But they say they are under pressure to make headlines
Posted in General on 30. Jul, 2010
But they say they are under pressure to make headlines.”In addition to investigating store prices, the Government has attacked car dealers and last week turned up the heat on providers of mortgages and long-term investment products.”If you look at the timing of all this cynically,” said a bank chief executive, “what you see is: Government identifies problem, Government investigates problem. “They say off-the-record that it’s an over-simplified way of looking at things. Unveiling 70 measures to tackle consumer predators – from cowboy builders to dodgy used-car merchants – Trade and Industry Secretary Stephen Byers declared: “We need to recognise that many feel they are living in rip-off Britain, paying high prices for shoddy goods, with cheats allowed to prosper and move with ease from one scam to another.”Mr Byers’ decision to compare prices of 100 goods in Britain with the same goods in the US, France, and Germany incensed retailers because it put them at the centre of the debate.”We have talked to the DTI about the list,” said one retailer. She challenged it to develop policies to help supermarkets and other chains hold their own against overseas rivals at a time when national boundaries are dissolving in the retailing sector.”The way to get lower prices is not to bash our stores, but to find ways to improve their buying power when negotiating with their multinational suppliers,” she said.The launch of the BRC campaign follows publication of a Department of Trade and Industry consumer White Paper on 22 July. “Retailers live or die by how well they get along with their customers.”
Mrs Robinson called on the Government to stop playing politics with prices. “The Government didn’t invent the idea of consumers,” said Ann Robinson, director- general of the British Retail Consortium.
IN A CAMPAIGN set to raise the stakes in the battle between the Government and high-street chains such as Tesco, Boots and Kingfisher, retailers have condemned ministers for including them in Britain’s so- called “rip-off culture”. They fear that the FARC guerrillas are stalling while readying to overthrow the government.. This week, Bogota tried to revive the peace talks, which were scuttled on 19 July when FARC refused to let outside observers monitor the process.Colombian political analysts are growing more pessimistic about the chances of success for Mr Pastrana’s dialogue, particularly because some rebel groups are excluded and a cease-fire is not required. But Colombian President Andres Pastrana, elected in November with a mandate to negotiation with the rebels, contradicted the US analysis about FARC’s drug connections and rejected rumours about armed intervention by outsiders.Insurgency has taken 35,000 lives in the past decade and FARC alone now controls over 40 per cent of the country. The car bomb was similar to explosions which rocked the city during his terrorist campaign against the Bogota government and nearly as bloody as a 1997 blast in Uraba, which killed 10 and wounded 49.Mr McCaffrey, a retired general, recently announced that US special forces will train and supply a 1,000-strong Colombian anti-narcotics battalion and said 150 American military advisers are already in the country. They fund their arms purchases through kidnapping and, according to Barry McCaffrey, the US anti-drug co-ordinator, links to the narcotics underworld which yield $600m a year.Until gangster Pablo Escobar was killed in 1993, Medellin was the world trade centre for cocaine. Four city blocks were reduced to rubble after the blast outside the barracks of the government’s anti-kidnapping force Many of the victims remained in critical condition.
“This is a repugnant and atrocious act,” said General Nestor Ramirez, second-in-command of the Colombian army. “It’s a demonstration of barbarity.”
Officers believe Friday’s bomb was in retaliation for the arrest of seven guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), although the rebel negotiator Raul Reyes, denied responsibility.With an estimated 15,000 troops, FARC is the largest and oldest of the six Colombian guerrilla groups. However sweet their independence, the East Timorese would feel the shock of separation, especially from the substantial Indonesian subsidies. The UN would have to bear the cost of these, along with reorganisations of local institutions like the judiciary and even the currency.But, above all, the UN would be faced with the burden of keeping the peace.
“There seems to be this growing misconception that we can just send in the cavalry if violence breaks out after the consultations,” said one UN source last week “But that simply is not true.”. A PICK-UP truck packed with 220lbs of dynamite exploded, killing 10 people and maiming 38 others in Medellin, an industrial city in north- west Colombia, as Marxist guerrillas carried out their recent threats to bring the country’s 30-year civil war from the jungles into city streets. Having been rejected at the ballot box, the Indonesian armed forces will have even less incentive to maintain law and order – but with only a few hundred unarmed police in place as “advisers”, the UN will be in no position to do the job.UN officials in New York are reported to be making plans for an interim administration lasting as long as four years. Under the agreement between Indonesia, the UN and Portugal, the former colonial ruler of East Timor, responsibility for security rests with the Indonesian police – part of the very armed forces which are behind the violence in the first place.But the new focus of concern is the period immediately following the referendum.
If, as seems likely despite the intimidation, the result is a vote for independence, there will be a very unstable interim before the result is ratified in the Indonesian parliament. The reason for the delays is simple – despite repeated promises by the Indonesian government to rectify the situation, East Timor is far too dangerous a place to hold a genuinely fair referendum.Large areas of the country remain under the control of the so-called “militias” – gangs of pro-Jakarta thugs intimidating the supporters of independence and acting with the support, and even under the leadership, of the Indonesian army. Aid organisations estimate that as many as 59,000 people have been driven out of their homes by the militias, who have attacked aid convoys and UN personnel. Six months later, however, little is going according to plan.Just last week, the UN’s Secretary General, Kofi Annan, announced a second postponement of the referendum – having originally been scheduled for a week today, it will now be held on Monday 30 August. “In such a volatile and dangerous situation anything could happen. It would be the ultimate abrogation of international responsibility if we do not have the contingent plans to do the job right from day one.”When the idea of the referendum was first put forward in January by the Indonesian president, BJ Habibie, it seemed like the happy ending to one of Asia’s saddest stories, and few outsiders seriously doubted that the great majority of East Timorese wanted independence. “From the moment that happens, the UN will be taking responsibility for trusteeship for East Timor,” he said.