Former Cabinet minister David Laws said he plans to get back to work as a local MP after his dramatic resignation from the coalition Government.
The Liberal Democrat stood down as Chief Secretary to the Treasury after he admitted channelling tens of thousands of pounds of public money in rent to his long-term partner.
Mr Laws said he would now see whether he still had the "confidence" of his constituents in Yeovil, Somerset.
In a statement to local media, he said: "I have paid a high price for trying to keep my sexuality a secret. Losing your privacy, your Cabinet job and your perceived integrity within 48 hours isn't very easy.
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The Prince of Wales is opening up his gardens at Clarence House for the first time this summer - with a little help from Alan Titchmarsh, Jools Holland and Dame Vivienne Westwood.
There is, however, a catch. While visitors will have an unprecedented opportunity to relax in the Prince’s London garden - inspecting his vegetable patch and rose garden while they are there - they will also be exposed to a barrage of eco-conscious information as the Prince’s friends, associates and fellow green campaigners tell them how to lead more sustainable lives.
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Relatives of a Royal Marine killed in Afghanistan have told how they had been left with a void "that can never be filled".
Marine Scott Taylor, 21, of Buxton, Derbyshire, died in an explosion on Sunday while on foot patrol near Sangin with Alpha Company, 40 Commando.
His family said: "Scotty was the perfect son, brother, grandson, nephew and friend who would do anything for anybody no matter who they were, always caring and respectful.
"He loved his family and lit up the room with his smile."
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A martial arts expert who masterminded the £53 million Securitas robbery has been jailed for 10 years in Morocco.
Cage fighter Lee Murray, 30, was told he will spend the next decade in prison at a hearing in Rabat, Kent Police said.
The sentence was for his role co-ordinating the audacious raid at the cash depot in Tonbridge, Kent, on February 21, 2006.
Last June the Moroccan authorities refused to extradite Murray, originally from Sidcup, after establishing his Moroccan nationality.
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The father of Chelsea and England footballer John Terry has been spared jail for supplying cocaine to an undercover newspaper reporter.
Edward Terry, of Chafford Hundred, Essex, admitted supplying 3.5 grammes of the class A drug to a News of the World journalist, posing as a chauffeur, last November.
But Judge Christopher Mitchell said: "It is a very, very clear case of entrapment solely to create a newspaper story."
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Climate change now represents so urgent a threat to mankind that the only way to deal with it is by suspending democracy. more
Ministers have ordered a review of looming global shortages of resources, from fish and timber to water and precious metals, amid mounting concern that the problem could hit every sector of the economy.
The study has been commissioned following sharp rises in many commodity prices on the world markets and recent riots in some countries over food shortages. more
Morgan Kelly, an economics professor with University College Dublin, make clear that Ireland’s budgetary situation is, in fact, set to decay rapidly. According Kelly, who is credited with having predicted the collapse of the Irish housing bubble, “It is no longer a question of whether Ireland will go bust, but when”. more
The sovereign debt crisis in Greece and many other European nations has, at least for the moment, opened a gap in the wash of financial disinformation that has prevailed in the mainstream media for the past year. The average American is now more aware of the terrible costs of living in an artificially driven and widely manipulated “global economy”, and has also been exposed (at least for the moment) to the very real frailties in our own markets, which have been hidden or downplayed by the government as well as disingenuous establishment economists. Events in the EU, however, are only a glimpse of the greater and more imminent threats we face in the near future. In this article we will look at some of the latest and most disturbing moves by governments and financial institutions, as well as tell-tale signs in our own local cities, which signal that a full-spectrum collapse of world markets and possibly our own currency is not only in progress, but nearing completion. more
The largest financial crisis in history is spreading from private to sovereign entities. At best, Europe’s recovery will suffer as the collapsing euro subtracts from growth in its key trading partners. At worst, a disintegration of the single currency or a wave of disorderly defaults could unhinge the financial system and precipitate a double-dip recession... more
The European Central Bank sent tremors through financial markets last night when it warned that banks in the eurozone nations faced having to write off another €195 billion in bad loans over the next 18 months. more
In one of the early issues of my newsletter, I wrote an article about the Kondratiev Cycle, an economic cycle which was first identified by Nikolai D. Kondratiev (1892-1938) an eminent Russian economist. The famous economist, Joseph Schumpeter, once said that the Kondratiev Wave is “...the single most important tool in economic forecasting.” more
The politicians as evidenced during the sovereign debt crisis bailouts continue to show that they are firmly in the back pockets of the bankster elite. Instead of countries such as Greece defaulting on their debts, they are being forced to become debt slaves to finance their debt masters (the bond market) in perpetuity, as power continue to drift from the debt slave sovereign states to the their debt masters i.e. the debt providers, the IMF and now the German Government which through its bailout holds countries such as Greece by the balls, and is fully willing to squeeze governments that show dissent and disobedience to the New German European Order. Off course looking at the bigger picture, the German state itself is enslaved to the banking elite. more
Make no mistake about it, what is happening in Greece and Thailand right now will be coming soon to a theatre near you as well, with a war between our bloated bureaucracy and the public at center. It’s important to understand that the weaker periphery states in the Western alliance is just the beginning in a global affair, as Martin Armstrong points out in his latest, and that while being ‘big daddy’ of the sovereign debt debacle will postpone crisis in the US briefly as capital seeks safety in her markets, once this reaction is exhausted the U$$ Titanic America will be going down too. Therein, after the panic into US bonds (and stocks as a result of artificially lower rates) is done, rates will rise in the States as well, forcing the same budget cuts and austerity measures now being imposed on what is being described by the Western media sources (in justifying trading action) as the economic basket case, better known as Europe. more
People spent less going out in the past three months as the service sector failed to build on the momentum evident at the start of the year, according to the CBI.more
The summer of 2010 promises to be the most tumultuous summer in the short history of the European Union. The sovereign debt crisis sweeping the continent threatens to cause economic and political instability on a scale not seen in Europe for decades. The truth is that governments across the eurozone have accumulated gigantic piles of debt that simply are not sustainable. Prior to the implementation of the euro, these European governments often "printed" their way out of messes like this, but now they can't do that. Now they either have to dramatically cut government expenses or they have to default. But the austerity measures that the IMF and the ECB are pressuring these European governments to adopt are likely to have some very painful side effects. Not only will these austerity measures cause a significant slowdown in economic growth, they are also likely to cause the same kinds of protests, strikes and riots that we saw in Greece to erupt all over Europe. more
“Europe’s top job-creator only two years ago, Spain now has the region’s highest unemployment rate, at just over 20 percent, and is the slowest of the major economies to emerge from the global recession. Meanwhile, the ratings agency dealt a blow to state efforts to shore up confidence in its finances by cutting the country’s rating one notch from AAA to AA plus” more
We had expected the broad stockmarket and the resource sector to stabilize and start to recover last week and they did, and while we are likely to see further recovery in the days and perhaps weeks ahead, there have been some ominous developments in the recent past that we would be most unwise to ignore. The market did not go into full crash mode because it was not technically ready to, although it got close to it, and crucial support held - for now. However, heavy technical damage was inflicted and a broad review of long-term charts reveals that a blood-curdlingly dangerous setup has developed across a wide spectrum of markets. more
Euro under new pressure after Spain's debt rating is downgraded ... Markets set to fall after ratings agency Fitch strips Spain of AAA score ... French debt rating also threatened, says budget minister Francois Baroin ... Spain's Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero (left) struggled to gain support for austerity measures. His government may also face a general strike. ... The euro is expected to come under further pressure tomorrow as Spain's minority government teeters on the brink of collapse and traders fear contagion throughout the eurozone after a senior French minister admitted that his country's top-notch credit rating was under threat. Stock and debt markets are likely to take a battering after the decision on Friday by the ratings agency Fitch to strip Spain of its coveted AAA credit score, the second downgrade in a month. Fitch's decision was announced after the markets in closed, so traders will have their first chance tomorrow to react, although London and New York will be sidelined by bank holidays. more
So just how bad is the U.S. economy? Well, the truth is that sometimes it is hard to put into words. We have squandered the great wealth left to us by our forefathers, we have almost totally dismantled the world’s greatest manufacturing base, we have shipped millions of good jobs overseas and we have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of mankind. We have taken the greatest free enterprise economy that was ever created and have turned it into a gigantic house of cards delicately balanced on a never-ending spiral of paper money and debt. For decades, all of this paper money and debt has enabled us to enjoy the greatest party in the history of the world, but now the bills are coming due and the party is nearly over. more
On the weekend of May 7-9, the European Union gazed into the abyss of historical failure. The fate of the euro was at stake and with it European unification as a whole. Not since before the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957 had Europe been in such grave political danger. On the surface, the matter at hand was the financial stabilization of Greece and of the Europe’s common currency, but the real title of the play was “Saving the Banks, Part II.” more
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