Written By Unknown on Senin, 16 Maret 2015 | 22.11
A giant Alex Salmond glances down towards his suit pocket, where a gormless looking Ed Miliband peeks out. As political photoshop jobs go, it's particularly cruel.
I've lost count of the number of times I've seen the Conservative commissioned image; it's plastered all over the internet.
The message is clear: Vote Labour, Get SNP.
Today Ed Miliband has wriggled out of the jacket pocket: he's ruled out a coalition with the SNP.
Conservative campaigners make their point
It's smart politics, and in reality the Labour leader had little choice.
As the Tories behind the attack ad know, the thought of the SNP in Government south of the border is a frightening prospect to many voters in England and Wales.
Video:Feb: SNP May Back 2nd Place Labour
What would be the pound of flesh the SNP would demand in return for propping up a Labour government?
In addition, Scottish Labour MPs desperately fighting off challenges from a resurgent SNP were getting increasingly twitchy about their party's refusal - until now - to rule out a formal pact.
Their best line of defence against SNP opponents is "Vote SNP, Get Tory."
If the SNP and Labour are prepared to join forces after the election, that argument becomes redundant.
Video:Labour's King Canute In Scotland
So today's announcement will be, on the whole, welcomed by Labour members.
However, there are two quick caveats.
Mr Miliband has ruled out a formal coalition arrangement - but not a looser agreement.
The SNP and Labour could form a "confidence and supply" deal, for example, where the smaller party agrees to support the larger on crucial votes such as the Budget.
Video:General Election Balance Of Power
And, what is smart politics before an election may not look quite so cunning afterwards.
If the polls are anything to go by, the result is likely to be scrappy and uncertain. If Mr Miliband is more able to form a solid, stable coalition than David Cameron, that could edge him closer to the doors of No 10 - even if the SNP are uncomfortable bedfellows.
Scotland Yard is to be investigated for alleged corruption over claims it covered up child abuse because police and MPs were involved.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission will carry out the investigation into the actions of the Metropolitan Police.
There are 14 referrals which detail alleged corruption dating back to the 1970s and stretching to 2005.
Sarah Green, deputy chair of the IPCC, said: "These allegations are of historic, high-level corruption of the most serious nature. We will oversee the investigations and ensure that they meet the terms of reference that we will set.
"Allegations of this nature are of grave concern and I would like to reassure people of our absolute commitment to ensuring that the investigations are thorough and robust."
A Met Police spokesman said: "The MPS (Metropolitan Police Service) recognised the severity of the allegations, and the importance of understanding whether or not our officers had in the past acted inappropriately, and therefore voluntarily referred the 16 separate allegations to the IPCC."
The allegations referred to the IPCC include:
:: A claim that a Parliament document found at a paedophile's address linked a number of "highly prominent individuals" including MPs and senior police officers to a paedophile ring but no further action was taken.
:: The allegation an investigation into young men being targeted in Dolphin Square, the apartment complex popular with MPs, was stopped because officers were "too near prominent people".
:: An allegation that an account provided by an abuse victim had been changed to omit the name of a senior politician.
:: A claim that a dossier of allegations against senior figures and politicians involved in child abuse was taken by Special Branch officers.
:: The allegation that police officers sexually abused a boy and carried out surveillance on him.
Scotland Yard is currently investigating allegations that a paedophile ring of high-profile figures - including politicians, law enforcement and military officials - operated in the 1970s and 80s.
Detectives from Operation Midland are also investigating claims the murders of three boys, aged between seven and 16, are linked to the alleged abuse centred on Dolphin Square in Westminster.
Speaking after the IPCC investigation was announced, Sky's Crime Correspondent Martin Brunt said: "Just when you thought this couldn't go any deeper, it does.
"For some time the police themselves have been looking at corruption but because of the severity of the allegations they have passed it on to the IPCC."
A near-total solar eclipse will occur in the skies above Britain this week, prompting warnings about the dangers of watching the spectacle without taking precautions.
The eclipse will begin around 8.30am on Friday and last for two hours as the moon moves in front of the Sun.
The proportion of the Sun covered by the moon will increase the further north you are.
In London, 84% of the Sun will be covered, while in Edinburgh the proportion is 93%.
The last solar eclipse of such significance took place in August 1999, when a total eclipse occurred.
Video:1999: Solar Eclipse
Tour operators have organised trips based around the event, which will briefly allow the Sun's outer atmosphere to be seen.
Robin Scagell, vice-president of the Society for Popular Astronomy (SPA), who will be travelling on the P&O cruise ship Oriana to witness the eclipse, said the event will be "memorable".
"We won't experience totality in the UK, but it will still be a memorable event," he said.
"Depending on where you are, up to 90% of the Sun will be covered over."
Organised events are being held in London's Regent's Park and the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.
In the lead up to the event, experts have offered advice on safety and warned of the perils of Sun-watching.
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Gallery: 3 Nov, 2013: Rare Hybrid Eclipse Of The Sun
A bird flies across the sun in Sidon, Lebanon.
People in equatorial Africa got the best view of the hybrid eclipse, with totality lasting up to a minute.
The man tasked with investigating Jeremy Clarkson's "fracas" has reportedly begun his inquiry but the BBC is remaining silent over how long it will take.
Ken MacQuarrie, who is director of BBC Scotland, is in London to begin sorting out what is becoming an increasing embarrassment for the corporation.
Earlier Clarkson left his west London home and told reporters he was going for lunch with a friend - not to the inquiry.
Sources close to the investigation say it is impossible to put a deadline on its work until it hears from the two men central to the inquiry - Clarkson and producer Oisin Tymon.
The Top Gear host was suspended on Tuesday for allegedly punching Mr Tymon after filming for the show during a row over a hot meal at a hotel.
Video:PM: 'He's A Great Talent'
Sunday night's Top Gear episode was replaced with a programme about the Red Arrows. It is thought the viewing figures for BBC2's 8pm slot fell by around four million.
Communications watchdog Ofcom said it had received more than 100 complaints, with a spokesman saying it will take no action as it "can only assess a breach of the broadcasting code if a show has actually aired".
A BBC spokesman said: "The BBC's position is the one we set out in a statement last week. We have an investigation led by Ken MacQuarrie to establish the facts and people should wait for the outcome of that."
Clarkson is still scheduled to appear alongside co-hosts James May and Richard Hammond at four live shows in Norway on 27 and 28 March and a decision on whether to go ahead is expected early this week.
All three men's contracts expire three days after the Norway gigs, which could render any disciplinary hearings redundant.
Video:'I'm Off To The Job Centre'
The controversy took a further twist this weekend when victims of Jimmy Savile denounced comparisons of the support shown to Clarkson to the widespread protection offered to the dead paedophile presenter as "upsetting" and "totally offensive".
A senior figure at the BBC was reported as suggesting Clarkson is able to behave as he wishes because of his celebrated position and support from powerful friends, including the Prime Minister.
The Mail On Sunday claimed the BBC chief compared the support for Clarkson to the way sex offender Savile was defended.
The reported comments drew a furious response from victims of the former Radio 1 DJ.
Ed Miliband has ruled out any coalition deal with SNP that would see Scottish ministers in Westminster.
The Labour leader insisted the party would not form a Government with nationalist MPs from north of the border if Labour did not win a majority in May.
Speaking at an event in Leeds, he said: "Labour will not go into coalition government with the SNP. There will be no SNP ministers in any government I lead."
Crucially, however, he stopped short of ruling out a looser arrangement that would see the SNP offering limited support to shore up Labour.
The Tory campaign has focused on an SNP Labour alliance
It would leave the door open to the two parties entering into a "confidence and supply" arrangement, which would see the SNP vote through Budget proposals and vote for the Government in a no confidence vote.
Mr Milband added the real danger to the UK was the Conservatives going into a coalition with UKIP.
Video:Sturgeon: SNP Could Still Do Deal
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she would be willing to "strike deals with a minority Labour UK Government" and added she "cannot see for the life of me" why Mr Miliband would want to rule out a coalition with the SNP.
She said: " ... working with Labour, in a looser arrangement, I certainly wouldn't rule out because I want to see SNP MPs being in the House of Commons arguing for and pushing for progressive change.
"I cannot see for the life of me why Labour wouldn't want to contemplate the possibility of working with the SNP to keep the Tories out of office."
She noted that Mr Miliband had not ruled out working together under a looser arrangement and said Labour would not be forgiven in Scotland if they missed the opportunity to work with the SNP to remove David Cameron from power.
There has been increasing pressure on Labour to rule out such a coalition from the Conservatives, who have made it clear in attack posters they are intend to campaign on the prospect of a power-sharing agreement between the two parties.
The latest poster saw a picture of Mr Miliband in the jacket pocket of the former Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond, who is running for MP in May.
Following Mr Miliband's comments a Conservatives spokesman said: "This changes nothing. Ed Miliband will not rule out a deal with the SNP because he knows it's impossible to become Prime Minister without being carried into Downing Street in Alex Salmond's pocket."
The idea of Labour sharing power with a party that actively wants to break up the UK has caused unease among many voters in England.
It has also caused concern for Labour MPs campaigning in Scotland where the party is expecting to suffer heavy losses to the SNP.
Video:Ken Clarke Dismisses UKIP Pact
Writing in the Scottish newspaper the Daily Record on Monday morning, Labour's chief election strategist Douglas Alexander also said the party did not want a coalition with the SNP.
"The SNP have already said they don't want a coalition with Labour. As Labour, we don't want a coalition with the SNP. The coalition we want is with working people across Britain to change who our economy works for," he said.
Mr Alexander listed a number of policies over which the SNP and Labour were at odds.
He said the nationalist party did not back Labour's plans for a mansion tax to pay for extra NHS staff or proposals to fund measures to help children going from school to work with a cut for pension tax relief for high earners.
On Sunday, the shadow chancellor Ed Balls said: "We don't want any deal with the SNP; it's not part of our plans. It's nonsense."
Labour has looked to pressure the Tories over a deal with UKIP that could see the party hold on to power.
At the weekend Nigel Farage offered a confidence and supply arrangement with David Cameron's party in return for an immediate referendum on Britain's continued membership of the European Union – Mr Cameron has said there will not be a vote until 2017.
However, speaking on the Andrew Marr show George Osborne said the idea was "total nonsense".
Jeremy Clarkson is filling his days getting into a different kind of stew - as a friend revealed he phoned BBC bosses to apologise for his notorious "fracas" to avoid a formal bureaucratic inquiry.
The presenter, who has joked about his ham-fisted, "Keith Floydish" foray into Vietnamese food, called Danny Cohen, director of television at the corporation, even though Top Gear producer Oisin Tymon had not made a complaint.
It is understood Clarkson, 54, hoped this would draw a line under the matter - "not least for the sake of the hundreds of people standing by to carry on with the rest of the show," according to his friend AA Gill.
"It was Jeremy who handed himself in. He ... explained he had lost his rag after a difficult and tiring day," the food critic wrote in The Sunday Times.
Gill praised his "mate" as a hard-working broadcaster who had earned the BBC "hundreds of millions" and slammed Mr Cohen's investigation into the row as "preposterous and ponderous".
He said: "Jeremy reported the incident. It was over the absence of hot food at the end of a long and frustrating day with the prospect of another early start in the morning.
Video:Family: We Saw Clarkson's Abuse
"The producer, Oisin Tymon, had not made a complaint. Jeremy called Danny Cohen, the director of BBC television, directly and explained he had lost his rag.
"Cohen had a choice: to do the right thing or the bureaucratic thing, but at the BBC no good intention goes unquestioned."
He added: "People work long hours with a great deal of stress, and small things - almost invariably food - are tetchy trip-wires.
"Whatever did happen, in mitigation to Jeremy, nobody works harder or under more stress than he."
Mr Cohen suspended Clarkson and cancelled the next three episodes of the BBC2 programme after reportedly hearing that Clarkson threw a punch at Mr Tymon.
He also announced an inquiry into the incident, due to begin on Monday.
It will be led by Ken MacQuarrie, the head of BBC Scotland, who carried out the investigation into Newsnight's false expose of Lord McAlpine.
Video:Is Clarkson Finished With The BBC?
Writing in The Sunday Times, Clarkson described himself as a "not very interesting fat man" and joked about retirement while he awaits the disciplinary hearing.
"We read often about active and busy people who die the day after they retire because they simply can't cope with the concept of relaxation," he said.
"So as I seem to have a bit of time on my hands at the moment, I thought it would be a good idea to take up some kind of hobby.
"I began by watching daytime television, and soon felt myself starting to slip away. So I turned over to the news and it was all about a not very interesting fat man who had been suspended from his not very important job.
"But watching the fat man made me hungry and that's when the penny dropped: I'd take up cooking."
He added: "I decided to get ambitious and cook the most delicious thing I've eaten in my life: a pho ... a Vietnamese noodle soup that contains about 128 ingredients."
However, after tucking into wine while waiting for the beef broth to cook and adding chillies "that sat on the Scoville scale just above lava" he went to bed "hungry, drunk and with an ulcerated, gangrenous mouth".
Video:Clarkson's Fate 'For BBC To Decide'
Following his comments on Saturday that the time may have come for him to leave Top Gear, was he hinting at a possible new career as a restaurant critic?
"My new hobby is called 'going out to restaurants and letting people who know what they're doing cook my food," he wrote at the end of his column.
The BBC investigation will try to establish what happened on the night of 4 March at the Simonstone Hall hotel in Hawes, North Yorkshire, after Clarkson was told the chef had stopped serving hot food.
It will also take into account Clarkson's other controversies of the past two years, and could take weeks until his fate is decided.
The delay already appears to have irked fellow Top Gear presenter James May, who tweeted on Saturday: "So; it's been a week, and still no answer. How exactly do you pronounce 'fracas'?"
Nearly one million people have signed a petition calling for Clarkson to be reinstated, but not everyone at the BBC wants him back.
The BBC's in-house magazine, Ariel, published a letter from a receptionist at BBC Oxford that reflects the mood of some staff.
Video:Is Clarkson Finished With The BBC?
Pat Noel argued "there are only so many warnings the BBC can give one person. There is a lot of great talent in the BBC; let's not make one man a god."
Last month, the BBC approved its new bullying and harassment grievance policy, agreed with unions, and some are seeing allegations that Clarkson threw a punch at a producer as a test case.
Luke Crawley, assistant general secretary of the broadcast and workers' union Bectu, told The Observer: "If it turns out that the allegations are true, then the BBC must take a very firm line.
"Otherwise it seems to be open season for star presenters taking a pop at staff. This is a pretty serious test case."
Chancellor George Osborne is expected to extend pension freedoms to some five million people who have already purchased an annuity.
The change - due to be announced in Wednesday's Budget - will remove limits on buying and selling existing annuities.
The reform lets people cash in their annuity without incurring heavy tax penalties.
It also allows pensioners the same access to their retirement funds as the Chancellor announced last year for people who have yet to take their pensions.
Under those changes, from 6 April people can cash in their pension savings when they retire, rather than purchase an annuity.
Video:The Sky News Budget Rap Battle
With just weeks to go before the General Election, the announcement is expected to be popular with elderly voters.
The Chancellor is also reportedly considering cutting inheritance tax in a move which could allow millions to pass on their homes to their children tax free.
The Sunday Express reports that Mr Osborne is considering raising the death tax threshold from £325,000 to £1m, or abolishing the tax for a main family home.
The reform will either be announced in the Budget or as part of the Conservative manifesto, according to the newspaper.
Mr Osborne is expected to say on Wednesday that his Budget will deliver "a truly national recovery".
Video:60-Second Economist: The Budget
The Chancellor will outline measures to invest in industries around Britain, not just in London and the South East.
The measures are expected to include increased support for regional technology clusters and investment in the chemical sector in the North East.
Writing in The Sun On Sunday, Mr Osborne said: "We mustn't go back to the bad old days of just relying on the City of London for growth.
"New analysis shows that if all parts of England outside London and the South East grew at the national average then the UK economy as a whole could be an extra £90bn bigger by 2030.
"And it can be done. Between 2010 and 2013 Yorkshire and the Humber alone created more jobs than the whole of France, and in the South West over the last year someone has got a new job every 10 minutes."
A Northampton bus station dubbed "the mouth of hell" has been demolished.
The Greyfriars bus station was built in 1976, an example of brutalist architecture, and was so despised that the Lonely Planet guide once described it as "infamously ugly".
It was costing taxpayers £500,000 in repairs each year and the council claimed it would cost almost £30m to renovate it. So the three-storey building, which included a car park and offices, had been left to deteriorate.
A new bus station opened last year and so Northampton Borough Council decided the old one should go, in an event streamed live to more than 1,300 people in order to discourage them from risking their safety at the scene.
The council set up an exclusion zone and evacuated 414 homes near the four-acre town centre site as a precaution.
Video:Power Station Demolition On Webcam
David Macintosh, leader of the council, said, despite the building's ugliness, residents had expressed some sadness leading up to its demolition.
He said: "It's funny because, in the last couple of months, people have said, 'we will miss it'.
"It's not very well-liked, and is now redundant. 'The mouth of hell' sums it up perfectly."
Video:Tower Blocks Tumble In Dundee
The bus station also featured on a Channel 4 series called Demolition in 2005, when it was voted third favourite out of 12 buildings that should be demolished.
It was during this programme that the "mouth of hell" moniker was coined by broadcaster Kevin McCloud.
End of life care should be made available free of charge, MPs have concluded.
A report by the Health Select Committee found that acute and community care for people reaching the end of their lives varies around the UK and has called for long-term sustainable funding for hospices.
Report author Dr Sarah Wollaston MP said: "There are unacceptable levels of variation in the care that people receive and this needs to be addressed so that high quality end of life care is available to everyone regardless of their age, medical condition or where they live.
"We must make sure that specialist palliative care expertise is accessible within hospitals and community settings as well as within our hospices."
In patient Vera Clark, 87, is currently being treated for lung and heart problems at the highly rated Hospice of St Francis in Berkhamsted, Herts.
Video:Terminal Patients Denied Last Wish
Her son Brian, who visits her every day, told Sky News: "We do feel lucky that she is where she is, it makes such a difference knowing she is in the right place."
Hospice director Dr Ros Taylor, who is also national director of Hospice UK, explained that some patients still get lost within the NHS system.
"There isn't the confidence of nurses and young doctors in hospital to have those conversations to recognise that somebody might be towards the end of their life, so the planning doesn't happen and people die waiting to leave hospital," she said.
Three British teenagers are back in the UK after being detained for allegedly trying to travel to Syria to join terror group Islamic State.
The group, a 19-year-old male and two boys aged 17, are being held at a central London police station after being arrested on suspicion of preparing terrorist acts, said Scotland Yard.
They were apprehended at Sabiha Gokcen airport in the Turkish city of Istanbul.
It is believed they travelled from England to Spain before flying on to the country.
The detainees have not been named, but Sky sources in Turkey say the initials of the men are GH, MNG, and MA.
Video:Girls 'Pictured On Way To Syria'
In a statement, the Metropolitan Police said counter-terrorism officers were alerted on Friday that two 17-year-olds from northwest London had gone missing and were believed to be travelling to Syria.
Enquiries revealed they had gone with a third male, aged 19.
Officers alerted Turkish authorities who intercepted all three and prevented them crossing into Syria.
A Met police spokesman said: "On Saturday, 14 March the three males returned to the UK and at approximately 11.10pm were arrested on suspicion of preparation of terrorist acts contrary to section five of the Terrorism Act 2006.
"All three have been taken to a central London police station, where they remain in custody."
The detention of the males points to a new level of cooperation between the UK and Turkish police forces, which has faced criticism after three British schoolgirls travelled to Syria to join IS.
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Gallery: Three Schoolgirls From East London Missing
These pictures were taken from Kadiza Sultana (l) and Shamima Begum's (r) Twitter accounts
Kadiza and Shamima are feared to be on their way to Syria with a third girl, 15-year-old Amira Abase
