UK's POSITION ON IRAN'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM

The United Kingdom is part of the EU3+3 (UK, France, Germany, US, China and Russia) group of countries that are engaged discussions with Iran. The UK is therefore one of the countries that has stated that Iran would be provided with enriched fuel and support to develop a modern nuclear power program if it, in the words of the Foreign Office spokesperson "suspends all enrichment related activities, answer all the outstanding issues relating to Iran's nuclear program and implement the additional protocol agreed with the IAEA" The UK (with China, France, Germany and Russia) put forward the three Security Council resolutions that have been passed in the UN.

On 8 May 2006, Former Deputy Commander-in-Chief of British Land Forces, General Sir Hugh Beach, former Cabinet Ministers, scientists and campaigners joined a delegation to Downing Street opposing military intervention in Iran. The delegation delivered two letters to Prime Minister Tony Blair from 1,800 physicists warning that the military intervention and the use of nuclear weapons would have disastrous consequences for the security of Britain and the rest of world. The letters carried the signatures of academics, politicians and scientists including some of 5 physicists who are Nobel Laureates.

Recent news

PM condemns planned Islamic march in Wootton Bassett
LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Monday he was appalled that an Islamic group planned to march through the town renowned for honouring British troops killed in Afghanistan.

He said any attempt to distress the families of dead soldiers would be "abhorrent and offensive."

Home Secretary Alan Johnson said the proposed procession through the Wiltshire town of Wootton Bassett filled him with "revulsion" and he would grant an order banning the march if police and the local authority sought one.

Anjem Choudary says his organisation Islam4UK intends to hold the demonstration to highlight the deaths of "innocent Muslim men, women and children" who had been killed in the conflict.

Choudary defended the protest in an open letter to families of the dead soldiers on Monday.

Wootton Bassett has become famous for holding public processions in memory of many of the 246 British soldiers who have been killed in Afghanistan since the invasion to oust the Taliban in 2001.

In his letter, Choudary, who calls himself the UK head of al-Muhajiroun, said he wanted to explain to family and friends of dead soldiers that the proposed march was not "merely an act of incitement or provocation."

"The procession in Wootton Bassett is therefore an attempt to engage the British public's minds on the real reasons why their soldiers are returning home in body bags and the real cost of the war," the letter says.
The parades, the speeches about soldiers doing their duty and the feeling of patriotism has obfuscated the reality of the conflict and the murderous crimes being committed by the occupiers and their agents."

The group's website gave no indication of when the march would take place. A protest by Choudary's supporters in Luton last March against soldiers returning from Iraq led to widespread condemnation.

A Facebook page set up to condemn the planned procession has already attracted almost 180,000 supporters.

Brown said the nation should honour soldiers who died for their country.

"I am personally appalled by the prospect of a march in Wootton Bassett," he said.

"Any attempt to use this location to cause further distress and suffering to those who have lost loved ones would be abhorrent and offensive."

Johnson said the march was a "stunt" that only sought to incite hatred and discord.

"The idea that anyone would stage this kind of demonstration in Wootton Bassett fills me with revulsion," he said.

"If the Wiltshire police and local authority feel that a procession of this kind has the potential to cause public disorder and seek my consent to a banning order, then I would have no hesitation in supporting that request."

(Additional reporting by Tim Castle)

Response of people to privatisation

Privatization has been a major element of reform in Central and Eastern Europe, however its effects on firm marketing capability and performance are unclear. This study tests a number of hypotheses concerning the effects of privatization on marketing capability, activities and performance in Poland. The main conclusions are that privatization leads to enhanced marketing capability, to more pro-active marketing activities, such as the adoption of longer term priorities, to an emphasis on delivering superior quality to customers and to more active new product development. On both financial and market-based criteria, the privatized firms are seen to outperform their state-owned counterparts.
Attitudes toward the impending privatization of the UK electricity supply and water industries were assessed by means of a questionnaire distributed to 225 visitors to holiday beaches in SW England as part of a broader survey of perceptions of coastal pollution. The water industry was evaluated more negatively than the electricity industry in terms of both its present performance and the changes in its practice anticipated after privatization. The levels of pollutants in the immediate environment were expected to increase, with those individuals most opposed to privatization being especially pessimistic. The results suggest that respondents did not consider privatization to be a corrective for poor previous industrial practice, but rather that it would lead to improvement where an industry was seen as performing well, and deterioration where it was seen as performing badly. At worst, this was seen as likely to involve the privatized industries putting their own financial interests ahead of those of the public and the environment. It is argued that individuals based their attitudes on previous experience and on assumptions about the effects of market forces on behaviour that differed from those implicit in the policy of privatization.

Effects of privatisation

There is considerable debate around the effect of railway privatisation, especially since the structure now in place is considerably different from that originally envisaged at the time of the Railways Act 1993. Some of the most common arguments for and against are:
• Customer Service: Privatisation was supposed to bring improved customer service and many rail lines have seen improvements in this field with better on-board and station services. In the early years, however, customer service was dented when too many drivers were given voluntary redundancy by the new TOCs and trains had to be cancelled. Also, the impact of the Hatfield rail accident in 2000 left services seriously affected for many months after.
• Fares and Timetable: In an attempt to protect passengers' interests, certain fares (mostly commuter season fares) and basic elements of the timetable were regulated. However, the TOCs still had quite a bit of latitude in changing unregulated fares and could change the number of trains run within certain regulatory and practical limitations. While average fare prices have changed little since privatisation, this masks substantial changes. Although the price of commuter season tickets has fallen in real terms, many unregulated fares have increased as demand levels shifted, particularly 'walk-on' fares on inter-urban routes where operators have urged passengers to use the cheaper 'advance purchase' tickets. In fact, this has become so common that Virgin Trains now charge £219 for a standard open return ticket between Manchester and London, a journey of only 200 miles each way.[6] So far as the timetable is concerned, many more trains are being run each day than under BR as operators have tried to run more frequent, but usually shorter, trains on many routes to attract more customers.
• New Trains: The promoters of privatisation expected that the ROSCOs would compete against each other to provide the TOCs with the rolling stock they required. In practice, in most cases the individual TOCs required specific classes of trains to run their services, and often only one of the ROSCOs would have that class of train, resulting in their having to pay whatever the ROSCO concerned cared to charge for leasing the trains. Old rolling stock was extremely profitable to the ROSCOs, as they were able to charge substantial amounts for their hire even though British Rail had already written off their construction costs. As trains grow older, the cost of their lease does not decrease. This was due to the adoption of 'indifference pricing' as the method of determining lease costs by the government, which was intended to make purchasing new trains more attractive when compared to running life-expired trains. In practice, the average age of trains in the UK is no different to that under the last years of BR.
• Rolling Stock Manufacture The rolling stock manufacturers themselves suffered under privatisation; with the hiatus in new orders for new trains caused by the reorganisation and restructuring process, the former BREL works at York (now owned by ABB) had been severely downsized and eventually closed. The former Metro Cammell plant in Birmingham (later owned by Alstom) followed suit in 2005, closing its doors once the last of Virgin Trains' new Pendolino units had rolled off the assembly line. Only the former British Rail research centre and associated BREL works in Derby and Crewe survive to the present day; now owned by Canadian conglomerate Bombardier.
• Punctuality and Reliability: The privatised railway has not shown the improvement in punctuality and reliability that was hoped for. The contracts in place between companies were intended to incentivise improvements in these areas, but with the large increase in the number of trains run while using more or less the same amount of rolling stock and track, there has been less room for manoeuvre when problems occur, with consequent impacts on punctuality. This was also compounded by post-Hatfield disruption.
• Level of Traffic: It is unclear whether privatisation was intended to increase traffic, but that is what happened in the early years of the privatised railway with many more trains run, more passengers carried and more freight (in terms of weight and distance - in terms of weight alone there was little change) lifted. Opponents of privatisation argue that some increase would have been expected anyway in line with the improved UK economy and the sharp rise in road congestion and bus fares; it took until just 1997, three years after privatisation before traffic exceeded to the levels achieved by BR in the late 1980s at the height of the previous economic boom. More passengers are now being carried each year than at any time since 1957, when the network was twice the mileage. In addition rail's total passenger kilometres has reached the highest level since 1946.

Structural adjustments programs in UK

Structural adjustment is a term used to describe the policy changes implemented by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (the Bretton Woods Institutions) in developing countries. These policy changes are conditions (Conditionalities) for getting new loans from the IMF or World Bank, or for obtaining lower interest rates on existing loans. Conditionalities are implemented to ensure that the money lent will be spent in accordance with the overall goals of the loan. The Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) are created with the goal of reducing the borrowing country's fiscal imbalances. The bank from which a borrowing country receives its loan depends upon the type of necessity. The SAP's are supposed to allow the economies of the developing countries to become more market oriented. This then forces them to concentrate more on trade and production so it can boost their economy.

Through conditionalities, Structural Adjustment Programs generally implement "free market" programs and policy. These programs include internal changes (notably privatization and deregulation) as well as external ones, especially the reduction of trade barriers. Countries which fail to enact these programs may be subject to severe fiscal discipline. Critics argue that financial threats to poor countries amount to blackmail; that poor nations have no choice but to comply.

Since the late 1990s, some proponents of structural adjustment such as the World Bank, have spoken of "poverty reduction" as a goal. Structural Adjustment Programs were often criticized for implementing generic free market policy, as well as the lack of involvement from the country. To increase the borrowing country's involvement, developing countries are now encouraged to draw up Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). These PRSPs essentially take the place of the SAPs. Some believe that the increase of the local governments participation in creating the policy will lead to greater ownership of the loan programs, thus better fiscal policy. The content of these PRSPs has turned out to be quite similar to the original content of bank authored Structural Adjustment Programs. Critics argue that the similarities show that the banks, and the countries that fund them, are still overly involved in the policy making process.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_adjustment

Privatization in UK

The privatization of British Rail was set in motion when the Conservative government enacted, on the 19th January 1993, the British Coal and British Rail (Transfer Proposals) Act 1993. This enabled the relevant Secretary of State to issue directions (as to the disposal of holdings) to the relevant Board. This was necessary since (in the case of the British Railways Board) they had to Act, at all times, within the rules established by various Transport and Railways acts - none of which would have allowed the Board to 'sell-off' any of its assets. The subsequent direction from the Secretary of State forced the creation of Rail track PLC. This then paved the way, later that year for the Railways Act 1993 introduced by John Major's Conservative government. The operations of the British Railways Board (BRB) were broken up and sold off. This process was very controversial at the time, and the Labor opposition announced its intention to re-nationalize the railways, although this has not been implemented by the subsequent Labor government. The manner in which privatization was carried out has also received criticism for its complexity.

Recent news

Kidnapped Brit Tells Of Pirate Yacht Raid

8:05pm UK, Thursday October 29, 2009

Huw Borland, Sky News Online
A kidnapped British man has told how armed Somali pirates boarded the yacht he and his wife were sailing in the Indian Ocean.

Speaking by phone to ITV news, Paul Chandler, 59, said: "I was asleep and men with guns came aboard."

The retired quantity surveyor and his economist wife Rachel, 55, had disappeared while taking their vessel, the Lynn Rival, from the Seychelles towards Tanzania.

Mr Chandler, from Tunbridge Wells, Kent, continued: "I was off watch. I was asleep and men with guns came aboard. It was on Friday last week at 2.30pm."

We are at the moment in the captain's cabin of the container ship Kota… We are hostage together with this ship.

Paul Chandler

Before the phone call, the kidnapping and the couple's safety had not been verified.

Mr Chandler's brother-in-law, Stephen Collett, confirmed that it was his voice which was heard during the call.

Paul and Rachel Chandler

The couple are still missing

The kidnapped man said the couple were forced to sail towards Somalia after the Lynn Rival was captured.

Mr Chandler and his wife were now being held "hostage" on a container ship called the Kota Wajar, he said.

His captors have not asked for a ransom, he said: "Not officially - they kept asking for money and took everything of value on the boat."

Prime Minister Gordon Brown called on the pirates to release the British couple immediately.

Earlier, a pirate called Hassan, in the Somali coastal town of Haradheere, claimed his crew had seized the Chandlers and moved them onto the Kota Wajar.