- Newsnight
- 10 Apr 08, 05:09 PM
Arms and the Man
An extraordinary and damning judgement from the High Court today into the Serious Fraud Office's decision to abandon its investigation into BAE arms deals with Saudi Arabia. The judgement said, in part: "No one whether in this country or outside is entitled to interfere with the course of our justice." So why didn't the SFO - and the Blair government - just tell the Saudis to get lost?
You can watch Peter Marshall's reports into BAE .
Brown
Nine months into Gordon Brown's premiership - what more do we know about his vision for reforming the public services? And does it actually differ all that much from that of his predecessor? David Grossman has been investigating - and we'll be reconvening our political panel to reflect on the week in politics.
Italy
For those of us who love the country, Italy is an enigma. Simultaneously the most cultured, civilised and wonderful country in Western Europe - and a kind of hopeless Third World style mess of corruption and political incompetence. Are Italians once again searching for a Strong Man to run their country? Is Silvio Berlusconi on his way back to power?
You can watch the Newsnight report on corruption in Italian politics here.
- Newsnight
- 10 Apr 08, 11:40 AM
Anyone who regularly reads the Newsnight blog will know that we have suffered from a series of technical problems for some time now. Comments disappear, the dreaded 502 'not available' message appears, and multiple copies of comments get submitted in error. (More on the problems here.)
Well, to much relief (not least here at Newsnight), a solution is about to be unveiled.
In the very near future the comments system that causes all the problems is being replaced by a 大象传媒-wide system.
Under the new system, anyone wishing to leave a comment will need to sign in - a relatively swift and painless affair that comes with the added bonus of enabling you to leave your thoughts on blogs and message boards across all 大象传媒 websites.
Finally, we hope to revamp and relaunch the whole Newsnight blog shortly, with more bloggers, more variety, and the odd bit of video thrown in. But one step at a time...
We'll update you on the changes next week.
- Newsnight
- 10 Apr 08, 10:16 AM
Liz Gibbons is today's programme producer. Here's her early email to the team ahead of the morning editorial meeting.
Hello all.
China and the torch feels like the biggest story in town - how do we do it though?
The BAE ruling has just come in - bids on this?
We should watch interest rates and Birmingham City obviously.
What else do you fancy?
David Grossman is working up a piece about Gordon Brown's vision for public services and why we're not at all clear what it is yet. We could discuss off the back?
And we have a film about the Italian elections from Christian Fraser - the country is in such an economic mess that Berlusconi might get back in.
See you at 10.30 for some Apprentice-style team bonding.
Liz