Robin Hood Tax and the British Bankers’ Association
March 15th, 2010 by Robin Hood
Posted in: Action reports, Campaign updates, In the news and on the web, Latest, Top stories
Many supporters have asked what do the bankers think of the Robin Hood tax? On Sunday, Graham Allen, MP for Nottingham North finally got a chance to ask that question to the British Bankers Association.
On Wednesday, Graham Allen championed the Robin Hood Tax in parliament. On Sunday, Allen took the discussion to Angela Knight, the Chief Executive of the British Bankers Association in a televised debate on the BBC East Midlands Politics Show. Angela Knight stepped into the role played by Bill Nighy in the campaign video of the unconvinced banker, prompting the presenter to ask , ‘is this parody too close to the mark?’.
Allen describing himself as the ‘bankers friend’ urged the banks to take this opportunity to restore their reputation and use ‘their help and expertise to find this tax and help develop it.’ Knight agreed the campaign raised a serious issue that needed to be considered both in terms of what the tax is and what it could do. Knight argued that banking was international and so the solution would need to be international. We believe there is lots they could do to help the UK take leadership on the world stage by helping to implement this tax first in the UK. Although Angela remained unconvinced she did agreed to meet with the campaign to discuss the idea further. Watch this space.
Watch the debate for yourself on iPlayer. Starts at 50:30 >>
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If you make the tax based on, say a flat rate then they are going to simply charge the flat amount of the tax to the clients and users to cope for the banks lost funds.
If you tax them on a fixed proposal, well then they are going to manipulate numbers in similar fashion to cope for the loss in revenue to taxable transactions.
Might have to vote "No" on this idea unless you can keep the banks from doing what I just described.
Why not just get rid of the banks once and for all?
One way to make adherance to the law effective, is by intro0ducing severe penalties for breaching them, such that you risk being thumped many times harder for NOT doing what you should than if you just paid the tax and moved on. I'd suggest a reward system for anybody who blows the whistle on any fraud of the Robin Hood Tax, so substantial that people will be HOPING for the big break of actually catching their employer out in such an act. This removes the usual impediment to whistleblowing. Then bankers who are found to be defrauding the Robin Hood tax, must be dealt with severely. Much like we used to deal with any actual instance of proven fraud. This entails a return to the rule of law of course which appears to have become a thing of the past lately as far as major financial fraud is concerned.
On the whole I think it will fail, due to the corruption of governments (the last resort for control) and the insane level of greed and corruption amongst the Banksters, which is why I still advocate rounding up all bankers and hanging them from any convenient supporting structure. A tree, a lamp post, a swing set....
So pleased was I, that I began to call all the Senators in Congress that I could think of that have ANYTHING to do with banking and/or raising funds. I got several staffers interested but have heard NOTHING in the news over here.
I would be pleased to help spread the word over here. Do you have anyone in line in the U.S. to try to push internationally? I can suggest several progressive websites such as FireDogLake and MoveOn.org. Please help get people interested over here! Over here we really could use the funds to pay for public health care! That would shut the obstructionists up (mostly Republicans) who are whining about how it would bankrupt the government. They would have no comeback against something like this!! Please, get in touch with some progressive organizations over here and get them interested. I will do anything I can to help.
My personal belief is that you are the least worthy beings on this planet and that you and your kind, your entire "trade" of financial skullduggery and usury should be consigned to history, forever. I advocate your execution. I sincerely believe that the best move for mankind at this point regarding your kind, is to declare you enemies of mankind and to hunt you and exterminate you.
This is my personal belief and I advocate it as a first step in restoring some balance in the world. I may sound crazy but many people agree with me. So I think you really should think seriously about your responsibilites at this time, consider how paying a fraction of a percent in taxes and introducing a little bit more of your complicated "book keeping" to your already self indulgent lives, might actually save your lives in the long run.
Otherwise, our motto may end up being "Kill and eat the rich"
I posted this somewhere elso on the site yesterday in answer to your question but as the question also appears here, I am repeating it in case you havn't seen it. Firstly, thanks for the question I think it's very important to understand why the Swedish experience didn't work whereas the UK taxing of stock transactions is a successful tax bringing in more than £3billion in revenue. It is especially important to understand this in the context that financial transaction taxes (FTTs) are commonplace throughout the world and have been introduced permanently or temporarily on such areas as stocks, corporate and government bonds, futures and general computerised financial transfers over the last 25 years in the following countries (and this isn't a complete list): Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Morocco, Netherlands, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, UK and US. So it is extremely important to contextualise Sweden's short-lived unsuccessful experience, which is often rolled as some kind of proof that FTTs don't work, when the vast majority of them are proven effective and successful means of raising substantial revenue.
The best explanation I am aware of that gives a detailed comparison of the Swedish and UK experiences is from this paper by Sony Kapoor: http://www.stampoutpoverty.org/?lid=11189
Here I quote an extract which describes the UK and Swedish experiences in detail and compares and contrasts them excellently. I hope this will serve to fully answer your question.
Kind regards
David
I would just explain the acronyms Kapoor uses: STT = Security Transaction Tax and CTT = Currency Transaction Tax.
Extract:
Two examples of STT regimesThe best point of reference would be to start at home and look at the STT regime in the UK. This is relevant, as London is one of the most important financial centres in the world; home to top investment companies, banks and other financial institutions.
The UK has had a 0.5% (one of the highest in the world) tax on all share transactions in UK incorporated companies. It is chargeable whether the transaction takes place in the UK or overseas, and whether either party is resident in the UK or not. In 2000-2001, the tax raised £4.5 billion in revenue and had the lowest cost of collection of all major taxes (0.09% as opposed to an average collection cost over all major financial taxes of 1.11%). This shows that the STT regime in the UK is thriving and raises significant revenues (2000-2001 revenues were 14% of all corporation tax collected in the UK) at a time when some of the other major economies have dismantled their STT regimes.
The Stamp Duty on shares in the UK was introduced in 1963 at a rate of 1% and in 1974 was revised upwards to 2%. It was reduced in 1984 to 1% and then again in 1986 to the current level of 0.5%. This level of 0.5% on the market value of a security is payable by the buyer. There is at present no tax on derivative securities but the transfer of a share to a nominee owner (to be re-issued as non taxable depository receipts) attracts a triple rate of 1.5%.
Instead of focussing on both successful and unsuccessful examples of STT regimes, opponents of the CTT have chosen to talk just about the Swedish experience, which was a failure by most measures. In 1984, the Swedish government introduced a tax of 0.5% on both the sale and purchase of equities. This was payable only in the case of a Swedish Brokerage service being used. The tax went through many changes of rate but the basic structure remained the same. In 1989 a similar albeit smaller tax was imposed on the trade of fixed income securities, including government debt and associated derivatives, such as interest rate futures and options.
As a result of these taxes, a significant amount of trading in Swedish stocks migrated overseas. At the extreme only 23% of the trading in Ericsson, Sweden’s most actively traded stock, took place in Sweden in 1989. The average for the market as a whole was 57%. There is little evidence of a fall in the overall size of the market; most trading just migrated overseas in order to evade the taxes imposed on Swedish brokers. In the fixed income markets the effects were even more dramatic; bond trading fell by 85% and bills trading fell by 20% within a week of the tax being introduced. This was accompanied by a sharp increase in trading in untaxed fixed income instruments such as debentures, variable rate notes, forward rate agreements and swaps all of which served as close substitutes for the taxed instruments.
The Swedish STT experiment came to an end in 1991 when all the transaction taxes were abolished. The markets in both fixed income and equities soon recovered to pre tax levels.
Can any lessons for the CTT be drawn from these STT regimes?
The two STT regimes discussed above offer many policy lessons for the implementation of a CTT.
The major difference between the Swedish and the UK STT regime was that the Swedish tax was a domestic tax on international capital whereas the UK tax is an international tax on domestically registered companies.
The lesson here for successful implementation of the CTT in the UK is that the tax needs to be imposed on the trade of all British pounds, no matter where in the world they are traded and no matter how the counterparties trade. Because if HM Treasury only taxes currency trades in the UK, similarly to Sweden just taxing their domestic brokers to levy their STT, then it would be easy to legally evade through offshore migration. For a successful design of the CTT, therefore, the tax has to apply to the British pound itself, and not to a jurisdiction or a channel of trade. If it operates in this way it would be next to impossible to evade through any legal channels.
The Swedish fixed income market saw a rapid migration of trades from taxed instruments to untaxed instruments that could act as close substitutes. This shows that it is important to cover all close substitute instruments when imposing a CTT. This being said, though equity derivatives in the UK are not taxed, the UK market has only seen a small migration of trades from the taxed share market to the untaxed derivative market. This shows that derivative instruments are not perfect substitutes for the underlying financial instrument. This is also partly as derivatives get less preferential treatment in the UK for accounting and reserve purposes.
The next lesson can be drawn by looking at the fact that no mass migration of shares to depository receipts has been seen in the UK market. The purchase of shares for the purpose of issuing non-taxable depository receipts, the creation of non-taxable bearer instruments and for the purpose of transferring into clearing services is all taxed at 1.5%, three times the standard tax rate. This high initial cost of transfer and the fact that these instruments are not perfect substitutes for owned shares in the UK have both helped deter a mass flight from shares into these untaxed instruments. A currency equivalent of overseas depository receipts is the offshore holding of Eurocurrency deposits. This can be discouraged either through making offshore holding of currencies illegal (as Malaysia did in response to the South East Asian crisis) or by imposing a very high exit cost as in the case of UK shares.
The original stamp duty in the UK was payable whenever there was a transfer of the paper share certificate from one owner to the other. However, when an electronic settlements system, called CREST, was introduced in 1996, a new tax called the stamp duty reserve tax (also simply called stamp duty in this text) was introduced on the electronic transfer of ownership. This made collection much easier and less expensive; only 0.02% cost of collection as compared to the 1.11% average for other major financial taxes. This shows that the recent trend of the FX market towards increased electronic trading and settlement (especially the Continuous Linked Settlement Bank) would make it much easier and cheaper for governments to administer and collect the CTT. Most of the FX is already traded electronically.
Another relevant lesson that can be drawn from the UK stamp duty experience is that international co-operation on STTs is possible. As the stamp duty is payable no matter where shares in UK incorporated companies trade, there is a need for international co-operation which has been forthcoming. Another good example of international co-operation is that between the Irish and the British governments who share the stamp duty revenue collected on the trade of Irish shares in the UK.
The UK stamp duty structure provides an excellent framework on which to develop a successful CTT regime. The fact is that the UK raises upwards of £4 billion in revenue every year through the stamp duty. As well, the London Stock Exchange remains the second largest exchange in the world despite having a stamp duty which is not payable in most competing exchanges. Both points are testament to the enduring success of the UK stamp duty regime.
Dani Rodrik, , Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/rod... (the bulk of this article is a fascinating exploration of how orthodoxies can shift quickly and dramatically)
Jeffrey Sachs, advisor to the UN Secretary General (with video): http://robinhoodtax.org.uk/homepage/robin-hood-...
The European Parliament votes 536/80 for a Robin Hood Tax: http://robinhoodtax.org.uk/debate/in-the-news/q...
Just one week! We may disagree but it just isn't true to say this only appeals at a 'populist' level. Hope that's useful. Stay merry
Monday, 6 September 2010
Robin Hood Tax and the British Bankers’ Association | The Robin Hood Tax
Daily Post North Wales - News - North Wales News - Call for public meeting to save Theatr Harlech
Call for public meeting to save Theatr Harlech
Sep 6 2010 by Hywel Trewyn, Daily Post
THE future of under-threat Theatr Harlech will come under the spotlight at a public meeting, promised the man in charge of changes last night.
But board chairman Gerallt Hughes warned it was “too easy to react emotionally” to events after four workers at the theatre were told they would be losing their jobs , with redundancy proceedings due to begin in the next few weeks.
Mr Hughes said there had been a lot of speculation about the future of the theatre, which, during the last few years, has made a profit.
The number of users had also increased by 31%, added Mr Hughes of Dolgellau, former chief executive of Meirionnydd District Council.
Mr Hughes said: “It’s not being run at a loss. I have promised people we will hold a public meeting to discuss the matter.
“The fact is that many people have misinterpreted the situation.
“It’s nothing to do with the leadership of the theatre”
Alluding to an online campaign on Facebook to save the theatre, he said: “I would be grateful for the support of local people in the Harlech area and theatre attendees. The theatre’s board are very supportive of any campaign but, unfortunately, see ourselves in a situation created by the Arts Council’s new investment plan policy.”
Mr Hughes said the board hadn’t had much time to react after the Arts Council of Wales announced in June it was stopping its £72,000 annual grant to the Theatr as part of a review, which saw a total of 32 arts organisations throughout Wales also losing money.
As a result of the bombshell, the theatre announced plans to take productions to the wider community of south Gwynedd, rather than just using its building.
In March, Snowdonia National Park planners gave the green light to a £14m Canolfan Cambria Centre on the Coleg Harlech site, which it shares with Theatr Harlech.
The development would include a 266-seat theatre, new conference and exhibition facilities, business units as well as changes to Theatr Harlech.
It would complement plans for a five-star “destination” hotel on the next-door site of the now derelict St David's Hotel.
Last night Mr Hughes said: “We need to discuss how to move ahead. If the college was to be redeveloped there were fears that darkness would fall on the Theatr.
“We have a 15-year lease left on the building. That’s why we decided on the Constellation Programme, to bring the theatre out into the community while the building work was going on. We were trying to plan ahead carefully.”
The plan would bring professional and community arts to towns and villages across south Gwynedd – where the nearest other theatres are at Llandudno or Aberystwyth.
The board have already applied to the Arts Council for £50,000-60,000 to fund the Constellation programme. They are hopeful of getting a decision in their favour by the end of this month.
Mr Hughes added: “Some of the rules regarding staffing means that we will have to use freelance and part-time staff.”
Sunday, 5 September 2010
NEWS - projectbrainsaver
Did I forget to mention
' + relTimeStr + ''); } } else { document.write(absTimeStr); } } //]]> posted 5 Sep 2010 06:02 by Mark Aldiss [ updated 5 Sep 2010 07:45 ]
I had my first ride in a helicopter a few years ago because I had a heart attack - ever since then I have wanted a helicopter to ride in and go places....
I can manage three days in full on contact with the 'outside' world then I crash and sleep whilst my brain reels from the onslaught of minds and thoughts and feelings and and and...
The week that I went to SpeechTEK and also saw Gruff Prys at Bangor University knocked my head sideways for a week - like being smashed round the side of the head by a baseball bat, but with no physical injuries, or having your brain opened and a kitchen whisk being used in it.
Too much information and I become a zombie.
I want this kit for me. I have a brain the size of a planet and all I am capable of at times is sitting being still. Drained.
Yet
I need this kit to give Autonomy and the University what they need.Catch 22.
This kit is designed so that it can help me get off benefits for the first time in 20 years and more. Not because it will make me rich but because it will utilise some parts of me better than I can
This kit is designed so that others will build it because they see a need for it
£300,000 for the trial and a minimum of £1,000,000 pa to run easily that if you scale it up.For me to set out to raise £300,000 would mean me pushing myself directly into the danger zone of fits and heart attacks - I have been part of the politics of this world and I can't play any more.
Which is why this was given away as an idea... not because I wouldn't like to be free of the system and have money of my own but because you have to build it because I don't want to explode my brain or my heart one time too often.
You being each individual who joins a group big enough to buy the kit from Autonomy for yourselves....
It will probably be dentists!
Stamp Out Poverty Campaign : Stamp Out Poverty Report
BBC News - Wiltshire policeman faces sack for cell attack on woman
5 September 2010 Last updated at 05:14 ETWiltshire policeman faces sack for cell attack on woman
Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.
Sgt Mark Andrews dragged Pamela Somerville across the floor of the police station. CCTV provided by Wiltshire Police
A police officer is facing the sack after he was caught on CCTV throwing a woman into a cell, badly injuring her.
The footage also shows Sgt Mark Andrews dragging Pamela Somerville through Melksham police station in Wiltshire.
Ms Somerville, 59, was arrested in July 2008 after being found asleep in her car. Her treatment left her with facial injuries and needing hospital care.
Andrews has been convicted of causing the woman actual bodily harm and is expected to be dismissed from his job.
Ms Somerville had been detained for failing to provide a sample for a breath test.
'Completely disgraceful'She said: "I thought I was going to die, by people that you trust.
"You can't imagine it. They're the people that you trust, so who do you trust after that?
"You don't treat somebody - even if you've found them guilty of the worst possible thing you can possibly imagine - you don't put them in a situation where they have to be in hospital twice in one day, do you?"
Continue reading the main story“Start Quote
End Quote Chief Constable Patrick Geenty Wiltshire PolicePeople have a right to expect that the police will always act by placing the safety and welfare of the public as their first priority”
The case was brought after one of Andrews' colleagues reported the matter to senior officers, who have apologised to Ms Somerville.
Wiltshire Police's Assistant Chief Constable Patrick Geenty said it was a "completely disgraceful incident".
"We are very concerned when anyone is injured in our custody and the court has decided that this injury was as a result of a criminal assault by Sgt Mark Andrews, a member of Wiltshire Police who was performing duty as a custody sergeant at the time," he said.
"We respect the decision of the court and the force has formally apologised to the injured lady for the assault she suffered while in our care.
"People have a right to expect that the police will always act by placing the safety and welfare of the public as their first priority.
"This is particularly so when in police custody when irrespective of the reason for their detention, people should feel and be safe."
Andrews, who has been suspended on full pay since his conviction, is due to be sentenced for the assault at Oxford Magistrates' Court on Tuesday. He is also to face a police misconduct hearing.
BBC home affairs correspondent Steve Brodie said he understood that the officer would be sacked.
Saturday, 4 September 2010
Robin Hood Debate in Parliament | The Robin Hood Tax
Robin Hood Debate in Parliament
March 12th, 2010 by Robin Hood
Posted in: Campaign updates, Latest
On Wednesday 10th March, Graham Allen MP (Nottingham North), secured a debate this week on the Robin Hood Tax in Parliament. The debate happened in Westminster Hall. This type of debate allows MPs to raise issues that matter to them and have a government minister respond.
Hear what Graham Allen thought of the debate
Graham Allen MP called for the introduction of a Robin Hood Tax (Financial Transaction Tax), saying that this was a fair way of raising the money we desperately need to tackle poverty at home and abroad. ‘It will be one of those things that people will say ‘why didn’t we do this earlier?” he said. Mr Allen then drew on the legend of Robin Hood, ‘the government of today is a little more sympathetic than in the days of St John.’
MPs from all parties joined in the debate, many adding their support for a tax. The public support the campaign has enjoyed was a key point of the debate. The Treasury Minister, Stephen Timms MP, responded and said he commended the Robin Hood Tax campaign. The Minister was impressed by the public support for the campaign – and he said that the high number of MPs who supported the idea was a direct result of this public support (that’s you and that’s because of your work if you contacted your MP – it’s making a real difference).
The Minister agreed that we need to see reform of the financial sector and that the Treasury was working with the IMF and with other European countries to see what kind of international regulation would work best. Some of the MPs present urged the government to take this opportunity to show leadership on the global stage.
So we got an OK response from the Government but they need to go further – we want to see them come out in full support of a financial transaction tax – watch this space to find out how you can help push them further.
Read the full transcript of the debate >>
Parliamentary officer, Jonny Tench, with a message from outside the House of Commons
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A debate with only 119 MPs having signed, and only two from the Conservative Party!...
E
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Drumbeat/p2pu/public roadmap 2.0 - MozillaWiki
Drumbeat/p2pu/public roadmap 2.0
From MozillaWiki
End of 2011
Recognition & respect. We are on our way to democratizing web developer education.
- The P2PU Webcraft brand is recognized & respected by learners & employers. Graduates are listing School of Webcraft badges in their CVs and employers are paying attention. Webcraft graduates are getting jobs.
- The community has reached critical mass. We see 150 to 200 active courses per semester and 10,000+ total community members and steady growth.
- We have replaced outdated assessment models with new ways of describing web developer skills: the hackers' habits. P2PU Webcraft awards badges that describe technical skills, attitudes, and knowledge.
- School of Webcraft is global. Web developers around the world are designing and localizing courses in many languages.
End of 2010
We have made some changes, refined our ideas and are ready to build up: more courses, more countries, more people.
- The community is growing steadily: 500+ applicants enrolled for January 2011 semester and 25+ mentors ready to run courses
- We have awarded the first Webcraft badges and are turning more and more of the "hacker's habits" into assessments and badges. And we are mapping our courses against a broad competency map of open web skills.
- We have learned from the first round of courses and are gearing up to scale. Our processes are prepared to deal with many more people and courses. The application process for organisers and participants is easier and faster. And the collaboration tools for working in the courses are refined based on feedback.
- Webcraft communities in other countries are joining and designing courses that are appropriate for their local context. At least one community (Brazil or India) is actively recruiting local course organizers and designing courses that are appropriate for the local context.
- We are strengthening our ties with the broader community - focusing on groups who are developing curricula and courses relevant to web develompent, software developer communities, and employers.
September 2010
We have a plan and are launching the first round of courses to test our ideas and pick up momentum.
- 12+ courses
- 200+ participants
- 3 languages (English, Portuguese and German)
- We have an initial map of what we think the "hacker's habits" are - and we are testing our ideas with the web developer community.
- We are adding assessment of one of these habits into the first courses.
- Our initial courses cover a mixed bag of beginner and advanced skills - we are experimenting.
- There is a nice buzz in the community, and interesting people are joining the project.
To date
- 9 courses proposed for September semester
- Small active community on Drumbeat site and mailing list
- Signed up first advisors willing to review and feedback
- Ran a successful pilot class ("Mashing up the Open Web")
- Have a first list of "hacker's habits" and ideas how to assess them
Retrieved from "https://wiki.mozilla.org/Drumbeat/p2pu/public_roadmap_2.0"
Mother who fled failed marriage faces extradition battle - Telegraph
She is now preparing for a courtroom battle to stop herself from being handed over to her accusers.
If she is sent to America, tried and convicted of the offence, she could spend three years in prison.
The case has sparked outrage from campaigners, including Shami Chakrabarti, director of human rights group Liberty, who said it was "yet another terrifying reminder of the dangers of lopsided instant extradition without evidence being tested in a UK court".
Mrs Clark, a US citizen, says she was stunned when Metropolitan Police officers dressed in plain clothes turned up at her family's flat on July 29, arrested her and served her with the warrant.
She said: "It scared the living daylights out me. Never in my life, since I left John, have I been so afraid."
According to Mrs Clark, sending her to America to stand trial would have a devastating impact on her children, who would be left to fend for themselves in Britain.
She said: "Me and my children won't be together. I'm their home and their mainstay. If they were all off and had their own families, it would be different. But they are completely reliant on me.
"I'm OK during the day but at night I wake up shaking. I just want them to throw this out."
Her fate will be decided after a hearing at London's Westminster Magistrates Court in November, at which legal experts could be flown from the US to help fight her corner.
The case follows disputes over attempts by America to secure the extradition of Gary McKinnon, the British computer hacker, and Christopher Tappin, the retired businessman and golf club president accused of illegal arms deals.
Last week the Government announced a review of current extradition arrangements, which will examine both the US-UK treaty and the controversial European Arrest Warrants system.
The move comes after The Sunday Telegraph highlighted concerns about the way extradition works in Britain.
On Feb 9, 1995, Mrs Clark, a former aerobics trainer and model, fled the home in New Mexico she shared with her then husband, John Clark – a day after he told her he wanted to separate "due to marital discord".
She took the couple's three children with her.
Two days later she flew to California to stay with a friend. In June 1995, state prosecutors charged her with "custodial interference". The marriage was dissolved in Feb 1997 with both parents retaining legal custody.
Mrs Clark moved to Britain in 1998 to begin a new life with the children, who are also US citizens - Chandler, now 23, Hayden, 20, and Rebekah, 17.
She has recently separated from her second husband and is now retraining to become an English language teacher.
Meanwhile Mr Clark was pursuing the case through the US courts. He also launched a publicity campaign, declaring in one television interview: "I'm not going to give up on making sure she pays the price for what she did."
The charge of custodial interference was dropped in May 2004, only for a new, identical accusation to be raised the following year.
US prosecutors claim they discovered in July 2008 that Mrs Clark was living Britain.
They approached their UK counterparts to seek her return to face trial, but were told that custodial interference was not a sufficiently serious offence to justify her extradition.
A few month later, a grand jury indicted her for the more serious offence of international parental kidnapping, and a warrant was issued for her arrest.
Mrs Clark was placed on the FBI's "most wanted" list. Underneath her photograph, her three children are pictured, with a claim that they are "still missing" and the word "victim" printed next to each picture.
The children had contacted the Santa Fe police department in New Mexico to inform them they were not missing, and were subsequently removed from a national register of missing children.
But the FBI immediately ordered that they be re-entered, this time as missing "endangered adults".
Last night Mrs Clark said of her arrest: "After those guys came, I think John knows where I live. Now I'm really shaken up.
"My children are articulate, proud young people. But if I have to go back, well, it's going to undermine them so much. There will be so many things to sort out. I don't know if I'll ever be able to come back."
In her battle against extradition she is being represented by Mike Evans from Kaim Todner, the same law firm defending McKinnon and Tappin.
Her lawyers told a court hearing on Friday that they were considering a raft of arguments to block the extradition.
These include the impact on her children and a claim that the prosecution is being carried out "in bad faith" following pressure from her former husband.
They will also argue that too much time has passed since the alleged crime. Under US "statute of limitations" rules, suspects for many kinds of crime can only be prosecuted within five years of the offence.
Miss Chakrabarti said: "That a mother with happy children in their late teens and twenties can be shipped off on abduction charges years after the alleged offence shows how vulnerable to abuse ordinary Britons have been left by our rotten extradition system.
"How would the politicians responsible for this legislation feel if they were yanked off to some international court without the opportunity to test the evidence against them?"
Mrs Clark's US attorney has accused the American government of a "complete abuse of power".
David Foster said: "The entire basis for the extradition is improper. The federal government apparently tried to extradite her based on the state charges, and the UK said 'no'.
"In spite, the federal government decided to indict Mrs Clark on a charge of international kidnapping – based on what was alleged to have happened in 1995. This is despite the fact that New Mexico doesn't want to extradite her.
"This is a malicious prosecution by the US government. They are harassing her and her kids."
Chandler is waiting to find out if he will get funding to study philosophy at King's College in London.
He said: "It's very difficult on a personal level. I got the grades and was told I'd get into the best philosophy university outside Oxbridge. Even if the student funding goes through, will I be starting Fresher's Week in a few weeks time? I don't think so."
Rebekah said she was "really scared" when her mother was suddenly arrested.
"I was upstairs and I could here everything that was going on. I thought I was going to have a heart attack," she said.
Hayden faces losing his place at the London School of Economics, where he has just completed his first year of a law degree. The boy says the three siblings will have to make a home for themselves in England if their mother is sent to America.
"If mum's extradited, what's going to happen to us? We will have to look after Rebekah. What are we going to do about housing?" added Hayden.
All three insist they do not want to be reunited with their father.
Mr Clark has led a public campaign against his former wife, including an appearance on the TV talk show Dr Phil. Earlier this year he claimed in a TV interview: "She's taken 15 years of my life."
His current wife, Jeanette, has also appeared on television to attack Mrs Clark, declaring: "She should be the one in prison. She's put him in prison for 15 years."
But Rebekah, who is studying for A-levels, said: "I just think it's absolutely ridiculous. There are murderers all over the world and my mum is wanted by the FBI. It's the biggest joke I've heard in my life."
Varnish
Table of Contents
Welcome to the Varnish project
Varnish is a state-of-the-art, high-performance HTTP accelerator. It uses the advanced features in Linux 2.6, FreeBSD 6/7 and Solaris 10 to achieve its high performance.
Some of the features include
- A modern design
- VCL - a very flexible configuration language
- Load balancing with health checking of backends
- Partial support for ESI
- URL rewriting
- Graceful handling of "dead" backends
- more features...
Varnish is free software and is licenced under a modified BSD licence. Please read the introduction to get started with Varnish.
See what people blog about Varnish on Planet Varnish.
Trouble, Errata and things you should know
Here is our running log of things you probably want to know
News
2010-07-28 Varnish 2.1.3 Released
We are pleased to announce Varnish 2.1.3, a bug fix and feature release in the Varnish 2.1 series. The most notable changes are:
- The scalability of critbit, the default hashing method, has been improved
- A bug in varnishd would in some cases confuse varnishncsa leading to lost or wrong log lines.
- Some bugs in the handling of Range requests has been fixed. This only matters if you enable Range support.
- Add «log» command to VCL which will log to the Varnish log.
Downloads at the usual spot.
New documentation
There is a brand new installation guide and a tutorial. Also, the man pages are now put online as part of a reference guide. Please see http://varnish-cache.org/docs/
2010-05-05 Varnish 2.1.2 Released
We have released Varnish 2.1.2 - a bug fix release. The only change is a one line change that fixes a bug introduced in 2.1.1 when adding Range support. This bug which would append garbage to objects larger than the chunk size, by default 128k. This only affects content transfered with chunked encoding. Browsers would do the right thing due to Content-Length, but some load balancers would get very confused.
2010-04-26 Varnish 2.1.1 Released
We have just released Varnish 2.1.1 - a bug fix and feature release of the Varnish 2.1 series. The most notable changes are:
- Experimental support for the Range header, must be enabled with the http_range_support parameter.
- A bug in workspace rollback prevented ESI from working correctly in all situations. This is now fixed.
- A race condition and a deadlock in the critbit hasher have been fixed.
- HEAD requests are no longer converted to GET requests for pass and pipe.
- Support for completely obliterating objects including all variants («nuke»). See http://varnish-cache.org/changeset/4668 for details
This is a summary of the changes, please see the changelog for a more full list.
2010-03-24 Varnish 2.1.0 released
Varnish 2.1.0 has just been released. It contains lots of changes relative to 2.0.6, the most important ones being:
- Experimental support for persistent cache
- The regular expression engine is now PCRE
- Saint mode, where we try to grace an object.
- A more scalable hashing method called critbit
- Increased scalability, removing a limitation of maximum 64k connections
- obj_workspace is removed, this is now scaled automatically
- Hashing and client IP based directors
Note: The release has some syntaxchanges in VCL, please read the full changelog
2010-02-05 Varnish User Group meeting 2 announced
On the 29th and 30th of March 2010 we will hold the next Varnish User Group meeting in Amsterdam.
For more information and how to sign up see the VUG2 page.
2009-12-16 Varnish 2.0.6 released
Varnish 2.0.6 has just been released. This release contains multiple changes, amongst them:
- Fix off-by-one error in ESI handling
- Bug fixes related to session lingering
- Backend probes should now work correctly with more servers
- Portability fixes
- Make it possible to specify the per-thread stack size, useful for 32 bit systems
There are some old news as well.
Source
- Download Varnish from SourceForge
- Pre 2.0 releases
- Repository
- Short term roadmap details changes in future releases
- PostTwoShoppingList is a more strategic overview of what could be done in the future
Documentation
- Main documentation site.
- an introduction to varnish. Read this first.
- Installation guide.
- Tutorial.
- The old Getting started, still relevant.
- The various features of varnish explained.
- Installing Varnish
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- VCL Syntax, formalized and detailed descriptions.
- VCL Examples, small snippets for doing common tasks.
- CLI, CLI documentation
- VTLA, VTLA documentation
Resources
- varnish-software.com is our commercial sister-site
- Commercial support can be bought
- Debugging Varnish
- Performance tuning of Varnish and the underlying OS
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- Accelerating Wordpress with Varnish
- Varnishing over Drupal
Community support
- IRC channel: #varnish on irc.linpro.no
- Mailing lists
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About this Wiki
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Friday, 3 September 2010
David Blunkett's startling admission on UK-US extradition treaty | Mail Online
'I gave too much away': David Blunkett's startling admission on UK-U.S. extradition treaty
By James Slack
Last updated at 7:08 AM on 3rd September 2010David Blunkett, the Cabinet minister who signed Labour's controversial Extradition Act, admitted yesterday that he may have 'given too much away' to the Americans.
The Act, which opponents say is biased against British citizens, is being used to extradite Gary McKinnon, who has Asperger's, for computer hacking.
The last government stubbornly insisted there was nothing wrong with the Act, while rejecting overwhelming support for Mr McKinnon to be tried in the UK.
Admitting error: Former Home Secretary David Blunkett, left, said he 'gave too much away' when negotiating the extradition treaty with the US, a move which has led to the extradition case involving alleged hacker Gary McKinnon
But Mr Blunkett, who was Home Secretary when the Act was signed, yesterday broke ranks to express serious misgivings about the law.
He said: 'I'm being honest about looking at something seven years on and saying it wasn't perfect. Of course we can look back and say we could have done better.'
Critics say the Act is lopsided because British citizens are not given the same legal protection as their American counterparts.
If the U.S. government wants to extradite a UK citizen it needs only to outline the alleged offence, the punishment specified by statute and provide an accurate description of the suspect.
But to extradite an American from the States, Britain must prove that the wanted individual has probably committed a crime, a much harder test.
Critical: Janis Sharp, pictured with her son Gary McKinnon, welcomed the admission by David Blunkett and said the treaty had ruined their lives
Mr Blunkett told BBC Radio Four's The Report: 'In theoretical terms, I think there is still a debate - and I'm prepared to concede this - about whether we gave away too much.'
The admission could make it easier for the Coalition to change the Act. Ministers will be able to point out that even its own architect is now having misgivings.
Speaking to the Mail, Mr Blunkett-also called for a debate over trying people in the UK if that is where most of their crimes were committed - which is the case with Mr McKinnon.
Accused: US authorities want Gary McKinnon to stand trial for allegedly hacking into defence computer systems
Last night Mr McKinnon's mother Janis Sharp said: 'It's good to hear that David Blunkett has the honesty and decency to admit that mistakes were made about the extradition treaty with the U.S. and Europe and that he realises that he gave too much away.
'This has left British citizens especially vulnerable and the treaty is all too often being used frivolously and not for the serious crimes we were led to believe it was intended for. The past eight years of stress has ruined Gary's life and his mental health has deteriorated greatly. Our lives have also been ruined.'
The Coalition is about to begin a full review of the Act.
Home Secretary Theresa May has granted a temporary reprieve to Mr McKinnon, whom Labour had agreed to send to the U.S. to face a possible 60-year jail term under the Act for allegedly hacking into 97 United States military and NASA computer systems.
Mrs May said Gary's court case would be adjourned while she considers new medical evidence about the fragile mental state of the 44-year-old, who was searching for evidence of alien life when he hacked into NASA and Pentagon computers.
Campaigners hope the review of the one-sided Act, a focus of the Mail's Affront to British Justice campaign, will unravel the mess created by Labour.
UK courts are approving 89 per cent of U.S. extradition requests. By comparison, only seven in ten requests to the Americans by the British authorities are granted, according to analysis by the Liberal Democrats.
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So you state now, Mr Blunkett. But when you were in the Office of Home Secretary, you were just as clueless and useless as all your Labour colleagues who held that post. You probably caved into Mr Blair's demands that the UK be 'Nice and Friendly' to the one way demands of the Clinton and Bush administrations.
After all, Mr Blair had some sort of 'Shock & Awe' affair with the Clinton's and the Bush's, and was overwhelmed by it all (Maybe something to with being Mega-Rich?)
- Mr I Grumble, Raddled Victor Meldrew of Old Blighty's Shore East Anglia England UK (EU-SSR-Lan, 03/9/2010 10:42
obviously he couldn't see that he had gone too far after all you don't see much when you've got your head buried up America's backside , the frightening thing is that this fool was one of the people in charge of our once great country
- beachboy, calahonda spain, 03/9/2010 10:40
Of course you gave too much away as did Blair, Gordon and the rest of your party. You idiots.
- Nick, Lymington, 03/9/2010 10:40
These treaties are only pieces of paper - and if they don't seem fair then why do we continue to adhere to them. Surely we can just rip them up and say we want to start again. We are a soveriegn country - why should we continue to cow-tow to others. If the USA or others have a problem with that, then let them sort it out. What they going to do - bomb us?
Rip up the treaty and whilst your at it bin the Yuman Rites treaty as well. Let's run our own affairs and tell the EU and the Yanks to go away.- aargonaut, Birmingham, 03/9/2010 10:33
Why are people so determined to stop a criminal facing justice (and before you start, no this is not about guilt or innocence, you'd be sprouting exactly the same rubbish if the trial had already been held and he was being extradited to serve his sentence)!? The BS aspergers (utter and complete abuse of Human Rights leglisation) defence was made up long after the fact to pull at the public's heart strings - millions of aspergers sufferers survie just fine without breaking the law and hundreds serve prison sentences as well as other prisoners. For god's sake we sent a mass murdering terrorist home to hero's welcome in LIbya, and now we're waxing lyrical about poor old Gary McKinnon? If it'd been an American facing British justice - you'd all be baying for his blood - broken, broken Britain - the true shame of the world. Exradite - let justice serve its course and stop trying to be so high and mighty - we are not!
- Incensed, London, 03/9/2010 10:26
I fear for this country more than ever. Not only did we have to succumb to too many years of Labour, we now have more liars and hypocrits on the public stage! Who are the lunatics voting for these people? I expect when Cameron and Clegg have done their 'bit', more books will be on sale containing absolutely no essence, just excuses and drivel.
Can we have some good news for a change DM. The good news would be: immigration stopped for 10 years; banks forced to pay back government money; NHS saved - all immigrants must take out their own private health plan until they have supported the NHS for at least 10 years; human rights act revised and replaced; come out of the EU - the list is endless.
I'd like to see a government who looks after their 'home' interests for a change. Blair just loved and still loves the international stage. He is loathsome.
- kate, w sussex, 03/9/2010 10:24
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