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| What Liverpool fans think of takeover Liverpool football club is set to be sold to the owners of the Boston Red Sox - the firm New England Sports Ventures. bbc.co.uk |
Saudi Prince slept in double bed with manservant A Saudi prince accused of murdering his manservant in a sexually motivated attack insisted they were "close friends" who only shared a double bed because the sofa bed was inferior, a court heard yesterday. telegraph.co.uk |
Rosyth aircraft carriers spared from defence cuts Nick Clegg says safeguarding the £5.2bn contract for building HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales in Scotland secures thousands of jobs in ScotlandTwo aircraft carriers being constructed in Scotland will be spared from cuts as part of the government's spending review, it was confirmed today.The deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, visited the Rosyth docklands where the carriers will be assembled to announce that the projects would go ahead.Joined by the Scottish secretary, Michael Moore, at the Fife dockyard, he met workers to reassure them that their jobs were safe.Clegg said: "The workers are delighted to have heard we have now confirmed that the two aircraft carriers will go ahead because that means their jobs and skills are being safeguarded for the future."Clegg also confirmed that the government would be cancelling the Nimrod aircraft.He said that the decision would inevitably have an impact on the Moray communities dependent on RAF Kinloss and RAF Lossiemouth.He said: "There's clearly an impact of some of the decisions we've taken."Cancelling the Nimrod aircraft of course has a knock-on effect on the bases in Moray, but it's not the end of the story."We're not going to abandon the families and communities which are dependent for their jobs and their livelihoods on those bases."For instance, we're looking at the possibility of redeploying military personnel from Germany to the UK and perhaps using the bases for that purpose in the future."Clegg said the government would work "flat-out" with the communities in Moray to make sure there was a future for them.He said: "The bases clearly will be affected by the decision not to go ahead with the Nimrod aircraft because the bases are servicing and supporting those aircraft."What I'm saying is that there are lots of other decisions which we're going to take, such as the redeploying military personnel from Germany, which could provide a new future, a different future for those bases."He said the government would continue the building of the aircraft carriers at Rosyth and Govan in Glasgow but that they would have to be shared with the UK's allies.He added: "It was a difficult decision for us to make as we had to deal with a ludicrous legacy from Gordon Brown and the Labour party."They had arranged for these aircraft carriers to be built in a way which couldn't actually be shared with our American and French allies."We believe we will need to share these carriers in terms of aircraft landing and taking off from them long into the future."We've made some decisions which means that we'll not only go ahead and build the aircraft carriers but we'll build them differently so that they can be used interchangeably with our allies."We think that's necessary because we're not always going to face conflicts and wars on our own."Safeguarding the £5.2bn contract for building HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales in Scotland secures thousands of jobs in Rosyth and on the Clyde.Clegg said: "There's a great sense of relief here. There are many thousands of people in the Forth, the Clyde and down in Portsmouth dependent on these contracts and they were very worried about the uncertainty."I think they are very relieved now that finally the decision has been taken to proceed, if in a slightly different way, with the construction of the aircraft carriers."Moore said: "Over the last few months we have been grappling with the nation's security needs."As part of that we've been considering how we shape our armed forces for the future."I'm delighted that in that context we are able to confirm that both aircraft carriers will proceed and that will mean work in Rosyth and in Govan will continue for a long time to come."Across Scotland, there are at least 5,000 people directly involved in the construction so this is really important for Scotland's economy."Spending review 2010Tax and spendingDefence policyMilitaryNick Cleggguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
French and Henry granted divorce Comedy stars Dawn French and Lenny Henry divorce on the grounds of his "unreasonable behaviour". bbc.co.uk |
Lauren Booth's conversion to Islam | Andrew Brown By becoming a Muslim, Tony Blair's sister-in-law has made a clear political statement about the society she has rejectedThere is quite a lot that could be said about anyone who converts to Islam in Iran under the impression that it is less inhumane than New Labour, but as a piece of theatre, Lauren Booth's conversion could hardly be beaten.We tend to think of conversion as an essentially solitary or individual choice: the classic picture is the kind of "conversion experience" described in William James, and central both to evangelical Christianity and Alcoholics Anonymous. But it is also always a political and social act, a statement about where you fit into the world. To convert is to announce your allegiance to a new tribe, or a new idea of humanity.It is also, by implication at least, a rejection of your old self, and of the people who thought they recognised you in it. In this it is more like a divorce or a remarriage than any kind of intellectual experience. This is why it is a little silly to mock Lauren Booth for saying she has got up to page 60 of the Qur'an, after reading it every day. The conviction precedes the reading, and drives it along. Besides, how fast are you supposed to read a holy book? It's not as if you're trying to discover who dun it, only how He did it, and that is a study which can take a very long time. I might think her more sincere if she announced she was still on page one after three months.But leave God out of this for the moment. Conversion always involves a conversation with the people around you, and just as with any other conversation, the meaning depends on where you are. To become a Muslim in Britain is a very different thing to becoming one in Indonesia, and in Argentina it's different again. This has absolutely nothing to do with doctrine. Baptists in the southern US can believe almost exactly the same things as Baptists in the Ukraine, but in one case baptism means you are becoming a normal person, and in the other that you are defining yourself as a weirdo.In theory, all of the monotheistic religions try to stress the way in which true conversion moves you away from worldly things and into a relationship with God, rather than one with society. But in practice, most of the time, most people find their theological beliefs are a way of expressing their relationship with society. Disraeli could never have become prime minister had his father not converted from Judaism to Christianity. Even within Christianity, Margaret Thatcher found it necessary as part of her social rise to move from Methodism to Anglicanism.To convert to Islam in a British prison is one way of expressing your disdain for the world outside, whereas conversion to Christianity is an attempt to come to terms with the dominant culture. To proclaim yourself an atheist in some parts of America is to invite derision, as much as it would be to announce in the BBC that you were a practising Calvinist.Of course the consequence of conversion can be very much worse than derision. In almost all countries there is some religion that is regarded as treacherous almost in its essence. Much of the present tension in the US over Cordoba House comes from the attempts to define Islam as communism once was – an ideology that is incompatible with patriotism. But at least the American constitution works against such efforts in theory. Had Lauren Booth had a different mystical experience in Iran, and converted away from Islam rather than into it, she would have been liable to the death penalty.ReligionIslamAndrew Brownguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |