..that those who like big government, including reservations in private sector, suddenly remember individual freedom.

But here is a humble suggestion to the esteemed professor. The terrorist currently in Mumbai Police custody has been charged under MOCACA which is  as ”draconian” as POTA–just ask any legal expert if you don’t believe me.

I hope the good professor will launch a movement or at least write a post advocating that the incarcerated terrorist be tried under under provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code and not ”draconian” laws.

I look forward to reading it.

Posted in Media/Blog watch      

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/83042?ns=guardianpageName=Business%3A+Poor+outlook+for+services+sector+raises+likelihood+of+big+interest+rate+cutch=Businessc3=The+Guardianc4=Economics+%28Business%29%2CInterest+rates+%28Business%29%2CBank+of+England+%28Business%29%2CCredit+crunch+%28Business%29%2CRetail+industry+%28Business%29%2CCurrencies+%28dollar%2C+pound+etc%29%2CManufacturing+sector+%28Business%29%2COil+and+gas+companies+%28Business%29%2CBusinessc5=Credit+Crunch%2CBusiness+Markets%2CProperty+Mortgages+and+Interest+Ratesc6=Ashley+Seagerc7=2008_12_04c8=1128392c9=articlec10=GUc11=Businessc12=Economicsc13=c14=h2=GU%2FBusiness%2FEconomics" width="1" height="1" //divpThe Bank of England looks likely to slash interest rates by at least another percentage point today after evidence yesterday of the slump in the services sector pointed to a dramatic deterioration in the economy./ppIf the Bank's monetary policy committee cuts rates to 2%, as is widely expected in the City, that would be the lowest rate since late 1951, itself the lowest since the Bank was founded in 1694. If it cuts by more than 1%, as some predict, then rates will be at an all-time low./ppYesterday's monthly snapshot of the dominant services sector - which includes businesses from banks to airlines and hairdressers - hit a record low. The poor economic outlook saw the pound fall sharply to its lowest for 13 years against a basket of major currencies. It dropped to below $1.47 and to just above euro;1.16./ppThe services sector survey's purchasing managers' index, which measures everything from output to orders and jobs, tumbled to 40.1 last month, the lowest since the report began in 1996. As the figure is far below the 50 level that divides expansion from contraction, the survey suggests that the sector, which accounts for about two-thirds of the economy, is contracting rapidly./ppRoy Ayliffe, of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply, said: "Purchasing managers in the services sector reported record falls across activity, new business and employment as the economic climate continued to worsen."/ppHe said optimism had turned to pessimism for the first time in 12 years of the survey. Financial services, restaurants and hotels were particularly badly hit./ppSimilar surveys of the manufacturing and construction sectors this week also showed record drops. /ppJames Knightley, of ING Financial Markets, said: "Given the weakness across all purchasing managers' indices, it looks as though we could see the economy contract by close to 1% in the fourth quarter./pp"The first quarter of 2009 is likely to be similarly weak given the long lead times before the policy stimulus we have seen can take effect ... This will put pressure on the BoE to continue delivering aggressive monetary easing and we expect to see a further 100 basis point [one percentage point] of rate cuts tomorrow. Rates are then expected to fall to 1% early in the new year."/ppHoward Archer, economist at IHS Global Insight, said: "This is a desperately worrying survey given the importance of the dominant service sector to the UK economy. The heightened financial sector crisis has obviously taken a particularly heavy toll on the services sector, while the deep housing market downturn and markedly reduced consumer spending on services is also hitting the sector hard."/ppConsumer spending has been hard hit as well. Nationwide said yesterday that its monthly index of consumer confidence fell again and to the lowest since its survey began in 2004. The index reading of 50 for November compares with 56 in October and 83 in November last year./ppFionnuala Earley, Nationwide's chief economist, said: "Reports of job cuts have almost certainly impacted on sentiment about the ... employment situation, causing purse strings to tighten further."/ppA similar survey yesterday of the services sector in the eurozone was equally weak, leading analysts to predict another interest rate cut from the European Central Bank today. Eurozone rates are at 3.25% and analysts expect the ECB to cut them to 2.5% or even lower./ppThere was also gloomy news from the US, where a survey of services also hit a record low last month, while other figures showed that private-sector employers slashed an unexpectedly high 250,000 jobs in November. The world's biggest economy was confirmed as being in recession this week and yesterday's data showed things are getting worse./ppThe Institute for Supply Management said its non-manufacturing index came in at 37.3, the worst in the gauge's 11-year history and below October's weak 44.4. It was also much worse than expected./ppPierre Ellis, senior economist at Decision Economics in New York, said: "The severe damage to the service industry is another indication of the extraordinary force of this recession." /ppEvery major category in the ISM survey hit a record low, which is particularly bad news for the US, where 80% of the economy is driven by the services sector./ppThere was some good news, as oil prices fell to their lowest level in three and a half years. US light crude futures fell to $46.78 a barrel, their lowest since May 2005 and more than $100 a barrel below the all-time high reached in July. That is likely to lead to further drops in petrol prices at the pump, though for British motorists the effect of lower oil prices is blunted by the drop in the pound's value against the dollar, in which oil is priced./ppStephen Schork, an oil analyst, said that the trend in prices was still down. "Just because we are nearly as close to $40 as we are to $50 does not, in and of itself, mean we are near some theoretical bottom."/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/economics"Economics/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/interestrates"Interest rates/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/bankofenglandgovernor"Bank of England/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/creditcrunch"Credit crunch/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/retail"Retail industry/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/currencies"Currencies/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/manufacturing"Manufacturing sector/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/oilandgascompanies"Oil and gas companies/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/9-qJLtTXT1PC23k_Ie5HDgIyUGs/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/9-qJLtTXT1PC23k_Ie5HDgIyUGs/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

Washington Post columnist George Will and syndicated columnist Mona Charen continued a trend among members of the conservative media of responding to media comparisons between the current economic situation and that of the 1930s and between President-elect Barack Obama and Franklin Delano Roosevelt by attacking the New Deal. In recent columns, both Will and Charen cherry-picked certain unemployment figures to assert that the New Deal failed to reduce unemployment. In doing so, they ignored both the downward trend in unemployment during the New Deal and ignored statistics on the increased numbers of jobs created in the government by the New Deal itself -- the latter omission is one that historians and progressive economists have said portrays New Deal unemployment in the "worst possible light." Indeed, both Will and Charen cited former Wall Street Journal writer Amity Shlaes' 2007 book The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression in advancing their attacks, but in a November 29 Wall Street Journal column, Shlaes acknowledged using data that ignored "emergency" public employment.

In his November 30 column, Will asserted, "The assumption is that the New Deal vanquished the Depression. Intelligent, informed people differ about why the Depression lasted so long. But people whose recipe for recovery today is another New Deal should remember that America's biggest industrial collapse occurred in 1937, eight years after the 1929 stock market crash and nearly five years into the New Deal. In 1939, after a decade of frantic federal spending -- President Herbert Hoover increased it more than 50 percent between 1929 and the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt -- unemployment was 17.2 percent."

Similarly, in her November 28 column, Charen asserted, "You know the fairy tale. You were probably taught it in school. During the 1920s, America practiced laissez-faire economics. The 1920s were seen, as historian Amity Shlaes put it, as a period of 'false growth and low morals.' " Charen later claimed that "the New Deal's chief object was never achieved -- it did not solve the nation's unemployment problem. The CATO Institute's Jim Powell points out in FDR's Folly, 'From 1934 to 1940, the median annual unemployment rate was 17.2. At no point during the 1930s did unemployment go below 14 percent. ... Living standards remained depressed until after the war.' "

Will and Charen both cited certain unemployment figures during the 1930s but ignored the overall downward trajectory of unemployment rates throughout the New Deal. In a July 5, 2007, Slate article, University of California-Davis history professor Eric Rauchway noted: "Except in the 1937-38 recession, unemployment fell every year of the New Deal. Also, real GDP grew at an annual rate of around 9 percent during Roosevelt's first term and, after the 1937-38 dip, around 11 percent." Further, New York Times columnist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman wrote that it was a reversal of New Deal policies that contributed to rising unemployment during the 1937-38 recession. In a November 10 Times column, Krugman wrote: "After winning a smashing election victory in 1936, the Roosevelt administration cut spending and raised taxes, precipitating an economic relapse that drove the unemployment rate back into double digits and led to a major defeat in the 1938 midterm elections."

Moreover, Will claimed, "In 1939 ... unemployment was 17.2 percent," and Charen repeated Powell's claim that "[f]rom 1934 to 1940, the median annual unemployment rate was 17.2 percent," but they appear to be relying on unemployment data that ignores government-relief employment created by New Deal programs. Indeed, Shlaes acknowledged that her figures excluded "make-work jobs," instead relying on data compiled for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) by economist Stanley Lebergott. In a November 29 Wall Street Journal column, she wrote, "To be sure, Michael Darby of UCLA has argued that make-work jobs should be counted. Even so, his chart shows that from 1931 to 1940, New Deal joblessness ranges as high as 16% (1934) but never gets below 9 percent" [emphasis in original].

After World War II, BLS ceased counting those in work-relief programs as unemployed, as noted by economist Gene Smiley in a 1983 Journal of Economic History article:

Apparently the purpose of the estimates of the number of unemployed was to estimate how many private-sector jobs would have to be created to reemploy all those who were unemployed as well as those who were employed on federal government work-relief programs. These data were used by Lebergott in constructing his unemployment rate estimates for the 1930s. Since World War II the BLS does not count as unemployed those employed in any type of government relief programs, so the Lebergott rates are not consistent with those reported since the 1930s.

As Media Matters for America documented, University of Texas professor James Galbraith criticized the methodology Shlaes used in her book. On November 18, at a Campaign for America's Future conference, Galbraith stated that "the underlying numbers, which Shlaes uses ... do not count the people who actually worked on the New Deal as employed. They count them as unemployed. Why did they do that? Because in retrospect, to give -- to put a charitable construction on it, they wanted to assess the condition of the private economy." Further, Rauchway noted in an October 10 blog post that "if you don't count these people who held jobs as unemployed, you get a different picture of unemployment in the 1930s."

As Media Matters for America has noted, in recent weeks, Will has repeatedly attacked the New Deal. During the November 23 edition of ABC's This Week, Will asked, "Before we go into a new New Deal, can we just acknowledge that the first New Deal didn't work?" He added: "That is, the biggest collapse in industrial production in history occurred in 1937, eight years after the stock market collapse of 1929, five years into the New Deal."

The comments echoed remarks Will made the week before on This Week when he asserted that "one of the ways we turned a depression into the Great Depression that didn't end until the Japanese fleet appeared off Hawaii was that there were no rules, and investors went on strike, because the government was completely improvising." He added: "Net investment was negative through almost all of the '30s because, again, people did not know the environment in which they were operating because the government had the fidgets and would not let rules and markets work." Krugman was also a panelist on the show. He responded:

KRUGMAN: No, the negative net investment was because, you know, when you have 20 percent unemployment and all the factories are standing idle, who wants to build a new one? You don't need to invoke the government to explain that. No, what actually happened was, you know, there was an -- there was a collapse of the financial system, which was not restored for a long time. There was a persistent deep slump in consumer demand and, therefore, no investment demand, and so you were stuck in this trap.

Roosevelt got the economy moving somewhat. By 1937, things were a lot better than they were in 1933. Then he was persuaded to balance the budget, or try to, and he raised taxes and cut spending and the economy went back down again. And it took an enormous public works program known as World War II to bring the economy out of the Depression.

From Charen's November 28 syndicated column:

The conventional wisdom has had a rough time of it lately among scholars. You know the fairy tale. You were probably taught it in school. During the 1920s, America practiced laissez-faire economics. The 1920s were seen, as historian Amity Shlaes put it, as a period of "false growth and low morals." Greedy businessmen got out of control and created a market crash in 1929. President Hoover, obedient to Republican ideas concerning noninterference in the market, did nothing. The economy spiraled into a depression. Roosevelt was elected in 1932, banished fear, inaugurated the New Deal, and put America back to work.

A series of recent books has demolished the myth. Some of Roosevelt's reforms were salutary (the Securities and Exchange Commission, reform of the Federal Reserve) but the New Deal's chief object was never achieved -- it did not solve the nation's unemployment problem. The CATO Institute's Jim Powell points out in "FDR's Folly," "From 1934 to 1940, the median annual unemployment rate was 17.2. At no point during the 1930s did unemployment go below 14 percent. ... Living standards remained depressed until after the war."

From Will's November 30 Washington Post column:

The assumption is that the New Deal vanquished the Depression. Intelligent, informed people differ about why the Depression lasted so long. But people whose recipe for recovery today is another New Deal should remember that America's biggest industrial collapse occurred in 1937, eight years after the 1929 stock market crash and nearly five years into the New Deal. In 1939, after a decade of frantic federal spending -- President Herbert Hoover increased it more than 50 percent between 1929 and the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt -- unemployment was 17.2 percent.

"I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started," lamented Henry Morgenthau, FDR's Treasury secretary. Unemployment declined when America began selling materials to nations engaged in a war America would soon join.

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/78651?ns=guardianpageName=Business%3A+US+service+sector+sheds+250%2C000+jobs+in+a+monthch=Businessc3=guardian.co.ukc4=US+economy+%28Business%29%2CGlobal+recession%2CUS+news%2CBusiness%2CCredit+crunch+%28Business%29c5=Credit+Crunch%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CBusiness+Markets%2CUS+Economyc6=Kathryn+Hopkinsc7=2008_12_03c8=1128198c9=articlec10=GUc11=Businessc12=US+economyc13=c14=h2=GU%2FBusiness%2FUS+economy" width="1" height="1" //divpMore than 250,000 private sector workers in the US lost their jobs in November, according to new figures from the a href="http://www.ism.ws/"Institute of Supply and Management/a (ISM)./ppAs the credit crunch further takes its toll on the a href="http://www.gardian.co.uk/business/useconomy"country's already fragile economy/a, the ISM's employment index plunged to a record low of 31.3 last month, from 41.5 in October. Any mark below 50 signifies a contraction as opposed to growth./ppPaul Ashworth, the enior US economist at consultants Capital Economics, said that the data puts it at a "level consistent with monthly declines in service sector payrolls of more than 500,000". /ppHe said there had probably been a 650,000 drop in overall non-farm payroll employment in the month, comprising "half a million job losses in services, then conservatively add on another 150,000 job losses in manufacturing and construction"./ppThe non-manufacturing index also plummeted to a record low of 37.3 in November, down from 44.4. A number of economists polled by Reuters had predicted a score of 42./ppThe index is now at a level consistent with a 3% annual contraction in GDP. "That is even worse than what the manufacturing index is telling us," Ashworth said.br / br /Every major category in the ISM survey hit a record low including the service sector, which takes in businesses such as banks, airlines, hotels and restaurants and accounts for 80% of economic activity in the US./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/useconomy"US economy/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/globalrecession"Global recession/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa"United States/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/creditcrunch"Credit crunch/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/8NzMwDhezdonp4EeNlZB1M9QUxI/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/8NzMwDhezdonp4EeNlZB1M9QUxI/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

The U.S. economy shed a quarter-million private-sector jobs in November, according to a payroll processor's report that was worse than economists expected.img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/rss/money_latest/~4/S3BRPSXAXGs" height="1" width="1"/

This guest post is written by Matt Rutherford, Web Strategist and technology producer for Charlie Rose. Matt focuses on the macro themes affecting the internet and the wider world. You can read Matt’s previous guest post, Larry Lessig Defends Copyright, Loves Charlie Rose Remixes, here.

Who protects the internet? In part, it’s this man – General Kevin Chilton, US STRATCOM commander and the head of all military cyber warfare. We’re broadcasting an interview tonight with General Chilton, in which he discusses the threat of cyber warfare, along with his other remits of space warfare and the US nuclear deterrent. Chilton is fascinating, and amongst other things has been a NASA space shuttle pilot, logging over 700 hours in space. You can watch the full interview here (and it is embedded below).

The discussion with General Chilton brings to light a crucial question, however. Is the internet actually protected? The military remit is to defend the .mil networks, prevent online espionage, and develop offensive strike capabilities. But who’s protecting the rest? Given its integration with every aspect of our lives and economy, it’s surprising just how little we know about who defends our electronic nervous system.

The Threat

There’s copious discussion about exactly how vulnerable the US is to online attack. The alleged Russian DoS attacks on Estonia in 2007, and on Georgia this summer, highlighted the potential damage of state sponsored attacks. China has also been developing cyber warfare capabilities for some time, mounting online intelligence operations against Taiwan, and almost certainly against the US. The Chinese military has openly stated that it plans to be able to win an “informationized war” by the middle of this century. Russia, Israel and Romania are also alleged to have high-level cyber warfare capabilities.

This developing threat from state actors led Sami Saydjari, CEO of Cyber Defense LLC, to testify (pdf) to the US House Committee of Homeland Security in 2007, saying: “The US is vulnerable to a strategically crippling cyber attack from nation-state-class adversaries.” Such an attack has the potential to turn the US “from being a superpower to a third-world nation practically overnight.”

I should point out that many have disputed the apocalyptic nature of Saydjari’s statement. Kevin Mitnick, the reformed hacker, noted in a recent phone call:

“Could we face a mass DOS attack, as in Georgia and Estonia? I don’t think so. I think it would be more of a surveillance operation to get intelligence. Technically you could have a mass attack against the thirteen root nameservers around the world. But as for cyber war, I don’t think we’re at that point yet, I think it’s over-stated.”

Regardless of the impact of an offensive cyber attack, everyone appears to agree on the insidious danger from online intelligence gathering. Former counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke eloquently summarized this in Foreign Policy recently:

“People tend to think about attacks that change things—turn off power grids, or whatever. And while that’s possible, what is happening every day is quite devastating, even though it doesn’t have a kinetic impact and there are no body bags. What’s happening every day is that all of our information is being stolen. So, we pay billions of dollars for research and development, both in the government and the private sector, for engineering, for pharmaceuticals, for bioengineering, genetic stuff... and all that information gets stolen for one one-thousandth of the cost that it took to develop it.”

Who protects us?

The problem is that it isn’t clear who has the remit for comprehensive defense of the internet. The US military and intelligence agencies defend government networks and track targets online, both domestically and abroad. A new Bush-ordained funding boost in January this year will help them become more coordinated. However, as Richard Clarke goes on to note, “the problem is that much of what we need to protect is not in the U.S. government; it’s in our private companies and our private networks”.

The Department of Homeland Security’s National Cyber Security Division operates various public-private initiatives, such as the rather prosaic National Cyber Security Awareness Month. But beyond this, the general response appears highly fragmented with little grand oversight or public-private coordination. I emailed Jonathan Zittrain to ask his opinion on ‘who protects the internet’. He replied:

“Basically no one. At most, a number of loose confederations of computer scientists and engineers who seek to devise better protocols and practices — unincorporated groups like the Internet Engineering Task Force and the North American Network Operators Group. But the fact remains that no one really owns security online, which leads to gated communities with firewalls — a highly unreliable and wasteful way to try to assure security.”

Hackers to the rescue?

When Obama appoints a white house CTO, there will at least be an official figurehead in charge of this matter. Proposed candidates for the role currently include Eric Schmidt, Steve Ballmer, Jeff Bezos and Julius Genachowski from IAC.

However, perhaps the future of internet security really lies in the hands of the community. Indeed, Jonathan Zittrain talked about ‘good hackers’ on our show in May, and he argues the importance of community policing in The Future of the Internet. The last few years of the internet have been about empowering the masses, and removing intermediary apparatus – so why not leverage the community to defend its cyber territory? Indeed, this is already happening, to a certain extent. Just look at Dan Kaminsky, a computer consultant who discovered a fundamental flaw in DNS, allowing him control over any website online. This flaw was astounding in what it gave access to – yet Dan Kaminsky didn’t turn to a government agency or organization, or abuse the hack himself. Instead he made a phone call to Paul Vixie, one of the creators of the BIND9 DNS routing software, and they assembled a team of civilians and private companies to resolve this apocalyptic vulnerability.

It will be interesting to see what happens from here. And whilst it’s certainly entertaining to envision vigilante hackers and rag-tag groups of high school kids overcoming nation states, I think there’s more serious matters at stake. The way that the internet community reacts and operates with state apparatus in defending against cyber threats will be a crucial indicator of our future society. How reliant are we on the nation-state to protect us? Will it ever be possible for internet communities to erode the relevance of the nation state? Or will the internet turn out to be just as Hobbesian as the real world has been?

Charlie Rose’s discussions with General Kevin Chilton and Jonathan Zittrain are available at our website, charlierose.com. Matt Rutherford can be reached at matt@charlierose.com.

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divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/57706?ns=guardianpageName=Politics%3A+Mandelson+calls+for+%27industrial+activism%27+to+revitalise+Britain+after+the+recessionch=Politicsc3=The+Guardianc4=Economic+policy%2CPeter+Mandelson%2CRecession+%28UK%29%2CCredit+crunch+%28Business%29%2CPolitics%2CBusiness%2CUK+newsc5=Credit+Crunch%2CBusiness+Markets%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CUnclassifed+Contributorsc6=Allegra+Strattonc7=2008_12_03c8=1127786c9=articlec10=GUc11=Politicsc12=Economic+policyc13=c14=h2=GU%2FPolitics%2FEconomic+policy" width="1" height="1" //divpThe business secretary, Peter Mandelson, will set out plans for a new age of "industrial activism" when he gives the annual Hugo Young memorial lecture today, saying the government must do more to support services and manufacturing for after the recession, when the country will be "an even tougher place to do business in". /ppIn the Guardian lecture, Mandelson will take a break from his department's current preoccupation with getting the banks to resume lending to paint a picture of Britain on "the other side" of the recession. He will say: "We will get through the downturn. But on the other side we will encounter an even tougher place to do business in and we need to be fully prepared."/ppMandelson will sketch out a new doctrine of "market-driven industrial activism" to ready the economy. Aides describe this as a model that would see the government, in partnership with the private sector, driving what they call "available streams of the economy" to support growth sectors. Low-carbon technology, civil nuclear plans and high-tech manufacturing are all likely to be boosted./ppToday's speech will build on a defence of Britain's manufacturing base the business secretary mounted last week at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), in which he said he "hated" Britain being described as a "post-industrial economy" since the UK was the sixth-largest manufacturer by output. Though the future for the country may not lie with "mills and smokestacks", he told the CBI, it lay with the "next industrial revolution and the low-carbon and post-carbon technologies that will define the 21st century."/ppAccording to the Purchasing Managers Index published on Monday, British manufacturing shrank in November at the fastest rate since records began in 1992, making it the third month in a row to see a record decline. In October the CBI said optimism among British manufacturers was at its lowest level for three decades./ppToday Mandelson will defend the government against claims its industrial policies were becoming overly statist, something critics say repudiates the modernisation platform on which Labour was elected in 1997./ppHe will say: "For New Labour this is a critical moment to renew and think further about how Britain adapts to globalisation and the tougher economic challenge we are facing. Not to retreat from the strong and abiding commitment to open economies and free markets that New Labour made in 1994. Certainly not to be hubristic that big government is back: I don't believe it is or should be. But to define urgently what smart government can do to resolve not just the present crisis but to guarantee Britain's future prosperity."/ppMandelson will also acknowledge the government's attempts to steer business through the recession may have frustrated some. He will say: "While the government is doing a lot to back enterprise and support entrepreneurs, some of its efforts appear to business as insufficiently joined up and often overlapping."/ppLast night a business department spokesman said rights to flexible working would be going ahead. The business secretary caused controversy only three weeks into his job when he announced a review of the rights, on account of businesses fearing they would be unable to afford it during a downturn. Yesterday an aide said the review had wrapped up and they were "happy for it to go ahead"./ppIt will not be included in the Queen's speech tomorrow since it does not require primary legislation./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/economy"Economic policy/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/peter-mandelson"Peter Mandelson/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/recession"Recession/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/creditcrunch"Credit crunch/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/bCmfVGe8FzssvcdHAwTkVj3WwDo/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/bCmfVGe8FzssvcdHAwTkVj3WwDo/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/29505?ns=guardianpageName=Environment%3A+CBI+calls+for+incentives+to+protect+climatech=Environmentc3=The+Guardianc4=Climate+change+%28Environment%29%2CCarbon+emissions+%28Environment%29%2CEnvironment%2CBusiness%2CPoliticsc5=Not+commercially+useful%2CBusiness+Markets%2CClimate+Change%2CEthical+Livingc6=Terry+Macalisterc7=2008_12_03c8=1127770c9=articlec10=GUc11=Environmentc12=Climate+changec13=c14=h2=GU%2FEnvironment%2FClimate+change" width="1" height="1" //divpThe CBI warned yesterday that government would not meet its ambitious targets for reducing carbon emissions unless it introduced bolder policies including new financial incentives, but said the global economic crisis was no reason for either side to slam the brakes on./ppRichard Lambert, the director-general of the main employers' body, said he supported a ministerial drive to tackle climate change and cut greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050 but the right framework for investment needed to be in place if the private sector was to develop the necessary technologies./pp"We must not let the global economic crisis become an excuse for inaction on climate change. Now more than ever, we need to secure a binding EU climate change deal, or the opportunity to make the transition to a low-carbon economy will slip through our fingers," he added./ppThe government had made a promising start by setting up a new Department for Energy and Climate Change plus creating a new planning act. But 300 wind farms still awaited planning approvals, companies needed incentives to cut non-carbon emissions and further financial help was needed to speed-up the insulation of homes, Lambert said at a special climate change conference organised by the CBI and attended by Ed Miliband, the energy and climate change secretary./ppMiliband praised Lambert and other business leaders for setting the pace on green initiatives. Britain would continue to lead the way on climate change and he insisted it was not the time now for the European Union to row back on previous commitments when it met to discuss climate change at Poznan in Poland next week./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climatechange"Climate change/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/carbonemissions"Carbon emissions/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/aFhjxzbCvXYlG9rSTLPZeBAfcM8/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/aFhjxzbCvXYlG9rSTLPZeBAfcM8/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p