The Taxpayers' Alliance, a campaign group that calls for tax and spending cuts and claims to represent the interests of taxpayers, has admitted one of its directors does not pay British tax.

The Guardian has learned that Alexander Heath, a director of the increasingly influential free market, rightwing lobby group, lives in a farmhouse in the Loire and has not paid British tax for years.

The admission, made by Matthew Elliott, the TPA's chief executive and founder, is potentially embarrassing for the Conservative party, which has close links to the group that claims to be "the guardian of taxpayers' money, the voice of taxpayers in the media and their representative at Westminster".

Six-and-a-half years after he sent British forces into battle in Iraq, Tony Blair today came face to face with the uncomfortable consequences of his decision when the father of one of the 178 military personnel who died in the conflict refused to shake his hand, denouncing him as a "war criminal".

Peter Brierley, whose son Lance Corporal Shaun Brierley died in a road accident while on service in Iraq barely a week after the invasion in March 2003, publicly snubbed the former prime minister at a reception that followed a service commemorating those who served in the conflict. As Blair proffered his hand, Brierley told him: "I'm not shaking your hand, you've got blood on it."

Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London, has accused his successor, Boris Johnson, of trying to "pay off" the former editor of the Evening Standard with a top arts job in the capital in return for its coverage in last year's mayoral election.

This week it emerged that the culture secretary, Ben Bradshaw, had vetoed Johnson's recommendation to install Veronica Wadley as Arts Council for London chair. But the mayor has refused to recommend another candidate for approval, signalling that he is prepared to leave the post open until after the general election, when he hopes a Conservative government would allow Wadley's appointment.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski signed the European Union's reform treaty into law today, leaving the Czech Republic as the only country still to ratify the document.

Kaczynski, a eurosceptical conservative, signed the Lisbon Treaty at a ceremony in the presidential palace attended by the heads of the European Commission and the European Parliament.

Nicolas Sarkozy's presidency - and especially his relationship with his conservative followers and voters - has been seriously undermined by the "sexual tourism" scandal which has engulfed his Culture Minister, according to centre-right politicians.

Parliamentarians in the President's own party suggest that the "Frédéric Mitterrand affair" - whatever its rights and wrongs - has alienated the older, traditionalist voters who turned out for Mr Sarkozy in 2007 after he promised to roll back the influence of a "left-liberal, post-1968", cultural elite.

Some centre-right parliamentarians blame the scandal on what they call the "bo-bo [bourgeois bohemian] values" brought to the Elysée Palace by the President's wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.

Days after Italy's highest court stripped him of legal immunity, Silvio Berlusconi's allegedly corrupt business dealings were again under the spotlight yesterday as David Mills, the estranged husband of British Olympics minister Tessa Jowell, appealed against his conviction for taking a bribe.

Mills, sentenced to four-and-a-half years' jail in February for taking $600,000 (£378,000) to lie under oath about overseas slush funds for the mogul's TV empire, reminded Italy that if he was guilty then so too was the Prime Minister. In the original indictment, Mr Berlusconi was accused of being the giver of the bribe - but after the passing last year of a law granting him immunity, all reference to him was removed from the case. This put Mills in the strange position of allegedly taking a bribe from an unknown source.

Now that the law has been struck down as unconstitutional, however, Mr Berlusconi could find himself in the dock at a re-trial, a fact Mills alluded to yesterday on Italian television.

Zurich has approved the display of a controversial anti-Islamic poster showing a menacing looking woman in a burqa, next to minarets that closely resemble missiles standing on the Swiss flag.

The posters are part of a far right party's campaign ahead of a national referendum in late November on whether to ban mosques from having minarets. They have been given the go-ahead by Zurich city council, which argues that they are a necessary component of free speech.

A nuclear physicist working on the "large collider" experiment to simulate the Big Bang has been arrested in France on suspicion of advising al-Qa'ida on possible terrorist targets.

The 32-year-old French scientist, of Algerian origin, is being held with his younger brother after being trailed, and bugged, by French anti-terrorist police for more than a year.

A judicial source told the newspaper Le Figaro: "This is very high level." The French Interior Minister, Brice Hortefeux, said that the investigation "may perhaps show that we have prevented the worst".

The scientist - who was not immediately named - was arrested alongside his brother near Lyons on Thursday on suspicion of having contacts with al-Qa'ida in the Islamic Maghreb, or Aqim. He was said to have been suspected of giving advice on possible nuclear targets within France.

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has faced questions in recent weeks over his health and eyesight, has two minor tears in his retina but will not require further surgery, his office said on Saturday.

There has been media speculation, dismissed by Brown, that health problems could force him to step down before a general election he must call by next June. The Conservatives are ahead in opinion polls.

"This summer Mr Brown had his annual eye check up which was fine. Later he had his retina checked. After examinations surgeons found that the retina had two minor tears," his office said in a statement.

"However as there has been no further deterioration, and no change in his eyesight, they decided against further operations. Yesterday Mr Brown visited Moorfields Hospital (in London) as part of regular checks on his eyes and this check was also fine," it added.

Conservative leader David Cameron's suggestion that the Bank of England end its asset purchases soon was criticized by two former central bank officials, a setback to the opposition's effort to build credibility on the economy.

David Blanchflower, who left the bank's Monetary Policy Committee in May, said Cameron's speech yesterday was "bizarre" and if put into practice may tip the U.K. into a "depression." Shamik Dhar, a former Bank of England economist, said "at best this is wrong and at worst downright dangerous."

Bundeskanzler Werner Faymann (SPÖ) hat sich heute klar gegen die Berufung des früheren britischen Premierministers Tony Blair zum EU-Ratspräsidenten ausgesprochen. Er begründete das mit Blairs engem politischen Verhältnis zum früheren US-Präsidenten George W. Bush.

Der Kandidat für diesen Posten solle die Sozialdemokratie widerspiegeln, sagte Faymann heute beim Parteitag der Salzburger SPÖ in Zell am See, aber: "Wir brauchen einen Kandidaten, der nicht für Bush ist, sondern für Obama."

ZURICH (Reuters) - Turkey and Armenia signed a landmark peace accord on Saturday to restore ties and open their shared border after a century of hostility stemming from the World War One mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman forces.

But in an indication of the many pitfalls that lie ahead of its implementation, the ceremony was marred by a three-hour delay due to last-minute disagreements on statements, forcing U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to engage in intense discussions to salvage a deal.

Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and his Armenian counterpart Edward Nalbandian signed the Swiss-mediated deal in Zurich at a ceremony also attended by European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and France's Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.

A fierce debate is underway in Britain about whether Tony Blair is the right man to be the European Union's first full-time president, as well as what the job should entail.

Blair, who led Britain into the Iraq war, is still a controversial figure for some but his supporters argue that he is one of the few people with the stature necessary for the job.

"Opinions are divided (over) whether it should be a little man or a grand man," said Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform think-tank.

"Europe has to decide to think big or act small," said Britain's former Europe minister, Denis MacShane, while the Economist summed it up: "The choice is, (between) the usual Europygmies, or Tony Blair."

George Osborne's reputation as a would-be Tory chancellor was unravelling tonight after his claim that he would save £13bn by raising the state pension age was challenged by the respected thinktank that provided the basis for his figures.

The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) said the shadow chancellor's proposed saving, outlined at the Conservative party conference this week, would take five years longer than estimated and fall £3bn short.

NIESR said Osborne's team had made a mistake in their calculations, misreading a paper written by the thinktank earlier this year. Osborne's aides originally based their calculations on a NIESR document in the House of Commons library. After his speech the thinktank sought clarification of his assumptions. It has recalculated the figures and will present them at a conference on Monday.

US Outlook: Richard Fisher, head of the Federal Reserve's Dallas branch, calls the foreign exchange market a "manic depressive mechanism," and we just closed a particularly manic week. To listen to the hubbub from the trading desks, you would think we have passed into a new world economic order, with the dollar consigned to history as the dominant reserve currency. To all this, I just want to say: not so fast.

The inexorable rise of the Chinese economy, and the near-collapse of the US financial system last year, have absolutely altered the balance of power in economic affairs. There is no doubt that we are feeling our way in new territory, but what has struck me most this week has been the mountain of practical problems that switching from a dollar reserve system entails. The intellectual framework is not in place, the institutional framework is woefully compromised, there are too many economic interests ranged in favour of the status quo, and the Chinese renminbi is - quite frankly - an implausible alternative to the dollar.

For a start, the dollar is not collapsing. The dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies, is down 11.9 per cent since that old tax-and-spender Barack Obama came to power (as one anti-Obama paper pointed out yesterday), but the index is just back to the level of the end of 2007.

Lord Mandelson and officials at the Department of Business will spend the weekend in last-ditch talks aimed at protecting British workers as the US car giant General Motors closes in on a deal to sell its European division, including Vauxhall, to a consortium led by the Canadian auto parts maker Magna International.

The Government insisted last night that, despite concerns that Magna's purchase of GM Europe would see a disproportionate number of UK workers lose their jobs compared to their counterparts in the GM's German operation Opel, talks were continuing and it was not too late to secure a deal.

At stake are 6,000 jobs at GM Europe's Vauxhall plants in Ellesmere Port and Luton, with Magna already having warned that staff cutbacks will be inevitable across the operation.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and their Free Democrat allies have shelved plans to lift family spending due to budget constraints but will lower some tax rates to boost growth, a magazine reported on Saturday.

Focus magazine reported that leaders in the two parties that are in talks to form a new centre-right government after winning last month's election decided to put off proposed increases in monthly child support and tax breaks for families with children.

Georg Fahrenschon, Bavaria's state finance minister, told Focus the new government would have to reduce spending by 30 billion euros over the next four years. It wants to reform corporate taxes that are worsening the economic crisis.

MUMBAI (Reuters) - India is set to become a global leader in technology services as software companies move up in the value chain, while the weak dollar has hurt the U.S. economic recovery, the Chairman and CEO of business publisher Forbes said on Saturday.

"You have to make the distinction between pumping in money in immediate emergency response to the near collapse of the financial system and when the immediate crisis is over," Steve Forbes, 62, told Reuters, when asked what he made of the U.S. government's response to the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression.

"This year I think the U.S. government has made a number of mistakes that has slowed the recovery. They've not reduced taxes ... in terms of the dollar, they have not stabilized the dollar. They've weakened the dollar which hurts business investments, hurts the flow of capital and small businesses," he said.

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Saturday the economy will grow more quickly than expected next year, rejecting Conservative suggestions that tough choices and years of hardship were needed to kick-start growth.

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Brown forecast strong economic growth over the next 12 months.

Branding the Conservatives "pessimists," he said it is "simply not true" that tough years lie ahead.

Brown also argued that big public spending cuts outlined at the Conservative Party conference earlier this week would only prolong the deep recession.

"If you have a growth policy for Britain, get unemployment down, get the economy moving forward, then Britain can have upgrowth," he said in an interview with the paper.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will know within a month whether a $1.1 billion drop in revenue collections is part of a growing budget shortfall or an isolated event, his budget spokesman said.

Revenue in the three months ended Sept. 30 was 5.3 percent less than assumed in the $85 billion annual budget, state controller John Chiang reported yesterday. Income tax receipts led the gap, as unemployment reached 12.2 percent in August.

Barack Obama put himself squarely behind efforts to create a consumer financial protection agency on Friday, one of the most resisted elements of the regulatory reforms under way in the US Congress.

"It will have the ability to enforce and build on the credit card reforms we passed earlier this year, so that consumers aren't hit with unfair rate hikes and penalties, or hidden charges," the US president told an audience of politicians and people who had been hurt financially by fees and charges.

"It will require brokers to look out for the interests of families if they give advice about mortgages," Mr Obama said. "And it will ensure transparency and fair dealing for other financial products, like bank overdraft services and payday loans."

Hundreds of community banks and business organisations led by the US Chamber of Commerce are opposing legislation to bring in such an agency, arguing it would impose onerous rules and conflict with directives from other regulators.

The TV presenter accused of commissioning murders to boost the ratings of his daily crime show was in prison yesterday, remanded on murder and drug trafficking charges after he had turned himself in.

Police had spent four days in the Brazilian city of Manaus looking for Wallace Souza, 51, who went on the run on Monday after a warrant was issued on charges of drug trafficking, gang formation and weapons possession.

A new warrant was issued yesterday, for the 2007 killing of drug trafficker Cleomir Pereira Bernardino, though this was not one of the five killings under investigation which had appeared on Souza's Canal Livre crime show, say the authorities.

Souza is accused of renting the car in the Bernardino hit, according to the homicide arrest warrant signed by Judge Mirza Telma. The judge who had issued the earlier warrant, Mauro Antony, described Souza as "mentor" of a gang which killed rival drug traffickers.

A slightly sheepish President Barack Obama accepted the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize as a "call to action" to the whole world to confront the global challenges before it, ranging from climate change to the threat of nuclear proliferation. But he made no attempt to conceal his astonishment at being selected.

Mr Obama used a Rose Garden appearance yesterday partly to deflect the attention from himself with humour and humility. "This is not how I expected to wake up this morning," he said, noting that his daughters were as quick to inform him it was also Bo the dog's birthday. Children, he said, "keep things in perspective".

The pre-dawn news from Oslo seemed to affirm the strong message of tolerance and dialogue that Mr Obama has proffered since before he was elected, but also threatens to heighten the burden of expectations on him. He indeed warned that much of what he aspires for will not be achieved in his presidency - or even his lifetime.

Suspected militants dressed in army uniforms attacked Pakistan's army headquarters today, killing six guards and triggering a battle in which four gunmen were killed, military officials said.

The brazen attack on the tightly guarded headquarters in the city of Rawalpindi came as the army prepares a major offensive against Pakistani Taliban militants in their northwestern stronghold on the Afghan border.

LAGOS (Reuters) - As many as 70 people were feared dead after a fuel tanker and six commuter buses crashed in the southern Nigerian state of Anambra late on Friday, Nigerian newspapers said on Saturday.

The This Day newspaper quoted witnesses as saying the fuel tanker was attempting to cross large potholes on the Enugu-Onitsha highway when it toppled over, spilling fuel across the road.

A car crashed into the debris, causing an explosion which engulfed the buses and other vehicles, the newspaper said.

KHOST, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A roadside bomb killed two regional officials in a remote part of Afghanistan on Saturday, the latest insurgent attack on local government targets, a regional police chief said.

Afghanistan has seen a dramatic rise of violence this year as 100,000 Western troops, two-thirds of them American, battle to contain an increasingly fierce Taliban insurgency.

The latest attack occurred in the Shah Khil district of the southeastern Paktika province when a roadside bomb hit a car carrying two local officials.

"The district police chief and district governor were travelling in a vehicle when a roadside bomb killed both of them," Wali Khan Zadran, Paktika's police chief, told Reuters.

BEIJING (Reuters) - North Korea wants to ease a standoff with the United States, Japan and South Korea, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told East Asian neighbours at a summit focussed on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons and regional integration.

At the meeting on Saturday, China, Japan and South Korea vowed to seek an early restart of six-party talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons plans, and to push a long-term idea to create an "East Asian community," promoted by Japan's new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama.

Wen visited North Korea last Sunday to Tuesday and met top leader Kim Jong-il. Wen said Pyongyang wanted to ease strains, following sanctions and months of contention sparked by its second-ever nuclear test in May.

"North Korea does not only hope to improve relations with the United States, it also hopes to do so with South Korea and Japan," Wen told a news conference after the meeting in Beijing with Hatoyama and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.

GAZA (Reuters) - A Palestinian armed group accused the Gaza Strip's Hamas rulers on Saturday of preventing its men from firing rockets at Israel, a sensitive allegation for the Islamist faction as it pursues mediated deals with the Jewish state.

Hamas police intercepted Islamic Jihad rocket crews on three occasions over the past month, a group official said, foiling their bids to avenge Israeli fire on Gaza and to show solidarity with Palestinian protests over a contested Jerusalem shrine.

"We have been prevented from launching attacks," the Islamic Jihad official told Reuters, adding that Hamas had also scrapped a planned rally by the group and arrested two of its members in a dispute over control of a mosque in northern Gaza.

PARIS (Reuters) - The French military fired on pirates in the Indian Ocean on Saturday to protect two tuna fishing vessels, a spokesman for France's armed forces said.

The operation at dawn some 350 km (220 miles) from the Seychelles was the first time the French had repelled an attack since a plan was put in place in July for the military to protect boats in the region from Somali pirates.

French soldiers opened fire on two small launches that were trying to approach the vessels bearing the French ensign. No one was injured on the tuna ships, which are based at Concarneau, in southern Brittany, the spokesman said. "There were shots ... it lasted half an hour and at one point they turned around," the captain of one of the tuna vessels, Christophe Guyader, told France Bleu Breizh Izel radio.

Rupert Murdoch on Friday called for China to allow a more open media sector, saying Beijing needed to compete in a global "marketplace of ideas" just as it had opened up its industrial economy three decades ago.

The tycoon's call came as he joined scores of international media executives in paying homage to the country's Communist leaders at a conference organised by Xinhua, China's official news agency and one of its main propaganda tools.
...
After trying for years to establish a presence in China, often with his Chinese-born wife at his side as an adviser, Mr Murdoch in the past two years had all but given up on investing in the country's tightly controlled media sector.

Apart from being given limited landing rights in southern China for a satellite TV channel, Mr Murdoch's entreaties to China to be allowed to make or broadcast programmes in the country have been constantly rebuffed.

They [Republicans] understand that if somehow or other Barack Obama coud bring about world peace, they'd blaim him for destroying the defense industry.

He actually gave this speech the day before the Peace Prize was announced.

• The carbon footprint of the data centre industry equals that of the airline industry = it's nasty and growing.

• Iceland has virtually free renewable, non-carbon electricity and is surrounded by cooling water.

• Iceland is fricked financially so needs the work.

• Iceland is handily placed on a fibreoptic stepping stone between Europe and America.

• The data delay from Iceland to London is 17 milliseconds - not good enough for the financial industry, but good enough for 70% of data traffic.

Beyond all the negative headlines, what do we really know about Britain's teen boys? Simon Hattenstone takes a trip deep into boy world and finds that it's very different from what you might expect...

Nasa's hope of filming a spectacular crash on the moon was dashed satellite and telescope imagery failed to record the enormous plume of rock and dust that scientists had predicted.

The US space agency steered two parts of a spacecraft, called LCROSS, into the moon at more than 5,600 miles per hour, in the final act of a hunt for signs of water.

Nasa scientists had anticipated that the impact would throw up a six-mile-high cloud of lunar dust and rock which could be scanned for evidence of frozen water. But after the collision at 12.31pm today, no sign of the plume was spotted, even from the second stage, which crashed nearby four minutes later.

Nasa's headquarters in Washington DC had faced a flood of calls from people objecting to the agency "bombing" the moon, fearing disruption to tides on Earth and even their menstrual cycles.

Anthony Colaprete, principal investigator on the LCROSS mission, said of the missing plume: "We haven't been able to see it clearly in our data yet." He added that scientists were working "feverishly" on information sent back.

October 10 2009 is World Mental Health Day, during which millions of people around the world will work to raise awareness and much-needed funds for mental health causes. Andrew Smith, 28, is living with schizo-affected disorder. It was eventually diagnosed in his early twenties, after years of depression, hallucinations and an overdose. He tells guardianweekly.co.uk editor Mark King his story

Canadian space tourist and circus billionaire Guy Laliberte mixed star power, science lectures, music and poetry with water, hosting a TV/Internet show from the International Space Station.

People from around the world tuned in via TV and the Internet on Friday the Cirque du Soleil founder, brought his crusade to preserve the world's water resources down to Earth from his host's chair on the International Space Station.

Former US vice president Al Gore, U2 and Shakira were among the parade of entertainers and activists that participated back on Earth with acts performed in 14 cities on five continents.

The show was aimed at raising awareness for Laliberte's One Drop Foundation, which seeks to draw attention to the growing shortage of clean water.

Scientists say they have made a dramatic breakthrough in understanding the cause of chronic fatigue syndrome - a debilitating condition affecting 250,000 people in Britain which for decades has defied a rational medical explanation.

The researchers have discovered a strong link between chronic fatigue syndrome, which is sometimes known as ME or myalgic encephalomyelitis, and an obscure retrovirus related to a group of viruses found to infect mice.

LONDON (Reuters) - Police have arrested 30 people during clashes between a far-right group and opponents in the centre of Manchester on Saturday.

Supporters of the English Defence League, a new group which stages street protests against what it terms "radical Islam," clashed with anti-racism campaigners.

Police said around 2,000 rival protesters had congregated in the Piccadilly Gardens area of the city. The two groups were being kept apart by a line of police in riot helmets, a Reuters photographer at the scene said.

Most of those arrested have been held on suspicion of public order offences, police said.

"The presence of so many protesters in the city has proved a challenge and while many have turned out to protest peacefully the police reaction has been necessary in order to prevent the few hell-bent on violent confrontation," Assistant Chief Constable Garry Shewan said in a statement.

They aren't mainstream but they are nasty and making themselves known more and more lately.  The Welsh Defence League were due to hold a rally in Newport soon but the unions are concerned about being there even at a distance, giving out leaflets elsewhere in the area, because they know that they'll be sought out and fights will start.

Ad astra per aspera

The fact that the Daily Mail online is the first link I can seem to find a story on it says it all about the show really but still:

X Factor: Cheryl Cole's fury at Simon Cowell's stripper insult... while Dannii Minogue's bisexual jibe nearly costs her job | Mail Online

X Factor: Dannii Minogue's bisexual jibe nearly costs her job - while Simon Cowell's stripper insult angers Cheryl Cole

It was meant to be the first chance for the X Factor finalists to show the public what they're made of.

Instead it was the judges who stole the show in an evening rocked by dramatic rows on the panel.

Dannii Minogue turned Simon Cowell incandescent by making a jibe about the sexuality of his favourite act,

It is not cool to put someone on the spot on live tv in front of a huge audience and try to force them to out themselves.

Facebook has exploded with people complaining about it and links to ofcom's complaints page are prompting plenty of complaints.

Well, there's social networking in action... I always do find it interesting to see how shows like x factor  inspire people to vote, to discuss issues, to get up and do something like lodging an official complaint.  Yet we can't get these same people engaged in politics.

Ad astra per aspera

I'm sure we've discussed the horrible gender stereotyping in Toys R Us stores in the past on The F Word, and I was actually in there at the weekend, trying to contain my rage as I walked past pink `Girlz' aisles full of baby dolls, princess toys and house keeping equipment and blue aisles full of action toys, dinosaurs, cars and the stuff I generally found fun as a child. So I was delighted to come across this article about a group of 13-year-old Swedish schoolchildren who lodged a complaint against Toys R Us based on the stereotyping in their 2008 Christmas catalogue:

<snip>

Thumbing through the catalogue, 13-year-old Hannes Psajd explained that he and his twin sister had always shared the same toys and that he was concerned about the message sent by the Toys"R"Us publication.

"Small girls in princess stuff...and here are boys dressed as super heroes. It's obvious that you get affected by this," he told the newspaper.

"When I see that only girls play with certain things then, as a guy, I don't want it."

Classmate Moa Averin emphasized the importance of children being able to be who they want even if "guys want to be princesses sometimes".

Senior male workers at the computer company Dell are being mentored by female colleagues in a pioneering move aimed at highlighting the problems women face in the workplace and helping them get into the top jobs.

Women in middle-management roles have been mentoring some of the company's most senior men to give them an insight into female perceptions of the world of work and the daily challenges women face, such as childcare arrangements.

"Women get to a certain point in their careers when they have to juggle both home and work life and there's a lot of extra pressure on them," said a spokesperson at Dell.

Ingrid Devin, Dell's diversity manager for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, said: "The feedback from the men was great. They realised that they have a lot to learn about the challenges that women face in the workplace, especially learning how to do the 'right thing'."

In major city after city across the United States a trained corps of quasi-security agents are being hired and trained by business to function outside the official law enforcement aegis to drive homeless people away from "business districts."

The parent corporation, SMS Holdings, has subsidiary units in several different service sectors, including maintenance and security. The company has been wooing and partnering with groups of local businesses banded together as "Business Improvement Districts" (BIDs) to install private-sector, uniformed teams to patrol these city areas and, in part, seek to target homeless populations with efforts designed to control and even remove homeless citizens. These "services" include preventing "panhandling" and "loitering."