The Week V. 1031

Osborne’s wage gamble What happened George Osborne wrong-footed Labour last week, by making a big hike in the minimum wage the centrepiece of his first wholly Tory Budget. In a move that went further than even the opposition was planning, the Chancellor announced that, from next April, employers would have to pay workers aged over 25 a “national living wage” of at least £7.20 an hour, rising to £9 an hour by 2020 (the current minimum wage for over-21s is £6.50 an hour). “Britain needs a pay rise,” he declared, echoing a former TUC campaign slogan. However, the Institute for Fiscal Studies later took issue with Osborne’s “Budget for working people”, pointing out that the future pay gains for many families would be more than offset by planned cuts to…

Controversy of the week A deal with Iran When 20 months of arduous talks over Iran’s nuclear programme came to an end this week, “you only had to look at the beaming smiles on the faces of the Iranian negotiating team to see who had emerged as the undisputed winners”, said Con Coughlin in The Daily Telegraph. The Iranians, led by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, have long been seen as “wily negotiators”. But the outcome, reached after a final 18-day “marathon” in Vienna, will “have surpassed even their wildest expectations”. Tehran entered these talks, with the US, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany, in “desperation” over the “crippling” effects of Western sanctions – imposed because it was building a covert nuclear weapons programme. As a result of the deal,…

Paris Anti-harassment plan: France launched a national action plan this week to combat sexual harassment on public transport. It was devised in response to a Paris Métro passenger survey, in April, in which all 600 female respondents said they had suffered some form of harassment – ranging from insults to rape. The government’s new 12-point strategy includes a text-message system that will enable victims or witnesses to report such incidents, and a network-wide ban on any advertising deemed sexist. Female passenger groups will be invited to visit stations to identify areas where they feel unsafe, and where better lighting and security provisions may be needed. Night buses will stop on demand for female passengers, to help them get closer to their final destinations; and a campaign in schools and elsewhere…

Washington DC Transgender reform: The Pentagon’s ban on transgender people serving in the US military is outdated, and should be lifted, US Defence Secretary Ash Carter announced on Monday. Carter will create a working group made up of senior military and civilian personnel, and give them six months to assess the likely impact of lifting the ban on the US’s fighting capability; however, he said, the opening assumption would be that transgender people serving openly would have no adverse effect on “military effectiveness”. The group will also consider practical questions surrounding issues such as uniforms and accommodation arrangements. It is estimated that 15,000 transgender people – defined as people who identify with a gender different to that they were born with – are already serving in the armed forces, mostly…

7/7 bus driver recalls horror Ten years after a suicide bomber blew up the London bus he was driving, George Psaradakis is still struggling to come to terms with the atrocity. On the morning of 7/7, as he navigated the number 30 bus through central London, Psaradakis received a message from central control telling him to expect extra passengers because of a problem on the Underground. “You could hear sirens, traffic building up, people running up and down the pavements,” he told Kathryn Knight in the Daily Mail. “I knew something was wrong but in my worst nightmare I could not have imagined what had happened.” As people poured out of the Underground, traffic ground to a halt and the bus became dangerously overfull. Psaradakis pulled over and radioed his…

Where did Beavis park? On 15 April 2013, “between the hours of half past two and half past five”, according to court documents, fish and chip shop owner Beavis parked his car at Chelmsford’s Riverside Retail Park. The private car park offered two hours of free parking, but Beavis stayed an extra 56 minutes on top of that. A few weeks later, he got a letter from ParkingEye Ltd, which operates the car park, demanding an £85 fine. Beavis refused to pay. “Each communication from the parking company made me ever more furious,” he said. “It has to stop.” When his case was heard at Cambridge County Court, last May, Beavis lost. This April, his case was heard again, at the Court of Appeal, but was thrown out. Next week,…