News

Here's a brief round-up of some of the stories that have been in the news recently.

Of course, the headlines have been on the exploding political situation in Libya. In Britain the government was highly criticized for its slow response for getting its citizens out of Libya. BP was actually able to get planes to evacuate British nationals before the UK government could.

There were thousands of UK oil workers that needed to get out of remote areas of Libya. I saw a few newspapers asking the question if companies put their workers in remote areas, is it the responsibility of the government or the company to get them out? The British Government has also taken a lot of heat because they have been selling arms and other weapons to the Libyan government. Not good.

All of the London boroughs have been forced to make massive cuts to their municipal budgets- together the cuts equal billions of pounds in savings. Libraries have been primary targets although everything, from children`s centres to office jobs, are being closed somewhere. The public have had to be banned from many of the council meetings because they have been too disruptive- fights have broken out and a chair was even thrown through a glass door at one point. Protests in Camden town blocked the main road last night protesting against 35 million pounds worth of cuts- only ambulances were allowed through.

Finally, British fashion designer John Galliano has been suspended from his head design position at Christian Dior due to a very public drunken, anti-Semitic rant directed at a couple in a Paris cafe. I know this made the papers back home but this was front page news in Britain. While this story breaks my heart because I idolize Galliano but he’s obviously got a lot of issues to sort out, which unfortunately had to surface in a very public way. I’m sure that the massive design machine that is the House of Dior will manage Paris fashion week (which is next week) without him, but long-term I’m concerned about the image of the house.