As the Press Association reports, a High Court judge said today that Surrey County Council had "failed to have due regard to equality issues". The council said later that it had lost the case only on a "technical" challenge and the legal defeat would not prevent the scheme ultimately going ahead. The judge is expected to decide next month what orders, if any, to make against the council. It is expected that the authority will have to reconsider its flawed decision in the light of today's judgment. The authority's community library scheme is aimed at keeping its 52 libraries open. It involves removing all paid staff from 10 community libraries, leaving them to be run entirely by volunteers.
This is a tie that will snap - unless the issue is resolved."12.09pm: My colleagues Paul Owen and Peter Walker who are writing the phone hacking live blog have just posted a summary of all the latest developments.12.35pm: One of Ed Miliband's aides has been in touch to say that Miliband said that Rupert Murdoch should drop his bid for BSkyB yesterday, in his interview with Andrew Marr. He did not come out with it for the first time at the end of his news conference this morning, as I suggested earlier. (See 11.29am.) Sorry about that.12.45pm: Jeremy Hunt will make a statement in the Commons about phone hacking this afternoon. Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, is making one first, at 3.
Also, by way of encouragement,
kate spade outlet online, we have 10 copies to give away to the first 10 people to post "I want a copy please", alongside a nice comment relevant to the book. And if you're lucky enough to get in early, don't forget to email
Ginny.Hooker@guardian.co.uk as we can't track you down ourselves. Be nice to her too.We are sceptical about literary prizes. And yet – come on, confess – we like literary prizes as well.I'm not talking about the winning, though winning them can – and probably should – produce a potent, mingled sense of scepticism and pleasure. I'm talking about the divide we may feel upon hearing that a certain book has won an award.On one hand, there's the prize's obvious absurdity – its inevitable subjectivity, not to mention the plain silliness of deeming one book better than another.
The bill will be a "big step forward" for Britain, he says.Labour's Sadiq Khan asks if the Lib Dems will want to remove the 20% of appointed peers in future if the government legislates to have 80% elected.Clegg says he supports a fully-elected Lords. But an 80%-elected Lords would be better than having a Lords with no elected element.Q: Will the government be prepared to use the Parliament Act to drive this through?Clegg says the government will pursue this bill "as forcefully" as it can. If necessary, the Parliament Act will be used. But he hopes that won't be necessary.11.53am: In response to a question about his responsibilities, Clegg says he "supports" the prime minister. This prompts much laughing11.
Yet so disproportionate are the numbers that they should have raised questions – even with Mr Hilton. As the historian Niall Ferguson asks in his brilliant book Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World: "Was this the most efficient bureaucracy in history? Was a single British civil servant really able to run the lives of up to three million Indians, spread over 17,000 square miles, as some district officers were supposed to do?"The answer, of course,
kate spade bags, was no. As Mr Ferguson explains, beneath the tiny top layer of overwhelmingly British officials was another, much larger bureaucracy composed of Indians who carried out day-to-day administration. And below them, says Mr Ferguson, "was a veritable army of lesser public employees… Without this auxiliary force of civil servants who were native born, the 'heaven-born' would have been impotent.
He could introduce a version of the ASBO for the rich — a RASBO — that would be served on anybody who acts against the interests of the wider community. A civil rather than a criminal order, it could catch the tax avoiders as well as the tax evaders, the ill-mannered along with the illegal.Yes, like the original ASBOs, RASBOs could become a "badge of honour" and be criticised as a form of "punitive populism". But they would be a way of society expressing its displeasure about certain forms of behaviour. Everybody, rich or poor, should uphold the spirit of our society as well as abide by the letter of its laws.11.19am: Here's the latest on public sector pensions.Paul Noon, general secretary of Prospect,
marc by marc jacobs tote, the union for public sector professionals, told Sky that the November strike created "a shift in the atmosphere" and that subsequently "proper negotiations started".
Chat Sentinela
