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Sneaked out shortly before MP's Christmas recess, the Government's decision to 'carry on culling' badgers with no evidence that the slaughter is reducing the incidence of bovine TB is a travesty of process, writes Lesley Docksey. But it does have one useful outcome - it has exposed Defra's claims that the cull is 'science-led' as arrant nonsense. Science never even got a look in.

Answering MPs' questions , Truss claimed that more than half of England (the Low Risk Area) will officially bTB free by 2020, but ignored the fact that:

Scotland has been officially bTB free for quite some years, without culling badgers.

Wales took the decision in 2009 NOT to cull badgers but to have strict bio-security measures, cattle movement controls and annual testing for all cattle. This has almost halved their cattle slaughter rate and they are on the way to becoming bTB free without killing badgers.

The Low Risk northern and eastern regions, although they currently have little bTB, have also not benefited from annual testing and tighter cattle movement controls. The incidence of TB is rising.

Asked by Labour MP David Hanson how many of the thousands of killed badgers had been tested for bTB, she first blamed Labour for creating the problem of bTB and then said,

"I am following the advice of the Chief Veterinary Officer, who says that culling is an important part of dealing with it. Why do Labour members not congratulate the hard-working farmers in Somerset, Gloucestershire and Dorset who have delivered this year, and who are helping us to deal with this terrible disease?"

Neil Parrish, the pro-culling Devon Tory MP said: "In Gloucestershire and Somerset, there has been a very beneficial reduction in the number of cattle suffering from TB in the badger culling areas." He then asked, "When will the Secretary of State be able to release the figures that will show what is happening?"

Maybe when the moon turns blue, because if there genuinely were figures to suport his statement Liz Truss would have been touting them around every media outlet she could find...

Renewables are now the single largest contributor to electricity generation in Scotland, according to new figures.

Green energy projects are now the largest generator of electricity in Scotland, according to new figures.

Department of Energy and Climate Change statistics showed almost half (49.7%) of Scotland's electricity demand came from renewable sources in 2014.

Scotland exported 23.7% of what it generated.

With that figure taken in to account, renewables provided 38% of electricity generated - above both nuclear, at 33%, and fossil fuels, at 28%.

Renewable generation for last year was up 11.9% on 2013, which was a previous record.

The sector north of the border employs 21,000 people directly and last year produced almost a third (29%) of the UK's renewable energy.

Sources of renewable electricity include hydro, wind, tidal, solar and biomass developments.

Think-tank says UK Border Force - set up only four years ago - is failing and should have passport control functions put out to contract

Passport control at Britain’s border should be privatised, a controversial new report will propose this week.

Immigration control functions of the UK Border Force (UKBF) should be handed over to a private company to modernise the “understaffed” service and stop spending spiralling out of control, the Centre for Policy Studies think-tank will say.

The proposal, which comes just four years after Theresa May, the Home Secretary, created the UKBF in a reorganisation, would not see law enforcement-style powers handed to civilians, however.

It will say enforcement functions – such as customs checks and drugs checks – should be handed to another public sector agency.

The full report will be published later this week by the think-tank, which was co-founded by Margaret Thatcher in 1974.

#law and order

Erdogan was speaking on board a plane transporting him back home following a meeting with Saudi King Salman in Riyadh.

On Saturday, Erdogan – returning from an official trip to Saudi Arabia – told journalists that “Israel is in need of a country like Turkey in the region. We have to admit that we also need Israel.” This mutual need, he said, “is a fact of the region.” Erdogan’s comments are the latest in the saga regarding the possibility of Israeli-Turkish reconciliation following the breakdown of ties that came in the wake of the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident, during which Israeli commandos killed nine Turks on the ship trying to break Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.Various officials from Erdogan’s AK Party said in the days following, however, that there was no agreement on curtailing Hamas activities in the country, and that Turkey stood by its demand that a lifting of the blockade on Gaza was a prerequisite to normalizing ties. Israeli officials have made clear that Jerusalem has no intention of lifting the blockade as per Turkey’s demands, but that ways could be found to allow Turkish aid into Gaza.

Today’s Zaman reported that the Turkish president also said that “an end to the violations of the sanctity of al-Aksa Mosque” was another issue important for Turkey.

Activists in Atlanta are working with the homeless to produce healthy organic food instead of expecting donations.

An organization in Atlanta is calling themselves Task Force For the Homeless and should be highlighted for their message and their tactics to restore dignity and prosperity to those who have fallen on hard times. They have chosen to combine two essential approaches to reverse the conditions which afflict the homeless the most: not having access to healthy food, and not being able to connect with others who are working in structured way to engage in practical solutions.Residents of the homeless shelter are now engaged in community building while providing for themselves food that only costs what their own efforts naturally produce.

Instead of processed foods given through donation, their rooftop garden has 80 beds of the most diverse range of vegetables, fruits and herbs that can be produced on site.

Now, instead of waiting for their next meal, they have taken action to ensure that each and every day they are well fed and well nourished.

#steven maxwell

The UN says Sheikh Nimr was executed by Saudi Arabia without committing a “most serious” crime under international law.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has deplored the Saudi Arabia’s execution of prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr as a “disturbing development”, since he had not committed a crime regarded “as most serious” under international law.

“The category of ‘most serious crimes,’ for which the death penalty is still permissible, has been consistently interpreted by human rights mechanisms as being restricted to murder and other forms of intentional killing,” said Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein in a statement on Sunday, adding that the death penalty could only be handed down with stringent respect of due process and fair trial guarantees, and full transparency throughout the process.

He also called on Riyadh to put a moratorium on all executions, noting that the Arab kingdom executed almost one-third of the last year’s total executions in a single day.

Saudi Arabia’s binge of head-choppings – 47 in all, including the learned Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqr al-Nimr, followed by a Koranic justification for the executions – was worthy of Isis. Perhaps that was the point.

Saudi Arabia’s binge of head-choppings – 47 in all, including the learned Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqr al-Nimr, followed by a Koranic justification for the executions – was worthy of Isis. Perhaps that was the point. For this extraordinary bloodbath in the land of the Sunni Muslim al-Saud monarchy – clearly intended to infuriate the Iranians and the entire Shia world – re-sectarianised a religious conflict which Isis has itself done so much to promote.

All that was missing was the video of the decapitations – although the Kingdom’s 158 beheadings last year were perfectly in tune with the Wahabi teachings of the ‘Islamic State’. Macbeth’s ‘blood will have blood’ certainly applies to the Saudis, whose ‘war on terror’, it seems, now justifies any amount of blood, both Sunni and Shia. But how often do the angels of God the Most Merciful appear to the present Saudi interior minister, Crown Prince Mohamed bin Nayef?

For Sheikh Nimr was not just any old divine. He spent years as a scholar in Tehran and Syria, was a revered Shia leader of Friday prayers in the Saudi Eastern Province, and a man who stayed clear of political parties but demanded free elections, and was regularly detained and tortured – by his own account – for opposing the Sunni Wahabi Saudi government. Sheikh Nimr said that words were more powerful than violence. The authorities’ whimsical suggestion that there was nothing sectarian about this most recent bloodbath – on the grounds that they beheaded Sunnis as well as Shias – was classic Isis rhetoric.

After all, Isis cuts the heads of Sunni ‘apostates’ and Sunni Syrian and Iraqi soldiers just as readily as it slaughters Shias. Sheikh Nimr would have got precisely the same treatment from the thugs of the ‘Islamic State’ as he got from the Saudis...

#isis

Financial Conduct Authority will take no action against bank whose Swiss arm helped clients to evade tax

HSBC will not face formal action from the City regulator following revelations that the Swiss arm of Britain’s biggest bank helped clients to evade tax.

HSBC was engulfed in scandal a year ago when leaked bank account details showed how the bank’s Swiss unit helped wealthy customers to dodge taxes by concealing assets and handing out bundles of cash to avoid the authorities.

At the time, the Financial Conduct Authority said it was looking at the working practices inside the bank after admitting it had learned about the details of the activities in the Swiss bank from the reports in the Guardian and other publications. However, the FCA has now concluded that review and will not take formal action against HSBC.

#hsbc #tax avoidance #financial conduct authority #banking #business

PRINCE Charles is facing an animal welfare backlash as members of the royal hunt are filmed shooting Cadbury dairy calves.

Shocking undercover footage by animal rights campaigners shows a male calf just days old being shot in the head as it stands on a pile of rotting corpses.

The confectionery giant, which uses the Bristol farm to provide milk for 250 million bars of chocolate every year, hired the Prince’s Beaufort Hunt to shoot the calves because they are unable to give birth or provide milk.

Viva! campaigner Justin Kerswell said: “We’d hope that Prince Charles will be horrified that calves are being ripped from their mothers at just a few days old, shot in the head and then fed to the hounds. The trade in dead baby animals is fuelling the royals’ favourite hunt.”

The bodies are considered a useless by-product by the industry, to be dealt with by the Beaufort Hunt, with which Princes William and Harry have also ridden.

Viva! campaigner Kat Affleck said: “Cadbury appears to be suggesting that the heart-breaking scenes we filmed of a little, uncomprehending calf being made to stand on the dead bodies of other calves before being shot in the head was just a one-off.

“How can they explain the fact that Viva! filmed on at least four other dairy farms that supply Cadbury with milk and also shoot these animals?

“One hundred thousand shots ring out on British dairy farms every year because of unwanted males. The simple truth is that there’s a calf and a half of suffering in every bar of milk chocolate.”

British Hen Welfare Trust has organised a hen rehoming event in Allesley next month

Cluck up the courage to give a hen a home is the plea from an animal charity ahead of an ex-battery hen rehoming event.

The British Hen Welfare Trust is organising another hen rehoming event in Coventry on Saturday, January 9.

Hundreds of former commercial egg-laying hens will be brought from battery farms to a location in Allesley to be handed to new owners.

The hens available for rehoming are all about 18 months old. At that age they can no longer be guaranteed to lay eggs every day.

People rehoming hens are asked to make a donation for each one they adopt. Most people donate £4 to £5 which helps to cover the charity’s rehoming costs.

The charity will reveal the exact location of the event when you ring up to register. The number to ring is 01884 860084. The e-mail address is [email protected].

#allesley

Yesterday squatters occupied a former Royal Mint building in Tower Hill in protest against homelessness, empty buildings and the ongoing criminalisation of squatting.

The building on Royal Mint Court was converted into offices in 1980, when the Royal Mint completed its move to Llantrisant in Wales. At its height, the building symbolised the monetary power of the City of London and, as its occupiers point out, has become to represent the vast inequality it once had a part in producing.

The autonomous group of squatters come from different backgrounds and past projects but definitely agree on one thing: that stopping homelessness means abolishing the capitalist system. By occupying, they want to communicate the contradiction between the Royal Mint and what it represents and the lives of ordinary people. Wealth is wealth because it excludes the majority of us.

Despite housing many homeless people during this “crisis”, squatting contradicts the nonsense of private property and has therefore suffered continuous attempts to legislate it away – or stamp it out with force. From Tory Grant Shapps to the Labour council in Tower Hamlets, the state response is violent and quickening in pace. Security companies, such as Gallowglass, or such upmarket bailiffs as County Enforcement Group and Evict UK have become the default response from owners and local authorities alike.

Squatting is no solution to the “housing crisis” but reveals the myth of this crisis – that there are too few buildings for all of us – and shows its reality as purposeful class warfare. The Royal Mint squatters know this as well as anyone. Since the beginning of their occupation, private security guards have been employed to monitor and intimidate. Despite the repression, the building is secure and its new occupants are optimistic about its future. One thing is for sure: squatting has stayed despite what the politicians said in 2012 – and is still causing havoc for the wealthy elite.

A network of around 8,300 'Big Brother' spy cameras takes photos of about 30million number plates each day, with senior officers saying it is invaluable in preventing and solving crimes.

A police database that contains details of 22billion vehicle journeys is illegal, Britain's surveillance tsar has warned.

A network of around 8,300 'Big Brother' spy cameras takes photos of about 30million number plates each day, with senior officers claiming it is invaluable in preventing and solving serious crimes and terrorist attacks.

Tony Porter, the independent surveillance camera commissioner, has questioned the database's legality.

In his report, Mr Porter said: 'There is no statutory authority for the creation of the national ANPR database, its creation was never agreed by Parliament, and no report on its operation has even been laid before Parliament.

'I have referred these concerns over the legality of ANPR to the Home Office. The Government may wish to consider the statutory framework on which ANPR is based.'

Each time a vehicle passes an ANPR camera it takes a picture of the number plate and the front of the car, including the driver's face.

Privacy campaigners have long argued that the system, which allows officers to access the mountains of data for up to two years, is intrusive.

Mr Porter's warning is troubling because police want to extend retention of details to seven years and DVLA officials could be permitted access to track down road tax cheats – increasing the risk of data being abused

While there is almost no chance of the system being shut down, it raises the prospect of motorists – including criminals – taking legal action against the authorities for breaches of privacy.

Daniel Nesbitt, research director of pressure group Big Brother Watch, said: 'If there is to be any confidence in this system the questions about its legality need to be resolved as a matter of urgency.

'It's now virtually impossible for motorists to travel without having their details stored, regardless of whether or not they are doing anything wrong.

'As this report shows, a proper debate about how this technology is used and to what extent it invades the privacy of ordinary motorists is long overdue.’

Bella Sankey, director of policy at Liberty, the civil liberties pressure group, added: 'The slow creep of ANPR use, without public or parliamentary consent, undermines the bedrock principle of policing by consent – how can we consent when we haven't been consulted?'

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Saudi King Abdullah briefly discussed global oil supplies during a meeting on the crisis in Iraq on Friday, a senior State Department official said.

During the talks, Kerry referred to recent comments by a Saudi oil official that the world's largest oil producer would increase supplies should crises in Iraq or Syria disrupt supplies, the official said.

Note: Supply and demand economics tell us that if you increase the supply of something it’s value will go reduce: If you own a rare Pokemon card that’s worth over £1,000 and a box is discovered containing 100 of the same card, the card is less ‘rare’ and its’ value is lowered. The same principle has been applied to oil by Saudi Arabia as foretold by this article well over a year ago. - Max

Crisis-hit Venezuela to press for change in policy, reports Andrew Critchlow

Lower oil prices have crippled Venezuela’s economy, where a 22pc spike in food price inflation in August has meant the country is even struggling to feed itself.

The oil price war, which Al-Naimi effectively started, has also put the kingdom’s finances under severe strain at a time when it is fighting a full scale war in Yemen and funding moderate opposition groups fighting Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria.

Oil is arguably Saudi Arabia’s best weapon against both Russia and Iran. Although the kingdom’s finances are under severe strain from the collapse in export revenues it can still fall back on its $655bn (£423bn) of foreign assets while Russia and Iran will feel the impact of another year of weak oil prices more acutely.

#finance headlines

Russia blames Saudi Arabia for destabilizing global oil market by pumping more crude.

Russia has blamed Saudi Arabia for destabilizing global oil market by pumping more crude and driving the prices to record lows.

"Saudi Arabia has this year increased production by 1.5 million barrels per day, thus effectively destabilizing the situation on the market," Russia’s Energy Minister Alexander Novak told Rossiya 24 TV channel on Monday.

Saudi Arabia has been widely criticized for the plummeting oil prices as it has adamantly refused to cut its crude output in a bid to drive other oil market players, including US shale producers, out of the market.

The kingdom’s public revenues for 2015 have been the lowest since 2009, when oil prices took a nosedive as a result of the global financial crisis.

In addition, Riyadh has been under tremendous financial pressure due to its military intervention in Yemen since March. More than 7,500 Yemenis have been killed and over 14,000 others injured in the Saudi aggression against the impoverished country.

A human rights monitor was chased and attacked by settlers in Palestine while working to achieve peace.

Hannah Griffiths, from Yelvertoft, has been hit, kicked and threatened while working with a team of international human rights defenders, who are there to monitor and report human rights violations against vulnerable communities in Hebron, Palestine.

The team also ensure safe access to education for children.

Hannah, who works with the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), was chased down Shuhada Street – a street in the city centre of Hebron controlled by the Israeli authorities. She was hit and kicked by a female settler.

Hannah said: “The situation has got so much worse in the last few months. We are being targeted but it is worse for local Palestinians who tell us that they are scared. Teachers are scared to go to work, and children are scared to go to school.”

A new report says the majority of people tased by British police are mentally ill.

A new report indicates that over two-thirds of people tasered by British police between 2010 and 2014 were mentally ill.

Police use of the stun guns increased over the period from 6,238 incidents in 2010 to 9,196 last year, and there has been a corresponding rise in the number of incidents involving mentally ill people, from 2,737 in 2010 to 4,200 in 2014, the Independent reported citing Home Office figures.

The latest statistics were released in response to a Freedom of Information request made by the website The Justice Gap. It revealed that in 67 percent of cases in which tasers were discharged, they were fired at people identified by officers as mentally ill.

When cases in which the weapons were drawn, aimed but not fired were included in the data, mentally ill people were the target in only 45 percent of incidents.

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