2 Big Stories

Miliband backs Blair as EU President

Well, here’s a turn-up for the books – the man who was Tony Blair’s head of policy is now backing his former boss for the new post of President of the European Union. Who’d have thunk it? The BBC reports:

David Miliband has ruled himself out of taking a senior role within the EU, while endorsing Tony Blair for the new post of European president. … it would be “good for Britain and good for Europe” if Mr Blair became the president of the European Council. Although Mr Blair is seen as frontrunner for the role, the Conservatives and Lib Dems are opposed to this and certain European governments are believed to have misgivings.

As the Lib Dems’ shadow foreign secretary Ed Davey said last month:

No Government can in good conscience support Tony Blair as a potential President of the European Council while it remains unclear what his role was in the development of British policy on torture.”

Will ‘common sense’ prevail in Royal Mail dispute?

That, at least, is the expressed hope of the company’s chief executive Adam Crozier:

Royal Mail chief executive Adam Crozier has said he hopes “common sense prevails” and three days of UK-wide strikes are called off. … He said he hoped an outline deal would see the strikes planned for Thursday, Friday and Saturday cancelled.

The CWU said it was “looking forward” to Monday’s talks. This week’s planned strikes follow after UK-wide walkouts by Communication Workers Union (CWU) members on Thursday and Friday of last week, in an ongoing dispute over pay, conditions and modernisation.

The Royal Mail says it is continuing to deal with a backlog of 30 million items but the CWU puts the figure nearer to 65 million.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

Nick Griffin has a Mother-in-Law from heaven… (Jon Ault)

You can choose your racist friends, but not your family: ‘Nick Griffin’s mother-in-law describes him as a “work-shy pretender,” according to today’s Sunday Telepgraph.’

BNP fact check (Peter Black AM)

The BNP’s distortions exposed: ‘[Channel 4] have fact-checked the BNP’s pronouncements on the programme and concluded like the rest of us that he was being economical with the actualité.’

These are just my quick picks for yesterday. Please let us know in the comments if you read anything great yesterday.