News Roundup - 22nd February 2008

- Hamburg has its city elections on Sunday, and "The Left" party is expected to take 9% of the vote. Across Germany, their support is at 12%. With a platform of a minimum wage, renationalisation of the energy sector, a super tax for the rich, and troops out of Afghanistan, Die Linke is taking advantage of people disillusioned with the Social Democrats (in coalition with the right nationally) and the German Greens (who are split down the middle on German deployment to Afghanistan).

- The government has refused to publish the full report, by Deloitte and Touche, on the risk to security breaches of the £224m ContactPoint child protection system. ContactPoint would list the name, address and date of birth of every child in England and contact details for their parents, doctors and schools. In a five page summary, the Deloitte report said that: "risk can only be managed, not eliminated, and therefore there will always be a risk of data security incidents occurring."

- Johann Hari makes the case for strong government regulation:

Dispersed consumer choices are not going to keep the climate this side of a disastrous temperature rise. The only way that can ever happen is by governments legislating to force us all – green and anti-green – to shift towards cleaner behaviour. Just as the government in the Second World War did not ask people to eat less voluntarily, governments today cannot ask us to burn fewer greenhouse gases voluntarily . It is not enough for you to change your bulbs. Everyone has to change their bulbs. It is not enough for you to eat less meat. Everyone has to eat less meat. It is not enough for you to fly less. Everyone has to fly less. (And yes, I hate these facts as much as you do. But I will hate the reality of runaway global warming even more.)