THE Treasury was last week forced to bail out Britain’s biggest waste disposal project with £120 million of extra public money, as part of the Government’s plan to protect the Private Finance Initiative from the credit crunch.
Archive for April, 2009
Treasury saves mammoth PFI project – with giant bailout
By Tribune Web Editor /Friday, April 17th, 2009Westminster Watch: Smear today, gone tomorrow
By Tribune Web Editor /Friday, April 17th, 2009“LIKE dung-rolling Scarab beetles, you can bet the Tories are squirrelling dirt away on us to use ahead of the next election”, one Labour minister told me this week. The graphic image was his response to the furore over the “smear” emails sent between Gordon Brown’s now departed special advisor Damian McBride and political blogger Derek Draper.
FCO faces new criticism over Colombia aid
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, April 16th, 2009BRITISH military aid to Colombia must end and the Colombian government must clean up its “human rights crimes”, according to a delegation of British MPs and British and American trade unionists who have returned from a visit to the country.
Whitehall goes to the jobcentre as joblessness strikes elsewhere
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, April 16th, 2009GOVERNMENT departments have belatedly accepted that they should advertise jobs through the Government’s own jobcentres, the Department for Work and Pensions confirmed this week.
Tribune Comment: Labour’s shameful smear
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, April 16th, 2009THE available supply of condemnatory superlatives has been exhausted. There is no mitigation for the lurid emails which leave a stench of moral decomposition as the flies buzz around Downing Street. As Paul Anderson says on page 13, it is impossible to exaggerate the damage done to the Labour Party.
Cop who fought forced marriages set to lose job
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, April 16th, 2009A BRADFORD police worker defended by dozens of MPs last year when he was disciplined for speaking out publicly is set to lose his job.
TUC calls on Government to reform the rules on redundancy
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, April 16th, 2009THE TUC is calling for urgent reform to redundancy rules in Britain to help workers losing their jobs because of the credit crunch inspired world recession. It has asked the Government to cut the qualifying period for statutory redundancy pay from two years to 12 months.
Shadows of the past are threatening Guatemala
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, April 16th, 2009GOVERNMENT officials involved in opening police archives and members of their families have been threatened and attacked in Guatemala. The wife of the Director of the Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office was kidnapped and tortured. A senior official was badly beaten up, while a number of threats have been made against other officials of the organisation – including a bomb threat and a death threat against the director of the Office.
‘Disastrous’ Bush years savaged over human rights
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, April 16th, 2009BARACK OBAMA’S administration has to put human rights at the heart of its foreign, domestic and security policy if it is to undo the “enormous damage” of the Bush years, according to the Human Rights Watch World Report, published this week.