Annual food inflation could reach 7 per cent later this year, a leading City economist has warned.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation food index, which measures prices of meat, dairy products, cereals, oils and fats, and sugar on a monthly basis, rose 22pc in August.
The jump, from 1.7 per cent in June, is likely if global food commodity prices continue to rise, said Simon Ward, chief economist at Henderson.
Rising food costs could have the effect of pushing up the consumer prices index (CPI), the official measure of inflation, to 4 per cent – double the Bank of England’s 2 per cent target, warned Mr Ward.
The impact on household budgets could even persuade the Coalition to cancel its planned rise in VAT, he added.
“Such an increase [in food prices] would hit consumer spending and recovery prospects and could destabilise inflationary expectations,” said Mr Ward.
“This could warrant postponing or cancelling the coming VAT hike.”
The Food and Agriculture Organisation food index, which measures prices of meat, dairy products, cereals, oils and fats, and sugar on a monthly basis, rose by an annual 22 per cent in August, the fastest rate since September 2008.
Food prices have increased further in September, Mr Ward said.
And, addressing the use of Snatch Land Rovers, which he deemed to be unsafe and prompted his decision to stand down, he said: “I had to resign.
“I had warned (the MoD) time and time again that there were going to be needless deaths if we were not given the right equipment, and they ignored this advice. There is blood on their hands.
“There was no other vehicle to use. The simple truth is that the protection on these vehicles is inadequate and this led to the unnecessary deaths.”
The former head of the Army accuses Tony Blair and Gordon Brown of badly letting down the Armed Forces during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In a damning verdict, General Sir Richard Dannatt accuses Mr Brown of being a “malign” influence by failing to honour guarantees on defence spending during his time at the Treasury, and charges Mr Blair with lacking “moral courage” for failing to overrule his chancellor.
Gen Dannatt’s book, Leading from the Front, which begins its serialisationin The Sunday Telegraphtoday, is the first major public critique of the Blair/Brown administration by a senior outside figure who served under both men. He was Chief of the General Staff from 2006-09.
He describes his efforts to persuade Mr Blair and Mr Brown that the Army – fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan and suffering heavy casualties – was facing almost unbearable pressures as “pushing a rock up a steep hill almost all the way through”.
His book is further evidence of the cripplingly dysfunctional nature of the relationship between Mr Blair and Mr Brown, which Mr Blair spelt out in his own memoir, A Journey, published this week.
The general also reveals in his book and in interviews for this newspaper that:
-By early 2009, at a time when the Army was suffering a punishing casualty rate in Afghanistan, he had not had a face-to-face meeting with Mr Brown for six months. Eventually he was forced to “ambush” the prime minister during a chance meeting in Horse Guards Parade to get his concerns across;
-The 1997-98 Strategic Defence Review (SDR), which set out a “good framework” for future defence policy, could not cope with troops being committed to Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time and was “fatally flawed” through being underfunded;
-The intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, cited as the main reason for Britain joining the United States in the 2003 war, was “most uncompelling”. Planning for the aftermath of the conflict was, he said, an “abject failure”.
Gen Dannatt reserves his strongest criticism for Labour’s two prime ministers, accusing them of letting down the troops they sent to Iraq and Afghanistan.
He writes in his book: “History will pass judgment on these foreign adventures in due course, but in my view Gordon Brown’s malign intervention, when chancellor, on the SDR by refusing to fund what his own government had agreed, fatally flawed the en tire process from the outset.
“The seeds were sown for some of the impossible operational pressures to come.”
Mr Blair “lacked the moral courage to impose his will on his own chancellor”.
The general also admits he was “bemused” by Mr Brown’s decision to write his book, Wartime Courage, about the generation that suffered so much in winning the Second World War. He adds: “I am still not sure whether he ever realised that by denying the proper funding of his own government’s declared policy, he was condemning more young men and women to the same sacrifices he railed against in a previous generation.”
Asked why he thought Mr Blair did not overrule Mr Brown, he replied: “To me it seems extraordinary that the prime minister, the No 1 guy, cannot crack the whip sufficiently to his very close friend apparently, his next door neighbour, the chancellor.
“In the war Cabinet that Margaret Thatcher put together in 1982 [during the Falklands conflict] there was no one from the Treasury. It’s tough to criticise lack of moral courage, but moral courage is what you need. Physical courage is a wonderful thing, but moral courage is actually doing the right thing at the right time.”
Gen Dannatt warns the Coalition that carrying on with the current rate of casualties in Afghanistan – where more than 100 servicemen were killed last year – would be unacceptable. “We’ve got to have cracked it by 2014, 2015,” he said.
By Patrick Hennessy and Melissa Kite
Published: 10:00PM BST 04 Sep 2010
Murray asserts that the primary motivation for US and British military involvement in central Asia has to do with large natural gas deposits in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. As evidence, he points to the plans to build a natural gas pipeline through Afghanistan that would allow Western oil companies to avoid Russia and Iran when transporting natural gas out of the region.
Murray alleged that in the late 1990s the Uzbek ambassador to the US met with then-Texas Governor George W. Bush to discuss a pipeline for the region, and out of that meeting came agreements that would see Texas-based Enron gain the rights to Uzbekistan’s natural gas deposits, while oil company Unocal worked on developing the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline.
“The consultant who was organizing this for Unocal was a certain Mr. Karzai, who is now president of Afghanistan,” Murray noted.
“There are designs of this pipeline, and if you look at the deployment of US forces in Afghanistan, as against other NATO country forces in Afghanistan, you’ll see that undoubtedly the US forces are positioned to guard the pipeline route. It’s what it’s about. It’s about money, it’s about oil, it’s not about democracy.”
“I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States’ presence in Afghanistan,” he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter to the department’s head of personnel. “I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end.”
“I’m not much for this war. I’m not sure it’s worth all those lives lost,” said Sergeant Christian Richardson as we walked across corn fields that will soon be ploughed up to plant a spring crop of opium poppy.
Opium production rate has soared to 6,900 tons in Afghanistan in the past 10 years ‘despite‘ the presence of 100,000 foreign troops in the country for nearly eight years.
A report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said on Wednesday that Afghanistan produces 92 percent of the world’s opium that has devastating global consequences.
The UN report also noted that Afghanistan’s illegal opium production is worth 65 billion dollars.
The heroin and opium market feeds 15 million addicts, with Europe, Russia and Iran consuming half the supply, UNODC reported.
– Top US commander in Afghanistan: The Taliban have gained the upper hand:
The Taliban have gained the upper hand in Afghanistan, the top American commander there said, forcing the U.S. to change its strategy in the eight-year-old conflict by increasing the number of troops in heavily populated areas like the volatile southern city of Kandahar, the insurgency’s spiritual home.Gen. Stanley McChrystal warned that means U.S. casualties, already running at record levels, will remain high for months to come.
Consumers drank on average five bottles of wine fewer last year as health concerns and the recession combined to bring biggest drop in alcohol consumption since records began.
There were 821 million fewer pints of beer drunk in 2008 compared with 2009, according to the British Beer and Pub Association Photo: ALAMY
The average person drank the equivalent of 89 bottles of wine during the year, down from more than 94 bottles, according to new statistics.
It was the largest drop in alcohol consumed since 1948, as health concerns and the recession encouraged consumers to cut back.
This 6 per cent fall in alcohol consumption is the largest annual drop since records began in 1948, when the British Beer and Pub Association started collecting figures. The figures include all alcohol sales, both from supermarkets and at pubs.
It is the fourth annual decline in the last five years, with the average person consuming the equivalent of 8.4 litres of pure alcohol, down from 8.9 litres.
The data, compiled from Government tax receipts, back up Office for National Statistics figures published earlier this year, which suggested that after many years of people drinking less at pubs, they had also started to cut back at home for the first time.
Violent and merciless Luan Plakici made £1million from sex slaves. He is in jail
UP to 12,000 women have been smuggled into Britain and forced to work as prostitutes earning hundreds of millions of pounds for organised crime gangs, reveals a new study.
The “sex slaves” live and work in appalling conditions and suffer kidnap, rape and imprisonment.
Bonded by thousands of pounds of debt, they are strictly controlled by threats of violence to family members back home. Most of the trafficked women are from Eastern Europe, China and South East Asia.
The scale of migrant prostitution in England and Wales was uncovered by ground-breaking research for the Association of Chief Police Officers.
The two-year study, known as Project Acumen, revealed that 30,000 women are working in brothels around the country.
Police estimate 17,000 are immigrants and believe 11,800 may have been trafficked into the country.
Older people will have to wait at least six years longer to receive winter fuel payments, under government plans to cut the welfare bill.
Last winter, any household with someone aged 60 or more received a £250 winter fuel payment. For those over 80, it rose to £400 Photo: GETTY IMAGES
The Daily Telegraph has learnt that ministers have resolved to increase the qualifying age for the annual payment from 60 to at least 66. Talks are under way about an even bigger rise.
The basic winter fuel payment, made to more than 12 million people, will also be cut by £50 for new recipients and £100 for the oldest.
It would be the first major restriction in a universal benefit under the Coalition, and could open the door to more dramatic announcements, with cuts to child benefit also under discussion.
The move comes despite a pre-election promise from David Cameron to safeguard benefits for the elderly, including winter fuel payments.
Earlier this month, the Government published plans to raise the state pension age for women to 66 by 2019.
Although there is no formal link between the retirement age and fuel payments, Whitehall sources confirmed that eligibility would follow the pension age upwards.
Liberal Democrat ministers, led by Nick Clegg, are pushing for the qualifying age to go even higher.
Some suggest that, ultimately, only those aged 75 and over should receive winter fuel payments. That would bring the benefit in line with free television licences.
Mervyn King ‘nuked’ the UK by using what economists call the ‘nuclear option’ (=quantitative easing = printing money = creating money out of thin air = increasing the money supply = inflation = hidden tax on monetary assets = theft) …
British consumers should prepare for lingering higher inflation, the Bank of England Governor has warned, as latest figures show a sharp jump in food prices.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics showed a 3.4pc increase in the cost of food over the last year, with fruit being 10pc more expensive. The last year also saw a sharp rise in the cost of travel, which climbed an average 7.8pc.
Mervyn King, the Bank’s Governor, voiced surprise that prices are higher than he had expected in a letter of explanation to the Chancellor George Osborne. While the overall consumer prices edged down to 3.1pc from 3.2pc in June, it remains above the Bank’s own 2pc target, and the small decline will do little to ease the fear of some economists that a high cost of living will undermine Britain’s fragile recovery.
Mr King must write to the Treasury each month that inflation exceeds 3pc, and he said he is likely to have to send several more letters. Inflation will probably not return to target until the end of 2011, he said.
“Food price inflation has moved up strongly … and that’s perhaps a trend that’s going to continue over the next 12 months,” said Philip Shaw, an economist at Investec.
Today’s figures from the Office for National Statistics also showed that the Retail Price Index, a measure of inflation generally seen as the best gauge of the cost of living, was at 4.8pc last month. Again, though lower than June’s 5pc, it’s far outstripping any pay rises companies may be awarding.
Mr King has insisted that the price pressures are driven by temporary influences such as the price of oil.
Shoppers are paying up to 58 per cent more for basic grocery items than they were three years ago, according to figures published today.
The price of tea has shot up by 30 per cent while the cost of staple foods such as bread and eggs have risen by 18 per cent since 2007.
But the biggest increase has been in the price of rice and pulses such as lentils or beans, which have risen by 58 per cent.
The cost of staple foods such as bread and eggs have risen by 18 per cent since 2007. The soaring prices are in contrast to the overall inflation rate
Figures compiled by the price comparison website mySupermarket.co.uk show that parents with young children are also being hit particularly hard.
The cost of baby wipes, creams and bath wash has risen by 38 per cent. Baby food and snacks have gone up by 21 per cent while baby milk and drinks have increased by 29 per cent.
Even pets are proving to be an increasing drain on families, with dog food up by 20 per cent and cat food rising by 13 per cent.
The soaring prices are in contrast to the overall inflation rate, which is currently 3.2 per cent a year.
Britain’s high food prices are also at odds with many of our European neighbours, who have seen their grocery bills fall steadily over the past year.
The mySupermarket research does not quote prices for individual items. Instead, the researchers selected a basket of supermarket items for each food category from Tesco.
Tribunal rules that police colluded at top level to destroy the career of junior detective who reported one of them for cheating
DS Howard Shaw was exonerated by an internal police hearing
A senior police officer cheated to get a promotion and then used his new position to wreck the career of a detective who blew the whistle on him, an employment tribunal has found.
Detective Inspector Kevin Williams – who accessed questions on an internal database shortly before he was interviewed for a promotion in the Metropolitan Police e-crime unit – still retains high-level security clearance and now works in the counter-terror unit. In the meantime, Detective Sergeant Howard Shaw, who blew the whistle, has been forced out of his job.
The tribunal found that senior Scotland Yard officers colluded in bringing a false disciplinary case, and Commander Nigel Mawer – who led the investigation into the loss of government disks containing the information of 25 million people in 2007 – was criticised for being “surprisingly and exceptionally careless” in his handling of the case. The judge concluded that Mr Mawer “did not consider and did not care whether or not the disciplinary proceedings against the claimant were properly founded”.
When Shaw, 47, discovered that Williams had asked a colleague for the questions on an interview panel, he reported the incident to Detective Superintendent Charlie McMurdie. But no action was taken and Williams was appointed to the e-crime unit soon afterwards. When it emerged that he had accessed the questions online, Shaw again complained to McMurdie. Days later McMurdie and Williams instigated disciplinary proceedings against Shaw, making a false allegation that he had broken an order not to continue with an outside business interest, and removed him from the e-crime unit, the tribunal found.
“There is an assumption in the police that if you are disciplined then you are guilty,” said DS Shaw. “I was ostracised by my peers, it was a lonely two years. I was under the care of my doctor and on medication, I had counselling. It had an effect on my whole family.”
The terrible plight of foreign women trafficked into the UK and forced to work as prostitutes has overshadowed a home-grown scandal
Posing for her first school photograph, Joanne was like any other girl at the age of five. She loved drawing and painting, and her favourite game was to play hide-and-seek in the woods near her home in Leeds with her five siblings. As she grew, Joanne liked to hang around, chatting and laughing with friends. But soon after she turned 12, while out playing, she met a gang of men who were to become her pimps. They took advantage of her freedom, gained her trust and prepared to abuse her.
In the beginning, the men who befriended her had seemed nice enough: they showered her with compliments, bought her a phone, and one of them – a 42-year-old married man – became her “boyfriend”. Within a year, she was forced into prostitution.
By the time she was 16, Joanne would disappear from the family home for weeks at a time. She was transported between Manchester, Rochdale, Bradford and countless other towns, locked into rooms and made to have sex repeatedly with men for money – not that she saw any of it.
Joanne is only one of many young women who have been subjected to such horrific ordeals across the UK. She is the victim of sex trafficking with a twist: not women brought in illegally from abroad and forced into prostitution, but British born. Targeted on estates throughout the country, they are passed from gang to gang, and work from town to town.
Yet the information on the trafficking of young people for sex within Britain is so scant that experts say the first official figures confirming the trade – seen by The Independent on Sunday – are just “the very, very tip of the iceberg”. Figures from the UK Human Trafficking Centre for April 2009 to March 2010 show only 38 Britons were registered as victims. This comes after a snapshot survey by the children’s charity Barnardo’s revealed it worked with 609 sexually exploited children last year, of whom 90 appeared to have been trafficked within the UK.
It turns out that western medicine, pollution, food additives and an ignorant lifestyle are the cause for breast cancer.
World Cancer Research Fund survey cites lifestyle as reason for difference
A World Cancer Research Fund survey shows that breast cancer rates in Britain are four times higher than those in eastern Africa. Photograph: Robert Llewellyn/Alamy
Breast cancer rates in the UK are more than four times higher than those in eastern Africa, the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) has revealed.
According to the latest cancer statistics, 87.9 women per 100,000 in the UK (adjusted for age) were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008, compared to 19.3 in eastern Africa, which includes Kenya and Tanzania.
Part of the difference is likely to be because the UK is better at diagnosing and recording breast cancer cases. But the WCRF has warned that lifestyle is also an important reason for the difference.
Scientists estimate about four out of every 10 breast cancer cases in Britain could be prevented through maintaining a healthy weight, drinking less alcohol and being more physically active. There is also convincing evidence that breastfeeding reduces the risk of breast cancer.
Charity says that migrants from eastern Europe who do not qualify for benefits are sleeping rough in appalling conditions
Eastern Europeans in the UK are often left to fend for themselves if they lose their jobs and some end up sleeping rough.
Homeless migrants from eastern Europe in London who are unable to get benefits have become so impoverished that they are eating rats and drinking lethal cocktails of alcoholic handwash, a homeless charity has warned.
Jeremy Swain, chief executive of Thames Reach, one of UK’s biggest homeless charities, said he had been appalled by the conditions of destitute rough sleepers from new EU states, who now make up more than a quarter of those on the streets of the capital.
“We have come across homeless Poles in north London barbecuing rats. We have to explain to them that unlike the rats back home, in London they would be full of poison. The health risks are enormous,” he said.
A camp that was home to half a dozen Polish rough sleepers was closed down in March. The Guardian spoke to Megan Stewart of Thames Reach outreach team who found the site. She visited on three occasions and found people eating cooked rats, which had either been toasted over a fire or stewed in a pot.
“It was the worst thing I had seen in three decades of working with the homeless,” said Stewart.
• UK thinktank warns British ‘depression’ will last until 2012
Job seekers speak with recruiters during a career fair in Chicago but there are fears that a recovery in the US economy will not mean a revival in employment (Getty Images)
Employers in the US shed twice as many jobs as expected in July, adding to fears that the recovery in the world’s largest economy will not see a revival in employment.
The dismal US job figures came as the National Institute of Economic and Social Research predicted a protracted depression for the UK economy.
Across the Atlantic talk of a double-dip recession was revived when the government revealed 131,000 jobs were lost last month. That dwarfed forecasts for a fall of 65,000. June’s drop was also revised to a far steeper 221,000 from 125,000.
Richard C. Cook (born October 20, 1946) is a former U.S. federal government analyst, who was instrumental in exposing White House cover-ups regarding the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster of 1986. As a witness to the incident and a participant in the subsequent investigations, Cook provided key document to The New York Times and testified before the Rogers Commission. In 1990, he received the Cavallo Foundation Award for Moral Courage in Business and Government for his testimony. In 2007, his memoirs of the tragedy were published in a book entitled, Challenger Revealed: An Insider’s Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age.(Wikipedia)
The world is indeed changing, in ways different from what the imperialists have planned. They may try to wreck the world to prevent these changes, but it won’t work. As Steiner and other prophetic thinkers made clear, at-one-ment is here and now. Nothing else in fact has ever really existed.
Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) was an Austrian philosopher and esotericist and founder of one of the key modern spiritual movements in the West. He is best known for his books and lectures before and after World War I, when he founded the Anthroposophical Society with its present-day headquarters in Dornach, Switzerland. After World War I, Steiner and his work were criticized viciously by right-wing nationalists in Germany, which caused him to give up his residence in Berlin. Among the critics was Adolf Hitler, who attacked him in print as a traitor to Germany for his efforts to promote peace.
The work of prophetic thinkers like Rudolf Steiner makes clear that the history of humanity proceeds through the evolution of consciousness, where changes take place in the psyche of people well in advance of their outward manifestations. Thus an understanding of what is happening before our eyes is never simple, nor can it be taken at face value. Discernment requires a level of knowledge that can only be achieved through study and insight.
But only an approach that penetrates deeply into human nature allows us to see the real inner causes of events. Such causes can be positive or negative, constructive or destructive. It is the genius and dilemma of man that we can choose which influences we serve. As Steiner prophesied almost a century ago, we appear today to be at a pivotal point where how we make such choices can determine the fate of the world.
Head teachers and pupils have complained to Scotland’s education watchdog that some new teachers cannot read, write or count properly, leaked documents have revealed.
The HM Inspectorate of Education (HMIe) reported that they were told a “small but significant” number of staff lack the necessary skills to teach the ‘three Rs’ in the classroom.
Among the deficiencies highlighted to the watchdog by head teachers were basic spoken grammar, fractions, long division and mental calculation.
Although some newly-qualified teachers (NQTs) were confident about teaching the 3Rs, the report found that in many instances this self-belief was “superficial”.
Details of the documents were published the day after it emerged just two teachers have been struck off for incompetence over the past two years.
Spending on education has doubled since devolution began a decade ago, but standards have stagnated and Scotland has slipped down international league tables.
“This man says that the problems should be addressed by negotiation, not war. When I asked the group who they would like to be responsible for running this area they answered, to a man, Taliban.”
Now that should be an eye-opener to the blind.
Nine years after the invasion, US-led forces are still trying to pin down and defeat the elusive Taliban
British Marines in action during operations near Kajaki, Helmand province
At midnight last night, the United States formally recorded its most lethal month in the seemingly endless war in Afghanistan. Some 66 servicemen died – at least two a day, every day, for 31 days. That was July. June was the deadliest for the coalition as a whole, and the first six months of 2010 were among the bloodiest for civilians since records began in 2007. What will August bring? Or September and October, months which, General David Petraeus, the US commander, has warned may well bring even more intense fighting? By that time, the war will have gone into its 10th year, and so will move towards, and beyond, the landmark when it will have lasted longer than the First and Second World Wars combined.
It is, especially for the Afghan people, a war without end, and one to add to their history of other fruitless conflicts. An Independent on Sunday assessment, using records kept by Professor Marc Herold of the University of New Hampshire and the UN, puts the civilians killed as a direct result of the war since 2001 at 13,746. Last year, the toll of those who died directly or indirectly was estimated by another US academic to be as high as 32,000.
Meanwhile, the US continues to pile in troops. American strength stands at about 95,000, and by the end of August the figure is expected to swell to 100,000 – three times the number in early 2009. As a result, US commanders have been stepping up the fight against the insurgents in their longtime strongholds such as the Arghandab Valley, Panjwaii and Zhari – all on the outskirts of Kandahar city, the biggest urban area in the ethnic Pashtun south, and the Taliban’s spiritual birthplace, where support for the insurgency runs deep.
Yet, as the US and its allies step up pressure around Kandahar, Taliban resistance has also intensified in Helmand to the west and in Zabul to the east. And there were disconcerting scenes in Kabul on Friday. Police fired weapons into the air to disperse a crowd of angry Afghans who shouted “Death to America!”, hurled stones and set fire to two vehicles after an SUV, driven by US contract employees, was involved in an accident that killed four Afghans.
Besides do you think it is healthy to be pregnant all of the time?
That is exactly what the pill does to the body, because the pill’s job is to deceive the body to believe that it is pregnant.
Guess why some women have gained so much weight since they started taking the pill.
The number of 11 and 12-year-old girls prescribed the pill by a family doctor has soared five-fold in the past decade, according to figures.
More than 1,000 girls in the first year of secondary school have been given prescriptions for the pill, according to figures from GPs, while a further 200 have long-term injectable or implanted contraceptive devices.
The disclosure prompted warnings that Britain was “facilitating the sexualisation of young people at an every younger age”.
It follows the publication of guidance by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence that sex education should be introduced from the age of five.
Trevor Stammers, chairman of the Christian Medical Fellowship and a GP in south London, told The Sunday Times: “If sex education is introduced in primary schools in the way being proposed, we will see many more 11-year-old girls seeking contraception without pointing out the risks…. We are going to make matters worse.”
Chris Etherington, chief executive of wholesaler P&H, said: “I think this could be the beginning of the double-dip recession. This is really scary stuff.”
Again: This is the Greatest Depression! Prepare yourself now.
The cost of food is likely to jump by up to 10 per cent before Christmas after dry weather drastically reduced the amount of winter feed that farmers could harvest, experts said.
Wheat: expensive. (Getty Images)
The price of milk, cheese, chicken, beef and pork and associated products are all expected to rise because the industry has been hit by soaring animal feed prices, a shortage of silage and poor harvests.
Food inflation is closely linked to overall inflation and some in the industry have warned it could push the economy towards a “double-dip” recession.
BOCM Pauls, Britain’s biggest animal feed supplier, has reported a 20 per cent increase in the price of raw material feed on last year
The cost of wheat used as animal feed has also jumped by 30 per cent.
The company warned that the price at which it sells feed to dairy, poultry, beef and pig farmers would have to increase by the same amount over the next three months, trade magazine The Grocer said.
It is possible that such a margin could be passed on to consumers, however, it is unlikely to be passed on in full. Instead, prices are likely to go up while producers’ and retailers’ profit margins are also squeezed.
The National Farmers’ Union said the dry weather had added to its members’ problems by slashing the yields of silage for winter feed by up to 50 per cent.
Food producers are already suffering from the high cost of common ingredients such as palm oil, cocoa and soya oil, which have risen by 39 per cent, 23 per cent and 14 per cent respectively since last year, according to Mintec figures.
City watchdog finds 170 people with contracts that breach bonus rules as it tries to tighten up pay code
The FSA shake-up on bonuses comes after new European rules were introduced.
More than 2,800 people in the City took home more than £1m last year, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) revealed today as it prepared to stop City firms exploiting potential loopholes in its pay code. Providing a rare insight into pay levels in the City, the regulator said it had found 170 people whose contracts breached new rules that require up to 60% of bonuses to be deferred over three years. The FSA said it had applied pressure to their employers to change the contracts.
The rules are designed to discourage excessive risk-taking and were introduced after the meltdown in the financial industry in the autumn of 2008. The FSA also revealed that the industry had lobbied for a relaxation of its ban on guaranteed bonuses that run for more than a year, claiming it was having an “adverse effect on employee mobility or staff retention”.
As the FSA began a consultation on its pay code, it warned that its scope would have to expand from 27 companies to 2,500 as a result of new European rules, known as the capital requirements directive.
In the wide-ranging consultation, the FSA also set out ways to stop “rewards for failure” and to ensure that pensions do not inadvertently reward poor performance, by demanding that any enhanced contributions are held in shares for five years.
The regulator also said that companies should decide how much money to pour into their annual bonus pots on the basis of the amount of profit being made rather than the size of the revenue generated. The FSA said that paying bonuses out of revenue would not “pay sufficient regard to the quality of business undertaken or services provided”.
The FSA reviewed the deferral arrangements of 4,300 City workers covered by its code because they were senior managers, influential traders or because they earned more than £1m. It said that 2,800 of them came under the code because they earned at least £1m and 1,300 of these were employed by UK banking groups, with the rest at big investment banks.
And now he warns over inflation. This is like nuking a country and then warn the people over radiation.
Elite puppet Mervyn King is intentionally destroying the pound, looting the people, through quantitative easing (Whereas the UK government is destroying the pound and looting the people through skyrocketing government debt.) and promoting the New World Order:
The economy is not facing stagflation, but the Greatest Depression.
Bank of England Governor Mervyn King has warned that high inflation will continue to erode earnings power through next year as the economy faces the threat of ‘stagflation’.
Prices rises have consistently defied the Bank’s expectations of a slowdown, adding to pressure on households as wage growth remains weak and the Government introduces a strict austerity package.
The Bank’s rate-setters are charged with keeping inflation at 2% but the Consumer Prices Index benchmark has been above 3% throughout the year.
However, addressing a committee of MPs, Mr King suggested that they will be reluctant to try to curb the problem by raising borrowingcosts from 0.5 per cent any time soon because of the weakness of the economy.
“There will come a point when we will certainly need to ease off the accelerator and return Bank Rate to more normal levels,” Mr King told MPs today.
“I look forward to that time because it will probably be a signal that there is a smoother drive ahead, with the economic outlook improving in a durable way. But I fear there is some considerable distance to travel before we can begin to use the word ‘normal.'”
The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), which slashed interest rates to a record low of 0.5pc during the depths of the recession, faces an acute dilemma on when to begin raising them. Not everyone on the MPC agrees with the Governor that the threats to the recovery present a greater danger than that of rising prices.
Prime minister intervenes in Middle East dispute and hopes Turkey can stop Iran’s nuclear weapons programme
David Cameron defended his remarks at a press conference with Recep Tayyip Erdogan. (REUTERS)
David Cameron used a visit to Turkey to make his strongest intervention yet in the intractable Middle East conflict today when he likened the experience of Palestinians in the blockaded Gaza Strip to that of a “prison camp”.
Although he has made similar remarks before, his decision to repeat them on a world stage in Turkey, whose relations with Israel have deteriorated sharply since it mounted a deadly assault on the Gaza flotilla, gave them much greater diplomatic significance.
Cameron’s comments, in a speech to business leaders in Ankara, prompted the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to issue another strong condemnation of how Israel dealt with the flotilla.
Erdogan likened the behaviour of Israeli commandos, who shot dead nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists, to Somali pirates.
Cameron’s criticism of Tel Aviv came when he called for Israel to relax its restrictions on Gaza. “The situation in Gaza has to change,” he said. “Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp.”
He strongly condemned Israel after the assault on the Gaza flotilla. “The Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla was completely unacceptable,” he said. “I have told prime minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu we will expect the Israeli inquiry to be swift, transparent and rigorous. “Let me also be clear that the situation in Gaza has to change.”
New powers: Police officers from European countries could soon be able to spy on and arrest Britons in the UK
Ministers are ready to hand sweeping Big Brother powers to EU states so they can spy on British citizens.
Foreign police will be able to travel to the UK and take part in the arrest of Britons.
They will be able to place them under surveillance, bug telephone conversations, monitor bank accounts and demand fingerprints, DNA or blood samples.
Anyone who refuses to comply with a formal request for co-operation by a foreign-based force is likely to be arrested by UK officers.
The move will spark a damaging row with backbench Tory MPs opposed to giving such draconian powers to Brussels.
The Tories were opposed to the directive in opposition, saying it showed a ‘relish for surveillance and disdain for civil liberties’.
But ministers have made a dramatic U-turn since joining the pro-EU Lib Dems in government, and the wide-ranging powers are due to be approved later this week.
According to the campaign group Fair Trials International, under the new rules it would be possible, for example, for Spanish police investigating a murder in a nightclub to demand the ID of every British citizen who flew to the country in the month the offence took place.
They could also force the UK to search its DNA database – which contains nearly one million innocent people – and send samples belonging to anybody who was in Spain at the time.
NHS bosses have drawn up secret plans for sweeping cuts to services, with restrictions on the most basic treatments for the sick and injured.
The NHS faces extensive cuts
Some of the most common operations — including hip replacements and cataract surgery — will be rationed as part of attempts to save billions of pounds, despite government promises that front-line services would be protected.
Patients’ groups have described the measures as “astonishingly brutal”.
An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has uncovered widespread cuts planned across the NHS, many of which have already been agreed by senior health service officials. They include:
* Restrictions on some of the most basic and common operations, including hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery and orthodontic procedures.
* Plans to cut hundreds of thousands of pounds from budgets for the terminally ill, with dying cancer patients to be told to manage their own symptoms if their condition worsens at evenings or weekends.
* The closure of nursing homes for the elderly.
* A reduction in acute hospital beds, including those for the mentally ill, with targets to discourage GPs from sending patients to hospitals and reduce the number of people using accident and emergency departments.
* Tighter rationing of NHS funding for IVF treatment, and for surgery for obesity.
* Thousands of job losses at NHS hospitals, including 500 staff to go at a trust where cancer patients recently suffered delays in diagnosis and treatment because of staff shortages.
* Cost-cutting programmes in paediatric and maternity services, care of the elderly and services that provide respite breaks to long-term carers.
The Sunday Telegraph found the details of hundreds of cuts buried in obscure appendices to lengthy policy and strategy documents published by trusts. In most cases, local communities appear to be unaware of the plans.
Dr Peter Carter, the head of the Royal College of Nursing, said he was “incredibly worried” about the disclosures.
BP is to begin deep-water drilling off Libya, despite environmental concerns following the Gulf of Mexico spill and an international row over the release of the Lockerbie bomber.
BP drilling in Libya comes amid international concerns about Lockerbie (AP)
The plans, reported in the Financial Times, come in the shadow of controversy, as the oil giant faces new scrutiny of its 2007 deal to acquire gas and oil fields off the Libyan coast at a cost of $900 million.
At a depth of more than 1700 metres below sea level, the new site in Libya’s Gulf of Sirte will be 200 metres deeper than the Gulf of Mexico well that exploded on April 20, killing 11 oil workers and causing immeasurable environmental damage.
The 2007 agreement has since come under fire from American politicians, after BP revealed that it lobbied the UK government over a prisoner transfer agreement between Britain and Libya.
Despite increased pressure from senior officials, including US President Barack Obama, the UK oil group has vigorously denied any involvement in the release of Libyan terrorist Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, after the Lockerbie bomber was freed by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds.
The issue was raised last week when British Prime Minister David Cameron met President Obama for talks in Washington. Mr Cameron has indicated there could be an inquiry into the release.
BP maintains it was “not involved in any discussions with the UK government or the Scottish government about the release of Mr al-Megrahi”.
A US senator has begged Alex Salmond, Scotland’s First Minister, to assist a hearing into the release of the Lockerbie bomber.
In a letter, Frank Lautenberg said he was “pleading” with the Scottish government to reconsider its decision not to send officials to a hearing into the release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi.
The company’s Chief Executive, Tony Hayward, is expected to appear before US Senators on Thursday to deny the claims.
A spokesman for BP confirmed the Libya drilling, saying: “Drilling at the new site will start within a few weeks”.
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