UK News
Insights from the UK and beyond
from Global News Journal:
EU delivers its own “State of the Union” address
The European Union talks frequently about wanting to be a bigger player in the world, about making its political influence match its economic weight and the need to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the United States.
And at least in one respect it can now say it's America's equal -- both have a State of the Union address.
Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, delivered his inaugural State of the Union speech to the European Parliament on Tuesday, a sweeping assessment of where the bloc of 27 countries stands and what it needs to do to be better in the future, tapping a similar vein to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address to Congress in January.
But beyond the matching titles, and some common themes, there were few similarities, at least from a rhetorical point of view.
from Global News Journal:
EU gets new Commission, but little to cheer yet
There was more a sense of relief than joy when the European Union finally got its new executive on Tuesday. These are difficult times for the EU and there is little to celebrate.
The new European Commission is taking office in a tough economic climate, with the 16-country euro zone facing its hardest test since the single currency came into being 11 years ago.
from Afghan Journal:
The Afghan conference: a meeting of victors or the vanquished ?
If you listened to some of the rhetoric in the lead-up to Thursday's conference on Afghanistan in London and followed the coverage accompanying it, you would think it is a meeting of the victors of war.
Here we are, at a meeting attended by representatives from more than 50 countries, offering the Taliban a chance for peace before the "surge" of 30,000 additional U.S. troops hits them. They better grasp it before the tide turns decisively against them, seems to be the message. Host British Prime Minister Gordon, according to this report, vowed to "split the Taliban" while offering them a full part in the rebuilt Afghanistan if they united behind the government in Kabul.
Playing the blame game
President Barack Obama had barely settled into in the White House before he was happy to admit he had “screwed up” over one of his choices for a cabinet job after Tom Daschle withdraw his nomination as health secretary over an income tax controversy.
Even Britain’s leading bankers were moved to apologise to parliament last month over the sector’s indiscretions in the boom years.
Time for salary cap for bankers?
It’s not a great time to be a banker at the moment with financial apocalypse making the pin-striped gents probably more loathed than estate agents or journalists. Thousands of them have lost their jobs and those that are still in paid employment are finding that their renumeration packages are coming under ever greater public scrutiny.
Over the weekend reports that the Royal Bank of Scotland was about to award its staff a billion pounds in bonuses prompted outrage at a time of soaring unemployment and with a deep recession looming. Most people would agree it is a no-brainer that a company that has just posted the biggest-ever financial loss in British corporate history, required a 20-billion-pound government bail-out to stay afloat last year and is now nearly 70-percent state-owned should not be allowing its staff to be trousering huge bonuses.
Snow event?
When in Rome . . .
As I watched the snow fall gently from London skies on Sunday night, I asked an acquaintance if I would have to go to work the next day.
My Canadian “snow radar” — fine-tuned from living in the snowy cities of Toronto, Ottawa and Halifax — was telling me that there wasn’t going to be much accumulation, but given the regular daily London transit delays in fair weather during the rush hour, I had a gleeful feeling a “snow day” might be in store.
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The Wall
