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Thursday, October 21, 2010

The new British coalition government has warned local authorities in the United Kingdom not to provide tax breaks to branches of the Church of Scientology. After an investigation by The Guardian newspaper revealed that several local authorities have granted Scientology tax breaks worth over a million pounds, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles intervened to urge councils to end the practice.

Pickles noted in a statement that Scientology was not officially recognised in the UK as a religion or a registered charity and was not eligible for tax relief. Pickles commented, “I do not believe the majority of the public would want their own council to be giving special tax breaks to such a controversial organisation.”

The minister’s intervention followed the disclosure by The Guardian that at least four local authorities have given Scientology lucrative tax discounts on branches in their areas. These included:

• The City of London Corporation, which gave an 80% tax exemption worth £1.3 million to the flagship Scientology centre in the City of London. The corporation justified the exemption on the basis that Scientology could be considered to be a charity either for the advancement of religion “or other purposes beneficial to the community”. It said that it feared being sued by the organisation if it discontinued the exemption.

• Westminster City Council granted 80% rates relief to the Scientology Celebrity Centre in the Bayswater district of London. This saved Scientology £165,303 over the past ten years, though as of July 2010 the centre is no longer in use. The council determined that Scientology was a “non-registered charity” that is “beneficial to the community”.

• Birmingham City Council awarded the Church of Scientology Religious Education College an 80% tax discount on the grounds that the property was an educational institution.

• The City of Sunderland gave the Church of Scientology’s branch in the city tax relief worth £30,000 over five years.

Camden London Borough Council refused to disclose whether and how much tax relief had been granted to the Scientology branch in the London Borough of Camden. Other local authorities, including Manchester City Council and Mid Sussex District Council, said that they charged Scientology the full commercial rate.

In response to The Guardian report, Eric Pickles issued a statement saying that Scientology should not receive privileged tax status and did not deserve to do so, “Tolerance and freedom of expression are important British values, but this does not mean that the likes of Church of Scientology deserve favoured tax treatment over and above other business premises. The Church of Scientology is not a registered charity, since the Charity Commission has ruled that it does not provide a public benefit. Nor are its premises a recognised place of worship. Councils may award charitable relief. They should take into consideration the Charity Commission’s rulings when weighing up whether to do so. I do not believe the majority of the public would want their own council to be giving special tax breaks to such a controversial organisation.”

The controversy was the latest in a series of disputes involving Scientology’s tax status in the UK. Scientology is not officially recognised as a religion. The Charity Commission for England and Wales rejected an application in 1999 by Scientology for charitable status, ruling that its activities did not meet the “public benefit” test. However, in 2000 Scientology obtained exemption from Value Added Tax (VAT) on the grounds that its services were educational and non-profitable. It successfully sued HM Revenue and Customs for the return of £8 million in overpaid VAT.

A spokesman for the Church of Scientology told The Guardian, “Scientology is very popular with those who have visited our churches, met with Scientologists and observed or utilised our numerous community activities that effectively address drug abuse, illiteracy, declining moral values, human rights violations, criminality and more. Local council authorities, government bodies in this country and many others, and the European court of human rights have all recognised the religious nature of Scientology or the fact that Scientologists are actively helping those in their communities as a direct reflection of their religious beliefs.”

Birmingham City Council told the local Sunday Mercury newspaper, “We have noted Mr Pickles’ comments and will take them on board.”

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia — The Sunshine Coast Regional Council has formally ratified the rejection of the 24 hour McDonald’s in Minyama. The decision comes after council rejected the proposal earlier this week at a general committee meeting.

McDonald’s forwarded an 11th hour compromise to deputy mayor Tim Dwyer in order to overturn the decision. The compromised had included reducing the opening hours to 6am to 10pm Sunday to Thursday and until 12am Friday and Saturday.

Local member of federal parliament Peter Slipper has said that any new development be given serious and honest consideration to the various potential impacts on the community.

“It is important that any new development, including fast food outlets, give serious and honest consideration to the various potential impacts of the project on the community. This is important as society strives to balance the need for development with the need to support the lifestyle choices and wishes of residents,” said Mr Slipper in an e-mail to Wikinews.

Local residents who had opposed the development had support from local councilor Chris Thompson. “We already have a 24-hour McDonald’s at Mooloolaba, only one kilometre away, and there are already [anti-social] issues at that site,” he said.

Councillors ratified the rejection unanimously. McDonald’s will now fight the decision in court.

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia — The Sunshine Coast Regional Council has formally ratified the rejection of the 24 hour McDonald’s in Minyama. The decision comes after council rejected the proposal earlier this week at a general committee meeting.

McDonald’s forwarded an 11th hour compromise to deputy mayor Tim Dwyer in order to overturn the decision. The compromised had included reducing the opening hours to 6am to 10pm Sunday to Thursday and until 12am Friday and Saturday.

Local member of federal parliament Peter Slipper has said that any new development be given serious and honest consideration to the various potential impacts on the community.

“It is important that any new development, including fast food outlets, give serious and honest consideration to the various potential impacts of the project on the community. This is important as society strives to balance the need for development with the need to support the lifestyle choices and wishes of residents,” said Mr Slipper in an e-mail to Wikinews.

Local residents who had opposed the development had support from local councilor Chris Thompson. “We already have a 24-hour McDonald’s at Mooloolaba, only one kilometre away, and there are already [anti-social] issues at that site,” he said.

Councillors ratified the rejection unanimously. McDonald’s will now fight the decision in court.

Friday, June 5, 2009

The Labour government of United Kingdom Prime Minister Gordon Brown received multiple blows this week after a spate of resignations from the cabinet and losses in local and council elections.

As of this morning, six ministers — Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, Communities and Local Government Minister Hazel Blears, Work and Pensions Minister James Purnell, Transport Minister Geoff Hoon, Employment Minister Tony McNulty and Defence Minister John Hutton — had all handed in notices of resignation from the cabinet as fallout from the Members’ expenses scandal spread.

Mr Purnell’s resignation included an admonition for Gordon Brown to step down as Prime Minister and allow the Labour Party to choose a new leader. In his letter of resignation, Purnell told the Prime Minister “I owe it to our party to say what I believe no matter how hard that may be. I now believe your continued leadership makes a Conservative victory more, not less likely.”

However, when John Hutton, a known critic of Brown who once predicted that Brown would be a ‘Fucking disaster’^[1], resigned he gave his full backing to the Prime Minister. “I firmly believe that Gordon Brown is the right man to lead our party and our country”.

Incoming results from Thursday’s local elections also show heavy losses for Labour, with the party in control of none of the councils which have yet declared results. The last Labour-run County councils — Lancashire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire — were all lost. In Staffordshire there was a wipeout of Labour, going from 32 council seats to just three. Another telling figure was the result from St Ives in Cambridgeshire: Labour’s candidates placed last, behind the Official Monster Raving Loony Party‘s “Lord Toby Jug”.

While the results from the 2009 European Elections, which the United Kingdom also voted in on Thursday, will not be counted until Sunday, polling before the election indicated Labour’s share of the vote could be only the fourth largest, after the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and UKIP.

Labour’s troubles have prompted the Prime Minister to re-shuffle his cabinet, with Health Minister Alan Johnson becoming the new Home Secretary. His role of Health Secretary was taken by Andy Burnham. Tony Blair’s former spin doctor Peter Mandelson taking an expanded portfolio along with Gordon Brown’s own former title of First Minister.

Staying in their positions are Jim Murphy, the Scottish Secretary, Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary and Ed Balls, the Children, Schools and Families Secretary. Peter Hain, who resigned from the government last year returns as Welsh Secretary. Ben Bradshaw becomes the new Culture Secretary. Lord Adonis has become the new Transport Secretary, meaning that there are now two Lords in charge in major spending Government departments, and three Peers in the Cabinet. This has caused some controversy for Brown.

Drawing from the business world, Sir Alan Sugar, the hard-nosed tycoon who hosts the UK’s version of The Apprentice, has been appointed as ‘enterprise Tsar’.

There are now just three full members of the Cabinet who are women: Yvette Cooper, Baroness Royall and Harriet Harman.

Despite the setbacks, Brown said at a press conference this evening that he would “fight on” and rejected calls to step aside, saying “I have faith in doing my duty… I believe in never walking away in difficult times.”

However, even after such a dramatic day the bad news kept on coming for Brown. Caroline Flint, hitherto the Europe Minister resigned from government, attacking Brown’s use of female politicians as “female window dressing”. She accused Brown of running a “two-tier” government with an “inner” cabinet circle. Later Geraldine Smith, the Labour MP for Morecambe and Lunesdale criticized Flint saying “She should have counted to ten before she wrote that letter”.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

On Monday, Australian telecommunications company Telstra has introduced dual carrier HSPA+ standard for broadband Internet business customers in the Next G network. This is the first time this technology is being introduced on national scale. The bandwidths the users can deploy increased into two to three times, with Telstra becoming the world’s fastest national mobile broadband service. The switch started with enabling the service for premium users. After some feedback, Telstra may expand the plan.

The higher speeds for wireless are intended to simplify and ease multitasking of users.

John Paitaridis, Telstra’s executive director, network products and services in Enterprise & Government, said “One of the reasons we decided to launch first to Enterprise And Government and Business customers is that clients are saying that their ability to access applications quicker makes a difference to their business and when they start to equate time savings and doing calculations around productivity it does become a return on investment.”

Telstra Business Group Managing Director Deena Shiff also stated that the efforts aren’t as sudden as it might seem, having feedback of many users as the base.

Australians are telling us they can’t afford to be tied to the desk all day and these new speeds mean they can now access mobile broadband at speeds typically reserved for the office. We have been deploying the high-speed capability in the network since December 2009 and now, with the launch of the new Ultimate USB Modem, these new speeds are available to customers across all capital city CBDs and associated airports, selected metropolitan areas and in more than 100 regional locations. These high-speed zones cover approximately 50 per cent of the Australian population and match the areas of highest customer demand and will make the frustration of waiting around for files to download a thing of the past. In other metropolitan and regional areas, the Telstra Ultimate USB Modem offers typical download speeds ranging from 550kbps up to 8Mbps… Our customers have told us that they want higher speed mobile broadband so they can work more flexibly outside of the office and we are delighted to be the first in the world to offer these new blistering speeds on a national network. The new Telstra Ultimate USB Modem provides customers with the speeds needed to handle large files, multi-task and update cloud-hosted applications effortlessly on the go when they are in a coverage area.

Previous modems were able to reach peak speed 21Mbps, with real life speeds ranging from 0.5Mbps to 8 Mbps. The theoretically expected maximum of the new technology is 42Mbps with user speeds varying between 1.1 and 20 Mbps. The new speed is twice as fast. This is caused by that the dual-carrier “Evolved High-Speed Packet Access” technology allows networks to send and receive wireless data using two channels simultaneously. This technology can be deployed on Next G networks. Telstra switched to them in February, thus making the switch to HSPA possible now.

Telstra delayed the implementation of the new technology until elections end. This decision was intended to avoid wrong interpretation of them by Coalition. Coalition’s claims include that wireless networks can be an alternative to the Labor party “fibre-to-the-home” proposal to introduce more expensive wired Internet. The announcement of the new technology, initially planned on August 25, was delayed, with Telstra spokesman Craig Middleton explaining, “We just didn’t want to feel like we were influencing the [telecommunications] debate.”

The political parties have different plans on development and funds on the Internet. The Labor party aims to spend AUD 43 billion to bring 1 Gbps wired Internet nationwide, and the Coalition plans to spend AUD 6 billion to introduce a variety of improvements including upgrade of existing copper Internet as well as expansion of wireless Internet to support 12Mbps. Opposition leader Tony Abbott has said in the past that Australians shouldn’t assume wireless technologies won’t ever be comparable to fixed-line technology. Telstra’s upgrade shows that wireless broadband is reaching the 100 Mbps minimum speeds promised by Labor’s national broadband network.

Telstra has only 2000 devices which support the new technology. This is why the opportunity to try it out is being given only to the Business plan customers, and they receive it for the same price as they were paying for the previous NextG plan. Since October 5, the device will be available for sale, with the Business customers able to buy it with 75% discount and a prepaid data allowance. The upgrade is expected to cover roughly 50% of the population. This is happening at the same time as one of Telstra’s competitors Vodafone is doubling data download quotas on mobile cap plans.

As some testing showed, real life download speeds reached only about the half of the maximum. Telstra executive director of wireless Mike Wright explained that the predicted figures were the estimates, with real life speeds lower due to interfering environmental conditions: “It’s possible to achieve better than the typical user speed claims, but those claims occur in the ideal network environment with good signal quality. When you’re out on the streets you get a lot of variation where the network is subject to signal quality, your location and the network load.”

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Much of the interior of New South Wales, Australia continues to be affected by floods caused by heavy rains. With more rain predicted, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has issued a flood watch for all western flowing rivers in New South Wales from the Namoi River in the north of the state to the Murrumbidgee River in the south.

Coonamble, in the central-western plains district of New South Wales, has been isolated by major flooding of the Castlereagh River. The State Emergency Service estimates that around 2,760 people are currently trapped in Coonamble. Mudgee, Canowindra, Eugowra, Dubbo, Wellington, and Young have also been severely affected.

A number of major highways in Western districts of the state have been closed or had diversions put in place, including the Newell Highway near Mirrool Bridge, the Castlereagh Highway between Gilgandra and Walgett, the Oxley Highway between Gilgandra and Warren, and the Lachlan Valley Way between 28km north of Cowra and 6km South Of Gooloogong. A number of local roads have also been affected.

Emergency Management NSW has declared the local government areas of Mid-Western Region, Weddin, Wellington, Warrumbungle, Cootamundra, Coonamble, Harden, and Young as natural disaster areas where significant damage to property and infrastructure has occurred.

Evacuation orders have been issued for parts of Wagga Wagga and parts of Coonamble due to flooding.

The SES is advising people who require assistance due to flooding to call 132 500 and to contact 000 for life threatening emergencies. For road closure information, residents are encouraged to contact their local council.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 (the QE2) will not be sailing to Cape Town, South Africa. Cape Town has refused the vessel permission to berth for use by owner Dubai World as a floating hotel.

The Transnet National Ports Authority said that the famed vessel is much too large for Cape Town and that the facilites for the ship do not exist. Dubai World had hoped the ocean liner could serve as a hotel to accommodate football fans attending the World Cup and had previously told the Associated Press that Cape Town was among several possible destinations. No others have been named.

Transnet National Ports Authority port manager Sanjay Govan commented that “It’s the length of stay that was an issue … They wanted to stay much longer than just the World Cup. You have to sacrifice a normal cargo-working berth for such an operation. You wouldn’t do that for such a long time.” Dubai World has confirmed the trip to South Africa is off. South Africa’s Protea Hotels were thought to have won a contract to perform the management of the hotel during its stay in Cape Town. Dubai World also considered private terminals but met the same issue.

Dubai World’s investment arm Istithmar World paid Cunard US$100 million for the British liner in 2007. Since then it has been moored off Dubai’s Port Rashid, having arrived in the emirate in 2008. Original plans were to create a luxury floating hotel for tourists that would be moored beside an artificial island in the shape of a palm tree, but this idea was cancelled in the wake of global market uncertainty.

State-owned conglomerate Dubai World is currently in severe financial difficulties. The firm is seeking an extra six months to pay at least US$22 million in debts and the government has supported a six month delay as the first step towards a restructuring plan. Dubai World’s main units Nakheel and Limitless are the most indebted companies. World markets and media reacted sharply to the revelations on November 25 last year.

Dubai World is rumoured to need to sell assets, including the Queen Elizabeth 2. The company has refused to confirm or deny this, only stating that “There are a number of options being considered for the QE2. Istithmar World is considering which option will best maximise value of the vessel.”

The same year as the Queen Elizabeth 2 the conglomerate also obtained Barneys New York, a luxury retailer based in the United States. Istithmar World paid US$942.3 million for the company. Istithmar World chief executive David Jackson resigned last week; he presided over the acquirements. In December a New York foreclosure auction sold off the W Hotel Union Square for US$2 million, which was owned by Istithmar World.