UPDATE 1-BoEs Posen: We will do some-more QE if we have to

Wed Feb 24, 2010 7:34am EST Related News BoE"s Posen: We will do more QE if we have toWed, Feb 24 2010HIGHLIGHTS-BoE"s Posen panel discussion in LondonWed, Feb 24 2010UK inflation jump will force explanation from BoEMon, Feb 15 2010HIGHLIGHTS-BoE Feb Inflation Report press conferenceWed, Feb 10 2010

* Posen echoes BoE governor"s remarks on QE

Currencies&&&&Bonds

* Don"t bet on high inflation, he tells investors

By Fiona Shaikh

LONDON, Feb 24 (Reuters) - The Bank of England will expandits quantitative easing programme again if necessary, centralbank policymaker Adam Posen said on Wednesday.

His comments are in line with those of BoE Governor MervynKing and other members of the Monetary Policy Committee who havemade it clear that, while their 200 billion pound asset purchasescheme has been put on hold, the door is open for more.

"If we have to, we will," Posen said in an interview withReuters Insider television.

King told lawmakers on Tuesday that more QE, where the BoEbuys mostly British government bonds with newly-created money toboost demand, may be needed if the economy remains weak.[ID:nLDE61M1SA]

Britain"s economy has just emerged from an 18-monthrecession, growing only 0.1 percent in the final three months oflast year and policymakers have said further quarters ofcontraction could be on the cards.

Earlier this month, the BoE forecast inflation well belowits two percent target on the central bank"s two-yearforecasting horizon based on market expectations of interestrates, and after an initial but temporary price spike this year.

That outlook implies rates may need to stay at the recordlow of 0.5 percent for longer than the market had been thinkingor that further QE may be needed to boost the economy and getinflation back on track.

"Any of you betting on high inflation in major economies,including the UK, will lose money," Posen said.

However, he warned policymakers to take heed of pastmistakes in estimating just how much support the economy mayneed so that they didn"t drive up inflation.

"The biggest mistake of the 1970s was that central bankersoverestimated the output gap repeatedly," he said.

Posen said one way to control inflation was to encourageinvestment in inflation-protected bonds.

"If you look at countries with linker bonds, they are theones with the best inflation records over the last 20 years," hesaid. "The BoE and most central banks are eager to have TIPS(Treasury inflation-protected securities) and otherinflation-linked bonds because it"s a disciplining device."

He later told reporters that the pound, which weakenedduring the financial crisis, had now stabilised.

"The pound has been stable since early 2009 ... and I thinkthere is no reason to think it will move beyond that," he said.

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Election is ours to lose declares Brown as he launches Operation Fightback

Gordon Brown today launched Labour"s election campaign with an appeal to disillusioned voters to "take a second look" at his party"s policies.

Under the slogan "A Future Fair for All", the Prime Minister put activists on a war footing and accused the Tories of being out of touch with Britain"s "mainstream majority".

Mr Brown signaled that the economy will dominate his appeal to voters -with efforts to secure recovery making up three of his four key themes.

"My message to the people of Britain today is simple," he told the high-profile gathering at Warwick University.

"I know that Labour hasn"t done everything right. And I know -really, I know - that I"m not perfect. But I know where I come from, Iknow what I stand for, and I know who I came into politics to represent."

Fightback: Gordon Brown addresses Labour activists at Warwick University where he unveiled Labour"s new slogan

"And if you, like me, are from Britain"s mainstream majority - froman ordinary family that wants to get on and not simply get by, then mymessage to you today is simple: take a second look at us and take along hard look at them." More...Gordon Brown likens Tories to the Habsburgs as he goes on the attack over economyCameron to appear on Alan Titchmarsh show after dismissing Piers Morgan offer because he wanted something "substantial"Shock for Labour as rebel James Purnell quits as an MP

But the slogan drew immediate ridicule from rival party leaders who said he had presided over a 13-year failure to make Britain fairer.

Tory leader David Cameron said: "The truth is it"s the very people that Gordon Brown says he"s fighting for who have actually suffered the most.

"Today, it"s the Conservatives that can say: we"re not the party of the few, or even for the many - we"re the party for everyone."

Gordon Brown told his audience that Labour were "the changemakers" in the election and set out the four key themes for the campaign.

"First, we must secure the recovery, not put it at risk. Second, we must support new industries and future jobs.

Brown takes his leave after making a speech to party activists

"Third, as we reduce the deficit by half, we must protect and not cut frontline services. And fourth, we must stand up for the many not the few."

Mr Brown"s rallying speech, on his 59th birthday, had raised speculation that he was set to announce an earlier election date than the anticipated May 6 poll.

But despite tantalising the audience by telling them there were 76 campaigning days left - he joked that he was referring to the date of the local elections.]

Mr Brown"s confident speech contained no pre-election policy announcements but it represented a significant escalation of preparations for the poll.

He arrived on stage to the strains of Jackie Wilson"s "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher" after speeches from cabinet colleagues including Chancellor Alistair Darling and Business Secretary Lord Mandelson.

He accused the Tories of planning a series of cuts that would hit the "mainstream majority" and harm the economy: spending cuts this year; an end to cancer and GP guarantees; axing some child benefit and children"s centres; tax cuts for wealthy estates; retaining hereditary peers and overturning the ban on fox hunting.

And he seized on recent Tory document that mistakenly claimed more than half of girls in some parts of the UK were pregnant by the age of 18 - it is in fact 5%.

"Can they claim they know the aspirations of mainstream Britain when they so clearly understand so little of how we live?" he asked to cheers.

In a reference to the ongoing political row over how to pay for elderly care, he went on:

"When it comes to the most vulnerable people in our society, if you put partisan point scoring before a consensus on social care, real families really suffer.

"If you frighten people with made up figures on crime, real families really suffer.

"And if you talk Britain down in the middle of a recession and undermine confidence, real families really suffer.

"Because government is not a game. Because when you peel away the veneer and actually look at what their policies mean, what you see is not the new economics of the future, it"s the same old Conservative economics of the 1980s."

Mr Brown"s speech comes as Labour"s election co-ordinator Douglas Alexander said the partywanted to tap into a "submerged optimism" among voters about the future.

"Ifyou look at the voters" mood there is anxiety and anger over bankers"bonuses, expenses and the recession, a general sense of grumpiness,"the International Development Secretary told The Guardian.

"But sitting beneath that is a submerged optimism. What people want is a sense of a better future to come.

"Weare not denying times are tough, but it has been a different kind ofrecession. Why is crime down, not up? Why is unemployment half whatsome people expected, including the Government?

"Why arerepossessions lower than expected? Why if you look at the lastrecession under the Tories would you want to reopen old wounds and olddivides?"

Mr Alexander said middle-income female voters withchildren were being targeted by Labour warnings that they would losechildren"s centres and tax credits if the Tories took power.

Ministers will be sent out across the country as part of what theparty said would be a "street by street" fight for victory in thegeneral election.

The weekend will also see Labour mailshots sentto thousands of voters in key marginal seats and local parties given"Operation Fightback" packs including magazines, stickers and "keydoorstep messages" for campaigning "throughout the weekend and comingweeks".

But party sources played down suggestions that today"s high-profile event signalled that Mr Brown had decided on an earlier election than the anticipated May 6 poll.

The PM appealed to disillusioned voters to "take a second look" at his party"s policies

Unlike other parties, cash-strapped Labour is not holding a full spring conference so this weekend"s 300-strong event is being used to effectively launch the campaign.

Political differences over how best to tackle the UK"s record 178 billion deficit have dominated exchanges in the run up to the election.

Shadow chancellor George Osborne said the PM should stop "dithering" and name the date for the election - which must be held by June 3.

"In the end the public have to decide in an election. I want that election as soon as possible.

"Instead of Gordon Brown having election rallies why doesn"t he stop dithering and tell us when the election is actually going to be," he said.

Shadow chancellor George Osborne said: "Gordon Brown had nothing positive or new to offer Britain in today"s speech and is taking people for fools.

"He asks Britain to take a second look at Labour when the public have been looking at them for 13 years and know they have failed.

"They have failed on fairness and failed to find a credible plan for economic recovery. Five more years of Gordon Brown won"t change anything.

"Only David Cameron and the Conservatives can deliver the real change Britain needs to get the country back on its feet."

Iraq warrant Peter Moore - my ordeal

Deborah Haynes, Defence Editor & , : {}

Peter Moore, the solitary survivor of Britains misfortune kidnap predicament in dual decades, was hung off a doorway by his arms and doused in H2O by his captors, feared he would die from disease and outlayed months shackled to a grille on the wall.

Recalling his distress for the initial time in detail, the former warrant told The Times that he counted dots on a screen to kill time, invented a mother during hours of inquire and at one point even played ping-pong with his guards.

In an endless talk he rubbished claims that he was hold in Iran in a tract masterminded by the Republican Guard. He indicted elements of the Iraqi Government of collusion in his abduction, and suggested that British officials helped to secure his release.

He additionally removed the last time he saw his associate hostages Jason Swindlehurst, Jason Creswell, Alec MacLachlan and Alan McMenemy alive, and relived the terrifying impulse they were abducted on May 29, 2007.

Related LinksTimeline: Iraq kidnappingsBriton liberated after US hands over Iraq insurgentBritain stranded to no traffic policyMultimediaIN PICTURES: the distress of Peter Moore

Mr Moore, 36, an IT expert from Lincoln, was expelled last Dec after spending dual years, 7 months and one day in captivity.

I proposed to cry, he said, recounting the impulse he arrived at the British Embassy in Baghdad after being handed over to Sami al-Askiri, an Iraqi MP, by his abductors in Sadr City, a Shia dive in the easterly of the city.

At that point you wish to contend something profound, but I was like: I need a pee, pronounced Mr Moore, who has given outlayed weeks in debriefings with British troops and Foreign Office officials as well as on vacation friends and family.

Based in Guyana, Mr Moore pronounced he practical in early 2007 for a pursuit in Baghdad as an IT expert for BearingPoint, an American company, by mistake, meditative the on all sides was in the Caribbean not Iraq.

When I realised, I thought about it and the pursuit sounded flattering easy, precision IT staff in the Ministry of Finance to rise reports. I figured it was a great job, the not military, the assisting the Iraqi people, the kind of what I do in Guyana so I thought that would be unequivocally cool, he said.

On Apr 2, 2007 Mr Moore overwhelmed down at Baghdad airport. I recollect removing off the craft and saying plumes of fume only on the corner of the runway and thought: Ah geez acquire to Iraq.

He proposed precision computer programmers at the Finance Ministrys interpretation centre, that meant travelling multiform times a week from the fortified immature zone, where he was based, to a walled devalue opposite the city, utilizing a organisation of British security guards in dual armoured cars.

On the sunrise of his abduction, Mr Moore pronounced all seemed normal. He was training programmers in one room. A second British consultant, Peter Donkin, was subsequent doorway coaching a 4 Iraqi man on procurement.

The initial thing I knew was I listened a little man shout, in English: Get down! For a little reason, everybody in the room stood up so I stood up. Unfortunately that put me right subsequent to the door. It non-stop and there was a Ministry of Interior troops military officer there. He had a appurtenance gun strapped over his arm and a Glock pistol in his hand. His appurtenance gun was indicating true at my groin. I recollect thinking: If that goes off this is unequivocally going to hurt. I only put my hands up. He said: Come on. I said: Okay.

A Shia nonconformist organisation called the League of the Righteous, Asaib al-Haq, kidnapped Mr Moore and his 4 guards after a series of the members were arrested by British special forces in Iraq and upheld in to US custody. The kidnappers were ready to go as troops officers.

Mr Moore and the bodies of 3 of the guards were returned last year after the US troops expelled the organisation leaders as piece of a wider settlement process. There is no headlines yet, however, on the stays of Mr McMenemy.

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Basildon and Thurrock sanatorium guilty of slight over studious death

David Rose, Health Correspondent & , : {}

A scandal-hit sanatorium criticised for bad studious caring has pleaded guilty to health and reserve failings over the genocide of a 20-year-old infirm man who got trapped in the rails around his bed.

Kyle Flack died from asphyxiation when his head became trapped in between bars of his sanatorium bed in October, 2006. A jury at an inquisition last year ruled that slight had contributed to his death.

The Health and Safety Executive prosecuted Basildon and Thurrock University Hospital Trust at Basildon Magistrates Court currently for unwell to safeguard patients reserve underneath the Health and Safety at Work Act.

The Trust right away faces the probability of an total fine, but the box has been referred to Crown Court for sentencing subsequent month.

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Mr Flack from Stanford-le-Hope in Essex, was blind, deaf, paraplegic and suffered with intelligent palsy. He had been certified to Basildon Hospital in 2006 for a distended stomach.

An inquisition listened his head became trapped in the vituperation turn his bed at night and he was detected the following morning. Medics attempted to revitalise him but success and he died as a outcome of asphyxiation and complications relating to his intelligent palsy.

A jury at the inquisition last Jul ruled that the turn of organisation given to Mr Flack was unsound for his special needs and a correct risk-assessment had not been carried out.

An eccentric nursing consultant told the inquisition that Mr Flack should have perceived one-to-one caring via his complete stay at Basildon Hospital.

The Trust was additionally criticised for bad jot down keeping, disaster to simply entrance prior situation forms and not sufficient precision on the make use of of bed rails and bumpers for beds.

Matthew Taylor, for the prosecution, told the justice that the Trust unsuccessful a exposed studious and they had abandoned prior warnings.

Basildon Hospital was formerly criticised last year when a inform by the Care Quality Commission described dirty conditions together with blood-spattered fate and chairs, contaminated mattresses and commodes, a catheter bag on the building and disposable apparatus being used some-more than once.

Concerns were additionally lifted about high genocide rates at the Trust, and a charge force of healing experts was sent in to safeguard improvements.

Mr Flacks mom Gillian pronounced currently that her sons genocide was unconditionally nonessential and added: All of this has shown how the needs of the majority exposed in multitude are mostly not treated with colour with the apply oneself they merit or their needs met.

She pronounced that her son had led a happy and over hold up and his genocide had left her definitely devastated.

Maggie Rogers, Director of Nursing at Basildon and Thurrock, pronounced in a statement: I repeat the frank condolences to the family and friends of Kyle Flack.

I can encourage the patients that given his comfortless genocide in 2006, we have taken movement that includes mending the government of apparatus and the caring of the patients with special needs.

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Lord Carey of Clifton: Christianity is plant of bullying campaign

Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent & , : {}

Lord Carey of Clifton, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, has warned that Christianity is being marginalised by a strident and bullying debate opposite the faith.

Lord Carey, vocalization at a conference on Christian harm in the House of Lords, said: Christianity, that has since so most to the country, is right away being sidelined as never prior to as though it is a foreigner to the nation.

Warning that Britains Christian birthright was in risk of being abandoned, he continued: We have reached a point where politicians are mocked for merely expressing their faith. I cannot suppose any statesman expressing regard that Britain should sojourn a Christian country. That privacy is a liaison and a flaw to the history.

He urged Christians to turn some-more noisy about their faith: If we handle similar to doormats, don"t be astounded if we are treated with colour with colour as though we are. It is time to lapse to the open square.

Related LinksCareys immigration views are irrationalCarey: Pope contingency provide us with apply oneself

Recently, a series of Christians have been sacked or dangling for vocalization about their faith.

Olive Jones, a clergyman who lost her pursuit for asking accede to urge for a ill pupil, told the meeting: Twenty years of training discharged for pity the integrity of God in this Christian nation. I felt I had been treated with colour with colour as a criminal.

Caroline Petrie, a nurse, was dangling for charity to urge for a patient, said: I was told if I one after another what I was you do I would be struck off the nurses register. She was backed after looking authorised assistance.

Poland"s genius contributor Ryszard Kapuściński indicted of fiction-writing Books The Guardian

Ryszard Kapuscinski in 2003. In the 1960s and 70s he was his agency"s usually unfamiliar correspendent. Photograph: AFP

He has been voted the biggest publisher of the 20th century. In an forlorn career, Ryszard Kapuściński remade the usual pursuit of stating in to a well read art, chronicling the wars, coups and full of blood revolutions that shook Africa and Latin America in the 1960s and 70s.

But a new book claims that the mythological Polish journalist, who died 3 years ago elderly 74, regularly crossed the range in in in in between reportage and fiction-writing – or, to put it less politely, done things up.

In a 600-page autobiography of the bard published in Poland yesterday, Artur Domoslawski says Kapuściński mostly strayed from the despotic manners of "Anglo-Saxon journalism". He was mostly false with details, claiming to have witnessed events he was not benefaction at. On alternative occasions, Kapuściński invented images to fit his story, vacating from being in the interests of a higher cultured truth, Domoslawski claims.

Domoslawski told the Guardian: "Sometimes the well read thought cowed him. In one passage, for example, he writes that the fish in Lake Victoria in Uganda had grown big from feasting on people killed by Idi Amin. It"s a charming and terrifying metaphor. In fact, the fish got incomparable after eating not as big fish from the Nile."

He added: "Kapuściński was experimenting in journalism. He wasn"t wakeful he had crossed the line in in in in between broadcasting and literature. I still think his books are smashing and precious. But ultimately, they go to fiction."

On an additional occasion, the bard reported vividly on a electrocute in Mexico in 1968. Although he was travelling in Latin America at the time, Kapuściński did not declare it, notwithstanding reporting "I was there", Domoslawski alleges.

The biographer, a match with Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland"s largest paper, pronounced he did not wish to debunk Kapuściński, whom he described as "my mentor". Instead, he said, he sought to begin a discuss over the attribute in in in in between law and fiction, a memoirist and his subject, and how far complicated Poland remained condemned by the comrade past.

"I think my book is fair. The bizarre thing is I was essay with magnetism about Kapuściński. I wrote it with big empathy," he said. Kapuściński"s widow"s, Alicja, however, has vigourously objected to the biography, entitled Kapuściński Non Fiction. Last week she sought an claim in Warsaw"s district court, arguing that the work shop-worn her late husband"s reputation. (Four prior biographies embellished him in an wholly graceful light.)

The justice deserted her request. It forked out that she knew Domoslawski was essay a autobiography and even authorised him to have use of Kapuściński"s in isolation archive. She has right away appealed to the high court.

Domoslawski pronounced he was confused by her attempts to anathema the book. The autobiography includes usually seventeen pages that dwell on Kapuściński"s amorous relations with women and examines claims that he collaborated with Soviet intelligence.

Born in Pinsk, in what is right away Belarus, Kapuściński embarked on a career in broadcasting after university in Warsaw. In 1964 he became the usually unfamiliar match of the Polish Press Agency, and for the subsequent 10 years he was "responsible" for 50 countries. He trafficked opposite the building universe during the last stages of European colonialism, witnessing twenty-seven revolutions and coups.

He kept dual notebooks – one for recording paltry contribution used in reports relayed to Warsaw by telex, and an additional for impressionistic observations. These were to form the basement for his rarely acclaimed books, in between them The Soccer War, about the 1969 dispute in in in in between Honduras and El Salvador over a span of football matches, and The Emperor, a shining investigate of the unusual and demented Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. He additionally published Imperium, arguably the most appropriate investigate ever created on the tumble of the Soviet Union.

Kapuściński completed worldwide celebrity usually in his mid-40s, when his functions were translated in to countless languages and he was hailed by critics for his supernatural singularity of in isolation experience with wider chronological patterns. Back at home Poles voted him publisher of the century.

Today Domoslawski pronounced that Kapuściński had not usually delved in to novella on most occasions, but had additionally mythologised his unusual life. "In piece of his well read work he was formulating a fable of himself. I can assimilate the reasons. If you come from a small nation whose enlightenment and denunciation are not accepted abroad, you have your summary stronger."

He pronounced he got to know Kapuściński during the last 9 years of the writer"s life. Domoslawski trafficked at length during the 1990s in Latin America, an area in that he and Kapuściński had a clever usual interest. The thought of essay a autobiography usually came to him after the journalist"s death, he said.

"I would demur to call him my friend, given alternative people are entitled to contend they were improved friends than I was, but Kapuściński regularly treated with colour me as a kind of disciple," he said.

Rain and sleet strike road, rail and air travellers UK headlines

Snow-covered fields in New Mills, Derbyshire. Cold go on is foresee for majority of the UK for the rest of the week. Photograph: Dave Thompson/PA

Snow and complicated sleet brought Monday sunrise dejection and some-more transport intrusion to most areas of the UK currently with the wintry go on set to go on for the rest of the week.

Luton airfield runway was sealed after serious go on in Bedfordshire meant sleet had to be cleared, heading to moody cancellations and delays.

A orator for the airfield pronounced it would sojourn sealed until about 1pm. Arriving and vacating flights would possibly be cancelled or delayed.

A array of accidents on vital trade routes caused poignant problems, whilst sight users faced delays due to overruns of week end engineering work.

Snow fell in large tools of southern England, with Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Suffolk all affected.

A orator for the Met Office said: "It is a really murky and wintry stage out there today, with complicated sleet in the south of the nation and in London."

He pronounced there would still be ice in northern tools of the nation with temperatures around freezing. At mid-morning yesterday the heat in Aberdeen was -7C, after descending to -18C overnight.

"It"s going to be a cold night, with lows of -15C in the Highlands, and the odds of drawn out ice tomorrow morning."

The rest of the week would be mixed, he said.

"It"s going to be a soggy, cold week with sleet and sleet from the Midlands and serve north ... We"ll see a lot of sleet in the south, especially from south-west Wales to Essex."

He warned that the complicated rainfall on already humid belligerent heightened the risk of flooding.

On the roads, a territory of the A1 in Northumberland was sealed since of an accident, whilst a car glow close piece of the M54 in Shropshire. An collision caused overload on a widen of the M25 in Surrey, whilst an additional caused delays on the A23 in West Sussex.

Buses had to reinstate trains on East Midlands Trains services in in between Boston and Grantham in Lincolnshire since of over-running week end engineering work.

The Oxford area was additionally influenced by railway engineering and there were delays on East Coast services by Hitchin in Hertfordshire and on First TransPennine Express services, where buses transposed trains in in between Scunthorpe and Cleethorpes.