jan 10th

Impeach Blair on Iraq, says general
· PM misled public, says UN Bosnia commander
· Invasion 'a blunder of enormous significance'

Richard Norton-Taylor
Tuesday January 10, 2006

Guardian

A former general has called for impeachment proceedings against Tony Blair, accusing the prime minister of misleading parliament and the public over the invasion of Iraq.
General Sir Michael Rose, commander of UN forces in Bosnia in 1994, writes in today's Guardian: "The impeachment of Mr Blair is now something I believe must happen if we are to rekindle interest in the democratic process in this country once again". Britain was led into war on false pretences, he says. "It was a war that was to unleash untold suffering on the Iraqi people and cause grave damage to the west's prospects in the wider war against global terror."

Reflecting widespread unease among serving military chiefs over Iraq, Gen Rose says most British people had consistently opposed the decision to invade.

"These people have seen their political wishes ignored for reasons that have now proved false. Nor has there been any attempt made in parliament to call Mr Blair personally to account for what has transpired to be a blunder of enormous strategic significance," he writes.

It should not be surprising that "so many of the voters of this country have turned their backs on a democratic system which they feel has so little credibility and is so unresponsive".

The general, a former director of special forces, says MPs should investigate just how far the prime minister went to evaluate the quality of the intelligence about Iraq's weapons programme.

Military commanders were inevitably more cautious about using military force than politicians, since they understood better than most the consequences of engaging in war. Though in a democracy they had to remain subordinate to their political masters, they had a clear responsibility to point out "when political strategies are flawed or inadequately resourced".

Gen Rose tells Martin Bell, the former BBC correspondent in a programme, Iraq: The Failure of War, to be broadcast on Channel 4 on Friday, that he would "certainly" have resigned had he been in office at the time of the invasion.

That, he says, might have caused the politicians to "think twice about what they were doing".

Gen Sir Rupert Smith, who took over from Gen Rose as UN commander in Bosnia, says of Iraq in the programme: "We often actually reinforce our opponent's ability to achieve his objective because his strategy is always to get us to over-react."

General Sir Michael Walker, chief of defence staff, has said in public only that British military presence in Iraq was a "politically-charged issue" which has affected recruitment since people saw the armed forces as "guilty by association" with Mr Blair's decision to invade the country.

General Sir Mike Jackson, head of the army, has criticised US tactics in Iraq. British commanders were told by Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, chief of defence staff at the time of the invasion, to deal with Iraqi officers and Ba'athists to help maintain law and order. That order was rescinded in May 2003 on the instructions of US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Mr Blair's official spokesman said yesterday: "General Rose is entitled to his view. Equally, the government is entitled to point out that we have had free democratic elections in Iraq for the first time in well over a generation."

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006


***********

it is the war that will not go away.
this year sees the allied forces being 5 years in afghanistan, and still no closer to making the place safe.
iraq looks to be a much much longer struggle to ensure security in the region and a pull-out of troops.
more and more the validity of the war itself comes under attack.
blair may have gone in for the right reasons (but this is more and more doubtful)but increasingly it looks as if the war in iraq was a folly of the bush family and the american neo-cons.
rather than bring security to the world, it has hastened the clash of civilisations.
(then again perhaps it has achieved what they wanted...)

jan 9th

Cameron rules out new grammar schools
(Filed: 09/01/2006)

In a new direction for Conservative education policy, David Cameron has ruled out reinstating the grammar school system and said he would not abolish student tuition fees if he was elected to Government.


Cameron: no return to the 11-plus
Announcing party plans to introduce streaming in all schools, he said: "I guarantee… under a future Conservative government there will be no return to the 11-plus and no return to a grammar school system."

He told parents, teachers and governors at Chalvedon School and Sixth Form College, in Basildon, Essex, that he would push for the introduction of sets based on ability.

"I want the Conservative party to help me campaign in setting by each subject in every school so that we actually do what I think is common sense which is to help stretch the brightest pupils and help those who are in danger of falling behind."

He claimed that despite Tony Blair's promise to introduce setting in 1997, nationally only 40 per cent of classes are set by ability.

And in a direct contradiction of Conservative policy during the last election, Mr Cameron said he would not abolish university fees if he came to power.

He said: "On the issue of student fees, I'll say something that's probably a bit unpopular in the room. I'm afraid I think we're going to have to keep student fees, and I'll tell you why.

"You want to go to universities that are well-funded - good tutors, good facilities - and I want as many people who think they're going to benefit from university to be able to go.

"If you want those things - and as you also know we've also got to keep taxes down in this country - the money's got to come from somewhere."

Previously, Conservative Party pledged to scrap all tuition fees.

Mr Cameron said that traditionally on the subject of education, the left argue about resources and money and the right about structures and choices.

"I think there's a danger of missing the real thing which is right in the middle which is what happens in our state schools," he said.

He said he wanted the Conservatives to focus on this, and on achieving high standards "rather than have endless arguments about structures and organisations".

Mr Cameron said he believed education was one of the most important subjects because of the effect it had on social mobility, social cohesion, the economy and people's happiness.

Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence.

--------------
from the daily telegraph website.

i have no problem with students paying fees, and it is interesting that now that the tories have a legitimate shot at becoming the party in power they have had to change their tune about tuition fees.
(it is just a shame we seem so keen to fund sportsmen, but not academics. the arguement for the academics is that they will earn vastly more over their working lives than non-qualified people, sadly i have yet to see the "vastly more" part. but what on earth do top sports stars stand to earn? more than enough to pay back any loans i would argue.)

it does seem that mr cameron has got the right touch here.
he has been lucky with the kennedy resignation, as that has moved the spotlight off him for the time being.

jan 6th

Radio talkshow caller dies on air

A man who called a Liverpool radio station to take part in a live phone-in died while he was on air.
The caller, known only as Terry, was taking part in the Magic 1548 show hosted by Pete Price on Thursday.

The DJ, concerned when the line went dead, abandoned the show and rushed to the man's house in the Old Swan area, to find he had suffered a heart attack.

Merseyside Police later apologised for not sending an officer to investigate after Mr Price phoned them.

He had contacted them before going to the caller's house but was told there were higher priority incidents to be dealt with.


I knew something was wrong when the line went silent, I just had a gut instinct
Pete Price
Asst Ch Con Helen King said the force was "very sorry that last night a member of the public called us asking for help and we didn't provide it".

She added the force sent its sympathies to the man's family and an inquiry would be held by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

The 60-year-old man was a regular caller to Pete Price's show.

"I'm just glad he died doing something he enjoyed doing, we all heard his last words," Mr Price said.

"It was awful, when I got there the ambulance was already outside his house.

Abandoned show

"Apparently he was found in his chair with the phone by his side. I was flabbergasted.

"Terry was a regular caller to the show and I knew something was wrong when the line went silent, I just had a gut instinct."

Mr Price appealed to his listeners for help, and one of the caller's neighbours broke into his home to find him dead in a chair.

The ambulance service arrived a short time later.

Mr Price, who is soon moving to Radio City, has previously come to the aid of one of his listeners.

In February 2004 he helped a teenage boy who called in and threatened to kill himself.

The DJ kept the teenager talking live on air for 45 minutes before convincing him to meet him off air.


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/england/merseyside/4587550.stm

Published: 2006/01/06 18:29:15 GMT

© BBC MMVI


============================

call me sick, call me warped but my first reaction to this when i saw it was a very very large guffaw.
i think it was more to do with the headlines juxtaposition betwen a live call-in and a listener dying.
as one of my pals said "gives a whole new meaning to dead air...."

jan 5th

George Bush insists that Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. So why, six years ago, did the CIA give the Iranians blueprints to build a bomb?
In an extract from his explosive new book, New York Times reporter James Risen reveals the bungles and miscalculations that led to a spectacular intelligence fiasco

James Risen
Thursday January 5, 2006
Guardian

She had probably done this a dozen times before. Modern digital technology had made clandestine communications with overseas agents seem routine. Back in the cold war, contacting a secret agent in Moscow or Beijing was a dangerous, labour-intensive process that could take days or even weeks. But by 2004, it was possible to send high-speed, encrypted messages directly and instantaneously from CIA headquarters to agents in the field who were equipped with small, covert personal communications devices. So the officer at CIA headquarters assigned to handle communications with the agency's spies in Iran probably didn't think twice when she began her latest download. With a few simple commands, she sent a secret data flow to one of the Iranian agents in the CIA's spy network. Just as she had done so many times before.
But this time, the ease and speed of the technology betrayed her. The CIA officer had made a disastrous mistake. She had sent information to one Iranian agent that exposed an entire spy network; the data could be used to identify virtually every spy the CIA had inside Iran.

Mistake piled on mistake. As the CIA later learned, the Iranian who received the download was a double agent. The agent quickly turned the data over to Iranian security officials, and it enabled them to "roll up" the CIA's network throughout Iran. CIA sources say that several of the Iranian agents were arrested and jailed, while the fates of some of the others is still unknown.

This espionage disaster, of course, was not reported. It left the CIA virtually blind in Iran, unable to provide any significant intelligence on one of the most critical issues facing the US - whether Tehran was about to go nuclear.

In fact, just as President Bush and his aides were making the case in 2004 and 2005 that Iran was moving rapidly to develop nuclear weapons, the American intelligence community found itself unable to provide the evidence to back up the administration's public arguments. On the heels of the CIA's failure to provide accurate pre-war intelligence on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, the agency was once again clueless in the Middle East. In the spring of 2005, in the wake of the CIA's Iranian disaster, Porter Goss, its new director, told President Bush in a White House briefing that the CIA really didn't know how close Iran was to becoming a nuclear power.

But it's worse than that. Deep in the bowels of the CIA, someone must be nervously, but very privately, wondering: "Whatever happened to those nuclear blueprints we gave to the Iranians?"

The story dates back to the Clinton administration and February 2000, when one frightened Russian scientist walked Vienna's winter streets. The Russian had good reason to be afraid. He was walking around Vienna with blueprints for a nuclear bomb.

To be precise, he was carrying technical designs for a TBA 480 high-voltage block, otherwise known as a "firing set", for a Russian-designed nuclear weapon. He held in his hands the knowledge needed to create a perfect implosion that could trigger a nuclear chain reaction inside a small spherical core. It was one of the greatest engineering secrets in the world, providing the solution to one of a handful of problems that separated nuclear powers such as the United States and Russia from rogue countries such as Iran that were desperate to join the nuclear club but had so far fallen short.

The Russian, who had defected to the US years earlier, still couldn't believe the orders he had received from CIA headquarters. The CIA had given him the nuclear blueprints and then sent him to Vienna to sell them - or simply give them - to the Iranian representatives to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). With the Russian doing its bidding, the CIA appeared to be about to help Iran leapfrog one of the last remaining engineering hurdles blocking its path to a nuclear weapon. The dangerous irony was not lost on the Russian - the IAEA was an international organisation created to restrict the spread of nuclear technology.

The Russian was a nuclear engineer in the pay of the CIA, which had arranged for him to become an American citizen and funded him to the tune of $5,000 a month. It seemed like easy money, with few strings attached.

Until now. The CIA was placing him on the front line of a plan that seemed to be completely at odds with the interests of the US, and it had taken a lot of persuading by his CIA case officer to convince him to go through with what appeared to be a rogue operation.

The case officer worked hard to convince him - even though he had doubts about the plan as well. As he was sweet-talking the Russian into flying to Vienna, the case officer wondered whether he was involved in an illegal covert action. Should he expect to be hauled before a congressional committee and grilled because he was the officer who helped give nuclear blueprints to Iran? The code name for this operation was Merlin; to the officer, that seemed like a wry tip-off that nothing about this programme was what it appeared to be. He did his best to hide his concerns from his Russian agent.

The Russian's assignment from the CIA was to pose as an unemployed and greedy scientist who was willing to sell his soul - and the secrets of the atomic bomb - to the highest bidder. By hook or by crook, the CIA told him, he was to get the nuclear blueprints to the Iranians. They would quickly recognise their value and rush them back to their superiors in Tehran.

The plan had been laid out for the defector during a CIA-financed trip to San Francisco, where he had meetings with CIA officers and nuclear experts mixed in with leisurely wine-tasting trips to Sonoma County. In a luxurious San Francisco hotel room, a senior CIA official involved in the operation talked the Russian through the details of the plan. He brought in experts from one of the national laboratories to go over the blueprints that he was supposed to give the Iranians.

The senior CIA officer could see that the Russian was nervous, and so he tried to downplay the significance of what they were asking him to do. He said the CIA was mounting the operation simply to find out where the Iranians were with their nuclear programme. This was just an intelligence-gathering effort, the CIA officer said, not an illegal attempt to give Iran the bomb. He suggested that the Iranians already had the technology he was going to hand over to them. It was all a game. Nothing too serious.

On paper, Merlin was supposed to stunt the development of Tehran's nuclear programme by sending Iran's weapons experts down the wrong technical path. The CIA believed that once the Iranians had the blueprints and studied them, they would believe the designs were usable and so would start to build an atom bomb based on the flawed designs. But Tehran would get a big surprise when its scientists tried to explode their new bomb. Instead of a mushroom cloud, the Iranian scientists would witness a disappointing fizzle. The Iranian nuclear programme would suffer a humiliating setback, and Tehran's goal of becoming a nuclear power would have been delayed by several years. In the meantime, the CIA, by watching Iran's reaction to the blueprints, would have gained a wealth of information about the status of Iran's weapons programme, which has been shrouded in secrecy.

The Russian studied the blueprints the CIA had given him. Within minutes of being handed the designs, he had identified a flaw. "This isn't right," he told the CIA officers gathered around the hotel room. "There is something wrong." His comments prompted stony looks, but no straight answers from the CIA men. No one in the meeting seemed surprised by the Russian's assertion that the blueprints didn't look quite right, but no one wanted to enlighten him further on the matter, either.

In fact, the CIA case officer who was the Russian's personal handler had been stunned by his statement. During a break, he took the senior CIA officer aside. "He wasn't supposed to know that," the CIA case officer told his superior. "He wasn't supposed to find a flaw."

"Don't worry," the senior CIA officer calmly replied. "It doesn't matter."

The CIA case officer couldn't believe the senior CIA officer's answer, but he managed to keep his fears from the Russian, and continued to train him for his mission.

After their trip to San Francisco, the case officer handed the Russian a sealed envelope with the nuclear blueprints inside. He was told not to open the envelope under any circumstances. He was to follow the CIA's instructions to find the Iranians and give them the envelope with the documents inside. Keep it simple, and get out of Vienna safe and alive, the Russian was told. But the defector had his own ideas about how he might play that game.

The CIA had discovered that a high-ranking Iranian official would be travelling to Vienna and visiting the Iranian mission to the IAEA, and so the agency decided to send the Russian to Vienna at the same time. It was hoped that he could make contact with either the Iranian representative to the IAEA or the visitor from Tehran.

In Vienna, however, the Russian unsealed the envelope with the nuclear blueprints and included a personal letter of his own to the Iranians. No matter what the CIA told him, he was going to hedge his bets. There was obviously something wrong with the blueprints - so he decided to mention that fact to the Iranians in his letter. They would certainly find flaws for themselves, and if he didn't tell them first, they would never want to deal with him again.

The Russian was thus warning the Iranians as carefully as he could that there was a flaw somewhere in the nuclear blueprints, and he could help them find it. At the same time, he was still going through with the CIA's operation in the only way he thought would work.

The Russian soon found 19 Heinstrasse, a five-storey office and apartment building with a flat, pale green and beige facade in a quiet, slightly down-at-heel neighbourhood in Vienna's north end. Amid the list of Austrian tenants, there was one simple line: "PM/Iran." The Iranians clearly didn't want publicity. An Austrian postman helped him. As the Russian stood by, the postman opened the building door and dropped off the mail. The Russian followed suit; he realised that he could leave his package without actually having to talk to anyone. He slipped through the front door, and hurriedly shoved his envelope through the inner-door slot at the Iranian office.

The Russian fled the mission without being seen. He was deeply relieved that he had made the hand-off without having to come face to face with a real live Iranian. He flew back to the US without being detected by either Austrian security or, more importantly, Iranian intelligence.

Just days after the Russian dropped off his package at the Iranian mission, the National Security Agency reported that an Iranian official in Vienna abruptly changed his schedule, making airline reservations to fly home to Iran. The odds were that the nuclear blueprints were now in Tehran.

The Russian scientist's fears about the operation seemed well founded. He was the front man for what may have been one of the most reckless operations in the modern history of the CIA, one that may have helped put nuclear weapons in the hands of a charter member of what President George W Bush has called the "axis of evil".

Operation Merlin has been one of the most closely guarded secrets in the Clinton and Bush administrations. It's not clear who originally came up with the idea, but the plan was first approved by Clinton. After the Russian scientist's fateful trip to Vienna, however, the Merlin operation was endorsed by the Bush administration, possibly with an eye toward repeating it against North Korea or other dangerous states.

Several former CIA officials say that the theory behind Merlin - handing over tainted weapon designs to confound one of America's adversaries - is a trick that has been used many times in past operations, stretching back to the cold war. But in previous cases, such Trojan horse operations involved conventional weapons; none of the former officials had ever heard of the CIA attempting to conduct this kind of high-risk operation with designs for a nuclear bomb. The former officials also said these kind of programmes must be closely monitored by senior CIA managers in order to control the flow of information to the adversary. If mishandled, they could easily help an enemy accelerate its weapons development. That may be what happened with Merlin.

Iran has spent nearly 20 years trying to develop nuclear weapons, and in the process has created a strong base of sophisticated scientists knowledgeable enough to spot flaws in nuclear blueprints. Tehran also obtained nuclear blueprints from the network of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, and so already had workable blueprints against which to compare the designs obtained from the CIA. Nuclear experts say that they would thus be able to extract valuable information from the blueprints while ignoring the flaws.

"If [the flaw] is bad enough," warned a nuclear weapons expert with the IAEA, "they will find it quite quickly. That would be my fear"

© James Risen 2006

· This is an edited extract from State of War, by James Risen, published by The Free Press

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006


-------------------

just some more of the mixed history of the usa when it comes to those who might be their enemies or might be their friends, if they can ever work out who is friend or foe.

jan 4th

Police ban Christian crime comic
An anti-violence comic by a Christian police group has been banned by the Metropolitan Police after being accused of ignoring other faiths.
The comic book, Cops and Robbers, has first-hand stories from criminals who have embraced Christianity.

But Scotland Yard said it will not distribute the comic without wider consultation with faith groups.

A member of the Christian Police Association (CPA) says the group aims to reverse the Met's decision.

'Disappointment'

"It is essential that we respond effectively to the needs of all faith groups and that the potential impact of any initiative is carefully considered," a Metropolitan Police statement said.

Des Brown, a convicted killer who now works in a Christian youth group, says he wants criminals to become Christians.

"The purpose of this comic is to put forward a story that people's lives can be changed by the power of Jesus Christ. That's the point of the comic."

Pc David Turtle, deputy chairman of the CPA, said: "We would express our disappointment to the commissioner and the Metropolitan Police Authority. We would be seeking ways in which this can be reversed."

The CPA is believed to have around 1,000 members within London's police force. The comic was designed to be given out to youths being held in custody cells.

Commander Alf Hitchcock, of the Metropolitan Police, said: "I welcome the involvement of the Christian Police Association - the Cops and Robbers publication is an innovative and positive concept.

"However, it is important that effective consultation takes place, in relation to the material, and that the needs of other faith groups are also considered as part of the ongoing work being undertaken by the Custody Directorate."



Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/england/london/4578360.stm

Published: 2006/01/03 16:19:42 GMT



-------------------------------------------------

this is one of those stories that just stops you in your tracks.
i have no problem with inclusion, i have no problems with diversity, no problem with multiculturalism but i do have a problem with needless "political correctness" that doesn't serve to benefit anyone but may actually prevent something good being done.

i feel for the met because they are between a rock and a hard place as they probably realise that they can't be seen to have favourites. but nominally we are still a christian country, so there should be no issue with there being a christian effort to move people away from a life of crime.

as for multi-faith approach how many faiths do you consult (remember that being a jedi has been recognised as bieng a religion....)

i suppose the timing of this is quite funny as the tories have recently started speaking about having a political correctness buster. i have never been truly comfortable with the way that political correctness grew out of control, but now that the tories have become opponets of it i am slowly becoming more and more of a fan of political correctness. childish i know.

jan 3rd

Rocking-horse craze rides high among rich Arabs
By Martin Hickman, Consumer Affairs Correspondent
Published: 03 January 2006
Even for a horse-obsessed Arab millionaire, an old-fashioned toy carved in Kent hardly has the ostentatious appeal of an armour-plated Bentley or a diamond-encrusted swimming pool.

But a surprising number of wealthy Arab buyers, including King Hussein of Jordan, are in the vanguard of a new shopping craze that has its roots in a very traditional vision of English childhood. This year hundreds of beautifully crafted rocking horses will be hand-made in a modest white wood-fronted building deep in the Kent countryside and sold around the world for between £1,500 and £10,000.

Central to their popularity is the maker's offer to replicate a customer's favourite horse, copying everything from the colour of the forelock to the design of the bridle. And in supporting the toy horse industry, the mixture of wealthy foreign buyers, owners of country houses and horse-loving middle classes are keeping alive a classic emblem of an old-fashioned childhood, amid the omnipresence of bleeping computer games and DVDs.

About 400 rocking horses rolled out of Stevenson Brothers' workshop in the village of Bethersden, near Ashford, last year. And the manufacturers expect the numbers to grow over the coming months.

Some are bought as furniture, others as presents for adults. Marc Stevenson, 49, the co-owner of Stevenson Brothers, said: "They are equine sculptures but they are usable pieces of sculpture. When you look in the toy store for things you would give house-room to, a lot of it comes from China and has no inherent value. [Our] customers want something that isn't made of silicon chips and batteries."

Rocking horses had their hey-day in Victorian and Edwardian Britain, when they were a way of introducing the children of the nobility and squirearchy to riding. Mr Stevenson and his twin brother Tony entered the business in 1982, inspired by their uncle James Bosworthick, a shipwright at Chatham dockyards.

With the whiff of lacquer and paint hanging in the air, 11 artisans do the joinery, carving, sanding and painting that transform bare wood into a finished toy.

Tulip is the wood most used, followed by oak and walnut, though cherry was the favourite a few years ago. The archetypal "dappled grey" model is the most popular but horses can be painted piebald or any other design. A secret lockable compartment under the belly allows the stowing of documents or a time capsule. Blankets are embroidered with the owner's initials. The tails of dead horses are used for the manes and they hang, somewhat incongruously, on a fence outside. Getting hold of less common hair such as grey can be awkward. Sue Russell, a partner in the business, whispered: "Sometimes that causes us immense problems because horses don't die to order."

For modern flats where a traditional rocking horse might look out of place, the company makes rocking tigers and zebras. New rocking horses are delivered all over the world, particularly to the United States. King Hussein has one, and the Queen has two. Frankie Dettori and Alan Shearer have one horse each.

Marc Stevenson says an old "Stevenson" rises in value but realises most of his thoroughbreds are bought for enjoyment rather than investment. "It's a nostalgic gift and it reminds us of a time when there was plenty of time to indulge ourselves in fantasy. When you look at a child going on a rocking horse they disappear into their own thoughts. They are racing along the beach or flying up to the moon - and back in time for tea."



----------------------------------------

you just have to love conspicuous consumption.

jan 2nd

Passenger groups condemn rail fare rises
Staff and agencies
Monday January 2, 2006
Guardian Unlimited

Rail passenger groups have criticised the above-inflation fare rises that come into effect across the UK today.
The increases see the price of some tickets increasing by almost 9%, with regulated fares - which cover season and saver tickets - going up by 3.9%. Unregulated fares, which include cheap day returns, rise by an average of 4.5%.

The east coast main line, run by the GNER train company, is putting its unregulated fares up by an average of 8.8%, while unregulated fares on Central Trains are going up by an average of 6.4%.

The smallest rises are on Merseyrail, where both regulated and unregulated fares are increasing by an average of 2.9%.

"The rail industry is going to have to work hard to demonstrate that these rises represent value for money," Anthony Smith, the chief executive of the Rail Passengers' Council, said.

Bob Crow, the general secretary of the RMT rail union, accused rail companies of "shamelessly using their route monopolies to maximise revenues and profits on premium routes".

However, operators said the increases were needed to pay for improvements being made to the rail network, and season ticket holders will get discounts of around 5% if their operating company has performed badly.

"Our railways are the fastest growing in Europe, and operators will continue to introduce new trains, better passenger facilities and improved travel information," George Muir, the director general of the Association of Train Operating Companies, said.

The transport secretary, Alistair Darling, said passengers had to bear their share of the costs of improvements.

"Nobody can be happy about putting fares up at all, but there are improvements to the railways in terms of the infrastructure - nearly a third of the rolling stock is new in the last few years," Mr Darling told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"It has all got to be paid for, and we've got to strike a balance between the amount of money that the taxpayer puts in and the amount that the fare payer puts in as well."

However, the Liberal Democrat transport spokesman, Tom Brake, said the increases were a "slap in the face" for commuters. "These fare rises send out the wrong signal at a time when the government is seeking to get more people on to trains and out of their cars," he said.

The shadow transport secretary Chris Grayling said: "My fear is that we are going back to the days of British Rail where when they had a problem they put the fares up and tried to price people off the trains."

Fares on London's bus and underground systems will also increase from today, with the minimum cash fare on the underground rising to £3.

Brian Cooke, the chairman of passenger group London TravelWatch, said people who used public transport in London infrequently were being penalised by the move towards cashless Oyster cards to pay fares on the network.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006


------

it is great to see private monopolies making all this extra cash, and then saying that they need it to make investments in the services that they run. it is cheaper now to fly to new york than it is to catch a train to newcastle.
of course it is new labour's fault that it is like this, even though they have inherited a stupid system from the conservatives that just meant that this was going to happen. but like all good things where the government is going to bail out private concerns that have control over important national infrastructure the private companies get what they want both ways - subsidies from the state and also get to hike the prices up.
the reason i blame new labour is that they should have renationalised the whole thing from the moment they got back into power.
now it is far too late and the system is probably never going to get better or be much cheaper for the users.

in london i have seen my annual pass rise by £100. since i have had the pass it has gone up about £150. there has been no improvement of the service. in fact the 25 has gotten worse.

jan 1st

Unclaimed jackpot deadline looms
Time is running out for the holder of a £9.5m jackpot-winning lottery ticket to claim the prize - the largest unclaimed fortune in the draw's history.
The unsuspecting winner, who bought the ticket in Doncaster, has already lost out on almost £215,000 in interest since the numbers came up on 6 July.

The winning numbers are: 3, 12, 17, 36, 44 and 49.

If the £9,476,995 prize is not claimed by 1730 GMT on Monday, the cash goes to the Lotto's Good Causes fund.

So far £100m has gone unclaimed on the draws.

The largest unclaimed jackpot before this was worth more than £7m.

That ticket, bought in Belfast in August 2004, was never handed in.

Twenty-two people have missed out on becoming millionaires since the lottery began by not claiming their prizes, Camelot said.

Winners have 180 days to submit their claim.


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/4573760.stm

this is a story dear to my heart as i am a lottery user who more often than not forgets to check his ticket.
luckily i have not been to doncaster recently so this is not mine.
though i wonder how much i have lost (or won and not claimed) over the months.