TOP 100 ENGLAND SITES
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| QinetiQ shares plunge as military spending squeeze hits profits • Planned US troop surge has not brought in orders• QinetiQ profits expected to be down 15%• Mark Elliott to replace John Chisholm as chairmanQinetiQ, the defence firm, has warned that profits will be hit this year because of the squeeze on military spending in the US and Britain, sending its shares plunging by more than 12%.Profits are likely to be down more than 15% for the full year because of uncertainty over military spending and delays in orders for hardware, the company said.The former state-run defence agency announced Sir John Chisholm had retired as chairman and will be replaced by non-executive director Mark Elliott. Chisholm pocketed a heavily criticised windfall when shares in the firm he had bought for £126,000 were converted into stock worth £26m after it floated four years ago.QinetiQ usually enjoys much stronger profits in the second half of the year but said today that performance would be "broadly similar" to the first six months.It said the planned US troop surge in Afghanistan had not yet resulted in firm orders for equipment such as bomb disposal robots and armour for vehicles such as Land Rovers. The company makes about half its profits from US government military spending and analysts had not expected these orders to be delayed.QinetiQ expects to start winning orders after the current financial year ends. Military spending in Britain, its other main market, faces bigger cuts.The National Audit Office criticised the payouts for Chisholm and other directors of the company. MPs accused them of "profiteering at the expense of the taxpayer". The NAO also criticised civil servants over their pricing of the sale of a minority stake in the company to private equity group Carlyle for £42m in 2003. The firmCarlyle made a profit of over more than £300m when the firm floated three years later.QinetiQDefence policyMilitaryTim Webbguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Compensation for control orders is a distraction | Andy Worthington Instead of tinkering at the edges of the control order regime, questions should be raised about its fundamental legalitySupporters of the government's right to hold men under a form of house arrest, when it alleges that they have some sort of involvement with terrorist activities, but is unwilling to produce any evidence to support its claims, are fuming after a high court judge accepted that the basis on which two men were deprived of their liberty was unlawful, and suggested that they might be able to claim compensation from the government.The men – AE, an Iraqi national and an imam in the north of England, and AF, a dual British/Libyan national, born in Derby – had control orders imposed on them in 2006, severely restricting their movements and their ability to communicate with other people, through the use of a variety of measures including electronic tags, curfews, the vetting of all visitors, and a ban on the use of the internet.Imposed in 2005, after the law lords ruled that the government's previous policy of imprisoning terror suspects without charge or trial was unlawful, control orders have been championed by successive home secretaries, and for four years were supported, with some reluctance, by both parliament and the courts. However, last June the law lords effectively ordered the government to rethink its policy, ruling that the use of secret evidence in these cases breaches Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to a fair trial.In the bizarre system conceived by the government, detainees are represented in closed sessions of the Special Immigration Appeal Commission (Siac) by special advocates, who are prevented from discussing anything that they have heard with their clients, thereby preventing them from either knowing fully what the allegations are against them, or being able to challenge them. When the law lords made their ruling last June, they concluded that control orders breached Article 6 specifically because a suspect held under a control order is not given "sufficient information about the allegations against him to enable him to give effective instructions to the special advocate assigned to him".In the wake of the ruling, the government quietly dropped a handful of control orders, and had others revoked by the courts. However, the home secretary refused to accept that the entire system is in ruins, and imposed three new control orders, and re-imposed two others, with "significantly reduced obligations".The scope of these new obligations has not yet been explored, and may result in new legal challenges, but behind the scenes, lawyers and judges have already been arguing about whether, in cases where the government feels that it cannot provide an "irreducible minimum" of evidence, the law lords' ruling imposes a requirement to revoke or quash the control orders. The former, favoured by the government, allows the home secretary to maintain that a perfectly sound system was, essentially, derailed on a technicality, while the latter – advanced by Mr Justice Silber yesterday – indicates that the entire basis of the control order was unlawful.As a result, the questions that need to be raised today concern the fundamental legality of the government's policies, and not whether, as a result of the quashing of the control orders, the men in question will be compensated for the loss of their liberty. Mr Justice Silber ruled only that the revocation of the control orders meant that "in principle" the men would be entitled to claim compensation. He stressed that each case would need to be examined on an individual basis, and that, in any case, the amount of compensation would be low.Behind this convenient smokescreen, the heart of the matter is whether the government's entire approach to "preventive detention" was wrong from the outset, and the answer, surely, is that it is was. The use of the word "terrorism" is so charged, and so liable to induce fear rather than scrutiny, that it is easy to lose sight of the fact that, when pushed, the government found itself unable to justify the continued detention of men like AE and AF, who were once so casually branded as "international terrorists".Instead of trying to shore up an unlawful system, and tinkering at its edges to make it appear more palatable, the home secretary should accept that the government's post-9/11 experiment in "preventive detention" has failed, and, moreover, that it has no place in a country that claims to respect the rule of law. If he has evidence, he should put "terror suspects" on trial, and stop pretending that putting them under house arrest on the basis of secret evidence was ever a reasonable alternative.Control ordersTerrorism policyCriminal justiceAlan JohnsonAndy Worthingtonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Boy torturers were already tortured | David Wilson Those jailed for a brutal attack on two children were abused in their own home – a crime all adults must guard againstAs the two boys responsible for the brutal, sadistic attack on two other boys in Edlington, South Yorkshire, in April last year were being led away from Sheffield crown court to begin their indeterminate sentence, the mother of one of their victims is reported to have shouted at them "you evil little bastards, I hope someone does that to you".Her outburst is perfectly understandable given the ferocity of their attack, which over some 90 minutes had taken a variety of forms including punching, kicking, stamping, choking, beating their victims with sticks, making then strip and then sexually assaulting them – some of which was filmed on a mobile phone. As the judge commented, this was pain being inflicted for their own emotional pleasure, and for which they have subsequently shown no remorse. One expert at court commented that the younger of the two attackers was a psychopath in the making.How are we to understand all of this? What should we do with these boys, and how can we best support the two boys they attacked? Let's return to the outburst of the mother. From information leaked about the family circumstances in which these two boys were being raised – and from which they had been temporarily removed to Edlington into foster care – there is more than enough evidence to suggest that someone had indeed been doing "that" to them both, and that their lives had already been filled with violence, neglect, stampings, beatings and kicks. We now know they watched pornographic videos that were brought into their home and they often witnessed their mother being physically threatened by their father.As for thinking of them as "evil" this might bring some form of temporary comfort to many. Labelling them in this way absolves us from having to acknowledge that no child is born "evil" but any child can quickly become socialised into doing awful things – and seeing such behaviour as "normal" – if the only thing that has characterised their upbringing has been abuse and neglect.Psychopaths do indeed often show difficulties in understanding how their hurtful behaviour and actions can cause suffering and pain in others. One of the challenges of working with psychopaths is to get them to make this connection given that they are essentially selfish and emotionally distant and cold. They look after themselves, view other people in relation to what those people can do for them, and are happy to discard those people should they no longer be needed. Changing this type of behaviour takes time, especially if that behaviour has become ingrained. At HMP Grendon – where the 240 adult prisoners have elevated scores on Hare's Psychopathy Checklist – there is no "treatment effect" for at least 18 months, and many of the prisoners stay much, much longer before being able to live in the community again.So, given the relative youth of these two boys, an indeterminate sentence with at least five years is probably about right, and already we have been advised that – removed from the toxic world they were being brought up in – they are responding well. However, we should not expect any quick fixes, nor pander to any knee-jerk demands that their identity should be revealed, or that they should spend the rest of their lives locked up.And, as Loretta Loach rightly remembers, what about the two boys they attacked? How should we support them in the months and years to come? I presume the support started long ago, given that the attack took place last April, and in the same way that we shouldn't expect quick fixes with the culprits, we should give time to their victims to allow them to describe how best we can support them and heal their wounds.The attacks in Edlington do not stand as some awful symbol of a "broken Britain", or even – and here I differ perhaps in my emphasis from Robert Reiner – of the growing economic chasm that former mining communities now inhabit and where the "have-nots" far exceed the "haves". Rather, these attacks should serve to remind us that children are very precious and what we do to children in the space that we call childhood is one of the greatest responsibilities that all adults share.ChildrenCrimeChild protectionDavid Wilsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Baby cup maker in administration A maker of spill-free plastic cups for babies and toddlers in Cardiff calls in administrators and makes 26 job losses. news.bbc.co.uk |
Supreme court rules asset-freezing orders for terror suspects illegal 'Draconian' restrictions imposed by Gordon Brown as chancellor exceeded government's powers, say justicesOrders to freeze the assets of five terror suspects, imposed without parliament's approval by Gordon Brown during his time as chancellor, have been ruled illegal by the UK supreme court.The seven supreme court justices described the sweeping financial powers contained in two asset-freezing orders as "paralysing", "draconian" and leaving those involved as "effectively prisoners of the state". They said the government had exceeded its powers.Lord Hope of Craighead, the deputy president of the court, said: "Even in the face of the threat of international terrorism, the safety of the people is not the supreme law. We must be just as careful to guard against unrestrained encroachments on personal liberty." It was a clear example of an attempt to adversely affect the basic rights of the citizen without the clear authority of parliament, he said.The supreme court also lifted anonymity orders, ruling there was a "powerful, general public interest" in the five men being identified. The decision, following an application by the Guardian and other news organisations, was described as a "resounding victory for press freedom".The Treasury said it would introduce "fast-track" legislation to prevent disruption to its powers to freeze terror suspects' assets. The supreme court is expected to delay quashing the orders to give ministers time to get parliamentary approval for emergency orders, so denying the men access to their funds.The justices stressed that the ruling did not displace the will of parliament: "On the contrary, the court's judgment vindicates the primacy of parliament, as opposed to the executive, in determining in what circumstances fundamental rights may legitimately be restricted," said Lord Phillips, the supreme court president.The two asset-freezing orders against the five men were imposed between 2005 and 2007 as part of measures implementing a UN security council resolution. In practice the men have only been allowed £10 in cash each week. They had licences for claiming benefits and had to produce receipts for everything they spent.One of the five has already been named by the Bank of England in an earlier decision as Mohammed al-Ghabra from east London. A second, Hani el-Sayed Sabaei Youssef, has successfully sued the home secretary for wrongful detention after a failed attempt to deport him to Egypt. He has broadcast regularly on al-Jazeera.The remaining suspects are brothers: Mohammed Jabar Ahmed, Mohammed Azmir Khan and Michael Marteen, previously known as Mohammed Tunveer Ahmed. The whereabouts of the first two is unknown.The ruling covered two types of asset freezing orders. The first, covering about 40 people either resident in the UK or with British bank accounts, is the result of a UK-specific measure introduced in 2006 by Order in Council without a parliament vote. The second transposes the global UN list of 500 international terror suspects into British law should they try to use the British banking system.A Treasury spokesman said: "It's important to be clear that this ruling does not challenge the UK's obligations under the UN Charter to freeze the assets of suspected terrorists, which we will continue to meet."UK security and terrorismTerrorism policyAlan Travisguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |