The unfolding events in Dubai continued to weigh on stock markets across Europe today, despite attempts by the central bank of the United Arab Emirates to contain the financial crisis.

On the first day of trading after the Eid holiday, stock markets in the UAE had their first chance to react to the announcement last week that Dubai World – the owner of P&O shipping and extensive property in the UK – was struggling to meet repayments on its $59bn (£36bn) debt. In Dubai, the stock market plunged 7.3% while in Abu Dhabi, the fall was 8.3%. A combined $9bn was wiped off UAE markets.

In London, where many banks have large exposure to the Dubai economy, continued anxiety about the potential repercussions of the crisis dragged the FTSE 100 index of leading shares 1.1% lower, to close at 5190.68, erasing gains made on Friday. James Hughes, market analyst at CMC Markets, said the session had been “dominated by nervousness surrounding the debt situation in Dubai” and there remained “suspicions that we could well get yet more surprises”.
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KPMG is leading a committee of creditors – including Lloyds, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland and Standard Chartered and two local banks – in seeking meetings with Dubai officials. David Teather, The Guardian.

Whoopee Doo will the UK tax payer be propping up oil rich sheiks?

We’ve all seen how Google tries to guess what you’re thinking before you’ve finished typing into its search box by giving us a drop down box to select from – sometimes things don’t quite goes as planned for instance type in “I really” and you get:

In case you can’t quite read my image it says “I really hope you get sexually violated by a pterodactyl tonight”. More faux pas at Autocomplete Me.

Hat Tip: Johnny Dee, The Guardian.

Tory candidate Zac Goldsmith has claimed non-domiciled tax status which has allowed him to dodge income tax, capital gains and inheritance tax. What’s the Tories response?

Tory HQ said it was “a private matter” for the candidate. Michael White, The Observer.

So tax dodging is fine by the Tories – remember what they don’t pay we’ll have to.

The BBC will look at cutting some of its digital television and radio services after the analogue TV signal is switched off in 2012, its director general, Mark Thompson, said on Thursday.

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He implied digital services such as BBC3, BBC4 and 6Music could face the axe. These cost millions to run but reach a relatively small audience compared with the mainstream BBC1, BBC2, Radio 1 and Radio 2. John Plunkett, The Guardian.

6Music’s the only reason I own a DAB radio – it’s about the only station that cares about music and not ratings – the end of 6Music would be a sad day in radio broadcasting.

The UK’s banks should be forced to publicly disclose the number of their employees who earn more than £1m a year, a report has concluded.

That is one of the main findings of the government-commissioned Walker Review into the corporate governance of banks. BBC.

Well that’s going to prevent another banking crisis telling us how many bankers earn more than a million – what a joke – is Sir David Walker a banker by any chance? Oh yes – he’s been chairman of Morgan Stanley and is still a senior adviser to the bank – says it all – no surprise that Walker isn’t going to kill the goose that laid his golden eggs.

So that leaves the rest of us paying off the huge debt the bankers have just run-up with every prospect of us facing another huge bill from the bankers in the near future – what a sham.

Peers would get a £200-a-day attendance allowance under proposed reforms to expenses in the House of Lords.

The Senior Salaries Review Body review followed claims some peers abuse the £174-a-night overnight allowance.

It says overnight claims should be cut to £140 but daily allowances for office costs and food, worth up to £161.50, be replaced by the £200 attendance fee. BBC.

So they dress it up in smallish amounts but if you take £200 attendance allowance and the £140 overnight allowance and assume 20 working days a month it works out at £48,000 a year plus £33,600 living expenses – nice work if you can get it.

Anyway weren’t we supposed to be getting rid of the House of Lords?

There’s more to the Internet than a Google search reveals

Fourteen years ago, a pasty Irish teenager with a flair for inventions arrived at Edinburgh University to study artificial intelligence and computer science. For his thesis project, Ian Clarke created “a Distributed, Decentralised Information Storage and Retrieval System”, or, as a less precise person might put it, a revolutionary new way for people to use the internet without detection. By downloading Clarke’s software, which he intended to distribute for free, anyone could chat online, or read or set up a website, or share files, with almost complete anonymity.

“It seemed so obvious that that was what the net was supposed to be about – freedom to communicate,” Clarke says now. “But [back then] in the late 90s that simply wasn’t the case. The internet could be monitored more quickly, more comprehensively, more cheaply than more old-fashioned communications systems like the mail.” His pioneering software was intended to change that.

His tutors were not bowled over. “I would say the response was a bit lukewarm. They gave me a B. They thought the project was a bit wacky … they said, ‘You didn’t cite enough prior work.’”

Undaunted, in 2000 Clarke publicly released his software, now more appealingly called Freenet. Nine years on, he has lost count of how many people are using it: “At least 2m copies have been downloaded from the website, primarily in Europe and the US. The website is blocked in [authoritarian] countries like China so there, people tend to get Freenet from friends.” Last year Clarke produced an improved version: it hides not only the identities of Freenet users but also, in any online environment, the fact that someone is using Freenet at all.

Installing the software takes barely a couple of minutes and requires minimal computer skills. You find the Freenet website, read a few terse instructions, and answer a few questions (“How much security do you need?” … “NORMAL: I live in a relatively free country” or “MAXIMUM: I intend to access information that could get me arrested, imprisoned, or worse”). Then you enter a previously hidden online world. In utilitarian type and bald capsule descriptions, an official Freenet index lists the hundreds of “freesites” available: “Iran News”, “Horny Kate”, “The Terrorist’s Handbook: A practical guide to explosives and other things of interests to terrorists”, “How To Spot A Pedophile [sic]“, “Freenet Warez Portal: The source for pirate copies of books, games, movies, music, software, TV series and more”, “Arson Around With Auntie: A how-to guide on arson attacks for animal rights activists”. There is material written in Russian, Spanish, Dutch, Polish and Italian. There is English-language material from America and Thailand, from Argentina and Japan. There are disconcerting blogs (“Welcome to my first Freenet site. I’m not here because of kiddie porn … [but] I might post some images of naked women”) and legally dubious political revelations. There is all the teeming life of the everyday internet, but rendered a little stranger and more intense. One of the Freenet bloggers sums up the difference: “If you’re reading this now, then you’re on the darkweb.”

The modern internet is often thought of as a miracle of openness – its global reach, its outflanking of censors, its seemingly all-seeing search engines. “Many many users think that when they search on Google they’re getting all the web pages,” says Anand Rajaraman, co-founder of Kosmix, one of a new generation of post-Google search engine companies. But Rajaraman knows different. “I think it’s a very small fraction of the deep web which search engines are bringing to the surface. I don’t know, to be honest, what fraction. No one has a really good estimate of how big the deep web is. Five hundred times as big as the surface web is the only estimate I know.” Andy Beckett, The Guardian.

Back in July 2000 in his white paper The Deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value, Michael K. Bergman estimated the Deep Web as 500 times larger than the known web which is the figure Rajaraman talks about – Bergman now considers his figure of 500 as an overestimate – but in the 10-years since Bergman made wrote his paper no one has provided an alternative estimate – all that can be said is the Deep Web is vast.

As for Freenet’s claim to be a defender of free speech it seems little more than a fig leaf – in reality Freenet is nothing more than a haven for paedophiles, terrorists, criminals and sad people with nothing better to do with their time.

People around the world certainly need secure communications, many countries implement firewalls that preventing their citizens accessing information on anything from AIDS to birth control then theirs journalists such as those working for Reporters without Borders to name a few.

There are alternatives which don’t produce the mass of abhorrent content that is Freenet. For secure communications there is Tor and for publishing facts to the world there’s the excellent Wikileaks.

Personally I’m steering well clear of Freenet and I’m lucky not to need the services of Tor or Wikileaks – although there are those who’d disagree with me.

For those of us who aren’t millionaires Martin Lewis’ Money Saving Expert website should be at the top of our bookmarks, and his Teenage Cash Class should be compulsory reading.

What’s in it?

Lesson 1: A company’s job is to make money

A company’s job is to make money; it is NOT there to help you, it is NOT your friend. They spend billions on advertising, marketing, and teaching their staff to sell; all to make you part with your cash, even when you shouldn’t!

Lesson 2: Debt isn’t bad, bad debt is bad

There’s very little chance you’ll be able to live your life without borrowing money at any point, whether it’s for university, a house or something else you need. Get it wrong and it’ll cost you a fortune. Unlike most other things we spend cash on, you can’t cancel debts, so you need to get it right the first time.

Lesson 3: Loyalty doesn’t pay

Loyalty is for losers, and doesn’t pay. The normal rules don’t apply here, stick with the same people longer and you’ll get less. Martin Lewis, Money Saving Expert.

Rupert Murdoch is considering a tie-up with Microsoft which would see the technology group pay for exclusive rights to content from his stable of newspapers, including the Times and the Sun, to attract visitors to its Bing search engine. Richard Wray, The Guardian.

Meanwhile

Internet search giant Google has lifted the lid on its operating system, known as Chrome OS.

The free and open source system is initially aimed at low-cost netbooks and does away with many of the features of a traditional program. BBC.

It seems like Microsoft is busy trying to turn itself into Google, whilst Google is busy trying to turn itself into Microsoft – perhaps “turn itself into” is the wrong words I should’ve used “crush”. Either way I’d gladly see the back of that viper Rupert Murdoch – is this the last gamble of a desperate man?

Andy Coulson, David Cameron's head of communications

This is the type of person David Cameron is happy employing – don’t be fooled this is the real Tories.

A News of the World reporter who suffered from a culture of bullying led by former editor Andy Coulson, who is now David Cameron’s head of communications, has been awarded almost £800,000 for unfair dismissal and disability discrimination.

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Matt Driscoll, a sports reporter sacked in April 2007 while on long-term sick leave for stress-related depression, was awarded £792,736 by the east London employment tribunal. It is believed to be the highest payout of its kind in the media, and legal costs could take News International’s total bill well over the £1m mark.

The tribunal found in December 2008 that Driscoll had fallen victim to “a consistent pattern of bullying behaviour”. “The original source of the hostility towards the claimant [Driscoll] was Mr Coulson, the editor; although other senior managers either took their lead from Mr Coulson and continued with his motivation after Mr Coulson’s departure; or shared his views themselves. Mr Coulson did not attend the tribunal to explain why he wanted the claimant dismissed.”

The News of the World, which defended the case, said the main reason for Driscoll’s dismissal was his capability or qualifications for performing his work.

Before going on sick leave in July 2006, Driscoll was subject to disciplinary proceedings and issued with formal warnings starting from November 2005 over alleged inaccuracies in his reporting and for failing to turn up punctually on one occasion.

The tribunal found that was merely a pretext and the real reason for the disciplinary proceedings was simply that Coulson wanted to “get shot” of him. In July 2006, Coulson wrote in an email to the deputy editor, Neil Wallis, that he wanted Driscoll “out as quickly and cheaply as possible”.

Driscoll, who joined the paper in 1997 and was promoted twice, was initially highly regarded, according to the tribunal ruling. That changed in August 2005 when Coulson turned against him for failing to stand up a tip that Arsenal were planning to play in purple shirts, a story that later appeared in sister paper, the Sun.

The judgment singled out Coulson for making “bullying” remarks in an email to Driscoll after the first formal warning, letting him know that he thought he should have been sacked.

According to the tribunal, the bullying continued after Driscoll went on sick leave. Senior management at the paper sent Driscoll a barrage of emails, phone calls and visited his home to demand that he see a company doctor, despite Driscoll’s GP advising him to “distance” himself from the source of his stress. Hugh Muir and Chris Tryhorn, The Guardian.