playing they were given an official ‘stop and search’ form which they had to sign themselves.

‘Sledging downhill’ was given as the ‘grounds for intervention’ on Monday.

Their parents have now been told the youngsters’ details will now go on a police database.

Father Mike Mogre, 43, said he was ‘absolutely dumbfounded’.

Energy users' watchdog says UK lucky to escape gas shortages

January is on course to be the coldest for 37 years after temperatures in the first week of the month averaged minus 2.1 degrees (28F).

When Karen Slavick-Lennard was kept awake all night due to her husband’s bizarre sleep-talking, she was more amused than annoyed.

Instead of investing in earplugs, Karen recorded Adam’s random, often expletive-filled, rants – and published them online.

The Government has been forced to release highly-sensitive intelligence files which are expected to prove that MI5 agents were involved in torture.

Government lawyers have spent the past four months fighting a desperate legal battle to avoid disclosing the potentially deeply-shameful information.

But today the Foreign Secretary David Miliband announced he had 'a change of heart' and will now make the information available.

"We only forecast warming" - Met Office Souce

A group of Iranian MPs is demanding that the country cut its diplomatic ties with Britain in a sign of the country's deteriorating relations with the West.