Free Republic

Public loses faith in the Chancellor By Toby Helm and George Trefgarne(Filed: 31/01/2003) Labour's lead over the Conservatives has been cut to its lowest level since the fuel protests of September 2000, amid clear signs that the Government is losing its hard-won reputation for economic competence.A survey by YouGov put Labour on 36 per cent (down three since December), the Tories on 32 per cent (unchanged) and the Liberal Democrats on 24 (up three).Crucially, Labour and the Tories now stand almost neck and neck on the issue of economic management, the subject on which Tony Blair based much of his...

January 29, 2003 New union law to crush fire strike By Jill Sherman and Philip Webster Prescott uses emergency powers in historic breach with Labour allies John Prescott is risking Labour civil war by taking powers to end the fire dispute DRACONIAN powers to force unions to bow to the Government's will on pay were announced by John Prescott and Tony Blair yesterday. Mr Prescott's patience with the Fire Brigades Union finally snapped as he declared that he would take emergency powers to impose a pay settlement on the striking firefighters. A Bill will be introduced next month which...

IT IS a case of life imitating art, or in this case, science fiction. In Michael Crichton’s latest book, Prey, a swarm of molecular-sized computer chips escapes from a laboratory. The chips grow in intelligence and threaten to take over the human race. While this chilling scenario remains confined to the realms of imagination, the technology behind the novel could soon become reality through ground-breaking work being carried out by Scottish scientists. A team at Edinburgh University, led by DK Arvind, a reader in informatics and director of the school of informatics, is being funded by the US military to...

God bless those Brits (love them,hate them). Despite spending most of their time fretting over whether Tony sniffs George's ass too much or whether Tony gives it to Cherie too much or whether Charles or Wills will be the next Queen of England, they still have time to focus on the absurd. According to the BBC, a British bookmaker is giving 6-1 to odds that actor Michael Douglas will one day become President of the United States. You see Michael, like most self-important, self-deluded, self-gratifying, liberal Hollywood types, fancies himself more than a guy who makes a living kissing Glenn...

Blair suffers a double defeat on asylum seekers at Seville summit By Francis Elliott in Seville (Filed: 23/06/2002) European Union leaders yesterday moved to establish an EU border police force to patrol shores, ports and crossing points against illegal immigrants. The dramatic attempt to strengthen "fortress Europe" could mean foreign guards wearing an EU uniform patrolling in Britain. European leaders gather for a group photo at the end of the Seville summit The heads of government said that the moves were a stepping stone to the creation of a fully fledged European-wide force which would act in tandem with...

Logan quits GMTV for America Owen GibsonWednesday May 22, 2002 Lara Logan  GMTV's Lara Logan is cashing in on her six months of fame and defecting to American TV after being offered a deal that will give her a primetime slot alongside the legendary Dan Rather.The 31-year-old South African is leaving to join CBS after her reports from the frontline in Afghanistan impressed US news bosses.According to sources she clinched the deal in the last week."This is an absolutely brilliant move for Lara. It's very exciting and will give her a chance to prove herself in one of the toughest...

For three days running, the White House has issued alarming warnings. On Sunday, the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, said another terrorist attack was "almost certain". On Monday the FBI director, Robert Mueller, said suicide attacks were "inevitable". Then on Tuesday, the Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, said terrorists would "inevitably" get weapons of mass destruction and "not hesitate to use them". President George Bush joined in, saying that terrorists were "nothing but a bunch of cold-blooded killers". That morning he said, Mueller had told him that "al-Qaeda is active, plotting, planning, you know, trying to hit us". Not surprisingly, a CBS...

Straw rebukes EU chief for attack on American link By David Rennie in Washington(Filed: 09/05/2002) JACK STRAW sharply rebuked Romano Prodi, the European Commission president, yesterday for suggesting that Britain's close relationship with America made it a bad European.Warning European leaders never to forget how much they benefited from America's power and strength, the Foreign Secretary said: "I do not share the view of Romano Prodi that Britain's relationship with America somehow gets in the way of playing a full part in Europe."I reject the idea that relations with the United States and EU involve a zero sum - that...

The young prefer Rule Britannia to Cool Britannia By Tom Leonard, Media Editor (Filed: 09/05/2002) THE popular image of young people as opposed to tradition, the monarchy and patriotism is wrong, says a poll of attitudes to Britishness.The survey of 20- to 30-year-olds shows that symbols of "old" Britain, such as the Royal Family, Buckingham Palace and Marks & Spencer, figure far more prominently than the trappings of "Cool Britannia" in many young people's sense of national identity.Nearly three-quarters of those questioned said they were proud to be British, an emotion that 50 per cent said they felt when they...

EU leader attacks Britain over links with United StatesBy Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Brussels and George Jones, Political Editor (Filed: 30/04/2002) ROMANO PRODI, the president of the European Commission, rebuked Britain yesterday for lacking the courage to embrace the euro and play a full part in Europe.   Romano Prodi speaks at the opening of the Said Business School at Oxford University He angered the Government and Opposition politicians by claiming that Britain's attachment to the United States was built on wishful thinking and twisted notions of Europe."I wonder what makes this great nation so confident when dealing with a...

ADMIRAL Sir Michael Boyce, Chief of Defence Staff, has warned that the International Criminal Court could put servicemen's lives at risk.Ministers were told that commanders would face a choice between being accused of war crimes or changing rules of engagement to the point where the enemy could be certain of striking first.Senior officers said that, to avoid the risk of being called before the court, rules of engagement would have to be changed in a way that ensured that an enemy with fewer scruples could fire first.If a ship's commander, an aircraft pilot or an artillery officer were to attack...

Summit May Signal U.K.-U.S. Split Over Israel 8 April 2002 Summary Official statements following the recent meeting between U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair focused primarily on the need for military action in Iraq, but a joint statement on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was conspicuously absent. This could betray a deeper disagreement between the two countries over how to deal with Israel, further sidetracking Washington from its pursuit of al Qaeda. Analysis The recent meeting between U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in Crawford, Texas, initially was supposed to focus on...

Tony Blair went to see George Bush in Texas and did what we at The Mirror feared he would do.He rolled over like a rather docile poodle, wagged his tail dutifully, and agreed to everything the war-hungry American President wanted.Mr Blair's speech last night could have been written by the White House.It could be boiled down to this: 'America is big, America is strong, America is wonderful - and we in Britain are proud to sit by its side in whatever it does."In particular, we are apparently delighted to support a new war on Iraq to get rid of Saddam...

SEVEN peace activists have been abused by Israeli passengers while flying back to Britain after being trapped by Israel's invasion of Bethlehem.The four men and three women, who had travelled through occupied territories on Good Friday, were allowed safe passage out of the city after he intervention of the British Consulate in Jerusalem. But they had to be escorted off the plane by police at Heathrow after Israeli passengers on board BA flight 164 from Tel Aviv began to abuse them after learning what they had been doing.The seven - Joanne Bird, from Manchester, Emma Bleach, from Bristol, Chris Dunham,...

THE Royal Marines of 45 Commando are to mount night-time raids against followers of Osama Bin Laden in mined mountain passes more than 130 miles from their base after they arrive in Afghanistan this week. The 1,700 marines, most of them in their late teens and early twenties, have been assigned to seek and destroy Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters in a large expanse of mountains in the east of the country. The area is close to the border with Pakistan, over which many fighters have fled. The marines will work in groups of between three and 50, depending on the...

BOYS have had a place in the British Armed Forces since well before the formation of the New Model Army by Cromwell in the mid-1600s.Drummer boys, most in their early teens but some as young as nine, enlisted in the army, while "powder monkeys" of a similar age helped both the army's and the navy's gunners reload their guns. Runners and ship's boys were also normally in their early teens. Technically, they were regarded as non-combatants but shot, shell and often opponents all ignored such distinctions. At the battle of Isandhlwana on Jan 22, 1879, when the Zulus destroyed a...

BRITAIN is to end its centuries-old policy of sending boy soldiers into battle after deciding to ratify a UN protocol aimed at preventing the use of children in warfare.But it will continue to recruit 15-year-olds even though the protocol is specifically aimed at stopping armies from recruiting anyone under 18. At present, more than a third of recruits to the Armed Forces are below this age.The deployment of 17-year-old soldiers during the Gulf war and the Kosovo conflict led Save the Children and other campaign groups to compare Ministry of Defence policy to that of Third World countries.An investigation is...

LONDON: The Briton suspected of plotting the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan was deeply moved by his experience of the Bosnian war, the possible start of a journey to Muslim extremism, a friend said on Thursday. The trial of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh begins in Karachi on Friday. He is charged with the abduction and killing of Wall Street Journal writer Daniel Pearl. Asad Khan took Omar, then in his late teens, on a mission to bring aid to Muslims in the Balkans a decade ago, an experience that apparently led to his conversion to...

"Thus are the young condemned to live in an eternal present, a present that merely exists, without connection to a past that might explain it or to a future that might develop from it. Theirs is truly a life of one damned thing after another."– Theodore Dalrymple For those of us who know that life today in Britain is the future in America a dozen years down the road, Theodore Dalrymple's book, "Life at the Bottom: The worldview that makes the underclass," is a frightening prospect (Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 2001). Some things are different, of course: America's immigrant groups...

Unionists outrage local Muslims Unionist councillors in County Antrim have outraged local Muslims by refusing to accept an Islamic gift which had been presented to an SDLP member. One Democratic Unionist Party member of Ballymena council said he was suspicious of Muslims because of the 11 September terrorist attacks in the United States. The gift at the centre of the row is a brass plate, decorated with Islamic designs intended to express friendship with the people of the town. It was presented to SDLP councillor Declan O'Loan at an exhibition in the town's museum. He wanted to pass it to...