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Poll nerves for Irish government

Donegal County Council signThe Donegal by-election could prove vital for Brian Cowen

Voters in south-west Donegal go to the polls later to elect a new TD (MP) to the Irish Parliament.

The by-election was called after Pat ‘The Cope’ Gallagher, the sitting Fianna Fail TD, became an MEP.

It comes after the Irish government unveiled a range of tough austerity measures designed to help solve the country’s debt crisis.

The vote is being interpreted by some as a referendum on the record of Fianna Fail leader Brian Cowen.

Should the party fail to hold the seat it will place more pressure on his premiership.

Among the spending cuts and tax rises are a reduction in the minimum wage, a new property tax and thousands of public sector job cuts.

Brian O Domhnaill is hoping to retain the seat for Fianna Fail.

He faces opposition from four other candidates.

Pearse Doherty is standing for Sinn Fein. He recently took court action against the government to force the by-election.

Barry O’Neill is running for Fine Gael, and Frank McBrearty, a Raphoe businessman, is standing for the Labour Party.

Thomas Pringle, a former Sinn Fein councillor, is running as an Independent although he is regarded as an outsider.

Voters on Donegal’s islands have already cast their votes and the result will be declared on Friday.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Railways to get £8bn investment

Richard ScottBy Richard Scott

Blackfriars railway bridgeBlackfriars station will be relocated over the Thames as part of the fully approved Thameslink upgrade
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The government has announced plans for £8bn of investment in Great Britain’s railways.

It is buying about 2,000 new carriages to tackle overcrowding, electrifying some lines and pressing ahead with the Thameslink programme.

But plans to modernise the London-Swansea line are still on hold and it will be the end of the decade before the investment is complete.

Passengers also face rises in ticket prices to help pay for the investments.

The government had put many rail investment schemes on hold while it decided which it could afford in the face of budget cuts. Now we know that more than 2,000 new carriages are being bought, with 1,850 of them being used to provide extra capacity.

Those carriages will not arrive instantly though – they won’t finish coming into service until 2019.

Some 400 of them are for Crossrail (the new line being built east-west across London), 800 for Thameslink (the north-south link across London) and 650 will be given to different franchises around the country.

Those 650 carriages will be used to serve commuters travelling into the big cities.

But the government cannot say precisely which franchises will get what.

Passenger journeys in Great Britain

Although the new carriages will be given to the franchises, and represent good news for passengers – the train companies will want extra money from the government to run them.

So ministers will now negotiate with franchises to get the best deal they can – and that will determine in part where the carriages go.

Those carriages will increase capacity on the network by 17%, enabling an extra 185,000 passengers to be carried at any one time.

The Thameslink project is also going to go ahead in full. This will eventually double capacity on the route from Brighton to Bedford, allowing up to 24 trains an hour.

Work on the scheme is already underway, but there had been question marks over whether the rest of the stages would go ahead.

It won’t be completed though until 2018 – two years later than planned. That delay means the engineering work is easier, and cuts costs.

There is also news that lines in the north west – from Manchester to Liverpool and Manchester to Blackpool – are going to be electrified.

Electric trains have an operating cost roughly half that of their diesel equivalents. They are also more reliable and can fit more passengers on board.

But the long-awaited electrification of the London to Swansea Great Western route still isn’t happening.

The government is deciding whether to replace the intercity fleet with electric trains, or electric-diesel hybrids. Whatever it decides will determine what happens to the electrification of the route into South Wales.

Passengers face an average fare rise of 6.2% in the new year, with some commuters seeing their tickets go up by as much as 12.8%.

The government says these fare rises are necessary to safeguard the investment that has just been announced.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Rail electrification plans stall

First Great Western trainThe government is still deciding which trains it will use to replace existing carriages on the London to Swansea line
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The UK government has been accused of “leaving Wales behind” after stalling plans to electrify the rail line between London and Swansea.

Despite a £8bn investment into the railways, the electrification of the Great Western Main Line is on hold.

The Department for Transport said it needs to decide whether to replace the intercity fleet with electric trains, or electric-diesel hybrids beforehand.

Shadow Welsh Secretary Peter Hain criticised the decision.

The Department for Transport said it will make a further statement in the New Year after it considers the “extent of electrification on the Great Western route”.

Peter Hain, Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Wales said: “Yet again this government is leaving Wales behind.

“The London-south Wales electrification has been kicked into the long grass – they claim it is still an “aspiration” but have effectively ruled it out for decades.

“The Secretary of State for Wales (Cheryl Gillan) should have been leading the campaign for electrification to Swansea.

“The London-south Wales electrification has been kicked into the long grass – they claim it is still an “aspiration” but have effectively ruled it out for decades”

Peter Hain Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Wales

“Her inaction on our part, and the government’s decision, shows they just don’t care about jobs and prosperity in Wales.”

Ms Gillan said she remained fully supportive of the electrification project and hoped to work with the Welsh Assembly Government on the business case.

She said: “No final decision has yet been taken and I will continue to robustly argue the case with the secretary of state for transport and cabinet colleagues.

“This is not a simple process and a range of factors must be considered before any decision can be made.

“We should not forget that the last government failed to electrify a single centimetre of track in Wales during their 13 years in office.

“This government is far more responsible when it comes to public money and it is right that we examine in fine detail projects such as electrification to Swansea.”

The overall investment package will increase capacity on the UK’s railways by 17%, delivering more than 2,100 new rail carriages by May 2019 in a bid to tackle overcrowding on the busiest services.

But questions are being asked about why three transport schemes related to the London and Swansea line have been boosted while the electrification has been stalled.

Some 400 of the new carriages are for Crossrail (the new line being built east-west across London), 800 for Thameslink (the north-south link across London) and 650 will be given to different franchises around the country.

Those 650 carriages will be used to serve commuters travelling into the big cities.

But the UK government cannot say precisely which franchises will get what.

Professor Stuart Cole, Wales Transport Research Centre

“The decision to delay the electrification of the London to Swansea line is very strange.

When the DfT only announces three of four inter-related schemes, it becomes a little worrying about what they are going to say later on.

Phil Hammond has a difficult decision to make but he has to decide which of the two new kinds of train he is going to buy and how far west the link will go.

From our point of view in Wales there is very little option and the undoubtedly the cheapest option is to electrify the service all the way to Swansea in one project rather than several.

The Thameslink project is also going to go ahead in full. This will eventually double capacity on the route from Brighton to Bedford, allowing up to 24 trains an hour and lines in the north west – from Manchester to Liverpool and Manchester to Blackpool – are going to be electrified.

Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said it was a “rolling programme” but said passengers would start to see the benefits “within the next few months”.

Passengers face an average fare rise of 6.2% in the new year, with some commuters seeing their tickets go up by as much as 12.8%.

The UK government says these fare rises are necessary to safeguard the investment that has just been announced.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

PM’s £2m bid to measure happiness

A happy coupleHealth, education and income may be factors used to measure happiness
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How to measure happiness is the question being asked by David Cameron with the launch of a £2m consultation on how to best assess our well-being.

The prime minister will argue that economic growth is an “incomplete” way of calculating progress, and that it should also include quality of life.

The Office for National Statistics will lead the debate on what matters most to us, before launching a survey in April.

Mr Cameron believes the new measure will help focus policy.

Launching the consultation on Thursday, the prime minister will say: “From April next year we will start measuring our progress as a country not just by how our economy is growing, but by how our lives are improving, not just by our standard of living, but by our quality of life.

“We’ll continue to measure GDP as we’ve always done, but it is high time we admitted that, taken on its own, GDP is an incomplete way of measuring a country’s progress.”

“Finding out what will really improve lives and acting on it is the serious business of government”

David Cameron

Possible indicators to be included in next year’s survey include health, levels of education, inequalities in income and the environment.

BBC home editor Mark Easton said Mr Cameron was determined to put his personal stamp on Britain’s search for a new way of measuring social progress despite doing so in the midst of painful government cuts.

A new measure of well-being will, in time, “lead to government policy that is more focussed not just on the bottom line, but on all those things that make life worthwhile”, he will say.

He will quote former US senator Robert Kennedy, who said GDP measured everything “except that which makes life worthwhile”.

The information gathered would help Britain re-evaluate its priorities in life, he will add.

Mr Cameron will deny the changes will sideline economic growth just as the country tries to recover from the recession.

“To those who say that all this sounds like a distraction from the serious business of government, I say finding out what will really improve lives and acting on it is the serious business of government.”

The UK government is not the first to seek better measures of progress than GDP – the World Bank, European Commission, United Nations, and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development have all made the same commitment.

ONS head Jil Matheson said: “There is no shortage of numbers that could be used to construct measures of well-being, but they will only be successful if they are widely accepted and understood.

“We want to develop measures based on what people tell us matters most.”

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

S Korea to bolster island force

Destroyed houses are seen after they were hit by artillery shells fired by North Korea on Yeonpyeong Island North Korean shells destroyed houses on the island of Yeonpyeong

South Korea says it will boost border security and be more flexible in response to threats from North Korea.

A presidential spokesman said Seoul was concerned it had “become too passive”.

North Korean shelling of a Southern island two days ago killed two civilians and two marines, and prompted an increase in regional tension.

Meanwhile, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has held talks in Russia amid calls for China to use its influence on the North to calm the situation.

A planned visit by Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi to South Korea has also been postponed, it emerged on Thursday. The delay was put down to “scheduling” issues.

The North has threatened further military action if South Korea continues on what it called a “path of military provocation”, the North’s official KCNA news agency reported.

Pyongyang also blamed the new level of hostilities on the United States – saying the US helped draw up the “illegal” western maritime border between the two Koreas.

After holding an emergency cabinet meeting, South Korea announced it would dramatically increase its troop levels and overhaul the way it acts in the face of threats from the North.

“[The government] has decided to sharply increase military force, including ground troops, on the five islands in the Yellow Sea and allocate more of its budget towards dealing with North Korea’s asymmetrical threats,” the presidential senior public affairs secretary Hong Sang-pyo told reporters.

NORTH KOREAN ATTACKSJan 1967 – attacks South Korean warship near border, killing 39 sailorsJan 1968 – commandos storm presidential palace in Seoul in a failed attempt to kill President Park Chung-heeJan 1968 – captures USS Pueblo – one crew member dies and 82 held hostage for 11 monthsDec 1969 – hijacks South Korean airliner taking dozens of passengers hostageOct 1983 – bombs hotel in Rangoon, Burma, in failed attempt to kill South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan – 21 people dieNov 1987 – bombs South Korean airliner, killing 115Mar 2010 – torpedoes Cheonan warship, 46 sailors killed. N Korea denies responsibilityHow the ship was sunk

“The government has decided to make new rules of engagement to change the paradigm itself of responding to North Korea’s provocation,” Mr Hong said.

The BBC’s Chris Hogg says the cabinet had decided that in the existing rules of engagement there was too much emphasis on preventing a military incident escalating into something worse.

There is now an awareness that this thinking had to change, our correspondent says.

In future the South would implement different levels of response depending on whether the North Koreans attacked the military in the South or civilian targets, the spokesman said.

In the Chinese leadership’s first statement on the issue, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, speaking in Moscow, described the situation on the peninsula as “grim and complicated”.

“China is firmly committed to maintaining the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula and opposes any provocative military acts,” he said.

“Relevant sides should maintain the utmost restraint and the global community should do more to relax the tense situation,” he said, in a statement issued by the Chinese foreign ministry.

China has been under pressure to use its influence over the North to ease tensions.

Mr Wen repeated his view that six-nation talks on the North’s nuclear programme should be resumed as soon as possible, a position shared by North Korea.

South Korea, the US and Japan have said the six-nation talks should not re-start until the North stops building new nuclear enrichment plants, and apologises for its alleged torpedoing of a South Korean warship in March, at the cost of 46 lives.

Map showing Yeonpyeong and the disputed border between North and South Korea

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.