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Was bad news buried on Thursday?
From Edward Starr

The plethora of announcements raised the suspicions of political opponents and brought to mind the infamous email from Labour spin doctor Jo Moore, which observed that September 11 2001 was "a very good day to get out anything we want to bury".

Thursday could hardly have been busier. Never mind the ongoing inquiry into the murders in Ipswich; the long-awaited report into the death of Princess Diana was finally being published. Lord Stevens was still discussing his findings when reporters learned the prime minister had at last been interviewed by the police over loans and peerages.

That news, preceded by the announcement of proposals to close 2,500 post offices, was rapidly followed by the emergence of plans to expand the aviation industry - to the fury of environmentalists and those living near airports.

Just as reporters were drawing breath, the Attorney General announced that the Serious Fraud Office had called off its inquiry into British Aerospace. Little wonder that even a Labour insider described it as "take out the trash" day.

Downing Street flatly denied that the PM's interview had been timed to coincide with the Stevens report. "Categorically, there was no linkage with other events," a spokesman said. It was a case of finding space in the PM's schedule.

News of the PO closures leaked out at the weekend, making Alastair Darling's statement largely a formality.

And Lord Goldsmith said that the timing of his statement was dictated by commercial sensitivities. Once the SFO had reached its decision on Thursday, he had to announce it rapidly but waited for the markets to close to avoid too rapid a reaction (certainly, BAE shares soared when they reopened yesterday).

An independently minded backbencher gave ministers the benefit of the doubt: "There's a desire to clear the decks before Christmas - if it got out then they would be accused of burying stuff over recess," he said.
Tania Branigan

Is anybody worth a £50m bonus?
From Rupert Williams

The Goldman Sachs trader Driss Ben-Brahim was said to have received a £50m bonus this week. Despite the investment bank's denial that the Moroccan-born trader had received such a vast amount, plenty of his rivals were prepared to believe that he could have earned almost £1m a week during 2006.

Is anyone worth such a sum?

The amount of money traders such as Mr Ben-Brahim make for their employers is easily measured. So, calculating their cut of the spoils is a precise art. The more money made for the bank, the bigger the pay cheque. That is their incentive to turn up to work - and take risks on the markets.

Weighing up the risks being taken, however, will be important. Too much risk in the pursuit of profit - and bonus - could prove disastrous. But paying a star trader such as Mr Ben-Brahim too little (relative to rival firms) could prove painful if they are then lured away to earn more elsewhere.

Morally, though, it seems harder to justify. Soldiers earn £10,000 a year (even the highest ranks take home just over £80,000) and put their lives on the line. Nurses are saving lives every day yet they typically earn less than £30,000.

Such comparisons between lowly paid nurses and highly paid stars - be they City traders or international football stars - are made regularly and the huge inequality is difficult to stomach, especially when the rewards for those at the top keep increasing much more quickly than for those at the bottom. But if a company is prepared to pay someone £50m it, at least, must believe they are worth it. That need not, of course, mean it's right.
Martin Farrer

Do children need fathers?
From Mary Ann Thompson

The announcement that fertility clinics will now be able to offer a woman IVF treatment even if there's no father around sounds at first like a Daily Mail reader's nightmare: a monstrous regiment of viragos and harridans using the test tube to throw men on the scrap-heap.

Up comes the counter-argument: look what happens in a fatherless, divorce-ridden society - crime, drugs, depression. Crude debates like this can go on for ever.

The truth is that of course, if possible, children need fathers. They also need mothers, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends, neighbours - the African saying about it needing a whole village to rear a child was never truer. Raising a child alone must rank as one of the hardest things that a human being can do, and should invite admiration rather than censure.

In the real world, people don't necessarily meet, marry, conceive, and live happily ever after. Or perhaps they do meet, marry, conceive, and live happily ever after, but they're two women. Should single women, widows, or lesbians be denied IVF treatment because of a moral panic that the family is being undermined?

I do recognise that funding bodies with scarce resources have to decide on their priorities and use moral values to do so. What's dangerous is when those values are used ideologically to "safeguard the family" - a family that exists more in our fantasies than in reality.

You might feel that fathers have an important role to play in raising kids - I do - but you can't mandate it, because in many households containing a father they actually play a minimal part: they're there, but only physically (and sometimes not even that). Or, if they're violent, they may be a malign presence in their children's lives. Instead of obsessing about early reading, we should pour resources into teaching small boys the value of fathering, something that they may not have experienced themselves.

So yes, children need fathers, but they need good fathers.
Anne Karpf