News roundup

What a busy day, so here are some snippets:

1. British Public Sector Debt 'To Hit £180bn' - Sky report that:

"British public sector debt is set to balloon to a colossal £180bn as the recession worsens in the next financial year, experts have warned.

The prediction by a leading independent forecasting body suggests the Government will have to borrow some 12.6% of GDP in 2009/10 to counter a rapid surge in unemployment, a sharp increase in spending and a plunge in tax receipts.

Borrowing nearly double the amount taken from the public funds this financial year would leave the Government a miniscule amount for further stimulus efforts, economists from Ernst and Young's ITEM Club said.

"The public finances are continuing to deteriorate at an alarming rate and as the economy continues to shrink, the outlook is bleak," said the ITEM Club."

Can you say the word "bankrupt"?


2. The BBC report that Labour

"Employment minister Tony McNulty has said he did nothing wrong by claiming second-home expenses on a London house where his parents live.

He received allowances worth thousands of pounds for the property in his Harrow East constituency, which is eight miles from his main home."

Are they all at it?


3. The BBC report

"The UK is planning an updated anti-terror strategy aimed at tackling the immediate threat of terrorism and the longer-term causes of extremism.

The Home Office says the proposal would give the UK the most comprehensive counter-terror strategy in the world. "

A Gordon Brown "junta" with a new "anti-terror strategy", now why does that instill me with a sense of fear rather than reassurance?


4. Technology to the rescue as CTV reports that:

"A Concordia university student is being credited with foiling a troubled British teen's plot to firebomb his high school.

J.P. Neufeld, a music student, had logged onto an online chat forum over breakfast Tuesday when he spotted the threat to burn down Attleborough High School in Norfolk.

He took it seriously and immediately called local police using his Internet phone service after doing a quick Web search to find the phone number.

Within half an hour, Norfolk Constabulary officers had seized a 16-year-old at the doors of the school. The teen was carrying a knife, matches and a canister of fuel. Police later searched the boy's home and confiscated his computer.

The teen, identified only as T.B., was arrested on suspicion of threats to commit criminal damage and possession of an offensive weapon. He's in custody under the U.K.'s Mental Health Act. "

5. The Times reports that:

"WHEN the White House announced last week that President Barack Obama will be returning to the nation’s television screens on Tuesday for a prime-time press conference that will postpone the latest episode of American Idol - the talent show watched by 25m viewers - fans of the programme were quick to respond.

“Stop, please stop, Mr O, we can’t take much more,” one angry viewer wrote on an Idol-related website. “Not again!” complained another. “It’s the same speech he’s been giving for the past year.”

There were dark mutterings that by commandeering evening programming only a few days after he appeared on Jay Leno’s popular late-night chat show, Obama was “just like Fidel Castro [of Cuba] and Hugo Chavez [of Venezuela] - always on camera, always giving speeches and lecturing”.

The barbed response to the prospect of yet another mass-media dose of Obama’s economic prescriptions underlined the dangers the president is facing as he struggles to sell his recovery efforts to a country seething with anger and anxiety over the costs, effectiveness and potential abuse of the government’s trillion-dollar bailout programme. "

Are the masses realising that President Obama may not be the answer to everything?



6. The Times reports the totally surprising news that: "Minister in charge of offshore clampdown ran tax haven firm"

Apparently:

"THE government minister in charge of stamping out corporate tax avoidance has himself set up a business in the tax haven of Bermuda. Lord Myners, already under fire for approving Sir Fred Goodwin’s massive pension from Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), was part-time chairman of an offshore company which avoided more than £100m a year in taxes.

Details of Myners’s involvement in Aspen Insurance Holdings (AIH) have emerged as Gordon Brown seeks to win the backing of heads of government to prise open tax havens at a meeting of the G20 in London on April 2.

Myners, who earned nearly £200,000 from AIH in one year, is also facing questions over share options he accrued during five years as chairman of the Bermuda-based company. Accounts for AIH show that at the end of 2007 Myners held 318,338 share options. On Friday the shares, which are listed on the New York Stock Exchange, closed at $21.64, which would value that stake at £4.8m.

Myners, financial services secretary to the Treasury and former chairman of the Guardian Media Group, was awarded the majority of the share options at an exercise price of $16.20 a share in August 2003, a year after he helped to start the company.

When he stepped down in May 2007 he was given until August 2008 to buy the shares. If he had bought the shares between January and August last year, when Aspen’s share price fluctuated between $22.59 and $29.90, he would have made a profit of between £1m and £2.1m.

When approached by The Sunday Times on Friday morning, Myners declined to say whether he had exercised the shares. On Saturday afternoon a Treasury spokesman said that Myners had not exercised the share options and owned no stock in Aspen. "

Are they all at it?


7. The Telegraph reports the unsurprising news that: "Labour spends 'more on rail consultants than trains' " Apparently:

"Outside advisers on the new intercity train earned £6.7 million from the Department for Transport between late 2005 and December 2007, the Government said in a parliamentary written reply.

This figure soared to £14.94 million in the period between December 2007 and January this year.

More than £2 million was spent on financial advice alone as the Government decided on which consortium was to provide a replacement to the ageing intercity fleet.

The final decision was delayed and then the Government ran into criticism over handing the £7.5 billion contract to a Japanese-led consortium at a time when unemployment in Britain was rising.

Theresa Villiers, the Tories' transport spokesman, condemned the Government for spending millions of pounds on outside advice during the current economic climate.

"I was staggered to learn that Labour has chosen to double the money spent on consultants for the IEP during such a serious economic recession," she said. "

How do we rid ourselves of this incompetent Labour rabble that are spending our money on fripperies and building a client state to ensure that the UK "enjoys" a perpetual Labour government?