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Monday 28 February 2011

Sarah McDermott | 11:37 UK time, Monday, 28 February 2011

Coming up on tonight's programme:

Britain has today joined growing calls for the possible imposition of a military no-fly zone
over Libya to prevent further attacks by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi on his own people.

Prime Minister David Cameron told the House of Commons he had ordered the Chief of Defence Staff, Sir David Richards, to begin work with key UK allies on plans for such a restriction.

Tonight, Michael Crick will report on this hardening of Mr Cameron's position, a significant moment for his premiership as a no-fly zone would be the first time the prime minister has committed UK forces to an international military action.

Plus Lyse Doucet, who is in the rebel-held Libyan city of Benghazi, will be bringing us the latest on the situation on the ground.

Paul Mason looks at the steps being taken by China, Iran and Saudi Arabia to ensure that the contagion of protest does not spread to them - particularly how they are censoring the internet to dampen down any dissent.

And here, our Political correspondent Iain Watson asks who the UK's "squeezed middle" are, why electorally they are crucial and how much their standard of living is expected to be affected by spending cuts.

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    #105(previous) M76:
    “AV waste of time...


    You don’t say whether you agree or disagree with Boris. Take a look at the comments made on the link and you will see that most disagree and argue for a YES vote on 5th May. Nobody who attempts to state what would have happened ‘had AV been used’ at last May’s General Election has any credibility, as no voter recorded a second or subsequent choice on the FPTP ballot system. And over 400 MPs were elected with less than 50% of the vote.

    The main arguments for a YES vote are the opportunity:-
    • to establish that we have a right to be consulted by referenda on important issues;
    •to register our disapproval with the present Big 3 monopoly of power politics;
    •to get at least a few Independents and radical MPs, such as UKIP, elected.

    Whether we place them as our first or second choice, in the majority of constituencies (where most first votes are still less than half of all first votes) our second votes will not be wasted as in FPTP. This is also important to unseat the Big 3 party ‘favourites’ from ‘safe seats’ where they do not get the support of the majority of voters, and where many do not bother to ‘waste their vote’ under FPTP.

    By voting 'YES' the public can then decide whether AV produces the desired results, or whether we then push for a further referendum for PR or any other modification that WE feel is best for US.

  • Comment number 2.

    AH - GENEVA - WHY NOT. THEY CAN AFFORD IT.

    While there: perhaps each country, in turn, might own up to its Human Rights violations and war crimes.

    Memo to Billy the Spud: rendition - Chagossian deportation - Iraq war - bribery/arms deals. it's a start. (Is Billy a Christian? Mote and Beam?)

  • Comment number 3.

    BUT STILL WESTMINSTER PARTY-GAMES ENDURE (#1)

    Does AV (unless the ballot allows 'OPT OUT') get us anywhere nearer to overturning (revolution) the current Westminster corruption?

    I have posted a reminder of the sort of manipulative individuals we are dealing with, on yesterday's thread. They will manipulate AV - it's what they do best.

    As for a Coalition between Demolition Dave and Nobody Nick - POST REFERENDUM - how does that work then?

  • Comment number 4.

    NEW GOLD STANDARD ANNOUNCED FOR 'STORAGE UNTO DEATH' HOMES

    They are going to assess the activities!

    10 metre dribble. Carer whacking. Most sustained sobbing. Loudest cry of HELP ME! Food throwing prowess. Longest blank stare. Most distressed visitor. Best fob-off. Longest abandonment. Highest knotted alarm cord. Farthest water mug.

    But not a word of dignified escape as THIS IS THE AGE OF PERVERSITY and Britain leads the world.

    I am part of the Big Society (though much diminished by the Caring Experience) yet no one is consulting me.

  • Comment number 5.



    "According to William K. Black, after the much tinier S&L crisis, there were over 1,000 successful felony prosecutions, several thousand successful enforcement actions, and roughly 1,000 successful civil actions.

    This time Congress gave us the Great Cover-up. Bank officers dodged jail time and collected billions in bonuses. As one of my South American friends observes, he's witnessed this third-world corruption before, and this time it's in English."

    "CEOs of our Systemically Dangerous Institutions (SDI's) fail to manage them, because no one is capable of doing it. Like a morbidly obese junk food addict, banks won't even get on a scale. Our banks refuse to properly measure (account for) the problem. "

    Lets hear more from the noted Janet Tavakoli who more than 10 years ago wrote about the financial derivatives that were used to mount massive (40% of the entire worlds wealth) fraud.

  • Comment number 6.

    FAR OFF WARS COME AND GO, BUT 'STORAGE UNTO DEATH' GOES ON FOR EVER IT SEEMS

    Sorry - just boiled over. What a crass affront to people like me, that our prancing ninnies go to Geneva to discuss Johnnie Foreigner's Human Rights loss, while back in glorious, exemplary Britain, we rot our living-dead to death, with medieval callousness.

    AND ALL THE WHILE WE ARE KILLING A DIFFERENT LOT OF BLAMELESS CIVILIANS ON A WHIM!

    It's enough to make one PHYSICALLY SICK eh Dave?

    THIS IS THE AGE OF PERVERSITY. But who will address it?

  • Comment number 7.

    Re my ongoing battle with migraine

    Discovering two things and responding to them to ascertain its relevance to me significantly improved my quality of life .

    1/ Bruxism - teeth grinding and clenching during sleep and awake can cause migraine (answer NTI splint - make sure it is always firm before you sleep with it )



    2/ Excess copper in the body can trigger migraine (answer water filter and avoid high copper content food)



    I sincerely hope that information helps anyone who is no aware if this. No GP ever informed me of the above they just prescribe drugs which make you worse and have very many side effects, you could say the NICE effect. They are Wrong and harming people !

  • Comment number 8.

    LOW SERUM ZINC SAID TO INDUCE BRUXIS (#7)

    Doctors are a funny lot. They keep experimanting on us, but never ask if it worked when you go back with a different problem.

  • Comment number 9.

    Re the Squeezed Middle:

    Iain Watson needs only to look at the election result across the Irish Sea - Fianna Fail's vote has collapsed because they allowed the full weight of their failed economic strategy to fall heavily on the middle class as well the working class and the poor - it's the middle class have deserted them that led to their disasterous poll result.

    I find it amazing that faced with the UK teetering on the edge of a double dip recession, with rising unemployment and an impending steep hike in energy prices following profound events in the arab world that George Osborne is seriously going ahead with the tax rises and taking £110 Bn out of the economy!

    With the MPC now talking about interest rate rises and the prospect of real living standards being hit hard from imported petrol and food price rises as well as higher taxes, why does the OBR go on predicting 2m+ new jobs, £400 Bn investment in industry and exports to rise by a third?

    The middle classes will also see their services cut back hard - everything from zero arts budget in Somerset to no more lollypop men/ladies in E. Anglia, drastic cuts in policing, the list goes on - and in Devon we are told that many minor rural roads will no longer be maintained at all.

    A lot of the jobs going in local & central government and the NHS are middle class ones - and many of the job loses in the private sector suppliers will also be middle class ones.

    This is all justified by the need to pay off the national debt, but as Fianna Fail discovered, deep and rapid public spending cuts actually INCREASES the level of debt because it shrinks the economy that means lower tax income and bigger welfare bills - the total failure of their strategy in Eire was the stake through the heard of the Irish Conservatives.

    I'd be very worried indeed if I was a backbench Tory or LibDem - taking this level of demand out of the UK economy against this backdrop is as close to political and economic suicide as you can get.

    We can see that the "Squeezed Middle" will and are going to feel real pain - whilst the rich will use their network of tax breaks, offshore banking and other fiddles to sidestep a lot of tax.

    So "We're All In It Together" sounds a pretty hollow claim - but it is true for two groups - Tory MPs and LibDem MPs - they will both sink or swim depending on the effect of Osborne's tax rises and spending cuts. If Osborne has got it badly wrong, their fate will be that of Fianna Fail and Labour (minus "new") will return to power with a large majority and carte blanche to hammer bankers, the rich and restore much of what has been cut.

    Last night's R4 documenary on the "Orange Book Coup" revealed how many of the LibDem policies in the coalition agreement were first floated in the Orange Book, then rejected by the Liberal Democrat Party Policy forum, yet were salted into the Coalition Agreement in flat contradition to the Party's Election Manifesto by Clegg et al.

    This is now felt as a complete betrayal by middle class voters - NB on University tuition fees - if the UK goes go into the same sortof tailspin as Eire, the LibDems will be able to hold their parilamentary party meetings in the back of a London Taxi again for a generation.

  • Comment number 10.

    DON'T BLAME CALLOW CLEGG - HE HAD HIS PRICE AND DODGY DAVE 'PAID' IT (#9)

    I once worked for an American company who set up network of subsidiaries in UK and European countries. The American in charge had no idea, and appointed a 'two-headed monster' - one cunning Swiss and one English gentleman. They were supposed to be equal and to work closely. Guess which head came out on top.

    NAIVE NICK IS NO MATCH FOR DEVIOUS DAVE. Nice blokes come in two types: INGENUOUS AND DEVIOUS. I am not for a moment suggesting that Nick is a sweetie, but COMPARED TO DAVE he is a babe in arms.

    This truth may well deliver us an early election and we can SPOILPARTYGAMES. One thing is sure: No matter what Nick has signed . . .

  • Comment number 11.

    Fascinating to think that China probably will have rebellion at some stage in the coming years or even months as mass millitary troop defections are not the distant or unthinkable event that probably could never have been expecetd even just a few weeks a ago ... North Korea also ... and Burma...

    It it is the millitary that hold the power ... ultimately ... and those who control it, either from within, or outside.

    Once the people know they have the will power for a stand and the millitary are sympathetic ... the game is up for all dicatorships as the days of getting arms and help from other despots, in such a crisis, are now gone, it seems.

  • Comment number 12.



    From the bank that Madoff said knew full well what he was upto. Others in the UK are on trial facing charges of a smilar nature who also has a battery of HSBC accounts running for years.

    #8 Thank you barrie, think my painting obsession is also to blame.

  • Comment number 13.

    its all connected personally I blame the Mgt. KING BNE and the Illuminati





  • Comment number 14.



    UK uncut spreads over the pond.

  • Comment number 15.

    Have to say the moves that the globalists have made are utterly brilliant . Assange the CIA stooge? acting as US foreign policy implementer and excuse to regulate the WWW. 'Democracy' breaking out in the Middle East - who can argue with that ? will it equate to Islamic banking (forbids usury the mainstay of western banking) being 'taken out'?

  • Comment number 16.

    HOW MANY NEW YORK TAILORS DOES IT TAKE TO STITCH UP A FALSE FLAG? (#15)

    You want another one already?

  • Comment number 17.

    'And Iain Watson asks who the UK's "squeezed middle" are, and why - electorally - they are crucial.

    Possibly because a certain party and its hapless leader are pinning a lot on the notion in all their press releases... that become 'news'?



  • Comment number 18.

    Meanwhile, back on the 'reporting' front, any chance of getting Douglas Alexander back to comment on the sterling work our men in Libya are doing.

    I refer of course to such as Jeremy 'Pass the sheep's eyeballs Col' Bowen, and Frank 'I think they are hiding... here' Gardner, amongst others.



    Maybe letting the forces get the refugees out without blabbing who is doing what and where at the drop of a tweet is erring on responsible journalism?

  • Comment number 19.

    ARE YOU BLAND? (#13)

    The logo is quite clearly 'OSAMA' in MIRROR IMAGE. That's how 'they' write on Terror Firma (Land of Terror).

    The clue is in the price (£400K). You don't pay that sort of money for an innocent doodle now - do you! You do?

  • Comment number 20.

  • Comment number 21.

    Nomi Prins on the Middle East :-

  • Comment number 22.

    #20 Thanks for that link brossen, they are building even more off my coast...



    Read the words in bold, they have us down as a load of idiots where they can expand their market! :(

  • Comment number 23.

    BTW you see that photo of Nomi - thats how the Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú should light.

  • Comment number 24.

    The brilliant JB Yeats (if aunty allows)

  • Comment number 25.

    sooner than I anticipated (moderated posting a week past) but dave the Hanoverian will get his Belgrano moment before the royal nuptials.
    smoke mirrors bread and circus
    wants to be careful not to play his joker to early

  • Comment number 26.

    ONLY THREE THING ARE ASSURED: DEATH, TAXES AND PERVERSITY (#20 link)

    Anyone got a fag packet with a back to it?

    Those who have lived in the British isles for a decade or two, have seen the isobar map BLANK. As has been said: it is most commonly associated with very hot and very cold weather - the latter a guaranteed net increase in demand; the former, perhaps, offset against space-heating being off. Further, although we make towers (and blades?) for wind, I gather the gearing and generating kit is imported. All in all it does not look enticing.

    The article linked by Bro99 seems confused as to SCAM or BLUNDER. this will be where the perversity comes in. I can only find one construct that fits: wind is SET TO FAIL. Might this be to panic-up the price of energy? That would give Nuclear a chance of being viable, unsubsidised, INCLUDING DECOMMISSIONING.

    But what about the blunder? could that be failure to realise the RUSH TO TIDAL POWER that a high price for electricity will bring? Perversity dictates government will find a way to suppress tidal power - probably from a 'green' angle.

    And so it goes. My problem is I just don't see sufficient ability in politicians to mount a viable scam. All they are good at is politics: bluster, obfuscation, avoidance, deviation, misplaced loyalty - and lying.
    aka PERVERSITY. perhaps wind offered the best back-handers. It could be that simple.

  • Comment number 27.

    BarrieI and others its an Industry after all.
    Interestingly there are towns in the US whose continued existence as communities relies on selling wind power to the grid. I know they blow hot over thar but how could we get it so wron...doh!

  • Comment number 28.

    And the gravy train rolls on.....

  • Comment number 29.

    a far off land of which we know very little........oh dear, I feel another Iraq coming on....

  • Comment number 30.

    PUZZLED (#27)

    Wind is a HEAVILY SUBSIDISED industry.
    How complex are American wind patterns and how widespread the grid? Britain can be totally under still air for - how long - at any one time?

    I am in little doubt that, for Britain, tidal power is the most viable energy source. If perversity rules, tidal will be suppressed.

    The US towns you cite: would they use wind for electricity IF THEY WERE NOT ON THE GRID?


  • Comment number 31.

    WAS DESTINY DAVE EVER GOING TO GO QUIETLY, WITHOUT HIS WAR? (#29)

    He is child of Thatcher, heir to Blair, draconian as an Old Etonian and as daft as a brush. He could do anything. And, as he can dupe poor Nick with a reassuring pat on the shoulder, any time, he WILL do anything - anything he wants to. He is a dangerous despot, wielding power in a feudal system of archaic allegiances and deference.

    WE HAVE GOT OURSELVES ANOTHER ONE

  • Comment number 32.

    Marc Faber 'under any scenario I would own some oil and energy shares'

    No kidding oils going up



    Some how I dont think they have worked out how to do tidal wave power properly, they sure scuppered it in the 70's. Flowing water round the northern coast has got to be the way. Its been doing it for many millions of years rather regular. We live on a pile of coal and when the gas/elec companies take the price to a certain point; a sledge hammer and chisel will be found and once blocked up fire places and unused chimneys will live again. Its already happening where I live, ruining my evening walk.

    Didn't take long for the war talk to present itself from 'Dave's' mouth did it.

  • Comment number 33.

    Jeremy is the most stylish :o)

  • Comment number 34.

    who is spinning the media for con-dem(ed)?
    this horse is clean out of the stable, it might be a totally different colour but that don't matter when all you see are its hoofs and tail speeding off into the distance.

    /news/health-12578300

    much like the forest debacle completely mismanaged much like the country

  • Comment number 35.

    ed SimpleBand blames ConLib for Money Problems

    2 Aircraft Carriers without Catapults? nulabour Ploy oh Joy

    nulabour Con borrow and Spend as much as they can squeeze out of idiots

    Then Blame the Incumbants. Cynical isnt The Word

    Roughly 2,000 other nulabour Tricks as Above

    here's one 1997 2 Billion A Year on D.L.A. Now 12 Billion Lovely Jubbely

    How Much did You Lose on The Golden Brown Plan? there's another one

    nulabour Deviants

  • Comment number 36.

    LibCon are starting to make Misstakes, Who is this Miss Takes person

    The Last thing we need is another bunch of Politicians

    More Politicians due for H.M. Pleasure, (mostly nulabour)The More The Merrier

    Western Goverments Are Not Immune from Real DeMockcrazy

  • Comment number 37.

    Who Mentioned Civil Unrest/War

    Was'nt Me Guv I Don't Believe Init

  • Comment number 38.

    How Much Debt Are We In .. Who Got Us There

    How Much Debt Are We In .. Who Took Us There

    How Much Debt Are We In .. Who Sent Us There

    How Much Bebt Are We In .. Who Conned Us There

    How Much Debt Are We In .. Who Forced YOU There

    Be A nulabour Vase Blame Your Mother

  • Comment number 39.

    Jacking up on Power

    oil is the difference as to why cameron has found an imperialist voice. how does he square being a patron of the JNF with this new rhetoric?

    it's Illogical Captain

    IF wage bill for 10 people = £100 and 1 person gets £70 then you can 'sell' globalisation [ie chinese currency manipulation] as much as you like but the wages of the other people won't increase. Rather its going to get less as the person with £70 will search for people [migrants] who cost less so he can get £80?


  • Comment number 40.

    jaunty
    better yet ensure that you have a native crop of forced labour to draw upon by making them take any job just so they can get the benefits required to stay alive in the UK.

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