Far-right thugs, football hooligans blamed for violence at London march

London’s Metropolitan Police said that physical violence by far-right thugs and football hooligans on the city’s streets Saturday was more dangerous than the far-larger pro-Palestinian demonstration that was largely peaceful.

An estimated 300,000 people took to London’s streets on Saturday — as protesters did across other major European cities such as Paris and Brussels — to call for a cease-fire in Israel’s bombing campaign on Gaza. The London march was between Hyde Park and the U.S. Embassy.

Ecuador’s new president might be ready to kick Julian Assange out of London embassy

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been living in the Ecuadorian embassy for six years, but the country’s new president is ready to evict.

According to The Sunday Express, Foreign Office minister Sir Alan Duncan is “said to be involved in a diplomatic effort” just weeks ahead of President Lenin Moreno’s visit.

Brexit Will Mean Job Losses In The City Of London, Warns RBS Chairman

Brexit will cause “considerable” damage to the United Kingdom’s economy, the chairman of RBS has warned.

Sir Howard Davies said today that jobs would be lost in the City of London as a result of referendum result.

Sadiq Khan: London mayor who took on Trump won't flinch in fight with Uber

Sadiq Khan, the first Muslim mayor of a western capital city, is no stranger to making powerful enemies, and few come as mighty and ill-tempered as Donald Trump. The mayor of London and the US president have clashed several times – spats that appeared engineered by Trump to show who’s boss. Khan has not flinched, chastising and ridiculing Trump with apparent relish.

News that the 46-year-old son of a Pakistani bus driver was taking on Uber would have surprised few seasoned Khan-watchers. His 15 months as mayor of a London navigating one of the most tumultuous periods of its modern history have left him battle-hardened rather than bowed.

Conservative media call for internment of Muslims following London attacks

BBC: Seven pedestrians killed in central London terrorist attack. On June 3, a van drove into a crowd of people on London Bridge around 10 p.m. Saturday evening London time. Three men jumped out of the van and attacked people at a nearby market with knives. Seven people were killed in the attack. From the June 5 BBC article:

    Police said that the attack began at 21:58 BST on Saturday when a van drove on to London Bridge from the north side.

No left turn for London's new mayor

Everyone on the left is bound to welcome Sadiq Khan's clear victory over Tory Zac Goldsmith to become London's new mayor in succession to Boris Johnson. Khan took 44 per cent of the vote to Goldsmith's 35 per cent, ending eight years of Tory rule at city hall.

The population of London is one of the most ethnically diverse in the world, with 44 per cent of the city's 8.6 million people from minority backgrounds. The election of a Muslim bus-driver's son who grew up on a council estate as mayor is fitting testimony to that, and also a welcome riposte to the racist campaign waged by the Tories.

Who profits from austerity?

On Saturday, London rocked to the sounds of 250,000 marchers protesting austerity in the U.K. Organized by The People's Assembly Against Austerity, the day's events (marches were also held in Liverpool and Glasgow) announce the beginning of a campaign against the cutbacks to services by the Conservative government headed by David Cameron.

Recently returned to power with an unexpected majority, the Conservatives wants to resume the tight spending policies -- temporarily suspended in the run-up to the election -- that have worsened unemployment all over Europe.

Lavish Canada House reopening in London cost taxpayers more than $200K

As the Harper government was tightening its belt to wipe out the federal deficit, officials at Canada House in London, England, spared no expense on a splashy re-opening fit for a queen.

Internal invoices for the Feb. 19 posh event on Trafalgar Square show taxpayers were billed more than $200,000 for a few hours of wine-sipping, beef-eating and plaque-unveiling, as well as a set of complimentary keys for Queen Elizabeth II, the guest of honour, and Prince Philip.

Million Mask March Activists Clash With Police In London, Russell Brand Joins Crowds

Thousands of anti-capitalist activists took to the streets of central London on Bonfire night to protest against "political oppression", with ten people arrested as masked marchers clashed with police.

Demonstrators wearing Guy Fawkes masks and carrying banners and placards descended on Trafalgar Square before marching towards Parliament Square at 6.30pm. Protesters chanted anti-establishment slogans as they milled around, and some who had climbed on to the base of Nelson's Column let off fireworks.

Campus police deny asking protester to leave

A Western University dean is demanding answers about how campus police broke up a student demonstration during Orientation Week.

Nick Dyer-Witheford, acting dean of the faculty of information and media studies, contacted the university to request a review into whether campus police turfed protesters or asked them to move their demonstration to another area of campus.

An official from the university who spoke with campus police maintains the group was merely asked to relocate.

University Of London Bans Students From Protesting

The UK's largest university has banned students from protesting - and has threatened legal action if students do not comply.

The University of London decision, which has been branded "draconian", follows recent student protests calling for equal working conditions for the university's staff.

Idle No More protest brings more than 1,000 to the street in London

They halted traffic for 90 minutes on Canada’s busiest highway Wednesday, more than 1,000 protesters from area First Nations. They’re part of a grassroots movement — Idle No More — gaining momentum across Canada. Jennifer O’Brien explores the story behind the protest.

Committee votes council a 3.1% raise

An "automatic" pay raise of 3.1% for members of London city council won support Monday from council's finance and administrative services committee.

It was anything but automatic, however, as committee members fretted about whether they deserve a raise and some talked about doing without.

Administration advised the committee that under a council policy, council members, who haven't had a raise since 2008, were entitled to one. The policy calls for a 3.1% hike this year based on the Consumer Price Index.

"If you don't accept this, you are afraid of what the community will say," Coun. Harold Usher said when several members opposed it.

"It's utter nonsense to say we don't deserve it," he said. "We're not getting the proper remuneration right now."

Make rioters do social, military service

From the vantage point of middle age, little is more depressing than the prospect of becoming an angry, wizened old coot, slouched on his front porch, tossing little sticks at passing teenagers.

Which is why I am a little reluctant to wade into the London, Ont., riots debate, if indeed it can be called that. What's to debate? Getting mad at these designer-panted, Xbox-playing, skateboard-riding tween-agers (a teenager being a young hobbit in his 20s, not fully mature, in Tolkien's eyes) is too easy. Fish in a barrel.

On the other hand, these little fish did trash a London city street, attack police and firefighters with bricks, boards and bottles, and burn a CTV News van, at a cost estimated at $100,000. The 1,000-strong mob could easily have killed someone. That it didn't is a testament to either brilliant police work or, more likely, luck.

Just as in the aftermath of the Vancouver Stanley Cup riots, it's reasonable to ask why. No doubt the soft-hearted will proffer the usual answers - alienation, disenfranchisement, lousy employment prospects and the like. "Poor dears, we've failed them so." And I think, actually, that we have failed them.

But not in the way that some may think. We've failed them by giving them too much and asking too little in return.

Fleming Drive Riot: Rioters Hit London, Ont. Near Fanshawe College

LONDON, Ont. - A heaving, intoxicated crowd of up to 1,000 people spent much of Saturday night fuelling a large street fire and attacking authorities who tried to intervene as St. Patrick's Day celebrations in London, Ont., went awry.

The upheaval on Fleming Drive in the city's east end drew about 65 police in riot gear and 10 firefighters to the scene.

The area, near Fanshawe College, is heavily populated by students and has been the site of previous disturbances, but none as large as the latest one, authorities said.

"It was pretty tense and it was kind of unusual, even for that area," District Fire Chief Jim Holmes told The Canadian Press.

"That particular area has had some incidents in the past but I don't think ever to this scale and this number of people and this length."

Olympics 2012 security: welcome to lockdown London

London 2012 will see the UK's biggest mobilisation of military and security forces since the second world war and the effects will linger long after the athletes have left


As a metaphor for the London Olympics, it could hardly be more stark. The much-derided "Wenlock" Olympic mascot is now available in London Olympic stores dressed as a Metropolitan police officer. For £10.25 you, too, can own the ultimate symbol of the Games: a member of by far the biggest and most expensive security operation in recent British history packaged as tourist commodity. Eerily, his single panoptic-style eye, peering out from beneath the police helmet, is reminiscent of the all-seeing eye of God so commonly depicted at the top of Enlightenment paintings. In these, God's eye maintained a custodial and omniscient surveillance on His unruly subjects far below on terra firma.

The imminent Olympics will take place in a city still recovering from riots that the Guardian-LSE Reading the Riots project showed were partly fuelled by resentment at their lavish cost. Last week, the UK spending watchdog warned that the overall costs of the Games were set to be at least £11bn – £2 bn over even recently inflated budgets. When major infrastructure projects such as Crossrail, speeded up for the Games, are factored in, the figure may be as high as £24bn, according to Sky News. The estimated cost put forward only seven years ago when the Games were won was £2.37 bn.

Parents should have more legal leeway in spanking: London mayor

Boris Johnson sympathizes with parents who just aren’t sure how hard they can smack their children – legally speaking.

The mayor of London told the BBC he thinks parents should have more leeway, comments in line with the argument that last summer’s London riots were, in part, caused by parents easing up on physical punishment.

“People do feel anxious about imposing discipline on their children, whether the law will support them...,” he told the BBC.

“Parents ... should be seen as the natural figures of authority.”

A U.K. law in place since 2004 allows parents to smack their kids without causing the “reddening of the skin,” according to The Telegraph.

London Metropolitan Police Spend $54,000 Calling Speaking Clock

LONDON -- For Britain's biggest police force, time really is money.

Figures show that London's Metropolitan Police spent 35,000 pounds ($54,000) on calls to a speaking clock service between 2009 and 2011. By recording such calls, police presumably obtained proof of the times they entered into their official written reports.

The force also spent more than 200,000 pounds calling directory inquiries over the same period.

Data released after a freedom of information request from the Press Association news agency shows members of the force made more than 110,000 calls to the speaking clock, at 31 pence a shot.

The force said it was committed to cost-cutting, but there were "evidential and operational reasons" for officers and staff to need to know the exact time, and many had no direct Internet access.

Original Article
Source: Huff 

Plant got big federal tax break

If London's Electro-Motive plant is closed and its jobs moved to Indiana, it'll be after having milked the benefits of a billion-dollar tax break once trumpeted on the plant floor by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Three years ago, Harper donned protective goggles and posed with workers to chat up how his government had created a $1-billion tax break for industry broadly and a $5-million break to grease the wheels for sales by the locomotive-maker.

"Ontario is the heart, it is still the engine of the Canadian economy," Harper said then. "There's no reason the Ontario economy can't be as strong as the economy in any other part of this country."

Harper wasn't talking Thursday, as many of those same workers faced off with a company now owned by Caterpillar Inc. that seemingly wants to slash wages and benefits by more than half or close the 61-year-old facility.

While a Harper spokesperson said she'd seek a comment from him, the task of answering was delegated to an Industry Canada spokesperson.

Riot In Tottenham After Protest At Mark Duggan's Killing By Police

PRESS ASSOCIATION -- Petrol bombs have been thrown at police, two patrol cars attacked and a bus set alight after members of a community where a young man was shot dead by police took to the streets to demand "justice".

The 29-year-old, named locally as father-of-four Mark Duggan, died at the scene in Tottenham, north London, on Thursday.

About 120 people marched from the local Broadwater Farm area to Tottenham Police Station on Saturday, forcing officers to close the High Road and put traffic diversions in place.

After night fell, two police cars parked about 200 yards from the police station were set upon. Later a bus was set on fire at the junction of the High Road and Brook Street, which belched black smoke out into the air and was clearly going to be completely burnt out.