“It took me some time,” he wrote, “and probably several beers in a good pub near my mother’s house in England to put even a little distance between me and what has happened.” He suggested I might like to write to one of his clients, Ricky Langley, a young man whom, he said, “the majority of the world loves to hate”.Ricky has been on death row for two years He is typical of the men and women there He is poor and he is mentally sick. His life has been a catalogue of tragedy and confusion which led to the ultimate, horrific act; in a state of delusion Ricky killed a six-year-old boy.My reaction to Clive’s letter brought me up short I found myself in a state of dismay and panic I couldn’t do it, I thought I couldn’t befriend a child killer. There was one thing, though – to correspond with a death row prisoner. The feeling of helplessness that I had lived with for so long spilled over and I wrote to Clive, asking what I could do, while feeling that there was nothing that could be done. When the execution of Nicholas Ingram, a British death row inmate, dominated our newspapers and television screens in April 1995, I watched his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, as he talked to reporters outside the jail after the execution He wept openly and unashamedly for this one he had lost. Those who have seen me post my letters shudder at the address because it brings reality too close to home. I have always been passionately opposed to the death penalty.

I live in despair because of the sickness of a so-called civilised society which renders murder for murder with a calculated intent that strikes at my soul with its chilling premeditation. “Death Row” is not a colloquialism or a concept Death Row is an address. It is what I put on the envelope when I write to my Louisiana penfriend and it is what he writes at the top of his letters to me. At the end of her interview, Ms Ford commented: “So you are not going to elevate the debate – thank you Mr Clarke.”. William Waldegrave, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, is finalising bids with ministers, to cut spending to make room for tax cuts in the Budget.An interview with the Chancellor on the BBC Today programme was attacked by Brian Mawhinney, Tory Party chairman, yesterday.Dr Mawhinney protested to John Birt, Director-General of the BBC, for alleged bias over an interview with the Chancellor by Anna Ford in the BBC Today programme.Dr Mawhinney accused Ms Ford of having “repeatedly interrupted the Chancellor”, but he said James Naughtie, another presenter had treated Tony Blair, the Labour leader, “with kid gloves” in an interview a few minutes later. “Yet again the Government expects low-paid public staff to bear the brunt of the cuts to pay for tax cuts in a last attempt to bribe the electorate in November,” said a spokeswoman.The Chancellor will tell the review bodies that pay rises must be paid for with productivity, but he will give a clear signal that he expects the public sector to squeezed more tightly than before, with running costs facing a cut of 12 per cent over the next three years.Last year public sector pay rises averaged 2-3 per cent, and this year they were held to 3 per cent, but with inflation down to 2.1 per cent Mr Clark wants to hold the public sector down below 3 per cent next year.The Chancellor shortly will chair the EDX committee of the Cabinet to settle the public spending levels for next year.

Kenneth Clarke’s letter to the pay review bodies covering nurses, doctors, teachers and civil servants is certain to cause an outcry in the wake of the MPs’ decision to give themselves a pay rise of 26 per cent.
The nurses will table a demand next week for a “substantial” pay increase, without setting a figure, to enable them to catch up with comparable groups, including teachers.The main public sector union, Unison, representing 1.5 million workers, rejected the Chancellor’s pay freeze strategy. Pay review bodies for five million public sector workers will be told today by the Chancellor that the Government is enforcing a pay squeeze for the fourth year in succession. The research also suggests that while traffic increased on nearby roads as people sought to avoid the 20mph zones, the accident rate did not.. The RAC responded with a cautious welcome for extending the zones and called for “a review of all speed limits.”

In a survey of the first 200 20mph zones around Britain, researchers at the Transport Research Laboratory found the number of accidents involving child pedestrians fell by 70 per cent and those involving child cyclists by a half.
Local authorities were first given the right in December 1990 to apply to the Department of Transport permission to impose 20mph limit zones and there are now nearly 300.The councils must implement traffic-calming measures before imposing the speed limit and most zones have been installed in residential areas, though a few are in town centres. Previous research has shown that while at 30mph nearly half of children hit by a car will die, at 20mph one in 20 will be killed.The researchers found that overall speeds fell by just over 9mph in the new zones, showing that most motorists obeyed the limits, and that there was a 6 per cent drop in accidents for every 1mph reduction in speed. Pressure for the extension of 20mph speed-limit zones is likely to increase after a report yesterday showed that they reduce accidents by 60 per cent. “Yet again the Government expects low-paid public staff to bear the brunt of the cuts to pay for tax cuts in a last attempt to bribe the electorate in November,” said a spokeswoman.The Chancellor will tell the review bodies that pay rises must be paid for with productivity, but he will give a clear signal that he expects the public sector to squeezed more tightly than before, with running costs facing a cut of 12 per cent over the next three years..

At the end, Ms Ford commented: “So you are not going to elevate the debate – thank you Mr Clarke.”A Tory spokeswoman, comparing Mr Clarke’s encounter with Ms Ford with “gentle” questioning of Tony Blair by James Naughtie, said: “I think any independent observer just looking at the transcripts and comparing the two would be absolutely horrified.”The Chancellor can expect another rough ride today when pay review bodies for five million public sector workers will be told that the Government is enforcing a pay squeeze for the fourth year in succession.Mr Clarke’s letter to the pay review bodies covering nurses, doctors, teachers and civil servants is certain to cause an outcry in the wake of the MPs’ decision to give themselves a pay rise of 26 per cent.The nurses will table a demand next week for a “substantial” pay increase, without setting a figure, to enable them to catch up with comparable groups, including teachers.The main public sector union, Unison, representing 1.5 million workers, rejected the Chancellor’s pay freeze strategy. But, he said, James Naughtie, another presenter, treated the Labour leader Tony Blair “with kid gloves” in an interview a few minutes later.Ms Ford opened with a question about the Government’s so-called “demon eyes” attack on Labour, beginning a robust series of exchanges with the Chancellor. Dr Mawhinney protested to John Birt, Director-General of the BBC, that an interview with the Chancellor by Anna Ford, one of the programme’s co-presenter, had been partial.
Dr Mawhinney accused Ms Ford of having “repeatedly interrupted” the Chancellor, Kenneth Clarke. The laboratory also looked at the contents of the birds’ digestive tracts. There they found the remains of Chinese takeaway food, bread and a small piece of plastic yellow carton from the McDonald’s hamburger chain.. The BBC came under fire from the Conservatives yesterday when the Radio 4 Today programme was accused of bias by Brian Mawhinney, the Tory Party chairman. But it points out that the public might be unhappy about a major cull, and that it would be impossible to eliminate pigeons entirely from the square.Meanwhile the London Evening Standard, in a public-spirited gesture, has had ten pigeon corpses analysed by a laboratory in Norwich which found they harboured a rich variety of disease-causing organisms, including those which cause food poisoning, thrush and skin lesions.