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| Food Prices Soar in India High food prices are of particular concern in a country where despite a growing economy, millions of people are still poor. www1.voanews.com |
Detroit terror attack: MI5 hunt for bomber's accomplices MI5 is hunting for possible accomplices of the Detroit airline bomber amid fears that he may have been planning to launch the attack from Britain. telegraph.co.uk |
Fans of the tame, rejoice – TV's Beige Age is on its way | Marina Hyde With Jonathan Ross's exit it is hard not to think the puritans have won, as cowed producers give in to the anti-BBC mobIn movie folklore, Heaven's Gate is the film that sank a studio. Like all the best Hollywood stories, it isn't completely true – United Artists, the studio which made Michael Cimino's epic western, was essentially bankrupted and sold to MGM within a month of the film's release in 1980 – but to all intents and purposes the company founded in a blaze of idealism by Hollywood's brightest talents six decades earlier was dead. The New Hollywood era, in which explosive talents were given huge sums of money with minimal studio control, had ended, and the heavily edited upshot of it all was that the nerds won. The more anarchic geniuses had squandered the goodwill of the studios, and to some extent the public, while your dependable Lucases and Spielbergs invented the blockbuster that would shape the future.From Heaven's Gate, then, to Sachsgate – as scandal cliche demands we style the epic overreaction to an offence which did so much to precipitate this week's departure of Jonathan Ross from the BBC – an affair that some genuinely claimed would sink the corporation.That Ross had to go was clear. Not only had he long ago become the story, symbolising everything that an unquantified section of people believe is wrong with the BBC; but the restrictions placed on him in the wake of the row had hamstrung his act so completely that continuing it was pointless. The situation, in short, was unworkable, and the era of the BBC handing eye-watering amounts of money over to hubristic talent to run their own shows appears to have ended.But now Ross has gone, where do we find ourselves? It's always harder for the people left behind, or so the adage runs, and for those of us now staring at "Michael McIntyre To Get Chatshow?" headlines, it has never felt truer.Coming, as the Ross saga did, in the wake of the Hutton report, and very likely just before a Murdoch-frotting Tory government gets to work on the corporation, it is impossible to dispel the sense that the puritans have won. The collective loss of nerve post-Hutton has been amplified by the overhaul of compliance post-Sachsgate, which privately many BBC producers claim makes risk-taking … well, just too risky.This, of course, is middle-of-the-road music to the ears of the new puritans, who believe the BBC should take risks with arts programming and nature documentaries, but refuse to countenance it doing so with popular shows. You would scream at them for this failure of logic, until you recall that they are egged on by those who wish the complete destruction of the BBC as we know it for their own commercial ends, and who will slaver obsequiously over any Simon Cowell format, no matter that its questionable content cannot be excused simply by virtue of its being on a commercial channel. It hardly matters to Rupert Murdoch that an independent report commissioned by the BBC-loathing New Labour found – most inconveniently – that people would actually pay an average of £31 a year more for the licence fee.Perhaps the most fist-bitingly irritating aspect of the mob who allow themselves to be led by these anti-BBC private interests is their inability to understand that not every piece of the corporation's output has to appeal directly to them. Incomprehensible as this might be, many of the licence fee payers who enjoyed Ross's chatshow probably couldn't give a toss about the Today programme, or whatever else the Daily Mail regards as the universally adored parts of the BBC's schedules, and will never listen to it, nor accept for a minute that it is indispensable.What they also won't do, though, is make demented complaints about every show they don't like the look of, which gives disproportionate emphasis to the disgusted throngs of Tunbridge Wells. Yesterday's Daily Telegraph leader claimed Ross was hired because he appealed to "young people, who do not necessarily pay the licence fee". Really? They might have been younger than readers of the Telegraph print edition (I don't include the paper's website, where they run made-up stories saying Michelle Obama is pregnant). But I'd guess a huge proportion of viewers and listeners of Jonathan Ross pay the licence fee; they just had better things to do with their time than confect months-long rows about why My Family is on their telly, or why on earth they should have to pay towards CBeebies.Yet the damage is done. No matter how nervily they rein themselves in or hobble their talents, the BBC still won't be able to catch a break, of course, because you can't really appease people who desire your complete destruction.But for fans of the tame, the inoffensive, the presentably decent, we are surely entering what you would call a golden age – were gold not too polarisingly brash a shade. Let us herald it as a Beige Age, then – an age of "send us your snow pictures", the revived heyday of "gentle comedy", with gentle being a synonym for "no". It is an age crystallised by the deeply imitable Michael McIntyre, whom Daily Mail readers would gladly allow to have sex with their granddaughter.Jonathan RossDaily MailBBCNational newspapersTelevision industryRussell BrandRupert MurdochTelevisionSimon CowellMarina Hydeguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Iran Demonstrators Facing Death Sentence Several said to be charged with 'offending God and his prophet' www1.voanews.com |
Paul Myners | You are right to be angry. The banks should have to pay for state backing The UK is leading global efforts to rebalance an economic model that privileges the interests of investment banksThere were plenty of Âreasons to be angry when taxpayers around the world were forced to rescue the world's financial system. It seemed that just as government funds were arriving through the doors of major banks, these banks were turning around and paying big bonuses, refusing to lend to the economy, and fighting proposals for regulatory reform.But behind these headline-friendly outrages, it is the fundamental unfairness of the rescue that should be the cause of lasting anger. When recessions hit, businesses get into trouble. And some businesses fail, taking many jobs with them. Banks, however, were for the most part protected from the rules that applied to everyone else – and Âprotected at great cost to public funds. In the wake of the financial crisis, governments have been working together to address many areas for reform. But our task will be incomplete if we cannot address this fundamental inequity at the heart of global capitalism.If a bank is judged to be too big or too important to fail, it should be the banks and their owners, not taxpayers, who pay the price for saving it.Let me be clear – it is the goal of the government to do everything it can to make sure that banks in future are much less likely to fail in the first place. Through an international process, we are forcing banks to hold more capital and of higher quality than they have in the past. We will also require them to hold a greater proportion of liquid assets, so they can access cash when they find themselves under pressure. And to implement leverage caps to ensure they are living within their means.And we will make sure that pay and bonus policies incentivise smart Âdecisions, not reckless risk-taking.We are also determined to take the "too big to fail" or "too connected to fail" problem head-on. Any institution that thinks it will always be bailed out when the going gets tough is an Âinherently dangerous institution. If you never have to face the consequences of bad decisions, you are less likely to be as careful as you should be when Âmaking important choices.This is why we are leading international efforts to make banks plan for their own failure through "living wills". They will have to build firewalls between their risky trading activities and the deposits of families and businesses. They will have to convince regulators that they are structured simply enough so that if they got into trouble, they could either Âconfront their problems or be allowed to fail in an orderly way.But no regulatory system can or should eliminate all risk. We all need banks to take risks. If banks were not willing to borrow money on short terms (from our deposits, which we can remove at any time) and lend it out on long terms (to businesses and homebuyers), our economy would not function.Making banking risk-free is not an option. And we will never be able to rule out entirely a future scenario in which taxpayer money is required to protect people's savings or to limit the damage of a crisis in global credit Âmarkets – even as we strive to make that scenario much less likely.But this is not charity. Banks are paid handsomely for the risks they take on our behalf. The profits reported by big investment banks in Ârecent days have Âreminded us all that banks don't need the rest of us in the economy to be doing well to find ways to make huge amounts of money.If banks are to enjoy even a small hint of implicit underwriting from the state, they should pay for it. None of us can get insurance for our homes or our businesses for free – we pay a premium for it. And so should banks. We need to re-examine an economic model that seems to work much better for investment banks than for businesses and workers.It is this challenge that a meeting I am chairing tomorrow is seeking to address. Together with senior officials from G7 finance ministries, the IMF, World Bank, the Financial Stability Board, and leading academics, the government will be exploring ways to shift the burden of financial sector support from the public to the private sector.There are several options – among them a global insurance levy, the use of innovative contingent capital instruments developed in the UK, and a global transactions tax. But this problem can only be dealt with through Âglobal agreement, as we know all too well that banks can use gaps in regulation to game the system. We have seen that we are all vulnerable to the failures of firms in other nations, and we all benefit from the actions of national authorities to support their financial systems.Finding a new way to keep taxpayers from shouldering the bill for future Âbailouts will be far from easy, but the UK will continue to lead the Âinternational effort to do so. A global agreement on this issue would be the most Âimportant legacy of our response to this crisis, and it is a prize all governments have a duty to pursue.BankingFinancial crisisEconomic policyPaul Mynersguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |