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Qatar already has a stake in Barclays but will it invest in RBS or Lloyds?

Qatar has expressed an interest in investing in the part-nationalised Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group.

“About any investment in the state or partially-state owned banks, we are very open for any investment in the UK,” Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim said.

The UK government plans to sell its 83% stake in RBS and 43% holding in Lloyds.

Qatar invested heavily in Barclays in the wake of the financial crisis.

And last year the Qatari royal family’s investment company bought Harrod’s for a reported £1.5bn, while the Qatar Investment Authority owns about a quarter of retailer Sainsbury’s.

After meeting UK Prime Minister David Cameron, the Qatari prime minister expressed interest in doing more deals with UK companies.

Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim said he had “discussed some ideas” with Mr Cameron, who was visiting Qatar on Wednesday as part of a Middle East tour.

“Our team has been engaged and we will continue to discuss investment in the UK,” he added.

The government’s stakes in the part-nationalised banks, which also include Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley are managed by UKFI.

UKFI declined to comment on the suggestion of interest from Qatar.

However it has previously said that no sale was likely until RBS and Lloyds had seen some share price stability and until the government’s Independent Commission on Banking (ICB) was published.

Last month, the head of UKFI warned that if the ICB recommended a break-up of British banks, this would damage taxpayers’ returns from their stakes – worth about £67bn at the time of investment.

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

Manchester is among the councils that have had to make significant cuts

Newspapers have savagely attacked the retention of council “non-jobs” while front line services are axed. But are there such things as “non-jobs” and what exactly is an essential job?

With cuts beginning to bite, attacks on alleged council waste are intensifying.

Newspapers and ministers – led by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles – have lambasted councils for protecting “non-jobs” while front line staff are being laid off.

There has been criticism about posts like “walking co-ordinator”, “roller disco coach”, “bouncy castle attendant”, “cheerleading development officer”, “future shape programme manager” and “Nuclear Free Local Authorities policy officer”.

The coalition government has released figures suggesting that since 1997 councils have taken on an extra 180,000 workers. The critics claim that it brings the number of “non-jobs” – those not in traditional front-line roles such as education, refuse collection or social care – to almost 750,000.

“Crazy non-jobs like cheerleading development officers and press officers tasked with spinning propaganda on bin collections provide no value to the public,” said Bob Neill, the local government minister.

Most would say elderly care was front line, but what about elderly care managers?

So are these types of jobs being retained while front line services are cut?

Islington council leader Catherine West says her new administration axed the “walking co-ordinator” post after its election in May.

“Some lazy journalists and even a government minister keep repeating the myth that Islington ‘has a walking co-ordinator’ without even bothering to check. It is unbelievably cynical to criticise ‘non-jobs’ that don’t even exist,” she says.

Angus council says it pulled the plug on the bouncy castle attendant “some years” ago while Falkirk council says the cheerleading development officer hasn’t existed for “several years”.

But some of the criticised posts remain. North East Lincolnshire Council is recruiting for a “Future Shape programme manager”, an appointment which Tony Hunter, the council’s chief executive, says is about saving money.

“Future Shape involves reshaping what we do and how we do it, in line with the government’s Big Society and broad localism principles,” he states.

Manchester City Council still has a Nuclear Free Local Authority policy officer. A spokesman defends the job’s existence by saying that they pay only 20% of the salary with the rest funded by the NFLA Secretariat, which the council hosts.

He argues that the job “involved links to other cities” around the UK which were beneficial to Manchester.

“Most people polled in Manchester would not want to pay for a nuclear free worker,” says Neil O’Brien, director of the Policy Exchange think tank.

John O’Connell, research director at TaxPayers’ Alliance, a group which lobbies for lower taxes and greater government efficiency, admits there is no precise definition for a “non-job”.

One definition is a council employee who doesn’t work in a front line role but there is uncertainty over what “front line” actually means, as can be seen from the debate over front line policing numbers.

One good example of an “expendable role” is the post of diversity officer, Mr O’Connell believes, citing figures showing that during 2009-2010 there were 543 diversity officers working at England’s councils at a cost of almost £20m.

Birmingham City Council topped the list, spending £1.9 million on 28 diversity officers.

But a council spokeswoman said these staff played a valuable role and stressed the need to comply with government equality legislation.

“We do not have ‘diversity officers’,” says the spokeswoman. “We have officers working within the equality and diversity division who engage with other public agencies and community groups to ensure that everyone has the ability, knowledge and confidence to know how to access services, what help is available and what help they are entitled to.”

Mr O’Connell acknowledges that councils have to comply with equality legislation but says some like Birmingham were being disproportionate.

It doesn’t help that council jobs are often hard for the layman to decipher. Mr O’Connell points to the advertisement for the £70,000-a-year “Future Shape programme manager” at North East Lincolnshire Council.

“The duties are explained as ‘setting out the council’s vision to be a commissioning, enabling and facilitating organisation’. An ordinary council tax payer wouldn’t have a clue what that means,” Mr O’Connell argues.

But John Ransford, chief executive of the Local Government Association, says some of the designations of “non-job” are wholly wrong.

He defends Liverpool City Council, which has come under fire from ministers for advertising the job of “assistant director of adult services” on a salary of £90,000.

“Many of the posts being denigrated as ‘non-jobs’ reflect a lack of understanding about the complex nature of the work local authorities do. To suggest that an assistant director of adult services – responsible for overseeing the care of thousands of elderly and vulnerable people – is a ‘non-job’ absolutely beggars belief,” Mr Ransford says.

The real issue is not exotic sounding jobs but the massive scaling up of pay and headcounts at local authorities, says Mr O’Brien. Between 2002 and 2009 spending on local authority payrolls increased by £67bn, he says.

About £4bn of that, according to the Policy Exchange, went on jobs like marketing and PR, but a much bigger increase – £14bn – has gone on paying for managers.

“There is a lot of waste,” Mr O’Brien says. “But most of that is not in overtly weird jobs but massive increases in pay and staff numbers. The median hourly salary is now 30% higher in the public sector than the private sector.”

But Stephen Overell, associate director of the Work Foundation urges caution when knocking councils.

“If the ‘non-job’ is about peculiar job titles then the public sector has no monopoly on that. We need to remember that in the private sector companies have departments of fun.”

And the equality and diversity department is just as much a feature of corporations as councils.

The difference is that councils are democratically accountable and paid for by taxes, and therefore attract more criticism, he says. It can be argued that the whole world of work, whether private or public sector, has seen an explosion in managerialism in recent years.

And it’s often very hard to describe what these jobs do, Mr Overell says.

Critics argue that local government is employing too many managers instead of protecting front line staff from cuts. But Mr Overell doubts this is the case.

“It’s very difficult to say what is an essential managerial post to support front line staff. If it comes to a toss up between paying teachers’ salaries or trimming the diversity and equality function, I suspect it’s the latter that will get cut.”



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

Wintek maes touch screens on contract for Apple and other mobile firms.

Chinese workers injured while making touchscreens for mobile devices, including iPhones, have written to Apple asking it to do more to help them.

137 workers suffered adverse health effects following exposure to a chemical, known as n-hexane.

They claim that the Taiwanese factory owner has not given them enough compensation.

Apple did not offer comment on the letter.

Five workers, including 27-year-old Jia Jingchuan, have signed a letter to chief executive officer Steve Jobs, asking Apple to offer more help over the incidents.

They say that the factory owner has not given enough compensation, has pressured those who took compensation to give up their jobs and failed to offer assurance that workers who may suffer fresh illnesess will have medical bills taken care of.

Jia Jingchuan is among victims of the chemical poisoning

Wintek, the Taiwanese company that owns the factory, said that it used the chemical in place of alcohol because it evaporated more quickly and speeded up production of touch screens.

It has now reverted to using alcohol to clean screens.

Workers exposed to n-hexane experienced faintness and tiredness, sweaty hands and feet, numbness in hands and swelling and pain in feet. Some claim they are still suffering ill-effects.

Experts say that daily exposure to n-hexane can cause long-term damage.

In its annual report, published last week, Apple acknowledged the incident.

“In 2010 we learned that 137 workers at the Suzhou facility of Wintek, one of Apple’s suppliers, had suffered adverse health effects following exposure to n-hexane, a chemical in cleaning agents used in some manufacturing processes,” the report read.

“We required Wintek to stop using n-hexane and to provide evidence that they had removed the chemical from their production lines,” it said.

Apple said it also asked the firm to provide adequate ventilation in the factory. It will monitor the plant and will reaudit the facility later this year.

Wintek also supplies components to a number of other companies, including Nokia and HTC.

This is not the first problem Apple has experienced with its Chinese factories.

Its annual report also references an incident at its main China supplier Foxconn’s factory, where over a dozen workers committed suicide.

“We were disturbed and deeply saddened to learn that factory workers were taking their own lives,” the report read.

It said “suicide prevention specialists” were working with Foxconn to improve conditions.

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