The Periscope Post

The Independent

“President Obama’s decision yesterday to halt deep-water drilling permits for six months cannot undo the calamity of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. However, it undoubtedly corresponds to the overwhelming will of the country,” said The Independent. The BP oil spill has made a mockery of the Republican deregulation of the oil industry and it has also harmed Obama, whose federal executive has been “revealed as ineffectual in the crisis.” Now the “entire culture must be changed.” The Independent called for more regulation, less dependence on fossil fuels and “sweeping new energy legislation.”

The Times

“If the coalition Government wants to be judged on its own terms, it must succeed in reforming the welfare system,” said The Times. “Welfare has become both ruinously expensive and increasingly ineffective.” With one in four working adults “either unemployed or economically inactive”, the paper “welcomed” the reforms outlined yesterday by the new Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, which would transfer job finding responsibilities away from “government alone” to businesses and charities, and would “pay more to work rather than to receive welfare.” Welfare “should be remedial, not merely ameliorative,” said The Times. Iain Duncan Smith understand this.

The Guardian

Iain Duncan Smith’s State of the Nation Report “highlights the intractable problem of multiple disadvantage,” said The Guardian, before pointing to the example of the three missing Bradford sex workers and various other murdered prostitutes. “Selling sex is potentially life-threatening,” but would decriminalisation of the industry make it safer for sex workers? The paper sat on the fence over this question, before commenting wearily that any law on prostitution “only deals with the symptoms, not the desperation that drives women on to the streets and into danger.”