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Dear Newsnight

We should have sent troops into Zimbabwe a long time ago, and to Darfur.

The amount of resistance would be zero -from anyone, so why allow this to continue?

Bob

McFALL How very Apt. Brown Darling Return The King.
Just seen Gordon asking for Democracy in Zimbabwe Hear Hear
How about some HEAR in the UK.
Perhaps Gordon YOU Invaded the wrong place. NO Oil There Though EH

I`ve read that the Newsnight budget has been cut by a fifth . Does this mean that Jeremy will only be allowed to wear the same tie for a month or will the tie drawer go completely ?

About Northern Rock - the fragility of the capitalist system is slightly more than "shouting fire in a crowded cinema". This system is susceptable to boom and bust cycles, because it is based on risk, and mysterious futures, - a big gamble from beginning to end. Legalised but still involves taking chances! This means that the rich always end up with more money, while the poor always end up with less money. What an idiotic comment to make about a serious economic situation which threatens to wipe out peoples hard earned savings. The Bank of England now blames the rules, legislation, and our lack of prudence, for its late intervention. What rules are there, in a free market economy, and how prudent is he, I would like to know???

Barrie I checked out the Link Ignorance is Bliss for a lot of our mp's, OR does it cut down on their Tax Stealing. I know which way I Swing and it isnt with Ming.

Hello

About Northern Rock. The authorities are trapped in their own web of deceit. The more they try to cover up the real nature of shady financial dealings that underpin our economic system, the more they get dragged in the mire of their own lies. I am enoying the spectacle, and, hope this is a nail in the banking coffin, as the consumers are showing they are not as stupid as the Bank of England or the Government think they are!

Why should the taxpayer bail out a bank, when the banks often refuse to bail us out?? The Governor of the Bank of England blames the laws, which presuambly he helped draft, but they gamble with impunity with our money every day! That is why it takes five days to clear a cheque in the UK (a few hours in Saudi Arabia, to give the banks cash-flow money to gamble with! Our cash their profits. Well now we want our money back before they lose it altogether!

i read paxo was leaving to go to america...maybe something to do with budget cuts??

A respectful Boltonesque interview, or a "robotic, identikit, narcissistic, fascistic" questioning of the Zimbabwean ambasssador?
I know which one I expect.

quote:
Zimbabwe
Sue Lloyd Roberts' exclusive film for Newsnight last week provided first hand evidence for many of just how serious the humanitarian crisis is in Zimababwe at the moment. Now Gordon Brown has reacted in an article today.

He has said that he will not attend the forthcoming EU-Africa Summit in Portugal if Robert Mugabe goes but the Portuguese government doesn't agree. It says he should be invited because other African leaders want him to attend.

How is Zimbabwe reacting to the Prime Minister's intervention? We will be talking to the Zimbabwean ambassador to the UN live on the programme

How long has Senile Bob been destroying his people and country. How long has the brown marxist Jackboot been doing the same here.
Are they related,Surely the same make of party as I see it. 1.2 million in Iraq combined with more murders in the uk in the last 10 years than I have ever seen before, Include Honour Killings and disapearance's + terrorist murder. The figure for murder, starvation and disease in Zimbabwe who knows. Why the nulabour spin machine feeds us this latest cynical ploy is perhaps a tactical error. I dont buy it like I dont buy anything from them. KILL the debt in africa I agree with but flush gordon gave away 9 billion to africa last year, How many of our troops have died because of equipment. At least 52, The nulabour spin machine lies over the wounded figures so I have no idea 2 to 500 would be fair. After 10 years in power is nulabour trying to tell us they were unaware of mad bob and what he hss been doing to his country. Oborne from the Spectator did a documentery last year or so nothing has really changed since. Why didnt wonderfull gordon come out then. Peter Tatchel has done more than brown without any spin. I have no doubt who is to blame for NR. Oborne again investigated control freak gordon and that charge came from within nulabour. Its all gone smelly? It allways was.

Not climate change again... It is getting far too repetitive, far too one-sided, and far too BORING!!!

Let's have some proper news and analysis instead.

I honestly do not understand why the people in the countries like the UK should be taxed even more than they are as it is. I come from Serbia and there absolutely no taxation based on ecology.

Taking this into account I would say that additional taxing of people in the UK or any of the developed countries is rather useless, especially if you look at the congestion charge......it has had no effect in reducing the traffic in central London, on the other hand why would a taxation of such sort have any restricting effect on the population.

Why is there no additional taxation on industrial pollution, which churns out more pollutants than anything else around?
Why are there actual aiding projects for the countries which are in the process of developing, so that their industries may develop in an environmentally conscious manner? Instead the undeveloped countries of Europe and other parts of the world are intensively used for manufacturing products which in this procedure cause excessive pollution.
Why are the ordinary people always the ones suffering?

Lets work around this problem the other way this time, lets see the big ones, countries and industries alike sacrifice some of their money so that the planet and all the people, animals, plants and everything else living on it may survive.

Is this too much to ask?

Iran is surrounded on all sides by American occupiers, and the Americans and now French are continually threatening it with war. Iran's crime is that it exercised it's right under the NPT to use nuclear technology for energy, which is a right exercised by many nations including our own.

If I was an Iranian, I would press for my government to develop nuclear weapons because I think the West will not attack a country which is strong, technologically developed and able to stand up for itself. Iraq was powerless and weak and that is why the West invaded it to steal it's oil.

The "we pay your salary" argument from medialens, an organisation I have never heard of, kills off their protest.

You may well indeed pay your TV license fee, but so do millions and millions of others. That in itself does not make our email ranting and other views we hold correct.

Good to see Newsnight stay with Zimbabwe. I would have hoped Mr Brown would ignore the foreign office and act on instinct, if such a thing existsed. ZANU PF got away for it for years because it was politically incorrect for a UK Prime Minister, or other western leaders, to suuggest that he was incapable of leadership. The racist thing. The fear of being misunderstood. The reason for tolerating Banda, Choba, Moshoeshoe (benign king of lesotho) and their successive military dictators etc. Brown should imagine that Zimbabwe is Ireland, and how the UK would and should react if post-colonial Ireland was afflicted in the same way.

The performance of the Chaps from the City before MPs has vindiated my comments last week re: inability of financial services regulation to protect the public interest in the UK. Shame on them.

This is what we have learned:

Mr King says he wished to quietly and swiftly inject money into the banking system to help Northern Rock before the queues became evident. But he couldn't do that because if he intervened with an injection of money into the system before the Run on the Northern Rock Bank became evident, then the public wouldn't realise that he was only doing it to assist troubled Northern Rock. They would think that lots of banks were in jeopardy. And so confidence in the entire economy might have been lost.

So he had to allow Northern Rock to be seen to be sinking (and other banks not) before he began to take action. That's so people would realise that the only reason he put billions of extra money into the system was purely for the benefit of Northern Rock, and certainly not to benefit any other Banks - for no other Banks need benefitting, they aren't in a mess, they are well run and completely solvent.

It's all perfectly clear. But does it make any sense?

Nevertheless I feel rather sorry for Mr King, he is taking the brunt of criticism for what looks to be fault on the part of the people who run Northern Rock.

But if Northern Rock wasn't being managed well then surely the Financial Services Authority who regulate the banking system (don't they?) could have intervened earlier and stopped Northern Rock from putting itself in jeopardy by risky behaviour.

We are told that the money Mr King injected into the banking system, to save Northern Rock, was Taxpayers Money. I suppose he has a pot of money that can be used in times of emergency, war, etc and he took it out of that.

Will we reach a stage when the emergency pot is empty, or is it just limitless and self-filling? Can more money be printed on demand to top up the emergency pot? Will this have any negative effects on the economy in the long run?

I entirely agree with barrie singleton. Arrest Mugabe at the EU-Africa Summit on human rights violations charges: the deaths of several hundred thousands, the removal of civil liberties and the destruction of personal property.
Then send in a few thousand troops (half the amount needed for Iraq), hold a proper, non-rigged election, and let Zimbabwe get back on it's feet.

Stock market parasite Chris Hulne may wax lyrical about Australian prime minister John Howard being converted to the " Green " cause, but only recently I heard a report about Howard being possibly de-selected as his party leader for fear of loosing the coming election.

I agree with dan m-m and Barrie but we must force brown to go to. They could arrest the pair of them. Two birds with the one stone. Two sides of the same coin. How many wonderfull brits have nulabour forced out of uk with taxes and stupidity good riddence nulabour would say how very Nice of them. At the same time they cram as many other nulabour voters into the country from all over the world and have been doing so for 10 years only now they think they should speak english. Mad bob n Brown Jackboot, AC DC, pinky n perky pos n neg photo. Politicians = vomit, War, taxes. return the king

Sir, I have never understood why we didn't go into Zimbabwe and really doing something about the deprevation and inhumanity that is everywhere whilst the leaders live in luxury. I know there is no oil there and that's what seems to motivate 'good cause mode' from ourselves and the Americans but it has to be more than that, surely. Are we afraid of the old colonialist tag. Why? We set up present day Iraq as recently as 1917 and that never seemed to bother us. Sincerely, Steve.

Good programme last night - especially where Jeremy got to the nub of the NR problem by quizzing those chaps about the 'tripartite' relationship which is at the heart of the problem. Despite the risk, as he put it, of sending his viewers to sleep, he enabled the audience to understand that the Bank of England does not, and cannot, carry the can alone for the recent problems.

F O'Flannel [above] yes, the FSA should be regulating, but one of the problems is that they focus on the most 'risky' banks i.e. the smaller ones. And as we have seen with NR, sometimes the bigger they are, the harder they can fall.

Time for a full-scale investigation into the FSA. The grilling of FSA chief Callum McCarthy at the Treasury Select Committe should be a date for the diary.

Newsnight has imaginary pets?
Some might consider that undermines the credibility of a serious news programme?

The Benny Hill Music.

This may have suggested the complete sketch/analogy. Where a top hatted and tailed man [who represents the Bank of England] with a big bag labelled 'Money' being chased by scantily clad women [who represent the banks]? The FSA could be the short bald bloke who gets slapped on the head?

Shouting fire in a crowded cinema? How about waking up after nearly 80 years to the reality of risks in the banking system having failed to even consider them let alone addressing fixing them. What do you call people who do not learn from other peoples' experiences, mistakes, tragedies, disasters? The run on banks was one of the hallmarks of the beginning of the Great Depression in the United States in 1929. This is how and why the FDIC and SBLIC were established. This is how the risk to bank depositors was eliminated to prevent the possibility of future runs on banks. This is how the risks that certain types of banks were allowed to take themselves with their depositor's money was reduced to allow the government to rationally insure those deposits. And this is how depositors in American Savings and Commercial banks know that their deposits are safe and that they will never have to stand out in front of a bank building hoping to get their money back before the bank closes up its business forever. If you invest with an investment bank, you are aware of the increased risk and that you could lose all of your money, that's a different kind of bank. If you depost in a government insured account, you can't lose. No depositor has lost even one cent in a government insured account. Where are comparable protections for comparable banks around the world, in Britain for instance? Simple, they don't exist. The "it can't happen here" mentality prevailed and the risk was completely ignored. Now the chickens have come home to roost and the Bank of England had to improvise quickly or risk a cascading bank failure which could have taken down the entire British economy. Perhaps if Britain were tied to the Euoro, the cascade could have spread to the continent as well, now there's a happy thought.

I would like to propose a name for your imaginary dog. It's an imaginary name. Want to know what it is? I'd tell you if I could but unfortunately there is only one way to find out. Use your imagination. :-)

In two hours of questions by the HoC Treasury Committee, I thought we essentially just saw some excellent theatrics on the part of both the committee and King, with the latter saying little more than the conjunction of four pieces of financial legislation (especially the FSMA) served as an obstruction to their acting covertly as they might have wished.

Surely there's little point in anyone publicy asking them questions, as the the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Market Abuse) essentially prevents them from saying anything which might either inspire or frighten the horses?

As there are something like 60,000 people working in securities (about 2800 companies) and the regulator (FSA) only has 2800 staff, can they cope given that they are, I believe they are making cuts to their enforcement side?

New Labour has crammed the Statute Book with new Home Office laws, and that doesn't prevent crime (in fact it just increases it). If the likelihood of market abuse detection is low, but the rewards are high, what can we expect from the FSA? Perhaps Newsnight could do a reassuring piece on just how they do actively monitor the securities companies?

How *does* one draw the line between companies taking extreme risks with other people's money (including depositors) and still talk of a free market?

I can't believe the audacity of the White House spokesman telling us how far ahead of the rest of us the US and President Bush is on climate change!

Gavin Esler should have wiped the floor with him.