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Prospects for Wednesday, 13 August

Brian Thornton | 10:29 UK time, Wednesday, 13 August 2008

Good morning, here are programme producer Shaminder's early thoughts on what stories to cover tonight:

"Andrew North, Warwick and Peter are still in Georgia. They will be looking at the internal situation in Georgia. Is it curtains for Saakashvili? What do people really think about him, and the way the conflict has panned out?

There's deep disagreement about the way forward at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels. They're expected to endorse the French peace plan, and send it to the UN - but apart from that there are divisions over what to do next - whether to send in international peacekeepers for instance, and divisions over who was really to blame in the conflict. What shall we do on all this?

The Bank of England publishes its latest report on inflation in a minute. Tougher times ahead are expected. The number of people claiming jobless benefits rose in July by the largest amount since 1992. Paul Mason is on the case.

Prince Charles is warning that companies developing genetically modified crops could cause what he calls the "biggest environmental disaster of all time". What's he talking about?

The Policy Exchange suggests that people from Liverpool, Sunderland and Bradford should move to London, Oxford and Cambridge. Everyone will be talking about it all day, but should we?

John MacDougall, MP for Central Fife has died. Another Scottish by-election.

What's going on with Zimbabwe?

What else?

Yours, Shaminder"

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

  • Comment number 2.

    OH BLOGDOG - WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

    Pasted from AvensisTom (Tuesday) in lieu of chewed post above.

    Why doesn't Paul Mason report on how fiat currencies and Central Banks actually work?


    Everyone should spend 50 minutes watching the above video - it will open your eyes.

    IT'S THE SAME LINK GUYS! And not taken down from Tuesday.

  • Comment number 3.

    I love that line - written at 10.29 am: 'The Bank of England publishes its latest report on inflation in a minute'. So let's have 30 secs on on the economy - before turning
    to the next Scottish by-election in Thane
    of Fife's backyard. Will that be delayed or
    will Labour cut and run? The Curtis Fine
    Papers company in nearby Guardbridge
    has recently gone into liquidation - so I
    guess they won't be printing the ballot
    papers this time round .... .... Of course
    we were told in Glasgow East that the
    Prime Minister of the day does not take
    part in by-elections but will Brown stick
    to that rule this time I wonder? Labour
    in Scotland is still in the middle of its
    own leadership contest too - with an
    interesting story in The Herald quoting
    complaints from two of the contenders
    about London interference. Wheelan
    has been spotted at one of the union
    adoption meetings in Glasgow which
    plumped for Ian Gray ...........A sheer
    coincidence it is claimed as Charlie
    Wheelan is apparently the "Political Director" of Amicus these days when
    not doing programmes on fishing for
    the television from a wee but and ben
    in The Highlands .......

    Why not bring him on to offer odds?
    But balance that with e.g. J Curtice
    or a neutral political scientist .........

  • Comment number 4.

    Re # Barrie and Avensis.
    Thanx for this stuff. I'm in that section of the class sliding one arm up just a little bit, and looking at the floor when teacher says "Hands up who doesn't know what a fiat currency is?" I promise to check out the link you gave and hand my homework in on time.
    Re Gangofone.
    Maybe we can agree on one issue. In trying to check out the newspapers etc that I've missed recently, I thought I detected the whiff of anti-semitism in the treatment of David Miliband taking a run at the PM's job. Did all those commentators and columnists really feel him to be 'without substance or support' or 'geeky'? Or was a deeper dislike here somewhere? To me as a British voter, given the choice of DM or Brown, I'd go for Miliband every time. I think he's very clever, competent, and socially accomplished in a way that Brown never will be and, as politicians of the 3 old parties go, I find that he makes a reasonable effort to give a straight answer to a direct question. If anti-semitism is at work here, it is certainly to be deplored, and I can appreciate your wish to stand out against this. However, this doesn't deal with all aspects of Miliband being British Foreign Secretary, since as a Jewish man, he has an partiality towards Israeli interests, I would suggest. Surely we need a grown up debate about the fact that when Britain wages war on an Arab nation, people called Miliband, or Straw or Rifkind are high-placed in the decision making.
    Chanting anti-semitism and looking for bans on debating certain topics, has had its day, and only makes the debate more bitter. You object to posters routinely referring to Jewish people, yet any discussion of any major issue, ranging from the British Cabinet, through the British media, the financial and commercial sectors, landownership, Rich Lists etc, and running on to the EU, United Nations, the Russian Oligarches, Nobel Prize-Winners etc. etc. will find Jewish people, massively represented. So precisely why should a poster feel that he/she mustn't mention this, if they feel it relevent to their point? On discussing, for example,Georgia, we'll quickly encounter Kouchner and Sarchozy, and US presidential candidates, who effectively received affirmation of their candidacies, at a major convention of Jewish American groups, will probably be getting their foreign policy advice from Kagan and Rubin.

  • Comment number 5.

    Too early to go with the MacDougall story - especially if you don't cover it from Scotland. At least wait until after the funeral and a few people from all parties are back from hols.

    Come September, can we have more serious by-election coverage than we got over Glasgow East? Some local comment from Brian Taylor would probably be much more relevant than Michael Crick's Westmidden village view.

  • Comment number 6.

    #2

    Thanks for the video , I found it informative and interesting.

    At first thought I would lean towards the Gold Standard , but I need to mull this one over for awhile to reach a conclusion.

  • Comment number 7.

    ALL CREDIT DUE TO AVENSISTOM (#6 and 2)

    Yeah. That gold stuff can be a bit of a let down. Especially when you find your national champion has been eating food designed on a Swiss computer and training at an Australian performance farm for half the year. Not to mention having a Martian grandmother. Oh - sorry, I wandered off to the Olympics.

  • Comment number 8.

    Grumpy-jon.
    A debate about why people, of faith are high placed and making decisions from a specific perspective, sounds like an EU debate. (NFG will come of it)
    Good luck with your quest!

  • Comment number 9.



    Where was James Bond? Did he get stuck in a pipe?


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