Archive for Today’s News
TV ad revenue hits record thanks to Google and Groupon
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Television advertising revenue in the UK increased by 2.2% year on year to a record £4.36bn in 2011, as advertisers such as internet giants Google and Groupon ploughed millions into TV commercials for the first time.
The UK TV market was buoyed by 887 new or returning advertisers – defined as those who have not run commercials for at least five years – according to research conducted by TV marketing body Thinkbox and Nielsen Media Research.
New advertisers, which accounted for £113m or 2.6% of TV ad spend in the UK, included Google, Groupon, Ann Summers, Jimmy Choo and British Airways new frequent-flyer brand Avios.
Google, which has historically shied away from TV and brand advertising, spent £5.2m on TV ads in the UK last year.
This represents 23% of the £22.5m that Google spent in the UK on all forms of advertising – including internet, outdoor, press and radio – according to figures from Nielsen.
Google’s ad spend in the UK has increased more than seven-fold in just three years. In 2009 Google spent £3m, in 2010 this more than doubled to £6.6m and then almost quadrupled to £22.5m last year.
The rocketing ad spend is a far cry from Google’s previous ethos with Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive, admitting on Twitter that “hell has indeed frozen over” when the search giant purchased one of the world most expensive ad slots to run a commercial during the Super Bowl in 2010.
Notable work in the UK last year includes ad agency BBH’s campaign for Google Chrome featuring Jamal Edwards, the teenager behind urban music site SBTV, which ran with the strapline “The web is what you make of it”.
Google UK also uses M&C Saatchi for marketing and advertising communications around the issue of privacy and has a prolific in-house ad department called Creative Labs.
Tess Alps, the chief executive of Thinkbox, said the rise in UK TV ad revenue was an encouraging performance particularly given that in 2010 the market rose 16% year on year in the recovery following the downturn, making a further rise last year all that more difficult to achieve.
“The strength of linear TV advertising investment reflects commercial TV’s record viewing and the further acknowledgement by advertisers of its ability to create business profit,” said Alps.
The top spending category remained retailers, followed by the entertainment and leisure sector, and finance.
Telecoms companies increased ad spend by 28.8% year on year, travel and transport rose 27% and the never-ending battle between comparison websites saw TV ad spend rise 21.5% year on year in this sector.
In January, Thinkbox produced its annual TV viewing report, showing UK viewers watched an average of four hours and two minutes of television per day. Each viewer watched an average of 47 TV ads per day in 2011.
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Eurozone crisis live: Spain told to cut harder as Greek deal approved
Posted by: | CommentsSome early action in the credit ratings world – Moody’s has slashed Cyprus’s credit rating into Junk status, and blamed the Greek debt deal.
Moody’s cuts Cyprus’s sovereign rating by one notch to ‘Ba1′ from ‘Baa3′, with a negative outlook. That means the island’s debt is no longer seen as investment grade.
Moody’s warned that the Cyprus government will have to inject fresh capital into its banks to cover losses incurred through Greece’s debt swap. There is, it said, a “very material risk” that the private sector will fail to provide all the new funds itself.
It’s another sign of the knock-on effects of the Greek deal. Cyprus’s banks were highly exposed to Greek debt, relative to other banks, so are disproportionately hit by the haircut taken by creditors. Cyprus itself is also frozen out of the financial markets at present, and is relying on a loan from Russia.
Depending how you look at it, the Eurogroup’s decision on Spain last night can be seen either as a concession or an imposition.
Here’s the bare facts. The EU now wants Spain to cut its deficit in 2012 to 5.3% of GDP this year. That’s less taxing than the previous target of 4.4%, but harder than 5.8% of GDP that the Madrid government set as its new target last month.
Jean-Claude Juncker, chair of the eurogroup, argued it was vital that Spain gets its deficit in 2013 down to 3% of GDP by making tough decisions this year. He said:
It will be the responsibility of the Spanish authorities to choose the initiatives that will have to be taken in order to bring down the budgetary deficit in 2012, what is most important is what is the target for 2013.
What is less important, but nevertheless important, are the avenues chosen in 2012.
Spain’s deficit is a key issue because the country came nowhere close to hitting its targets in 2011. Last year’s deficit came in at 8.5%, far above the 6.0% goal. That was mainly because its regional governments failed to achieve their own targets.
Juncker appeared to rule out penalising Spain for last year’s performance, indicating that was consigned to history. As he put it:
The figure announced previously by the Spanish government… is dead.
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of the eurozone debt crisis.
Overnight, European finance ministers finallly agreed that Greece’s €130bn (£109bn) rescue package should proceed. Although the official stamp of approval won’t come until tomorrow, this means that the Eurogroup have – at last – accepted that Greece has done everything demanded of it.
The talks in Brussels also saw Spain move centre-stage. European leaders insisted on tougher cutbacks than prime minister Mariano Rajoy recently announced, but also abandoned their old deficit targets.
Is the focus of the crisis moving away from Athens, and over to Madrid?
As usual, we’ll be tracking all the latest developments and reactions. Let us know what you think too…
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London mayor and local election results – live coverage
Posted by: | CommentsLabour has also won in Swansea, Steven Morris reports.
Nick Clegg has said he is “really sad that so many” of his Liberal Democrat councillors have lost their seats.
The government is reducing immigration, is changing the law on the EU to institute referendums where there is a major transfer of power to Europe, Hague says – pointing out to rightwingers that the Tories are still pursuing some of their pet projects.
Should the Tories turn right or head towards the centre?
Neither, says Hague. We carry on turning around this country’s economy and “repairing the damage from the last government”, plus reforming welfare and education.
Hague says the election results are not about gay marriage or Lords reform.
Of course the Tories would do things differently if they were governing alone, he says – but they aren’t. “It’s a coalition government and I think the country understands that.”
“These are not phenomenally good results for the Labour party”, says Hague – they can’t even get 40% of the vote.
Hague says what Labour wants is for the government to spend more and borrow more and that is what got us into this mess in the first place.
William Hague says the weather had no influence and he is not blaming anything on the rain.
Asked about the low turnout (estimated at 32%), Harman says those not voting were also sending that negative message to the government.
She says there is a sense of “can anybody really deal with this?” – referring to the economy.
She also said the weather dampened turnout – “not drizzle, but driving rain, with the leaflets almost dematerialising in your hands”.
Harman says she is “not crowing” about the results.
William Hague, the foreign secretary, and Harriet Harman, Labour’s deputy leader, are being interviewed on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme.
Harman says these are very encouraging results, and Labour won councils it wasn’t expecting to win, and councils where the party had lost MPs in 2010.
The message is that the government has to change course on the economy, and “it still appears to be not listening”.
William Hague has hinted that the Tories cannot do everything they would like to in government because they are in coalition with the Lib Dems, perhaps responding to Tory voices calling for a swing to the right.
Of course the Conservatives can’t do everything that we would like to do in government because we are in coalition within the Liberal Democrats. Of course it is what we will be fighting for in the next general election in 2015.
Tory backbencher Gary Streeter has added his voice to calls for a swing to the right in response to the Conservatives’ council losses. He said Tory supporters are “gagging” for more traditional rightwing policies in areas such as law and order.
If the tail has been wagging the dog a little bit too much, we have got to be a little more small “c” and big “C” conservative on crime, law and order, some of our traditional policies. That’s what our supporters are waiting, indeed gagging, to see.
William Hague, the foreign secretary, has attempted to play down the Tory losses on BBC1′s Breakfast.
These results – while it is never a good feeling to lose councillors – are well within the normal range of mid-term results for governments and I think not so good for the opposition who are not getting 40% of the vote. You wouldn’t look at this and say Labour was on track to win a general election at all.
As Andrew Sparrow reported last night, the BBC has calculated that if people had voted in a general election in the way that they voted in the local elections, Labour would now be in power. The Commons would look like this:
Labour: 368 MPs
Conservatives: 218 MPs
Lib Dems: 39 MPs
That would mean a Labour government with a majority of 86.
Hague also appears to have given a bit of a hostage to fortune. We still don’t know the actual voting figures from yesterday. It could easily transpire that Labour got 40% of the vote.
Bradford has voted against having an elected mayor. The vote was 44.87% for and 55.13% against.
Earlier defence minister Gerald Howarth pinned some of the blame for the Tories’ poor performance on support for policies such as gay marriage and Bernard Jenkin, a backbencher, said David Cameron should resist Lib Dem obsessions like Lords reform.
Tim Farron (left), the Lib Dem president, has responded, saying swinging to the right would be a “bonkers” strategy for the Tories. Farron said:
It was almost amazing that the Tories managed to not win the 2010 general election but the thought that they would somehow build themselves up to a majority by lurching to the right to try and bring back people they think they’ve lost to Ukip – in so far as anyone in the Tory party should take political and strategic advice from me, can I just advise them that would be bonkers.
The thought that people who are struggling, worried for their jobs, concerned about the prices of things going up and generally feeling the pinch … have their votes swayed by Lords reform is just madness.
He then defended the planned democratisation of the upper house, saying:
All three parties went into the last election saying we should reform and we were 100 years overdue for doing that. It should be a straightforward consensual job.
Back to George Galloway for a second. You can always rely on him for a good quote. Here he is on Respect’s victories in Bradford:
We took the head off the rotten fish that is the Bradford city council. We defeated a council leader who sat there, apparently impregnable and utterly complacent, for a decade and a half or more.
He said Respect offered voters a “viable alternative to the Tweedledee, Tweedledum, Tweedledee-and-a-half politics that the three mainstream leaderships are offering them”.
Labour has gained control of Caerphilly council in South Wales in a landslide election victory, and has also captured Newport. The latest figures show Labour will be in outright control of six of Wales’s 22 councils – two more than its total four years ago. Welsh Labour leader Carwyn Jones said: “We have reconnected with people and our community campaigning has resonated with voters right across Wales.”
My colleague Helen Pidd has just come back from the Respect after-party in Bradford, where George Galloway was waiting, arms outstretched, to welcome his party’s five new councillors into the world of municipal politics.
Horns were blaring outside the Respect HQ in Grattan Road to herald the city’s newly elected politicians. One car was playing the Bradford Spring rap, an ode to Galloway and his disciples sung in a broad West Yorkshire accent (“There is this guy who came into town, walked into Bradford, took a look around, realised we were sinking in a hole – Odeon, Westfield … “).
Around 50 supporters crammed into the back room of Chambers solicitors, which has been the Respect temporary nerve centre since Galloway decided to contest the Bradford West byelection in March. He then gave a speech christening the councillors the “Magnificent Five”, saying: “In five weeks we have won five seats. Wait till we’ve been here for 52 weeks.”
Never a man to underplay an achievement, Galloway said: “The story of the night is Respect in Bradford. Because Labour in the country did really well. And Labour in Bradford, where we were not standing, did really well. Where we were standing, they did catastrophically badly. The lesson there is that if we were standing everywhere, we would give them a run for their money. And the result would be that they would be forced to become more like us.”
Steven Morris emails to tell me that BBC Radio Wales is reporting definitively that Labour has taken control of Cardiff from a Lib Dem-Plaid Cymru adminstration.
The Lib Dems have sent out a briefing note. They say that “in MPs’ seats, we are doing well … Portsmouth, Cheltenham, Eastleigh, Southport, Cheadle and Colchester”. In northern councils, “there simply aren’t any Conservatives. If you want to give the Government a kicking, we’re the only ones around to kick.”
They add: “We’re taking seats from the Tories: Brentwood, Southport, Cheadle and Colchester.”
But to be honest good news is a bit thin on the ground for them.
Mark Romsbottom, the leader of the Lib Dem group on Manchester council, gave this rather stilted statement: “I’m still committed to the Liberal Democratic party and I’m certainly not angry with Nick Clegg or the national party. I’ll make sure I’ll keep campaigning for the Lib Dems.”
He added: “I think the anger has definitely dimmed down in the last two years, people are now prepared to talk and listen to us whereas last year was very, very tough there was a lot of anger on the doorstep.”
The Lib Dems lost all the seats they fought in Manchester. All of them went to Labour.
Of Ed Miliband’s party, the Lib Dems concede:
They have indeed made great gains tonight, but it isn’t a whole-hearted, convincing win. They are losing a few seats to fringe parties such as Respect, this is nothing out of the ordinary for a midterm opposition party, and there are strong doubts over whether Labour can do well in their London and Scottish heartlands.
It was expected that the coalition would attempt to obscure large Labour council gains across the board by emphasising their probable loss in the London mayoral contest and possible loss of control of Glasgow council.
The Lib Dems also play down Labour gains by saying that the Daily Mirror said yesterday Labour might win 1,000 seats.
“David Miliband’s party could gain more than 700 seats, while the Tories look set to lose a third of their councillors,” reports the Daily Mail. Technically correct. (Thanks to Ruth Barnett.)
Jenny Jones, the Green candidate for London mayor, has just posted two rather forlorn tweets. She asked her supporters to give their second-preference votes to Ken Livingstone, the Labour candidate, who looks likely to lose to Tory Boris Johnson. Jones tweeted:
If Boris has won, my next four years will be much less interesting & very frustrating at so much turning back of the environmental agenda.
— Jenny Jones (@GreenJennyJones) May 4, 2012
If Ken has won, my next four years will be exhausting, challenging & v exciting. Plus a bright future for walking & #cycling in London.
— Jenny Jones (@GreenJennyJones) May 4, 2012
Sorry to be self obsessed on an issue that will affect 7.5m Londoners, but all politics is personal in some way. So, did Labour do it?
— Jenny Jones (@GreenJennyJones) May 4, 2012
John Prescott has got wind of the fact the Lib Dems’ number of councillors has fallen to a historic low.
The Lib Dems have less than 3000 councillors for the first time ever. Welcome to #ArmaCleggon
— John Prescott (@johnprescott) May 4, 2012
I’m not sure if #ArmaCleggon is going to catch on as a description of tonight’s results, but Prescott knows a lot more about Twitter than me …
The BBC is reporting that the number of Liberal Democrat councillors has fallen below 3,000 for the first time since the party was formed in 1988.
Good morning and welcome to today’s live coverage of the local election results in England, Wales and Scotland and the London mayoral contest. Many thanks to Andrew Sparrow, who has been covering events live overnight.
Here’s an early morning summary.
• Labour has soundly beaten the Conservatives in the local elections in a result that has been welcomed by the opposition as evidence that it is mounting a strong fightback.Many of the results are not yet in, but the BBC say the results are equivalent to Labour having 39% of the national vote, with the Conservatives on 31% and the Lib Dems on 16%. A Labour source said these were “strong results” for the party, and their best in local elections since 1997. In a general election, this would give Labour a large majority. Labour’s performance was good rather than brilliant, but the party has taken heart from the fact that it is winning in some of the marginal constituencies in the Midlands and the south of England that it needs to win if it wants to form a government in 2015. Here’s a full list of the English results that are in.
• Tory MPs, including a minister, have openly urged David Cameron to adopt more traditional Conservative policies in response to his party’s drubbing at the polls. Gerald Howarth, a defence minister, said that Cameron should accept that Tory voters do not approve of gay marriage. Bernard Jenkin, a backbencher, said Cameron should resist Lib Dem obsessions like Lords reform. And Gary Streeter, another backbencher, said the party had to restore its reputation for competence.
The interesting thing for me was that, doing a lot of visits on the doorstep, that people were unhappy, obviously about the last two months of our government, and many of them said we can accept many things from the Conservative party, but we expect them to be competent. And that was one of the messages coming across … We have to regain our sure-footedness if we are going to recapture lost trust and confidence.
These are the opening shots in a blame game that it likely to continue over the coming days.
• Cameron’s plan to develop a network of high-profile, directly-elected mayors outside London has suffered a severe setback. Manchester, Nottingham and Coventry have all voted against having a mayor. Birmingham, which was expected to vote yes, also seems set to vote no. Another six cities are also voting, but most of those are also expected to reject the proposal. Other cities have rejected the directly-elected mayor model in the past, but to have so many big cities rejecting the model at one time could kill this as a priority local government reform for many years to come.
• Turnout seems to be 32% – the lowest figure since 2000.
• George Galloway’s Respect party has continued to disrupt the mainstream political establishment by winning five seats on Bradford council, including one from its Labour leader. The Tories are depicting it as a serious blow to Labour (which it is), but it also underlines how vulnerable all the main parties are to insurgent outsiders.
• The Lib Dems have sought to brush aside their losses as an inevitable result of being in government. Ed Davey, the energy secretary, said the Liberals had been waiting 90 years to suffer mid-term blues. As my colleague Patrick Wintour reports, Nick Clegg intends to respond to the results by trying to persuade Lib Dems that the results do not spell inevitable electoral wipeout in 2015.
• Labour has been celebrating particularly good results in Wales. Carwyn Jones, the Labour Welsh first minister, said: “The momentum is clearly with Welsh Labour. We are taking seats from every party across the country – with impressive gains in Wrexham, Caerphilly, Newport and a total Lib Dem wipe out in Merthyr. We have reconnected with people and our community campaigning has resonated with voters right across Wales.” Here are the results from Wales that are in.
• Labour’s Joe Anderson has been elected as Liverpool’s first mayor with almost 60% of the vote. The two other cities electing mayors yesterday, Salford and London, will start their counts this morning. Salford’s result is expected between 3pm and 5pm, and London’s some time between 6pm and midnight. A YouGov poll yesterday showed Boris Johnson, the Tory candidate and current mayor, on 53% to 47% for Ken Livingstone, his Labour rival and predecessor.
• The Conservatives have already lost almost 300 seats. Counting in Scotland has not started yet, but, with results available from 97 councils, here is the state of play.
Councils
Conservatives: 26 – down 11
Labour: 49 – up 21
Lib Dems: 3 – down 1
Councillors
Conservatives: 549 – down 272
Labour: 1,087 – up 456
Lib Dems: 211 – down 128
Plaid Cymru: 32 – down 11
Green: 16 – up 3
BNP: 0 – down 3
Respect: 5 – up 5
Ukip: 7 – up 1
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Local elections 2012: Labour enjoys ‘stunning’ night in Wales
Posted by: | CommentsLabour has enjoyed what it called a “stunning” night in Wales, claiming impressive wins in Cardiff, Swansea and Newport at the expense of the Liberal Democrats.
The party had been expected to take back former strongholds, including Newport and Swansea, but it had not been so confident of winning in the capital, where the Liberal Democrats have ruled for eight years.
Re-counts were taking place in two Cardiff wards but Labour was satisfied it had won enough seats to seize control of the council and expected the Liberal Democrat leader, Rodney Berman, to be ousted from his seat.
Ahead of the count, Labour had claimed that voters who deserted the party at the height of Gordon Brown’s unpopular premiership were returning. As the night went on it began to look as if new voters had also turned to the party.
The Welsh Labour leader and first minister, Carwyn Jones, said: “The momentum is clearly with Welsh Labour. We are taking seats from every party across the country. We have reconnected with people and our community campaigning has resonated with voters right across Wales.”
Welsh Labour’s campaign was a two-pronged affair. It called on the electorate to make the vote a referendum on the Tory/Lib Dem coalition at Westminster. And it encouraged activists to prepare manifestos tailored to local needs, rather than publishing a national one.
Kirsty Williams, the Liberal Democrat leader, said the party had tried to fight the election on local issues and the record of its councillors. But she said Labour and the media had concentrated on what was happening at Westminster.
The Conservatives had a poor night, losing the majority in two of their strongest areas, the Vale of Glamorgan, west of Cardiff, and Monmouthshire. Peter Hain, the shadow Welsh secretary, said the Tory vote was softening and claimed Labour was persuading Conservative voters to switch to it. Such a move was key if Labour was to win the next general election, he said.
Andrew RT Davies, the Tory leader in Wales, said the night had been a setback. Like Williams, he said Labour had succeeded in focusing on the Westminster agenda.
Plaid Cymru, under its new leader, Leanne Wood, suffered disappointments, particularly in Caerphilly, where the nationalists lost control of the council to Labour. A familiar figure, the former Welsh secretary Ron Davies who is now a member of Plaid, lost his seat. Plaid activists argued they were the victims of a UK-wide move towards Labour.
But as elsewhere in the UK, it may be Liberal Democrat losses that create the biggest headlines. They lost power — of various kinds — in the cities of Swansea and Newport in the south and in Wales’ largest town in the north, Wrexham. In Cardiff, the Lib Dems went into the election holding 34 seats to the Tories’ 16 and Labour’s 14, but saw their vote collapse.
Interestingly, council leaders lost their seats in Wrexham, Caerphilly, Ceredigion and the Vale of Glamorgan, possibly because they are so closely identified with service cuts.
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George Galloway’s Respect party wins Bradford council seats
Posted by: | CommentsGeorge Galloway’s electoral winning streak has continued in Bradford with five rookie politicians from his Respect party winning city council seats – including one swiped from the Labour leader of the administration.
Ian Greenwood, who has run the council since 2010 and has been a councillor in Bradford for 17 years, loses his £50,000 a year job. He was defeated by Alyas Karmani, onetime head of race relations for the Welsh Assembly and these days a youth worker and expert on sexual violence.
In a bruising campaign that resulted in the police being called to address complaints of violence, Respect won three other seats from Labour in the city and another from the Conservatives. The resurgent party contested 12 out of the 30 seats up for grabs in the Yorkshire town, hoping to capitalise on Galloway’s tumultuous victory in the Bradford West byelection in March.
The only woman to win a seat for Respect was Ruqayyah Collector, already a veteran campaigner at 28, having led the successful campaign to have the controversial Leeds University lecturer, Professor Frank Ellis, suspended as the university investigated whether he was in breach of the Race Relations Act. She won the student-heavy City Ward, beating Labour by around 700 votes.
Before Thursday’s election Bradford city council was run by a minority Labour-led administration. Three votes short of a majority, Labour required help from the trio of Greens on the council to pass key motions.
Despite making a few gains from the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, Labour was denied an overall majority when Greenwood lost Little Horton to Respect. They now hold 45 seats – exactly half of the 90 in the whole administration.
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Local elections: great expectations as Labour ends ‘southern discomfort’
Posted by: | CommentsLabour has won back control of councils across the country, boosting the position of Ed Miliband and prompting soul searching among Conservative MPs.
John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde university, declared that Labour was now a serious opposition party after performing better than last year and securing seats across England.
In a symbolic gain Labour wrested control of Birmingham, Britain’s second largest city, from a Conservative-Liberal Democrat administration early on Friday. Labour also regained control of Great Yarmouth and Harlow from the Tories.
In Great Yarmouth Labour gained five seats to take its share to 21 seats. The Tories lost four seats as its number dropped to 18. In Harlow Labour gained five seats to take its share to 20. The Tories lost four to take their figure to 13. The Lib Dems lost their only seat.
Labour also won back control of Thurrock, Exeter, Wirral, Chorley and Nuneaton and Bedworth. There were signs that the party was on course to gain control of Southampton, allowing the party to say it is tackling the “southern discomfort” that helped keep Labour out of power nationally between 1979 and 1997.
The Liberal Democrats experienced a difficult night on a par with last year’s elections when the party lost 760 seats. In an early result, the Lib Dems lost all four of their councillors in Knowsley to Labour, which now has all 63 seats on the council.
The BBC reported that the Lib Dems had lost four councillors in Grimsby. One Lib Dem councillor told the BBC that the party was facing “meltdown mark two”.
Simon Hughes, the party’s deputy leader, told the BBC: “We will not do as badly as last year because people are getting used to the idea of us being in government. For me, it will be a slow climb.”
One of the few bright spots for the Lib Dems was in Eastleigh, held by Chris Huhne at Westminster, where the party made gains. The party won back seats from former Lib Dems who had become independents.
Miliband will hail the Labour results as a sign that Labour is returning in areas it has to win back if is to form a government. The Tories won Harlow with a majority of 4,925 at the 2010 general election. It gained Great Yarmouth with a majority of 4,276.
Curtice told the BBC: “Labour will take heart. It is not the kind of performance Labour was putting in before the 1997 election. But Labour now looks like a serious opposition to an incumbent government.”
A Labour source said: “Early results show we are exceeding expectations – Great Yarmouth, Plymouth, Dudley. We are making real progress in areas where we need to win in 2015 – Harlow, Nuneaton and Bedworth. The big story seems to be a disaster for the Tories who are losing twice as many seats as Lib Dems.”
The Tories showed nerves in the early hours as it became clear Labour had performed well. Lady Warsi, the Tory co-chair who had started the evening trotting out the party’s official claim that Labour had to gain 700 seats to show that it was performing well, suddenly changed her projections. After consulting her iPad during the BBC election night programme, Warsi said that Labour had to gain 1,000 seats.
Tom Watson, the Labour deputy chairman, said: “We will not gain 1,000 seats. That is a ridiculously over-optimistic figure. There are only 3,600 seats.”
The Tories said there were some bright spots. In Castle Point in Essex the Tories held all their seats, ensuring that Labour still has no seats on the council. In Preston Labour lost a seat.
Labour entered the elections facing an acute challenge because it scored just 24% of the vote when the same set of seats were contested in England in 2008. The party is now on 40% in national polls, which prompted psephologists to say that Labour should gain at least 700 seats in this year’s elections.
The party said it hoped to make gains of between 300 and 350 in England and 100 in Wales. It expected to make net losses in Scotland because the SNP is still performing strongly after its emphatic victory in last year’s parliamentary elections.
Labour expects to lose control of Glasgow city council, though it believes the SNP will fail to gain control of Scotland’s largest city.
In the first result, declared just before midnight, Labour gained eight seats on Sunderland city council to secure 64 seats. The Tories lost six seats to take their total to eight. The Lib Dems lost their only seat. Independents have three seats.
Justine Greening, the transport secretary, indicated that the Tories will assess the results across the country with care. “We need to be a government that represents the whole country and not just the fringes of it,” she told the BBC.
Greening’s comments came after Gary Streeter, the moderate Tory MP for South West Devon, launched a stinging attack on the government for having “clobbered” natural party supporters in the budget. “We have to put right the misdeeds of the last month,” Streeter told the BBC.
Labour hopes to repeat its overnight successes in London – in at least one area – when the results are declared this afternoon. It believes it is on course to squeeze the Tories into second place in the London assembly elections.
But Labour is bracing itself for a setback amid a growing belief that Boris Johnson will secure a second term as mayor. In a sign of nerves at the highest levels of the Labour party, the deputy leader, Harriet Harman, criticised Watson for saying that voters should hold their noses and vote for Livingstone.
“It was wrong of Tom Watson to say, ‘Hold your nose’,” Harman said on Question Time on BBC1. “Ken Livingstone has great policies for London.”
Harman made clear that Labour will focus on the difficulty of unseating such a huge personality as Boris Johnson.
“It is a pity that there has not been a focus on the issues that matter,” she told Question Time.
“I hope that Londoners will have seen through the [focus on personalities] and will not have been distracted by the mudslinging from Boris.”
Harman declined to say whether it was right that Livingstone was selected as the Labour candidate. Senior Labour figures blame Harman for agreeing that the contest to choose the Labour candidate should take place at the same time as the party’s overall leadership contest in 2010. This denied David Miliband the chance of throwing his hat into the ring in London.
Harman quibbled with David Dimbleby, the Question Time presenter, when he asked whether it was right of Watson to question Livingstone’s candidacy.
But Watson told LBC last month: “I’m being totally candid with you. I’m saying to you, those Labour voters who are thinking of going to vote for Boris Johnson, ‘Hold your nose, vote for Ken,’ because that’s the way that you will help Labour.”
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London mayoral elections: how people voted – in pictures
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Syria, Egypt and Middle East unrest – live updates
Posted by: | CommentsEgypt: The ruling military council is committed to handing over power to a civilian administration by 1 July as it promised, the Associated Press reports, citing a senior member of the council.
The announcement came a day after deadly clashes between protesters and assailants left at least 11 dead in Cairo, prompting some politicians to voice fears that the military might use the violence as a pretext to ignore its own deadline to relinquish control of the country.
Maj Gen Mohammed al-Asar also told reporters that the military will ensure the integrity and fairness of presidential elections scheduled for May 23-24.
The military took over after a popular uprising ousted Egypt’s authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. But in over a year in power, it has been accused of badly bungling the transition, killing protesters, hauling more than 10,000 civilians to trial before military tribunals and of scheming to enshrine a political role for itself after handing over power.
“We say it frankly and clearly, the armed forces and their supreme council are committed to the handover of power on June 30,” al-Asar said. “We don’t desire power. The Supreme Council (of the Armed Forces) is not a substitute for legitimacy in Egypt.”
Here’s a summary of the main developments so far today.
Syria
• At least four students have been killed after security services stormed dorms at Aleppo University, activists and opposition groups said. Dozens more were injured and scores arrested, according to the reports. There have numerous clashes at the university and the assault followed the biggest demonstration there since the beginning of the uprising, according to an opposition website.
• The son of the leader of a Syrian opposition party has been killed, the state news agency reported, blaming an armed terrorist group. Ismail Haider, son of Syrian Social Nationalist party (SSNP) leader Ali Haidar was with another party member, who was also killed, when machine guns opened fire on their car on the road between Homs and Masyaf. A SSNP member told al-Akhbar that the party, which calls for democratic change and rejects the militarisation of the uprising, has enemies on both sides.
• The Syrian government imported $167m-worth of air defence systems and missiles and a further $1m of small arms and ammunition in the months before it began the crackdown on opposition activists, a report by the charity Oxfam says.
Egypt
• The military rulers have expressed sorrow for the bloodshed in Abbasiya but said protesters should have demonstrated in Tahrir Square instead. At a press conference on the violence, they also insisted they were committed to handing over power by 30 June.
Tunisia
• The head of Nessma TV, Nabil Karoui, has been fined 2,400 dinars (about $1,500) for broadcasting the award-winning film, Persepolis, after being convicted of a public order offence. Hedi Boughnim, who dubbed the film into Tunisian dialect, was also fined 1,200 dinars (about $750).
Syria: More arrests are being carried out at the campus of Aleppo University – where activists say at least four students were killed earlier today and scores arrested by government forces – according to the Local Coordination Committees opposition group.
Syria: The assault by the security forces at Aleppo University last night followed the largest anti-regime demonstration at the university to date, the opposition website al-Ayyam says.
This video purports to show the demonstration yesterday.
Al-Ayyam says:
The protest drew many students and was the largest protest at Aleppo University to date. Security forces arrived quickly on the scene and assaulted the protesting students forcing them to disperse and fold back.
The main assault [was] overnight. The students started another protest in the university’s housing complex. They launched the protest from their rooms. Witnesses report that three buses carrying security forces and Shabbiha [pro-regime thugs] surrounded and laid siege to the housing complex. The attack started shortly after midnight Thursday and lasted about an hour.
Security forces stormed the complex with five military vehicles while firing from mounted machine guns. The initial assault caused widespread damage and killed two students. Security forces and Shabbiha followed on foot. They searched room by room, breaking in, and firing bursts of gunfire to intimidate the students. More than 50 students were seen being taken away.
Libya: The National Transitional Council yesterday passed a number of laws criminalising the “glorification” of the late Muammar Gaddafi, his regime and his sons, the Tripoli Post reports:
This law and other two laws that aim to protect the nation and the new democratic Libya have been under debate for some time and have been demanded by a large part of the population.
The remnants of pro-Gaddafi elements have exploited the atmosphere of forgiveness and the spirit of reconciliation expressed by the leaders of the uprising and has been working undercover to undermine the state for some time now.
The Tripoli Post quotes a statement read out to reporters by a judicial official:
Praising or glorifying Muammar Gaddfi, his regime, his ideas or his sons … is punishable by a prison sentence …
If those news reports, rumours or propaganda cause any damage to the state the penalty will be life in prison …
In conditions of war, there is a prison sentence for any person who spreads information and rumors which disrupt military preparations for the defense of the country, spread terror or weaken the citizens’ morale.
(Libya is still considered to be in a state of war, apparently.)
A second law stipulates prison sentences for anyone who “attacks the February 17 revolution, denigrates Islam, the authority of the state or its institutions,” the Tripoli Post says, stating that these are laws “governing the transition” – which perhaps means that they are intended to be temporary.
A third new law promulgated yesterday confiscates all property and funds belonging to figures of the previous regime, including Gaddafi’s relatives.
Yemen: Democracy is America’s second choice in Yemen, counter-radicalisation expert Francisco Martin-Rayo argues in an article for Foreign Policy that is highly critical of the Obama administration and its apparent obsession with al-Qaida:
Though Yemen’s internal politics have changed dramatically since January 2011, US strategy there has remained single-mindedly focused on eradicating AQAP [al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula]. Democracy promotion, and the hopes of millions of Yemenis who supported the revolution, do not appear to be among the Obama administration’s concerns in the country.
Nowhere was this more clear than in a recent press conference in Sana’a, where Jeffrey Feltman, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, reinforced US support for the existing transition plan, which doesn’t call for elections until February 2014 and which has widely left President Saleh’s patronage network intact. (His son, Ahmed Ali Abdullah Saleh, still controls the Republican Guard and Special Forces – a fact that inspires considerable disquiet among members of the pro-democracy opposition.)
Since the beginning of the demonstrations against President Saleh’s regime, the US has signally failed to support the pro-democracy youth movement, a group that consists largely of the young and dissatisfied men that AQAP recruits so assiduously …
In April 2011, the youth movement openly petitioned the US for support, only to be ignored. The US instead supported the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) negotiations with the old regime, squashing any hopes of an authentic democratic revolution and antagonising Washington’s most likely local allies.
Tunisia: It appears that Nabil Karoui, the head of Nessma TV, has been convicted of a public order or “morality” offence rather than blasphemy in the Persepolis trial. This may explain why he has been fined rather than jailed.
According to Le Nouvel Observateur (in French), the court judgment said he was punished for “broadcasting to the public a film that disturbed public order and was contrary to good morals”.
Tunisia Live says Hedi Boughnim, who dubbed the award-winning film into Tunisian dialect, was also fined 1,200 dinars (about $750).
Syria: The son of the leader of the opposition Syrian Social Nationalist party (SSNP) was assassinated on Wednesday by an armed terrorist group, the state news agency reports.
Ismail Haidar, son of Ali Haidar, was killed alongside another SSNP member, Fadi Atawneh, by machine gun fire on the road between Homs and Masyaf, says Sana.
The SSNP, founded by Lebanese academic Antun Saadeh in the 1930s, is “an opposition party calling for democratic change in Syria, but adamantly rejected foreign intervention and the militarisation of the uprising,” says al-Akhbar.
It quotes an anonymous high-ranking member of the SSNP based in the US as saying:
The SSNP has taken a position that is neither to the complete liking of the regime nor to the complete liking of many elements in the opposition, but which it feels represents the interest of Syria, which should be above all other interests.
Unfortunately, certain elements on the ground believe that unless you are 100% with them, then you are 100% against them, and as a result two young members of the SSNP have paid with their lives for the party’s position.
Mohammad Zahweh, from the SSNP, told Al-Akhbar.
It happened yesterday evening. There were gunmen waiting [on the street] and they began firing on the car … We have received threats, particularly against the president [of] the party, but we couldn’t specify the source of those threats. I can’t really say for sure [who was responsible]. The investigation is underway [and] we don’t want to guess who was behind it, it could’ve been a criminal act.
Sana quotes SSNP leader Ali Haidar as saying:
I don’t need condolences over the deaths of my son and his comrade, because their blood is no more precious than the blood of any Syrian that was martyred before or will be martyred in the coming days … Those who carry guns will not terrorise us and will not silence us nor stop is from working day and night to establish peace and security in Syria …Ismael and his comrade are the victims of terrorism that is afflicting Syria… they, like the rest of the martyrs, fell so that Syria may live, for Syria’s interest is above all interests.
Tunisia: Reports are coming in that the head of Nessma TV has been fined 2,400 dinars (about $1,500) for broadcasting the film, Persepolis, which religious elements complained was blasphemous. More details shortly.
Bahrain: The kingdom’s human rights record will come under scrutiny at the UN Human Rights Council later this month, as part of the “periodic review” system.
As part of that process, the kingdom has submitted a report detaiing its achievements since the last review in 2008. As usual with these reports, it gives a fairly glowing picture. It also refers to the king as “beloved” three times (pages 8, 20 and 25) and “dearly beloved” once (page 7).
A second report, by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, is less congratulatory. It complains about “a deterioration in the human rights situation” and notes “with concern” allegations of torture, including the torture of children.
Syria: In another video from Aleppo University, where activists say at least four students were killed (see 9.40am), the sound of intense gunfire can be heard. It is difficult to make out the different figures running outside as the video is filmed from a room high off the ground. A voiceover at the end says “Assad mukhabarat [secret police].”
Another video purports to show students outside the dormitories amid their belongings, strewn on the ground.
Tunisia: Two police officers who killed a protester last year have been jailed for 20 years each – the first punishment meted out to security officials over their crackdown on the revolution that ousted President Ben Ali, Reuters reports.
The officers were also fined 80,000 dinars ($60,000) each for their role in the death of Salim al-Hadhary, a source said. The money will go to the victim’s family.
Syria: Syrian security forces stormed student dorms at Aleppo University in the north-west of the country following anti-government protests there, killing at least four students and wounding several others with teargas and live ammunition, activists and opposition groups said today. From AP .
Around 1,500 students had been protesting in student quarters adjacent to Aleppo University’s main campus late Wednesday when security forces and pro-regime gunmen swept into their residences, firing tear gas at first, then live ammunition to disperse them.
Student activist Thaer al-Ahmed said panic and chaos ensued as students tried to flee. “Some students ran to their rooms to take cover but they were followed to their rooms, beaten up and arrested,” he said.
He said raids and intermittent gunfire continued until early Thursday morning. Dozens of people were wounded, some critically, and around 50 students were arrested, he said.The Local Coordination Committees activist group confirmed the raid and said five students were killed and some 200 arrested while the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said four students were killed. “Regime forces demanded through loudspeakers that the dorms be evacuated, then began detaining the students,” the LCC said in a statement.
The LCC says demonstrations are taking place now, both elsewhere on the campus and outside the campus, in solidarity with the students who were attacked.
A video posted online purports to show a student who was shot.
This video shows purports to show a fire still blazing at the university dorms after the attacks. http://youtu.be/uulRMOFytWc
A picture of one of those said to have been killed, named as Majed Abdulhaid, has been posted on Twitter. (warning:graphic)
Syria: Will it end in stalemate or checkmate? The New York Times is intrigued to discover that the president of the World Chess Federation was in Damascus at the weekend and had three hours of talks with President Assad .
It says Kirsan Ilyumzhinov – described as “an eccentric Russian millionaire” – was officially visiting Syria to promote the teaching of chess in schools, though the paper notes that he also went to Libya last year in an effort to negotiate a settlement between the Libyan rebels and Colonel Gaddafi:
Although he holds no formal diplomatic position with the Russian government, his repeated visits to Arab countries in turmoil have reinforced the impression that he is serving as an informal envoy, using the chess organization’s business as a fittingly Russian ruse.
Bahrain: To mark World Press Freedom Day, King Hamad has announced “a new era” for Bahrain’s media, the pro-government Gulf Daily News reports. The king is quoted as saying:
There should be no tampering with the right of Bahraini citizens in expressing their opinions, nor any ceilings put on their freedoms or creativity apart from professional consciousness, national and ethical responsibilities and observance of the people’s unity and national interest in compliance with the constitution and the law.
Media freedoms are ushering in a more advanced phase of diversity, independence and respect of opinion and counter-opinion.
The king added that legislation to “boost freedom of opinion and expression in compliance with highest international standards” was on in preparation.
Good morning. Welcome to Middle East Live. During the day we shall be monitoring unrest in Syria, Egypt, Bahrain and other parts of the region, and keeping an eye on the growing problems faced by the Un monitoring operation in Syria.
Syria
• The UN monitoring mission is in trouble – and not just on the ground in Syria, where the monitors are constantly tailed by the authorities. “The UN is making repeated calls to member states seeking personnel as it tries to deploy the full force by the end of May,” Bloomberg reports.
It adds that the deployment is hindered by the acknowledgment of US and other security council diplomats that the mission is likely to fail and that its purpose is to convince Russia and China that stronger measures, which they previously blocked, are needed to force President Bashar al-Assad to stop killing his opponents and civilians.
• In a statement last night, the Avaaz organisation said the Annan plan is “in the gutter”.
Referring to developments in Homs, it said “While the pace of bombardment slowed significantly ever since the UN observers arrived in the city, the Annan plan is not being upheld. Armed opposition groups remain inside the city while the regime’s forces retain a formidable presence.”
• The Syrian government imported $167m-worth of air defence systems and missiles and a further $1m of small arms and ammunition in the months before it began the crackdown on opposition activists, a report by the charity Oxfam says.
Egypt
• The ruling military council (Scaf) says it was not reponsible for the deaths of 11 or more protesters during recent clashes in Cairo and will hold a press conference later today, the Egypt Independent reports.
A statement on Scaf’s Facebook page says: “The armed forces have over the last week endured what it cannot tolerate of insults and attacks from demonstrators in front of the defence ministry.”
Libya
• Shokri Ghanem, Libya’s former oil chief who was found drowned in the river Danube on Sunday, was wanted for questioning in Libya,
Reuters reports. The Libyan authorities had sent a warrant to Interpol about a month ago but were still awaiting a “decisive reply”.
• The National Transitional Council has lifted controversial restrictions on the types of political parties that can take part in next month’s election, the BBC reports.
In April the NTC had announced a ban on parties organised along religious, regional, tribal or ethnic lines, saying that this was a measure to preserve “national unity”. But yesterday it issued a new version of the law which made no mention of the restrictions.
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Eurozone crisis live: Tight security in Barcelona as ECB meets
Posted by: | CommentsA bit more information from the student march in Barcelona via ITN’s Jess Brammar: the event is proceeding pretty calmly, but someone else appears to have thrown a waterbomb at the riot police (somewhat risky).
Riot police getting waterbombed from nearby buildings, but protests so far very peaceful in Barcelona while ECB meets twitter.com/jessbrammar/st…
— Jess Brammar (@jessbrammar) May 3, 2012
No-one really expected the European Central Bank to cut rates today. Despite some pretty rubbish economic data yesterday, the current eurozone inflation rate (2.6% at the last count) doesn’t really allow further monetary easing.
Anders Svendsen, chief analyst at Nordea bank, reckons ECB president Mario Draghi will sound “mildly dovish” at his press conference, which starts at 1.30pm BST (2.30pm CEST), telling Reuters that:
For now, it is still too early for the ECB to change its view, but the risk of an interest rate cut during the summer has clearly increased.
Struggling households, mortgage holders and businesses across the eurozone would probably see a rate cut as an opportunity, rather than a risk.
The European Central Bank has just voted to leave eurozone interest rates unchanged, at 1%.
In Barcelona, the student protest march is now underway. All peaceful so far, it appears
I counted at least 15 full police vans up one street behind this relatively modest, peaceful student march on ECB meet twitter.com/jessbrammar/st…
— Jess Brammar (@jessbrammar) May 3, 2012
Katharine Ainger gets in touch from Barcelona to explain that many people are deliberately not protesting against the European Central Bank today, and are keeping their powder dry for demonstrations on May 12.
She explained this is a “deliberate strategy of indifference as the government has declared war on protest” (a reference to the thousands of police who have flooded the steets of Barcelona today).
A bit more information on the situation in Barcelona — Spanish students are planning to march from the centre of the city to the hotel where the ECB is holding today’s meeting, in protests at Spain’s austerity programme (that’s via ITV’s Jess Brammar).
That’s despite the heavy police presence, including armed officers.
Speaking of elections, the Open Europe thinktank has published a report today looking how a François Hollande victory in the French presidential elections would change the eurocrisis.
They conclude that France is likely to become a “more difficult and assertive EU partner” whoever wins on Sunday. However, Open Europe analyst Vincenzo Scarpetta warned, neither candidate will find it easy to deliver their pledges. Scarpetta added:
The Franco-German axis will continue, but a Hollande victory in particular will mean a more unpredictable relationship and therefore potentially more uncertainty on the markets.
Clearly, under Hollande, Germany will find it far more difficult to push its vision of a eurozone based on strong budget discipline.
Sarkozy has already questioned the role of the European Central Bank during the election campaign. That debate could be even more heated under Hollande, Scarpetta believes.
You can download the full report here (.pfd)
Thanks to those of you who have posted questions for Helena Smith’s Q&A on the Greek elections (I see several familiar names). Still room for more…. (in the Q&A please)
Jess Brammar, producer at ITV News, is in Barcelona and confirms that there is a strong police presence to protect the European Central Bank as it meets today (details at 10.57am):
No, this guy isn’t an anarchist protestor, he’s a plain-clothed policeman. Security heavy at ECB meeting in Barcelona twitter.com/jessbrammar/st…
— Jess Brammar (@jessbrammar) May 3, 2012
Security barriers were being erected yesterday….
…as this photo taken on Wednesday shows.
Here’s a picture of European Central Bank president Mario Draghi and EU commissioner Olli Rehn chatting before their meeting in Barcelona begins.
They don’t look particularly cheerful (and no wonder, with nearly half the eurozone in recession and unemployment hitting a new record high yesterday).
The ECB will announce its decision on monetary policy at 12.45pm BST, or 1.45pm local time. Economists expect no change in interest rates (there’s a handy round-up of predictions here). The press conference 45 minute later should be interesting — Draghi could again urge EU leaders to do more, or repeat his calls for a growth pact (or steer away from politics given Sunday’s elections in France and Greece).
Security is tight in Barcelona today as the European Central Bank’s board of directors hold their regular meeting on monetary policy.
The Spanish authorities appear very concerned that the event could be disrupted. Around 4,500 police officers have been mobilised in the city, with another 2,000 members of the Civil Guard also ready to be deployed.
Such is the concern that Spain has temporarily suspended the Schengen Protocol, the laws which allow free movement within the EU.
That might prevent troublemakers from abroad getting to Barcelona. But last month’s Spanish general strike saw some isolated violence, so it’s possible that there could still be some trouble (unless the heavy police presence deters them).
Coming up this afternoon — our Athens correspondent, Helena Smith, is holding an online Q&A session on the Greek elections.
It starts at 2pm BST. You can get your questions in now — just click here to see the Q&A page. Please post them there, rather than in this live blog.
Sunday’s parliamentary election is a crucial event in the future Greece, and the wider eurozone. As Helena explains:
With Greek citizens increasingly outraged by austerity measures, the vote will decide whether the country continues on the path set for it by its partners in the Eurozone, or chooses instead to back parties who propose leaving the currency.
City analysts and the financial markets aren’t too impressed by this morning’s Spanish bond auction, but neither are they panicking.
Nicholas Spiro of Spiro Sovereign Strategy points out that Spain’s own commercial banks have been heavy buyers in previous Spanish auctions:
There’s growing uncertainty about the willingness and ability of Spanish and Italian banks to continue to prop up their sovereigns’ bond markets. The more dire things get in the real economy, the more pressure there is on banks to rein in their bond purchases. Yet with foreign investors becoming even more risk averse, it’s the “domestics” that are holding the fort.
Nick Stamenkovic of Ria Capital saids it was a “mixed picture”, and that the higher borrowing costs meant the “ongoing worries about the fiscal position of Spain will persist”.
Lyn Graham-Taylor of Rabobank fears that the results show that the €1trn of cheap loans pumped into the European financial sector by the ECB is no longer helping weak countries such as Spain. He said:
It is difficult to not see Spanish yields continuing an inexorable rise from here given the poor economic figures and the increasing talk of a bank recapitalisation being required.
The euro is down a tad this morning, at $1.3125, but most stock markets are a little higher (FTSE 100 up 25 points at 5783). All calm….
Back in the eurozone crisis, and Spain has seen its borrowing costs jump at an auction of government debt.
In its first test of market confidence since being downgraded by Standard & Poor’s, Spain saw the yield (interest rate) on five year bonds as high as 4.96%, up from 3.696% at the last auction of this type.
The yield on a three-year Spanish bond also spiked, to 4.03% from 2.617%.
Given Spain is back in recession, and the entire eurozone manufacturing sector is shrinking, analysts had expected borrowing costs to jump. The encouraging news for the Madrid government is that it sold a total of €2.5bn of debt, the maximum it was targeting.
The auction also attracted plenty of interest (Spain recieved bids for more than three times as much debt as it actually sold).
The highlights of today’s service sector data (see 9.32am) are that companies are reporting:
• a rise in volumes of incoming new business (see graph above), and
• an increase in staffing levels.
The downside is that service sector firms also reported strong ‘input price’ increases (ie, higher fuel, food, and energy costs).
Growth in Britain’s service sector has fallen faster than expected, according to data just released.
The monthly service sector PMI (a measure of activity across the industry), has fallen to 53.3 in April, from 55.5 in March. That’s the lowest reading since November, and a sharper slowdown (although not a contraction) than analysts had expected.
But Markit, the firm which compiled the data, argues that the underlying picture was healthy. It also questioned whether Britain is really in recession (as the Office for National Statistics reported last week).
Chris Williamson, Markit’s chief economist, commented:
Companies continued to report rising levels of new business, which helped drive confidence to the highest for over two years. From what we are hearing from panellists, this certainly does not sound like an economy in recession.
That’s a controversial argument, that will renew the dispute over whether the PMI data or the ONS’s larger sample gives the best view of the UK economy.
Here’s some more instant reaction to Mervyn King’s slot on the Today Programme.
Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan is amused by King’s argument that his successor should understand history, given the current quantitative easing programme:
Mervyn King has one thing right: it’s sensible to have a historian at the Bank of England. If I’m chosen, I promise to stop printing money.
— Daniel Hannan (@DanHannanMEP) May 3, 2012
Ed Conway of Sky has taken issue with the governor’s claim that the crisis wasn’t preceded by a boom (which a competent central bank should have controlled):
Chart that disproves Sir Mervyn’s claim there was no sign economy growing unsustainably. Look at M4 build-up pre-crisis twitpic.com/9gnv9e
— Ed Conway (@EdConwaySky) May 3, 2012
And economist Shaun Richards has renewed his call for more democracy at the Bank of England:
Unhappy with Mervyn KIng and his arrogance and complacency? There is a democratic alternative. bit.ly/KTZDBb #gfc2
— Shaun Richards (@notayesmansecon) May 3, 2012
So what did we learn from Mervyn King’s appearance on the Today Programme (see 8.11am onwards)?
• By predicting ‘steady, slow’ growth this year, the governor of the Bank of England is offering support to the Treasury at a time when George Osborne’s economic credibility is under fire. The ‘big picture’ here is that the government’s fiscal plans are based on quite steady growth in the next few years – not a double-dip recession in which tax receipts will probably be lower than planned.
• The Bank is sticking to its position that it should only bear limited responsibility for Britain’s worst financial crisis in decades, and plenty of credit for how it handed the situation since. King may be willing to support future inquiries, but there’s no chance of a thorough investigation of Threadneedle Street’s mistakes anytime soon.
• King’s successor is more likely to have an academic background than a City one. He appeared to suggest that a historian would be well-placed to understand the current situation. So Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs, who implausably appears to be in the running, may not be a 5-1 shot after all.
Mervyn King is reminded that he has been labelled a “tyrant” by a former member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee, David Blanchflower.
King tries to shrug off the jibe with a joke, replying Blanchflower actually called him “a cruel tyrant”. He then denies the charge — pointing out that there are nine people on the MPC, and on three occasions he has found himself in the minority when the committee votes.
What I would ask people to do is look at how the system works.
Would a tyrant allow himself to be outvoted three times?
King touches briefly on the issue of his successor, saying it’s important to have someone who understands the long view, rather than just short term issues. Ben Bernanke, of course, is an expert on the Great Depression of the 1930s.
They then move onto sporting matters — Merv is an Aston Villa fan (doesn’t he have enough problems?), and the interview ends. Reaction to follow!
Sir Mervyn King predicts that the UK economy should come out of recession during 2012, as his interview on the Today Programme continues:
The Bank of England governor tells listeners that he sees signs of recovery in the data he sees from around the country.as he tours the country:
It’s a patchy picture, but we see signs of recovery coming.
[I expect] Steady, slow recovery, later this year.
King pins the blame for Britain’s double-dip on the consequences of higher food and energy costs. Without that, he says, we might have seen some growth in the first three months of 2012 rather than a 0.2% decline in GDP.
The issue of bankers pay is also raised — and King says that he wouldn’t really mind what bankers were paid, if the state wasn’t providing guarantees to banks to prevent their failure.
Why won’t the Bank of England hold a proper inquiry into its conduct before, and during, the financial crisis, asks Evan Davis.
This is a key question — many analysts, and some MPs, believe Threadneedle Street is refusing to allow us to see exactly what went wrong.
Not at all, Sir Mervyn King insists. We’ve already held an inquiry to learn the lessons — back in 2008, indeed.
Davis suggests that we might have a few more lessons to learn now, but King puts up his defences — pointing out that responsibility was split between the Bank of England, the Financial Services Authority and the Treasury.
We are very happy to review the responsibilities we were given, and will continue to do that.
King also claims that the UK has learned many more lessons than other countries. Simon Nixon of the Wall Street Journal argues that other countries think Britain has learned the wrong lessons.
King says UK has learned more lessons than any other country. Many other countries think UK is nuts.
— Simon Nixon (@Simon_Nixon) May 3, 2012
So where were the mistakes made, Governor?
Mervyn King blames the “inbalance in the economy” that means the Bank of England could not protect the UK from the crisis.
Evan Davis presses him on this — what did the Bank actually get wrong? King insists that it was an error of vision:
We were certainly late to the game in understanding the fragiliy of the banking sector, and the consequences when the fragility became clear.
But we were in good company, he adds. In fact, the Bank of England was a relative success by keeping interest rates higher than many other G7 countries.
Mervyn King is on the Today Programe now, discussing his role in the financial crash.
Evan Davis asks whether the Bank of England governor is really taking the blame for the crisis (as some headlines this morning say), or really blaming others?
King argues that the scale of the crisis means that pretty much everyone involved much take some blame. This wasn’t just the fault of a few people or a few banks.
He adds:
I accept our share of responsibility for going along with a banking sector that failed.
Sir Mervyn King is due on the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme in about 10 minutes time to discuss last night’s speech on the financial crisis, and the lessons we can learn.
During the speech, King admitted that the Bank of England should have “shouted from the rooftops” about the looming disaster during the good years, while insisting that the real culprits were the Labour government (for not providing a decent regulatory framework) and the banking sector (for becoming dangerously overleveraged).
King’s argument that the Bank was merely culpable of not shouting louder has been questioned by several commentators this morning.
Our economics editor Larry Elliott writes:
It was the banks and Gordon Brown wot did it. Neutered by New Labour and unable to prevent the City from behaving in an increasingly reckless fashion, the Bank of England could only issue reports and deliver sermons as Britain slid inexorably towards its worst financial and economic crisis since the 1930s.
That is the recent past as seen through the eyes of Sir Mervyn King, and there will be many both in the financial sector and at Westminster who will raise more than a sceptical eyebrow at the governor’s conclusions. King, they will argue, is now rewriting history in order to salvage his own reputation.
The Daily Telegraph’s Damian Reece isn’t convinced by King’s argument:
We got a mea culpa of sorts. But mainly we got self-justification from a leader of an organisation that was as culpable as any for the regulatory and policy failings that led to the crash but which has miraculously found itself about to acquire unprecedented regulatory powers over banking, financial services generally and the economy more broadly. This without any independent investigation and report into what went wrong within the Bank of England previously.
And things did go wrong.
Claire Jones of the Financial Times said King’s message was “Mea not really culpa”.
As a history lesson into central banks’ less-than-stellar performance over recent years it’s pretty revisionist.
Do we get an apology on monetary authorities’ failure to prevent the crisis? Or the promise of a review into how the Bank has performed during the turmoil? Not quite. There is some admission of guilt, but more half-truths and excuses.
Alex Brummer of the Daily Mail focuses on King’s warning that the system needs to be strengthened to avoid a repeat of the crisis:
What the governor makes clear is that the Great Recession, and the financial crisis which accompanied it, is far from over.
The threat of an implosion in euroland, where our banks are heavily invested, means that they need every bit of regulatory capital that they can get hold of to withstand the whirlwind.
Today’s agenda has a Spanish feel — with this morning’s debt auction, and the European Central Bank decamping from its usual base in Germany. The latest healthcheck of the UK service sector could also be interesting.
• Spanish debt auction: from 9.30am BST / 10.30am CEST
• UK Services sector PMI for April: 9.30am BST
• Eurozone producer prices index for March: 10am BST / 11am BST
• ECB monetary policy decision: 12.45pm BST / 13.45pm CEST
• ECB press conference: 1.30pm BST / 2.30pm CEST
Good morning, and welcome to today’s rolling coverage of the eurozone debt crisis.
Coming up: the European Central Bank is holding its monthly policy-setting meeting today, in Barcelona instead of Frankfurt. Will it consider new measures to stimulate the European economy? Unlikely, but Mario Draghi will certainly be quizzed about the crisis at this afternoon’s press conference.
Also … Spain will hold an auction of up to €2.5bn (£2bn) of three and five-year bonds. This is its first test of market confidence since being downgraded by S&P last week, and falling into recession on Monday.
We’ll also be tracking the reaction to Sir Mervyn King’s BBC Today Programme Lecture, delivered last night. The Bank of England governor admitted to some failings in the run-up to the crisis, while pinning most of the blame on the banks and the Labour government.
We can also watching political developments in France and Greece ahead of this weekend’s elections.
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Connecting the dots of this climate change crisis
Posted by: Editor | Comments (0)The Williams river was so languid and lovely last Saturday morning that it was almost impossible to imagine the violence with which it must have been running on 28 August 2011. Yet the evidence was all around: sand piled high on its banks, trees still scattered as if by a giant’s fist, and most obvious of all, a utilitarian temporary bridge where, for 140 years, a graceful covered bridge had spanned the water.
The YouTube video of that bridge crashing into the raging river was Vermont’s iconic image from its worst disaster in memory, the record flooding that followed Hurricane Irene’s rampage through the state in August 2011. It claimed dozens of lives, as it cut a more than $1bn swath of destruction across the eastern US.
I watched it on TV in Washington, DC, just after emerging from jail, having been arrested at the White House during mass protests of the Keystone XL pipeline. Since Vermont is my home, it took the theoretical – the ever more turbulent, erratic, and dangerous weather that the tar sands pipeline from Canada would help ensure – and made it all too concrete. It shook me bad.
And I am not the only one.
New data (pdf) released last month by researchers at Yale and George Mason universities show that a lot of Americans are growing far more concerned about climate change, precisely because they are drawing the links between freaky weather, a climate kicked off-kilter by a fossil-fuel guzzling civilization, and their own lives. After a year with a record number of multibillion dollar weather disasters, seven in ten Americans now believe that “global warming is affecting the weather.”
No less striking, 35% of the respondents reported that extreme weather had affected them personally in 2011. As Yale’s Anthony Laiserowitz told the New York Times, “People are starting to connect the dots.”
Which is what we must do. As long as this remains one abstract problem in the long list of problems, we will never get to it. There will always be something going on each day that is more important, including, if you are facing flood or drought, the immediate danger.
But in reality, climate change is actually the biggest thing that is going on every single day. If we could only see that pattern, we would have a fighting chance. It is like one of those trompe l’oeil puzzles where you can only catch sight of the real picture by holding it a certain way.
So, this weekend, we will be doing our best to hold our planet a certain way so that the most essential pattern is evident. At 350.org, we are organizing a global day of action that is all about dot-connecting; in fact, you can follow the action at climatedots.org.
The day will begin in the Marshall Islands of the far Pacific, where the sun first rises on our planet, and where locals will hold a daybreak underwater demonstration on their coral reef already threatened by rising seas. They will hold, in essence, a giant dot – and so will our friends in Bujumbura, Burundi, where March flooding destroyed 500 homes. In Dakar, Senegal, they’ll mark the tidal margins of recent storm surges. In Adelaide, Australia, activists will host a “dry creek regatta” to highlight the spreading drought down under.
Pakistani farmers – some of the millions driven from their homes by unprecedented flooding over the last two years – will mark the day on the banks of the Indus; in Ayuthaya, Thailand, Buddhist monks will protest next to a temple destroyed by December’s epic deluges that also left the capital, Bangkok, awash.
Activists in Ulanbataar will focus on the ongoing effects of drought in Mongolia. In Daegu, South Korea, students will gather with bags of rice and umbrellas to connect the dots between climate change, heavy rains, and the damage caused to South Korea’s rice crop in recent years. In Amman, Jordan, Friends of the Earth Middle East will be forming a climate dot on the shores of the Dead Sea to draw attention to how climate change-induced drought has been shrinking that sea.
In Herzliya, Israel, people will form a dot on the beach to stand in solidarity with island nations and coastal communities around the world that are feeling the impact of climate change. In newly-freed Libya, students will hold a teach-in. In Oman, elders will explain how the weather along the Persian Gulf has shifted in their lifetimes.
There will be actions in the cloud forests of Costa Rica, and in the highlands of Peru where drought has wrecked the lives of local farmers. In Monterrey, Mexico, they’ll recall last year’s floods that did nearly $2bn in damage. In Chamonix, France, climbers will put a giant red dot on the melting glaciers of the Alps.
And across North America, as the sun moves westward, activists in Halifax, Canada, will “swim for survival” across its bay to highlight rising sea levels, while high school students in Nashville, Tennessee will gather on a football field inundated by 2011′s historic killer floods.
In Portland, Oregon, city dwellers will hold an umbrella-decorating party to commemorate March’s record rains. In Bandelier, New Mexico, firefighters in full uniform will remember last year’s record forest fires and unveil the new solar panels on their fire station. In Miami, Manhattan, and Maui, citizens will line streets that scientists say will eventually be underwater. In the high Sierra, on one of the glaciers steadily melting away, protesters will unveil a giant banner with just two words, a quote from that classic of western children’s literature, The Wizard of Oz: “I’m melting” it will say, in letters three-stories high.
This is a full-on fight between information and disinformation, between the urge to witness and the urge to cover up. The fossil fuel industry has funded endless efforts to confuse people, to leave an impression that nothing much is going on. But as with the tobacco industry before them, the evidence has simply gotten too strong. Once you saw enough people die of lung cancer, you made the connection.
The situation is the same today. Now, it is not just the scientists and the insurance industry; it is your neighbors. Even pleasant weather starts to seem weird. Fifteen thousand US temperature records were broken, mainly in the east and midwest, in the month of March alone, as a completely unprecedented heat wave moved across the continent. Most people I met enjoyed the rare experience of wearing shorts in winter, but they were still shaking their heads. Something was clearly wrong and they knew it.
The one institution in our society that is not likely to be much help in spreading the news is … the news. Studies show our newspapers and TV channels paying ever less attention to our shifting climate. In fact, in 2011, ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox spent twice as much time discussing Donald Trump as climate change. Do not expect representatives from Saturday’s Connect the Dots day to show up on Sunday’s talk shows. Over the last three years, those inside-the-Beltway extravaganzas have devoted 98 minutes total to the planet’s biggest challenge. Last year, in fact, all the Sunday talk shows spent exactly nine minutes of Sunday talking time on climate change – and here is a shock: all of it was given over to Republican politicians in the great denial sweepstakes.
So, here’s a prediction: next Sunday, no matter how big and beautiful the demonstrations may be that we’re mounting across the world, “Face the Nation” and “Meet the Press” won’t be connecting the dots. They will be gassing along about Newt Gingrich’s retirement from the presidential race or Mitt Romney’s coming nomination, and many of the commercials will come from oil companies lying about their environmental efforts.
If we are going to tell this story – and it is the most important story of our time – we are going to have to tell it ourselves.
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