In The Loop: 14/01/09

Blue sky thinking to revitalise affordable homes market
"Ministers are looking at detailed plans for a multibillion-pound infrastructure fund to kickstart the stricken housing market. Against the worst conditions for housebuilding for more than 30 years, senior Whitehall officials are drawing up a groundbreaking scheme that would see the public sector inject equity into social housing developments in an attempt to "lever in" insurance and pension funds investment.

The idea is to create a huge cash pool that would see up to £6 of private capital invested by institutions for every pound of government money to dramatically increase the number of affordable homes built in Britain." [Guardian]

Mandelson unveils £20bn plan to free up credit for businesses
"The business secretary, Lord Mandelson, today unveiled a £20bn package of measures to support British businesses as the recession gathers pace, by bolstering the availability of credit from the banking sector.

The government is also bringing in Mervyn Davies, one of Britain's leading bankers, to replace Digby Jones as trade minister. Lord Jones left the government in the last reshuffle." [Guardian]

Quarter of local authorities freeze recruitment due to credit crunch
"Nearly a quarter of local authorities in England have frozen recruitment and more than one in eight have axed jobs in response to a decline in income caused by the credit crunch, the Local Government Association (LGA) said today.

A survey of 154 council chief executives found that 34 have already frozen recruitment as a result of the economic slowdown (22%) and 20 have shed jobs (13%.)" [Guardian]

Thames estuary airport would have 'disastrous' environmental impact, London mayor Boris Johnson told
"Boris Johnson was today warned of "disastrous" environmental consequences if his plans for a new airport on the Thames estuary went ahead.

The Conservative London mayor, who is opposed to a proposed third runway at Heathrow, is pushing the case for a third London airport on the Thames estuary." [Guardian]

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Grimsdale's Ire: 14/08/08

Smithfield market plans refused
A part of the historic Smithfield market earmarked for demolition has been saved after planning permission to redevelop the site was refused. [BBC]

Booming Liverpool rejects 'counsel of despair'
The claim by the Conservative-leaning thinktank Policy Exchange that some northern cities are beyond revival did not go down well in Liverpool. The city - currently undergoing one of the biggest regeneration programmes in Europe - saw off competition from the likes of Bristol, Brighton and Hove, and Oxford to become the European Capital of Culture 2008. [Guardian]

Police call to action after pay talks collapse
The Police Federation yesterday called on its 140,000 members to in effect work to rule after talks broke down in a bitter pay row. The federation's chairman Paul McKeever called on rank-and-file members to conform strictly to their conditions of employment after discussions broke down in the long-running pay dispute which saw more than 20,000 officers march on Westminster in January. [Guardian]

Ethnic minority lawyers discriminated against, report finds
The body that regulates solicitors has been discriminating against ethnic minority lawyers and subjecting them to potentially ruinous investigations, an independent report has concluded. [Guardian]

Building up hope
It might seem a far cry from the golden age of post-war housing, when both main political parties competed to deliver millions of homes in record time and "credit crunch" had yet to enter the popular vocabulary, but after a gap of more than 20 years, town halls are now re-entering an area regarded as no-go territory until recently - planning thousands of new council houses. [Guardian]

Boris Johnson backs 'disproportionate' development project
Boris Johnson has given the go-ahead to a £50m development project in a London borough led by a political ally, despite a warning from his own planning officers that it will fail to help meet the housing needs of some of the poorest local residents. [Guardian]

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In The Loop: 03/08/08

Crisis is set to worsen as jails run out of cells

Britain's jails will struggle to cope with a predicted rise in prisoner numbers because the government plans to build far fewer cells than may be needed, The Observer has established.

Minutes from a private briefing given by the Justice Minister, David Hanson, to senior prison staff, civil servants and penal experts indicate that the government is facing a cells crisis.

'Our projections show we're going to need something like 96,000 prison places by 2012, 2014,' Hanson told the briefing last month. In a transcript seen by The Observer, he also expressed a desire to remove 6,000 prison places dating from Victorian times, which have long been criticised by penal reformers. [Guardian]

Energy giants forced to act on fuel poverty

Energy companies are to be told to reallocate some of the £3bn they must spend to reduce carbon emissions towards directly helping the fuel poor, following uproar over last week's decision by British Gas to hike gas bills by a third. [Guardian]

Property market: House prices down 8.1% in largest fall for 17 years

The average price of a UK home is now £15,000 less than it was a year ago, with prices tumbling at their fastest rate since 1991 in the year to July, Nationwide said yesterday. [Guardian]

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In The Loop: 31/07/08

Higher oil price boosts BP profit

Oil giant BP has announced a 6% rise in profits for the second quarter of 2008, largely thanks to a sharp rise in the price of oil. [BBC]

Climate activists occupy proposed site for coal-fired power station

Climate change activists yesterday occupied the proposed site for Britain's first coal-fired power station in 30 years, claiming the development will cause huge damage to the environment if it goes ahead. [Guardian]

Next prime minister or this one must deal with rising energy prices

Excellent article by Micael White on UK utility companies’ failure to develop modern infrastructure to keep down the price of energy. [Guardian]

Cable calls for social tariff for energy providers

Vince Cable was asked about rising energy prices, the housing market and the profits of Centrica. He called for a social tariff whereby energy providers would feed money back to those most in need.

He said on the issue of home heating that as summer moves to winter, “those high prices will really bite. We have 2.5 million people in fuel poverty.

He said that for the energy providers, “there should be an obligation to provide a real social tariff.” [PoliticsHome]

'Oil from algae' promises climate friendly fuel

A liquid fuel made from plants that is chemically identical to crude oil but which does not contribute to climate change when it is burned or, unlike other biofuels, need agricultural land to produce sounds too good to be true. But a company in San Diego claims to have developed exactly that – a sustainable version of oil it calls "green crude". [Guardian]

Two wheels

Wonderful look by Claire Armitstead on the relationship between cycling and political values. [Guardian]

UK is second in the world at research

UK scientists publish more research than any other country in the world except the United States, the science minister will say today. However, China now publishes almost the same number of studies as the UK – four times as many as it did 10 years ago. [Guardian]

United States economy shrinks for first time since 2001

The US economy shrank at the end of 2007 for the first time in six years, according to official figures, leading analysts to speculate the world's largest economy may be in recession. [Guardian]

House prices suffer record fall

House prices continued to fall in July, recording their largest year-on-year drop since the property market crash of the early 1990s, figures from Nationwide building society showed today. [Guardian]

Nasa discovers giant lake on surface of Saturn moon

Nasa scientists said today they had discovered the first direct evidence that the surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, has lakes of liquid hydrocarbons - the only object other than Earth to have standing liquids on its surface. [Guardian]

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