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The Old Age Pension was introduced by the British government 100 years ago today.

In 1898, the national pensions committee was formed, holding meetings across the country and organising petitions to government with the demand for a universal pension for all men and women over the age of 65. It took 10 years of campaigning by the likes of leading trade unionist Margaret Bondfield, philanthropist Charles Booth and businessman Edward Cadbury.

David Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the Liberal government, a staunch opponent of the Poor Law was determined to "lift the shadow of the workhouse from the homes of the poor". The Old Age Pensions Act was passed on 1 August 1908 and payments began on 1 January 1909.

The act provided that all men and women over the age of 70 received between one and five shillings a week, paid at the post office. Married couples received seven shillings and six pence. The act was Means Tested and only paid to people that could meet certain standards of character. Anybody that had been found guilty of a crime or were likely to squander the allowance away was disqualified from receiving the pension.

Many Labour and Liberal politicians of the day welcomed the introduction of the pension but some argued that the level of benefits were far too low and that the pensions should be universal and disliked the Means Test aspect. The Conservatives, with a large House of Lords majority, objected and made it clear that they intended to block the pension. A long struggle with the House of Lords followed before the budget for the act was ratified. This lead to the Liberal Government passing the 1911 Parliament Act that restricted the power of the House of Lords to block legislation passed by the House of Commons.

A Canadian court has lifted a 12-year-old girl's grounding, overturning her father's punishment for disobeying his orders to stay off the internet, his lawyer said.

Full story here.

I'm not a parent but I think from reading the article that the father had made reasonable attempts to control the behaviour of an unruly child. It boggles the mind that a court would feel inclined to intervene in such a situation.

The merger of Vivendi Games with Activision has gained approval from the EU. Amid claims that it could prove to be anti-competitive the EU has argued that the combined company would still face stiff competition in the marketplace from the likes of EA, Sony & Nintendo amongst others.

Under the terms of the deal, Vivendi would hold a roughly 52 percent majority of the merged company by contributing Vivendi Games, valued at $8.1 billion, including Blizzard Entertainment, and $1.7 billion in cash. Activision would then be renamed Activision Blizzard and continue to operate on the Nasdaq as ATVI. Within five days of the deal closing, Activision Blizzard would launch a $4 billion all-cash tender offer to purchase up to 146.5 million Activision shares at $27.50. Vivendi has agreed to purchase up to $700 million of new shares at the same price.

• Current Activision CEO Robert Kotick will be president and CEO.
• Bruce Hack, current CEO of Vivendi Games, will serve as vice-chairman and chief corporate officer.
• Mike Griffith will be president and CEO of Activision Publishing (including the Sierra Entertainment, Sierra Online and Vivendi Games Mobile divisions in addition to the Activision business).
• Mike Morhaime will continue to serve as president and CEO of Blizzard Entertainment.
• Thomas Tippl, currently CFO of Activision, will become CFO.
• Jean-François Grollemund, currently CFO of Vivendi Games, will be appointed chief accounting officer of the new company.

The new company will be the largest of the third-party games publishers ahead of the likes of EA, Ubisoft and Take Two, with an estimated value of approximately $19 billion.

Since 1991, Regulation (EEC) No 918/83 has limited the maximum value of goods imported into the EU before incurring customs charges at €22 [£17.50]. From 1st December 2008 this limit will rise to €150 [£119.50] as a result of EU Council Directive 2007/74/EC. The text of the proposal can be found here.

The Byron Review was released this morning. Dr Tanya Byron's report was even handed and it's obvious that she knows what she's talking about.

The Byron Review proposes:

• Introduce a mandatory age-rating system for all games, to be handled by the BBFC
• Ensure that retailers defying the age-rating are punished appropriately
• Make age ratings on the game boxes larger and clearer
• Ensure that in situations where there is a risk of actual harm, restrictions can be adequately enforced
• PEGI will continue to rate 3+ and 7+ titles.

The final decision of any implementation is up to the government and it isn't guaranteed that they will follow the recommendations in the report.

John Hewer, synonymous with the portrayal of the grandfatherly Captain Birdseye on British television from 1967 until 1998 has died. He was 86.

When Captain Birdseye was temporarily axed in 1971 an obituary was run in the Times; and three years later when the adverts were reinstated the newspaper ran a story reporting that news of his death had been "grossly exaggerated".

The adverts changed little over the years and would always feature the grandfatherly captain calling in a group of children to dine on fish fingers on board a boat.

He was a member of London's Players Theatre, and had also appeared in many musical productions. In the 1950s he starred opposite Julie Andrews in The Boy Friend on Broadway.

He was born on 13th January 1922 in Leyton, London and passed away on 16th March 2008 in Twickenham, London.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke, arguably the greatest Science Fiction writer since H.G. Wells, died earlier today in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he had lived since 1956. He was born on 16th December 1917 and died on 19th March 2008 at the age of 90. He had been suffering from breathing problems recently and had also suffered from post-polio syndrome for the last two decades.

"Sometimes I am asked how I would like to be remembered," Clarke said recently. "I have had a diverse career as a writer, underwater explorer and space promoter. Of all these I would like to be remembered as a writer."

He had also stated that he did not regret having never followed his novels into space, adding that he had arranged to have DNA from strands of his hair sent into orbit. "One day, some super civilization may encounter this relic from the vanished species and I may exist in another time," he said. "Move over, Stephen King."

With the exceptional capabilities of today's home consoles it seems that the last bastions of arcade gaming; the Japanese market, is now feeling the pinch.

Earlier this month arcade firm Namco Bandai announced plans to close at least 50 of its arcade locations across Japan and Sega Sammy likewise announced plans to close over 100 arcades. Namco Bandai cited the expanding home console market, and the Nintendo Wii in particular, as a big part of the problem. Sega Sammy also announced that it plans to offer early retirement to approximately 400 employees.

"A lot of the types of games that people played at an arcade can now be done at home," said Namco Bandai spokesman Yuji Machida. Machida went on to state that strong holiday sales for the console meant a lot of kids have spent their time at home playing, and spent their money on more Wii software and hardware, such as the popular Wii Fit package. Machida also cited rising gas prices as a concern, as families become less willing to travel back and forth from shopping malls, where arcades are normally located. The closures amount to approximately 20% of Namco Bandai's arcades in Japan.

Just a couple of years after increased profits, Sega Sammy has announced expectations of an estimated loss of 26 billion yen (approx. $230 million) for this fiscal year; compared to the previous projection of a billion yen profit for the year. The main culprit behind the downturn seems to be the pachinko side of the business, which saw a predicted 85 percent fall in profits, and arcade sales, which switched from a slight profit last year to a 11.4 billion yen loss this year.

To coincide with the Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall campaign to raise awareness of the plight of chickens, the RSPCA has challenged supermarkets to become the first to pledge to only sell 100% welfare-friendly chicken by 2010.

Eight-hundred and sixty million chickens are reared for their meat in the UK each year. The majority of these chickens are reared to standards the RSPCA believe are unacceptably low.

Please visit the RSPCA for more information and also please sign the petition.

Hollywood could be back on its feet as early as Monday.

The major studios and the Writers Guild of America are putting the finishing touches on a deal that could bring an end to the costly walkout. Today the two sides are expected to finalize a three-year contract that guild leaders plan to present to thousands of writers in Los Angeles and New York on Saturday. The guild board could approve the contract Sunday and encourage writers to return to work the next day, according to people close to the negotiations.

Studio executives and TV producers have been preparing for that day for the last two weeks, hoping to salvage the remainder of the television season by quickly revving up production to bring back some popular TV shows that have been languishing in repeats or were taken off the air.

"Everyone is motivated to get back to work as quickly as possible," said Jonathan Littman, president of Jerry Bruckheimer Television, which produces "CSI" and "The Amazing Race," among other shows, for CBS. "They want to begin producing as many original episodes as they can."

Movies that were derailed by the strike also could lurch back, including high-profile projects such as Columbia Pictures' "Da Vinci Code" prequel "Angels & Demons" and Warner Bros.' "Shantaram," starring Johnny Depp.

Films are blessed with long lead times, and last summer studio executives accelerated development and production schedules in anticipation of a strike. As a result, the movie industry was not as hard hit by the Nov. 5 work stoppage as broadcast TV.

Production shut down in December and January, after the supply of TV scripts had been depleted. That compromised the season, which officially ends May 21.

It will take four to six weeks and tens of millions of dollars to ramp up TV production, and not every prime-time series will immediately return to the air.

"It's not just flipping a switch and having everything come right back on," said Barry Jossen, executive vice president of production for ABC Studios. "There are a lot of factors and considerations that go into these decisions. We are trying to determine the amount of material that was finished before the strike started, the creative status of the show and the broadcast schedule needs."

Only about 10 to 20 prime-time network programs are likely to return this spring with fresh episodes, including some of TV's biggest hits, such as "Grey's Anatomy" on ABC and "CSI" on CBS. Some viewers might not see new episodes of their favorites until fall -- at the earliest. Shows with complex plots, large casts and complicated production elements, such as NBC's "Heroes" and Fox's "24," are expected to roll over to next season.

Studio executives say they can't justify the increased costs of ramping up production for every program halted by the strike. It would cost the studios millions of dollars extra -- an average $200,000 more an episode, according to one estimate -- to produce an abbreviated run for each series. Crews must be rehired, sets need to be rebuilt, and the costs of production would be spread over a smaller number of episodes.

Some struggling shows might not be worth saving. Shelling out millions more for marketing campaigns to try to relaunch an iffy drama could spell sudden death for such programs as NBC's "Bionic Woman" and CBS' "Cane," industry executives predicted.

Television executives are vowing to use the disrupted TV season as an opportunity to do what they have talked about for years: change their decades-old rituals in an effort to contain costs in an era when audiences have declined and technologies such as the Internet and digital video recorders have changed the way people consume media.

"TV executives haven't been sitting around thumbing their fingers during the strike; they have been giving a lot of thought to how they run their business," Littman said. "We're seeing some industrial Darwinism as the business changes."

TV comedies would be the first to go back into production. Multi-camera shows such as "Two and a Half Men" on CBS and are likely to resume production within the next two weeks. Single-camera comedies, such as NBC's "The Office," also are expected to quickly shift back into gear.

The creator of NBC's "My Name Is Earl," Greg Garcia, said he would like to get his writing staff back together Monday. Production should begin within two weeks after the strike ends, Garcia said, because the writers had left two completed scripts that were not shot and had outlined several other episodes.

"We're kind of ahead of the game, so we can mobilize quickly," Garcia said. "But it all remains to be seen."

Source: Zap2it.com

I would like to urge everybody to please read this article and then sign the petition to try and help prevent the death of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, a young student of journalism in Afghanistan who has been sentenced to death by an Islamic court for downloading a report from the internet.

The burlesque performer and former Mrs Marilyn Manson is the new face of Wonderbra. The "Queen of Burlesque" will also design her own 1940s inspired limited edition collection for the lingerie firm. She follows in the footsteps of Eva Herzigova, Maja Latinović, Adriana Sklenaříková and Sophie Anderton.