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MP calls for better management of businesses

A Labour MP has told the House of Commons that UK businesses need better management rather than deregulation.
During Business, Innovation and Skills questions on 24 May 2012, Barry Sheerman quoted a Chartered Management Institute report which claimed that "43% of managers in this country are rated as poor".
He added: "Let's do something about management rather than going on about red tape."
Conservative MP Stephen Hammond had tabled a question asking ministers what steps they had taken to reduce the burden of regulation on business.
Mr Hammond said small businesses in his constituency wanted "access to lending and… deregulation".
Business and Enterprise Minister Mark Prisk told him that the government had reviewed 1,500 regulations as part of its Red Tape Challenge and "ministers have agreed to scrap or substantially overhaul 59% of those - some 887 regulations".
Liberal Democrat MP Lorely Burt referred to the recent report by venture capitalist Adam Beecroft, which included proposals to give firms more flexibility to sack workers.
"A fire at will policy might actually be counter-productive and won't actually increase productivity or growth," she said.
Mr Prisk said the proposal was just "one of 23 different measures" in Mr Beecroft's report.
Labour MP Ian Lavery asked whether "a person who has made in excess of a £500,000 donation to the Conservative Party and made more than £100m from private equity deals is a fit and proper person to determine government policy on workers' rights".
Mr Prisk warned him that "we need to be very careful" when making such allegations.
He defended Mr Beecroft's role, saying "it is important to have good employers, good people who actually understand the market" advising the government.
Shadow business minister Ian Murray referred to reports of Business Secretary Vince Cable's opposition to the Beecroft proposals and alleged that the report "puts old Tory ideology before any credible strategy to get people back to work".
But the minister accused him of producing "platitudes", adding: "We are actually acting and you are not."
Other questions were on topics including business confidence, the post office network and caravan manufacturing in and around Hull.

In fitting start to Queen's Jubilee, it's a day at the races

LONDON — Long known as the sport of kings, today horse racing is the Sport of the Queen, as the Diamond Jubilee got underway with a familiar annual ritual, the running of the Epsom Derby.

Horse-loving Queen Elizabeth II did not have a horse in the "dah-bee," as it's known here; instead it was the appropriately named Camelot, the favorite, that won the feature race today, in front of a crowd of 150,000 racing fans, with the No. 1 fan watching in the royal enclosure.

Along with her were members of her family, including her husband, Prince Philip; her two younger sons, Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex; and two of her grandchildren, Andrew's daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie.

The day was overcast, windy and cool but it was an especially colorful and cheerful derby, decorated with flags, flowers and jubilee bunting. It opened with military parachutists, bearing Union Jacks, floating down in their scarlet red jumpsuits, one of the reasons they're known as the Red Devils.

The crowds cheered and waved little flags (35,000 were handed out beforehand) as the queen and her husband arrived in a Rolls motorcade down the track. Smiling broadly, she exited the car and the Royal Marine Band struck up the familiar notes of the national anthem. Katherine Jenkins, the Welsh classical vocalist who finished second in Dancing With the Stars last month, sang God Save the Queen with gusto, although she looked slightly chilled in the cold while dressed in a creamy, strapless mermaid-tail gown, standing just a few feet away from the queen.

"This is definitely a day that I will never forget," she told the BBC later.

Unlike so many others, Jenkins was not wearing a hat for her performance but she didn't have to. By contrast, there's a strict dress code for those in the royal enclosure: Hats for women; top hats for men; and smart outfits for all. Elsewhere in the stands, fans are allowed to wear what they want and many of them apparently believe the wackier the better.

As per usual, the queen went down from the royal box to the paddock where she inspected some of the horses that competed in one of the races, the Coronation Cup, renamed the Diamond Jubilee Coronation Cup. She awarded the cup to the owner, trainer and jockey of winner St. Nicholas Abbey.

The big winner, Camelot, was trained and ridden by a father-son team, the first in derby history, adding to the historic character of this year's event.

Epsom is not just any horse-racing venue; the derby is way older than the Windsor dynasty, with the first was one in 1779. It's also one of the richest, at about $2 million. And it's free for fans.

The race also is the United Kingdom's only major one that the horsewoman-in-chief has not won. An expert in breeding, raising, training and racing horses, she has gone to the derby every year except one in her 60 years on the throne. She even attended just a few days after she was crowned in 1953, when her horse, Aureole, finished second, nearly giving the new queen a coronation victory.

Last year, her horse Carlton House, was the favorite but finished third, although it did win at another racetrack on Thursday.

Racing is one of the queen's real passions, so it's no coincidence that the derby opens the jubilee weekend. Brits are used to seeing her at the races, a standout in the royal box in her colorful hats and outfits, peering through binoculars, surrounded by family and friends. She typically visits the paddock and the winner's circle, loves talking to the trainers and jockeys, closely reads the daily racing press.

British commentators have repeatedly pointed out that no other event during jubilee weekend will be as much fun for the 86-year-old queen as the derby. Typically, she shows an enigmatic or neutral expression on her face during engagements, although lately she's been seen beaming for jubilee events. But it's at the races where she shows her excitement. One piece of video often shown features the queen at a race, grabbing her binoculars and rushing out of the royal box as one of her horses moved to the front of the pack.

Following the horses is the queen's hobby, one that provides a "relief from her daily duties," said her top-hatted (and rarely interviewed) racing manager, John Warren, interviewed by Sky News.

When the queen goes to the USA on rare private visits, she typically heads for Kentucky bluegrass country. There she visits Lane's End Farm, a top breeder owned by her friend William Farish, the former American ambassador to Britain.

And when she made her historic visit to Ireland last year, the first by a British monarch to its former colony, she made a point of spending hours at the Irish National Stud, talking horse bloodlines with people whose love of horses is as high as her own.

Taylor Calls for Calm Terming 50-yr Sentence a Mockery to Justice, Democracy

Written by Stephen Binda                                                    

Speaking from custody in The Hague yesterday shortly after being sentenced to 50 years of imprisonment for crimes against humanity, convicted former president Charles Taylor reportedly told his family back home to tell his supporters to remain calm as his lawyers process the appeal case against his conviction.

The former warlord, who became president after leading years of brutal civil law in his homeland, reportedly urged his supporters not to stage any street demonstration in protest against his sentencing. They should rather respect the democratic process, family spokesman Senator Sando Johnson, who claimed to have spoken directly to convict Taylor after the sentence, told the Daily Observer.

“Mr. Taylor has asked me to inform our people to remain calm and that God was in control of the situation,” he quoted Taylor as saying yesterday. “He (Taylor) informed me that his lawyers were preparing to appeal against the 50 years sentence brought against him.”

Johnson said the standing rule of the International Court for Sierra Leone provides for the accused to file an appeal following the sentence. Taylor will remain in the UN’s detention unit in The Hague until his appeal procedure is finalized within six months.

Quoting Mr. Taylor, Sen. Johnson termed the 50 years jail sentence as a mockery to justice and democracy for both Liberia and Sierra Leone.

He saked,“ While jail Mr. Taylor for 50 years for aiding and abetting war crimes when in fact the main perpetrators in Sierra Leone who were convicted went to jail for 15 to 30 years?”

According to him, Taylor said he was not surprised at the sentence, citing an international conspiracy by western powers.

“Mr. Taylor has said that there should not be any street demonstration or chaos in Liberia. We should respect the democratic peace process and pray for him and that every Liberian should remain calm,” Senator Johnson said.

Taylor (64) was convicted last month of all 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for aiding and abetting Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front (RUF) during the country’s brutal 1991-2001 civil war.

In return, the court said, he was paid in diamonds mined by slave labour in areas under control of the rebels, who murdered, raped and kept sex slaves, hacked off limbs and forced children under 15 to fight.

“The accused has been found responsible for aiding and abetting some of the most heinous crimes in human history,” said Special Court for Sierra Leone judge Richard Lussick on Wednesday.

“The trial chamber unanimously sentences you to a single term of imprisonment for 50 years on all counts,” the judge said as he announced the ruling of the court based at Leidschendam, just outside The Hague.

“The trial chamber noticed that the effects of these crimes on the families and society as a whole in Sierra Leone was devastating,” Lussick said in handing down the ruling, the first sentence against a former head of state in an international court since the Nazi trials at Nuremberg in 1946.

Taylor, wearing gold-rimmed glasses and dressed in a dark suit and gold tie, listened with his eyes closed as the judge handed down the sentence, which Taylor’s team, and prosecutors, have two weeks to appeal.

Early this month, chief prosecutor Brenda Hollis argued for 80 years behind bars for Taylor, once one of west Africa’s most powerful men and a driving force behind Sierra Leone’s decade-long war which claimed 120 000 lives.

His defense argued such a sentence would be “excessive”. Throughout the trial, Taylor himself maintained his innocence and insisted he was instrumental in eventually ending Sierra Leone’s civil war.

Taylor’s sentence will be served in a British prison. London’s offer in 2007 to host Taylor in custody if he was found guilty was part of the deal to put him on trial in the Netherlands-based court.

The trial, which lasted nearly four years, wrapped up in March 2011. It saw several high-profile witnesses testify, including supermodel Naomi Campbell, who told of a gift of “dirty diamonds” she received in 1997 at a charity ball hosted by South Africa’s then president Nelson Mandela.

Handing down the verdict last month, Lussick stressed that although Taylor had substantial influence over the RUF, including its feared leader Foday Sankoh, this “fell short of command and control” of rebel forces. Sankoh died in 2003 before he could face trial.

Authorities in Nigeria arrested Taylor in March 2006 as he tried to flee from exile after being forced to quit Liberia three years earlier, under international pressure to end that country’s own civil war.

He was transferred to the Hague in mid-2006 amid security fears should he go on trial in Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown.

Taylor’s sentencing came 66 years after the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg sentenced admiral Karl Donitz to 10 years in jail for his part in Nazi crimes during World War II.

Can Liberia Be Liberated From Its Past?

By ILENA SILVERMAN

Peter Dejong/AFP/Getty Images Charles Taylor, former president of Liberia, in April.

The recent news that The Hague has handed down a 50-year prison sentence to Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, brought to mind a couple of articles the magazine has published about that ravaged country. One was a moving excerpt from Helene Cooper’s memoir, “The House on Sugar Beach,” about growing up there in the 1970s and early ’80s, when the Liberian president, William Tolbert, was viciously murdered by a young rebel named Samuel Doe. Doe had the support of Taylor, who later became president himself.

Issouf Sanogo/AFP/Getty ImagesLiberia’s current president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, in 2011.

After Taylor’s brutal leadership, Liberians elected Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, profiled by the magazine in 2010. Sirleaf has done a lot to fight corruption in that war-town country and is respected by many in the West, but her own complicated relationship with Taylor reflects the entanglements, moral and other, so often in play in Africa.