Lloyds defends plans to pay staff £120m in bonuses
Lloyds Banking Group, which encompasses Lloyds and HBOS and which is now 43 per cent state-owned, has defended plans to pay out around £120m in bonuses to staff. The bank, which suffered a fall in its share price on Friday of more than 30 per cent after revealing write-downs of £10bn from the HBOS takeover, says the primary beneficiaries will be counter and branch staff. "We are a retail and commercial bank where most colleagues earn approximately £17,000 a year," a spokesman said. "In most cases this means an annual bonus of £1,000 or less." Meanwhile Lib-Dem Treasury spokesman Vince Cable says it is inevitable that Lloyds will have to be nationalised. (Sunday Telegraph)
The Mole: Brown promises bonus review - at the end of the year 
Civil unrest is a shot across the bows for the ruling classes
Sympathy grows for outlaws, thanks to the greedy bankers
Brown welfare guru defects to Tories
David Freud, the architect of Labour plans to privatise job training has defected to the Tories. Conservative leader David Cameron is planning to make Freud a working peer so he can take over the shadow welfare brief. Freud, a former investment banker, formally handed in his resignation to Welfare Secretary James Purnell yesterday. He has reportedly been unhappy with the Prime Minister's lack of ambition in seeking to reform the welfare system. To round off the PM's bad weekend, a YouGov poll shows Labour 12 points behind the Conservatives. (Sunday Times)
The Mole: all the latest from our Wetminster insider
Transplant row over drinkers
More than one in four liver transplants are going to hardened alcohol abusers, it was revealed yesterday. The news has sparked a row about the ethical considerations used when allocating organ donations, given that the waiting list for liver transplants has increased by almost 100 per cent over a decade. Dr Tony Calland, chairman of the British Medical Association's medical ethics committee, told the Observer: "Surgeons are within their rights to refuse transplants to anyone with alcohol-related liver disease if they do not demonstrate a genuine desire to stop drinking." (Observer)
Get the kids back in the pub
Americans: Booze gets the boot in Manhattan
Police chiefs ‘make £18m a year’
The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) is being run as a private business concern, according to the Mail on Sunday, and is generating revenues of £18m from selling information from the Police National Computer. The body is charging the public up to £70 a time to access information that only costs 60p for ACPO to access. It is also marketing 'police approval' notices to companies selling anti-theft and home protection devices and employing former officers on lucrative salaries. Because ACPO is run as a private company itself, there is little scrutiny of its activities. (Mail on Sunday)
Will Self: Sir Ian Blair was right to fight racism
Coppers are a tribe apart
School fees hit by credit crunch
The economic crisis is compelling some higher earning families to take their children out of private education and send them to state schools. As a result, figures show that two-thirds of local authorities have reported an increase in applications for primary and secondary schools compared with the same time last year. Some local authorities are having to build new classrooms and fear a funding shortfall from central government. Margaret Morrissey, spokeswoman for the Parents OutLoud campaign group, warns: "In the scramble for places, there will always be children that schools are more keen to have, although schools swear they don't cherry pick." (Sunday Telegraph)
Will Self: For better state education we need a better state
David Cameron has said that he will ban Scottish MPs from voting in the House of Commons on issues that only affect England if the Conservatives return to power. The move is Cameron's first attempt to address the so-called West Lothian question: why should Scottish MPs be allowed to vote on matters south of the border that have no relationship to their constituents? (Mail on Sunday)
The nationalist undercurrent behind Alex Salmond's jamboree
How Charles could become the next king of Scotland
Almost two in three members of the Church of England's General Synod believe that Christians suffer discrimination at work because to their beliefs, and that freedom of belief has generally been eroded since the Labour government. Came to power in 1997. The recent high-profile case of a nurse suspended from work for praying for a patient has brought the issue into the headlines. (Sunday Telegraph)
The horror of a new athiest world
PC lies are mad and dangerous
Compassion starts at home, your ex-holiness
Gordon Brown's former spin doctor Charlie Whelan (left) is at the centre of a bullying row at the Unite, the country's largest trade union. Three key officials in the political department, which Whelan heads as political director, have been off work for the last few months on full pay after allegedly being bullied by Whelan. (The Observer)
People: Whelan accused of bullying
A Royal Marine was shot dead yesterday in Afghanistan, the 144th serviceman to be killed in the country since British troops were first deployed there in 2001. The soldier, from 45 Commando, was shot while he was on patrol in an area southwest of Sangin in Helmand province and died on his way to hospital. His next of kin have been informed. (Independent on Sunday)
Will Self: Labour is sacrificing our soldiers in Afghanistan
Business Secretary Lord Mandelson's plans to part-privatise the Royal Mail are being labelled "dead in the water" after scores of Labour MPs pledged to vote against the Government on the issue. Mandelson's original scheme, which called for the selling-off of a minority stake in the Post Office, will now have to be re-thought, with one option being a guarantee in legislation that the company would never be fully sold off. (Sunday Telegraph)
Will Self: The Post Office we hanker after doesn't exist anymore
People: Mandelson gets to dance with Strictly judge
Three Islamist terror suspects were arrested in northwest England on Friday trying to flee the country under cover of a humanitarian convoy to Gaza led by the maverick MP George Galloway. The men were travelling south to join Galloway's Valentine's Day convoy of aid at Ramsgate when they were held by police and MI5 agents. There is no suggestion that Galloway knew of the men's plans. (Sunday Times)
Al-Qaeda is losing but the West isn't winning
Black Death and al-Qaeda - the anatomy of a scare story
Foreign Secretary David Miliband has been cast into an embarrassing row over an alleged attempt to cover up the torture of a British resident at Guantanamo Bay. The Foreign Office is accused of soliciting a letter from the US State Department that compelled British judges to keep the treatment of Binyam Mohammed quiet. The letter said that information about Mohammed's treatment would endanger future intelligence-sharing activities between the US and the UK. The Foreign Office confirmed that it had requested the letter but claimed it was merely to obtain a US angle on legal proceedings. (Observer)
Bagram - the granddaddy of US terror camps
The Mole: Brown plans Washington visit after intelligence sharing threat
Jacqui Smith, the under-fire Home Secretary, has told friends that she believes she will be removed from the job by Gordon Brown after a series of damaging revelations about her expenses as an MP. Smith believes she has lost the support of the PM, and officials within her ministry have been openly briefing against her, telling journalists that her former deputy Tony McNulty or the Police Minister Vernon Croaker would do better than her. (Sunday Times)
The Mole: Smith expenses row and Lord Taylor leave critics fuming
Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace have bought a £4m property in Hong Kong while their country is laid low by hyperinflation, unemployment and a deadly outbreak of cholera. The house, in a residential complex in the former British colony, was purchased for the couple by a middleman. Meanwhile, it has been reported that a plan has been hatched to evict the last of the country's white settlers. (Sunday Times)
Zimbabwe Today: Who gets the perks - and the Mercs?
Amanda Knox (left), the American exchange student who is accused of murdering her English housemate Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy, in 2007, had a mark on her neck which was visible in the days after the murder. Laura Mezzetti, who lived in the same house as Knox, said she noticed the mark after hearing that Ms Kercher had been stabbed in the neck. (Sunday Telegraph)
How Amanda Knox has captivated the global media
Logging companies are returning to the Amazon ranforest, and Brazil's army of unemployed are happily working in saw mills and other related industries, despite the potentially catastrophic enviromental consequences. Illegal loggers were driven out of the massive forest last year by the Brazilian army and police, but have been secretly returning to the region. (Observer)
In Pictures: first contact in the Amazon
Troubled broadcaster ITV, led by chairman Michael Grade, is looking to end its relationship with the social networking website Friends Reunited. ITV bought the company in 2006 for a reported £175m, but competition from websites such as Facebook and MySpace has meant FR is worth far less now. (Sunday Telegraph)
Aaron Sorkin to write Facebook, the movie
The Royal Bank of Scotland has been accused of wasting £200m in a series of sponsorship deals that were being negotiated even while the bank was on the brink of collapse last October. Stars such as Zara Phillips (left), racing driver Jackie Stewart and Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar were signed up by former RBS chief executive Fred Goodwin. (Sunday Times)
The Mole: Why Crosby had to go
The Government is drawing up 'Doomsday' plans to renationalise the communications giant BT should the company hit choppy waters during the recession. The private company has a pensions scheme which is believed to be many billions of pounds in the red, and saw its stock price plunge last week after announcing an 81 per cent fall in profits. (Observer)
Renationalisation can fix British failures
London's Tate Modern has become embroiled in a row over animal welfare after 12 fish died in an art installation at the gallery. The work by conceptual Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles, entitled Through, featured 55 ghost catfish and glass fish, almost a quarter of whom died during the 13-week exhibition. A spokesman for the RSPCA said: "If this art exhibition involved dogs, then there would be a national outcry, why should the use of fish be any different?" (Sunday Telegraph)
People: Tate hangs Rothkos upside down
Michael Jackson (left) is to auction off the contents of his Neverland ranch, with more than 2,000 items ranging from costumes and artworks to a Popemobile-style electric buggy, a huge statue of Prometheus and the gates of his ranch. Lots are "priced as if you and I had owned them, not as if they were owned by Michael Jackson," according to Martin J Nowlan, the auctioneer handling the April sale in LA. (Observer)
A French graffiti artist known as JR is being hailed as the new Banksy, after some of his pieces sold at more than twice their estimate at Sotheby's. JR, a 25-year-old mixed race Parisian, has 'tagged' buildings such as Tate Modern in London, and refers to himself as a 'photograffeur'. His work Ladj Ly, an image of a man holding a CCTV camera like a rifle, went for £26,250 to a French telephone bidder. (Sunday Times )
The overinflated art market sees its bubble burst
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