Mr Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, said during his speech at the Lord Mayor’s banquet that he wanted a meeting of allies in London in January about Afghanistan, to set a timetable and ‘identify a process for transferring district by district to full Afghan control’.
Mr Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, said during his speech at the Lord Mayor’s banquet that he wanted a meeting of allies in London in January about Afghanistan, to set a timetable and ‘identify a process for transferring district by district to full Afghan control’. Mr Brown also decided that next year would be a good time to apologise for the deportation in past decades of 130,000 orphans to Australia. In the Queen’s speech at the opening of Parliament, the government announced a Bill to allow the Financial Services Authority to nullify bankers’ contracts if it judged their bonuses excessive. Other Bills obliged children to be well educated, old people to be cared for, the budget deficit to halve and floods to abate. Few of the 15 Bills will have time to pass into law. British Airways agreed to merge with Iberia, with the holding company to be incorporated in Spain and to have headquarters in London. BA will control 55 per cent. O2, owned by Spain’s Telefonica, became the biggest British telephone provider. The East Coast mainline franchise reverted to government control after National Express failed to make it pay; its fares will rise 5 per cent next year, compared with a 1.1 per cent average nationally. Thousands of nematode worms, originating from a Bristol rubbish dump, were sent into space for study at the orbiting Japanese Kibo laboratory.
In the Glasgow North East by-election, precipitated by the resignation as Speaker of Mr Michael Martin, now Lord Martin of Springburn, the Labour candidate gained 12,231 votes, 59 per cent of those cast, with the Scottish Nationalist candidate second with 4,120; the turnout was only 33 per cent.
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