There are a few changes to David Cameron’s cabinet. I was personally surprised that Andrew Lansley is replaced by Jeremy Hunt. It makes me wonder whether Cameron has been reading McCann (or more likely some poor bod in MI5 has been forced to read it and provide a short summary).
Comparatively liberal justice secretary Ken Clarke was replaced by hardliner Chris Grayling, while Caroline Spelman was sacked as environment secretary to be replaced by Owen Paterson, who is pro-fox hunting and a renewable energy sceptic.
Jeremy Hunt was given the job of selling the NHS reforms of outgoing health secretary Andrew Lansley, with Patrick McLoughlin brought in to replace transport secretary Justine Greening, a vocal defender of the government’s commitment not to build a third runway at Heathrow.
But deputy prime minister Nick Clegg rejected claims the reshuffle represented a move to the right, insisting the coalition was ‘anchored in the centre ground’.
‘Right from day one this government was anchored in the centre ground. We’ve got a coalition agreement which is there, which is a tablet of stone setting out what we are going to do,’ said Mr Clegg, who did not make any changes to his quota of five Lib Dem cabinet ministers.
‘That is not going to change. I think the British people want us in the centre ground, they want us where the vast majority of British people are.’ [I think that I notice a repetative theme there.]
The websites of intelligence services MI5 and MI6 were brought down for an hour yesterday in protest over attempts by the British government to extradite Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to Sweden.Between 9am and 11.30am the sis.gov.uk and mi5.gov.uk websites were hit and left inaccessible.
Renowned hacking group Anonymous claimed it brought the sites down using a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, as part of its ongoing #OpFreeAssange (Operation Free Assange) protests.
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dizzy