Alternate use, see charter airline, yacht charter, bare-boat charter or Charter Communications.

A charter is a document bestowing certain rights on a town, city, university, land or institution; sometimes used as a loan of money. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a bill of rights. The term derives from a root word meaning "paper".

Origin

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As John Fiske described in his 1890 treatise on the Origin of Civil Government in the United States:

The word "charter" originally meant simply a paper or written document, and it was often applied to deeds for the transfer of real estate. In contracts of such importance papers or parchment documents were drawn up and carefully preserved as irrefragable evidences of the transaction. And so, in quite significant phrase the towns zealously guarded their charters as the "title-deeds of their liberties."

After a while the word charter was applied in England to a particular document which specified certain important concessions forcibly wrung by the people from a most unwilling sovereign. This document was called Magna Carta, or the "Great Charter," signed at Runnymede, June 15, 1215, by John, king of England.

More on [ Charter ]

BBC News | UK | World Edition

Flood fears ease as rains lighten
Sun, 07 Sep 2008 12:04:44 -0000
Flood fears are easing as showers replace persistent rain across England and Wales and river levels stabilise.
Data on 5,000 justice staff lost
Sun, 07 Sep 2008 08:11:14 -0000
Jack Straw has ordered an inquiry into the loss of a computer hard drive containing the details of up to 5,000 justice system staff.
Nationwide in talks over mergers
Sun, 07 Sep 2008 12:05:06 -0000
The Nationwide Building Society is in merger talks with two smaller rivals, the Derbyshire and Cheshire Building Societies.
Tax rich at higher rate, says TUC
Sat, 06 Sep 2008 23:22:11 -0000
People earning more than £100,000 a year should pay higher tax rates, the Trades Union Congress says.
Cameron: Back Brown or sack him
Sun, 07 Sep 2008 11:59:57 -0000
Conservative party leader David Cameron calls on Labour to support or reject Gordon Brown as leader.
Civil servants to vote on strike
Sun, 07 Sep 2008 12:50:52 -0000
Civil servants are to be balloted over taking industrial action for at least three months, the PCS union announces.

The Economist: Britain

The army in Afghanistan: Dam difficult
Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:30:35 -0000
Britain scores a military success. But it will take much more to beat the TalibanTHE earthen wall holding back the turquoise lake at Kajaki has stood as a rebuke to British forces for more than two years. Work on refurbishing its hydroelectric power station all but stopped when British and other NATO troops arrived in southern Afghanistan in 2006, reigniting the war with the Taliban.More than two seasons of inconclusive fighting, and the death of more than 100 British soldiers, have failed to secure southern Afghanistan. If anything, the Taliban have become bolder, staging more ambitious attacks and extending the insurgency to the gates of Kabul. As the Americans have reinforced understrength British forces in Helmand, relations between the allies have become tetchy. The Afghan government, too, has been critical of Western troops for killing Afghan civilians. ...
Gordon Brown's Scotland: Backyard blues
Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:30:35 -0000
The prime minister’s native land is no longer his redoubtNOT only is Gordon Brown leading a country the OECD claims is about to enter recession; he also flew north on September 4th to find the part of it he calls home in revolt. Chief among the prime minister’s difficulties in Scotland is a resurgent Scottish National Party (SNP), which is expected to win a parliamentary by-election in the Labour-held seat of Glenrothes. The contest, which was prompted by the death of Labour MP John MacDougall in August, is unlikely to take place before late October. The SNP holds the equivalent seat in the Scottish Parliament and needs a 14.5% swing, less than the 22% it secured when it snagged Glasgow East from Labour in a by-election in July, in order to send an MP to Westminster. ...
Bagehot: Deny, deflect, detonate
Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:30:35 -0000
Is economic woe driving the government’s political problems or vice versa?WHEN the Kursk, a Russian submarine, sank in 2000, Vladimir Putin’s government at first pretended the situation was not as awful as it seemed. Next, it blamed outsiders (in the shape of a phantom foreign craft). Finally, when obfuscation would no longer wash, it claimed that the crew had all died immediately, and thus that nothing the authorities might have done could have helped. In its efforts to explain Britain’s subsiding economy, the government of Gordon Brown—another leader installed by opaque anointment rather than open choice—seems to have adopted a similar approach to crisis management. The effect can be summarised as deny, deflect and detonate.For as long as he could, Mr Brown denied the seriousness of the downturn. Things, he insisted, had been much worse in the early 1990s; the government was taking the “tough long-term decisions” needed to avert a repeat of such Tory-inflicted hardship. Growth would remain stronger than the gloomy analysts were predicting. Next came deflect: when price rises and the collapse of the housing market became too stark to spin away, Mr Brown acknowledged the difficulties but stressed that, in the words of the song, “It wasn’t me”. He deflected the blame on to irresponsible foreigners, such as greedy American financiers and Arab oil sheikhs. He and his chancellor, Alistair Darling, nevertheless insisted that Britain’s “resilient” economy would withstand the credit crunch and other global squalls better than others. ...
Social housing: Estate management
Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:30:35 -0000
New proposals are likely to expand council housingHALF the government’s efforts this week were spent trying to convince wary buyers to set off down the risky path of home ownership. Soft loans and a temporary break from stamp duty, dangled tantalisingly on September 2nd, might tempt a few to take the plunge. But those who are weighing the risks and rewards of buying must have been alarmed that the government was simultaneously promoting rescue packages for those who had entered the housing market and got burned.Chief among these bail-outs was a GBP200m “mortgage-rescue” scheme, under which some 6,000 households in danger of having their home repossessed are to be saved. Councils and housing associations will be able to buy a share of the property, reducing the occupier’s mortgage. In some cases the authorities could buy it outright and let it back to its erstwhile owner, turning it into de facto social housing. ...
Faiths and schools: Religious rights and wrongs
Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:30:35 -0000
A campaign to loosen the grip of the godly on state educationIN BRITAIN, a largely secular country where churches retain their historic role in education, there is little agreement about the place of religion in schools. Some fret that schools for children of a particular faith foster segregation; others cite parents’ right to educate their offspring as they see fit, adding that religious schools outperform secular ones (though opponents say that is because richer children go to them). Such rows tend to entrench attitudes, rather than lead to resolution.Now campaigners, both godly and godless, are trying to change that. September 1st saw the launch of Accord, a coalition of Christians, Jews, humanists, secularists and teachers who hope to sidestep fruitless rows about whether religions should run schools and instead get them to do it more fairly. They take issue with schools favouring children of their own faith in admissions: “Churches should be championing social justice and equality for all in education, not privileging their own,” says the Rev Christopher Rowland of Accord. And they want to stop schools reserving jobs for co-religionists and those who follow church teachings in their private lives. ...
Titian in Britain: Exit, unfunded?
Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:30:35 -0000
The fate of two Old Masters reveals the strengths and weaknesses of the laws governing the sale of artPAINTING, said Ambrose Bierce, is “the art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic”. In Titian’s case, the critics have purred with enthusiasm. Lucian Freud hailed the two paintings offered for sale by the Duke of Sutherland, Diana and Actaeon and Diana and Callisto, as “simply the most beautiful pictures in the world”. And the Bridgewater Collection to which they belong is widely regarded as the world’s most important private collection of Old Masters.Yet keeping the paintings in the country will be a struggle. Although the duke is offering the Titians for much less than their market price, the National Galleries in England and Scotland still have to find GBP100m—almost five times the highest amount ever raised to keep art in Britain. And Britain’s notoriously liberal art-export laws do not provide much of a safety net. Between 1995 and 2005, 211 works of art totalling GBP274m in value were judged pre-eminent and worth keeping; yet money could be raised to hang on to only GBP105m-worth of them. ...

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