The Wardman Wire

This is a trial post for a Roundup of the Daily Papers Front Pages. Sky News have kindly agreed to our use of their front page scans. This presentation may change, as it will take some work to balance ease of production with ease of reading. This morning I’ve added a brief “Storyfix”.

Photos courtesy skynews.com.

Today’s Blogger StoryFix

Indy - Queen’s Plea for Cash

The Queen and the Government are locked in a secret dispute over royal demands for increased public funding to meet the growing expense of the monarchy.

In my opinion this is - along with pressure on Independent Schools and Fox Hunting - far more to do with satisfying the Luddite Gene than anything practical. It is difficult to take complaints about such a small amount of money seriously from a setup that has just thrown away £500m due to mismanagement of a helicopter project, continues to pour £300m a year in excess income into GPs due to Patricia Hewitt’s (solution: lamping) negotiation dolthood and the Polyclinic never-mind-our-claimed-aims-we’re-doing-it-anyway bulldozer.

The story is already (6:30am) relegated to a text link on the Indy homepage. Good.

NYT - Plan’s Basic Mystery: What’s All This Stuff Worth?

What would you pay, sight unseen, for a house that nobody wants, on a hard-luck street where no houses are selling? That question is easy compared to the one confronting the Treasury Department as Washington works toward a vast bailout of financial institutions.

Hmmm.

PA - Police Complaints Up

Police forces in England and Wales received 536 complaints about stop-and-search in the last financial year, up from 434, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said.

Stop-and-search grievances made up 3% of complaints by black people, the report revealed.

Opponents of stop-and-search say it unfairly targets minority groups, but the recent spate of high-profile knife crimes has led to greater use of the powers.

Figures released earlier this year showed police carried out 955,000 stop-and-searches in 2006/07, up 9%. Black people are seven times more likely to be stopped as white people, Ministry of Justice statistics showed.

The overall number of complaints against the police remained steady, after rises in recent years, the report found. The 43 forces received 28,963 complaints, ranging from impoliteness to assault. Most concerned failures to investigate crime properly or abusive language or behaviour.

It’s quite a small increase, but in my opinion a symptom of a really serious problem. Policing by consent and cooperation is going down the Swannee.

And it’s not just the police, either; there is an emerging culture of petty “Prussian-Corporal”-ism that needs fixing. The real problem here is that the vast majority of people don’t complain, and the damage that is happening to the police/public relationship.

Scots economy ‘in crisis’ as the credit crunch bites

Wey-hey-hey. Let’s save ‘Eck the trouble. I’m English. Guilty.

Later

This morning I’ll be posting David Keen’s reflection on the Labour Conference - this article had a link from the Today Programme yesterday (congratulations, David).