The Queen dedicated the bridge to all who will use it
The Queen has dedicated London's Millennium
Bridge in colourful ceremony - even though the
structure is incomplete.
The £16m pedestrian-only link is the first new
crossing to span the Thames in central London
since the opening of Tower Bridge in 1894.
But work on the project has fallen behind
schedule, postponing its opening until 10 June.
When open, the 320m-long crossing will run
from St Paul's Cathedral north of the river to
the new Tate Modern gallery and the Globe
Theatre in Southwark.
Specially composed
fanfares sounded from
each side of the river
as the Queen walked
past brightly coloured
flags and onto the
bridge.
She was accompanied
by an entourage
including Prince Philip,
the Lord Mayor of
London and the Bishop
of London.
The bishop gave a short prayer after which the
Queen dedicated the bridge.
She said: "I dedicate this bridge as a symbol of
the new millennium to the people of Southwark
and of the City of London and to all who shall
pass over it from all over the world."
The band of the Goldsmiths' School of Music
struck up on the south side of the river and
fireworks echoed across the Thames.
Before the dedication ceremony the Queen
attended a service at St Paul's Cathedral with
the Duke of Edinburgh and new London mayor
Ken Livingstone.
Mr Livingstone said the bridge will "make a
tremendous difference to the South Bank with
all the development going on there".
He added: "It will be so good to actually walk
across the river peacefully, without cars and
trains thundering by."
Designed by architect
Sir Norman Foster, the
bridge will be lit at
night to form a "blade
of light" across the
river.
More than half the
money for the bridge
has come from Lottery
funds. The Millennium
Commission has
contributed more than
£7.1m and a further
£3.5m has come from the Corporation of
London.
However the bridge is reported to have
exceeded its budget by more than £2m.
It was originally hoped the bridge would be
open this week to coincide with the opening of
the new Tate gallery.
The decision to delay the public opening until
June was made late last year.
~*~
Saudi Arabia's princes enjoyed their
gold-plated profligacy, but now comes the
day of reckoning (The Independent)
By Rupert Cornwell
Which Middle Eastern country has run a budget deficit for 17
years, has seen national income per head halve since the
early 1980s and now faces a choice between fundamental
economic reform complete with painful spending cuts, and
deep fiscal crisis and possible devaluation? Impecunious
Egypt, ravaged Lebanon, struggling Syria or Jordan ?
No, the answer is Saudi Arabia, the land that oil seemed to
have turned into a modern-day El Dorado, but now facing its
most serious economic problems in decades. The problems
are so severe that the country, which recently announced it
was going to start issuing tourist visas to bring in foreign
currency, said yesterday that it wants to introduce road tolls to
offset the billions of riyals it spends maintaining its highways.
Say Saudi Arabia and you think of vast desert, Islam's most
holy places, the gold-plated profligacy of its ruling princes and
a human rights record featuring beheadings, amputations and
closed-door justice. Economic failings do not come to mind.
But failings there are; so much so that if nothing is done, some
analysts believe the consequence could be the geostrategic
nightmare that haunts planners in Washington and London –
political instability in the country that is America's biggest
foreign oil supplier and a key Western ally in an eternally
unstable region.
Not that the kingdom is quite a basket case yet. Saudi Arabia
is Opec's largest and most influential producer, with 25 per
cent of the world's oil reserves, good for another century at
present extraction rates. The wealthier among its citizens have
sent abroad an estimated £300bn to £500bn, enough to pay
off Britain's entire national debt. The return of even a quarter of
it would put Riyadh's accounts to rights at a stroke. But the
Saudi myth no longer holds. A timeless law of nations has
been proved once again – that no country is so rich it cannot
spend itself into trouble.
That didn't seem to be the case in the 1970s, after the first
Opec oil bonanza, when Saudi Arabia became the
organisation's pivotal producer, and its oil minister, Sheikh
Ahmed Zaki Yamani, a global celebrity. Nor did anyone bat an
eyelid a decade later, when the kingdom poured £16bn into
Iraq's war against Iran, or when it chipped in £35bn to finance
the US-led operation to drive Saddam Hussein from Kuwait
(largesse thanks to which America actually showed a profit on
the war). And, as British Aerospace among other arms
manufacturers would gratefully attest, no weapons system
was too expensive for Riyadh's armed forces – usually paid on
the nail, in cash.
But all the while, the price of oil was in decline, and by the
1990s Saudi Arabia, metaphor for boundless wealth, joined
the well-stocked ranks of governments living beyond their
means. And, even though oil prices are back to about $25
(£16) a barrel, so the country remains today.
For two decades, Saudi Arabia has been trapped between a
mostly falling oil price and an inexorably rising population. The
lavish system of subsidies and welfare set up on the back of
the 1970s boom might have been politically untouchable; not
so the price of the commodity that has kept the economy afloat
and which even today generates 75 per cent of budget
revenue.
As the cost of a barrel of crude dipped from almost $40 to
beneath $10 at one point, the economy stagnated at best. But
population, anywhere from 15 million to 20 million, continued
to grow at an annual 3 per cent. Thus, GDP per head declined
from more than £10,000 in 1981 to barely £4,500 now.
Today, even the congenitally cautious House of Saud has got
the message. "The age of abundance is over," Crown Prince
Adbullah, who in effect runs the country in the place of his
ailing brother, King Fahd, warned his fellow Gulf rulers at a
summit.
The aim now is to diversify the economy by reducing
dependence on oil. Links with the global economy will be
helped by an overhaul of the stock market, modernisation of
the tax system and membership of the World Trade
Organisation. Curbs on direct foreign investment are being
eased, and soon foreign oil firms could be back in Saudi
Arabia for exploration and production, 19 years after the Saudi
industry was nationalised.
Other economies include the staggering of arms payments,
and cuts in longstanding subsidies on energy and other
services. Most telling of all perhaps, a reluctant door is being
opened for ordinary tourists. Under new legislation, Saudi
Arabia will issue its first tourist visas. No longer can a country
regarded as the closed heart of Islam afford to spurn the
income-generating package holidaymaker.
But whether even this will suffice is debatable. Much of the
country's infrastructure was installed in the 1970s and is
showing its age; the expansion required to cope with the
growing population could cost £60bn or more. With dearer oil,
talk of a devaluation of the riyal has receded but even native
Saudis can now face unemployment – a prospect hitherto
confined to largely unprotected immigrant workers, accounting
for a fifth of the population. With half its citizens aged under 25,
the state can simply no longer guarantee jobs in the old way.
If the ruling dynasty is to bring in reform, now is surely the
moment. The economy is picking up and the oil price should
stay high for a while. Saddam Hussein, whose invasion of
Kuwait in 1990 brutally exposed Saudi Arabia's vulnerability, is
safely in his box. Relations with Iran, the Gulf's biggest power
and Riyadh's other historic regional rival, are on the mend,
while the ArabIsraeli peace front still shows faint glimmers of
progress. At home, the undeclared opposition that surfaced
after the Gulf War has been bribed or browbeaten into line.
But at the best of times decision-making in Saudi Arabia is a
meandering process. And Prince Abdullah's role as regent,
one of a group of powerful brothers rather than king in his own
right, makes hisability to push through needed reforms even
more questionable. His family continues to spend the state's
money as if there were no tomorrow. Disagreement in the
ruling clan, however, could force suppressed strains in society
to come to the surface. If things went wrong and Saudi Arabia
imploded, the shock would be felt around the world.
~*~
Prince Charles leads 'buy British'
food campaign to save countryside(UK Times)
BY VALERIE ELLIOTT, COUNTRYSIDE EDITOR
THE Prince of Wales will today tell consumers that the
country's natural beauty will be at risk if they do not buy
more British food.
The Prince's plea is part of a strategy to make the public
understand the vital link between consumer power and the
sustainability of land. It was devised at the Prime
Minister's recent farming summit and is to be announced
by the Countryside Agency shortly.
Tony Blair believes that people must fully understand that
the choices they make in shops have a direct impact on
the fate of the countryside.
A British quality system similar to the appellation
contrôlée system for vineyards in France is being planned
to encourage British shoppers to buy home-produced
goods.
The Prince will today meet farmers and producers who
sell under the brand "A Taste of the South East". The
range includes beef from the dark red Sussex Cattle
breed, organic veal, fruit juices, and handmade cakes
from the West Sussex Farmhouse Cookery.
With world trade talks in progress in Geneva and
ministers committed to cutting European Union food
subsidies, the need to safeguard Britain's farming industry
and the landscape is critical. Ministers have given
well-publicised support to a resurgence of farmers'
markets.
Ewen Cameron, chairman of the Countryside Agency, is
working to enlist the support of supermarkets for British
regional produce. He has invited leading food retailers to a
seminar this month to discuss how they might change their
buying systems.
Mr Cameron wants companies to introduce more regional
buying instead of relying on a system of central buying,
and to put locally produced meat, poultry, cheese and
vegetables on the shelves in local stores. He also wishes
to see a far greater choice of British farm-produced food
on sale across the country. Mr Cameron said yesterday:
"There is scope for supermarkets to encourage this
regional buying. I understand they are competitive
businesses but there is room for supermarkets to do this."
He believes that a special label should be added to foods
and goods produced in the country's beauty spots. People
might then realise that when they buy a product they are
helping to pay for the upkeep of the landscape. Mr
Cameron referred to a new marketing scheme in Sussex -
the "Made in High Weald" label.
The Prince's visit to Sussex coincides with the publication
of the "Made in the High Weald" directory to farm and
rural businesses including suppliers of wood, wool and
other practical products.
He is to meet Mark Hardy, 38, who has turned a
loss-making sheep business into the lucrative High Weald
Sussex Dairy selling sheep milk and cheese. Mr Hardy
decided to study the potential of sheep milk and went to
Cyprus and France to learn from specialist farmers. With
a higher awareness of the causes of allergies, consumers
are turning to sheep and goats' milk. Today Mr Hardy's
frozen sheep milk and specialist range of sheep, goat and
organic cow cheeses are bestsellers, and display "Taste of
the South East" and "Made in High Weald" labels.