From the Evening Standard:
Cameron ready to approve euro bail-outs without a referendum: David Cameron clashed with Tory Eurosceptic MPs today as he offered to approve a new scheme to bail out the single currency without holding a referendum. At the start of an EU summit in Brussels, the Prime Minister signalled his support for a permanent new emergency rescue mechanism for economies in trouble.
But British diplomats were rebuffed when they tried to obtain a cast-iron guarantee that under the proposals the UK would never again have to pump taxpayers' money into the rescue of countries in the euro. More trouble brewed as Mr Cameron and other EU leaders planned to push through the bail-out plan as an amendment to the EU's contentious Lisbon Treaty without a referendum.
The BBC spins it thusly:
The eurozone stability mechanism will require a change to the EU's Lisbon Treaty - but the wording has now been agreed, diplomats say. As the UK uses the pound it will not have to contribute to the fund, UK Prime Minister David Cameron has said.
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Also from the Evening Standard:
New power plants could put bills up: Energy bills could rise by hundreds of pounds under plans for the construction of a new generation of power plants unveiled by the Government... Energy Secretary Chris Huhne said private-sector investment of £110 billion in new power stations and grid upgrades is needed over the next decade* to replace ageing plants, to hit the UK's climate change targets and to ensure that the lights do not go out...
Additional financial support for the construction of reserve plants to provide a "safety cushion" as Britain increasingly relies on electricity from intermittent sources such as wind; and a cap on CO2 emissions of 450-600 grammes per kilowatt/hour generated, which should ensure that all future coal-powered plants use carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.
Which the BBC spins thusly:
Price comparison website uSwitch has estimated that bills will rise by £500 a year if the measures are introduced. But Mr Huhne told the BBC that the average electricity bill of £500 a year would rise by £160 a year over the next 20 years, and if the new measures were not put in place, bills would rise by £190 a year.
In fact, the Treasury has calculated that the average annual household electricity bill will be between £4 and £28 higher in 2016, but should be between £20 and £48 lower by 2030.
Right, they can forecast electricity prices twenty years ahead, can they? Best of luck with that.
* These forecasts are also usually wildly understated, see also Olympics 2012, but let's take £110 billion over ten years at face value, that's £11 billion a year, two-thirds of which will be paid by households, unless we somehow imagine that private investors will pay for this out the goodness of their own hearts, that's about £300 per household per year.
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From The Sun:
Banned driver Aso Mohammed Ibrahim, 33, left Amy Houston, 12, to die under the wheels of his Rover car and fled the scene following the accident.
But the Iraqi Kurd was today told he can stay in Britain after judges said deporting the dad of two would breach HIS human rights following a seven-year legal battle.
Dismayed
25 minutes ago
7 comments:
I voted UKIP too, although I didn;t particularly feel the candidate was well suited to the area. I also voted in the locals for myself!
I'm not really sure what they mean by "the private sector" paying for this anyway. With this much government interference, it's really not much different from the government borrowing the money from the private sector and building the power stations (or windmills) themselves.
On the EU, of course we have to agree to the bailout mechanism - the EU is a single country now. Or we have to get out completely (as UKIP want). The semi-detached position favoured by the Tories and Labour always was a non-starter.
So who did Mohammed Ibrahim pop for them then ?
Bailouts, bailouts and more bailouts.
That first part about Cameron - it's all so blatant, isn't it?
Well you would, wouldn't you?
Aso Mohammed Ibrahim probably ran over a 13 year old in Iraq, too, so the victim's relatives would shoot him if he went back. Thus he could successfully argue that sending him back was equivalent to a death sentence, thus he had to stay here. Never confuse the law with justice.
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