BBC: "About 2,500 post offices - a fifth of those left in the UK - are to close by 2009, the government has confirmed."
Privatization and deregulation are ruining public services all over Europe.

Indymedia: "100 participants of a peaceful bicycle demonstration that was part of the bicycle caravan against the G8 were arrested in Utrecht yesterday in a planned and violent police action for not driving on the bicycle path. They were kept in arrest under adverse circumstances - overcrowded cells, insufficient oxygen supply, without food - long into the night, their bicycles confiscated. Four people are still under arrest today, among them at least two members of the bicycle caravan Gr8chaoskaravaan; one arrestee is being threatened with deportation and one is to remain arrested for two weeks for failing to pay a fine. None of the four remaining arrestees has had contact to a lawyer so far and it is not know where they are being held. Another caravan member was released but had his passport confiscated by the Foreigners Police. The caravan info office protested against the criminalisation of protest actions ahead of the G8 summit and calls for solidarity actions until everyone is out. Preparations for solidarity actions are currently taking place."

Guardian: "Spending on consultants across the public sector has reached a record £3bn - an increase of over a third in two years - according to the first authoritative investigation into their costs, released today by the National Audit Office.
The huge increase is almost entirely caused by the NHS, where spending on consultants has jumped more than 15-fold from £31m to more than £500m in two years - mirroring almost the entire deficit in the hospital and GP services.
The NAO says that many of the schemes do not represent value for money and estimates that if proper controls over consultants were introduced the government could save well over £1bn over the next three years."
But this is what neocon or new labour policies are all about, siphoning money from the taxpayers to private companies, plundering the public sector.

EUObserver: "EU member states have for the second time snubbed the European Commission by backing an Austrian ban on two genetically modified maize products, which the commission says violates international trade rules."
If international trade rules are violating human health and free trade, then they should be abolished. Those rules only favour the big monopolies, who are now trying to force genetically modified products on us. They are not only destroying natural crops and endangering our future food production and our environment, but are damaging international free trade.

Christmas in the Holy Land.

WageningenUniversity: "Observers in the Netherlands reported that more than 240 wild plant species were flowering in December, along with more than 200 cultivated species. According to biologist Arnold van Vliet of Wageningen University, this unseasonable flowering is being caused by extremely high autumn temperatures. The mean autumn temperature in 2006 was 13.6°C, which is 3.4°C above the long-term average."

Polizeros: "The French company that ran the water company after it was privatized in 1997 came under criticism because of high rates and a refusal to provide service for all, a familiar complaint about privatized water companies. Bolivia just completed their take-over of the company (the company received a severance payment.)"

Independent: "The accession of Romania and Bulgaria to the European Union will be recorded in history as a glad moment for the continent. But in the short term it has brought about one unfortunate consequence. The entrance of six reactionary Romanian and Bulgarian representatives to the European Parliament means that the far-right parties of the continent now control enough seats to form a recognised political group. This will go under the faintly sinister name of the Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty Group.
Thankfully, there is little sign that the ITS will be able to organise itself properly. Its leader, Bruno Gollnish, is awaiting trial on charges of Holocaust denial. And its members - ranging from Jean-Marie Le Pen and Alessandra Mussolini to Ashley Mote, formerly of the UK Independence Party - have little in common other than a generalised xenophobia. Most actually voted against the very Romanian and Bulgarian accession that has enabled them to form a recognised group."

Watch the videos of The Trial of Tony Blair.
NewStatesman: "The conflation of two tawdry stories on the same day has become a habit for this administration. It happened again shortly before Christmas - Blair was questioned in the loans-for-honours inquiry; on the same day came the hideous announcement that the government had stopped the Serious Fraud Office investigation into alleged bribes involving BAE Systems and Saudi Arabia."
BBC: "Prime Minister Tony Blair was questioned for a second time by police investigating cash-for-honours allegations, it has emerged."