If you missed it, Channel 4 News ran an exclusive last night that seems to put Metropolitan Police accounts of the circumstances of Gareth Williams’s death at odds with those emerging in anonymous briefings from Vauxhall Cross. Channel 4 News’s website has this to say:
The police who found the corpse of MI6 employee Gareth Williams described his death as a “neat job”, suggesting professionals may have been involved rather than the more lurid speculation that his death was linked to a sex game, Channel 4 News learns.
The evidence obtained by Channel 4 News from the day the MI6 employee was found dead in his central London flat suggests that reports that he was secretly gay or owed bondage equipment are untrue. The evidence also suggests his mobile phone sim cards were not arranged in a “ritualistic” way and there were no numbers for male escort agencies on them.
This, Channel 4 News understands, is what the police know about the death of the MI6 code breaker, contrary to the speculation which has been in other reports which is apparently based on MI6 briefings.
From the FT this morning, the following newsflash:
It is unfortunate for private equity boss Lyndon Lea that colourful details of his summer party leaked just as his Lion Capital buy-out firm is hitting the road to raise €2bn ($2.5bn) from strait-laced institutional investors.
Potential pension fund backers might have been surprised to read about the party at his Californian beach house last weekend, involving scantily clad Cirque de Soleil dancers and sushi served on the bodies of near-naked women.
One of the 200 guests was quoted in The New York Post as saying the evening’s entertainment featured a woman wearing tassels “sitting in a Victorian claw-foot bathtub with a muscular hunk, clad only in a thong, pouring milk over her”.
I’ve been looking into a curriculum subject introduced by New Labour in 2003, called Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL). It began as a voluntary primary school subject, and in 2007 was also made a voluntary secondary school subject. Over 90% of primary schools and over 60% of secondary schools now teach it.
SEAL teaches five emotional competencies: self-awareness, managing feelings, motivation, empathy and social skills. It’s the biggest example of the new ‘politics of wellbeing’, and of the new confidence governments have in managing their citizens’ emotional development.
What I’ve discovered, to my surprise, is that this new national subject was almost entirely based on one book – Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence (EI).
Goleman, then a journalist at the New York Times, wrote EI in 1996. The book was a huge hit and spent a year and a half in the New York Times best-seller list. It captured the 1990s fascination with the emotions, the role they play, and how we can manage them.
Cut to Southampton, in 1997, and Peter Sharp, the local authority’s chief educational psychologist, read EI and was so “inspired” by it that he and Southampton’s chief schools inspector decided that “emotional literacy should be an equal priority with literacy and numeracy for all children in Southampton”. The book must have made quite an impression. (more…)
Sounds like the US is playing hardball at the IMF. The Economist’s Free Exchangeblog takes up the tale:
When the IMF was formed, it was agreed that its executive board, which is its main decision-making body, would have 20 seats. Later, this was expanded to 24, but the expansion is technically an ad-hoc change which has to be reconfirmed by voting every couple of years. So far, it has always been renewed. But earlier this month, America simply did not vote on this year’s renewal, and because America has an effective veto (it has 16.74% of the votes in an institution that requires a super-majority of 85%), the renewal is hanging fire.
And no, the Treasury says, it wasn’t a mistake. So what gives? Well, if the US doesn’t renew the arrangement, then 24 seats have to go back down to 20. It’s time to play… international monetary musical chairs!
All this raises two intriguing questions. First, of course: who’ll be standing up when the music stops? Here’s a clue: Europe holds 9 of the current 24 seats. So, the Economist speculates, the likeliest outcome is that some of them will be merged: “for instance, there could be three euro area seats and two non-euro area seats (at the moment, there are 6 euro area countries with seats on the board, and 3 non-euro area Europeans (Britain, Denmark and Switzerland)”. So the likeliest losers? “Belgium, the Netherlands and their ilk”, who will be “furious” about being represented by (say) Germany what with the Euro crisis and all.
And question number two: what’s the US up to? Here’s a clue:
America also gains subtly by taking the side of emerging economies. They might be less likely, for example, to make a big fuss about America’s effective veto at the fund. This is something some have been highlighting as a rule that needs to change—but perhaps now that America is using its veto to make emerging countries’ case, they might prefer to pipe down about what a terrible thing it is. Which would probably suit America just fine.
So, to sum up: the real action is happening between the US and the emerging economies while the hapless EU founders around outside the room, looking lame. It’s Copenhagen 2.0!
I’ve been looking into a curriculum subject introduced by New Labour in 2003, called Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL). It began as a voluntary primary school subject, and in 2007 was also made a voluntary secondary school subject. Over 90% of primary schools and over 60% of secondary schools now teach it.