Nissan Revs Up For Qashqai At Sunderland Plant

Japanese car giant Nissan has started production of its new UK-designed Qashqai, promising to create 500 new jobs in Britain.

The second version of the Qashqai is being made at the company's Sunderland plant.

The new production is expected to see the total labour force top 7,000 for the first time.

The facility sees a new car roll off the production line every minute.

The Qashqai, developed at the company's Paddington design centre in west London, is the company's flagship best-seller in Europe.

First sold in 2006, it is now exported to 132 countries globally.

Nissan's chief performance officer Trevor Mann said: "It invented the crossover segment, propelled the Nissan brand in Europe to a new level and helped our plant in Sunderland to set new standards in productivity and quality.

"The new Qashqai … once again elevate Nissan to a new level."

The Prime Minister welcomed the new production and said the company's parts supply chain supported many more jobs across the UK.

David Cameron said: "Nissan supports 40,000 jobs across the UK.

"And when you add that to the £500m investment that Nissan have made in this country for this new model, it shows how our long-term plan is giving companies the confidence to invest and create jobs in Britain."

The new Nissan is produced on Sunderland's Line 1, which has operated around the clock since 2010 to meet production schedules.

The company said some 286,000 Qashqai cars were built last year, and a comparable figure forecast for 2014.

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Sinead O'Connor Makes Funeral Plans In Ordeal

Sinead O'Connor has revealed how she planned her funeral twice within the space of a week after being rushed to hospital in agonising pain.

The Irish singer-songwriter described the ordeal, which she documented on her blog, as the "most physically traumatic experience I've ever had that didn't result in a baby".

The 47-year-old first started experiencing pain last Tuesday and was told by a doctor who visited her that she should go to hospital in two days if she still felt unwell.

On Thursday, a hospital diagnosed her with an abdominal aneurysm, a bulge in a blood vessel.

O'Connor, best known for the early 1990s hit Nothing Compares 2 U, wrote that she thought "I could croak any minute" and started "making plans … as to how the kids will be OK" if she died.

But doctors changed their minds and put the excruciating pain down to kidney stones. The singer said she was sent home with painkillers.

The next day things got worse. O'Connor wrote that she was "on all fours" crying because the pain was so bad.

She said was told by a visiting doctor that the cause of her ordeal was a blood clot on her lung and she should go back to hospital.

It was then that she again turned her thoughts to funeral arrangements again.

She wrote: "My husband … (we aren't together but we're friends) had come over to help me ... and we start making plans as to if I croak between Friday night and Saturday morning … how I don't want the kids seeing my body n such ... for real."

On Saturday she went to a different hospital for more tests. A doctor told her there was "nothing" wrong with her lungs or chest.

She wrote: "He says 'You do have a kidney stone but it isn't where it would be causing you a problem. People have kidney stones all the time and don't know … the kidney stone isn't what's causing your pain'.

"He asks me have I been upset about anything … I sob quietly and say 'yes ... something extremely traumatic happened about a week ago' ... he says 'there's your problem'."

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Unemployment Rate Falls To 7.1% In Job Surge

The UK unemployment rate fell to 7.1% during the three months to the end of November, prompting concerns of a rise in mortgage rates.

It was the biggest ever quarterly increase in employment. A total of 280,000 jobs were created in the period.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the number of those jobless fell by 167,000 between September and November, to 2.32 million.

The ONS said a total of 30.15 million people are now in work. The number of people claiming jobseeker's allowance last month fell by 24,000 to 1.25 million, the ONS said.

It said average earnings increased by 0.9% in the year to November - excluding bonuses. The pay figure was unchanged on the previous month.

Base rate and unemployment rate since June 1992

The drop in the unemployment rate has potential implications for both savers and borrowers.

The Bank of England's monetary policy committee said it would consider a base rate rise, from the current record low of 0.5%, when the unemployment rate reached 7%.

The 0.5% is the lowest sustained base rate since 1964.

Forecasters had not expected the threshold to be reached until later in the year.

The 7% jobless rate will not trigger an automatic rate rise, according to the bank.

The latest unemployment rate of 7.1% is down by 0.5% from June-August, and by 0.6% from a year earlier.

Youth unemployment also fell, by 1.0% on the quarter.

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Cable Vows Fight Over Royal Mail Chief's Pay

By Mark Kleinman, City Editor

An explosive executive pay row is brewing between Vince Cable and Royal Mail over the £1.5m package earned by the newly privatised company's chief executive.

Sky News can reveal that the Business Secretary is preparing to face down moves by Royal Mail's board to hike Moya Greene's annual remuneration just months after the Government sold a 70% stake in the company.

Mr Cable is understood to be willing to consider going as far as using his vote as the postal operator's biggest remaining shareholder to try to block any such increase.

If that were to happen, it would represent a remarkable new chapter in the privatisation of Royal Mail, which was bitterly opposed by Labour and the Communication Workers' Union.

The Government has been heavily criticised since last October's £3.3bn stock market listing, with the company's soaring share price leaving ministers vulnerable to accusations that it had been seriously undervalued.

The conflict over executive pay has been simmering since last weekend, when Donald Brydon, the boardroom veteran who chairs Royal Mail, said in a newspaper interview that increasing Ms Greene's pay was necessary if the company wanted to retain her services.

"I think it's only fair to pay Moya the right market rate for her job," he told The Sunday Telegraph.

"I'm not in the school that says top executive pay is without fault, there are parts of it that are egregious and wrong. But happily we are so far away from that end of it that to try and right-size her a bit I think is a necessary part of making sure we keep her."

Mr Brydon did not quantify the perceived shortfall in the Royal Mail chief's pay, although Ms Greene is paid less in aggregate than any of her peers at the helm of companies in the FTSE 100. She is also paid substantially less than her predecessor, Adam Crozier.

Last year, she received just under £498,000 in basic salary with further sums totalling nearly £1m based on her performance and directors' judgements about her success at modernising the company.

Royal Mail has pledged not to give Ms Greene a significant pay rise until after the current financial year.

Mr Cable is said to be irritated at Mr Brydon's intervention in the context of a row last year which led to Ms Greene returning a £250,000 housing allowance after he objected to the "material" payment.

The sum was disclosed in Royal Mail's annual report last summer. A review of Ms Greene's employment contract by Sky News after the company's flotation found no further discretionary payments of that kind.

At the time, Mr Cable said: "I am pleased that this unapproved payment is being returned. The company acted quickly to rectify the situation.

"A mistake was made in not seeking my approval: I would not have approved it. The chairman is sorry; the payment is being returned. I now regard the matter closed.

"Moya Greene is an exceptionally good CEO and she and the board have my full support to take the company forward."

Under laws passed at Mr Cable's instigation, most listed companies will face for the first time in 2014 a binding shareholder vote on their future pay policies for senior executives.

The prospect of one of the first big protest votes under the new regime being orchestrated by Mr Cable himself would stun the City.

It is not clear whether Mr Cable is opposed to any increase at all in Ms Greene's salary while the Government remains a shareholder in the company, but he is understood to be determined to hold Royal Mail's board to account over the issue.

However, the Business Secretary's stance may leave the Government vulnerable to accusations of hypocrisy given that both Antonio Horta-Osorio and Ross McEwan, the chief executives of state-backed Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland, are paid far higher sums than Ms Greene.

There is a widespread expectation that ministers will sanction the sale of the remaining stake before next year's general election, which would leave Royal Mail's board answerable only to external investors.

The Business Secretary is said to be keen to avoid the "nuclear option" of using the Government's vote to oppose Royal Mail's remuneration report.

Unions are likely to apply intense pressure on him to do so, however, with Unite national officer Ian Tonks saying this week: "Calls to boost Moya Greene's huge salary even further is proof the rushed privatisation of Royal Mail is descending into a farce. The Government should step in and make clear it opposes this sort of corporate greed."

If Mr Cable did vote against it, it could leave some Royal Mail directors feeling that their positions were untenable because they were not able to act in the interests of all shareholders by securing the services of the company's chief executive.

It would also revive memories of the vote by UK Financial Investments against Royal Bank of Scotland's pay report in 2009 following its taxpayer bail-out, although that vote was only on an advisory basis.

Mr Cable will give evidence later on Wednesday to the Business, Innovation and Skills select committee about the department's annual report, when he may face further questioning about the Royal Mail sell-off.

A spokeswoman for Mr Cable declined to comment.

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Electric Shock Collars 'Should Be Banned'

By Adele Robinson, Sky News Correspondent

Calls to ban the sale and use of electric shock dog collars in England are being debated in the House of Commons.

Matthew Offord, Conservative MP for Hendon, is presenting the argument during a Ten Minute Rule Bill.

He is being backed by dog welfare organisations the Dogs Trust and the Kennel Club.

Tory MP Matthew Offord believes electric collars are cruel

The Bill follows the publication of research, funded by Defra, which shows that the collars can cause negative behavioural and physiological changes in dogs.

Mr Offord said Defra was ignoring its own research.

He said: "In 2013, Defra published its two studies which showed that electric shock collars can cause some dogs negative welfare issues even when trained by a professional using 'relatively benign training programmes', so therefore many would deem them unsafe.

"Very few people who buy these devices would have the skill set of an experienced training and behaviour adviser, so there would surely be a heightened chance of long-term negative impacts.

"... As a dog will have no idea what has caused the pain, it is far more likely to associate it with something in its immediate environment than to connect it with its own behaviour at the time.

Electronic dog collars are banned in Wales

"This is why cases of dogs attacking other dogs, their owner, or another animal close by at the time of the shock are common."

It is believed there are several hundred thousand electronic dog collars in use in the UK.

The Dogs Trust and The Kennel Club believe positive training methods have a greater influence over a dog's behaviour than the collars.

The sale and use of electronic dog collars was banned in Wales in 2010.

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Benefits Street: White Dee Invites Nick Clegg

Nick Clegg has been invited to visit the residents of a street which features in a documentary about benefit claimants.

One of its main stars, Deirdre Kelly, known as White Dee in the show, called the Deputy Prime Minister's weekly phone-in programme on LBC radio and told host Nick Ferrari: "We would love him to come to Benefits Street."

Channel 4's Benefits Street is a five-part series which focuses on residents of James Turner Street in Winson Green, Birmingham, and "the reality of life on benefits".

Ms Kelly, who describes herself as the mother of the street, asked Mr Clegg if he thought the programme was "a fair reflection of people on benefits".

In response to the invitation to visit the street, Mr Clegg said he was not going to make any promises on air.

He admitted he had not seen the show, but said he had heard differing opinions about it.

He said: "Some people say all people on benefits are like this ... they are scroungers and living off the state. Others say it is demonising people and it shouldn't have been made."

Mr Clegg said he wanted a "compassionate" welfare system, and one where "receiving help from the generosity of others shouldn't be a permanent way of life".

Ms Kelly said the show was "very cleverly edited" and producers had told her the programme was going to be a documentary "based around community spirit, how we get on, how we help each other out".

"It has been a shock. We didn't think it would be this big," she said.

Ms Kelly said if Mr Clegg was to pay the residents a visit he would find "a very clean street, people getting together, helping each other, children going to school", not people "scrounging and lying around".

She told him she voted Labour in the last general election, but added: "You can win me back Mr Clegg."

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Stan Collymore Accuses Twitter Over Abuse

By Enda Brady, Sky News Correspondent

Former England striker Stan Collymore has said police are "banging their heads against the wall" because Twitter are not doing enough to stop abuse on their site.

Police are investigating a series of death threats and racist abuse online issued to Collymore on the social media site after he suggested Liverpool striker Luis Suarez cheated by diving during last Saturday's match against Aston Villa.

Collymore retweeted some of the abuse he has received since the match to his 503,000 followers and called on Twitter to take action.

And speaking to Sky News, he said: "I've no problem with honestly held opinion. If people think I'm an idiot, they're more than welcome to say. They're also more than welcome, within the laws of the United Kingdom, to bring up my past.

"That is genuine use of freedom of speech. But freedom of speech means that if anyone walks past me now and calls me some of the things, or makes some of the threats (that have been made to me on Twitter), they would be arrested.

"The police are banging their heads against a brick wall, having to make requests to get reports and profiles processed. Six weeks later I'm still waiting.

"That means Twitter abuse operates in a bubble, a vacuum."

He said he believed financial factors were preventing action being taken by those issuing abuse on Twitter.

"I believe that the number of active (Twitter) users is monetised, so they would much rather have a billion active users who can say whatever the hell they like, rather than spend money on algorithms,scripts, age verification, tying an account to a phone number, or a credit card, which would of course decrease the numbers," he said.

He had previously written on the site: "In the last 24 hours I've been threatened with murder several times, demeaned on my race, and many of these accounts are still active. Why?

"I accuse Twitter directly of not doing enough to combat racist/homophobic /sexist hate messages, all of which are illegal in the UK."

He added later: "Several Police forces have been fantastic. Twitter haven't. Dismayed."

Later the 42-year-old said he was in contact with Staffordshire Police about the abuse.

He tweeted: "Staffordshire Police coming, again. Just the 5th time. Pity twitter aren't interested.

"Police take all complaints seriously,whoever it is. I've waited 6 weeks for twitter to provide information to Police. Yet to respond."

Collymore received support from fellow broadcaster Piers Morgan, who was also abused online after he called on Twitter and the police to do more following the abuse to the ex-Liverpool forward.

Morgan tweeted: "I repeat, racist abuse & death threats both criminal offences in UK. So keep spewing it, trolls, and I will have you ALL dealt with."

West Midlands Police confirmed on its Twitter page that Staffordshire Police was investigating "alleged abusive tweets to Stan Collymore" and urged people to block and report abuse at www.report-it.org.uk.

A Twitter spokeswoman said the company was unable to comment on individual users.

However, she pointed out that targeted abuse was against its rules and the site had recently made it easier for users to report abusive messages to them.

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Moors Murderer Ian Brady Taken To Hospital

Moors murderer Ian Brady has been taken to hospital after a fall at the high-security psychiatric unit where he is being held.

The 76-year-old child killer suffered two broken bones in the fall at Ashworth Hospital in Liverpool on Tuesday.

He is said to be in a stable condition after he was taken to an unspecified general hospital for treatment.

The child killer recently lost a bid to be moved to a prison

Brady was jailed for life in 1966 after he and his partner Myra Hindley were convicted of luring children and teenagers to their deaths.

Some of their victims were sexually tortured before they were buried on Saddleworth Moor.

Last year, Brady, who previously said he wants to starve himself to death, lost a bid to be transferred to prison.

At a mental health tribunal, his legal team claimed he was well enough to be treated away from Ashworth, where staff have a duty to keep him alive by feeding him through his nose.

However, doctors said he was chronically mentally ill and a paranoid schizophrenic who required around-the-clock care.

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Nazi Stag Party MP 'Stupid, Not Anti-Semitic'

The actions of a Conservative MP who organised a Nazi-themed stag party in France and bought the groom an SS uniform were "stupid and offensive", an internal party inquiry has found.

MP Aidan Burley, the best man, was sacked as a ministerial aide when photographs of the episode at Val Thorens ski resort emerged in December 2011.

Conservative peer Lord Gold, author of the report into the disciplinary probe, concluded: "Mr Burley is not a bad man, still less a racist or anti-Semite.

"However, his actions were stupid and offensive, and the conclusions and recommendations reflect that."

He found there was "no political motivation whatsoever" in the Cannock Chase MP's choice of theme.

While accepting the MP left the dinner in protest at one guest raising a Nazi-themed toast, Mr Burley failed to make it "explicitly clear" that he objected, Lord Gold said.

Mr Burley was sacked as a Commons aide

"Given the standards expected of a Member of Parliament, he should have done so," he continued.

He added the MP - formerly considered a rising star within the Conservative Party and who has since visited Auschwitz on the recommendation of the peer - was rightly sacked as parliamentary private secretary to Philip Hammond at the time.

Mr Burley said he regretted the episode and hoped to put it behind him.

"I was the best man and I had duties including booking the hotel and the flights. A number of people agreed on what the fancy dress should be and I was tasked with buying it," he told the Express & Star newspaper.

"I regret the incident and I hope now we can put it behind us. I apologised then and I apologise again now for my role in it.

"The outfit was bought legally in London by me as best man and I take responsibility for that. We did not know that wearing a fancy dress outfit would be illegal in France. It's not an offence in this country.

"It was done in the spirit of mocking the Nazis. There was no malicious intent, no ideological motive, no desire to offend people. And that was borne out by the investigation by the French authorities."

Lord Gold's report was released because French prosecutors have concluded their investigation into the matter.

Mark Fournier, the groom, was fined €1,500 (£1,200) for wearing the SS uniform and insignia, which is illegal in France.

The 33-year-old was also ordered to pay €1,000 (£820) to an organisation representing the families of Holocaust victims.

Mr Burley and the other guests were not prosecuted.

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William Roache 'Not Attracted To Young Girls'

By Mike McCarthy, North Of England Correspondent

The actor William Roache told police that it was against his nature to "force himself sexually" upon anyone, a court has heard.

The Coronation Street star, who faces two charges of rape and five of indecent assault, "absolutely denied" having met any of the alleged victims and said that he was not sexually attracted to young girls.

His trial has heard that he was arrested and cautioned at home in Cheshire in May 2013 and was "visibly shocked" by the allegations.

Roache told a detective that he was "absolutely surprised and amazed" by what had been claimed.

The jury at Preston Crown Court was told that the actor was arrested and cautioned before being taken to a police station for questioning.

In response to the claims, he said: "I think that I am a very sensitive and caring person. I have always respected the rights of other people. I would not dream of forcing myself sexually on another person."

The soap star is accused of raping a 15-year-old girl in his bungalow in Lancashire in 1967 and raping her again in a nearby cottage the same year.

Asked why he thought the woman had made the allegation, he said: "The climate of what is happening at the moment with people coming forward. I don't know what her motivation is. 

"I can only surmise there is hope of selling an article to a paper for a moment of fame."

He went on to say: "I have plenty of attractive and wonderful partners. I love women and love making love to women but it has to be with full co-operation and youngsters have no attraction to me at all.

"These allegations are not nice, not pleasant and I don't know why they have come forward."

Roache was shown photographs by the police of his accusers as girls and said that he did not recognise any of them, that he would not have invited young girls into his dressing room or given them lifts in his Rolls-Royce.

The actor has pleaded not guilty to the seven charges against him.

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