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IRAQ Reckoning Template.Qxd 04/08/2016 12:35 Page 63
IRAQ Reckoning_Template.qxd 04/08/2016 12:35 Page 63 IRAQ – The Reckoning ‘the fatuous irony of millions of liberalminded people taking to the streets, effectively to defend the most illiberal regime on earth’ Blair to Bush, 26 March 2003 IRAQ Reckoning_Template.qxd 04/08/2016 14:33 Page 64 64 Star Wars starts wars The voluminous and longoverdue report of the Iraq Inquiry, prepared by Sir John Chilcot, was finally published in July 2016. Pressure from families of service personnel killed in Iraq eventually hastened the protracted process, which commenced in 2009, six years after the invasion of Iraq led by the United States with prominent UK support. The illegal war on Iraq was always about much more than the prime actors, but Tony Blair’s impatience to oust Saddam and wilful ignorance about the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq leap from his correspondence with President Bush, compiled from the Chilcot Report and reprinted here. Charged with ‘learning the lessons’ of the misadventure in Iraq, the UK has gone to war in Libya and Syria while the report of the Iraq Inquiry was under preparation. Notable and informed critics of the war, such as Dr Brian Jones, formerly of Defence Intelligence Staff, have died before having a chance to see whether all their efforts to expose the fixing of intelligence in the UK proved worth while. Reg Keys, whose son, Tom, age 20 years, was one of six Military Police killed in southern Iraq in June 2003, has consistently campaigned for justice for those who died in this unnecessary war. -
Parliamentary Debates (Hansard)
Wednesday Volume 501 25 November 2009 No. 5 HOUSE OF COMMONS OFFICIAL REPORT PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES (HANSARD) Wednesday 25 November 2009 £5·00 © Parliamentary Copyright House of Commons 2009 This publication may be reproduced under the terms of the Parliamentary Click-Use Licence, available online through the Office of Public Sector Information website at www.opsi.gov.uk/click-use/ Enquiries to the Office of Public Sector Information, Kew, Richmond, Surrey TW9 4DU; e-mail: [email protected] 513 25 NOVEMBER 2009 514 my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and House of Commons Arran (Ms Clark). In a letter I received from Ofcom, the regulator states: Wednesday 25 November 2009 “Ofcom does not have the power to mandate ISPs”— internet service providers. Surely that power is overdue, because otherwise, many of my constituents, along with The House met at half-past Eleven o’clock those of my colleagues, will continue to receive a poor broadband service. PRAYERS Mr. Murphy: My hon. Friend makes some very important points about the decision-making powers and architecture [MR.SPEAKER in the Chair] that will ensure we achieve 90 per cent. broadband penetration. We are trying to ensure that the market provides most of that, and we expect that up to two thirds—60 to 70 per cent.—of homes will be able to Oral Answers to Questions access super-fast broadband through the market. However, the Government will have to do additional things, and my hon. Friend can make the case for giving Ofcom SCOTLAND additional powers; but, again, we are absolutely determined that no one be excluded for reasons of geography or income. -
Durham Research Online
Durham Research Online Deposited in DRO: 11 October 2011 Version of attached le: Published Version Peer-review status of attached le: Peer-reviewed Citation for published item: Masterman, R. and Mitchell, J. (2001) 'Devolution and the centre.', in The state of the nations 2001 : the second year of devolution in the United Kingdom. Thorverton: Imprint Academic, pp. 175-196. Further information on publisher's website: http://www.booksonix.com/imprint/bookshop/ Publisher's copyright statement: Additional information: Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Durham University Library, Stockton Road, Durham DH1 3LY, United Kingdom Tel : +44 (0)191 334 3042 | Fax : +44 (0)191 334 2971 https://dro.dur.ac.uk 8 Devolution and the Centre' Roger Masterman and James Mitchell INTRODUCTION Much of the debate on devolution before the enactment of the various pieces of devolution legislation was parochial. It had been parochial in concentrat- ing on the opportunities, problems and implications of devolution within Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; little attention had been paid to devo- lution's impact UK on the as a whole or on the `centre' - Whitehall and Westminster. -
People, Places and Policy
People, Places and Policy Set within the context of UK devolution and constitutional change, People, Places and Policy offers important and interesting insights into ‘place-making’ and ‘locality-making’ in contemporary Wales. Combining policy research with policy-maker and stakeholder interviews at various spatial scales (local, regional, national), it examines the historical processes and working practices that have produced the complex political geography of Wales. This book looks at the economic, social and political geographies of Wales, which in the context of devolution and public service governance are hotly debated. It offers a novel ‘new localities’ theoretical framework for capturing the dynamics of locality-making, to go beyond the obsession with boundaries and coterminous geog- raphies expressed by policy-makers and politicians. Three localities – Heads of the Valleys (north of Cardiff), central and west coast regions (Ceredigion, Pembrokeshire and the former district of Montgomeryshire in Powys) and the A55 corridor (from Wrexham to Holyhead) – are discussed in detail to illustrate this and also reveal the geographical tensions of devolution in contemporary Wales. This book is an original statement on the making of contemporary Wales from the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERD) researchers. It deploys a novel ‘new localities’ theoretical framework and innovative mapping techniques to represent spatial patterns in data. This allows the timely uncovering of both unbounded and fuzzy relational policy geographies, and the more bounded administrative concerns, which come together to produce and reproduce over time Wales’ regional geography. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.tandfebooks.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. -
Iraq Rage Drives Family Furies That Will Harry Blair at the Ballot Box | the Times
14/05/2015 Iraq rage drives family furies that will harry Blair at the ballot box | The Times Share via Iraq rage drives family furies that will harry Blair at the ballot box By Burhan Wazir Published at 12:00AM, April 26 2005 In key constituencies across the country the casualties of war are making sure that they are heard THIS is about rage. Incandescent anger. The kind of fingercurling, jawtightening fury that happens to everyone at least once in their lifetime. As Rose Gentle put it: “You get so angry that you can’t see straight. You get so angry that nothing else matters. The rage stops you from grieving for your dead son.” The election, once pungent with the odour of familiarity has, in a number of constituencies, turned into a boxing match with a host of alternative and independent candidates launching a jeremiad against key ministerial constituencies. In seats such as East Kilbride, Strathaven & Lesmahagow Birmingham Hodge Hill and Sedgefield, Labour Party workers, fearful of being shouted at, keep a low profile from antiwar candidates. “Tony Blair lied, my son died,” shouted Rose Gentle, 40, campaigning in East Kilbride, a blighted new town outside Glasgow, seemingly cursed by cold weather, where she is challenging Adam Ingram, the Armed Forces Minister. As wind and rain whistled through wide avenues, Mrs Gentle, whose son Gordon, 19, died in Iraq last summer while serving with the Royal Highland Fusiliers, dropped leaflets doortodoor accompanied by supporters. “I just take it day by day,” she said, rubbing her hands together. -
New Labour, the Market State, and the End of Welfare Soundings Journal
New Labour, the market state, and the end of welfare Jonathan Rutherford Jonathan Rutherford looks at the connections between government and the insurance business in their joint project to reduce eligibility for sickness benefits. In November 2001 a conference assembled at Woodstock, near Oxford. Its subject was ‘Malingering and Illness Deception’. The topic was a familiar one to the insurance industry, but it was now becoming a major political issue as New Labour committed itself to reducing the 2.6 million who were claiming Incapacity Benefit (IB). Amongst the 39 participants was Malcolm Wicks, then Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Work, and Mansel Aylward, his Chief Medical Officer at the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). Fraud - which amounts to less than 0.4 per cent of IB claims - was not the issue. The experts and academics present were the theorists and ideologues of welfare to work. What linked many of them together, including Aylward, was their association with the giant US income protection company UnumProvident, represented at the conference by John LoCascio. The goal was the transformation of the welfare system. The cultural meaning of illness would be redefined; growing numbers of claimants would be declared capable of work and ‘motivated’ into jobs. A new 40 New Labour, the market state, and the end of welfare work ethic would transform IB recipients into entrepreneurs helping themselves out of poverty and into self-reliance. Five years later these goals would take a tangible form in New Labour’s 2006 Welfare Reform Bill. etween 1979 and 2005 the numbers of working age individuals claiming IB increased from 0.7m to 2.7m. -
Understanding the 2015 General Election in Scotland Jan Eichhorn, Mor Kandlik Eltanani and Daniel Kenealy
Understanding the 2015 General Election in Scotland Jan Eichhorn, Mor Kandlik Eltanani and Daniel Kenealy Understanding the 2015 General Election in Scotland Jan Eichhorn, Mor Kandlik Eltanani and Daniel Kenealy1 1. Introduction The 2015 General Election was remarkable for many reasons. The overall result, with David Cameron’s Conservative party securing an overall majority, surprised many after opinion polls had pointed to a hung parliament.2 In Scotland, the most noteworthy development was the shift of support from Labour to the Scottish National Party (SNP). Across Scotland there was a swing of 26.1 per cent from Labour to the SNP, with swings as high as 39.3 per cent (in Glasgow North East). Labour lost 40 of the 41 Scottish seats it had won at the 2010 general election, every one of them to the SNP who also picked up 10 of the 11 seats won by the Liberal Democrats in 2010. Overall, the SNP won 56 of Scotland’s 59 Westminster constituencies and 50 per cent of the vote – the highest share of the vote won in Scotland since the combination of the Scottish Unionist Party and the National Liberal and Conservatives recorded 50.1 per cent in 1955. The party had turned defeat in Scotland’s independence referendum eight months earlier into a landslide electoral triumph. Table 1: The 2015 and 2010 UK General Election result in Scotland, vote share % and seats Vote share Seats 2015 2010 2015 2010 SNP 50.0 19.9 56 6 Labour 24.3 42.0 1 41 Conservatives 14.9 16.7 1 1 Liberal Democrat 7.5 18.9 1 11 Others 3.3 2.5 0 0 Labour’s 24.3 per cent share of the vote was sharply down on the 42 per cent the party recorded in the 2010 general election. -
2019-2020 Missouri Roster
The Missouri Roster 2019–2020 Secretary of State John R. Ashcroft State Capitol Room 208 Jefferson City, MO 65101 www.sos.mo.gov John R. Ashcroft Secretary of State Cover image: A sunrise appears on the horizon over the Missouri River in Jefferson City. Photo courtesy of Tyler Beck Photography www.tylerbeck.photography The Missouri Roster 2019–2020 A directory of state, district, county and federal officials John R. Ashcroft Secretary of State Office of the Secretary of State State of Missouri Jefferson City 65101 STATE CAPITOL John R. Ashcroft ROOM 208 SECRETARY OF STATE (573) 751-2379 Dear Fellow Missourians, As your secretary of state, it is my honor to provide this year’s Mis- souri Roster as a way for you to access Missouri’s elected officials at the county, state and federal levels. This publication provides contact information for officials through- out the state and includes information about personnel within exec- utive branch departments, the General Assembly and the judiciary. Additionally, you will find the most recent municipal classifications and results of the 2018 general election. The strength of our great state depends on open communication and honest, civil debate; we have been given an incredible oppor- tunity to model this for the next generation. I encourage you to par- ticipate in your government, contact your elected representatives and make your voice heard. Sincerely, John R. Ashcroft Secretary of State www.sos.mo.gov The content of the Missouri Roster is public information, and may be used accordingly; however, the arrangement, graphics and maps are copyrighted material. -
Parliamentary Debates (Hansard)
Wednesday Volume 497 14 October 2009 No. 123 HOUSE OF COMMONS OFFICIAL REPORT PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES (HANSARD) Wednesday 14 October 2009 £5·00 © Parliamentary Copyright House of Commons 2009 This publication may be reproduced under the terms of the Parliamentary Click-Use Licence, available online through the Office of Public Sector Information website at www.opsi.gov.uk/click-use/ Enquiries to the Office of Public Sector Information, Kew, Richmond, Surrey TW9 4DU; e-mail: [email protected] 277 14 OCTOBER 2009 278 at Kyle of Lochalsh were proposed, there would be an House of Commons open consultation and all interested parties would be involved. I am absolutely certain that the right hon. Wednesday 14 October 2009 Gentleman would be foremost among those interested parties, so I look forward to continuing our conversation. The House met at half-past Eleven o’clock Mr. Ian Davidson (Glasgow, South-West) (Lab/Co-op): Given that these torpedoes are being tested for the Royal Navy, does the Minister agree that if Scotland PRAYERS withdraws from it, there would be no need to have a torpedo testing range in Scotland? [MR.SPEAKER in the Chair] Mr. Murphy: In the world we live in, it is a fact that we need these weapons and that they have to be tested BUSINESS BEFORE QUESTIONS safely. It is in the nature of the modern world that, sadly, we need these sorts of ranges. The fact is that the CITY OF WESTMINSTER BILL [LORDS] only real threat to defence jobs in Scotland would be Motion made, Scotland breaking away from the rest of Britain. -
Ipsos MORI Scotland Public Opinion Monitor April 2015
2015 SCOTTISH PUBLIC OPINION MONITOR 2015 VOTING INTENTIONS General Election – Voting Intention HOW WOULD YOU VOTE IF THERE WERE A GENERAL ELECTION TOMORROW? 3 All giving a voting intention Certain to vote SNP 3% 1% 6% 1% 5% 2% LABOUR 17% 17% CONSERVATIVE 54% 54% LIB DEM GREEN 20% 20% OTHER SNP lead +34 SNP lead +34 Base: All giving a voting intention = 948; all certain to vote = 785. Data collected among 1,071 Scottish Source: Ipsos MORI Scottish Public Opinion Monitor adults 18+, 22nd - 27th April 2015 2015 SATISFACTION WITH PARTY LEADERS Satisfaction with Scottish party leaders HOW SATISFIED OR DISSATISFIED ARE YOU WITH THE WAY … IS / DOING HER JOB 5 AS FIRST MINISTER /HIS JOB AS DEPUTY FIRST MINISTER/ HIS/HER JOB AS LEADER OF THE XXXX PARTY? NICOLA STURGEON JIM MURPHY RUTH DAVIDSON WILLIE RENNIE PATRICK HARVIE +100 0 -100 -1% -15% +15% +3% -1% swing from January swing from January swing from January swing from January swing from January +48 Net -19 Net +7 Net -14 Net +20 Net SATISFIED 71% SATISFIED 33% SATISFIED 45% SATISFIED 27% SATISFIED 43% DISSATISFIED 24% DISSATISFIED 52% DISSATISFIED 38% DISSATISFIED 41% DISSATISFIED 23% Base: 1,071 Scottish adults 18+, 22nd - 27th April 2015. Source: Ipsos MORI Scottish Public Opinion Monitor Swing is calculated as the average of change in % “satisfied” and % “dissatisfied” Satisfaction with Westminster leaders HOW SATISFIED OR DISSATISFIED ARE YOU WITH THE WAY … IS RUNNING THE COUNTRY / DOING HIS JOB 6 AS PRIME MINISTER /DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER/LEADER OF THE LABOUR PARTY/UKIP? CONSERVATIVE LABOUR LIB DEM +100 0 -100 +6% +15% +11% swing from January swing from January swing from January -34 Net -31 Net -39 Net SATISFIED 31% SATISFIED 30% SATISFIED 26% DISSATISFIED 65% DISSATISFIED 61% DISSATISFIED 65% Base: 1,071 Scottish adults 18+, 22nd – 27th April 2015. -
OVERSEAS TRAVEL by MINISTERS 1 April 2007 – 31 March 2008
OVERSEAS TRAVEL BY MINISTERS 1 April 2007 – 31 March 2008 CABINET OFFICE JULY 2008 OVERSEAS TRAVEL BY MINISTERS 2007 – 2008 INDEX Page Attorney General’s Office 1 Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform 2 Cabinet Office 7 Minister for the Olympics and London 8 Chief Whip (Commons) 9 Chief Whip (Lords) 10 Department for Children, Schools and Families 11 Department for Communities and Local Government 13 Department for Culture, Media and Sport 14 Ministry of Defence 16 Deputy Prime Minister’s Office 19 Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs 20 Foreign and Commonwealth Office 24 Department of Health 33 Home Office 34 Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills 37 Department for International Development 38 Ministry of Justice 42 Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons 44 Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Lords 45 Northern Ireland Office 46 Prime Minister’s Office 47 Scotland Office 49 Department for Transport 50 HM Treasury 52 Wales Office 54 Department for Work and Pensions 55 OVERSEAS TRAVEL BY MINISTERS 2007 – 2008 ATTORNEY GENERAL’S OFFFICE Dates Minister Destination Purpose of Trip Scheduled, ‘No No. of Officials Total cost 32 (The Royal) Accompanying including travel Squadron’, or Minister, where & ‘Other RAF’ or non scheduled accommodation ‘Charter’ travel used Attorney General 18 - 19 April Rt Hon Lord Luxembourg Justice and Home Affairs Council Scheduled £676 2007 Goldsmith QC 25 May Rt Hon Lord Munich, Meetings with G8 Justice and Interior Ministers Other RAF -
Saturday 6 June 2010
Saturday 5 June 2010 Session 2010-11 No. 2 Edition No. 1077 House of Commons Weekly Information Bulletin This bulletin includes information on the work of the House of Commons in the period 1 - 4 June May 2010 and forthcoming business for 7 - 11 June 2010 Contents House of Commons • Noticeboard .......................................................................................................... 1 • The Week Ahead .................................................................................................. 2 • Order of Oral Questions ....................................................................................... 3 Weekly Business Information • Business of the House of Commons 31 May – 4 June 2010 ................................ 4 Bulletin • Written Ministerial Statements ............................................................................. 6 • Forthcoming Business of the House of Commons 7 – 18 June 2010 ................... 6 • Forthcoming Business of the House of Lords 7 – 18 June 2010 .......................... 8 Editor: Mary Durkin Legislation House of Commons Public Legislation Information Office • Public Bills before Parliament 2010/11 .............................................................. 10 London • Bills – Presentation, Publication and Royal Assent ............................................ 12 SW1A 2TT • Public and General Acts 2010/11 ....................................................................... 12 www.parliament.uk • Draft Bills under consideration or published during 2010/11 Session