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G20 finance ministers begin their meeting in Scotland, but are faced with divisions over stimulus packages and climate change.
The head of the body drafting new rules for MPs' expenses says he may not implement all the proposed reforms.
Two British ticketholders have become the country's biggest lottery winners after scooping £45570835.50 each in the latest EuroMillions draw.
Two British ticketholders have each won a record £45.5m in the EuroMillions draw, lottery operator Camelot says.
Police are set to give more details about the death of a mother in a blaze believed to have been started by a firework.
The UK's oldest public museum, the Ashmolean, reopens after a £61m redevelopment.
The Queen is due to attend the Royal Festival of Remembrance to commemorate those who gave their lives for their country.
In the 60s, the Isle of Man recast itself as an offshore tax haven. How will the Manx 'nation' react now that status is under threat?
Of all the ways to think about the Isle of Man - tax haven, motorbike race course, former birching capital of western Europe - the most difficult for the outsider to grasp and accept is the description "nation". How big is the nation? Thirty-three miles long and a maximum of 13 miles wide. What language does the nation speak? Mainly scouse and Mancunian, mixed in with some Scots and Irish. Where does the nation shop? At Marks & Spencer, Thorntons, Boots, Tesco and Next. What does the nation watch? Strictly Come Dancing, Coronation Street, and (coming soon, for one night only) Ken Dodd at the Gaiety. What colour are the 80,000 nationals? Overwhelmingly white. And where do most of them come from? At the latest count, 51% were born elsewhere, mainly in the country 60 miles across the sea to the east. On a very fine day, you can see the Cumbrian mountains from the promenade at Douglas, the nation's capital.
The same promenade has a big war memorial packed with the names of men who died fighting in the British cause and boarding houses (most of them now converted into flats) with names such as Kenilworth, Cunard, Marlborough and Savoy. Outside one of the prom's few remaining hotels, a bronze figure sits on a bench. This is Sir Norman Wisdom, probably the nation's most famous settler, advertising to the passerby that he can come inside and eat Sir Norman's Cottage Pie in Sir Norman's Brasserie. (The real Sir Norman sits in a nursing home elsewhere on the island, a 94-year-old sufferer from dementia, unable to recognise himself in his own films.) The sheer, familiar Britishness of all this is what makes the idea of the Isle of Man's separate nationhood so hard to understand.
Differences can, of course, be established. The nation has its own flag, its own anthem, its own parliament, its own £5, £10 and £20 notes, and a language (expensively revived but rarely heard) different to English. It might even have its own national dish: chips, cheese and gravy. But often greater differences, assuming there is some kind of British norm, occur between the nations that make up the UK. Douglas is much more like Llandudno than, say, Llandudno is like Penzance. The Isle of Man's difference is not so much cultural or social as financial. It stems from a history of mainland neglect and beneficence that has left it outside the UK (and the EU) as that hard-to-understand legal entity, a crown dependency, with the well-known consequence that it can make its own laws and set its own tax rates. These are very low. Corporation tax is zero for most businesses and 10% for banks; income tax has a top rate of 18% and a cap on the total amount that means no individual, no matter how high his earnings, can pay more than £100,000 a year; there is no stamp duty, death duty, or tax on capital gains and inheritance.
As an economic strategy for the wellbeing of 80,000 people, it has until now been an outstanding success. In the mid-1980s, the island's per capita GDP was about half the UK figure; the most recent statistics, for 2007-08, show it at least a fifth more. "A mini Celtic tiger," is how someone described this progress to me, though unlike in Ireland the recession has still to happen; the estimate for economic growth in the current financial year is 2.5%, while house prices, to judge from estate agents' windows, aren't far behind those in the south-east of England. Then last month London delivered a blow that had been coming ever since Alistair Darling told a Commons select committee in the early days of the financial crash that the UK Treasury needed to take "a long hard look at the relationship with the Isle of Man, a tax haven sitting in the middle of the Irish Sea".
Darling's target was the agreement in which the two governments share the revenue from VAT and duties on gambling and alcohol, which in various forms and to various formulae has survived for hundreds of years. The details are arcane - you can spend half a day trying unsuccessfully to unravel them - but the upshot of the UK Treasury's long hard look will be a steep reduction in the Isle of Man's share from the pot. This year the agreement contributed £339m to the Manx government; it will shrink by at least £50m next year and by at least £100m in the years thereafter. Because the agreement has supplied 60% of the Manx government's revenue, the cuts present the island with the biggest crisis most people can remember, and also reveal a truth. The Isle of Man owes its excellent schools, hospitals, infrastructure, transport and generous welfare provision (the basic state pension, for example, is 50% higher than in the UK) to payments gathered mainly by HM Revenue and Customs. Enemies of tax havens such as the Tax Justice Network (TJN) describe the payments as a subsidy from the UK taxpayer, which will continue even after the cuts. Manx people hotly dispute that. But however you describe it, the fact, surely, is that the Isle of Man's lavish public spending has not come about by charging 0% corporation tax and setting an income tax cap on billionaires at £100,000 a year.
I went to see the chief minister, Tony Brown, known as "The Chief" or "Chiefy" to his staff, and the owner of a hardware store in Castletown - the island has many treats for the British nostalgist but one of the most pleasant is the sight of small shops selling useful things. We met in his wood-panelled government office, but it was easy to imagine him behind a counter, as a cheery figure selling electric irons and light bulbs and joshing customers in his Liverpool accent ("Manx scouse", he said). I wondered why his government was so shy of "tax haven" as a description (all the official literature makes a big point of denying it) when it was so obviously a place to go to avoid paying taxes. The quarrel seemed to be with what the phrase connoted - money laundering, opaque banking techniques, drugs money - when the Isle of Man had, as Brown said, "actively engaged with the international community" to tackle these problems and was now widely recognised to have a financial system at least as transparent as most of the big tax jurisdictions.
"Still, your attraction is that you have very low taxes."
"Very low? I wouldn't say very low. I'd say low - like the City of London has low rates compared to Europe."
This is a favourite island argument - the pot-calling-the-kettle-black rebuttal - in which the Isle of Man features as an easy scapegoat for much bigger sins committed elsewhere. And who can't see the merit in it? This week an index produced by the TJN, an organisation usually reviled among the Manx population, showed that the island was placed 24th out of 60 jurisdictions ranked for their lack of transparency in relationship to their volume of financial activity. The American state of Delaware came first, followed by Luxembourg, Switzerland, the Cayman Islands and the City of London, so what did those goody two-shoes, Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, have to say about that?
Generally, inside and outside the chief minister's office, the feeling has grown that the UK is "picking on" the Manx. The minister for agriculture, fisheries and forests, Phil Gawne, told me that London mustn't go too far, otherwise a more militantly nationalist breed of politician may come to power in Douglas, and in unspecified ways make the relationship much more fraught. As Gawne went to jail as a young man for politically motivated arson, it can be assumed that he knows what he's talking about - but the irony is that he was protesting against incomers attracted by the same low tax rates that he sees now as his nation's salvation.
Neither are the cuts the only cause of resentment. The Manx government pays the UK a few million every year for defence and diplomatic representation abroad. It also pays the international rate in fees - £9,000 as opposed to £3,000 - for students at UK universities, while the NHS charges for any patients referred from the island for treatment in UK hospitals. Next year, however, the UK is ending its reciprocal healthcare arrangements, which means that Manx residents who fall ill or get injured in the UK will be charged as soon as they leave A&E and take up a bed in a ward. Another local newspaper, the Manx Independent, discovered that even for countries far beyond the EU - Moldova, Kyrgyzstan - similar bilateral agreements would remain untouched.
One feels sympathy. So much about the Isle of Man seems sympathetic to ordinary aspiration and, if you like, ordinary people. Unlike those snotty crown dependencies in the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man is open to settlement by the poor as well as the rich (though workers need permits and must work for five years before entitlement to social security). But it's worth remembering how we reached this state. The Isle of Man has always set its own tax rates, even after the crown bought the rights to the island's revenues, though not the island itself, from the Duke of Atholl in 1765. Tax evasion in the form of smuggling was a staple of the island economy around this time, and then, after the steamships and tourists began to arrive in the 19th century, it largely disappeared as a way of making money. Tourism transformed the island, but it provided unsteady, seasonal employment - even in the postwar era Manx people migrated to East Anglia every autumn to crop sugar beet - and by 1960 the number of holidaymakers was shrinking year by year.
It was a UK governor, in the days before the UK surrendered its power, who identified the solution as low taxation. In 1960, Sir Ronald Garvey persuaded the island's parliament to abolish surtax at a time when marginal rates in the UK were rising. The aim was to attract a richer kind of islander, officially known as New Residents and unofficially still remembered as the "When-I's", as in "When I was in Mombasa," because so many were retired from imperial duties. They gave their bungalows African names and talked about "my accountant" at cocktail parties. North Country businessmen and a scattering of writers and celebrities also arrived: George MacDonald Fraser, Mollie Sugden, Ronnie Ronalde ("If I were a blackbird I'd whistle and sing"), and of course Norman Wisdom. Financial capitalism had still to be globalised; the idea that institutions could migrate as easily as people had to wait until new technology developed in the 1980s. But the idea that Isle of Man's economic future would be founded on people and businesses escaping UK income tax had London origins, and until the great crash happened London seemed perfectly content.
Gawne pointed out to me that although the island made most of its money from alchemical companies making money out of money, the government itself was left-of-centre in its commitment to public services and redistributive policies. It was important that the cuts and the rises in tax, which will certainly come, did not bear down upon the weak. Does it remind you of anywhere else?
Miscarriages of justice are likely to result from proposals to reduce legal aid fees to barristers, the Bar Council's chairman warns.
Plans to give millions of cohabiting couples better inheritance rights are coming in for criticism.
The man appointed to oversee the future expenses regime for MPs will not necessarily implement the proposals published by Sir Christopher Kelly, but will instead conduct a wide-ranging review of his own.
The three leaders of the main political parties and Kelly, chairman of the committee on standards in public life, had this week said the proposals should be implemented as a whole. But Sir Ian Kennedy, appointed this week as chairman of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa), believes he has the statutory powers to look at many of the essential issues again. MPs' pay is currently set by the Senior Salaries Review Body, but Kennedy can see a case for looking at MPs' allowances, pensions and pay as a whole.
Ipsa was set up by parliament in the middle of the expenses scandal, and is due to take over responsibility for administering expenses as well as discipline.
Kennedy aims to have his proposals ready by the time of the new parliament, on the assumption of a spring general election. He has pointed out that lawyers may yet seek a judicial review of some of Kelly's central proposals, including his recommendation that spouses should not be employed by MPs. He also fears that there may be legal challenges to debarring MPs from making capital gains on any taxpayer-funded second home.
It is not clear if Kennedy has consulted widely on his decision to have a review, but he is under a statutory duty to consult. His approach is bound to lead to accusations that MPs are being given a fresh opportunity to water down the Kelly proposals.
Kennedy became Ipsa's chairman at the beginning of the week, following a rapid selection process. He hopes to appoint the other members of his board by the end of next month.
The Daily Telegraph today claims Kennedy, a former Reith lecturer, is a close friend of Tony Blair's former No 10 spokesman Alastair Campbell, even acting as his "phone a friend" in a celebrity edition of the quiz show Who Wants to be a Millionaire. But there is no suggestion that Campbell was involved in his appointment and there will be many in the Labour government that will not welcome Kennedy's belief that he is entitled to reopen the issues that the Labour frontbench hoped had been settled by Kelly.
Kennedy has not yet met Kelly to discuss his proposals, but Kelly is likely to question why his blueprint should be radically reshaped. Kelly regarded his report as definitive after taking evidence from 732 individuals and organisations.
On Wednesday at prime minister's questions, the Tory leader David Cameron said: "Is it not important that today we accept in full Sir Christopher Kelly's report?"
Gordon Brown replied: "We should accept the Kelly recommendations and make sure that they are implemented as quickly as possible." The Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg, said: "We must implement the report in full, without further delay."
Kennedy, believes MPs are having to accept massive constitutional change. But he is clear that what his body decides will prevail over parliament.
Former Strictly Come Dancing judge Arlene Phillips is to become a director of Sadler's Wells dance theatre.
Doctors are calling for human tissue to be routinely kept for genetic testing whenever young people die without explanation.
DAVID Cameron has been accused of "double standards" after he agreed he would allow a referendum that could lead to more powers for the Welsh Assembly.
THREE former defence chiefs have attacked Gordon Brown's commitment to the war in Afghanistan, accusing the Prime Minister of dithering and failing British troops.
THE battle between Lloyds Banking Group and its charitable arm looks set to continue after "crisis talks" aimed at resolving a bitter funding dispute broke down yeste
A HIGHLAND army officer who fought in the doomed Battle of Arnhem during the Second World War will be commemorated in a song performed by one the UK's top indie bands on
THE financial crisis is likely to add up to £1.5 trillion to the national debt, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has said. The surge comes from the huge liabi
A MOTHER of two who bled to death hours after breast surgery would have had the best chance of survival if a consultant surgeon had agreed to leave his home to attend to her,
A CONSERVATIVE MP who said she would stand down from parliament after being caught up in the expenses row has changed her mind.
A WOMAN who killed her unborn twins by injecting herself with drugs to induce their birth was jailed yesterday after going on the run.
BLACK and minority ethnic (BME) teachers face an "endemic culture of institutional racism" in schools, research has found.
THE two sides in the postal dispute have pledged to achieve a "radically different" culture in industrial and employee relations under a deal that ended the threat of
A motheroffive died saving her "bullied" son from a house blaze on Bonfire Night neighbours have said.
• Train service taken over from next Saturday
• Public ownership will last for at least 18 months
Back in the day, British Rail was synonymous with soggy sandwiches, late trains - or no services at all. Deserved or not, it was a reputation that became immortalised in the comedy, the Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin - every morning, his train to Waterloo was reliably late, but always for a different reason.
From next Saturday, though, the government will get a chance to make some amends, when it returns as a long distance train operator for the first time since privatisation in the mid-90s.
Passengers on the prestigious London to Edinburgh route have been promised punctuality, good food and clean loos.
The Department for Transport has seized control of the failed £1.4bn National Express East Coast franchise. Apart from a stint running the Southeastern service earlier in the decade, the government has ducked complaints over fare hikes and poor catering by letting the private sector take the flak - and the profits.
That will change when the DfT launches the frugally titled East Coast franchise with the aim of keeping the route under public ownership for at least 18 months while funnelling the proceeds into its coffers.
Elaine Holt, the head of East Coast, said the 18 million annual passengers will soon notice improvements to facilities and complimentary first class meals. "There are areas where customers are not satisfied when they should be, like toilets. There is a whole raft of things that can be improved."
Holt said the free food for premium passengers - "they just get a biscuit really" - will be beefed up, although the upgrade might extend to pastries and peanuts only. The trolley for passengers in standard class will also get a makeover, with Holt pledging that any changes will reflect a specially commissioned passenger survey. "Customers told us they want different things," she said.
Punctuality is already strong, with nearly 90%services on time but Holt pledged further improvements.
With the reassuring tag line of "business as usual" the most noticeable changes will be cosmetic, with the National Express logo excised from all trains and station signs by the end of next month.
The DfT is banishing the name of a company that defaulted on its contract just two years into a decade-long deal after it said it could not afford franchise payments, leaving ministers with a £1.4bn hole in the rail budget.
It was the second time that the route had been handed back in three years, following in the footsteps of GNER in 2006, prompting calls from Labour backbenchers and trade unions to scrap the rail franchise system.
Next week's launch of East Coast has given some hope to privatisation's critics but Holt warned rail nostalgists not to expect a return to the days of BR. She won plaudits at the private train operator FirstGroup and pledged a commercially aggressive approach in her new role.
"I don't see this as a step backwards into some sort of BR or public sector-type environment," she said. "It is a commercial company that happens to have the government as its owner."
BR was replaced by the ill-fated Railtrack when the network was sold off, while train franchises were carved out of individual routes such as east coast and auctioned to private operators.
Railtrack's chaotic demise in 2002 is seen by many within the industry as an indictment of privatisation, amid fierce criticism of the steep fare increases regularly imposed by franchise owners.
Holt admitted that East Coast will impose the above-inflation fare hikes that National Express was planning for January, even though the new business will not have to meet the franchise payment of around £180m next year that helped derail the route's former owner. "I am not going to sit here and say that just because we are a government-owned company we are going to slash fares."
She added: "Like any train company, we will be making the equivalent of premium payments to the DfT. They will not be in the order of £180m per year. If we were to make the same payments as National Express the franchise would be in trouble again next year."
East Coast is expected to increase the price of some advance and off-peak fares that are not protected by price caps, drawing criticism from green groups who see the East Coast transfer as a chance for the government to wean long-distance travellers away from planes and cars.
Cat Hobbs, of the Campaign for Better Transport, said: "We want the government to make sure it runs the franchise in passengers' interests and does not go ahead with fare increases. We also want the DfT to keep the franchise in the public sector beyond 2011 as a benchmark to see whether other franchises provide value for money."
The transport secretary, Lord Adonis, is determined to strip National Express of its remaining franchises, the Essex commuter services National Express East Anglia and c2c.
The RMT, the largest rail union, believes all 16 major franchises should be brought under public ownership. "The failure of the east coast franchise for the second time should kill off the rail privatisation policy which has been an expensive disaster," said Bob Crow, RMT general secretary.
Of more than 5,000 complaints against squad, less than 0.18% were upheld
Scotland Yard faced calls for an "ethical audit" of all officers in its controversial riot squad tonight after figures revealed that they had received more than 5,000 complaint allegations, mostly for "oppressive behaviour".
Details of all allegations lodged against the Metropolitan police territorial support group (TSG) over the last four years reveal that only nine - less than 0.18% - were "substantiated" after an investigation by the force's complaints department.
The figures, released under the Freedom of Information Act, were described as evidence of a "culture of impunity" that makes it almost impossible for members of the public to lodge successful complaints against the Met's 730 TSG officers.
The TSG is a specialist squad that responds to outbreaks of disorder anywhere in the capital. It is under investigation for the most high-profile cases of alleged brutality at the G20 protests, including the death of Ian Tomlinson.
The unit came under renewed criticism this week after one of its officers was identified as a member of a team implicated in a "serious, gratuitous and prolonged" attack on a Muslim man.
PC Mark Jones, 42, was one of six officers involved in an attack on Babar Ahmad, 34, who was punched, kicked, stamped on and strangled during his arrest at his home in Tooting, south London. The Met paid Ahmad £60,000 in damages earlier this year and accepted its officers were responsible for the attack, during which Ahmad, a terror suspect, was forced into the Muslim prayer position and told: "Where is your God now? Pray to him."
A former Royal Marine, Jones has had 31 complaints lodged against him since 1993. Twenty-six were assault allegations, most of which had been lodged by black or Asian men, but none were substantiated.
They included a complaint from a man detained in a drug search in 2007 who, Ahmad's lawyers told the high court, accused Jones of forcing him into a TSG van, placing him on his knees, grabbing his neck and spraying CS gas into his face.
Despite being identified in court by Ahmad's lawyers as the officer who placed him in an "extremely dangerous" neck-hold, Jones faced no disciplinary action and returned to duty on Wednesday after being cleared in another case of alleged racially aggravated assault.
The TSG has been the subject of 5,241 allegations since August 2005. They include 376 allegations of discrimination and 977 complaints of "incivility". More than 1,100 of the allegations concerned what members of the public said were "failures in duty". However by far the largest number of complaints - 2,280 - were categorised as "oppressive behaviour".
Just over 2,000 (38%) were "unsubstantiated" by the Met's department for professional standards, while the rest were resolved at the police station, dismissed, discontinued or dealt with in other ways.
Senior Met officers say the TSG's work, involving drug raids and demonstrations, means they are more likely to face complaints than other officers.
Jenny Jones, a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA), the force's watchdog, said tonight the figures revealed TSG officers were "practically immune" from criticism in the force.
"The fact that less than 0.2% of complaints about the TSG succeed, suggest its officers are protected within the Met to the extent that there is a culture of impunity for their actions," she said. "It's time for an ethical audit and a thorough overhaul. They desperately need better training, rotation of personnel, and reduction of duties to make them fit for purpose."
Fiona Murphy, Ahmad's solicitor, said: "The figures either mean thousands of members of the public are taking the trouble to make fabricated complaints against the TSG, which seems unlikely, or there is a systemic problem with the complaints procedure that means it is virtually impossible for officers in the unit to be held to account for their actions."
A high court order prevented identification of Jones as an officer involved in the Ahmad assault until the end of his separate criminal trial. On Tuesday jurors at Kingston crown court cleared Jones of racially and physically attacking two 16-year-old boys in a police van in June 2007.
The teenagers said they were racially taunted in front a team of TSG officers who had stopped them near Edgware Road, west London. One of the teenagers said Jones punched him several times in the head and placed him in a neck-hold while calling him an "Arab cunt".
Five other TSG officers who were in the van at the time were also cleared of charges of misfeasance in public office. A seventh, PC Amechi Onwugbonu, acted as a whistleblower during the trial, saying he saw Jones attacking the boys.
The jurors were not told about Jones's involvement in the Ahmad assault in 2003, which his lawyers said bore "striking similarities" to the teenagers' allegations. An IT support worker, Ahmad was assaulted at his home and then in a TSG van, where Jones is alleged to have put him in the neck hold. One officer said: "You'll remember this day for the rest of your life."
Another officer grabbed his testicles and he was also deliberately wrenched by his handcuffs - a technique known to cause intense pain.
• EU council urged to look at cumulative effect
• Campaigners fear controls will not be tough enough
Two-year-old children are being exposed to dangerous levels of hormone-disrupting chemicals in domestic products such as rubber clogs and sun creams, according to an EU investigation being studied by the government.
The 327-page report says that while risks from "anti-androgen" and "oestrogen-like" substances in individual items have been recognised, the cumulative impact of such chemicals, particularly on boys, is being ignored.
The EU's environment council of ministers is due to agree on a regulatory approach to the use of so-called "gender-bender" compounds before Christmas. On Monday, EU officials will try to work out a strategy for creating risk assessments of products causing concerns. Environmental campaigners fear controls will favour industry and not be sufficiently robust.
Phthalates, one of the main anti-androgen chemicals, which are used as softeners in soap, rubber shoes, bath mats and soft toys, have been blamed for blocking the action of testosterone in the womb and are alleged to cause low sperm counts, high rates of testicular cancer and malformations of the sexual organs.
Research has suggested that male foetuses around 8-12 weeks after conception can be effectively demasculinised by exposure to such chemicals.
The report presented to the environment council and passed on to the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) comes from Denmark, which has experienced a significant increase in the rates of testicular cancer.
The warnings are backed by the Chem (Chemicals Health and Environment Monitoring) Trust, a UK charity which has taken over campaigning work on toxic chemicals from the WWF (World Wildlife Fund).
The Danish study, Survey and Health Assessment of the exposure of two-year-olds to chemical substances in consumer products, concludes: "A few exposures to a high content of an endocrine-disruptor, such as that of [the phthalate] DBP in rubber clogs may result in a critical risk for the two-year-old.
"...The amounts that two-year-olds absorb from the [preservative] parabens propylparaben and butylparaben can constitute a risk for oestrogen-like disruptions of the endocrine system. This contribution originates predominantly from cosmetic products such as oil-based creams, moisturising creams, lotions and sunscreen.
"Not only is there a need to reduce exposure to anti-androgens and oestrogen-like substances from food products, indoor air and dust, but also to reduce exposure to [domestic] products, as these contribute to both indoor air and dust and to direct exposure.
"There is also a need to reduce possible contributions from other sources, such as propyl-, butyl- and isobutyl paraben in cosmetics, and phthalates in footwear (such as light-weight sandals and rubber boots)."
Gwynne Lyons, director of Chem Trust, said she feared the recommendations would not be heeded. "There are worries that Poland and the UK are more focused on protecting industry. Without public pressure, these countries will only agree to wording that sounds good, but actually falls short of ensuring that regulation is based on total exposure to, for example, so-called gender-bender chemicals.
"Both the public and wildlife are inadequately protected from harm, as regulation is based on looking at exposure to each substance in isolation, and yet it is now proven beyond doubt that hormone disrupting chemicals can act together to cause effects even when each by itself would not."
Defra said: "Public safety is the government's priority, and we will be reading the Danish report with interest. The potential for "cocktail effects" from different chemicals should not be ignored, and we support the European Union's Environment Council's upcoming work on regulating combinations of chemicals."
The government's Interdepartmental Group on Health Risks from Chemicals has recently published a report offering a framework for assessing the risks of mixtures to human health. It suggested that cumulative risk assessment should not be the only way of approaching "cocktail effects".
• Phthalates are used in the manufacture of rubber clogs, rubber boots, soap packaging, products made from PVC, bath mats and soft toys. They are also found in food products as a result of environmental pollution, according to the Danish study.
• Oestrogen-like substances, including chemicals known as parabens, occur in cosmetics, sun creams and moisturising lotions.
• Pesticides, such as DDT, dioxins and PCBs, are also known hormone-disruptors.
Mary Fox a motheroffive died saving her "bullied" son from a house blaze in Cornwall on Bonfire Night neighbours have said.
• Praise for 'swashbuckling, irresistible' London mayor
• Tory leader's religion 'not the rock it should be'
David Cameron has tipped the "swashbuckling, charismatic, irresistible" Boris Johnson as a future prime minister, in an interview published today.
The Conservative leader insisted that he had a "very good relationship" with Johnson, even though the London mayor could "put his size 10 feet in it". He added that he was glad to be in a party containing several "big figures" with leadership potential.
There has been speculation about the nature of the Cameron/Johnson relationship, the subject of a recent Channel 4 docudrama. That they were contemporaries at Eton and Oxford led observers to assume they were friends when they entered parliament, but many colleagues see them as rivals who are privately wary of each other.
Cameron did not give Johnson a post in his shadow cabinet when he became party leader and, although he backed him as Conservative candidate for London mayor, only did so when it became clear other candidates were not available.
As mayor, Johnson seems to relish occasionally challenging Cameron's authority, as when he described Cameron's broken society rhetoric as "piffle", or when he defied the party line by calling for a retrospective referendum on the Lisbon treaty on the eve of the Conservative conference.
Asked about Johnson's remarks about the referendum on European integration, Cameron told the London Evening Standard: "We managed to extinguish the fuse he lit. What it did not show was a deep split in the Conservative party. It was more cock-up than division."
Cameron would not say whether Johnson apologised after the incident, but said all was now well in the "Dave/Boris relationship". He went on: "Would I rather have some faceless bureaucrat running London who could not pull a crowd at the Tory conference? Or would I rather have a swashbuckling, charismatic, irresistible character who will, yes, occasionally put his size 10 feet in it? In the end I would rather have the latter."
Johnson has hinted that he would like to become prime minister and, asked about the prospect, Cameron replied: "Great. Good. I want people to look at the Conservative Party and say there is a huge amount of talent. It's not a one-man band, a two-man band, a three-man band.
"People who say 'what next for Boris?', I say the sky's the limit. He has got huge talent. I want the Conservative Party to have big figures in it."
In the interview Cameron also discussed his faith. He did not feel he had "a direct line" to God, but Christianity was nevertheless important to him.
"If you are asking, do I drop to my knees and pray for guidance, no," he said. "But do I have faith and is it important, yes. My own faith is there. It's not always the rock that perhaps it should be.
"I've a sort of fairly classic Church of England faith, a faith that grows hotter and colder by moments … I suppose I sort of started life believing that one's individual faith was important, but actually the institutions of the church were less important."
Gordon Brown warns Hamid Karzai he will lose international support if he fails to improve government's performance
Gordon Brown today denounced the Afghan government as corrupt and warned the president, Hamid Karzai, that he would lose international support if he failed to improve its performance.
In a speech to the Royal College of Defence Studies, the prime minister said he was "not prepared to put the lives of British men and women in harm's way for a government that does not stand up against corruption".
The remarks drew criticism that Britain's role in Afghanistan was being made hostage to the behaviour of a government that Brown himself described as "a byword for corruption". The shadow defence secretary, Liam Fox, said Britain's commitment to the conflict should not be "confused by mixed messages or empty threats".
Fox said: "We must put pressure on the Karzai government to improve governance and tackle corruption, but if our mission in Afghanistan is a national security imperative, it can't be conditional on the behaviour of others."
Whitehall officials said Brown's ultimatum did not imply a threatened withdrawal of British troops but rather a withholding of political support if Karzai did not improve his government in five areas laid out in the speech.
Those five benchmarks were the provision of security for the Afghan population, improving governance by combating corruption and appointing qualified officials, political reconciliation with opponents, providing economic development and stabilising relations with the country's neighbours.
"If the government fails to meet these five tests, it will not only have failed its people, it will have forfeited its right to international support," Brown said.
An early measure of Karzai's commitment to change will come at his inauguration, due in the next few weeks. The president, starting a new term after a highly contentious election, is expected to purge his government of its most corrupt officials and replace them with technocrats and representatives of Afghanistan's major ethnic groups. Karzai is also expected to create an anti-corruption commission involving some oversight from the international community.
In his speech, Brown talked about the need for an "international adviser of substance" to work with the Karzai government on anti-corruption measures. Downing Street referred to this as an "anti-corruption tsar", but refused to discuss whether Lord Ashdown would be a candidate. "There are a number of potential candidates for the post," the spokesman said.
The prime minister gave the speech at the end of a particularly lethal week for British troops, with seven killed, including five soldiers shot by one of the Afghan policemen they were mentoring. The losses brought the total British death toll since 2001 to 230.
Elizabeth Chant, the mother of one of the five killed, Warrant Officer Class 1 Darren Chant, called for a withdrawal. She told the BBC: "Darren wouldn't have me say anything bad, but I do think that those boys should come home now because there's too many being killed."
A Channel 4 News poll revealed a spike in public opposition to the war over the last fortnight, with 35% of respondents calling for immediate withdrawal, up from 25% two weeks ago. The poll echoes public nervousness in the US, where Barack Obama is due to announce in the next few weeks how many more American troops to dispatch for his commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal.
Nato allies met in Brussels today to approve the strategy recommended by McChrystal, which focuses on providing protection for Afghan civilians and helping to provide better governance. Each capital has been asked to increase its military, civilian and financial commitment to Afghanistan. Some member states are understood to have privately given provisional undertakings, pending Obama's announcement.
Brown has said he will send 500 more troops, bringing the British contingent to 9,500, if three main conditions are met: they are properly equipped, other Nato states take more of the military burden, and the Kabul government provides more Afghan army recruits.
Lord Guthrie, the former chief of defence staff, accused the government of "dithering". "The three conditions laid down by the prime minister for their movement reveal a complete lack of understanding of what these men are for," he said.
A Downing Street spokesman said that to deploy the extra troops without any certainty over their equipment and circumstances of their deployment "would be a dereliction of duty".
Chief executive warns about impact of restrictions on bonuses in RBS's profitable investment banking arm
The Treasury is demanding that Royal Bank of Scotland provides evidence of its efforts to lend £25bn to businesses and households after the Edinburgh-based bank admitted that it would not meet the targets set by the government.
As the bank reported a third-quarter loss of £2.1bn, the chief executive, Stephen Hester, warned again about the impact restrictions on bonuses were having in its profitable investment banking arm.
Because the bank is to be 84% owned by the taxpayer as a result of insuring £282bn of troublesome loans through the government's asset protection scheme (APS), RBS cannot pay cash bonuses to anyone earning more than £39,000, raising speculation that key bankers in its investment banking division will leave.
Joining the APS has also forced RBS to commit to lend an additional £25bn - £9bn for mortgages and £16bn to businesses. But in the first nine months of the year net lending was negative by £500m indicating that more customers were repaying loans than taking out new ones.
Any bonuses will be in shares or debt. Investment banking rivals are not subject to the same criteria and Hester, whose own bonus is linked to achieving the lending targets, said: "It is very easy for people at RBS to feel they have a miserable job, the uncertainty associated with the bank, the public and media pressure and excoriation, and the feelings of being discriminated against relative doing the same job elsewhere are all really wearing factors.
"So far our losses of people have been damaging but not destructive and I think these people deserve enormous credit for the way they've responded to those pressures … we're working hard to manage the situation as well as we can and people need to understand that part of RBS's recovery is that it should be a place where good people want to work."
Bonuses are decided at the end of the year, though staff costs in its investment banking arm rose to £2.5bn by the end of the September, against the £2.2bn incurred by the same time last year and indicating a bigger bonus pool than the £1bn allocated for 2008.
The investment bank employs 20,000 of the 160,000-strong workforce, from which Hester has cut 20,000 jobs since being parachuted in to replace Sir Fred Goodwin in October 2008. He indicated that this was about half the total he expected to cut to complete his five-year plan for growth.
As the shares rose 5% to 37p, Hester insisted his focus was on profits for taxpayers, who are on the hook for as much as £54bn. Some £20bn has already been invested; another £25.5bn will be used as a result of the APS, with the rest kept in reserve as a contingency.
RBS refuses to embark on lending that is not to creditworthy customers and Hester stressed that "increasingly borrowing is not the route to sustainable recovery". He said there was not enough demand for loans and the bank had £27bn of undrawn credit lines for overdrafts and other loans. "We should all be happy about that. The way out of recession is not another borrowing binge," he said.
The Treasury is demanding details about the pricing of loans and how they are marketed in a new charter that the bank must adhere to as a result of signing up to the APS.
Despite reporting a loss for the third quarter compared with a profit in the same period a year before the bank bailout, Hester was "upbeat". His five-year plan might be hindered by recent demands by the EU to sell off its insurance business, which he expects to float on the stockmarket. RBS also has to sell off other businesses that could take "at least a year".
The group incurred £3.2bn of impairment charges for bad debts, down on the previous quarter but higher than a year ago. However, the bank began to call the top of the bad debts that have forced it to enter the APS. "The outlook for impairments has improved somewhat and these may now be plateauing at 1H09 [first half of 2009] levels, though we are still seeing a modest increase in default rates," it said.
Professor Sir Ian Kennedy was so close to key figures in New Labour that he and his wife were described as "party people" by Alastair Campbell.
Hats are de rigueur when the Queen is awarding honours but this must be the first time she has been faced by a recipient sporting a pen.
Alex Simmons the 16yearold whose family was accused of abusing Fiona Pilkington who went on to kill herself and her disabled daughter has been given an Asbo.
• Actor urges students to carry on fighting prejudice
• Rwandan-born son endured 'unpleasant' experiences
The actor Emma Thompson has urged a university to work to stamp out racism after her adopted son endured "unpleasant" experiences while studying there. Thompson says Rwandan-born Tindyebwa Agaba suffered because of the colour of his skin during his first year studying politics at Exeter University.
Speaking at a diversity event at the university, Thompson claimed the leader of the BNP, Nick Griffin, would "love" the area because of its relative lack of racial diversity. She urged staff and students to carry on trying to drive out prejudice.
The Oscar-winning actor had been taking part in a project at the university called One World, aimed at celebrating diversity. She led a drama workshop, and joined a creative writing session and a debate.
On Thursday, during the debate entitled All Africans Now: Artistry and Activism, a member of the audience raised the issue of the BNP and comments by its leader that London was no longer a British city because of its racial diversity.
Thompson replied that Griffin "would feel very comfortable here". The questioner asked: "What can we do to change the whiteness of Devon and Cornwall? How can we expand our university?"
Thompson replied: "This is how we're doing it [by talking about it]. It's depressing when people think nothing is being done about it.
"Tindy had his experience and now we're having a big week of educational events to try and help it. Please understand you're already engaged, give yourself small goals. You must understand you have a staff who want this university to be the most humane, safe place it can be.
"You're not going to get hundreds of black students here overnight, but what you can do is make them more comfortable. Visitors are never the ones who come up with the solutions, it is up to you."
Opening the event, Agaba said he had suffered problems in his first year. He said: "I studied politics and international relations here and had a beautiful time, especially in my second and third years. I had some problems in my first year."
Sam Miles, an organiser of the One World project, said the event had been very positive. He said no one had been shocked by Thompson's comments about the BNP, but had taken them as criticism of Griffin's inability to live in a multicultural community.
A spokeswoman for the university said Thompson had said Griffin might feel more comfortable in the south-west of England because it is not as ethnically diverse as London.
The spokeswoman said: "This was in response to Mr Griffin's reported comments that London can no longer claim to be a British city because of its diversity."
She added: "Emma Thompson spoke in very positive terms about the university's efforts to encourage equality and diversity. We have a zero tolerance policy towards racism on campus. There are very few incidents: out of more than 18,000 staff and students last year there were five reported incidents of this nature on campus."
The university says about 12% of its student population consisted of black and minority ethnic students, compared with 3.2% in the Exeter region.
Agaba was a former child soldier who met Thompson and her husband, the actor Greg Wise, at a Refugee Council party in 2003. He is now studying for a master's degree, but while at Exeter University expressed surprise at the low number of African students. He wrote: "I find it incredible that I am the only African student in the entire politics department."
Victims of the Lockerbie bombing have criticised the Government for paying for tens of thousands of poundsworth of advice from Libya on airline safety.
• Inquiry into 'Scratcher's' alleged role faces obstacles
• Double jeopardy fears could prevent charges
The investigation into Sir Mark Thatcher's role in the failed coup in Equatorial Guinea could be hindered by legal obstacles, which may mean he could never be prosecuted in this country, according to senior law enforcement sources.
Scotland Yard detectives are engaged in what is said to be a serious and protracted inquiry into allegations that Old Etonian Simon Mann, along with Thatcher and others, orchestrated the attempt to oust the country's president during meetings in London in late 2003 and early 2004.
According to the former prosecutor in Equatorial Guinea, detectives from the counter-terrorism command at the Yard visited Mann in prison five times. He is said to have co-operated fully.
The evidence relating to Thatcher's alleged involvement in the coup as a key player is believed to be held in testimonies given to Yard officers by the British mercenary, and in documents handed to the Metropolitan police by Equatorial Guinea and held by officials in South Africa.
But despite months of gathering evidence in a detailed inquiry, investigators could stumble when it comes to considering any charges against the son of the former prime minister.
As Thatcher has already been convicted in South Africa of paying for a helicopter he suspected might be used for mercenary activity, the likelihood that he could be prosecuted in this country on the same evidence for a similar offence is very slim, according to senior legal and police sources. When he talks to the police in the UK, Mann will have to come up with something new and powerful if the prosecution is to go ahead, it is understood.
The sources indicated that the pursuit of Thatcher was primarily hindered by fears of double jeopardy because of his South African conviction, despite the fact that this took place in a different jurisdiction.
Adrian Chaplin, a criminal barrister in London, agreed. He said there were potentially huge problems of abuse of process should Thatcher be charged with anything.
"If there was an attempt to take him through the courts here there would be a fairly powerful argument to say: 'What's the point because he has been convicted and punished already,'" he said.
Thatcher was first implicated in the coup attempt in a letter written by Mann and intercepted by the South African police while he was being held in Harare, after his arrest following the failed plot in 2004. Written to his wife in Cape Town it made a request for money from the alleged financiers Scratcher, his nickname for Thatcher, and Smelly, a nickname for the Lebanese-born businessman Ely Calil.
Both Thatcher and Calil deny involvement in the coup attempt.
Other evidence which could be used against Thatcher is the testimony of Crause Steyl, a South African mercenary pilot who was on the plane the night of the coup. He was never arrested and returned to South Africa where a deal was struck. He co-operated with the authorities by telling them everything he knew, and he talked about Thatcher. According to Adam Roberts, author of The Wonga Coup, a detailed account of the plot, that was when the whole story about Thatcher exploded. Rumours about his involvement had been swirling for some time, but with Steyl's plea bargain evidence the South Africans arrested Thatcher in a move watched with disbelief by the world's press.
In South Africa Thatcher eventually admitted breaking the country's anti-mercenary laws, by giving money to someone despite suspecting the cash would be used for mercenary activity. Initially Thatcher told the authorities he had thought the £288,000 was to be used to fund an air ambulance for Africa's poor. But he accepted that at some point before the coup attempt, he suspected the helicopter might be used for a mercenary plot.
Thatcher was convicted in January 2005, fined £266,000 and given a four-year suspended sentence. He left South Africa shortly afterwards.
The third plank of evidence which could be used against him is Mann's testimony during his interviews with Scotland Yard detectives, who visited him in Black Beach prison after his trial ended in Equatorial Guinea last July. Mann implicated Thatcher, as he had done at his trial, when he said Thatcher was "not just an investor. He came on board completely and became part of the management team."
He also is understood to have continued to implicate Calil, who he named at his trial, saying he was the "overall boss".
But Mann's testimony will be one of the legal problems. The statements he made in Equatorial Guinea are tainted by the threat of ill-treatment or even death in prison. He is likely to repeat his statements under caution to the British police but even away from the threat of torture or death, his testimony might not be enough to lead to a prosecution of Thatcher.
Equatorial Guinea is still seeking to see Thatcher in court. President Teodoro Obiang said Thatcher would "definitely" be brought to justice. But his government has not asked Spanish police to arrest him.
Buyers of used cars to benefit from system similar to that used on domestic appliances.
Arlene Phillips whose controversial removal from the Strictly Come Dancing judging panel provoked accusations of ageism against the BBC has been made a director of Sadler's Wells.
Every child in England will have their personal details stored on a controversial database despite fears over security and privacy.
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