Although the number of Britons claiming jobless benefit in October rose by its smallest amount in 18 months, the jobless rate is at 7.8 percent.

One resource, sometimes overlooked by unemployed professionals and businesses looking for new recruits, is Jobcentre Plus, a government-run employment agency.

Businesses can cut costs by using the free vacancy-advertising and recruitment service offered by Jobcentre Plus. As well, employers that hire people who are unemployed for six months or more through a so-called Recruitment Subsidy scheme will receive 1,000 pounds for each eligible jobseeker. They can also access in-work training of a value of up to 1,500 pounds.

Chris Nicol, district manager, south London, explains what’s on offer for professional jobseekers.

It is rare that religion and science find agreement, but that is what happened when Britain's Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks spoke at a meeting on saving the earth from climate change.

"The great Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson published a book in 2007 called "Creation", subtitled An Appeal to Save Life on Earth," Sacks told leaders of all the major faiths meeting at Lambeth Palace in London on Thursday.

(Photo: A partially dried reservoir in Yingtan, Jiangxi province, China, 29 Oct 2009/stringer)

"I thought that was a very good book. E.O. Wilson is known not to be religious, but what this book was was a call to religious people and scientists to call off the war between religion and science and work together for the sake of the future of life on earth.

"And I felt that was a very generous and appropriate call by a non-religious scientist."

He said "that science and religion despite their apparent friction actually converge on a profoundly scientific and at the same time religious idea that there is a kinship of life and hence a covenant of life".

Not only did such a high-profile religious figure agree with the scientific world, but faith leaders found harmony among themselves at the same meeting.

Sitting next to Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual head of the Anglican Church, was the Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols, who only days earlier had delivered the Pope's offer to disaffected Anglicans the chance to convert to Rome.

Also attending were faith and community organisation leaders including Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Baha'i, Jain and Zoroastrian.

(Photo: Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, 23 July 2006/Paul Hackett)

Organised by Williams, the leaders issued a joint statement in which they "recognised unequivocally that there is a moral imperative" to tackle the causes of global warming.

They agreed to work together to raise awareness about the effects of "catastrophic climate change", saying it was the poor and vulnerable who most suffered from the ensuing droughts, floods, water shortages and rising sea levels.

Quoting from the book of Genesis, Sacks said man was placed on earth to serve it and protect it. "Man was a guardian, not the owner using and abusing the good things on earth," he said.

"We are taken from the earth and therefore owe it a sense of kinship and responsibility. We believe our very existence as human beings come wrapped up in environmental imperatives and ecological responsibility."

Drawing on the story of Noah's Ark where all animals, including the lion and the lamb, had to survive side by side, he said we would all drown if we failed to work together.

Of course, if everybody kept the Sabbath, when nobody drove cars, flew by plane, or switched on any electrical appliances, the environmental problem would be solved, he said.

But more realistically, a new set of rituals would have to be devised that recognise the importance of the environment.

"What religion allows us to do is take the big ideas and translate them into daily rituals," he said.

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Michael Jackson’s posthumous  new single, “This Is It” began streaming online and playing on radio stations on Monday. The singer died four months ago from a prescription drugs overdose at age 50.

A series of 50 concerts scheduled at London’s 02 Arena from July 2009 through March 2010 was also entitled “This Is It”.

The single is part of a related package, which includes a two-disc album and a film based on rehearsals and preparations for the O2 Arena concert series.

The soulful track, which features backing vocals by Jackson’s brothers, goes on sale on Oct. 26, internationally and on Oct. 27, in North America to coincide with the release of the film.

The “This Is It” film was the subject of a $60 million (38 million pound) deal between Jackson’s estate and concert promoter AEG Live and Sony Pictures. Sony Music’s Columbia/Epic Label Group will be releasing the album.

What do you think of the single?

Is this just an opportunity for stakeholders to make a cash grab or is it a legitimate tribute to the singer and his premature death?

Anyone listening to the BBC radio weather forecast this morning on the first day of Autumn will have come away with a detailed knowledge of how things look likely to pan out in Scotland – heavy winds apparently and not at all a day for going out walking on the hills.

They will also have probably had more than they need about Northern Ireland, with its endless bands of rain.

But if they lived where most of the population actually does live, London and the southeast, they would have got next to nothing. Just a couple of words about occasional cloud at the end of the bulletin.

Does this make sense?

Ah but the weather at Britain’s periphery is so much more interesting, say the forecasters, and people who live in places like the Outer Hebrides need to know what the weather’s going to do far more than city folk in their offices.

It’s not just the BBC who pointedly start their broadcasts and give most exposure to the places where the least number of people live. Apparently the word “London” is also avoided by other stations like GMTV, where presenter Clare Nasir revealed earlier this year that the mention of the capital is frowned upon in case other parts of the country feel marginalised.

High pressure building up in the southeast over this, judging by the number of newspaper articles on the weather forecast in recent weeks.

Is it time for southerners to take a stand?

Clerics and police have expressed concern, and now the Olympics minister has - London could see a proliferation in prostitution and human trafficking during the 2012 Games.

Some have warned the Olympics could see a repeat of the ”mega brothels” set up in German cities for the 2006 World Cup in Germany.

Tessa Jowell said: “I am concerned about that. I certainly became aware of it in the run-up to the World Cup.

“We need to send the strongest possible message that our Olympics will not be contaminated by this exploitation.”

In January, two Church of England dioceses set down a motion for discussion at the General Synod, or clerical parliament, for a government crackdown on human trafficking in the run-up to the London 2012 Olympics, saying “anything like slavery is wrong”.

They pointed to the World Cup in Germany, where they said city officials adopted a “pragmatic” approach towards catering for the sexual desires of the estimated three million football fans who attended the tournament.

“Sex huts” or “sex garages” for prostitution were set up, filled with 40,000 extra prostitutes, while special licences were issued allowing prostitutes to offer sex on the street, they added.

About 500,000 sports fans a day are expected to roll into London for the two-week long Olympics.

Concerns have already been raised about the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

While some studies suggested that prostitution levels may have in fact decreased during the World Cup in Germany, Jowell said: “I think this is a risk, it is a risk I am absolutely determined that London will mitigate, and that London will set an example for the world in future sporting events, basically outlawing trafficking, making it impossible for these young women, and young men, to be exploited in this way.”

“I think it is an issue that has to come out of the cupboard.”

So the watchdog can bark after all. Adair Turner, chairman of Britain's Financial Services Authority, says the financial sector has "swollen beyond its socially useful size". That is a striking statement for any financial regulator, particularly one that counts promoting London's financial centre as one of its goals. Identifying the problem, however, is the easy bit. Reversing decades of financial expansion will require global agreement on tough new rules, and the determination to make sure they are consistently enforced.

Turner's comments, in a debate hosted by Prospect magazine, underscore the extent to which the crisis has upended the received wisdom among policymakers. For years they assumed markets were self-correcting, that financial innovation brought lasting economic benefits, and that regulators should think twice before getting in the way.

But after two years of global economic turmoil and with several trillion dollars of public money committed to preventing further panic, the costs of this approach have become all too clear.

What is less certain is what should come in its place. A market economy needs functioning banks and financial markets to intermediate capital flows and allocate credit. This useful activity will involve some useless speculation: it is hard to imagine a regulator -- or anyone else -- reliably drawing a line between the two.

The authorities can, however, make sure that banks take greater account of the possible costs of their risk-taking. Turner thinks forcing banks, particularly those involved in trading activities, to hold greater reserves of capital will choke off some "socially useless" activity. Such changes are already under way. They will have the added benefit of reducing banks' profits and -- by implication -- the outsized bonuses they distribute to employees.

Governments can also do more to protect taxpayers from future financial failures. Banks could be required to prepare for their own failure by drawing up what Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, memorably described as a "living will". Alternatively, systemically important institutions could be charged an explicit fee for the state guarantee they enjoy.

Turner also floats the idea of introducing a Tobin tax -- a levy on financial transactions -- named after the economist who in the 1970s proposed taxing cross-border currency transactions. However, this would not distinguish between "useful" and "useless" transactions. It is also hard to imagine a global tax that could not be avoided somehow.

Turner is right to launch a debate. His comments will also help counter accusations that financial regulators have been captured by the industry they are supposed to police. But the reforms he has proposed cannot be imposed unilaterally by any one country -- let alone by a regulator that may not exist in its current form a year from now. Shrinking the financial sector will require a global agreement every bit as robust as the intellectual consensus that allowed it to swell up in the first place.

- Hugh Robertson is the opposition Conservatives' Olympics spokesman. The views expressed are his own. -

With three years to go, it is remarkable that London 2012 is going so well.

London’s Olympics were launched with a massive government miscalculation that resulted in the budget having to be increased threefold, were based on a plan that required us to build two Terminal 5s in half the time and have had to contend with the worst economic recession in living memory.

Despite this, the construction process remains on time and nearly on budget, the organising committee have raised more than £500 million in sponsorship and our athletes have given London 2012 a considerable boost by winning a record haul of medals in Beijing.

However, among all the plaudits, it is sensible to sound a note of caution.

The construction process is only just over one third complete and much remains to be done to a tight and immoveable deadline. Many of the major operational challenges for The organising committee lie ahead such as balancing the budget, finalising the venues, ticketing and the content of the opening and closing ceremonies. Finally, it is a considerable challenge to get our athletes to replicate, or exceed, their performance in Beijing.

In short, if you were writing a school report, you would probably conclude that London 2012 has started well but much remains to be done. You would also warn against too much self congratulation!

The major outstanding issue is legacy. It is a worry that neither the main stadium nor the broadcast and media centre have key anchor tenants and there has been little progress on delivering the promise, made when we won the bid, to use London 2012 to reengage young people in sport.

This is important for one simple reason. If we transform the area around Stratford but leave no more people enjoying the opportunities available through sport, we will have missed a once in a lifetime opportunity.

“Close Examination: Fakes, Mistakes and Discoveries,” an exhibition slated to go on show next summer at the National Gallery in London, will celebrate copies of works done by students of the great masters.

The exhibition ties in with recent forays by the gallery into boosting its reproduction of art online via a new iPhone application and a relaunch of its website, which allows access to its entire collection.

In a 1972 book titled “Ways of Seeing” based on a BBC TV series, critic John Berger wrote that with the advent of “cheap colour photography” the reproduction of works was made possible with a clarity never before possible except by using oil paint.

This, he argued, gives the spectator a false sense that they own the real object. However, reproductions remove the original sense of a work adding to a proliferation of meaningless images.

“Users can now examine every National Gallery masterpiece in outstanding detail, effortlessly sweep across digital canvases and zoom into minute details of their choosing,” a National Gallery press release states.

Do you think the National Gallery is taking the right approach? Whose work would you reproduce and why?

More than 50 million pounds worth of tickets were sold to see Michael Jackson perform at London’s O2 Arena where he was scheduled for a series of 50 concerts before his death.

The King of Pop’s run at the O2, scheduled to kick off in July, would have been the highest-grossing single concert engagement.

Fans have the choice of returning their ticket, or receiving it as a souvenir instead of getting a refund up until August 14. The tickets, which at face value cost 50 to 75 pounds, will show the concert date and seat location of the ticket as originally purchased.

If you had bought a ticket to see him perform, would you exchange it for face value, or would you hold onto it and hope to strike it rich by selling it as a collectors’ item in years to come?

London's transport bosses are telling travellers on the tube system to beat the heat by carrying a bottle of water with them when they venture underground.

But how many of us are refilling our bottles with tap water rather than pouring money down the tube -- not to mention the cost of recycling the plastic bottles -- by buying a new bottle of water each day?

Cue the National Hydration Council whose eye-catching advertising campaign to encourage people to buy more "naturally sourced bottled water" -- on health grounds -- featured prominently on the underground network earlier this year.

The worrying thing for the bottled water lobby is not that people are doing what would appear to be the most sensible thing and refilling their bottles from the tap, but that Britons are replacing bottled water with sugary drinks instead.

We're told that sales of bottled water fell by 7 percent last year, with 71 percent of that decline the result of people buying sweet drinks instead. Good news for the soft drinks industry perhaps, but a worry for health officials.

Meanwhile, beneath the streets of London, the hot and flustered faces of fellow tube passengers shows just how dire it is on board the capital's underground trains when the mercury rises.

With a decent air-conditioning system on most lines a distant prospect, Transport for London (TfL) could show it cares by offering each of its cash-strapped passengers a free TfL water bottle and the opportunity to refill them at its stations.