Word: scheme
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...everyone knew his name: Google searches for Kerviel exploded, as did news stories, and columns in the Financial Times. Everyone was covering the most spectacular rogue trader in financial history. Yet there is something even more surprising than the lack of controls that allowed for Kerviel’s scheme to work under the radar for over a year: the public’s reaction to the debacle...
Sometimes it's hard to muster enough critical detachment to report a subject fairly. Take the changes to London's congestion charging scheme that were unveiled at a ceremony in City Hall this morning. Ken Livingstone, the capital's two-term Labour Mayor - currently campaigning to win a third stint in May 1 elections - announced that from October onward, drivers of high-polluting vehicles will have to pay a punitive ?25 or $50-a-day toll for city-center journeys. The chief focus of Livingstone's wrath are the four-wheel drive vehicles he calls "Chelsea tractors": shiny gas-guzzlers...
...move toward charging for emissions is likely to prove popular with Livingstone's core supporters - blue-collar workers and a broad sweep of left-leaning metropolitan types concerned about climate change - as well as green campaigners across the world, who laud the congestion-charging scheme he first introduced in February 2003. The original daily $10 toll has been raised to $16, and the charging zone was extended westward last year. The mayor says that if a third of the 33,000 high-emissions cars daily entering central London continue to do so, the new scheme will generate a further...
...This all sounds egalitarian in impulse and wonderfully eco-friendly (even if Livingstone's staff have placed a large bouquet of exotic flowers, fresh off a plane, on the desk where he will sign off on the CO2-saving scheme). So why am I less than enthused by the announcement? Full disclosure: sitting in my garage is the kind of car that the mayor wants kept off the streets...
...That's a fair comment. So is there anyone else rash enough to criticize this planet-saving scheme? Step forward Livingstone's chief challenger Boris Johnson, the Conservative candidate for mayor. He responded to Livingstone's announcement with a statement attacking the "appalling state of the transport system" and suggesting that the new charge will hit poorer families who can't afford to exchange their old bangers for new, clean cars. "In effect, the mayor has just given the green light for richer people to buy smaller cars and enter the zone for free while families who struggle with...