All healthy schoolchildren may be vaccinated against swine flu, the Department of Health revealed today, as it issued guidance on how to help pregnant women who catch the infection.

Confirmation that the government is considering extending the vaccination programme came as the Conservatives called for all pupils to be immunised against the H1N1 virus.

Cases of the disease in England increased only marginally this week to 84,000, according to official estimates.

The British mercenary Simon Mann today vowed to testify in court against Sir Mark Thatcher and the oil tycoon Eli Calil, the two men he alleges were co-conspirators in the failed attempt to take over Equatorial Guinea in 2004.

The Bank of England has opted to pump more money into the economy in a clear sign that it does not believe that Britain is out of the woods yet.

Balfour Declaration
Statement issued by the British government in 1917, which is often seen as the initiation of the process leading to the establishment of the State of Israel.
Issuing of the statement is believed to have been motivated just as much by British interests, as by the sympathy for the Zionist cause. At the eve of the World War I Britain needed the support from the World Jewry, which had been neutral, and which represented a large part of the population of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The declaration was drafted with the help of US President, Woodrow Wilson, who was a strong supporter of Zionism.

The Home Secretary has become dependent on something very nasty.

Surveillance powers to counter terrorism will be used to track absent parents who fail to pay child support, the Government said yesterday.

Officials will be allowed access to telephone and e-mail information stored by telephone companies and internet service providers. The powers will also be given to officials in Northern Ireland to help to identify who is dumping hazardous waste.

Ministers last night pulled the plug on funding to bring the care of the sickest babies up to the standard for adults, in a sign of the impact of the credit crunch on the NHS.

"We need the money to continuously bail out banks."

The UK is “skint” and the next Government could be forced to raise VAT beyond 17.5pc as it sets about “refilling the coffers”, Sir Stuart Rose, the executive chairman of Marks & Spencer, has warned.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband on Tuesday criticized Israel’s construction of settlements in the occupied West Bank as “illegal” and said they represented an “obstacle” in the path of peace.

“Settlements are illegal in our view and an obstacle” that impedes efforts which seek to work out a final settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians, Miliband told a press conference at the end of a one-day visit to Jordan and talks with King Abdullah II.

Miliband supported the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with occupied East Jerusalem as its capital and expressed concern over Israeli violations in East Jerusalem, which Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War.

SECRET plans to seize more than £4billion a year from Britain and make its citizens pay taxes direct to Europe emerged last night.

The leaked proposals, seen by the Daily Express, state that Britain should lose the billions of pounds in rebate that was agreed by Margaret Thatcher 25 years ago.

The plans – with a foreword by European Union Commissioner Jose Manuel Barroso – would cost every British family at least £155 a year.

They would also mean Brussels being given the power to dip straight into taxpayers’ pockets.

In today's ruling, Mr Justice Michael Burton decided that: "A belief in man-made climate change, and the alleged resulting moral imperatives, is capable if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations." Under those regulations it is unlawful to discriminate against a person on the grounds of their religious or philosophical beliefs.

More wasted taxpayer money...

Tuesday 3 November 2009
London protesters face jail for standing up for Gaza
by Siân Ruddick
Thousands took part in a mass national demonstration in solidarity with Gaza on 10 January this year in central London....Now 69 people arrested during and after the marches against the Israeli assault on Gaza that began at the end of last year face jail terms of up to five years.Many of the accused were arrested months after the demonstration, some as late as July.One defendant had his house raided at 4.30am. His father accompanied him to court and spoke to Socialist Worker.He said, “I’ve been in this country for 47 years and I’ve never seen anything like that – 25 officers to come and get a boy. The police are treating people like they’re nothing.

A few weeks ago I posted an entry about a meeting in the House of Commons in London. The second meeting will be monday 2nd November.

With great support from a fairtrade coffee business, a full page advert was placed in one of our national newspapers, the Independent, on Saturday 31st October

As winter approaches, households around the UK will be invaded by a sticky and foul-smelling invader.

Harlequin ladybirds first arrived in Britain from Asia in the summer of 2004 and quickly spread across England and into Wales. They have been spotted as far north as the Orkney Islands.

Now scientists say their numbers across the country have dramatically escalated.

The mini-beasts, which push themselves through household cracks as the weather turns cold, emit a yellow chemical when disturbed that stains walls and furnishings.

Called 'reflex blood' it is packed full of chemicals that give off a bad odour.

A grieving father whose son died alongside the most senior soldier to be killed in Afghanistan has called on the Prime Minister to resign.

Peter Hammond said Gordon Brown was either lying or incompetent when he insisted that a shortage of helicopters had not led to British deaths.

Mr Hammond, whose teenage son Josh died alongside Lt Col Rupert Thorneloe, said: 'Brown's either a liar or hasn't a clue about what's going on. He should do the right thing and quit.'

Mass swine flu vaccinations are expected to be extended to all children under the age of 18 by the end of the year.

The youngest soldier to win the George Cross has criticised Gordon Brown for ‘betraying’ the Armed Forces and revealed he now works in a call centre, selling insurance.

‘My medal says I am a hero of the Iraqi conflict, a man of extraordinary valour and strength of character,’ says Chris Finney. ‘But now I work in a call centre. My life has gone from one extreme to the other.’

A top Scotland Yard officer who was personally criticised for failings in the Jean Charles de Menezes shooting has been appointed to the leadership of the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

Commander Moir Stewart will be the IPCC's new director of investigations and a member of its management board.

Flight taxes are being raised to help bail out the banks, Alistair Darling admitted yesterday.

In an extraordinary intervention, the Chancellor said the higher air passenger duty being introduced tomorrow was needed to plug gaps in the national finances.

He made no attempt to justify the move - which will add £340 to the ticket for a family of four flying long haul - on environmental grounds, the official reason for the tax.

The most senior soldier to be killed in Afghanistan foreshadowed his own death in a damning memo about the shortage of helicopters.

Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe told his superiors that British troops would die because they were being forced to make trips by road.

Less than a month later, he was blown up by a roadside bomb.

Peter Mandelson confirmed yesterday that illicit file-sharers could have their Internet connections severed as part of the government’s aims to reduce piracy by 70% in 2 years. TalkTalk, the UK’s second largest ISP, is said to be dismayed at the decision and is now threatening legal action over what it claims is a breach of human rights.

Secret court seizes £3.2bn from elderly... and even forces furious families to pay to access own bank account

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3,000 complaints in first 18 months of new system
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Families made to pay to access own bank account
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Homes of elderly raided in search for documents

The Court of Protection

Threatening: The Court of Protection's anonymous London tower block

A secret court is seizing the assets of thousands of elderly and mentally impaired people and turning control of their lives over to the State - against the wishes of their relatives.

SECRET plans to seize more than £4billion a year from Britain and make its citizens pay taxes direct to Europe emerged last night.

The leaked proposals, seen by the Daily Express, state that Britain should lose the billions of pounds in rebate that was agreed by Margaret Thatcher 25 years ago.

The plans – with a foreword by European Union Commissioner Jose Manuel Barroso – would cost every British family at least £155 a year.

They would also mean Brussels being given the power to dip straight into taxpayers’ pockets.

People who persistently download illegal content will be cut off from the net, Business Secretary Peter Mandelson has announced.

He confirmed that it would become government policy, following months of speculation.

It means persistent pirates will be sent two warning letters before facing disconnection from the network.

ISP TalkTalk said the plans were "ill-conceived" and said it was prepared to challenge measures "in the courts".

"What is being proposed is wrong in principle and won't work in practice," the firm said.

A proposed green tax to cut carbon emissions would lead to an £800 increase in the average annual household energy bill over the next decade

Plans put forward by the Green Fiscal Commission (GFC), a Government-supported think tank, would see the tax on gas and electricity rise every year.

By 2020, the new levy would amount to 80 per cent of the cost of the average gas bill and 30 per cent of the average electricity bill.

The tax forms part of a £150 billion package of proposed measures, including a tripling of fuel duty over the next decade and a tax of up to £3,300 on new cars.

Workers who spend little or no time with children may come under pressure to register with the government's anti-paedophile database, the head of the scheme has said.

There has been mounting public anger over the plan, under which an estimated 11.2million people - including parents - would be forced to register with the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) quango before giving neighbours or friends' children a lift to sports clubs or events under threat of a £5,000 fine and a criminal record.

Doctors and nurses in London were today urged to get themselves vaccinated against swine flu.

Some health chiefs are asking hospital consultants to act as role models amid concerns that many staff will refuse to have the jab.

This is sickening!

More than 500 officers smashed their way into thousands of safety-deposit boxes to retrieve guns, drugs and millions of pounds of criminal assets. At least, that's what was supposed to happen.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1222777/The-raid-rocke...

A secret court is seizing the assets of thousands of elderly and mentally impaired people and turning control of their lives over to the State - against the wishes of their relatives.

The draconian measures are being imposed by the little-known Court of Protection, set up two years ago to act in the interests of people suffering from Alzheimer's or other mental incapacity.

The court hears about 23,000 cases a year - always in private - involving people deemed unable to take their own decisions. Using far-reaching powers, the court has so far taken control of more than £3.2billion of assets.

A serving soldier today accused politicians of abusing the trust of the army and serving soldiers.

Lance Corporal Joe Glenton, who is facing a court martial for refusing to return to Afghanistan, made his comments before an anti-war demonstration in central London.

Lance Corporal Glenton is leading former colleagues, military families and anti-war protesters in the march, calling for British troops to be brought home.

Anti-BNP protesters breached security and broke into BBC Television Centre tonight ahead of Nick Griffin’s controversial appearance on Question Time.

Around 30 people rushed through the main gates of the BBC’s broadcasting headquarters in West London. Ten were dragged out of the car park by police officers but at least 20 more made it inside the building where the leader of the British National Party will take part in the political panel show tonight.

Income tax should rise by 7p in the pound or alternatively the state pension age should be increased to 70 to plug the black hole in the government's finances, a leading economic thinkthank said today.

One of the City's leading figures has suggested that inequality created by bankers' huge salaries is a price worth paying for greater prosperity.

Yeah, just look at how prosperous we all are because of them.

An astonishing £380 a minute will be spent on surveillance in a massive expansion of the Big Brother state.

The £200million-a-year sum will give officials access to details of every internet click made by every citizen - on top of the email and telephone records already available.

It is a 1,700 per cent increase on the cost of the current surveillance regime.

Every cloud has a silver lining.

Homebuyers could be forced to provide detailed information about the amount of money they spend on alcohol each month to qualify for a new mortgage under a new clampdown on reckless lending.

In a sweeping review of the mortgage market published today, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) said lenders needed to be far more rigorous about their financial checks of potential borrowers.

It said lenders should delve deeper into homebuyers' personal spending including the amount they spend on alcohol and tobacco.

Ministers have abandoned a ' backdoor' bid to let police store the DNA of innocent people for up to 12 years.

They had planned to use an obscure Parliamentary rule to change the law, but dropped the idea in the face of overwhelming opposition in the Lords.

Now a full Bill on the subject will be in the next Queen's Speech.

Campaigners hope it will lead to a significant watering-down of the plan.

The government programme aimed at preventing Muslims from being lured into violent extremism is being used to gather intelligence about innocent people who are not suspected of involvement in terrorism, the Guardian has learned.

The information the authorities are trying to find out includes political and religious views, information on mental health, sexual activity and associates, and other sensitive information, according to documents seen by the Guardian. Other documents reveal that the intelligence and information can be stored until the people concerned reach the age of 100.

A couple from Hull have been told that a 4lb (1.8kg) chunk of metal which smashed through the roof of their home may have come from space.

The RAF investigated the unidentified falling object after it landed in Peter and Mair Welton's loft in July.

It was not known where the metal had come from but it seemed likely that it was "space debris", investigators said.

They are notoriously quick to slap tickets on unsuspecting motorists for the most minor infringement.

But when it comes to their own parking it seems ticket attendants are a little more free and easy.

These photos were taken by furious trader Tim Mannering who spotted a parking attendant's council-owned car abandoned at an angle in a disabled bay in Sevenoaks, Kent.

While the majority of motorists would be slapped with an instant £60 fine for illegally parking in a disabled bay without a valid badge, Sevenoaks Council said the inspector was within his rights.

The US is expected to announce a significant surge of up to 45,000 extra troops for Afghanistan after Gordon Brown said that 500 more British troops would be sent to the country.

The Wall Street giant's 5,500 London staff can look forward to record average payouts of around £500,000 each at the end of the year from a global pot of £14?billion, the Standard has learned.

Yep they deserve every fuckin penny.

British people have the worst quality of life in Europe, according to a report which highlights the long hours, bad weather, low life expectancy and high price of many consumer goods.

Britain faces a return to 1970s-style power blackouts and disruption to its electricity supplies within four years, the energy regulator warned yesterday.

Ofgem raised the spectre of a return to the three-day week for British industry as the country scrambles to renovate its crumbling power infrastructure ahead of new EU pollution rules that will force the closure of a quarter of UK power stations by 2015.

A damning High Court judgment into claims of Army abuse in Iraq has concluded that one of the Royal Military Police's (RMP) most senior figures is "a most unsatisfactory witness".

Three High Court judges ruled that RMP Deputy Provost Marshal Colonel Dudley Giles "lacked reliability" when he gave evidence to an inquiry into claims UK soldiers mistreated and murdered prisoners.

A whistleblower has told the BBC he was not surprised when he heard the judges' comments.

"I believe that I was serving in something that was party to covering up quite serious allegations of torture and murder," said the former Royal Military Policeman of his time in the corps.

Several MPs are likely to face queries over cleaning bills. Downing Street sources have indicated that they expect Brown will be asked about his decision to share a cleaner with his brother, Andrew. He paid his brother £6,500. There is no suggestion of financial impropriety but sources expect that Brown could face questions about why he did not pay the cleaner directly and be asked to repay a portion of the sum.

A father’s grief and anger boiled over yesterday when he came face to face with the man he blames for his son’s death.

Tony Blair offered his hand to Peter Brierley during a reception following a service at St Paul’s to commemorate the dead of the Iraq war.

‘Don’t you dare,’ roared Mr Brierley. ‘You have my son’s blood on your hands.’

Three of the former Prime Minister’s bodyguards sprang into action, ushering away a visibly shocked Mr Blair, who had earlier been criticised during the service by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

But 59-year-old Mr Brierley, whose son Shaun died in the run-up to Iraq, was not finished.

He told the Daily Mail: ‘As far as I am concerned that man is a war criminal.'

David Cameron today promised to send more soldiers to Afghanistan in a bid to bring the war to a speedier end.

The Conservatives want to deliver ‘pain for everyone’ in the UK in order to fund a futile face saving exercise in Afghanistan.

The Campbell Collaboration report says that CCTV is now the single most heavily-funded crime prevention measure operating outside the criminal justice system and its rapid growth has come with a huge price tag. It adds that £170m was spent on CCTV schemes in town and city centres, car parks and residential areas between 1999 and 2001 alone. "Over the last decade, CCTV accounted for more than threequarters of total spending on crime prevention by the British Home Office," the report says.

The Lords report said that £500 million was spent in Britain on CCTV in the decade up to 2006, money which in the past would have gone on street lighting or neighbourhood crime prevention initiatives.

Estimates show there were 18,000 new cases of swine flu in England in the last week, up from 14,000 in the previous week and 9,000 the week before that.

The rate of increase is nowhere near the weekly doubling experts feared.

The recent rises in house prices will prove to be a false dawn because of the broader problems facing the British economy, Fitch Ratings said yesterday.

The ratings agency predicted that house prices in Britain would fall by around 30pc in total from the October 2007 peak, indicating that they have a further 17pc left to fall. The current average house price of £162,000 is 13pc lower than that peak, Fitch said.

Rising unemployment, which will peak next year and remain at that level into 2011, as well as a low wage inflation and poor credit availability, will drag on house prices, the report said.

Two thugs who attacked what they thought were a pair of transvestites picked on the wrong men - when their intended victims turned out to be cage fighters on a night out in fancy dress.

More than 5,700 patients died or suffered serious harm as a result of staff errors in the NHS over a six-month period, figures showed today.

Figures from the National Patient Safety Agency showed that 459,500 patient safety incidents and near misses occurred in England between last October and March.

Tony Blair is running up a bill of at least £2million a year for a police protection team bigger than the Prime Minister's, it emerged last night.

The former Premier - who is estimated to have earned £15million on leaving office and hopes to be appointed first president of Europe - has a 16-strong Scotland Yard 'close protection team' which follows him around the world.

Up to 12 more Met officers are responsible for providing 24-hour armed protection at his £3.5million home in Central London - even though he is often overseas in his role as Middle East envoy and pursuing his business interests.

In addition, an undisclosed number of officers from Thames Valley Police guard Mr Blair's £4million country mansion in Buckinghamshire.

A new renewable energy plant that will power 3,000 homes using food scraps, has been announced today.

Waste management group Shanks have brokered an £8million deal to build the facility, which will treat by-products from kitchens, supermarkets and food production in Cumbernauld, North Lanarkshire.

Patricia Morgan, an author who writes about the family and abuse, said: 'This is very Soviet - the elite get entirely different treatment from everybody else.'

About 1,000 children are taking part in a study testing two swine flu vaccines ahead of a UK vaccination programme.

Information about their use in children is limited and the study will allow experts to monitor immune reactions and any side effects.

The trial, which began on Saturday, will involve children aged between six months and 12 in Oxford, Southampton, London, Bristol and Devon.

The Ministry of Defence was accused today by three high court judges of "lamentable" behaviour and "serious breaches" of its duty of candour over the failure to disclose crucial information about allegations of murder and ill-treatment by British soldiers in Iraq in 2004.

In a withering attack, they damned the ministry's chief witness – the deputy head of the military police – as lacking all credibility. They described his evidence to the court as "seriously flawed".

The MoD's failure to conduct a proper investigation of its own into the allegations has forced Bob Ainsworth, the defence secretary, to hold an independent public inquiry, the high court heard.

Britain will have to stop building airports, switch to electric cars and shut down coal-fired power stations as part of a 'planned recession' to avoid dangerous climate change.

At the moment the UK is committed to cutting greenhouse gases by a third by 2020.

However a new report from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research said these targets are inadequate to keep global warming below two degrees C above pre-industrial levels.

The report says the only way to avoid going beyond the dangerous tipping point is to double the target to 70 per cent by 2020.

This would mean reducing the size of the economy through a "planned recession".

Would the last person out of the country please turn off the lights.

Nationwide Building Society said that house prices rose by 0.9pc in September and are back to levels seen 12 months ago. But property experts warn that the recovery may prove to be short-lived.

Seema Shah, economist from Capital Economics, said that the upturn will not continue for much longer and that falls in house values will be inevitable.

A British government minister asked California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday to shut down a U.S. website that allows men to rate prostitutes, including many working in London.

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The Governator will fix it!

Gordon Brown' s political fightback was in tatters today after he lost his cool during a media blitz aimed at putting to bed doubts over his leadership.

The Prime Minister became furious as he conducted a string of interviews, claiming he was not being allowed to talk about policy or give full answers to questions.

At one point, Mr Brown tried to walk off at the end of a fiery exchange with Sky's political editor Adam Boulton.

But the move descended into farce because he was still linked up to a microphone and had not realised he was supposed to stay put for the next interview.

Another schoolgirl at Blue Coat Church of England School needed an ambulance after having the cervical cancer jab, it emerged last night.

The 15-year-old pupil became cold, weak and dizzy less than an hour after the vaccine and only a short time after schoolmate Natalie Morton became fatally ill.

Her symptoms were so severe that paramedics did emergency blood tests and an ECG scan in a back room at the school, the girl's mother said.

The teenager refused to go to hospital because of a phobia of ambulances so her mother collected her from school on Monday.

The girl remains ill with chronic chest and back aches and loss of appetite.

Children as young as six months are being used in tests beginning today on two “fast tracked” and unlicensed flu vaccines containing ingredients that are known to cause neurological disorders and nerve diseases.

Over the next two weeks 1,000 children aged six months to 12 years are being recruited in Oxford, Bristol, Southampton, Exeter and London, to determine which vaccine “has fewer side-effects”, reports the BBC.

The government's welfare reform bill, due to return to the House of Lords in October, will give Jobcentre staff unprecedented new powers that are intrusive, potentially coercive and take the benefit system into worrying new directions. As the bill stands, benefit claimants who refuse to answer probing questions about their drug or alcohol use or attend a substance misuse "assessment" could see their benefit withdrawn for up to 26 weeks and potentially have Jobcentre staff "impose" one or more drug tests to determine whether there is or has been any drug in their body.

British lawyers for several Palestinian families are seeking to obtain an international arrest warrant for the Israeli defence minister, Ehud Barak, in a London court over alleged war crimes in the Gaza Strip.

Barak, who was in overall charge of Israeli's offensive in Gaza earlier this year, is due to speak at a fringe meeting at the Labour party conference in Brighton today.

A 14-year-old schoolgirl has died shortly after being given the new cervical cancer vaccine.

The teenager was one of four classmates who suffered side-effects at a school in Coventry after receiving the jab as part of the national immunisation programme.

The other girls suffered dizziness and nausea after being injected with Cervarix, which guards against the human papilloma virus (HPV), but did not need hospital treatment. The batch of vaccine has since been quarantined and the Medicines and Health care products Regulatory Agency is investigating.