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UK reduces long haul air tax to Caribbean

UK reduces long haul air tax to Caribbean

| 20/03/2014 | 0 Comments

(CNS Business): British Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, has announced a reduction in Air Passenger Duty (APD) for long haul visitors from the United Kingdom, though it will not be implemented until April 2015. The additional tax for passengers flying from a United Kingdom airport has long been criticised by Caribbean islands, which have claimed that it is detrimental to tourism to the region and that it is unfair, since it is calculated based on the location of a country’s capital. Therefore, the APD was less for passengers travelling to the US, even as far as Hawaii, than to this region. The Caribbean Tourism Organization has been rigorously lobbying for change since it was introduced in 2010. Read more on CNS Business

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CARICOM sets out battle plan for slavery reparations

CARICOM sets out battle plan for slavery reparations

| 16/03/2014 | 18 Comments

(CNS): The leaders of several Caribbean nations unanimously adopted a broad plan which they will follow in the battle for reparations from European nations to address the continuing impact on regional societies and economies of the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade. A British human rights law firm hired by the Caribbean Community grouping of nations announced that prime ministers had authorized a 10-point plan that would seek a formal apology and debt cancellation from former colonizers, such as Britain, France and the Netherlands. The decision came during a meeting this week in St. Vincent & the Grenadines of CARICOM leaders.

The countries will also seek reparation payments to repair the persisting “psychological trauma” from the days of plantation slavery. The plan calls for assistance to boost the region’s technological know-how since the Caribbean was denied participation in Europe’s industrialization and was confined to producing and exporting raw materials, such as sugar. The plan further demands European aid in strengthening the region’s public health, educational and cultural institutions, such as museums and research centres.

It is even pushing for the creation of a “repatriation program”, including legal and diplomatic assistance from European governments, to potentially resettle members of the Rastafarian spiritual movement in Africa. Repatriation to Africa has long been a central belief of Rastafari, a melding of Old Testament teachings and Pan-Africanism whose followers have long pushed for reparations.

Martyn Day, of the law firm Leigh Day, called the plan a “fair set of demands on the governments whose countries grew rich at the expense of those regions whose human wealth was stolen from them.”

The lawyers engage to take the fight to Europe said an upcoming meeting in London between Caribbean and European officials will help the group gauge whether or not their concerns are being taken seriously.

Although the idea of the countries that benefited from slavery paying some form of reparations has been a decades-long quest, it is only recently that it has gained serious momentum in the Caribbean and begun to get growing support from across the world. The UK’s FCO however has been quick to dismiss the possibility, despite having already lost one battle with Leigh Day, the law firm engaged by CARICOM that won a more than $21 million compensation settlement for the Kenyan victims of the Mau-Mau rebellion, who were tortured by the British colonial government.

The reparations commission chairman, Hilary Beckles, who has written several books on the history of Caribbean slavery, said he was pleased that CARICOM has officially adopted the plan.

See ten point plan here

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UK names and shames skinflint employers

UK names and shames skinflint employers

| 01/03/2014 | 4 Comments

(CNS): As Cayman wrestles with the idea of implementing a minimum wage after the labour minister expressed her reluctance in the Legislative Assembly this week, the UK government is taking things a step further and naming and shaming skinflint employers who fail to give their workers the basic legal pay. Five employers who failed to pay their staff the minimum wage have been "named and shamed" by the government, the BBC reported Friday, under new rules which came into effect last October. The employers owed £6,800 in arrears between them to six workers and have been fined £3,381.

Similar offences will attract higher penalties of up to £20,000 from 7 March this year, with the government planning to bring in even stiffer sanctions. Those would see rogue employers fined up to £20,000 for each individual worker who had been underpaid.

The adult rate for the national minimum wage in the UK rose by 12 pence last October to £6.31 an hour, which is more than CI$8. Britain’s Low Pay Commission has also recommended that the government increase the rate by 3%, bringing it £6.50 an hour.

Meanwhile, here in Cayman, the government has rejected a private member's motion filed by independent member Ezzard Miller suggesting a starting point of just $5 in order to do “more research” and “set up a committee".

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Troubled youth treatment centre eyes Cayman

Troubled youth treatment centre eyes Cayman

| 25/02/2014 | 21 Comments

(CNS): A Canadian couple whose unlicensed youth treatment centre was shut down by the authorities in British Columbia may be seeking to set up a new rehabilitation centre for troubled youngsters in the Cayman Islands. However, it is unlikely to solve any of Cayman’s young offender problems. David (left) and Susan Kenney are facing at least four law suits from different families who say their children were bullied, abused and mistreated while in the care of the couple at the NeurVana Recovery and Wellness centre, which charged thousands of dollars a week to treat the young people placed there.

The centre advertised the use of advanced neuro-technology to "harmonize the brains" of the youths it treats for a range of problems from self harming to drug misuse.

Reports from Canada suggest the Kenneys, who have relatives in Cayman according to local sources, are now attempting to create a new centre here by the spring despite having had their Canadian centre closed down the legal difficulties over the law suits. The legal action taken by the families involved allege various incidences of abuse, breach of contract, fraud and negligence at the former residential treatment facility which was located in Kelowna. From forcing vegetarians to eat meat to withholding medication from teen patients the law suits accuse the couple of numerous types of abuse and bullying none of which has yet been proven.

Concerns were raised by the families through their lawyers that the couple had not only left Canada in the face of the allegations and the sudden closure of the facility but were attempting to start the same kind of centre somewhere else. 

The Kenneys, who say they have worked with children in various places for 20 years have via their attorney denied all of the allegations.

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UK toddler suffers savage attack by pit bull terrier

UK toddler suffers savage attack by pit bull terrier

| 24/02/2014 | 2 Comments

Cayman Islands(The Telegraph): A judge has demanded “urgent reform” of the Dangerous Dogs Act after hearing how a pit bull terrier maimed a four-year-old girl in the street. Sentencing the dog’s owner to just over two years in jail for the mauling which left the youngster scarred for life, Judge Peter Clarke QC said the case highlighted the need for tougher sentences against those who keep fighting dogs. “This case has demonstrated that the maximum sentence for this kind of offence is in urgent need of reform,” the judge told Blackfriars Crown Court, as the family of victim Carla Cutler looked on. “When a small child can be attacked in this way even without the owner wanting it to happen – given the harm that was caused to Carla I feel I was constrained in this case by the maximum sentence set by Parliament.”

The maximum sentence for being in charge of a dog which causes injury while dangerously out of control in a public place, under the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, is just two years.

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Piers Morgan questioned over phone hacking

Piers Morgan questioned over phone hacking

| 18/02/2014 | 0 Comments

(BBC): Former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan has been questioned by police over phone hacking, it has emerged. Police confirmed a 48-year-old journalist was interviewed under caution on 6 December last year. The CNN host, who has not been named by Scotland Yard, was questioned as part of an investigation into alleged hacking at Mirror Group Newspapers. Morgan, who has always denied any involvement in the practice, confirmed he had attended the interview. He was interviewed as part of Operation Golding, the investigation into allegations of phone interception at Mirror Group Newspapers, which is a strand of the wider Operation Weeting.

In a statement, Mr Morgan said: "In early November I was asked to attend an interview by officers from Operation Weeting when I was next in the UK.  This was further to a full witness statement I had already freely provided. I attended that interview as requested on 6 December 2013."

CNN said it was aware of the interview before it took place and had no further comment to make.

 

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Slavery reparation demands to be released

Slavery reparation demands to be released

| 17/02/2014 | 46 Comments

(CNS): The coalition of Caribbean countries seeking reparations from Britain and other European countries over their role in the Atlantic slave trade will unveil a list of ten demands this month. The group is expected to ask for funds totalling billions of dollars, an apology, and assurances slavery will never be repeated. Professor Verene Shepherd, the chairman of Jamaica’s reparations committee, said that British colonisers had “disfigured the Caribbean,” and that their descendants must now pay to repair the damage. “If you commit a crime against humanity, you are bound to make amends,” Prof Shepherd told UK’s Daily Telegraph.

“The planters were given compensation, but not one cent went to the freed Jamaicans,” she added. Estimates suggest that some £4 trillion was extracted from the Caribbean in unpaid labour alone, researchers at the University of Birmingham have calculated.

Although the regional countries seeking the reparations have hired human rights legal expert Martin Day who won damages for Kenyans in connection with the Mau-Mau rebellion who is confident they can win, the UK government has so far made it clear it will not be paying.
Since Tony Blair’s 2007 almost apology when he expressed  “deep sorrow and regret” for the “unbearable suffering” caused by the slave trade, but carefully stopped short of saying sorry the UK has said little on the subject.

William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, described the trade as “brutal, mercenary and inhumane from its beginning to its end” in his 2008 biography of William Wilberforce, the great abolitionist MP. But although Mark Simmonds, the overseas territories and Caribbean minister, said that “slavery was abhorrent” he dismissed talk of reparations on a recent trip to Jamaica. “Do I think that we are in a position where we can financially offer compensation for an event two, three, four hundred years ago? No, I don’t,” Simmonds stated.

Some experts have dismissed the planned lawsuits arguing that regardless of its evils, the slave trade was legal at the time. But campaigners such Lord Gifford, a British hereditary peer and barrister who runs a law firm in Kingston and advises the reparations committee said the slave trade “breached the natural law that man is free” adding that there is “no statute of limitations” on a crime against humanity.

Many experts also argue that slavery is to blame for a litany of modern ills across the Caribbean, extending to epidemics of diabetes and hypertension allegedly rooted in the salty diets that were forced on the ancestors of sufferers. In 1962, they stress, Britain left an independent Jamaica in which 80 per cent of the people were functionally illiterate.

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HR lawyer says he can win reparations case

HR lawyer says he can win reparations case

| 09/02/2014 | 84 Comments

(CNS): Human rights lawyer Martyn Day, a partner at the UK law firm Leigh Day, says that despite massive impediments there is a real prospect that the British and other governments of the Western powers will pay-up for their part in the slave trade. In an exclusive interview for the UK’s leading black newspaper, The Voice, Day says the reparations issue is resonating in British society. Following the firm’s victory in the Mau Mau case, the lawyer said that while the reparations case will be tough, it is one worth fighting. The case is being pursued by CARICOM countries that say it is now time for the UK and other European governments to make financial amends for the horrors of the slave trade.

“The fact that it is a case involving issues that are two to four hundred years old is a massive impediment to a victory. But we feel the morality of the whole thing is very strong,” he told the London-based weekly.

“The morality of the case is massive and I think it will be very well recognised. William Hague is the foreign secretary who wrote the definitive book on [British abolitionist] William Wilberforce, so we have a foreign secretary who is absolutely knowledgeable about the issue. I hope we get a very sympathetic ear from the British government and have some chance of resolving it,” he said.

Day said that the primary question is, what is the impact of the slave era on the Caribbean today? And while reparations will not come in the shape of payments made directly to all the descendants of slaves, forgiving debt may be one of the ways for the UK to make reparations in the Caribbean. Explaining that there are a number of cultural sides to it, the lawyer said the firm would look at many issues to present to the British authorities.

Day is hopeful of persuading the UK to pay up without a court room fight

See full interview here.

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Simmonds claims expenses for missed vote

Simmonds claims expenses for missed vote

| 14/01/2014 | 17 Comments

(CNS): The overseas territories minister has made an expenses claim for attending the UK parliament last year, even though he missed a crucial vote which the coalition government lost. Mark Simmonds was one of ten government members that missed the vote on the British Prime Minister’s proposal to launch strikes against Syria. At the time of the vote Simmonds claimed he was in conversation with a government colleague in a room yards from the Commons chamber and did not hear the division bell.  According to records released by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority and published by the Daily Mail, although he missed the vote Simmonds claimed £112.50 for the drive to Westminster and back from his constituency.

Prime Minister David Cameron recalled Parliament on 29 August during the summer break to debate the principle of British involvement in military action in Syria after reports of war crimes by the Assad regime against his own people. While Simmonds had been embarrassed as an FCO minister by his failure to make it to the chamber, he still put in the claim for his day trip to London.

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UK armed police to wear video cameras

UK armed police to wear video cameras

| 09/01/2014 | 14 Comments

(CNS): British police who carry firearms are to wear video cameras in an attempt to be "more open" following the death of Mark Duggan, the Met Police Commissioner has said. Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe admitted this week that the force must "do more to build trust" after an inquest jury found the 29-year-old was lawfully killed. Duggan was shot dead by police in August 2011 in Tottenham, North London. Duggan, whose death sparked protests that descended into rioting and looting across London and spread to other parts of England, was shot when police stopped a taxi he was travelling in. The BBC reported that following the conclusion of the four-month inquest at the Royal Courts of Justice on Wednesday, his aunt, Carole Duggan, said he had been "executed".

Sir Bernard said he wanted officers to be able to be more open when it comes to the investigations that follow these events.

"In pursuance of that we're going to ask them to wear video cameras, so that we can record this type of incident, and I'm going to meet many people from across London, leaders from the Haringey community, to see what we need to do to work together to improve the confidence in the Met for those members of society who may feel that this has damaged their confidence in any way."

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