Straw is an agricultural by-product, the dry s of cereal plants, after the grain and chaff have been removed. Straw makes up about half of the yield of cereal crops such as barley, oats, rice, rye and wheat. It has many uses, including fuel, livestock bedding and fodder, thatching and basket-making. It is usually gathered and stored in a straw bale, which is a bundle of straw tightly bound with twine or wire. Bales may be square, rectangular, or round, depending on the type of baler used.
Category:Biodegradable materials Category:Biomass Category:Packaging materials Category:Building insulation materials Category:Water pollution
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Coordinates | 28°36′36″N77°13′48″N |
---|---|
Honorific-prefix | The Right Honourable |
Name | Jack Straw |
Honorific-suffix | MP |
Office | Shadow Deputy Prime Minister |
Leader | Harriet Harman |
Term start | 11 May 2010 |
Term end | 7 October 2010 |
Successor | Position abolished |
Office1 | Shadow Secretary of State for JusticeShadow Lord Chancellor |
Leader1 | Harriet HarmanEd Miliband |
Term start1 | 11 May 2010 |
Term end1 | 7 October 2010 |
Predecessor1 | Dominic Grieve |
Successor1 | Sadiq Khan |
Office2 | Secretary of State for JusticeLord Chancellor |
Primeminister2 | Gordon Brown |
Term start2 | 28 June 2007 |
Term end2 | 11 May 2010 |
Predecessor2 | The Lord Falconer of Thoroton |
Successor2 | Kenneth Clarke |
Office3 | Leader of the House of CommonsLord Privy Seal |
Primeminister3 | Tony Blair |
Term start3 | 6 May 2006 |
Term end3 | 27 June 2007 |
Predecessor3 | Geoff Hoon |
Successor3 | Harriet Harman |
Office4 | Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs |
Primeminister4 | Tony Blair |
Term start4 | 8 June 2001 |
Term end4 | 6 May 2006 |
Predecessor4 | Robin Cook |
Successor4 | Margaret Beckett |
Office5 | Home Secretary |
Primeminister5 | Tony Blair |
Term start5 | 2 May 1997 |
Term end5 | 8 June 2001 |
Predecessor5 | Michael Howard |
Successor5 | David Blunkett |
Office6 | Shadow Home Secretary |
Leader6 | Tony Blair |
Term start6 | 22 July 1994 |
Term end6 | 2 May 1997 |
Predecessor6 | Tony Blair |
Successor6 | Michael Howard |
Office7 | Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment |
Leader7 | John Smith |
Term start7 | 18 July 1992 |
Term end7 | 22 July 1994 |
Predecessor7 | Bryan Gould |
Successor7 | Frank Dobson |
Office8 | Member of Parliament for Blackburn |
Term start8 | 3 May 1979 |
Predecessor8 | Barbara Castle |
Majority8 | 9,856 (21.7%) |
Birth date | |
Birth place | Buckhurst Hill, Essex, England |
Party | Labour |
Alma mater | University of LeedsInns of Court School of Law |
Religion | Anglicanism |
Spouse | Anthea Weston (m. 1968-1977)Alice Perkins (m. 1978-present) |
Children | Daughter (deceased), son |
When the Labour Party lost power in May 2010, he briefly became the Shadow Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, Shadow Secretary of State for Justice and the Shadow Deputy Prime Minister, but stood down from the frontbench after the Labour Party elected a new Shadow Cabinet.
He qualified as a barrister at Inns of Court School of Law and practised criminal law. From 1971 to 1974 Jack Straw was a member of the Inner London Education Authority and Deputy Leader from 1973 to 1974. Straw contested Tonbridge and Malling constituency in Kent in the February 1974 general election. He served as political adviser to Barbara Castle at the Department of Social Security from 1974 to 1976 and then to Peter Shore at the Department for the Environment to 1977. He then worked as a researcher for the Granada TV series, World in Action.
Straw briefly served as Shadow Environment Secretary under John Smith from 1992 to 1994, speaking on matters concerning local government. When Tony Blair became leader after Smith's death, he chose Straw to succeed him as Shadow Home Secretary. Like Blair, Straw believed Labour's electoral chances had been damaged in the past by the party appearing to be "soft on crime" and he developed a reputation as being even more authoritarian than the Conservative Home Secretary Michael Howard. Straw garnered particular attention for comments condemning "aggressive beggars, winos and squeegee merchants" and calling for a curfew on children.
As Home Secretary, Straw was also involved in changing the electoral system for the European Parliament elections from plurality to proportional representation. In doing so, he advocated the use of d'Hondt formula as being the one that produces the most proportional outcomes. The d'Hondt formular, however, is less proportional to the Sainte-Laguë formula which was proposed by the Liberal Democrats. Straw later apologised to the House of Commons for his misleading comments, but the d'Hondt formula stayed in place.
In March 2000, Jack Straw was responsible for allowing General Augusto Pinochet to return to Chile. There were requests from several countries for Pinochet to be extradited and face trial for crimes against humanity. Pinochet was placed under house arrest in Britain while appealing the legal authority of the Spanish and British courts to try him, but Straw eventually ordered his release on medical grounds before a trial could begin, and Pinochet returned to Chile.
Also in 2000, Straw turned down an asylum request from a man fleeing Saddam Hussein's regime, stating "we have faith in the integrity of the Iraqi judicial process and that you should have no concerns if you haven’t done anything wrong."
He was the last Home Secretary to have all the traditional powers of that office, as following the 2001 general election, the government began transferring all non-law and order responsibilities to other departments.
He caused controversy in 2002 when he erroneously referred to the Prime Minister as the Head of State.
In 2003 the US-UK Extradition Treaty was negotiated, considered by some to be one-sided because it allows the US to extradite British citizens and others for offences committed against US law, even though the alleged offence may have been committed in Britain by a person living and working in Britain (see for example the NatWest Three), and there being no reciprocal right; and issues about the level of proof required being less to extradite from the UK to the US rather than vice-versa. The treaty was implemented in the Extradition Act 2003, with the manner of its implementation also causing concern because of alleged secrecy and minimal parliamentary scrutiny.
In a letter to The Independent in 2004, he claimed that Trotskyists "can usually now be found in the City, appearing on quiz shows or ranting in certain national newspapers," and recommended by Vladimir Lenin.
In the 2004 Equatorial Guinea coup d'état attempt, Jack Straw was personally informed months in advance of the plans for the takeover attempt and failed to accomplish the duty under international law of alerting the country's government. The involvement of British oil companies in the funding of the coup d'état, and the changing of British citizens evacuation plans for Equatorial Guinea before the attempt, posed serious challenges for the alleged ignorance of the situation. Later on, British officials and Jack Straw were forced to apologise to The Observer after categorically denying they had prior knowledge of the coup plot.
In the run up to the 2005 general election Straw faced a potential backlash from his Muslim constituents over the Iraq War – the Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK (MPAC) attempted to capitalise on anti-war sentiment with 'operation Muslim vote' in Blackburn. In addition, Craig Murray, who had been pushed out of his job as ambassador to Uzbekistan, stood against his former boss (Straw was head of the FCO) on a platform opposing the use of information gathered under torture in the "War on Terror". Straw's vote fell by 20% compared to the previous general election in 2001 (21,808 to 17,562) although the multiplicity of anti-Straw candidates makes it difficult to discern whether this was a particularly poor result for Straw and Labour. The swing to the second placed Conservatives was less than 2%, much lower than the national average. In any event, Straw was re-elected, while Murray trailed a distant fifth - barely managing to scrape the 5% of the vote necessary to retain his deposit and polling fewer votes than the BNP. Speaking moments after his re-election during the BBC's election night coverage, Straw called MPAC an 'egregious group' and expressed disappointment at its campaign tactics, which he saw as overly aggressive. Straw enjoys a reputation for involved local campaigning in his constituency despite his cabinet post, often spending many hours in the run up to elections literally standing on a soapbox in a high street area taking questions from the crowd and responding to criticism with a microphone .
On 13 October 2005 Straw took questions from a public panel of (mostly anti-war) individuals in a BBC Newsnight television special on the subject of Iraq, addressing widespread public concerns about the exit strategy for British troops, the Iraqi insurgency and, inevitably, the moral legitimacy of the war. On several occasions Straw reiterated his position that the decision to invade was in his opinion the right thing to do, but said he did not 'know' for certain that this was the case. He said he understood why public opinion on several matters might differ from his own—a Newsnight/ICM poll showed over 70% of respondents believed the war in Iraq to have increased the likelihood of terrorist attacks in Britain, but Straw said he could not agree based on the information presented to him. and UK Ambassador to the US Christopher Meyer in 2001.]] In February 2006, Straw attracted publicity after he condemned the publication of cartoons picturing Mohammed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, and in April 2006, reports of secret White House plans to target Iranian nuclear installations with bunker busting nuclear bombs was described by Jack Straw as "completely nuts".
In August 2006, it was claimed by William Rees-Mogg in The Times that there was evidence that Straw was removed from this post upon the request of the Bush administration, possibly owing to his expressed opposition to bombing Iran. This would be ironic, as Richard Ingrams in The Independent wondered whether Straw's predecessor as Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, was also removed at Bush's request, allowing Straw to become Foreign Secretary in the first place. It has also been alleged that another factor in Straw's dismissal was the large number of Muslims amongst his Blackburn constituents, supposedly considered a cause for concern by the US. Some Iranian dissidents mocked Straw as "Ayatollah Straw" after his frequent visits to Tehran in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks.
Straw gave evidence to the Iraq Inquiry on 21 January 2010, making him the second member of Tony Blair's cabinet to do so. He told the inquiry that the decision to go to war in Iraq had "haunted him" and that it was the "most difficult decision" of his life. He also said that he could have stopped the invasion, had he wanted to.
On 25 March 2007, Straw announced he was to run Gordon Brown's campaign for the Labour leadership. This was the first official confirmation the Chancellor would stand.
Straw's comments kicked off a wide-ranging and sometimes harshly worded debate within British politics and the media; Straw was supported by some establishment figures and castigated by others, including Muslim groups. There is an ongoing debate within the Muslim community whether the Qur'an and hadith (traditions of Muhammad) require the use of the full face veil. Jack Straw apologised for these comments regarding the veil on 26 April 2010 at a private hustings organised by Engage in the build up to the United Kingdom General Election, 2010.
In April 2011, Straw was appointed as a consultant to E. D. & F. Man Holdings Ltd., a British company based in London specialising in the production and trading of commodities including sugar, molasses, animal feed, tropical oils, biofuels, coffee and financial services. Commenting on his appointment to ED&F; Man on a salary of £30,000 per annum, Straw said, "There are 168 hours in the week, and I will work in Blackburn for a least 60 and maybe sleep for 50. Providing there’s no conflict, I have long taken the view that I am not against people doing other things. I had two jobs as a minister. I think it’s really important that politicians are involved with the outside world.”.
On 10 November 1978 he married Alice Perkins, a senior civil servant. In 2006 Straw's wife joined the board of the country's largest airports operator BAA, shortly before it was taken over by the Spanish firm Ferrovial.
Straw has tinnitus.
He supports his local football club Blackburn Rovers, and was made an Honorary Vice President of Blackburn Rovers in 1998 by Jack Walker.
His son, Will Straw, was president of the Oxford University Student Union, and a Fulbright Scholar. In 2009 he became a founding editor of the political blog, 'Left Foot Forward'
Straw's father, Walter Straw, was sent to prison in 1939 during part of World War II for being a conscientious objector.
Category:1946 births Category:Alumni of the University of Leeds Category:British Secretaries of State Category:British Secretaries of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Category:English Anglicans Category:English barristers Category:Labour Party (UK) MPs Category:Leaders of the House of Commons Category:Living people Category:Lord Chancellors of Great Britain Category:Lords Privy Seal Category:Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom Category:Members of the United Kingdom Parliament for English constituencies Category:NUS presidents Category:Old Brentwoods Category:People from Epping Forest (district) Category:People from Loughton Category:British people of Jewish descent Category:Politics of Blackburn Category:Presidents of the United Nations Security Council Category:Secretaries of State for the Home Department Category:UK MPs 1979–1983 Category:UK MPs 1983–1987 Category:UK MPs 1987–1992 Category:UK MPs 1992–1997 Category:UK MPs 1997–2001 Category:UK MPs 2001–2005 Category:UK MPs 2005–2010 Category:UK MPs 2010– Category:Witnesses of the Iraq Inquiry
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
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