David Cameron today dramatically shifts the terms of the debate over Britishness by demanding a new language of cohesiveness on the controversial issues of faith, race and nationhood.

In a ground-breaking article in today's Observer, the Tory leader lambasts the government for its aggressive approach, arguing: 'It's no use behaving like the proverbial English tourist abroad, shouting ever more loudly at the hapless foreigner who doesn't understand what is being said. We can't bully people into feeling British - we have to inspire them.

Kosovo is to declare independence in the next few months, with the tacit support of the EU and Nato, in an effort to resolve the eight-year impasse on the status of the province at the heart of the 1999 war between Nato and Belgrade.

Senior western diplomats say the province will make its move and be recognised as independent by European Union and Nato countries once a United Nations resolution about its future - expected to stop short of granting independence - is agreed.

"It's for a state to determine whether it's a state and for others to recognise it or not, and that's what's going to happen," said a western diplomat. He added that although the EU would recognise Kosovo as independent, Serbia would not.

Vitoria. (Vasco Press).- El Gobierno Vasco ha hecho pública hoy una declaración institucional en la que muestra su "honda preocupación" por "el impacto y la convulsión" que algunas decisiones judiciales tienen en la vida política y social de Euskadi y en la que critica que la Ley de Partidos "ha propiciado una nueva forma de interpretar y aplicar las leyes", hasta "poner bajo sospecha" al propio lehendakari.

En el documento, leído hoy en Lehendakaritza en castellano por el consejero de Justicia, Joseba Azkarraga, y en euskera por la portavoz Miren Azkarate, el Ejecutivo de Ibarretxe precisa que su crítica no compromete al conjunto de los profesionales de Justicia, a los que reconoce su "anónima pero eficaz labor" y dice que "ha defendido, defiende y defenderá siempre" a la Administración de Justicia como "poder necesario e imprescindible".

Advierte sin embargo, de que hay "una minoría de asuntos muy significativos" que suponen que la vida política y social vasca "viva una convulsión permanente y sostenida como consecuencia de determinadas decisiones judiciales, que afectan a pilares básicos de la de la división de poderes" o "limitan de forma drástica espacios legítimos de libertad de cualquier sociedad civilizada y democrática".

SCOTLAND is on the brink of a power crisis after an accident at one of the country's biggest electricity plants massively reduced supplies to the national grid.

Emergency legislation will be rushed through the Scottish Parliament early this week to allow Longannet power station, Fife, to burn gas as well as coal in a bid to stave off potential blackouts.....

Government sources said that only good fortune had prevented a major power crisis over the past week. They said colder conditions would almost certainly have led to 'rota cuts' where parts of the country would have had their power supply switched off at times of low demand.

And they added the problem had been exacerbated because Scotland usually exports energy to England. The set-up of the system makes it difficult to reverse the flow of energy.  

If it gets cold, this particular wrinkle is certain to inflame the Scots Nats.

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

A GROWING sense of English national identity has led to a significant decline in feelings of Britishness over the past decade, a report published today reveals.

Since 1996 - the year in which the Union flag was supplanted by the flag of St George during the European football championships - the proportion of the public who say they are British has fallen from 52 per cent to 44 per cent.

The authoritative British Social Attitudes Survey says that the decline can be explained mainly by changes in attitude south of the Border.

Since the Sunday Herald was founded in 1999, it has led the way in exposing the "dirty war" in Northern Ireland. Today, we report on the most shocking revelations to date. Our investigations show that far from merely "turning" terrorists to work for the state, British military intelligency actually created loyalist murder gangs to operate as proxy assassins. They even cleared areas in which the gangs were operating of police and army, to allow them to carry out their hits and escape.

ON MONDAY, the world was stunned by the release of a report by Nuala O'Loan, the police ombudsman for Northern Ireland, which stated that Special Branch officers in Belfast had "colluded" with loyalist terrorists working for the British state as informers. According to O'Loan, police failed to stop these paramilitary gangs, part of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) from killing an estimated 15 people in the 1990s. While this was seized upon by republicans as proof that security forces had aided a loyalist campaign of sectarian assassination, in reality O'Loan's findings barely scratched the surface of a 30-year history of criminality and murder orchestrated by the British army and the Ulster police.

HE INSISTS on being named only as "JB", a sick, ageing man, who fears that ill-health or a bullet from an assassin wishing to silence him will claim his life before he has the chance to tell the true story of his life and crimes. On Wednesday, JB passed a bundle of papers to the Sunday Herald, making up the bulk of his unpublished memoirs, which paint British military intelligence as a callous, murderous, criminal cabal. JB claims that he - and dozens of other members of the terrorist organisation, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) - were trained and armed by military intelligence.

It's GAL, but for the fact it's in Britain.  State terrorism, and definitely not the way in which to fight an insurgency.  And this released on the day that Sinn Fein is set to vote on recognizing the Nothern Irish police as a legitimate authority.

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

Big Brother en poste à Bruxelles
LE MONDE | 27.01.07 | 14h59
BRUXELLES BUREAU EUROPÉEN

C'est par le plus grand des hasards que la communauté des quelque 1 200 journalistes en poste à Bruxelles s'est aperçue qu'elle était victime de Big Brother. Le 15 janvier, une étudiante française travaillant sur les lobbies demande à la correspondante parlementaire du Monde de lui transmettre les réponses qu'elle aurait obtenues du secrétaire général, Julian Priestley, sur ce sujet, en novembre 2006. Comment sait-elle que Le Monde a enquêté sur les lobbies ? "Parce que j'ai trouvé l'un de vos e-mails sur le site Internet du Parlement !", répond l'étudiante en sciences politiques.

Le cabinet de M. Priestley confirme que toutes les lettres adressées au président du Parlement et au secrétaire général, ainsi que leurs réponses, sont rendues publiques, en vertu d'un règlement de 2001 qui tente de "renforcer la transparence" des institutions européennes.[...]

All correspondance to europarl president (and answers) is made public, which is a good thing. However journalists do not want their letters to be published because it could show other "competing" journalists what "scoop" they're working on...

Anyway, after 15 minutes of search, I could not locate the web site were the letters are, anyone knows?

WASHINGTON - Convinced this is their moment, tens of thousands marched Saturday in an anti-war demonstration linking military families, ordinary people and an icon of the Vietnam protest movement in a spirited call to get out of Iraq.

Celebrities, a half-dozen lawmakers and protesters from distant states rallied in the capital under a sunny sky, seizing an opportunity to press their cause with a Congress restive on the war and a country that has turned against the conflict.

Marching with them was Jane Fonda, in what she said was her first anti-war demonstration in 34 years.

"Silence is no longer an option," Fonda said to cheers from the stage on the National Mall. The actress once derided as "Hanoi Jane" by conservatives for her stance on Vietnam said she had held back from activism so as not to be a distraction for the Iraq anti-war movement, but needed to speak out now.

The rally on the Mall unfolded peacefully, although about 300 protesters tried to rush the Capitol, running up the grassy lawn to the front of the building. Police on motorcycles tried to stop them, scuffling with some and barricading entrances.

Ayn Rand is one of the most controversial writers in modern American literature, known for her tireless advocacy of the right to selfishness and her hatred of big government. She has been derided and loved in equal measure and her books have sold millions of copies, attracting followers as diverse as banker Alan Greenspan, President Ronald Reagan and architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

Her most famous book, Atlas Shrugged, has long been a target of Hollywood producers and attracted such big names as Faye Dunaway, Raquel Welch and Sharon Stone. But each project collapsed in the face of turning a 1,200-page philosophical novel into a watchable movie.

Now that is to change. The latest attempt to film Atlas Shrugged is set to star Angelina Jolie in the role of Rand's railroad heiress heroine Dagny Taggart. Unlike past efforts, this one seems likely to succeed. A two-hour screenplay is almost complete and filming is to start this year with release in 2008. It is being written by Randall Wallace, who wrote the Mel Gibson epic Braveheart, and is backed by Lion's Gate Entertainment.

I used to like Angelina Jolie.  

Now not so much.

Ayn Rand is evil, and the world is a better place because she's no longer in it.

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

Japan's health minister has referred to women as "birth-giving machines" in a speech to a local political meeting.

Hakuo Yanagisawa called for women to do their best to bear children in order to counter Japan's plummeting birth rate and rapidly ageing population.

"Because the number of birth-giving machines and devices is fixed, all we can ask for is for them to do their best per head," he said.

He added: "Although it may not be so appropriate to call them machines."

YOKOHAMA, Japan (Reuters) - Once a haven for Japan's earliest jazz fans, cafe Chigusa is packing up its thousands of vinyl records and ending the final chapter of its 73-year history as music lovers switch on their iPods for a taste of Miles Davis.

Chigusa is among the oldest and the most cherished of Japan's jazz coffee shops that enjoyed a glorious epoch in the 1960s and early 70s, when students and musicians gathered to listen to imported albums that were otherwise beyond their means.

"Filled with sound, smoke, and hundreds of records, jazz coffeehouses used to be a space for young people who came looking for a proper understanding of the music," said Michael Molasky, author of "The Jazz Culture of Postwar Japan" and professor of Asian languages and literature at the University of Minnesota.

"These days, kids don't listen to jazz, and they walk down the street with iPods, which makes the whole idea of 'place' irrelevant," he said.

I'm off to sleep.

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg