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| Uncle jailed for murdering niece A man obsessed with child abuse and torture is jailed for life after murdering his 12-year-old niece by stabbing and strangling her in Manchester. bbc.co.uk |
Red Cap murders: Baghdad court clears Iraqi pair Baghdad judge rules there is insufficient evidence against two men accused of killing six Royal Military police officers in 2003Two Iraqi men accused of murdering six Royal Military police officers in 2003 were acquitted today after a Baghdad judge ruled there was not enough evidence to convict them.Hamza Hateer and Ismael al-Fartusi were freed from custody, but Hateer was referred for further investigation on one charge of stealing a British service weapon during the bloody melee in which the Red Caps were killed.The judge, Balee Hamdi, told the Guardian: "I built my decisions on the evidence that was before me. The evidence was not sufficient to convict them."John Miller, whose son Corporal Simon Miller was among the dead, said he was "devastated" by the news and felt let down by the British government. "My son was let down so badly in life, now he has been let down so badly in death," he said.Before the trial, relatives of the dead men were told they would not be allowed access to court, but would be sent email updates by the British embassy. Miller said he had heard "nothing" from British authorities today."This is exactly why we wanted to be at the trial, we needed to be there. We were denied that, we were denied everything," he said.A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: "We know that the families of the victims will be very disappointed and our thoughts remain with them but we have no choice but to respect the decision of the Iraqi judges. They will have weighed up the credibility and reliability of the evidence before reaching their verdict."However, this is not the end. Seven further arrest warrants remain outstanding and are being actively pursued by the Iraqi authorities."The Red Caps who died were Sergeant Simon Hamilton-Jewell, 41; Corporal Russell Aston, 30; Corporal Paul Long, 24; Lance Corporal Benjamin Hyde, 23; Corporal Miller, 21; and Lance Corporal Thomas Keys, 20.The Iraqi government announced the arrest of eight suspects in February. It is believed they had been detained for a year; six of the men were later freed without charge.During a three-and-a-half-hour hearing in the central criminal court in northern Baghdad, 11 witnesses testified that they had not seen the two accused kill any of the men, who were cornered by a mob in the southern Iraqi town of Majar al-Kabir.Ahmed Hassan Sayed, a policeman at the station where the MPs were attacked, described in chilling detail scenes of chaos in the minutes before the incident."I was inside the station with the British soldiers," he told the court. "They had been coming twice a week for training. In the morning on the other side of the village, there had been a British military convoy in the market. There was a dispute with people there because they insisted on using dogs to search. The locals refused."I heard they had killed more than 10 people in the market during this dispute. Then I heard sounds of shooting that got closer and closer. We saw a lot of people approaching the building. I told all my employees to leave. I also told the British to leave. They refused, they stayed in the courtyard. They said they were only there to train and hadn't done anything wrong."What I understand is that this was an act of tribal vengeance. They wanted justice for the killing of their relatives. We fled through the back window and the British stayed behind."An inquest in March 2006 heard that some of the MPs' bodies were found riddled with bullets, while others had marks that suggested they had been dragged, tied up or beaten with rifles.The coroner, Nicholas Gardiner, recorded a narrative verdict of unlawful killing, saying the six soldiers should have been better equipped but their deaths could not have been avoided.Judge Hamdi said the evidence before him meant he could reach no other verdict. However, he acknowledged he treated more leniently acts of violence he deemed to be carried out in the name of resistance."If they are here for resistance against occupiers, I will try to lessen the sentence," he said.Additional reporting Enas IbrahimIraqMilitaryMartin Chulovguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Charity calls for hostage release Save the Children calls for the unconditional and immediate release of a British security consultant who was kidnapped in Somalia. bbc.co.uk |
Five reasons why the spending review plans are a tall order The government's hazy vision of a state that is more localised, flexible, and above all cheaper, is a long, long way off and there are many obstacles in its path, says guest blogger Steven ToftWelcome to the first guest post on my blog by Steven Toft, who blogs on "Business Bullshit, Corporate Crap and other stuff from the World of Work" at FlipChart Fairy TalesThis week's Comprehensive Spending Review imposed cuts averaging 19% across all government departments, with some being asked to cut by as much as 30%. To maintain anything like the level of provision we have been used to, the public sector will need to reorganise and become a lot cleverer and more creative about how it delivers its services.The government has a hazy vision of a more localised, flexible, responsive and, above all, cheaper state. Unfortunately, the organisations it is asking to implement this change are some of the most bureaucratic, inflexible, and hierarchical in the country. They have enjoyed almost continuous real-terms budget increases for as long as most people can remember. With the exception of a few, mostly in local government, these organisations have little experience of implementing major organisational and cultural change.The public sector faces five major challenges:Cuts of this scale over four years are unprecedentedFew people, even in the private sector, have experience of reducing an organisation's running costs by over 20 per cent in four years. For the public sector this is all completely new. Almost no-one has experience of managing a downsizing on this scale. Inevitably they will need to bring in outside help and the people with this sort of experience are expensive. This will drive up those consultancy costs that the government has committed itself to bringing down.The re-organisations will be complexThe public sector needs to do more than just downsize; it will have to work with new types of organisation. Charities, social enterprises and private companies will become more involved in the delivery of services. Many workers will find themselves transferring to new employers. Pay-scales, grading structures, HR policies and other new terms and conditions will need to be completely re-written and, in some cases, trashed completely. All these changes will need to be negotiated with trade unions who, in most cases, won't like them at all. Again, as with the downsizing, there are few managers in the public sector who have done this before. Most will be learning as they go along.Changing behaviour will take timeIt's no good designing new structures if people carry on working in the same way - people don't become flexible and creative overnight. Co-operation between local authorities, government agencies, NHS trusts and third sector organisations is a stretch, given that most have trouble enough collaborating within their own departments. There are few precedents for such far-reaching cultural and behavioural change anywhere and none in the public sector.It's hard to improve performance while morale is lowManagers will be under pressure to deliver more with less while managing performance more closely. In many cases, the reduction in headcount will lead to the removal of layers of management, meaning that some executives will find themselves taking on bigger roles and managing larger teams. They will need to do this while continuing to motivate employees unsettled by an uncertain environment and by the increased demands placed on them. This will be a difficult balance for even the most capable leaders to achieve.The cost will run into billionsReorganisations of this size are not only complex and difficult to pull off, they are also expensive. Getting rid of 490,000 public servants will not be cheap. The average salary in the public sector is around £23,000. Many have long service and would be entitled to a full year's redundancy pay. On top of that there is the cost of taking managers away from their already stretched departments to manage these changes and the resources and training they will need to implement them. Add in the considerable, but unavoidable, cost of management consultants and other external experts and the final bill for reconfiguring the public sector will run to several billion pounds.The management challenge for the public sector over the next few years is immense. It requires organisational change on a scale that few leaders have ever seen and which almost none has any experience of managing. According to research by Harvard's John P. Kotter, only 30 percent of change programmes succeed. Even when the direction is clear and the leaders experienced, the risk of failure is high.However, the vision for the public sector is anything but clear. Perhaps this is the biggest challenge of all. Public sector managers, used to steady-state operations and ever increasing budgets, are being asked to interpret vague ideas about collaboration and social innovation, and then turn them into creative and cheaper services. All this must be done in four years with next to no investment. If that sounds like a tall order, it's because it is!Public sector cutsPublic services policyPublic financeSpending review 2010Tax and spendingguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Lord Saville — an outstanding legal mind defined by Bloody Sunday inquiry It is an irony of the Bloody Sunday inquiry that the most expensive and long judicial investigation in history was chaired by a judge chosen for his efficiency. timesonline.co.uk |