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31 March, 2010

Hundreds of cancer patients at risk through misdiagnosis, NHS report finds

Much of this is due to the NHS reluctance to do diagnostic tests. They cost money

The health of hundreds of patients has been put at risk by doctors failing to diagnose cancer, according to a damning NHS report.

The National Patient Safety Agency has investigated over a thousand cases in which NHS staff misdiagnosed cancer, or were too slow in identifying the disease among patients over a one-year period. The failures led to 177 patients suffering unnecessarily, with two dying and 25 being seriously harmed, the study found.

However, NPSA said the overall figure of 1,650 cases for the 2007/08 period represented only the tip of the iceberg.

The report said there were incidents in which doctors failed to spot key signs of cancer, tissue samples were mixed up, some patients were wrongly given an all-clear and vital diagnostic tests were delayed because of staff and equipment shortages.

In one case, a GP diagnosed a breast lump on a 29-year-old woman as mastitis. The woman visited the doctor three times but was never referred to a breast clinic. The report says: “When she was finally diagnosed, she had advanced breast cancer with extensive spread.”

In another pathology blunder a patient with a benign breast condition received a malignant diagnosis and underwent surgery, while another patient was wrongly cleared.

The NPSA's "Delayed diagnosis of cancer: thematic review" details failures by NHS staff, including pathologists and administration staff. It said it “revealed a range of safety concerns along the cancer diagnostic pathway".

Last week, the family of a young mother who died after doctors failed to diagnose her cancer secured a six-figure payout from the NHS. Lavinia Bletchly, a 23-year-old mother of two, was sent home from Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend, Wales, three times while suffering aggressive cancer.

On one occasion, a senior consultant told her that her illness was “all in her head” and that she should make way for urgent cases, relatives said. By the time doctors identified the malignant tumour in her bowel, it had spread to her stomach and was so extensive that chemotherapy could not save her.

The textile design student, from Bridgend, south Wales, died on March 24, 2005 from peritonitis and malignant non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Health Board is understood to be paying her family £350,000 compensation following a High Court legal challenge.

SOURCE



Mr Ordinary is the perfect role model for boys and not celebrities who set a bad example, warn British teachers

Their humdrum lives may lack the glamour of a footballer or TV star. But teachers say ‘the ordinary working man’ should once again be held up as an example to young boys being led astray by today’s celebrity-obsessed culture.

They warned that traditional working-class virtues are being undermined by the trend to celebrate drunkenness and excessive spending. Rather than badly behaved footballers and reality TV stars, it is hard-working and responsible fathers who are the ‘real superstars’, according to a teaching union.

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers warned that a generation of white working-class boys was growing up believing life on an ordinary wage had little meaning or purpose.

Children are losing sight of old-fashioned values such as taking pride in a job, paying their own way and looking after a family. At its conference in Manchester, the union demanded a campaign to raise the profile of community role models and ‘the ordinary working man’.

The call comes after research showed that white workingclass boys do worse at school than any other group. Teacher Ian Bonner, of ATL’s Cheshire branch, said: ‘It’s almost as if you are a nobody if you don’t earn millions. ‘If anything, the lives of the well-paid footballers demonstrate that vast wages and poor examples generally go together.’

He said celebrities were often hailed as role models even if they had committed crimes such as possessing drugs or hitting photographers.

‘The ordinary honest working man can be a good role model and is an essential member of a society that needs to function well,’ he said. ‘Getting up, going to work, doing a good job, looking after your family, if you have one, not being a drunkard, living within your means, not running up debts you can’t pay, looking after your house or flat, are all part of the role that needs to be presented as important.’

ATL members backed his call for the union to ‘publicise the contribution made to society by men who support and care for their families in a positive and responsible manner’.

Mr Bonner said: ‘It is hard work bringing up children to be responsible and well-behaved, caring and considerate, generous and just good. ‘These are the real superstars in our society and without them this society would go belly-up within months.’

These unsung heroes are ‘far more essential to the life of our nation than those who get paid millions for kicking a ball around or who have found instant stardom on a talent show’, he said.

Suitable role models needed to be promoted for white working-class boys so they can see that ‘life can have as much, if not more, meaning and purpose without lots of expensive possessions’. ‘They will see that raising children to be good members of society is harder than jetting around the world and being in the papers,’ he said.

Mr Bonner told the conference working-class boys were ‘not motivated to learn because they see the education provided for them as irrelevant’. ‘They do not see it as relevant because they do not see people in society who came from their background making the news in a positive manner,’ he added.

SOURCE



Christian nurse says NHS 'persecuted' her faith and favours Muslims employees

A Christian nurse who refused to remove her crucifix at work has told an employment tribunal she felt "persecuted" because of her faith. Shirley Chaplin, who has worn her cross every day for 30 years, said she felt that Muslim members of staff were treated with greater understanding when it came to outward symbols of their religion.

The 54 year-old was banned from working on hospital wards by Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Trust after she failed to hide the cross she wore on a necklace chain. She is now suing her hospital employers.

She said: "Muslims are treated preferably to Christians who are treated less favourably." "I feel upset and persecuted. My belief is genuine and I am here to bear witness to that." She claimed that Muslim staff were allowed to wear headscarves as a "commitment to their faith and it is just accepted as they way they are".

The grandmother stressed that she had "no particular dislike" of Muslims but said they were the only other religious diversity within the Trust and they were "not asked to give witness about their faith". "I believe it is discrimination," Mrs Chaplin claimed.

The Trust said they made a number of attempts to reach a solution including wearing clip-on crucifix earrings.

Mrs Chaplin, a nurse since 1978, said: "I felt the Trust was trying to humiliate me" adding that a badge clipped on her uniform would have been a safer option than clip on earrings. Mrs Chaplin said the crucifix which she was given as a Confirmation gift, 'stays on my body'.

When one member of the three-man tribunal panel asked Mrs Chaplin about the cost of the protracted case to her emotionally, financially and to her health, she replied: "They are persecuting my faith. I am not sure what point they are trying to make."

She told tribunal Judge John Hollow that the cross and chain were a traditional way of wearing the crucifix and a crucifix alone on a lapel would not be satisfactory.

She said: "I want my clinical role back. My desire is to carry on working on wards as a nurse which has been taken from me until you decide what my future will be." Mr Hollow said at 54 years of age she still had a lot of skills to offer.

Mrs Chaplin is backed in her battle by six bishops, who claim Christians are being persecuted in Britain. The six bishops who back the nurse - and Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury – wrote to The Sunday Telegraph to offer their support.

They said: “It would seem that the NHS trust would rather lose the skills of an experienced nurse and divert scarce resources to fighting a legal case, instead of treating patients. “This dedicated nurse… has worn the cross every day since confirmation as a sign of her Christian faith, a faith which led to her vocation in nursing.”

A spokesman for Royal Devon & Exeter NHS Foundation Trust said: "The Trust made its position clear at the beginning of the tribunal and it would be inappropriate to make a running commentary on some of the key issues before we have articulated our case at the hearing."

SOURCE



A crime to sell goldfish?

It is in Britain if you are not careful. There is no limit to the number of things that a Fascist State can and will regulate

A 66-year-old British woman was fined and ordered to wear an ankle monitor as punishment for selling a goldfish to a 14-year-old.

Joan Higgins, 66, owner of Majors Pet Shop in Sale, England, was fined $1,506, ordered to wear an ankle monitor and given a seven-week curfew as punishment for selling a goldfish to a 14-year-old boy sent into the store by police on a test buy, the Daily Mail reported Tuesday.

A 2006 law prohibits the sale of live fish to children under the age of 16. Higgins' son, Mark, 47, was fined $1,300 and ordered to complete 120 hours of community service.

"I think it's a farce. What gets me so cross is that they put my mum on a tag -- she's nearly 70, for goodness sake," Mark Higgins said. "She's a great grandma so she won't be able to babysit a new born baby. You would think they have better things to do with their time and money."

"The council sent the 14-year-old into us. It is hard to tell how old a lad is these days. He looked much older than 14," he said.

SOURCE



Lovelock bloviating again

'We can't save the planet'

Professor James Lovelock, the scientist who developed Gaia theory, has said it is too late to try and save the planet. The man who achieved global fame for his theory that the whole earth is a single organism now believes that we can only hope that the earth will take care of itself in the face of completely unpredictable climate change.

Interviewed by Today presenter John Humphrys, videos of which you can see below, he said that while the earth's future was utterly uncertain, mankind was not aware it had "pulled the trigger" on global warming as it built its civilizations.

What is more, he predicts, the earth's climate will not conveniently comply with the models of modern climate scientists.

As the record winter cold testifies, he says, global temperatures move in "jerks and jumps", and we cannot confidently predict what the future holds.

Prof Lovelock does not pull his punches on the politicians and scientists who are set to gain from the idea that we can predict climate change and save the planet ourselves. Scientists, he says, have moved from investigating nature as a vocation, to being caught in a career path where it makes sense to "fudge the data".

And while renewable energy technology may make good business sense, he says, it is not based on "good practical engineering".

At the age of 90, Prof Lovelock is resigned to his own fate and the fate of the planet. Whether the planet saves itself or not, he argues, all we can do is to "enjoy life while you can".

SOURCE





30 March, 2010

Basic surgical procedures 'denied to thousands' amid NHS cost cutting

Basic surgical procedures which could improve the lives of thousands of people are being denied amid NHS cost cutting, some of the country's leading doctors have warned.

Operations aimed at tackling back pain and common hernias, to fitting bone-anchored hearing aids and knee replacements and removing varicose veins have been scrapped following recommendations by a Government-appointed management consultancy.

The Department of Health insisted that many of the surgical procedures have been superseded by either medication or better operations.

But the presidents of associations representing the six main surgical disciplines said the public should be fully informed of any policy change regarding such operations.

In a letter to The Guardian, they claimed that "patients attend their GP surgeries with conditions that can be effectively treated by surgery and are being turned away" and said some may not even be told about operations which might help them.

Even if they are referred to a hospital consultant, they could at that stage be refused an operation because trusts have "arbitrarily defined a number of operations that reduce pain, improve quality of life and prevent serious long-term complications as being of 'limited clinical value'".

Individual health trusts decide on the provision of treatments depending on the needs of its local population, but surgeons say some procedures are being scrapped across the NHS.

They cite those which were highlighted in a report by management consultants McKinsey which recommended their "decommissioning" to save £700m amid plans recently announced by the Government to save £1.5bn by reducing "unnecessary prescriptions and hospital referrals".

Surgeons claim cost-cutting lies at the heart of moves to "ration patient care". Alan Johnson, the president of ENT UK which represents ear, nose and throat surgeons, highlighted research which found that 30 trusts had restricted simple procedures "which they would not fund". "These procedures have been classified as of low clinical value," he said. "But a child who cannot hear has his or her development impaired. "Acute tonsillitis in the worst case can see patients admitted to emergency wards which is much more expensive than removing their tonsils."

Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrats health spokesman, said the surgeons' concerns were "cuts by stealth". "These are quietly being done by trusts without any sense of the evidence behind it," he told The Guardian. "They are trying to save millions of pounds but this is not the way to address the financial crisis in the NHS."

But the Department of Health insisted patient care came before cost considerations. Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of the NHS, said: "Good surgery is about fine judgments which ensure that each patient gets the right operation for them.

"This means continually reappraising the relative effectiveness of old, new and emerging options, whilst recognising that an operation which is suitable for one patient may not be suitable for another with different medical or personal circumstances. seems inconceivable that any PCT or even the Department of Health would unilaterally draw up a definitive list of apparently ineffective procedures without a clear consensus from surgeons who are experts in the field."

SOURCE



British School pupils ‘being used as political footballs’, says Association of Teachers and Lecturers

Schoolchildren are being turned into “political footballs” by MPs, according to a teachers’ leader. They are increasingly made to feel like failures at an early age if they struggle to hit pre-conceived Government targets, said Lesley Ward, president of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers. She told the union’s annual conference that meddling by politicians meant children failed to enjoy school as much as previous generations.

The comments come just weeks after inspectors found that Labour’s £4.5 billion school reforms were failing to improve standards in the three-Rs because schools had been “overwhelmed” by red tape. Ofsted found that progress in English and maths has been “too slow” over the last four years as state schools struggled under the weight of new initiatives and teaching materials introduced as part of the National Strategies programme.

In a speech to the union’s annual conference in Manchester, Mrs Ward said: "I don't think I would like to be a school child at the moment. “I don't think I would like to be a statistic. I don't think I would like to be told, at a very early age, what level I should be at, or that I am not at the right level and despite doing my best I am failing somehow. "I don't think I would like to feel guilty for being poorly during Sats week if my absence brought the school's score down. I don't think I would enjoy being a political football."

Mrs Ward, a primary school teacher from Doncaster, said education policy had become stuck, with the same issues being debated now as they were 40 years ago. "I am on to my 15th Secretary of State for Education and my 29th Minister for Education,” she said. “I have lived through, endured, survived, call it what you like, 54 pieces of education legislation since I started teaching. One more and it would be one for each year of my life."

The union, which represents 160,000 school staff, called for the abolition of Ofsted and league tables and a more trust in “teachers’ professional judgment”.

SOURCE



Jamie Oliver's school dinners 'are more effective than literacy hour'

Placebo alone will give you a 30% improvement in almost anything. Interesting that it didn't help poor kids. The middle class kids probably took the propaganda more seriously

Eating Jamie Oliver’s school dinners improves children’s performance in tests, according to researchers who claim that the celebrity chef’s campaign to improve school food has had more impact than government literacy programmes.

The findings of the two-year study indicate that scores in national curriculum tests at 11 rose in English and science at schools where Oliver’s menus were introduced. Control schools, where junk food was still available, showed smaller or negligible improvements, researchers said.

The news comes as more than half of teachers in a union survey said that classroom behaviour worsened after pupils had eaten a high-sugar or fatty meal.

Forty-two per cent of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers said food served at their school was pre-cooked off-site and reheated in the school kitchen.

Researchers at Oxford and Essex universities said that Oliver’s televised campaign to transform the eating habits of pupils by banning unhealthy options from school canteens and introducing more fruit and vegetables had “improved educational achievement”.

The chef was blamed for a decline in take-up of school meals after he exposed the poor quality of food in 2005 and forced the Government to raise nutritional standards. But in a paper presented to the Royal Economical Society today, researchers said that his campaign was a “unique opportunity to assess the causal effects of diet and educational outcomes”.

The proportion of pupils reaching level 4, the standard expected at the end of primary school, in English increased by 4.5 percentage points. The number of those reaching level 5 — the top grade — in science rose by 6 per cent two years after the new menus were put in place.

“The effects we have identified are comparable in magnitude to those estimates... for the literacy hour,” the researchers said. The compulsory hour of literacy for all primary school children, brought in under Labour, had increased the proportion of pupils reaching level 4 in reading by 3.2 per cent, the researchers added.

The improvements noted by the Healthy School Meals and Educational Outcomes study, were small but significant, “given that these effects are within a relatively short horizon and given that the campaign was not directly targeted at improving educational outcomes”.

Researchers looked at test results from the 80 schools in the London borough of Greenwich which formed the pilot for Oliver’s school dinner project. They used neighbouring local authorities as a control group.

The academics failed to find evidence that the campaign specifically helped children on free school meals — a measure of social deprivation. “On the contrary the campaign seemed to have affected most the children from richer socio-economic backgrounds,” the study said.

“This is not necessarily counter-intuitive; it is not unreasonable that children from favourable socio-economic backgrounds adjust more easily to changes in school meals than children from poor socio-economic backgrounds.”

SOURCE



The new priesthood of meddling experts

Whether they’re marshalling ‘science’ to stop us from smoking or from eating meat, we should all be more sceptical of the new expert class

Feeling that it lacks moral authority, the British political elite continually solicits others to speak on its behalf, whether it’s a group of scientists or medical doctors. Legitimacy, conviction, authority… what politicians want, these experts seem to have in spades. Little wonder that public policy, particularly the most authoritarian, citizen-controlling kind, always seems to be backed by ‘expertise’ these days.

And so it was this week with the release of a report by the UK’s Royal College of Physicians (RCP) warning of the deleterious effect passive smoking can have on children. This report wasn’t something the RCP did simply out of the goodness of its fearmongering heart. It did it because there is a review of anti-smoking legislation imminent and, given that the UK’s chief medical officer Liam Donaldson has written an approving foreword, the British state clearly needed the debate-defying authority only a professional expert can provide. Which makes the policies proposed in the RCP’s report even more shocking.

Chief among them is the proposal to ban smoking in cars and also where young people congregate. Such proposals are not entirely new, but what sets the RCP’s demands apart is that they want smoking prohibited not just when there are children in the car but in all cars per se. In the ominous words of the report’s lead author, Professor John Britton: ‘This isn’t just about protecting children from passive smoking, it’s about taking smoking completely out of children’s lives. Adults need to think about who’s seeing them smoke.’

Donaldson clearly welcomed this expert endorsement of future government legislation: ‘One of the biggest impacts of smoking around children is that adult smokers can be seen as role models, increasing the likelihood that the child will, in due course, also become a regular smoker. Preventing this means that adults take responsibility to stop smoking in front of their children at home, or in places where children may see them smoke.’ If anything confirms smokers’ pariah status, it is this: henceforth they will neither be seen nor inhaled.

No expert endorsement, in this case from a leading professional body, is complete without facts and figures, of course. Policymakers love facts and figures and the more of them, the better – the better, that is, with which to beat those who disagree around the head. Facts and figures don’t just put policy beyond doubt - they put it beyond debate. Right on cue the RCP estimated that, amongst children, passive smoking contributes to over 20,000 cases of lower respiratory tract infection, 120,000 cases of middle-ear disease, 22,000 new cases of wheeze and asthma, 200 cases of bacterial meningitis, and 40 sudden infant deaths. Got all that? And if illness and fatality aren’t persuasive enough, the RCP drops in the obligatory financial nugget: children’s inhalation of second-hand smoke costs the National Health Service about £23million a year.

None of this estimation is based on new research, however. It is based on ‘meta-analyses’ and ‘systematic reviews’ of ‘established literature’. In other, less confusing words, it’s an interpretation of data that has been around for the past 10 years. And the problem for those who want to close down a debate with an interpretation is that an interpretation is never beyond dispute: it can always be questioned. The truth of an interpretation is not something that can simply be proclaimed; it needs to be debated. Hence, as we have countered time and time again on spiked (see The anti-smoking ‘truth regime’ that cannot be questioned, by Dr Michael Fitzpatrick), there is still little or no statistically significant link between passive smoking and ill health.

Not for nothing did a 2006 House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee report assert that claims made for the dangers of environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) were far from certain - it even went so far as to say that the statistics did not justify the smoking ban. Not that this will be admitted by those at the Department of Health determined pre-emptively to shut down debate. These are facts, they say, and facts are sacred.

Except they’re not sacred. Sometimes they’re not even that factual. On the day the RCP launched its state-backed salvo against the citizenry, pitting children against adults, complete with facts, evidence and meta-analysed literature, there was another story also gaining momentum. In 2006, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) released a report claiming that meat production was responsible for 18 per cent of greenhouse emissions - more, incredibly, than transport.

This understandably caused quite a stir. A horrific alliance of greens and vegetarians had finally found the authority their essentially moral arguments lacked. Armed with this ‘fact’ much as Tomás de Torquemada carried the Bible, they proceeded to urge the world to stop stuffing their stupid, carnivorous faces. Paul McCartney even launched a campaign last year called ‘less meat = less heat’.

Unfortunately for these expert-powered, fact-fuelled campaigners, it has now become clear that something was not quite right with these facts. As Professor Frank Mitloehner from the University of California noted, while the FAO totted up all the greenhouse gas emissions associated with meat production, from farm to table, they just took the existing UN figure for the greenhouse emissions of transport.

Unlike that for meat production, this only included the fossil fuel burnt when using the particular mode of transport. It did not mention the fossil burnt in manufacturing cars, maintaining roads, building planes or the upkeep of railways. That is, the FAO applied completely different methods of measurement to food production and transport. The resulting figures are literally incomparable. A FAO policy officer was more than a little embarrassed: ‘I must say honestly that [Professor Mitloehner] has a point.’

The bigger point here, however, is not that facts can be more than a little fictional. It is not even that experts in their fields, medical or otherwise, are fallible. It is that expertise should not be prostituted to politicians and political campaigners. In their hands it becomes something other than it is. It becomes the source of authority that their arguments or their policies lack. And in the process it transforms those arguments and policies into the commands of those who know better than normal members of the demos. For the new expert priesthood, to choose not to stop smoking, as adults are entitled to do, is to choose ignorance and darkness. The facts and figures of prostituted expertise compel assent, not debate.

Criticising this exploitation of the expertise of professional scientists, medical doctors and so on shouldn’t be taken as a denigration of rationality, of our ability to know how things are, whether it’s the increased risk of lung disease amongst smokers or the carbon emissions of different modes of transport.

Rather it is to argue that this form of rational knowledge, when used by politicians, merges with their moral reasoning. They don’t just say how things are, they use (and abuse) it to say how things ought to be. And in doing so, they deprive us of our own reason, our own ability to make moral decisions about how we want to live our lives. Under the tyranny of expertise, the only rationality that matters is theirs.

SOURCE



The death of resilience: A Britain that prided itself on self-reliance now believes pills can cure anything and happiness is a human right

The brass band from Yorkshire Main Colliery assembled outside the doctor’s surgery in Edlington, South Yorkshire, and began to play. From the window above fluttered a Union Jack; below, the doctor handed out drinks to the puffing bandsmen. It was July 5, 1948, the first day of a new era: the age of the National Health Service.

But few of those people toasting the new arrival, born and bred in a country that valued stoicism, reticence and self-reliance, could have imagined how deeply their successors would sink into hypochondria and self-indulgence.

To the first NHS patients, the latest Department of Health figures — which show that the average Briton picks up a staggering 16 prescriptions a year and the Government spends an astonishing £22 million a day on prescription drugs — would seem utterly inconceivable.

For unlike their successors, those people who queued outside doctors’ surgeries in July 1948 were not whingers or hypochondriacs.

And what they would make of another report yesterday — that in an era of cuts and sacrifices, the Government’s ‘happiness czar’ Lord Layard is offering £80,000 a year for someone to run the new ‘Movement for Happiness’ — simply defies imagination.

They were the last in a long line of ordinary Britons who did their best to live up to the ideal of the stiff upper lip and saw life’s disappointments as troubles to be endured rather than as an excuse to demand yet more help from the state.

As the war had just shown, the average Briton had a strong sense of duty, believing in an obligation to give something to the state rather than the other way round. ‘What we want from the British people is self-discipline and self-restraint,’ said the founder of the NHS, the socialist firebrand Aneurin Bevan.

Sixty years on, those virtues seem to have evaporated. Of course, today we are a much healthier people living longer — though whether we are happier is a moot point.

Many, perhaps most, prescriptions are for genuine ailments, and none of us should begrudge the genuinely sick the medication they need to lead decent and fulfilling lives.

Yet, as Professor Joan Busfield of Essex University puts it, ‘the age of stoicism is dead’. We have become addicted to the idea that there is a pill for every ill. You can even get pills for ‘cognitive tempo disorder’ — symptoms: dreaminess, sluggishness and laziness — and ‘intermittent explosive disorder’ — otherwise known as having a temper tantrum.

As Professor Busfield notes, this obsession with pill-popping is partly driven by the profiteering drug companies. But it also says something deeper and more disturbing about our cult of self-indulgence, our insistence on instant happiness as an inalienable human right, and our reckless rejection of one of the oldest traits of Britishness: our resilience in the face of adversity.

Those first NHS patients had just come through the darkest time in British history, when we stood alone against Hitler’s tyranny. Yet what seems astonishing now is how few of them felt sorry for themselves.

Most prided themselves on living up to the slogan on the wartime posters: ‘Britain Can Take It.’ And in the words of their indomitable leader, Winston Churchill, soldiers and civilians alike were determined to ‘keep buggering on’.

Like Churchill, who was obsessed with living up to the example of his great forbear, the Duke of Marlborough, the wartime generation felt themselves to be following in the footsteps of millions of Britons whose stoicism under pressure had become legendary. They had been raised on stories of heroes such as Nelson and Wellington: cool under fire, unflappable even at the point of greatest danger, magnanimous in victory, unflinching in defeat.

Even now it is impossible to read stories of the great British stoics of the past without feeling oddly moved. Sir Philip Sidney, for instance, was not only one of the finest Elizabethan poets, but also a keen soldier who led Protestant forces against Spain in the Netherlands.

Shot in the thigh and bleeding to death at the Battle of Zutphen, he famously handed his water bottle to an injured comrade with the words: ‘Thy need is greater than mine.’

But his selfless bravery was nothing exceptional. More than two centuries later, as General James Wolfe was bleeding to death at the Battle of Quebec, he refused all offers to fetch a surgeon, insisting that other soldiers were in greater need. Told that the French were fleeing the field, he said simply: ‘God be praised. I die contented.’

The crucial point about stories such as these is that they became self-reinforcing. As each generation of Britons learned about the examples of their forefathers, so they, too, determined not to let the side down.

Perhaps this explains Lord Uxbridge’s extraordinary reaction when his right leg was shattered by a French cannonball at the Battle of Waterloo. ‘By God, sir!’ he remarked to the Duke of Wellington. ‘I’ve lost my leg!’ ‘By God, sir!’ the Iron Duke replied. ‘So you have!’

Yet in the light of our modern obsession with blame and compensation, it is what happened next to the Duke that is truly impressive. Even while surgeons were hacking off the remains of Uxbridge’s leg without recourse to antiseptics or anaesthetics, he remained calm, commenting merely: ‘The knives appear somewhat blunt.’

The Army offered him an annual pension of £1,200 as compensation for his lost leg. True to form, he turned it down.

Of course, those days are long gone. The mawkish outpouring of public grief has become our national emblem. Emotions are no longer kept in check by those suffering illness or misfortune, but instead permanently displayed. Tears spring readily to the eye and the notion of suffering in silence seems as alien to us as dragoons’ sabres or Bakelite radios.

Indeed, if the stoic spirit survives at all, it is in a few isolated bastions of the old order: the corridors of Buckingham Palace, where the Queen does her best to preserve a spirit of quiet service; or the deserts of Afghanistan, where our brave soldiers serve uncomplainingly despite grossly inadequate pay and equipment.

But in general, by comparison with our forebears, we have become a deeply spoiled and self-indulgent people. We expect perfection in our daily lives, and when, inevitably, it fails to materialise, we turn to the government for handouts and to the doctor for pills.

Barely half a century after millions of Britons struggled grimly through their daily lives with hernias, rotting teeth and broken bones because they simply could not afford the doctor’s bill, we hand out 10,000 prescriptions a week for ‘anti-hyperactivity’ drugs, known as the chemical cosh, to ensure order in the classroom.

Perhaps it is not surprising that we have become so obsessed with a quick fix to every problem. Thanks to the disgraceful neglect of history in the modern curriculum, many youngsters have no idea how lucky we are and no sense of the sacrifices our ancestors routinely had to make.

But the age of self-indulgence cannot last forever. In the next few years, deep cuts will mean there is no more money for happiness czars — and less money, I hope, for spurious prescriptions to be thrown around like confetti at a wedding. In an age of austerity, we will need to rediscover the older values of stoicism and self-reliance. We will have to get used to looking after ourselves, rather than expecting the state to do it for us.

Few of us, thankfully, will have to put up with anything as dreadful as our forebears were forced to endure, whether from the great conflicts or terrible diseases that imperilled their lives. But is it too much to hope that we can still learn something from their example?

SOURCE



Winston Churchill an unlikely adviser for General Stanley A. McChrystal in the Afghan conflict

GENERAL Stanley A. McChrystal, the commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, has found an unlikely adviser in the continuing struggle against the Taliban. This new counsellor is British, a former journalist, soldier, writer, painter and politician. He is also dead, and the last time he was anywhere near Afghanistan was in 1897.

Winston Churchill has come to the aid of the Allies. McChrystal is said to listen to the writings of Churchill on his iPod during his daily eight-mile jog. A recent visitor to Nato headquarters in Kabul found the American general immersed in Churchill's first book, his account of the struggle to pacify the tribes of the North West Frontier at the end of the 19th century.

Next on the general's reading list, it was reported, is Churchill's The River War, describing the reconquest of the Sudan that ended in the battle of Omdurman in 1898.

Barack Obama, fresh from his first presidential visit to Afghanistan, is no admirer of Britain's colonial past, and his own writings echo with anger at the iniquities of imperialism. Yet Britain's last great imperial leader offered an extraordinary insight into the nature of warfare in the region, Islamic fundamentalism and the history and character of Afghan tribal society.

In 1897, at the age of 23, Churchill was attached as a soldier-journalist to the Malakand Field Force, the British expedition under the splendidly named Sir Bindon Blood, dispatched to put down the rebellious Pathan tribesmen of the North West Frontier, on what is now the Afghan-Pakistan border.

Churchill described his impressions of this land "where every man is a soldier" in a series of vivid newspaper reports, which were incorporated into The Story of the Malakand Field Force, published a year later. Churchill's time among the border tribes was also recalled in his autobiography, My Early Life.

The Young Winston was only on the North West Frontier for a few weeks, but like most journalists he swiftly considered himself an expert on the Afghans in general, and the Pathans in particular. His prose is typically rich and colourful, his generalisations lofty and patronising. He shared the peculiar British reverence for the Pathans as a noble warrior race: "the ferocity of the Zulu are added to the craft of the Redskin and the marksmanship of the Boer". He never set foot in Afghanistan itself.

Yet Churchill was a natural historian, and for all their imperial arrogance, his words carry unmistakable relevance to Afghanistan today. "Tribe wars with tribe. Every man's hand is against the other and all are against the stranger... the state of continual tumult has produced a habit of mind which holds life cheap and embarks on war with careless levity."

Churchill was fascinated by the fabulously complex web of feud and counter-feud among the Taleban's ancestors, the conglomeration of tribes and sub-tribes and the total absence of central authority. "Such a disposition, combined with an absolute lack of reverence for all forms of law and authority, is the cause of their frequent quarrels with the British power."

Churchill reserved a special disdain for Talibs, the religious students who would later form the core of the original Taliban. He called them "a host of wandering Talib-ul-ulms [who] live free at the expense of the people".

Yet his attitude towards Islamic fundamentalism was far more nuanced than that of his contemporaries. Later in the Sudan he did not merely dismiss the Dervishes following the Mahdi as lunatics, but sought to understand the "mighty stimulus of fanaticism" that thrived, as it does today, in the "fearful fatalistic apathy" in much of the Muslim world.

Despite deploying the latest military technology, British imperial Forces were at a severe disadvantage when faced by rebels armed with long-handled jezail muskets, able to shoot and kill at a distance, and then disappear. "The weapons of the 19th century," wrote Churchill, "in the hands of the savages of the Stone Age."

The IED, the remote-controlled improvised explosive device planted at roadsides in Afghanistan to such devastating effect, is the modern equivalent of the jezail; the Taliban's "asymmetric tactics" are directly descended from the long-distance sniping of a century ago.

Above all, Churchill realised that pacifying the rebel Pathans was a matter of culture, politics and persuasion, not compulsion. The more an outside army sought to impose order, the more ferocious the Afghan response. For this society to develop and progress, he predicted, any government would have to first tackle "the warlike nature of the people and their hatred of control".

Brute force of arms, he knew, was not only insufficient and probably ineffective, but also likely to foment greater antagonism. After experiencing the wild borderlands firsthand, Churchill laid out the options for dealing with a country like Afghanistan: imposing the rule of law at the barrel of a gun, pulling out and leaving the tribes to their stone age bloodletting or working through and with the tribal system. As General McChrystal recently told Robert Kaplan of The Atlantic magazine, "the third choice - Churchill's choice - is really the only one we have".

One can see Churchill's choice reflected in the allies' changing policy in Afghanistan: in the determination to recruit and train Afghans for the army and police, in the greater willingness to talk to elements within the Taliban and the distribution of hard cash. On his brief visit to Bagram this week, Obama spoke of the progress made in "good governance, rule of law, anti-corruption efforts".

David Miliband, too, has suggested that Britain's past in Afghanistan might usefully be recruited to the present. "Imperial strategists sought and secured a saner and more sustainable objective: a self-governing, self-policing, but heavily subsidised Afghanistan where the tribes balanced each other and the Afghan state posed no threat to the safety of British India."

That sounds like the sort of solution Churchill would have applauded, yet he also knew that any policy reliant on raw force would have its limitations in a land saturated by centuries of violence. As a 23-year-old journalist, Churchill looked on, as Blood's British Forces laid waste to the rebel villages "in punitive devastation", and wondered whether peace would ever be possible here.

"At the end of a fortnight the valley was a desert," he wrote. "Whether it was worth it... I cannot tell."

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29 March, 2010

Dying hospital patient phoned switchboard begging for a drink after nurses said No

A patient desperate for a drink of water had to telephone the switchboard of the hospital he was being treated in to beg to see a doctor. Derek Sauter, 60, used his mobile phone to request medical attention after his pleas for help were ignored.

But when the doctor arrived he was turned away by ward nurse Caroline Lowe, who said Mr Sauter was 'over-reacting' and threatened to confiscate his phone.

Eight hours later the grandfather-of-three, who was suffering with a chest infection, was dead. Rather than offering sympathy to Susan, Mr Sauter's wife of 41 years, Miss Lowe later told her that he could have been prosecuted for harassing the doctor on call.

Yesterday his daughter, Ruth Sauter, 42, said she was appalled at the way her father, a former administrator for the Healthcare Commission, the former NHS watchdog, had been let down by the NHS. 'My father went into hospital for a routine chest infection, but never came out,' said Miss Sauter, of Thurrock, Essex. 'His condition was not life threatening and the nurses had specific instructions to keep close tabs on him. 'But their appalling lack of care, and cruel behaviour killed my father. He should not have died that weekend; it was not his time. 'It's so much worse knowing that he died alone, thirsty and scared on that ward.'

Mr Sauter was admitted to Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup, in Kent, at 9am on June 27 2008. He was admitted to a ward and given intravenous antibiotics and oxygen, but at 8.30pm he telephoned Mrs Sauter, a midwife, in distress claiming nurses were refusing to give him any water because he had accidentally knocked over the first cup he had been given.

A note scrawled by Mr Sauter and discovered by his family after his death said: 'Asked for a jug of water at 6pm and again at 8.30, told to wait for handover. Said I knocked cup of water on floor.' In another note Mr Sauter said he was 'getting depressed'.

Some time between 9.30pm and 11.30pm Mr Sauter was moved to a side room where there was no monitoring equipment and, although he was supposed to be checked every four hours, no observations on his condition were made.

At 11.35pm Mr Sauter, who had still not had any fluids, made his desperate call to the switchboard. The following morning, at 6.51am, a distressed Mr Sauter telephoned his wife to ask her to come back to the hospital. But he died of pneumonia brought on by the chest infection less than half an hour later - before Mrs Sauter, 60, arrived. She had not been able to see him before because the events had happened outside of visiting hours.

An investigation by the hospital revealed Mr Sauter's oxygen levels, which should have been routinely monitored, were not checked for 11 hours and had dropped 35 per cent below the recommended level. The report concluded that were it not for the failings of Miss Lowe Mr Sauter would have survived.

She has since been sacked by the hospital, but has not been suspended by the Nursing and Midwifery Council, who are investigating.

'It's absolutely appalling that they haven't struck the nurse off their register,' Miss Sauter added.

Miss Lowe, who lives in Essex, said: 'I am so sorry about what has gone on, but there are key facts the family haven't picked up on. 'He didn't press the buzzer. We got him water, but then he spilled it, so we got him another glass. We got him a jug and everything. 'I have been through such trauma with this. I am still traumatised by it.'

A spokesman for Queen Mary's Hospital said: 'The Trust would like to convey their sincerest apologies for the failings in care which have been revealed.'

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The incompetent, dirty and work-shy NHS again

If we were called upon to name a beloved British institution, the NHS is likely to be in the top three. All my life I've subscribed to the received wisdom that our National Health Service is the best in the world, so much so that even two shockingly mismanaged hospital births failed to dent my confidence.

But then, last summer, I broke my back in a riding accident in France, and what followed was a tale of two health care systems poles apart in efficiency, cleanliness and quality.

Given the recent pasting the NHS has received, I feel genuinely awkward about adding to the criticism. Nonetheless, my shabby treatment was so traumatic that I actually thank God I received my emergency surgery in France rather than in Britain.

So distressed was I by my experience here that many months later, when my UK consultant advised me I needed more surgery, I burst into tears and pleaded to be sent back to France for the operation.

But first to set the scene; I was taking part in a sedate pony trek through woodland near Bergerac, when my horse – and all the others on the ride – bolted from a standing start. As I fell, I had the presence of mind to jerk my head upwards to avoid landing on it. But in so doing, I twisted my body and landed with a sickening thud on my back, fracturing my spine.

The lower, lumbar region took the full impact and the pain was instant and appalling. When the ambulance came, I was strapped to a body board and taken to a local hospital. An X-ray confirmed I had broken my back and was in grave danger of permanent paralysis, so I was transferred to Pellegrin, a large teaching hospital outside Bordeaux.

The hospital was immaculate and the staff attentive and professional. I was bedbathed daily – virtually unheard of in British hospitals – my sheets were changed every day and the two-bed room was cleaned and dusted on a rolling basis. I later discovered that France is tackling MRSA by making nurses personally responsible for the cleanliness of their wards – it showed.

In the UK, by comparison, contract cleaners are employed. That shows, too. In a league table of 29 countries drawn up by the European Union's Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the UK came fifth. Only Portugal, Malta, Cyprus and Romania had a higher proportion of potentially deadly, antibiotic-resistant, hospital-acquired infections

My medications were always on time and there was an air of pride about the place that instilled confidence in me, despite the language barrier. After the most traumatic week of my life, when I lay terrified and immobilised on a morphine drip, I underwent surgery.

My L2 lumbar vertebra was crushed, so titanium screws were drilled into the L1 above and L3 below, to hold that section of spine in place as it healed. The pins were designed to stay in permanently.

The operation was deemed a success and, post-surgery, the nurses – a kind but forceful bunch – had me sitting up in a chair within three days, which involved a lot of screaming and moaning and was a far greater feat than it sounds.

By day six I was walking with a frame, which they took away after 20 minutes – so I could climb the stairs. It was a steep relearning curve, but I felt supported and looked after. I didn't have any travel insurance, but the bulk of my medical expenses were paid for under the European Health Insurance Card scheme (formerly covered by the E111), although I had to pay about £2,500 for ambulances and drugs.

I returned to Britain, weepy and sore, a week after the operation, to a very different scenario. My husband hired a private ambulance to take me home from the airport, because the NHS doesn't do airport pickups and I made it home breathing gas and air to help numb the pain.

It was all downhill from there. My GP had arranged for a community nurse to visit me that day, but she never came. It was left to my husband to change my dressing, and I had to inject myself in the stomach with the blood thinners prescribed to prevent deep vein thrombosis because I was so inactive.

The next day it was a similar story, so we rang and asked the nurse not to bother coming. But she turned up, with such a sullen, surly manner I decided I'd rather inject myself. She took 20 minutes apply a dressing that fell off before she'd reached the garden gate. Again, we phoned and said we didn't want a nurse – but still someone appeared on our doorstep for the next three days.

At my local hospital, Homerton Teaching Hospital, in east London, I saw a back specialist, who examined my X-rays and gave me a back brace to wear 16 hours a day, telling me that if all went to plan it would come off after eight weeks. When I returned for my next appointment, he was no longer at the hospital.

While orthopaedic doctors are trained to treat broken bones, backs are such complex structures that it is absolutely crucial to see a skilled specialist, as I did in Pellegrin.

But I was told by a general orthopaedic consultant – who, rather worryingly didn't seem to know how read my X-rays – that this wouldn't be happening. Instead, I would be seen in a fortnight by someone who "knows a little bit about backs". "I mean, it's not as if he's never seen a back before, heh, heh," he laughed. "It's just that – and I'll be honest with you – he's not an expert. Is that all right with you?"

"Um, not really, no," I said, weakly. "That's not all right with me. Do I have a choice?" He shrugged, smiled and said I didn't. Now, at this point some of you will be yelling at the newspaper shouting "Yes you do! You're entitled to be referred to another hospital! For God's sake woman, get a grip!"

But I didn't know what I was entitled to and I didn't get a grip, instead I accepted my lot and had a cry in the car park, feeling dismayed and a bit pathetic. I should point out that I'm not normally easily cowed by authority, but my broken back had (temporarily) broken my spirit, too.

In pain and emotionally out of kilter, I was struggling to cope with a seven-year-old and a 10-month-old; my broken back meant I was unable to even pick the baby up or change her nappy. To say that I was in no fit state to fight for my rights would be an understatement.

Fortunately in the wake of my appointment at Homerton, my husband was so angry on my behalf that he threatened to call the hospital himself. Goaded into action, I rang up and left a message to the effect that I would like to be referred to someone who was actually qualified to assess and treat my condition, as a matter of some urgency.

What ensued, however, was a (tragi-) comedy of errors, where I was batted back and forth between hospital and GP for three weeks, each claiming that the other was responsible for my referral. I spoke to my GP three times and wrote to him twice. I called the hospital and twice spoke to a senior member of the management who commiserated with me and suggested I turn up at A&E at another hospital holding my X-rays and pretending to be in pain, when I would be able to receive immediate treatment.

It was clear that even though I had a broken back, no one was going to cut through any red tape on my behalf. So in desperation, I took a cab to the hospital and paid £50 for a copy of my X-rays in order to go private.

Then the senior manager called my mobile as she had discovered I was a journalist. She apologised, admitted the hospital had let me down, reimbursed me and "to make amends", offered an emergency consultation – with the consultant who knew nothing about backs …

I declined and instead took my X-rays to Colin Natali, a consultant spinal, trauma and orthopaedic surgeon who practices in both Harley Street and within the NHS and who was recommended by a doctor friend. Finally I felt in safe hands; he took moments to assess the X-rays, although by then they were so out-of-date, I needed more.

When I told him my story, he offered me a place on his NHS list at the Royal London Hospital. A week later, I was X-rayed again and told I could remove the back brace.

But the results showed two of the titanium screws in my back had missed the bone and were pressing against a nerve, causing discomfort and pain. Mr Natali recommended I have them removed, although reluctantly, as it was an "excruciating" procedure.

The question hung in the air: did the French surgeon make a mistake? Mr Natali wouldn't be drawn, saying that it was a fiddly operation and that sometimes screws did end up in the wrong place. That sounded like a mistake to me, but I didn't dwell on it as I was already sobbing at the prospect of an operation in the NHS.

I blurted out that I wanted to go back to France, but Mr Natali detailed his impressive track record and assured me that he would personally oversee my care when a date for the surgery was set. Besides, NHS patients only ever get to go abroad to circumvent waiting lists.

He gave me a referral letter for physiotherapy, which I took in person to Homerton hospital, as it was my nearest physio provider. But when I called to make an appointment, they had lost the letter. Needless to say, it was down to me to obtain another.

The French doctors were absolutely adamant that I needed to begin intensive physiotherapy three months after the accident; seven months later, I haven't had any. My first appointment is on April 9.

And so I remain in pain and in limbo. I will have the operation later this year; I trust my surgeon, but placing my faith in the NHS is much proposition. I am scared; of the pain, of the standard of nursing I might receive, of the cleanliness of the ward. In that respect I'm like any other patient; the difference is that in France I saw health care at its best, in Britain I've endured it at its worst.

SOURCE



British High School exam results being 'inflated', says examiner

School exam results are being driven up by “grade inflation”, a leading examiner has admitted. Tim Oates, head of research at Cambridge Assessment, said that exam boards had bowed to political pressure by making questions more accessible for students and giving schools guidance about the way tests were marked.

He suggested that changes to GCSEs and A-levels could be leading to a rise in the number of students gaining the top grades. Last year, some 17 per cent of students scored three A grades at A-level, compared with only seven per cent in the mid-90s.

Mr Oates said publicly admitting the possibility of "subtle drift" in standards sounded like a "Ratner moment" for exam boards - a reference to Gerald Ratner whose infamous gaffe about the quality of his jewellery wiped an estimated £500m from the value of his company.

But he said it would be "profoundly dysfunctional" for examiners not to critically assess the reasons for rising results.

Writing in an article published by Cambridge Assessment, he said: “Giving the benefit of the doubt to pupils… can result in subtle grade inflation.

“Constantly enhancing the ‘accessibility’ of questions, the transparency of mark schemes and the precision of guidance can ease up the numbers gaining the highest grades.

“Changing the content to be more accessible to a wider audience than the previous educational elite can in turn move the content standards away from the precise requirements of elite higher education.”

The comments were made in an article designed to kick start a debate on why the number of top grades rises year-on-year.

Results published last summer showed the number of A-level papers graded A to E increased for the 27th year in a row.

More than a quarter of entries in England, Wales and Northern Ireland was awarded an A grade – double the number 20 years ago.

Critics have claimed that examinations have been “dumbed down” to make them easier to pass.

Mr Oates said exam boards – independent organisations with contracts to run GCSEs and A-levels – were under political pressure to make tests more accessible to students. This included moving to "modular" courses, which are broken up into bite-sized chunks that students can re-take to boost overall grades.

“Increasing access, updating content, switching to modular [tests] – and being as transparent as possible over mark schemes, grade criteria and guidance – have all been fervent pre-occupations of policy makers and the education establishment,” he said. “Awarding bodies have delivered on that agenda.”

SOURCE



British classroom anarchy, killers in school uniform and how a generation is being betrayed

Note for U.S. readers: The writer below uses the old British convention of referring to "public" schools when he means private schools. Government schools are "State" schools

The murder of 15-year-old Sofyen Belamouadden is an especially shocking gang crime because it was carried out in the midst of Victoria station, by [black] boys apparently wearing school blazers.

It is tragically easy to imagine the horrors of life in the sort of classrooms the murderers come from. We have grown accustomed to the existence of feral children - violent, amoral, unteachable and later unemployable - in many parts of Britain.

It is easy to identify their immediate victims, fellow teenagers who are bullied and occasionally killed. But beyond these, a much larger host pays the price: millions of children who want to equip themselves to lead decent lives. Indiscipline and violence are viruses, which infect all those around them. In classrooms up and down the land, they make it impossible for many teachers to teach and their pupils to be educated.

For every young gangster, there are 20 or 30 more children who, amid chronic disruption, are robbed of the opportunity to gain skills which alone can offer them a future beyond stacking supermarket shelves.

The sanction of exclusion exists, and is imposed in extreme cases. But in thousands of schools, in the name of 'social justice' and 'fairness', every teacher is expected to handle their quota of 'difficult' children. They are obliged to conduct classes in which the presence of disruptive boys and girls is taken for granted.

If teachers lose their tempers or fail to handle such pupils, this is deemed a symptom of professional failure. Such an approach is shockingly wrong. The interests of law-abiding, biddable children are daily damaged on a massive scale, to protect the supposed rights of the lawless minority.

Last week, I received a lengthy letter from a secondary school teacher, attesting to this state of affairs. It was anonymous, because identification would mean dismissal. 'Blending is a key feature of the state sector,' he writes. 'Pupils who cannot, and will not, behave appropriately are blended in with the other children. They call it inclusion. 'Teachers are expected to have their fair share of unmanageable louts and those who struggle to cope are labelled as poor teachers.

'This is manifestly unfair, because class teachers have no powers whatsoever to deal with the louts. They can only call for assistance, which is considered to indicate an inability to manage behaviour. You can predict levels of poor behaviour by looking at the academic results of a school.'

The Labour Government has miserably failed to raise state educational standards. It has spent hundreds of millions of pounds to create a massive edifice of supervision and bureaucracy. Far from supporting the teaching process, this sustains a reign of terror among school heads who must meet relentless, meaningless targets.

Worse, the educational establishment is fundamentally resistant to imposed discipline or sanctions against unruly children. It trains young teachers to suppose that anti-social behaviour is self-correcting, a view shared by no sensible parent.

I disliked school, as most of us do, and indeed was a badly behaved child. But I realise how vastly privileged was my private education, and that of my children. Fees bought excellent teaching. Much more important, we learned things because we were constrained within a rigorous framework of discipline. If we erred, we were punished. Serious excess meant expulsion - the sack - which is recognised in every middle-class household as a disgrace.

The real privilege of attending a public school is not to 'learn to talk posh' or even to enjoy lavish facilities. It is to acquire habits of self-discipline without which it is impossible for a human being to achieve anything in life, or even to relate to other people. One is taught that it is impossible to indulge every immediate impulse, and often necessary to do things one does not wish.

Of course some state schools and new academies foster this culture, and each year turn out thousands of well-behaved as well as educated adolescents. But they are a minority.

Many, if not most, are trapped in an endless struggle to avoid succumbing to mob rule. It is a miracle that they manage to teach their pupils anything at all.

I quote again from my teacher correspondent's bitter letter: 'My experiences have shown me that state education is being run by people who do not believe in discipline. They believe that unruly pupils will eventually reform themselves. They refuse to adopt rigorous policies.

'They have moved the definition of what constitutes "good" teaching. A lesson cannot be graded as "good" by Ofsted unless ALL the pupils in the class make good progress. If a single pupil misbehaves or refuses to work, the teacher is penalised.

'None of this makes for good teaching. Teachers become so obsessed with ticking all the boxes on the Ofsted checklist that they forget about the content.'

Most parents understand all this, and know what needs to be done. Only the Labour Party and the education establishment reject the obvious message.

We shall continue to fail in our efforts to match the new generation of, for instance, young Singaporeans until children willing to learn and obey rules are segregated from those who are not.

Call this, if you like, a quarantine process. We take it for granted that people suffering an infectious disease are set apart from the healthy for as long as doctors recommend.

In state schools, there is a sort of madness about the systemic rejection of such precautions. Month after month and year after year, a child or group of children is permitted to wreck the learning process for scores or hundreds of others.

Of course it is true that some of the wreckers deserve compassion - for the misery of their home lives, broken families or deprived circumstances. Those of us who live comfortable existences untouched by squalor, crime or violence know how fortunate we are. But the majority also has its rights.

In education as so much else, the Labour Government has ruthlessly subordinated the vital interests of most of the British people to the supposed welfare of minorities, some of them criminal.

The murder at Victoria station should serve as an alarm call, not merely about teenage violence, but about its consequences for much of our schools population. Until uncontrollable and unteachable children are separated from the rest, state education will continue to fail

It is hard to overstate the importance of what is at stake. Unless our state schools can produce much larger numbers of educated and disciplined pupils than they do today, not only will the individuals suffer, but this country will be unable to compete through the 21st century.

We live in an era dominated by technology and science. Yet science classes have become a privilege available overwhelmingly to fee-paying pupils.

In most state schools, basic skills to make possible such learning are lacking among teachers and pupils. Universities complain that many students waste their first year mastering essay-writing and other core techniques indispensable to fulfil degree courses, and which should be acquired before A-level.

If further evidence was needed of the insane social engineering conducted by those running Britain's education system, it came yesterday from Professor Steve Smith, President of Universities UK. he called for more university places to be given to students from poorer backgrounds, heedless of their inferior A-level grades. This supremely foolish man is demanding a further lowering of standards, in recognition of the ghastly failure of state schools.

The murder at Victoria station should serve as an alarm call, not merely about teenage violence, but about its consequences for much of our schools population. Until uncontrollable and unteachable children are separated from the rest, state education will continue to fail.

Unless teachers have power to command the attention of their classes, they cannot instill the learning for which schools exist.

Feral children merit pity, because their futures are bleak even if they escape likely years caged in cells. But much more sympathy is owed to millions of honest and ambitious teenagers who are today forced to share the cost of the gangsters' animality.

SOURCE



Absurd Canadian safety correctness insults the Queen



A row over a staircase has led to the Queen withdrawing from an appearance at the Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo during her forthcoming visit to Canada.

The tattoo would seem to be an ideal event to be graced by Her Majesty. It was a favourite of the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, who opened the original one in 1979, and gained its royal title in honour of the Queen’s 80th birthday in 2006. However, the Canadians reckon that Her Majesty is too old to manage the stairs. Now the Queen has withdrawn from the military display after an extraordinary row over safety between her representatives in Canada and the organisers of the tattoo.

The Queen, 83, and the Duke of Edinburgh, 88, had been due to attend the tattoo, the world’s largest indoor gathering of its kind, in Halifax in July as part of her official visit. Then someone raised the subject of the stairs and suddenly a simple royal engagement turned into something a lot more contentious.

The offending steps lead up to the 12ft-high stage where, it was suggested, the Queen could have addressed the tattoo. There are 17 of them, rising at an angle of 60 degrees.

Too steep, said the organisers in a report, and too dangerous for the royal couple. Not at all, said the Queen’s people: the Queen and the Duke are perfectly fit.

Indeed, the Queen regularly climbs the 47 steps of the grand staircase at Buckingham Palace. Even to get to the West Terrace from her garden after a stroll with the corgis requires a ten-step ascent. What is more, the Palace said, if she cannot address the tattoo from the platform then she would not be appearing at all.

Although it is only five years since the Queen and Prince Philip visited Canada, the Canadians may have forgotten that Windsor women are made of stern stuff. The Queen Mother was still making public appearances when she turned 100, while the Queen — as a Palace source pointed out — still goes riding regularly.

Perhaps the Canadians still harbour memories of the criticism that they received during the Golden Jubilee tour in 2002 when the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh had to sit out in the biting cold in Winnipeg without so much as a rug to keep them warm.

Although the Canadian Government refused to comment on the issue, saying that it has yet to publish details of the Queen’s visit, Buckingham Palace confirmed that the tattoo — which this year marks the 100th anniversary of the Canadian Navy — is not on her itinerary of events.

“Many different events are initially considered for an overseas visit, but the tattoo is not in the Queen’s programme,” a spokesperson said.

Ian Fraser, the show’s artistic director, produced a report into the matter, which said that climbing the steps would be “very, very dangerous” for the royal couple. One member of staff said that it would be madness for them to attempt it at all.

“The ascent and descent of the stage would be undignified and the potential for disaster is very high,” the report said.

Mr Fraser said that the tattoo wrote to the office of Nova Scotia’s premier, Darrell Dexter, confirming their objections to the Queen using the stairs and suggesting alternatives, including the option of making a speech from the royal box. “We were firmly informed that, ‘No, I’m sorry. The matter is closed and the decision has been taken. She [the Queen] will not be attending the tattoo’,” Mr Fraser said. “The position of the province was that — this is the wish of Buckingham Palace — that she goes up on the stage.”

He added: “If it is a condition [to use the stairs] for her to turn up then we can’t accept it. Do people still get their heads chopped off for defying the Queen?”

SOURCE



Private British weather forecasters reject global warming

The brief below is from "Positive Weather Solutions". PWS has a much better record at forecasting than does the official British Met office, who are keen global warmers

PWS are of the firm belief that global warming is cyclical, and there is no substantial, conclusive evidence, to back up the statement that we are heading towards a 'runaway climate' scenario.

There is significant evidence to suggest the our climate is dominated by cyclical patterns.



The graph depicts analysis of tree ring data taken from 12 locations in the northern hemisphere, and despite challenges to it from some quarters, it remains in the belief of PWS, solid evidence of a cyclical pattern in weather, and furthermore, shows that humans and their related events in history do indeed coincide with variances. Even if the ring data as some suggest actually suggests cooling where there is warming, this too remains a variance, and not an over all definitive trend.

There is also a noticeable blip in the argument for climate change during the period from around 5000 - 3000 BC, known as the 'climatic optimum', where temperatures were even warmer than the allegedly runaway climate temperatures of the future, that we're supposed to be seeing if global warming were true.

Furthermore, the most reliable form of temperature measurement are satellite readings taken from the Earth's lower troposphere, and these show no apparent global warming over the last quarter of a century. Land based temperature readings are distorted, because of human influence, industry etc.

In conclusion, there have been three noticeable trend indicators in history as we understand it. The 'Medieval Climate Anomaly'; 'The Little Ice Age', and 'The Industrial Era', which have all 'affected' the climate. However, nature and the Earth in general has re balanced affairs as it ages, and whereas man has had an influence on the climate, there remains no outright conclusive evidence that within the next hundred year or so, temperatures will continue to climb and even if they do, they will plateau out, and cool down again.

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28 March, 2010

Amazing! British Ambulance service gets £38 for every patient they DON'T take to hospital

The Ambulance service is being paid bonuses for not taking patients to hospital in a bid to help the NHS hit controversial targets. Patients' groups expressed horror at the "sick experiment" in which NHS managers have agreed to pay £38 for every casualty that ambulance staff "keep out of Accident and Emergency" (A&E) departments after a 999 call has been made.

The tactic is part of an attempt to manage increasing demand for emergency care amid failings in the GP out-of-hours system.

Documents seen by The Sunday Telegraph disclose that staff at Britain's largest ambulance service have been encouraged to maximise the organisation's income, by securing payments for diverting patients to telephone helplines.

The bonuses are among dozens of schemes being tried out by ambulance trusts across the country as they attempt to improve their emergency response times and help A&E departments meet controversial targets to treat all patients within four hours of arrival.

Another plan uncovered would see thousands of 999 calls currently classed as urgent downgraded so that callers receive telephone advice instead of an ambulance response.

The changes were due to be introduced across the country this week, but the Government committee governing ambulances has delayed its decision amid safety concerns.

Last week, an investigation was launched at the ambulance trust piloting the scheme following the death on Thursday of a man whose case was referred for telephone advice when an ambulance should have been immediately dispatched.

Katherine Murphy, from the Patients' Association, expressed horror at the potential risks being taken to ensure Government targets are met.

She said: "This is a sick experiment being played out on the public, at a cost to people's lives. These incentives are not just deeply unethical, but clearly dangerous. The patient has been forgotten."

Conservative health spokesman Mike Penning described the bonus payments as a "desperate" attempt to tackle a crisis in the emergency care system, which had been caused by Labour's policies.

He said the combination of rigid targets in A&E departments, and difficulties accessing GPs at weekends and evenings, meant "the system is falling apart".

The Sunday Telegraph has discovered that dozens of Primary Care Trusts in London are now paying the capital's ambulance service a £38 bonus for each patient crews do not send to hospital.

While the maximum amount of money the ambulance service can make from the scheme is "capped," board papers suggest increasing the number of patients diverted from hospital by 20 per cent a year "in order to reach the maximum level of funding available".

In the current financial year, London Ambulance Service has made £850,000 through the scheme.

Earlier this month, ambulance services in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hampshire and Oxfordshire abandoned plans to reward crews with shopping vouchers if they sent patients to a GP, instead of taking them to hospital.

South Central Ambulance Service had offered paramedics raffle tickets to win £200 of store coupons if they used the GP referral scheme, but dropped the plans following fury from crews.

Jonathan Fox, from the Association of Professional Ambulance Personnel said the use of financial inducements for individuals or organisations was too dangerous.

The paramedic said: "Trusts simply shouldn't put finances ahead of the clinical need of the patient; it is too risky and puts too much pressure on staff.

"Time and time again we come across incidents where red flags that a patient's situation is life-threatening are missed.

"Not every patient sent to hospital needs to be there, but paramedics need to take decisions based on what is best for the person they are treating, not the finances of their trust."

London introduced the bonus payments ahead of a pilot scheme to downgrade more than a dozen categories of calls currently classed as urgent and requiring a "blue light ambulance".

Since October, calls – including those involving stab victims and people suffering breathing difficulties – have been downgraded by London Ambulance Service.

More than a dozen types of medical crisis currently designated as urgent, and requiring a blue light ambulance within 19 minutes are instead either passed to telephone advisers or phoned back within 15 minutes of dialling 999.

The changes had been due to be introduced nationally, from this week.

However, concerns about the safety of the scheme have caused a delay, with a decision by a Government advisory committee now put back until next month.

On Thursday, there were furious clashes at the headquarters of London's ambulance service when it emerged that a 999 call about a dying man had been passed to the telephone helpline.

By the time advisers realised that the symptoms suffered by David Fisher, 76, from East London, were life-threatening, and sent an ambulance, the retired teacher could not be saved.

His partner Antony Croot dialled 999 just before 1am on Thursday, after Mr Fisher, who had a history of heart problems, collapsed at home.

When the call handler categorising the call chose between two responses, both of which had previously generated an urgent ambulance response, the screen did not warn them that one selection had been downgraded.

In selecting an option relating to Mr Fisher's struggle to breathe, rather than his history of heart problems, the call was diverted to telephone advisers.

By the time they realised that the elderly man's symptoms were life threatening, and despatched paramedics, who attempted to save his life, nothing could be done.

His bereaved partner said he could not fault the paramedics, and only hoped the delay sending the crew would not have affected Mr Fisher's treatment.

"It is just too awful to think it would have made a difference," said Mr Croot.

Abnormal breathing can indicate a host of high risk conditions, including heart problems, as it did in the case of Mr Fisher.

Other controversial categories downgraded under the pilot scheme include a puncture wound to a peripheral artery, which could result from a stabbing.

A report by the ambulance trust on the pilot scheme, which was written last July says: "Inevitably utilising telephone triage and advice rather than the dispatch of an ambulance may involve an increased risk".

The paper concludes that the level of danger is acceptable, but says the scheme should be supported by a "communication strategy" to make staff and public aware of the new response to emergency calls, and "remove the potential for disappointment".

But last night the ambulance trust refused to disclose details of the 13 categories downgraded.

A spokesman said that following concerns expressed regarding the management of Thursday's incident, technical changes had been made so that handlers were warned if any decisions involved categories which were part of the trial.

He said the trust's financial incentives were "part of a strategy to help manage overall demand in a clinically more appropriate manner".

The disclosures follow calls for an inquiry into the way ambulance services are run, following this newspaper's investigation earlier this month into risks in the operation of 999 software, which may have caused hundreds of deaths.

The problems were exposed by the death of Bonnie Mason, a nurse from Suffolk, whose response was delayed by failures in the handling of the automated system.

Last year a Sunday Telegraph investigation found that thousands of 999 patients were being left to wait in ambulances in car parks and holding bays, or in hospital corridors – in some cases for more than five hours, before they could even join the queue for hospital treatment.

Experts warned that hospitals were delaying patients in ambulances in order to help them meet the four hour A&E target.

SOURCE



Hospital wards to shut in secret NHS cuts

Tens of thousands of NHS workers would be sacked, hospital units closed and patients denied treatments under secret plans for £20 billion of health cuts.

The sick would be urged to stay at home and email doctors rather than visit surgeries, while procedures such as hip replacements could be scrapped.

The plans have emerged as health chiefs draw up emergency budgets that cast doubt on pledges by Gordon Brown to protect “front line services” in the NHS.

Documents show that health chiefs are considering plans to begin sacking workers, cutting treatments and shutting wards across the country.

The proposals could lead to:

* 10 per cent of NHS staff being sacked in some areas.

* The loss of thousands of hospital beds.

* A reduction in the number of ambulance call-outs.

* Medical professionals being replaced by less qualified assistants.

The plans are contained in a series of internal NHS documents uncovered by The Daily Telegraph.

The final details of the plans are not due to be announced until the autumn, well after the country has gone to the polls for the general election.

The Conservatives and health campaigners said the public deserved to know the true extent of cuts at their local surgeries and hospitals before voting.

Last year all English health authorities were ordered by Sir David Nicholson, the NHS chief executive, to reconsider their plans after the recession forced the Government to freeze health spending from April next year.

This left a ''black hole’’ of up to £20 billion in health budgets up to 2014, prompting the drawing up of new proposals by the 10 strategic health authorities (SHAs).

They had until Friday to submit their plans to Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary. He is under pressure from the Treasury to show how money will be saved to help bring down Britain’s record £167 billion deficit.

In Wednesday’s Budget, Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, repeated that the £20 billion would come through “efficiency savings” and not key services.

Documents produced by several of the SHAs show how the cuts are, in fact, expected to fall on hospital services.

In the South East Coast region, which covers Surrey, Kent and Sussex, up to £1.6 billion must be saved.

A document marked “restricted” and circulated among SHA board members suggests 10,000 of the region’s 100,000 NHS workers may lose their jobs. “The new financial environment demands that the trend in workforce growth must be reversed,” it said, adding bosses must reduce employee numbers by 10 per cent “or further”.

The document said staffing in the acute sector, covering hospitals, “can be expected to decline faster and further” than elsewhere.

Job losses will be “starting in the coming year”, it states. Mr Brown has repeatedly promised Labour will not start making significant cuts to public spending until 2011. A spokesman for the South East Coast SHA said the document was a discussion paper and not a final plan.

In London, which faces £5 billion in cuts, documents show managers believe up to £2 billion can be saved from community care budgets, which cover GPs’ surgeries. This would include “changing how patients get in contact with and receive services, such as through greater use of the internet and email”.

An internal presentation by NHS Yorkshire and the Humber, which spans Sheffield, York, Hull and north Lincolnshire, made similar suggestions. The SHA, which is expected to make about £2 billion in cuts, proposed directing more patients to “teleservices such as NHS Direct”. Meanwhile, £450 million could be saved in London by banning clinical procedures “that have little or no benefit to those receiving them, for example some joint replacements”.

NHS North West, which oversees Greater Manchester and Liverpool, is expected to make about £2 billion savings. It is preparing to close an A&E unit in Rochdale during evenings before scrapping it altogether next year.

In the East region, covering Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, up to £2 billion is to be cut. The SHA proposes shifting services out of hospitals and making social workers take over some treatments. It is estimated that savings of about £2.4 billion will need to be made by NHS West Midlands, £2 billion in the South West, £1.3 billion in South Central, £1 billion in the North East and £800 million in the East Midlands.

A Department of Health spokesman said: “We will be clear with trusts that they must not make short-term cuts that harm patient care.”

SOURCE



Family wins six-figure NHS payout after doctors failed to spot mother's cancer

The family of a young mother who died after doctors failed to diagnose her cancer has secured a six-figure payout from the NHS. Lavinia Bletchly, a 23-year-old mother of two, was sent home from hospital three times while suffering aggressive cancer. It is understood the family will receive about £350,000 compensation.

On one occasion, a senior consultant told her that her illness was “all in her head” and that she should make way for urgent cases, relatives said.

By the time doctors identified the malignant tumour in her bowel, it had spread to her stomach and was so extensive that chemotherapy could not save her.

The textile design student, from Bridgend, south Wales, died on March 24, 2005 from peritonitis and malignant non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

A High Court judge on Friday approved an out-of-court settlement with Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Health Board, part of which will compensate her daughters Shaila, nine, and Chloe, six.

Miss Bletchly fell ill in May 2004 a few months after Chloe's birth. Examinations during the next eight months ruled out gynaecological problems, but she continued to complain of pain in her abdomen and pelvis.

In February 2005 an ultrasound revealed a cyst and an operation found fluid above the liver. Over the next three weeks she was admitted three times to the Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend but sent home on each occasion.

In March 2005 a scan and further surgery found an extensive malignant tumour had encased her bowel and spread to her stomach. She died after a ruptured bowel caused peritonitis, leading to multi-organ failure.

Sitting in Cardiff, Judge Anthony Seys Llewellyn QC said he was satisfied the sum awarded was "appropriate and sensible". "This settlement gives certainty of very substantial damages for the dependants of Lavinia," the judge said.

Speaking outside court, Miss Bletchly's father, Arthur, 57, fought back tears as he described how his daughter's cancer went undiagnosed. "She was in that hospital for most of the month but was discharged three times," he said.

"At one point one of the senior consultants said to her 'This is all in your head. I need you to get out of this hospital to make way for more urgent cases', which was a terrible thing to say to a young woman with two kids who, four weeks further on, was going to die."

He called for the health board to consider taking disciplinary action and said he would refer the case to the General Medical Council.

In a statement, the health board said: "ABM University Health Board again offers its sincere condolences to the family of Lavinia Bletchly, following her sad death in 2005. "Incidents of this kind are taken very seriously and a full inquiry was carried out by the former Bro Morgannwg NHS Trust at the time, which included investigations by several independent clinical experts."

It added: "This was a very complex case, involving many different clinical specialities and processes. "We were assured by the reports from the independent clinical experts, which produced no evidence of any 'gross failings' on the part of hospital staff. "We are always anxious to learn lessons from incidents like these to ensure everything can be done to reduce the risk of them reoccurring."

It said the claim was settled out of court to avoid prolonged legal proceedings which could result in substantial costs.

SOURCE



How the NHS covers up fatal blunders

CLARE BOWEN will never know exactly how her five-year-old daughter Bethany died in an NHS hospital operating theatre. All she has gleaned is that her child bled to death after a trainee surgeon used an experimental rotary cutter, inserted with a keyhole technique, during a routine procedure to remove her spleen. Several cuts were found in her main artery, stomach and digestive system, but records that should have explained what went wrong have mysteriously disappeared.

Bethany’s case is not an isolated one. Hospitals are covering up fatal blunders by doctors and issuing misleading information about accidents to patients’ families. Deaths are sometimes blamed on natural causes or untreatable injury, when in fact patients have suffered a drug overdose, a surgical error or misdiagnosis.

New laws come into force this week requiring hospitals to send anonymous reports of mistakes to a central database. Failure to comply will lead to prosecution. However, the new reporting system by the Care Quality Commission, the health watchdog, has angered patients’ groups because it does not require doctors to share the information with victims or bereaved relatives.

Medical negligence lawyers say they have dealt with cases in which hospitals have tried to cover up errors by changing or destroying records. “We see many instances of alterations of handwritten medical records, seemingly in an attempt to mislead,” said Clair Hemming, a solicitor from Exeter. “You get additional wording squeezed in and no proper explanations offered.”

Although many millions of successful procedures are carried out annually, Department of Health statistics indicate that about 500,000 patients a year are accidentally harmed in NHS hospitals. Only 30,000 of these incidents lead to complaints and only 6,000 to litigation.

“The NHS Litigation Authority says it faces liabilities of £10 billion based on reports it receives from hospitals of accidents where people would have the right to compensation,” said Peter Walsh, chief executive of the charity Action for Victims of Medical Accidents. “Yet only £870m, including costs, was paid out last year, suggesting very large numbers of patients must have no idea they are entitled to compensation.”

Bowen, 34, of Cricklade, Wiltshire, has been asked to speak at a forthcoming conference by the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA). She will talk about the failure of hospitals to come clean when tragedies occur.

Her daughter had been due to undergo a serious, but routine, operation to remove her spleen because of an inherited blood disorder. The same procedure had been done successfully on her brother, who had a similar condition.

“You are in so much pain and despair after the death of a child that you don’t have the strength to fight a hospital, but that’s what we had to do,” Bowen said. “A year after Beth died we were still having meetings with the hospital and they kept changing their story.”

Bowen believes the strain led to her husband, Richard, 31, a design engineer, having a fatal heart attack, leaving her to raise her children, Will, 6, and James, 4, on her own.

Managers at the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford, where Bethany died almost four years ago, have acknowledged the error that killed her and paid £10,000 compensation. The hospital is now taking up Bowen’s suggestion to train doctors to communicate better with patients.

Next month Great Western hospital in Swindon is expected to face a £20,000 fine after claiming that Mayra Cabrera, 30, had died from natural causes an hour after giving birth. In fact her heart stopped because she was injected with bupivacaine, an anaesthetic infusion that was mistaken for saline solution. Her husband, Arnel, discovered the truth 14 months later. Last week the hospital insisted the death had not been covered up because the police and coroner were informed within 24 hours, although it conceded the husband knew nothing of the police inquiry.

Bupivacaine continues to be involved in hundreds of medical accidents. Between June 2006 and the end of February 2010, 453 anonymous cases were reported under the voluntary NPSA system; 22 of those cases caused “permanent harm”.

There is opposition, however, to making doctors legally obliged to own up to mistakes. “They would fear being targeted with disproportionate blame and anger,” said Stephanie Bown, policy director at the Medical Protection Society. “We want a culture of openness, but that sort of law would just drive mistakes further underground.”

A Department of Health spokesman said: “The parliamentary health select committee has called for a debate on the issue of a statutory duty of candour for doctors. We are setting up meetings to discuss these issues further.”

SOURCE



Activists jet 12,000 miles - to climate change meeting

Climate change activists opposed to air travel are travelling to a conference in South America...by plane.

Campaigners from Climate Camp -- who helped blockade Heathrow at the height of the summer holidays in 2007 -- face claims of hypocrisy having decided to send two members to an international meeting in Bolivia to discuss ‘transnational protests’ against climate change.

The 12,000-mile round trip to the Climate Change and Mother Earth’s Rights conference next month involves changing planes at least twice.

The flights will generate about eight tons of carbon dioxide greenhouse gases.

The money for their tickets -- at least £1,200 for an economy fare -- is being paid for by donations to Climate Camp from people opposed to flying and airport expansion.

One of the campaigners making the trip is Agnes Szafranowska. Ms Szafranowska, a Canadian who now lives in London, organises Climate Camp workshops and was involved in the Great Climate Swoop on Ratcliffe power station in Nottingham last October.

Police arrested ten people before the protest began on suspicion of conspiracy to cause criminal damage.

Some 1,000 people took part, and security fencing around the plant was pulled down. Police made 56 arrests and a number of people were injured, including one policeman who had to be airlifted to hospital.

Ms Szafranowska failed to answer questions sent to her by email, other than to say that Climate Camp were preparing a statement. The group’s Press officer did not return calls.

SOURCE



Laughable British border controls

A one-man crimewave from Algeria who has twice been deported from Britain is facing jail after being arrested near one of his favourite hunting grounds. To the Home Office's huge embarrassment, prolific bag snatcher Hakim Benmakhlouf was detained by police at Heathrow Airport after slipping back into the country.

The father- of-two, who has a string of convictions for stealing from rich tourists at five- star hotels and airports, was confronted by officers after being spotted on CCTV.

The UK Border Agency is to launch an inquiry into how Benmakhlouf, who has 12 aliases, was able to make a mockery of Britain's border controls yet again. The 28-year-old, was first thrown out in July 2007 when, while serving a three-and-a-half year prison sentence for theft, he was given £3,000 by the Government to be released early and fly home to his native Algeria.

But 24 hours later he returned to London on Eurostar to continue his extraordinary crime wave.

Benmakhlouf was re-arrested in April 2008 and jailed for three years the following month after admitting two thefts and asking for five similar offences to be taken into consideration. But he was released last March after serving just a third of his sentence and flown home again at taxpayers' expense. And he is thought to have returned to London a few days later.

Detectives are furious at how Benmakhlouf, regarded as one of London's most prolific bag snatchers, has made a laughing stock of the UK Border Agency. One said: 'What's the point of deporting someone if he can come back effortlessly just a few days later? For him, deportation orders are like a revolving door.'

Benmakhlouf was cornered in a car park at Heathrow Airport last Saturday. At Uxbridge Magistrates Court on Monday he admitted assault on police, breach of a deportation order and breach of an Anti-Social Behaviour Order. He will be sentenced on April 23.

The life and crimes of Benmakhlouf were laid bare at his May 2008 sentencing. Prosecutor Helen Thomas told Southwark Crown Court in London that Benmakhloufwas a 'prolific thief '. 'The defendant targets high class hotels or airports,' she added.

A UK Border Agency spokesperson said: 'We will look to remove this individual as soon as the judicial process is concluded. Those who come to the UK and break the rules will not be tolerated.'

SOURCE



Senior bishops call for end to persecution of Christians in Britain

Christians in Britain are being persecuted and "treated with disrespect", senior bishops have said. Six prominent bishops and Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, describe the "discrimination" against churchgoers as "unacceptable in a civilised society".

In a thinly-veiled attack on Labour, they claim that traditional beliefs on issues such as marriage are no longer being upheld and call on the major parties to address the issue in the run-up to the general election.

In a letter to The Sunday Telegraph, the bishops express their deep disquiet at the double standards of public sector employers, claiming that Christians are punished while followers of other faiths are treated far more sensitively.

Their intervention follows a series of cases in which Christians have been dismissed after seeking to express their faith. They highlight the plight of Shirley Chaplin, a nurse who was banned from working on hospital wards for wearing a cross around her neck. This week she will begin a legal battle against the decision.

Christians are also increasingly concerned that the Government is ignoring their views on issues such as sex education and homosexuality when introducing new legislation.

A group of 640 head teachers, school governors and faith leaders have signed a separate letter to this newspaper warning that compulsory sex education in primary schools will erode moral standards and encourage sexual experimentation.

They call for the dropping of legislation that will see children as young as seven taught about sex and relationships.

In their letter, the bishops urge the Government to stop the persecution of Christians.

"We are deeply concerned at the apparent discrimination shown against Christians and we call on the Government to remedy this serious development.

"In a number of cases, Christian beliefs on marriage, conscience and worship are simply not being upheld.

"There have been numerous dismissals of practising Christians from employment for reasons that are unacceptable in a civilised country."

In addition to Lord Carey, the letter has been signed by the Rt Rev Michael Scott-Joynt, the Bishop of Winchester; the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester; the Rt Rev Peter Forster, the Bishop of Chester; the Rt Rev Anthony Priddis, the Bishop of Hereford; the Rt Rev Nicholas Reade, the Bishop of Blackburn; and the Rt Rev Jonathan Gledhill, the Bishop of Lichfield.

Mrs Chaplin will take the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Trust to an employment tribunal this week after she was told last year that she must hide or remove a small cross on her necklace if she wanted to continue working on hospital wards.

While the trust refused to grant her an exemption, it makes concessions for other faiths, including allowing Muslim nurses to wear headscarves on duty.

Mrs Chaplin, 54, has spent all of her career at the Exeter hospital and had never been challenged before over the necklace, which she has worn since her confirmation 38 years ago.

The bishops criticised the way in which Mrs Chaplin had been treated and stated that she should not be prevented from expressing her faith by wearing her cross.

"This is yet another case in which the religious rights of the Christian community are being treated with disrespect," they say.

"To be asked by an employer to remove or 'hide' the cross is asking the Christian to hide their faith.”

The bishops said that it was “deeply disturbing” that the NHS trust’s uniform policy permits exemptions for religious clothing, but appears to regard the cross as “just an item of jewellery”.

They also expressed surprise that the court has asked for evidence to be submitted to verify that Christians wear crosses visibly around their neck.

Mrs Chaplin is being represented by leading human right’s barrister Paul Diamond, who also advised Caroline Petrie, the nurse who was suspended for offering to pray for a patient. She was later reinstated.

Andrea Minichiello Williams, founder and director of the Christian Legal Centre, described the treatment of Mrs Chaplin as “scandalous”.

“This is yet another case of double standards for Christians,” she said.

“It would seem the Exeter Hospital would rather use its money to deny Christians their rights than using its scarce financial resources to treat patients.

“It is ridiculous that in our country with such a great Christian heritage the court requires evidence to prove that the cross is a Christian symbol whilst not applying the same standards to other faiths."

Lynn Lane, the human resources director for the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Trust, said: "The trust has fully acknowledged that this has become an important issue for Mrs Chaplin which is why we offered her a number of different options in the hope that a mutually acceptable solution could be agreed.

"For the trust this has always been about compliance with our agreed uniform policy and the safety of staff and patients."

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, the human rights group, said: "Whether personal faith motivates the wearing of a cross, turban, head scarf or Star of David, it is fundamentally illiberal to require people to check such an important part of themselves at the workplace door for no justifiable reason."

" Freedom of thought, conscience and religion should protect people of all faiths and none. "We look forward to the Supreme Court demonstrating this by overturning the Court of Appeal in Nadia Eweida's case against BA."

SOURCE





27 March, 2010

Racial violence in Britain

It looks like black on Muslim violence. The attackers are described below as black and it has been mentioned elsewhere that the victim was of North African ancestry. That multiculturalism sure is great!

Several schoolgirls are to be questioned over the horrific mob stabbing of a 15-year-old boy at a major railway station in the middle of the rush hour.

The girls were spotted by witnesses as part of a gang, many in school uniform, who chased their victim into a ticket hall before cornering and killing him as terrified commuters looked on.

He was named last night as London-born Sofyen Ghailan, a pupil at the Henry Compton School in Fulham.

Twenty boys aged 14 to 17 were being held over the stabbing at Victoria Tube station in central London. They were questioned at several police stations across the capital. But the fact that schoolgirls were on the fringes of the murder gang has shocked police, who will now investigate what led up to the attack at 5.20pm on Thursday.

A major line of inquiry is that the victim was targeted during a planned fight between rival gangs of pupils from west and south London. The feuding gangs are said to have fought each other in the days leading up to the murder.

The killers are thought to be from a number of schools in South London. Sources said they arrived at Victoria by bus and initially attacked Sofyen outside the station. Then, with girls following closely, they pursued him down the steps into the station before delivering the fatal blows in the booking hall for the District and Circle lines. The boy suffered at least four serious stab wounds to his upper body.

Last night a witness described how he saw a schoolboy thug brandishing a 10in screwdriver leading at least 15 black youths into Victoria. The 25-year-old music producer said: 'They were all aged 15 to 17 and they were all male. I heard somebody shout something and they all started running towards me.

'Suddenly there was this big lad standing in front of me with a massive screwdriver in his hand. At first I thought it was a knife. 'The boy was about 16 and he was wearing a black hoodie and black school trousers. I jumped out of the way pretty quickly and they all ran past me into the station.

'Then I saw a massive scuffle with lots of kids. It looked as if they were all trying to get at something on the floor but there were too many of them for me to see properly. I now know it was this poor person who had been murdered.....

More HERE



Expensive campaign against oppressive British libel law

The story of how Simon Singh came to be a champion of libel reform, a figurehead for a growing consensus of human rights groups, journalists and politicians, began two years ago, with a libel writ from the British Chiropractic Association. Mr Singh, whose books include Fermat’s Last Theorem and Trick or Treatment: Alternative Medicine on Trial, wrote a piece in The Guardian to mark Chiropractic Awareness Week. He wrote that chiropractic does not cure colic, asthma and persistent crying and the BCA “happily promotes bogus treatments”.

The BCA writ arrived shortly afterwards and — unexpectedly — it was against him personally, rather than The Guardian. “Normally people go for the deepest pockets,” he said. “But they went for me instead — I can’t speculate why, but others have.” Others, less coy, say it is an attempt to ruin a prominent critic of alternative medicine.

The crux of a preliminary hearing, a year ago, was not whether chiropractic works. The hearing, which he had to fight with his own money, hinged instead on whether the word “bogus” implies dishonesty or just ignorance. The BCA believed the former. Mr Singh said he meant the latter. Mr Singh lost, but is now awaiting the imminent results of an appeal.

However, Jack Straw, the Justice Minster, is not interested in the case because of chiropractic. That is not why he this week pledged a law change if Labour wins the election. Nor why Henry Bellingham, his Tory shadow, on Tuesday promised to match Labour’s measures. They are interested because of a growing belief that Britain’s libel laws are muzzling free speech, and — in an age of libel tourism — are a national embarrassment.

We met outside Mr Singh’s Richmond house. The nearby green is flanked by million-pound houses and a former royal palace, and this affluence is the only reason we are talking at all.

“I have had three worldwide bestsellers. If I lose I can take this hit — it will be painful, but I won’t be destitute,” he said.He estimates the BCA’s costs, which he would have to pay if he lost, now exceed £250,000.

“I’m lucky, it won’t destroy my life. But for two years I have done nothing else. If I’m writing a book it dominates my life, and this is the same. You lie awake at night thinking about it.”

The cost of a libel case in England and Wales is 100 times the European average — often more than £1 million. “Even if I win,” Mr Singh said, “I will not get all my costs. There are dozens of libel writs sent every year where people who are absolutely right have to back down because they can’t afford the cost of losing. Or winning.”

This is why, campaigners claim, Britain is the world’s libel capital. Here a Saudi sheikh sued the American author of a book on terrorism funding — which sold only 23 copies in the UK. Peter Wilmshurst, an eminent cardiologist, is being sued here after saying a US heart device did not work.

Mr Wilmshurst is in touch with Mr Singh and, unlike him, faces bankruptcy if he loses. The case, Mr Singh claims, highlights the absurdity of our system. “It concerns an interview he gave in America to a Canadian journalist for an American online magazine at an American conference about an American company. But he is sued in London.”

Libel compaigners want a simpler, quicker and cheaper system. They want libel tribunals — rather like employment tribunals — to speed up the process. They want costs to be capped. They wantcorporations to be unable to sue individuals. And, vitally for Mr Singh, they want a public interest defence. “If I’m writing about a matter of children’s health, or a new heart device, that's a matter of public interest. The libel law should offer you some level of protection, instead of just tripping you up.”

Even if he gets the best possible result on appeal — a verdict is expected any day — the case is not over. Has it been worth it?

“If I lost this case, but the libel laws changed – so we had the same level of fairness and cost they have in the rest of the world – I could live with being the sacrificial lamb.” Mr Singh said. “Ideally though, I win my case, we get libel reform.” He stops, considering the long summer ahead. “And England win the World Cup.”

World capital of hurt feelings

• In 2008 John Mardas, a Greek entrepreneur, won the right to sue The New York Times and International Herald Tribune in an English court for describing him as a “charlatan”. Fewer than 200 hard copies of the article were published in the UK, where the article garnered four hits online.

• Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz, the Saudi billionaire, won an out-of-court settlement in 2005 after bringing a lawsuit against the American writer Rachel Ehrenfeld over her book on terrorism, Funding Evil. The book sold only 23 copies in this country.

• Also in 2005, Roman Polanski won £50,000 damages from Vanity Fair magazine for saying that the film director had tried to seduce a woman on the way to his murdered wife’s funeral. High Court judges sitting in London heard Polanski testify from Paris against the US-based publication.

• In 2003, Mohammed Jameel, a Saudi billionaire, won a libel action against The Wall Street Journal Europe for suggesting that Saudi Arabian authorities were monitoring bank accounts of prominent citizens for evidence of supporting terrorism. The Journal won a three-year battle to get the judgment overturned.

SOURCE



Unteachable pupils sent back to terrified British school staff despite assaults and sex attacks

Unteachable children are described in a dossier as a teaching union accused governors of not protecting staff. It is a shocking document which lays bare the realities of teaching in increasingly unruly schools.

One teacher reports the case of a 14-year-old boy who attacked her and sexually assaulted a female classroom assistant.

Another boy, this time aged only five, threatened to stab a member of staff with a pair of scissors and threw chairs in his reception class.

Most disturbingly, the culprits have all been returned to the classroom against the wishes of teachers - often after initially being excluded or expelled.

Nine 'unteachable' children are described in a dossier produced by the NASUWT union. Five were expelled by head teachers only to be reinstated by governing bodies. The union accuses governors of being more concerned with placating parents of troublemakers than protecting staff.

In the other four cases, head teachers themselves failed to take firm action, leaving classroom teachers in what they describe as an impossible position.

Chris Keates, NASUWT general secretary, said the dossier highlighted a 'deeply worrying' assault on teachers' authority. 'Governors seem to be taking the line of least resistance to placate the minority of parents rather than to protect the majority of pupils and their staff,' she said. 'If governors do not back head teachers' professional judgment in these matters then staff and school leaders cannot manage behaviour with confidence.

'Equally concerning is that, in the other cases, which were all serious incidents, the school took either no action or made the very weak response of temporary exclusion.'

One case of indiscipline even saw parents of fellow pupils removing their children out of fears they would be injured.

In all cases, the NASUWT union held a ballot for industrial action - refusing to teach the child involved - to force schools to protect staff from the troublemakers.

In most instances, the boycotting tactic resulted in the pupil being moved to a different school. In one, the youngster was moved to a specialist centre until they took their GCSEs.

The union said it dealt with an average of one case of a poor response to serious indiscipline a week but many were resolved without threats of industrial action.

Mrs Keates said the attacks, all in 2009, highlighted a growing trend for school decisions to go against teachers' interests.

Heads and governors are failing to use new legal powers to discipline children, she warned. Schools previously complained about independent appeals. 'Governing bodies have now overtaken independent appeals panels in the perversity of their judgments in relation to reinstating disruptive pupils,' Mrs Keates said.

'A very common feature reported to us by teachers is that when they raise behaviour problems in school they don't feel they are supported in maintaining discipline. 'They often cite that either they are held to blame for the poor behaviour by pupils or there is more concern for protecting the reputation of the school or placating parents.'

SOURCE



The calorie conqueror: Herbal pill 'can cut your appetite by a fifth ... and even cure a sweet tooth'

Here we go again: A quick and dirty study with no long term follow-up and no mention of side effects from the strong stimulants used. Some of the women taking it were probably too shaky to eat!

It could be the answer to your weight loss prayers - and there is no punishing exercise regime required. Women can cut their daily calorie intake by almost a fifth if they simply take a herbal diet pill, research reveals today.

The supplement has also been shown to help those with a sweet tooth - reducing the temptation to indulge in sugary snacks.

Zotrim, which is based on three South American plants and is freely available from supermarkets and chemists, was tested by scientists at the University of Liverpool.

They found that women who took the pill with their breakfast had a much lower appetite at lunch time - cutting their calorie intake by 17.6 per cent. Of 58 volunteers who were given either Zotrim or a dummy pill in the morning, those on the herbal supplement only picked at their afternoon meal.

The subjects, some of whom were overweight, were observed at a test lunch buffet where they were told to eat as much they wanted. Those on Zotrim ate on average 132 fewer calories - the equivalent of a Milky Way or can of cola.

If the effects were replicated throughout the day, the pill would cut a dieter's daily count by 400 or 500 calories, equivalent to two bars of chocolate or a kebab.

Zotrim is designed to make the user feel fuller for longer. But it also appears to take the edge off a sweet tooth, cutting the women's selection of biscuits and chocolate mousse from the buffet by 27 per cent.

The women taking the herbal pill finished eating around three minutes earlier than the others - indicating they did feel full sooner, the British Feeding and Drinking Group conference will hear today.

Researcher Dr Jason Halford, an obesity expert, said the findings suggest that Zotrim has a 'robust' effect on a dieter's appetite, which could help them lose weight.

The pill, which costs £22.99 for a month's supply, contains caffeine and other ingredients from herbs Guarana, Yerba Mate and Damiana.

The cocktail delays the rate at which the stomach empties by about 20 minutes. The process is not dangerous because it merely extends the length of time taken to digest the food.

However, it makes it difficult for dieters to overeat because they feel uncomfortably full sooner. It is hoped this will make them change their eating habits, stopping them from piling the pounds back on when they stop taking the supplement.

Previous research has shown that Zotrim can help overweight women lose an average of two inches from their waists in just four weeks. Some of those taking part shed five inches from their middles.

Another study credited the pills with helping women lose an average of 11lb in six weeks - those taking a dummy drug lost less than 1lb.

But not all studies of Zotrim have had such good results. A report by consumer watchdog Which? concluded that although there was evidence of significant weight loss in the short-term, the results of long-term follow-up studies have been 'disappointing'.

Zotrim inventor Dr Lasse Hessel said the pill 'helps people cheat on their own stomach'.

Source





26 March, 2010

Turning immigration into a tool of social engineering

The British elite is Leftist and, like all Leftists, despises the society in which it lives. It has been using barely-controlled immigration as a way of destroying that society and asserting its own moral superiority

In recent decades, various UK governments at various different times allowed a certain number of migrants to enter Britain for economic reasons, in order to compensate for a lack of labour or to boost a flagging industry. Under the New Labour government of the past 13 years, something rather different, new and dangerous occurred: migrants were allowed into Britain for political reasons, to achieve social objectives rather than economic ones.

Under New Labour, the number of migrants entering Britain rose exponentially. ... Amongst the elite, taking a ‘pro-immigration’ stance has become a way of espousing its supposedly superior values of cosmopolitanism, liberalism, official tolerance and official anti-racism, and of disciplining and policing those who do not possess such values. Such cynical politicisation of immigration has potentially increased community tensions, further racialised everyday life, and contributed enormously to the contemporary distrust of mainstream politics.

Social objectives

In recent months there have been many interesting revelations about New Labour’s immigration policy, but in keeping with our era of dumbed-down political debate the revelations have either been downplayed or have been used to fuel conspiracy theories.

At the end of last year, a former government adviser revealed that ministers frequently discussed ‘open[ing] up the UK to mass migration’. But their aims were as much political and social as they were economic. Indeed there was a ‘driving political purpose’: ministers’ belief that bringing in more immigrants would make manifest their ideal of a ‘truly multicultural society’ and allow them to ‘rub the right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date’ (4). Here, we can see how ‘diversity’ is looked upon by New Labour as more than a fluffy value – it is also considered an explicitly political tool that might be used to boost Labour’s fortunes and denigrate its critics.

At the start of this year, government documents released under a Freedom of Information claim confirmed what the government adviser said. In one, written in 2000, officials discussed their desire to ‘maximise the contribution’ of migrants to achieving the government’s ‘social objectives’. The document makes clear that New Labour, unlike previous governments, is keen to exploit the ‘social benefits’ of increased immigration. It argues that it is ‘clearly correct that the government has both economic and social objectives for migration policy’, and lists the ‘social impacts’ of immigration as including ‘a widening of consumer choice and significant cultural contributions’. ‘Migration policy has both social and economic impacts and should be designed to contribute to the government’s overall objectives on both counts’, the document proposed, describing this as ‘a considerable advance on the previously existing situation [where immigrants were allowed in primarily for economic reasons]’ (5).

Unfortunately, these interesting revelations have not generated any interesting or serious debate about New Labour and immigration. Liberal commentators have brushed them aside as unimportant. Right-wing commentators talk about a vast conspiracy by the New Labour government to remake Britain in its own image. Incapable of political nuance, New Labour’s critics have railed against what one commentator describes as ‘The secret plot to destroy Britain’s identity’ (8). Others have accused Labour of ‘using immigration to turn Britain into a nation of Labour voters’ (immigrants are more likely to vote Labour than Tory), where Labour has ‘deliberately tried to re-engineer Britain for its own political advantage’ (9).

The idea that the government’s attraction to the ‘social benefits’ of immigration was driven by a simplistic desire to magic up readymade Labour voters both overestimates the elite’s internal coherence and underestimates the profound moral and political crises that have combined to reshape the immigration issue over the past decade. There has been no plot or conspiracy by the political elite – rather it is drawn instinctively to immigration because it is an issue that allows it to distance itself from Britain’s past and to redefine itself as cosmopolitan and constantly changing. And this is not about simply winning votes – rather the reshaping of immigration has been driven by an historic and profound crisis of values amongst an elite which now sees more virtue in what newcomers can bring to Britain than in what its own predecessor elites created and achieved.

Disavowing the past

Those who claim that New Labour relaxed immigration controls in order to remake Britain in its own image are missing the main point: that New Labour’s instinctive attraction to immigration is a product precisely of its lack of real values, of its cultural and political disorientation and uncertainty about what to make Britain into. What the elite likes most about the immigrant is the idea that his arrival and his presence constantly remakes Britain, so that the absence of core British political and moral values can be glossed over with the positive-sounding notion that ours is a nation of forever-changing values, reflecting, in the words of one government minister, ‘the influences of the many different communities who have made their home here’ (10). Indeed, there has been an important shift over the past 30 years from emphasising the assimilation of immigrants into the values of British society to celebrating British society’s assimilation of the immigrants’ values.

For the contemporary elite, taking a ‘pro-immigration’ stance is a way of creating a distance between itself and ‘Old Britain’, a way of disavowing elements of the past, whether it is imperial values, outdated ideas of ‘Great’ Britain, the old-style education system, or aspects of British culture. As the former government adviser said at the end of last year, one of the reasons ministers wanted to increase immigration was to ‘render [the old right’s] arguments out of date’ (11). In a speech and report published in 2001, New Labour argued that there was little fixed about ‘British identity’ and that the ‘changing ethnic composition of the British people themselves [through immigration]’ can only ‘strengthen and renew British identity’ (12). Behind the PC-sounding language, it is a profound discomfort with the ‘identity’ of Old Britain – fixed, homogenous, nationalistic – which leads the elite to celebrate the impact of immigration on British identity today.

In April 2001, Robin Cook, then New Labour foreign secretary, gave a key speech on immigration to the Social Market Foundation. The speech is best remembered for Cook’s line describing chicken tikka masala as ‘a true British national dish’, yet the rest of it was extremely revealing. Cook outlined the reasons why his government was determined to relax immigration controls and made clear his hostility to ‘outdated’ ideas about Britishness. ‘The British are not a race but a gathering of countless different races and communities’, he said. And this lack of a singular notion of Britishness is precisely what gives Britain its strength: ‘[Our] pluralism is not a burden that we must reluctantly accept. It is an immense asset that contributes to the cultural and economic vitality of our nation.’ (13)

The most striking aspect of Cook’s speech was the period in British history he was most keen to distance himself from: the 100 years from the Victorian era to the Second World War. With remarkable historical illiteracy, Cook argued that Britain had ‘always been multicultural’: ‘In the pre-industrial era… Britain was unusually open to external influence, first through foreign invasion, then through commerce and imperial expansion. It is not their purity that makes the British unique, but the sheer pluralism of their ancestry.’

However, there was a period when, unfortunately in Cook’s view, British identity was relatively homogenous: ‘The homogeneity of British identity that some people assume to be the norm was confined to a relatively brief period. It lasted from the Victorian era of imperial expansion to the aftermath of the Second World War and depended on the unifying force of those two extraordinary experiences.’ For Cook, New Labour’s celebration of diversity today is in keeping with an older British history, one that preceded and therefore was not tainted by the now largely discredited modern industrial era. ‘The diversity of modern Britain expressed through devolution and multiculturalism is more consistent with the historical experience of our islands’, he argued (14).

Here, we can see what underpins the contemporary elite’s embrace of immigration: a desire to distance itself from a past it feels increasingly estranged from, by elevating the contribution of external actors to British society and identity. Feeling ever-more alienated from the values and advances of modern, Victorian and post-Victorian Britain – from the growth of industry to the celebration of high culture, from old-style morality to values such as the ‘stiff upper lip’ – today’s elite contrasts the dynamism of the contemporary flow of ‘many cultures’ into the UK with the ‘homogeneity of British identity’ that existed in what is now seen as the problematic modern era.

For all Cook’s and others’ seemingly progressive attacks on ‘purity’ and ‘homogeneity’ in favour of ‘diversity’ and ‘multiculturalism’, what they are really questioning is the idea that there should be any overarching, defining values in British society. They are effectively dressing up Britain’s crisis of values, its uncertainty about what it stands for, in the positive language of a ‘constant churn’ of values from outside (15), where the immigrant is celebrated precisely for his lack of attachment to, and origins in, Britain’s traditional culture.

This is what underpins the ethos of multiculturalism itself: a desire to re-present a crisis of values as something positive. Fundamentally, multiculturalism is officialdom’s response to the profound identity crisis of Western society, brought about as a result of the collapse of common values, national institutions and political networks. Multiculturalism is about adding a positive gloss to this identity crisis, where the lack of common values is sexed up as ‘cultural pluralism’ and divisions within communities are relabelled ‘diversity’. Likewise, the contemporary elite’s celebration of society’s ‘continually changing values’ as a result of unpredictable migrant flows re-presents a crisis of core values as something purposeful and positive.

Indeed, the most striking thing about immigration over the past 10 to 15 years is how the elite now advertises its assimilation of immigrant culture rather than calling for immigrants to assimilate into British culture. One historian of immigration in Britain writes that in the 1950s and the 1960s, ‘The first official British response [to mass immigration] was to declare that immigrants must be assimilated to a unitary British culture’ (16).

Now, in New Labour’s words, ‘Britain absorbs and adapts external influences. Our lifestyles and cultural horizons have also been broadened [by immigration]… it reaches into every aspect of our national life.’ (17) There were many problems with the old idea of immigrant assimilation, but it was at least built on the notion of a core society into which immigrants could be welcomed. The new idea of Britain ‘absorbing and adapting’ and being constantly altered by the arrival of migrants effectively says there is no such thing as society (updating Thatcher’s dictum), only various cultures.

Where the politics of assimilation spoke to a society that needed migrant workers and wanted them to be well-behaved, the politics of absorption speaks to something worse: a society that welcomes immigrants for the narrow political good of the elite, which hopes that the arrival of outsiders will somehow refresh and renew a corroded and confused nation alienated from its traditions. This is the political equivalent of slumming it.

Disciplining the working class

If the elite now expresses its discomfort with Old Britain through the immigration issue, it also expresses its disdain for the lower orders through it, too. In many ways a perfect issue for a fundamentally middle-class party like New Labour, the ‘pro-immigration’ stance allows the contemporary elite both to distance itself from the traditional elites of the past and from the working classes of today, from the old order and from the new masses.

For decades, the British elite used the politics of racism as a way of keeping the working classes in their place, ratcheting up immigration fears and racial tensions in an effort to win native workers’ loyalty. Now it uses the official politics of ‘anti-racism’ and ‘pro-immigration’ to do a similar job. One of the most effective ways in which the working classes are policed today is through the monitoring of their allegedly problematic attitudes to immigration and their failure to embrace the apparently superior cosmopolitan values of their rulers....

The ‘pro-immigration’ pose of the contemporary elite allows it to advertise its alleged moral superiority over the uneducated mob. Today, the elite defines itself as superior to the masses, not through its traditions, its role in history or its defence of Great Britain and British values, but through the very opposite: by affecting a cultural disdain for traditionalism, nationalism and sovereignty in favour of the modern values of cultural flux, cosmopolitanism and what Robin Cook described as a ‘modern notion of national identity [not] based on race and ethnicity’ (25).

It is the elite’s apparent ability to rise above the squalid traditions of the past that marks it out as superior today. And one of the key ways it does is this is by celebrating (controlled) immigration for ‘shaking up’ British values and forcing the illiberal lower orders to confront their prejudices or else have them fixed by a heavy dose of intervention by the Department of Communities....

Racialising everyday life

There are many problems with the elite’s adoption of a ‘pro-immigration’ stance for cynical social and political reasons. It is built on dishonesty and censorship, where the facts and the truth are kept away from the public lest they inflame our prejudicial instincts. It is driven by a disdain for some of the gains of the past and for the views of today’s working classes.

Most worryingly, it can only further racialise everyday life in Britain. Already, thanks to New Labour, virtually every aspect of our existences – from politics to schools to the workplace – has been racialised, where everyday interaction and speech is governed by a plethora of diversity codes and a super-sensitivity about racial matters. The politicisation of the immigrant, and his elevation as superior to the white working classes, threatens to take this racialisation to another level...

More here



Scientist attacks ‘fundamentalism’ of British atheist Dawkins

The “scientific fundamentalism” promoted by the atheist Richard Dawkins was criticised yesterday by the winner of a prize he had attacked.

Professor Francisco Ayala, who won the £1 million Templeton Prize for scientific thought, said that attacking religion and ridiculing believers provided ammunition for religious leaders who insisted that followers had to choose between God and Darwin. “Richard Dawkins has been a friend for more than 20 years, but it is unfortunate that he goes beyond the boundaries of science in making statements that antagonise believers,” he said.

Professor Ayala, of the University of California, Irvine, who is an authority on evolution and genetics, won the prize for his contribution to the question “Does scientific knowledge contradict religious belief?”. The prize, the largest of its kind, was founded by the late entrepreneur Sir John Templeton to honour scientists who contribute to progress in religion.

The professor, who was born in Spain and is a naturalised American, says science and religion cannot be in contradiction because they address different questions. It is only when either subject oversteps its boundary, as he believes is the case with Professor Dawkins, that a contradiction arises, he said. “The scientific fundamentalism proposed by Dawkins implies a materialistic view of the world. But once science has had its say, there remains much about reality that is of interest. Common sense tells us that science can’t tell us everything.”

This week Professor Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Oxford, attacked the US National Academy of Sciences for hosting the Templeton ceremony. He said on his blog: “The US National Academy of Sciences has brought ignominy on itself by agreeing to host the announcement of the 2010 Templeton Prize. This is exactly the kind of thing Templeton is ceaselessly angling for — recognition among real scientists — and they use their money shamelessly to satisfy their doomed craving for scientific respectability.”

Professor Ayala was ordained as a priest in 1960, but left the priesthood to study genetics. He maintains links with the Vatican, but would not reveal whether he believed in God. “My arguments are valid independent of my personal beliefs,” he said. Professor Ayala has been a fierce opponent of the teaching of creationism and intelligent design in schools alongside evolution “for the same reason that we don’t teach witchcraft in medicine or alchemy in chemistry classes”.

Man’s “flawed” design made evolutionary theory more compatible with the idea of a benevolent creator than intelligent design. “Because of the flawed design of our reproductive systems more than 20 per cent of all pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion,” said Professor Ayala. “Do you want to blame God for that? No, science has provided an answer. It is the clumsy ways of nature and the evolutionary process.”

The Duke of Edinburgh will present the prize to Professor Ayala on May 5 in a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace.

Paul Davies, a cosmologist at Arizona State University and previous winner of the prize, said that the rise of fundamentalism had dampened what was once a productive dialogue between scientists and the religious community. “Most people do care whether there’s a deeper meaning to life and the Universe,” he said. “Some of the founders of science were religious thinkers. This prize is part of that tradition.”

SOURCE



The calorie conqueror: Herbal pill 'can cut your appetite by a fifth ... and even cure a sweet tooth'

Here we go again: A quick and dirty study with no long term follow-up and no mention of side effects from the strong stimulants used. Some of the women taking it were probably too shaky to eat!

It could be the answer to your weight loss prayers - and there is no punishing exercise regime required. Women can cut their daily calorie intake by almost a fifth if they simply take a herbal diet pill, research reveals today.

The supplement has also been shown to help those with a sweet tooth - reducing the temptation to indulge in sugary snacks.

Zotrim, which is based on three South American plants and is freely available from supermarkets and chemists, was tested by scientists at the University of Liverpool.

They found that women who took the pill with their breakfast had a much lower appetite at lunch time - cutting their calorie intake by 17.6 per cent. Of 58 volunteers who were given either Zotrim or a dummy pill in the morning, those on the herbal supplement only picked at their afternoon meal.

The subjects, some of whom were overweight, were observed at a test lunch buffet where they were told to eat as much they wanted. Those on Zotrim ate on average 132 fewer calories - the equivalent of a Milky Way or can of cola.

If the effects were replicated throughout the day, the pill would cut a dieter's daily count by 400 or 500 calories, equivalent to two bars of chocolate or a kebab.

Zotrim is designed to make the user feel fuller for longer. But it also appears to take the edge off a sweet tooth, cutting the women's selection of biscuits and chocolate mousse from the buffet by 27 per cent.

The women taking the herbal pill finished eating around three minutes earlier than the others - indicating they did feel full sooner, the British Feeding and Drinking Group conference will hear today.

Researcher Dr Jason Halford, an obesity expert, said the findings suggest that Zotrim has a 'robust' effect on a dieter's appetite, which could help them lose weight.

The pill, which costs £22.99 for a month's supply, contains caffeine and other ingredients from herbs Guarana, Yerba Mate and Damiana.

The cocktail delays the rate at which the stomach empties by about 20 minutes. The process is not dangerous because it merely extends the length of time taken to digest the food.

However, it makes it difficult for dieters to overeat because they feel uncomfortably full sooner. It is hoped this will make them change their eating habits, stopping them from piling the pounds back on when they stop taking the supplement.

Previous research has shown that Zotrim can help overweight women lose an average of two inches from their waists in just four weeks. Some of those taking part shed five inches from their middles.

Another study credited the pills with helping women lose an average of 11lb in six weeks - those taking a dummy drug lost less than 1lb.

But not all studies of Zotrim have had such good results. A report by consumer watchdog Which? concluded that although there was evidence of significant weight loss in the short-term, the results of long-term follow-up studies have been 'disappointing'.

Zotrim inventor Dr Lasse Hessel said the pill 'helps people cheat on their own stomach'.

Source



Traditional science experiments 'disappearing' from British schools

Science experiments are disappearing from the classroom amid mounting concerns over pupil behaviour, crowded timetables and health and safety rules, according to research.

Almost all science teachers and lab technicians said they were now being prevented from staging certain practicals in biology, chemistry and physics lessons, it was claimed. The study – by Science Learning Centres, a network of teacher training colleges – said more than two-thirds of staff admitted axing experiments because of a lack of space in the curriculum. Four-in-10 blamed the demands of exams and assessment.

According to the study, some 28 per cent of teachers had been forced to drop classroom practical because of bad behaviour among pupils, while one-in-10 cited health and safety fears. It said that activities such as ripple tanks, dissection and microbiology – once commonplace in schools – were now becoming “endangered species”.

The survey, which questioned more than 1,300 teachers and technicians, found that pupils had fewer chances to conduct experiments as they moved up through secondary school.

Ministers have invested hundreds millions of pounds in programmes designed to boost the number of pupils taking science at GCSE and A-level. In the Budget this week, the Government announced extra funding to allow more students to study science and maths at university, suggesting that more highly-skilled professionals were needed to boost Britain’s economic recovery.

But experts fear that children are being turned off science at a young age because lessons are becoming increasingly safe.

Professor John Holman, director of the National Science Learning Centre, said: "Learning science without practicals is the equivalent of studying literature without books. “Experimental evidence is the mainstay of science and the UK has a very strong tradition of scientific practical work in schools. "It concerns me that, for a range of reasons, many teachers currently feel unable to dedicate as much time to practical work in the classroom as they would like to and today's students therefore have fewer opportunities for exploratory learning.

“While it is certainly not the case that schools are being forced to abandon all practical work, I am alarmed by this trend and struck by the obstacles that teachers say they are facing.”

SOURCE



Tombola Bingo advert gets banned in Britain

We read:

"It seems to be more of an issue of political correctness than the suggested presenting of a negative racial stereotype as the latest Tombola Bingo advert gets banned by ASA. This bingo sites latest advert prompted just two complaints but this is all it took for ASA to consider whether the complaints about the Tombola Bingo advert were justified or not.

Obviously it would not be appropriate to get into a debate as to whether the decision to ban the Tombola Bingo advert was the right thing to do. However, this bingo sites advert, which featured a coloured man playing a ukulele, repeating everything that the white man next to him was saying, was deemed to imply that black people are less intelligent than white people.

This is not the first time that Tombola Bingo has had to pull a TV advert off air. One of this bingo sites previous adverts was also banned after it was deemed to appeal to the younger generation.

Source

"appeal to the younger generation"! How shocking!





25 March, 2010

British teachers suspended after pupil Sam Linton dies from asthma attack

They should be jailed for manslaughter. They didn't give a damn about the kid. They were too busy having one of their innumerable "meetings"

A headmistress and four other members of staff have been suspended from a school that faces possible legal action after a pupil died from an asthma attack.

Sam Linton, 11, was made to sit in a corridor at Offerton High School, in Stockport, struggling to breathe while no ambulance was called. His parents are considering legal action against the school and the council after Sam died in hospital two hours later in December 2007. An inquest jury found that the school’s neglect had been a significant factor in his death.

A spokesman for Stockport council said yesterday that the five staff had been suspended while an internal inquiry is carried out. Evelyn Leslie, the head teacher, and Jan Ford, the teacher who told Sam to sit in the corridor, are among those who have been asked to step down during the inquiry.

Sam had been wheezing continually and using an inhaler on the day that he died but staff failed to call 999. He was left to wait in a hallway until two other pupils found him and raised the alarm. By the time his mother arrived Sam’s lips had turned blue.

The three-week inquest at Stockport Coroner’s Court was told that valuable time was lost while Sam was made to sit in the corridor. The jury found last week that Sam died from natural causes but said that neglect at an “individual and systemic level” had been a significant contributory factor.

Sam’s father, Paul Linton, described the council’s move as “too little, too late”. He told The Times: “We are considering legal action against the school and the local authority.

“I would hope that the head teacher doesn’t get another job as a head at another school. Education-wise I couldn’t fault the school but on the policy for looking after a child that was ill they get a big fat zero.”

The jury found that staff had failed to implement the asthma policy, were not sufficiently trained to deal with asthma and that a healthcare plan was not in place. Information about Sam’s attacks was not shared among staff and they failed to monitor Sam’s condition on the day of his death, the jury said.

The school, which was judged “unsatisfactory” in its latest Ofsted inspection, refused to comment. A spokesman for Stockport council said that detailed evidence presented to the inquest and the verdict of the jury had led them to carry out an inquiry.

“While it has been some time since Sam’s death there has not been a period of inactivity,” he said. “Immediately following Sam’s death, the governing body reviewed the handling of pupils’ medical needs relating to asthma and other medical conditions, and has adapted systems and practices at the school.”

The council has decided three times not to hold a serious case review, saying that the case did not meet the necessary criteria.

SOURCE



More appalling "safety" correctness in Britain

Teachers leave boy, 5, stranded in tree because of health and safety (then report passer-by who helped him down to police)

A boy of five was left stranded in a tree at school because of a bizarre health and safety policy - which banned teachers from helping him down.

The mischievous pupil climbed the 20ft tree at the end of morning break and refused to come down.

But instead of helping him, staff followed guidelines and retreated inside the school building to ‘observe from a distance’ so the child would not get ‘distracted and fall’.

The boy was only rescued after 45 minutes in the tree when passer-by Kim Barrett, 38, noticed the child and helped him down herself. But instead of being thanked for her actions by the head teacher of the Manor School in Melksham, Wiltshire, she was reported to the police for trespassing.

Miss Barrett, who lives in Melksham with her six-year-old daughter who attends a different school, said she is ‘surprised’ and ‘shocked’ by the school's policy. She said: 'I was completely shocked when I first saw him because he was sitting on a branch hanging out over the pavement.

'He was so young. He didn't look frightened but he was completely on his own - there were no teachers or friends in the playground and the field was empty. 'I walked past at 11.15am and he told me he had been hiding since the end of playtime because he didn't want to go back into class. 'Break ends at 10.30am so that means he had been in the tree for at least 45 minutes.

‘I stopped to ask him if he was OK, and it became clear that he'd been there since the end of playtime, which had been around half an hour earlier. ‘I was immediately concerned. I walked over to the school with the boy and was met by the associate head.

‘He didn't appear at all concerned, and was actually very patronising, patting me on the arm and asking me “what do you expect me to do, exactly, dear?” ‘When I said I thought it was a serious incident, he then said his only concern was me trespassing.

‘I was initially surprised that no one appeared to have missed this boy, no one could have known where he was because they could not have seen him from the school, and I was shocked at the way I was dealt with.’

The incident occurred on the morning of March 1 as Miss Barrett was walking home past the side entrance of 213-pupil The Manor Church of England Primary School.

She claims that she walked around to the front of the school, onto the playing field and then helped the schoolboy down before taking him back to his class.

But the school alleges that she ‘approached the school in an inappropriate way’ and asked her to leave the premises after she got into a row with staff over the boy's welfare.

Later that evening a letter from head teacher Beverley Martin was posted through Miss Barrett’s door, explaining that the school had contacted police about the incident. The next morning she was visited by a PCSO who told her she had committed a trespassing offence by helping the young schoolboy down from the tree.

Miss Barrett, a part-time cleaner, said: ‘I felt really angry because I felt I had saved the school and this boy from something that could have been far worse, and that instead of thanking me I was under investigation. ‘It was ridiculous. He was all on his own, there was no one near him and you couldn't see the school buildings from where he was.

‘Not only was he at least 6ft off the ground, but someone taller than me could easily have reached in from the pavement and plucked him off the branch. "The school say he was being watched but that's impossible because there is no line of sight from the school building to the tree.

'I am a mother myself and I find it a bit ridiculous that the school's policy is to leave a child up a tree. I would be very angry if this happened to my child. 'I think this is a big cover up and that the school obviously had no idea he was there. When I took him in they had no idea he was missing.'

Mrs Martin confirmed that the school's policy prevents staff going to the aid of children who have climbed trees. She said: ‘The safety of our pupils is our priority [A strange idea of safety!] and we would like to make it clear that this child was being observed at all times during this very short incident.

‘Like other schools whose premises include wooded areas, our policy when a child climbs a tree, is for staff to observe the situation from a distance so the child does not get distracted and fall. ‘We would strongly urge members of the public not to climb over a padlocked gate to approach children as their motives are not clear to staff.

‘To protect children, we cannot assume that people who enter the school grounds without permission have innocent intentions and must act accordingly. ‘If people are concerned about a child's welfare then they should go to the reception and alert a member of staff, who will be happy to help. ‘I am sure these expectations are the same in every school and are centred on children's wellbeing.’

A letter sent to Miss Barrett by Wiltshire Council added: ‘You may well have acted initially out of concern for the safety of the child but any such concerns should have been raised with a member of staff. ‘You subsequently behaved in a verbally aggressive manner to a member of staff.’

SOURCE



British KFC diner told 'you can't have bacon in your burger here - we're now halal'

A diner was left fuming after a KFC restaurant took his favourite meal off the menu because it breached their new halal regulations. Alan Phillips was told he would have to travel five miles to another branch if he wanted the Big Daddy, a chicken burger, topped with bacon, cheese and salad.

The branch, in Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, is one of 86 KFC restaurants which is running trials of a scheme where they sell nothing other than halal meat.

The company has taken the burger off the menu because Islamic dietary law forbids Muslims to eat anything which has been prepared on the same premises as pork, which is itself strictly forbidden. It said it was responding to 'increased demand' for a halal menu in the areas of Britain with growing Muslim populations.

Mr Phillips said he found the change 'extremely unfair' on non-Muslim customers. 'I can't believe a chain like this has taken this stance,' he said. 'Staff told me that due to the dietary laws halal meat could not be prepared in the same place as other meats, so I couldn't have my bacon. It was like they were saying I couldn't buy bacon because it might offend people.'

Mr Phillips was told he would have to travel to another KFC five miles away to buy his bacon burger. He protested that this was too far for him to travel. 'It is getting silly,' he said. 'I have many friends who are black, white and Muslim but they wouldn't be forced to eat non-halal meat. 'I have no problem with them selling halal meat, but I would like the choice.'

Traditionally, halal meat must be slaughtered by hand, although KFC, which has more than 750 restaurants in the UK, said its chickens are not killed in this way. The meat must also be blessed in the name of Allah and cannot be kept on the same premises as banned substances including pork and alcohol.

KFC spokesman Nina Arnott said the halal trial was expected to last 'a few months'. She said: 'We've responded to requests to provide halal food in some parts of the UK and the Middleway Park restaurant in Burton is one of the restaurants taking part in our trial.

'The Big Daddy is the only product we've taken off the menu at our trial stores and we're using exactly the same ingredients and exactly the same tasting chicken as before.'

SOURCE



The British rape debate is demeaning to women and an abandonment of the principles of justice

The Stern report on how rape cases are handled rehabilitates the Victorian view of women as helpless victims

By Nathalie Rothschild

A new report on rape and the criminal justice system in England and Wales has concluded that the debate around rape has been too much focused on conviction rates. Yet while Baroness Stern, author of the report, recommends that from now on support and care for victims be given as high a priority as the prosecution and conviction of perpetrators, her report is unlikely to change the terms of the debate.

The Stern report does not challenge the way in which women today are encouraged to see themselves as victims and how they are regarded as less accountable for their actions than men. And in suggesting that women reporting rape should be believed from the outset, Stern is insisting that, when it comes to alleged crimes of rape, the accused is guilty until proven innocent.

Feminists and rape awareness campaigners have been dismayed at Stern’s suggestion that attention be diverted away from the often-repeated claim that only six per cent of rapes lead to a conviction. This refers to the total number of reports producing convictions, but Stern says it is misleading as nearly 60 per cent of those charged with rape are, in fact, convicted.

A large number of reported rape cases, the Stern review found, are either unrecorded or retracted, while in 23 per cent of cases there is insufficient evidence to charge the suspect. So the attrition rate in rape cases is high, with only 12 per cent of cases reaching court. But the actual conviction rate for those cases that do get to court is as high as 57.7 per cent.

Stern suggests that the way to encourage women to report rape (and by extension to increase conviction rates – an ambition normally restricted to totalitarian states) is by diverting attention away from the off-putting six per cent figure and instead emphasising the more ‘positive’ conviction rates when charges have been brought. In other words, Stern is simply proposing a new spin on rape statistics rather than questioning the basic premises around the debate about rape and the criminal justice system today.

In 2007, Camilla Cavendish of The Times (London) found that rape allegations had jumped by 40 per cent between 2002 and 2005. While this can partly be put down to improved support for women, which facilitates the process of reporting rape, Cavendish argued that a widening official definition of rape also played a big role. Since the Sexual Offences Act 2003 came into force, the definition of rape has been expanded to include oral sex. But there has also been a profound attitude shift with roots in the second-wave feminist idea that heterosexual sex is an inherently violent and degrading act that women subject themselves to against their better judgement.

More than four out of five rape allegations are made against friends or acquaintances. As alcohol and/or drugs were involved in over half those cases, Cavendish puts this down to ‘the culture of binge drinking’. But this avoids the more complex picture. Today, various rape-awareness activists and state feminists are themselves helping to blur the boundaries between sex and rape, encouraging women to regard themselves as violated, abused and traumatised for having gone to bed with a man without thinking it through in minute detail.

The Sexual Offences Act 2003 declared that consent must be ‘active, not passive’; in rape cases, consent is now taken to mean agreement rather than the absence of a refusal. So if a woman goes along with sex, but doesn’t make it explicitly clear that she is actively consenting to it, it can be deemed to be rape. The government has even moved towards ensuring that no agreement can be taken as consent if it is given under the influence of alcohol. As Cavendish pointed out: ‘In our zeal to protect women, are we going to legislate so that a drunken man is accountable for his deeds, but a drunken woman is not? Why do we encourage women to see themselves as victims?’ Absolving women who engage in sexual liaisons – whether drunk or sober – of responsibility for their actions is not liberating; it’s demeaning.

There is no doubt that forcing someone to have sex is a heinous, violent and degrading act and victims of rape should indeed be treated with dignity and respect. But in the name of protecting women, the government is insisting that rape cases be treated differently from all other crimes, while interfering with the course of justice in a way that undermines defendants’ rights and undercuts the power of juries.

For those women who have baulked at Stern’s bout of stats spinning, it is only right for the legal process to be tailored to plaintiffs’ needs in rape cases. The solicitor general, Vera Baird, said she had reservations about ceasing to refer to the six per cent figure - the percentage of rape reports that produce a conviction. ‘Although we don’t count any other offence in this way’, she said, ‘it is particularly meaningful as it reflects the high number of rape victims who drop out before they get to court, and we really need to focus on that group.’ But this assumes ‘that group’ is actually made up of genuine rape cases. Without the chance to test that in court, we can never know.

Similarly, Nicole Westmarland, a lecturer in criminology and former chairwoman of Rape Crisis, insisted the process of reporting, prosecuting and convicting those accused of rape should be on different terms than other offences. She said that ‘all too often rape is just dismissed as “one person’s word against another’s” because a thorough investigation has not taken place. Evidence collection and management must be improved.’

Yet rape is difficult to prosecute precisely because it is, sometimes, a matter of his word against hers. There are often no witnesses and little circumstantial evidence, particularly in cases of acquaintance rape. It is very difficult to establish the truth in rape cases, but that does not mean that truth should have no bearing on the outcome of a rape case in court.

Yet, with the blessing of the government and various feminists, some important legal safeguards have been eroded in rape cases and the burden of proof has been reversed. Rather than the prosecutor having to prove that the woman did not consent, the defendant now must prove that the woman did consent.

Women are done no favours by these changes. They are being treated as feeble dimwits who have constantly to be asked for their consent, to be checked on every step of the way to make sure they’re okay. It is curious that self-described feminists are propounding such a paternalistic view of women as unable to make their own minds up, as too weak and silly to say ‘no’ to men, and as putting themselves at risk by drinking and flirting and potentially knocking out their critical faculties, leading them to wake up in a strange bed without having first given their ‘active consent’.

SOURCE



The fix is in: "Americans would do well to ponder a recent admission by a former British minister in the Blair government. On March 2, the Guardian reported that the ex-minister, now Lord Warner, said that while spending on Britain’s National Health Service had increased by 60 percent under the Labour government, its output had decreased by 4 percent. No doubt the spending of a Soviet-style organization like the NHS is more easily measurable than its output, but the former minister’s remark certainly accords with the experiences of many citizens, who see no dramatic improvement in the service as a result of such vastly increased outlays. On the contrary, while the service has taken on 400,000 new staff members — that is to say, one-fifth of all new jobs created in Britain during the period — continuity of medical care has been all but extinguished.”





24 March, 2010

British social workers think the poor can do no wrong again -- and blacks cannot be touched, of course

So baby was seen 15 times in six months by care workers. Yet still he starved to death in his mother's apartment

A baby boy has starved to death despite being under the care of at least nine doctors, social workers and health visitors. The helpless 10-month-old wasted away in his pram at his mother's flat even though he was seen at least 15 times in six months by care professionals.

Although the experts expressed 'concerns' about Saymon Michael's deteriorating health, no one did anything to save him and officials were repeatedly fobbed off by his mother.

In addition, a confidential report on the case - seen by the Daily Mail - concludes: 'Are there any lessons to be learned from this preliminary investigation? 'No. Are there any immediate actions that need to be taken? No.'

Saymon was found dead, emaciated and surrounded by rotting food on March 8 after a 999 call from his HIV positive mother's squalid council flat in North-West London.

A post-mortem examination revealed his stomach was empty and he had not eaten for days. He had suffered a 'long period of malnourishment' and his weight had plummeted since Christmas by a third to 12.5lb. His sister, four, was also malnourished. She was taken into care.

Police began a murder inquiry and Saymon's 29-year-old Eritrean-born mother Yirgalem Michael was arrested for child neglect.

She had avoided contact with care workers by complaining that her human rights would be breached if they used an Eritrean interpreter to question her - in case her close-knit community found out she had HIV.

Despite this and the fact that there were concerns about her parenting skills, she was allowed to keep Saymon and his four-year-old sister.

She had already admitted 'hearing voices' and had expressed fears for her baby's health.

Miss Michael spent only an hour in police custody before being taken to St Mary's Hospital in Paddington, West London where she died two days after her son from a rare brain condition linked to her HIV.

The family are believed to have come to Britain from East Africa several years ago and settled in the West Midlands. They immediately came to the attention of social workers and the daughter was placed on the at-risk register. But the girl, who cannot be named, was later removed from the register and the mother moved to Birmingham where she had her son, Saymon, last year.

In September 2009, she was rehoused in London after she claimed she had been beaten up by the children's father.

A series of visits by health visitors and social workers from Westminster City Council followed. But despite a growing file of evidence that all was not well, nothing was done. The last visit to the flat in St John's Wood was made on March 1. A week later, the boy was dead in his pram.

A neighbour said: 'We used to hear her baby and an older child crying all the time. On March 8 my son heard a scream at around seven in the morning.'

Two health trusts were responsible for the family, and a source with knowledge of the case said: 'It is completely unacceptable in modern Britain that a baby can starve to death while supposedly under the care of a dozen or so professionals.'

A secret report by one of the trusts - the Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust - obtained by the Mail said: 'Post mortem results on the infant showed that he had no food in his gut at all and so had not eaten for several days at least. However, there is evidence of a long period of malnourishment.'

But, after a nine-day investigation, the report concluded there are no lessons to be learnt.

Michael O'Connor, Westminster City Council's director for children and young people, said: 'Neither of the children were on the child protection register and there is no suggestion that they were at risk.'

Terry Bamford of Westminster's Local Safeguarding Children Board, said an independent serious case review would take place.

Central and North West London Trust refused to comment and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust said it was carrying out its own inquiry.

SOURCE



Israeli diplomat expelled by Britain on the basis of mere speculation

A new low was reached Tuesday in the traditionally close but often rocky British-Israeli relationship when Britain announced that it was expelling an Israeli diplomat following the use of forged British passports in the Dubai assassination of a senior Hamas official in January.

The cold war-style sanction was deployed after a British investigation determined that passports were forged when British citizens passed through airports on their way to Israel, although the probe was unable to definitively confirm the involvement of Israeli intelligence.

Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to Britain, was summoned to the headquarters of Britain’s Foreign Office on Monday to be told the results of Britain’s inquiry, for which investigators were sent to Israel this month to meet eight Israeli-British dual nationals whose identities were used in the Jan. 20 assassination. Britain’s Foreign Minister, David Miliband was due to address Parliament this afternoon.

While Britain has in the past reserved such action for states like Libya and Iran many see this as only a symbolic warning to its ally Israel – not a sweeping denunciation. However, precisely because of the closeness of the Israeli-British relationship, there could be more serious friction if the controversy is not laid to rest, says Yossi Mekelberg, an Israeli analyst at the London foreign policy think tank Chatham House.

“It is serious. If, as a country, your passports are misused or faked, then it is not something you can ignore and it has created practical problems. Israel has got away internationally with doing certain things in the past because it is a democracy," he says, calling the expulsion Britain's way of telling Israel, "you misbehaved."

But there is a cumulative effect, he adds – and one that may play out in less public avenues.

“Between Britain and Israel there is cooperation on so many different levels. In a globalized world Britain can decide that something like this can end with an expulsion – but behind closed doors there can be repercussions," says Mr. Mekelberg. "The closer a relationship is, then the more painful the sanctions can be.”

While action from London had been expected on the issue – the most serious cause of friction yet over a recent period of sometimes strained relations between the two countries – there was still shock value in the use of a sanction Britain has traditionally only deployed against states with which it has frosty relations.

The last time Britain expelled foreign diplomats from its soil was in June 2009, when two Iranian diplomats were told to pack their bags after Tehran ordered two British diplomats out.

SOURCE



Oppressive British "safety" regulations again

A wheelchair-bound woman was told to take a train for 30 miles in order to cross to an opposite platform 20 yards away.

Julie Cleary, 53, was hoping to use a new £2.8m lift at Staplehurst train station in Kent to get out of the station after a day trip to London, reports the Daily Telegraph.

But she was told she could not use it because of "health and safety" and told to instead to catch a train to Ashford International Station, 15 miles away, and back so she would end up on the right platform.

Miss Cleary said: "The lights were on but there was a metal bar over the button. We couldn't use it. We were told to wait for the next train to Ashford, cross the tracks and come back to get on the other side of the platform - which was 15 - 20 yards away. That was our only choice."

Miss Cleary, who has been forced to use a wheelchair since suffering a spinal aneurysm when she was 12-years-old, said she was told the high-tech lift could only be used when the station was manned.

She told a local website: "I have family in the village, and they came down and helped get me up and over the steps and down the other side. My friends were brilliant, but it was still embarrassing simply not being able to leave the station.

"I did feel furious about it. If I was on my own I would have had no choice but to take the train to Ashford, which is a large and busy station, then change back on the train to Staplehurst."

Miss Cleary complained to her MP Anne Widdecombe and received an apology from Southeastern trains along with £30 of rail vouchers.

Jon Hay-Campbell, a spokesman for the train company, said the lift had been opened as part of an "Access for All" scheme to help those in wheelchairs and with buggies to get across the tracks.

He added that initially the lift could only be used when the station was manned due to "health and safety" reasons but further works had now been done so it can be operated remotely 24 hours a day.

SOURCE



You can't predict the weather; or climate change: Our weather forecasts will always be as unreliable as our predictions of climate change

By Roger Highfield (Roger Highfield is the Editor of 'New Scientist’, a generally Warmist publication, so the stress below on the uncertain magnitudes involved is a big retreat)

Last year, the Met Office claimed the UK was “odds-on for a barbecue summer”. The reality was a washout. Then came its predictions of a mild winter, when it was the coldest for three decades. Now another company predicts this year’s summer will be sizzling. Can we believe them?

I asked Prof Tim Palmer, now at Oxford University, who pioneered medium-range climate forecasts. He sighs, and says of the Met’s forecasts that “we weren’t promised a barbecue summer — unfortunately, there was a certain amount of unnecessary spin placed on uncertain predictions”.

Today, at the Royal Society, London, Prof Palmer has gathered experts to discuss how we should handle uncertainties. Among them are Lord May, who put chaos theory into biology.

Chaos rules the weather. One can appreciate this with a mathematical structure called a Lorenz attractor, named after an American meteorologist. The lines depicting this structure never repeat their trajectory, just as the weather varies from day to day, but overall the lines form an owl-eye shape, just as our climate has regularities, notably warm summers and cold winters.

Although chaos theory limits the accuracy of weather predictions, we can still understand factors that influence the climate such as the greenhouse effect, predicted in 1827 by the French mathematician Joseph Fourier (1768-1830). The name arises because, like glass in a greenhouse, gases such as carbon dioxide and water vapour let solar energy in to warm the Earth but also trap some of the planet’s heat. Without greenhouse gases, the ground temperature would be 30C lower.

The uncertainty in predictions of global warming have not changed much since pioneering work by the American Jule Charney in the Seventies, when he worked out the possible impact of climate change. His lower limit estimates of 1.5 deg warming for a doubling of carbon dioxide levels are similar to those from the latest climate models.

There is little uncertainty when it comes to explaining why the Earth is warming, says Prof Palmer. The big issue is what happens next. Some scientists fear apocalyptic scenarios, others believe the change will be smooth. All agree that there are major holes in our understanding.

“What has been naggingly difficult has been working out the upper limit of possible warming,” says Prof Palmer. There is much debate among scientists, but among the public this comes over as “you are either a believer or non-believer in climate change, which is a false dichotomy”.

All the time, there is endless pressure to simplify. PR disasters such as the Met’s seasonal forecast can result when uncertainty is rendered down to a soundbite. The Met had said it was ''odds-on for a barbecue summer’’ in its press statement, which had a greater ring of certainty than the actual 50 per cent probability of above-average temperatures. Similarly, although the winter had a 50 per cent chance of being milder, there was a 20 per cent chance of being colder.

This month the Met Office abandoned these forecasts, where many variations on the same computer model of the climate are run to produce a fuzzy “ensemble” of forecasts, a method Prof Palmer popularised back in 1989. Palmer believes they are still valid. “The Met has been criticised too much.”

Uncertainty is a part of everyday life. “The big issue is this,’’ Prof Palmer explains. “When it comes to a catastrophic 4 deg average global warming, how big a probability would the public have to be faced with to back taking drastic action?”

The failure to make the uncertainties of climate change crystal clear may be another reason why public confidence in climate science has slumped.

SOURCE



Lord Oxburgh, the climate science peer, ‘has a conflict of interest’

A member of the House of Lords appointed to investigate the veracity of climate science has close links to businesses that stand to make billions of pounds from low-carbon technology.

Lord Oxburgh is to chair a scientific assessment panel that will examine the published science of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

The CRU has been accused of manipulating and suppressing data to overstate the dangers from climate change. Professor Phil Jones, its director, has stood down from his post while a separate inquiry, chaired by Sir Muir Russell, takes place into the leaking of e-mails sent by him and his colleagues.

Climate sceptics questioned whether Lord Oxburgh, chairman of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association and the wind energy company Falck Renewables, was truly independent because he led organisations that depended on climate change being seen as an urgent problem.

Andrew Montford, a climate-change sceptic who writes the widely-read Bishop Hill blog, said that Lord Oxburgh had a “direct financial interest in the outcome” of his inquiry.

Lord Oxburgh has said that he believes the need to tackle climate change will make capturing carbon from power plants “a worldwide industry of the same scale as the international oil industry today”.

The CCS Association has stated that carbon capture could become a “trillion dollar industry” by 2050, but this would happen only if governments made reducing emissions a top political priority. In an interview in 2007, Lord Oxburgh said that the threat from global warming was so severe that “it may be that we shall need . . . regulations which impose very severe penalties on people who emit more than specified amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere”.

The university appointed Lord Oxburgh, a geologist and former chairman of the Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology, after consulting the Royal Society, of which he is a fellow.

Professor Trevor Davies, the university’s pro-vice-chancellor for research, said that the university had been aware of Lord Oxburgh’s business interests but believed that he would lead the panel of six scientists “in an utterly objective way”. The panel will meet in Norwich next month.

He added: “We all have an interest in seeing alternatives to fossil fuel energy sources. This is going to be an issue for us all in future regardless of climate change.

“The choice of scientists is sure to be the subject of discussion, and experience would suggest that it is impossible to find a group of eminent scientists to look at this issue who are acceptable to every interest group which has expressed a view in the last few months. Similarly it is unlikely that a group of people who have the necessary experience to assess the science, but have formed no view of their own on global warming, could be found.”

He said the scientists has been selected because they had “the right mix of skills to understand the complex nature of climate research and the discipline-based expertise to scrutinise CRU’s research”.

Lord Oxburgh, a former chairman of Shell UK, said: “The shadow hanging over climate change and science more generally at present makes it a matter of urgency that we get on with this assessment. We will undertake this work and report as soon as possible.”

The university expects his report to be published before the summer.

The panel members are: Huw Davies, Professor of Physics at the Institute for Atmospheric & Climate Science at ETH Zürich; Kerry Emanuel, Professor of Meteorology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Professor Lisa Graumlich, Director of the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of Arizona; David Hand, Professor of Statistics in the Department of Mathematics at Imperial College, London; Herbert Huppert, Professor of Theoretical Geophysics at the University of Cambridge; and Michael Kelly, Prince Philip Professor of Technology at the University of Cambridge. They will be given access to CRU’s original data and be able to interview its scientists.

Professor Bob Watson, Chief Scientific Adviser to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said: “I strongly support the choice of chair and panel members — all world class — and the terms of reference. This should lead to a critical evaluation of the quality of the CRU science.”

SOURCE



Health drive in Britain will swallow up supersize bags of potato crisps

The popular 50g 'grab bags' of Walkers crisps will disappear as its parent company slashes the fat, salt and sugar in its brands. PepsiCo, whose brands also include Pepsi, 7Up, Doritos and Quaker Oats, is responding to pressure on food giants to fight obesity and ill-health. The company will introduce a cap of 160 calories on single-serve savoury snacks by 2015.

With more than 250 calories in a 50g 'grab bag' of Walkers crisps, the move spells the end of the size. The company says 50 per cent of its savoury snacks will be baked rather than fried by 2015, and 65 per cent of carbonated soft drink can and bottle sales will be 'no-sugar' by 2015.

A spokesman for consumer group Which? said: 'Consumers are longing to make healthier choices when it comes to the food that they eat and are crying out for companies to improve their offering. 'PepsiCo is savvy enough to know that innovating and providing an increasing range of healthier options is the way to keep their customers happy and their long-term future secure.' [Rubbish! They've been heavied]

SOURCE





23 March, 2010

British police investigate after homosexuals were 'turned away from B&B' by Christian owners

Homosexuals are a protected class but Christians are not, in sick Britain. Britain once was known for religious tolerance ....

Police launched an investigation today after a Christian bed and breakfast owner turned away a gay couple because she said it was 'against her convictions' to let them share a bed. Michael Black, 62, and John Morgan, have complained of unlawful discrimination after they were not allowed to take up their booking at the B&B in Cookham, Berkshire. The couple had booked a double room at the £75-a-night guest house on Friday and were met outside by owner Susanne Wilkinson.

She later admitted she had turned the couple away because it was her policy not to let same sex couples share a room.

Mr Black and Mr Morgan, from Brampton, Cambridgeshire, say they were treated like lepers.

It is illegal under the Equality Act 2006 to discriminate against people because of their sexual orientation and they have been interviewed after reporting the case to police. The couple had arranged the room because they were going for dinner with friends and to the theatre. Mr Black said: 'When we got out of the car she was immediately distant and unfriendly and then she said, "it's a double room", and we said "yes". 'She said, "It's a large double bed in a double room" and we said, "yes", and then she said it was against her convictions to let us stay.

'We said it was illegal to discriminate against people who stay in hotels because that's all we knew at the time and she said it was her private home and it was against her convictions. 'She said she was sorry and she was polite in a cold way and she was not abusive, so we asked our money back and she gave it to us.' He added: 'We were very shocked, and of course angry, that it happened. Neither of us has ever experienced homophobia before and I have been out since 1974. We felt we were treated like lepers and not fit to be under the same roof as her.'

Mr Black said that Mrs Wilkinson has said the men should have warned her, but the self-employed trainer said: 'It would be like saying to someone who runs a guest house, "I'm black or Muslim or blue-eyed" just in case they have a problem with it. 'There is no reason why we had to make it clear we were two men in this day and age. We have stayed in plenty of guest houses in Britain and abroad and have never had a problem.'

Mrs Wilkinson admitted to BBC News that she had turned the men away. She said: 'They gave me no prior warning and I couldn't offer them another room as I was fully booked. 'I don't see why I should change my mind and my beliefs I've held for years just because the government should force it on me,' she said. 'I am not a hotel, I am a guest house and this is a private house.'

The B&B's website boasts: 'A warm and friendly welcome awaits all guests at Susanne Wilkinson's Swiss Bed & Breakfast in the idyllic village of Cookham, near Maidenhead in Berkshire. 'This Swiss-English family offers first class hospitality in their spacious and comfortable home to business, tourist or family visitors from all around the world. English, French and German spoken.'

Stonewall, the gay rights campaign group, said that turning a couple away because of their sexual orientation was illegal. Spokesman Derek Munn said: 'Stonewall was delighted when the law changed in 2007 so that lesbian and gay couples could go on their holidays like anyone else. 'In open-and-shut cases of discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation the law's quite clear - it's illegal for businesses to turn away gay customers or discriminate against them when providing goods or services, and this can't be overridden by personal prejudice.'

A spokeswoman for Thames Valley Police said: 'We are aware of the incident and were contacted yesterday. The call has been logged as a homophobic incident. 'As the people live outside of the force area, we have asked Cambridgeshire Constabulary to speak to the individuals concerned.'

SOURCE



Solar insanity in Britain

Since when do Brits even SEE the sun?

Moonbat's spat over feed-in tariffs continues with a repost from his nemesis, Jeremy Leggett, defender of the solar industry. For once, though, we are completely on Moonbat's side. Only now is the enormity of the government's proposal beginning to sink in, with its intention to have a full two percent of UK electricity supplied from micro-generation by 2020. This will largely be delivered by solar panels, the most profitable option for small installations.

Actually, solar panels are one of the least cost-effective ways of producing electricity, costing £4,000-6,000 per kilowatt of installed capacity. Without massive government support, payback times (with interest) could be a hundred years or more to recoup the typical installation costs of between £3,000 and £20,000. Given that the devices have a maximum lifetime of 30 years, that would never have happened.

However, from 1 April, the government is offering 41.3p per kWh produced – a supposed "feed-in" tariff although it is paid even if the owner uses all the electricity produced. From this, it estimates that a typical 2.5kW well sited installation could earn £900 a year and save £140 a year on the electricity not used – the subsidies calculated to give a 5-8 percent return on investment.

The income from the electricity sales is not taxed so, for a higher bracket taxpayer – who would have to pay for the electricity out of earned income, the payback time can be reduced to as little as 15 years. By 2020, however, the government estimates that the subsidy – paid by electricity users – will be costing £8.6 billion annually. Since only the better off will be able to afford the installation costs, this amounts to a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to those fortunate enough to be able to buy the equipment.

To get to this state, the number of installations, currently approximately 100,000 and, up from an estimated 82,000 at the end of 2004, will need to increase to something like 7-10 million. And, as a rough estimate, the capital cost could be in the region of £100 billion – for two percent of our electricity production – with which we could buy 100 percent of our requirement in the form of brand new nuclear power stations.

It is this capital expenditure which will be defrayed by the feed-in tariff, replacing a composite scheme which included installation grants.

There was an inkling of how profitable solar was becoming last year when Guardian journalist Ashley Seager spent £8,500 on solar roof panels (having got a 50 percent grant for a system that cost £17,500) and claimed the experience to be financially rewarding.

That was before the government's feed-in tariff came into force and, when it does the owners will be able to sell all the electricity they produce at 41.3p per kWh, even if they use it all themselves.

Just how insane this really is can be seen from a similar scheme introduced in Germany in 2004 – with a 57.4 euro cent/kWh subsidy for domestic users. This pushed solar power capacity to about 9GW, delivering about 1.35 GW, or about one percent of total German production - including some massive industrial installations, which get a slightly lower subsidy rate.

But the cost has been massive. German electricity consumers last year paid more than £10 billion in subsidies, forcing chancellor Merkel to cut the tariff by 15 percent this month, with more cuts in the pipeline.

With the UK feed-in tariff – and other tax incentives – solar panels are now a good investment for anyone who can afford them, which means that there will almost certainly be a massive uptake. The government may well reach its 2020 target of two percent but the rest of us will be paying dearly for the privilege.

Even allowing for a low end installation cost of £4,000 per kW installed, the load capacity of domestic panels in the UK rarely exceeds 10 percent. This means that the 2GW needed by 2020 to make up 2 percent of our electrical production would still cost in the region of £80 billion. At this rate, no wonder Merkel finds the subsidies unaffordable. And yet, David Cameron wants not 2 but 15 percent, jacking up capital costs to a potential £600 billion.

If the current scheme is already insane, what the Tories are proposing is a multiple of insanity. And we can afford neither.

SOURCE (See the original for links)



Attention BBC: which of Australia's cities is almost dry?

By Andrew Bolt

A word to the BBC’s Sydney reporter Nick Bryant. Mate, Australians now have the Internet and can read and check the bizarre reports you file back home, like this one:

Australia is in the grip of “the Big Dry”, one of the worst droughts in a century.

Major cities confront the major possibility of running out of water daily, and some are building desalination plants that draw from the sea.

Here’s the rain anomalies for this summer, showing above average rainfall for most of the country:



And here are the current storage levels on these cities that “confront the major possibility of running out of water daily”:

Sydney: 59%

Melbourne: 34.3% with desalination plant to come online next year.

Brisbane: 97.7%

Perth: 39.6% with desalination plant online.

Adelaide: 62% plus water piped from the Murray.

Your correction should be a beauty. Claiming you simply consulted Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery is no excuse.

SOURCE



British students revolt as 150 are crammed into one tutorial

Tutorials -- as distinct from lectures -- are supposed to be fairly intimate events, with opportunites for interaction between teachers and students

Hundreds of engineering students at Manchester University have become the latest undergraduates to stage a revolt against the poor quality of teaching they receive. More than 200 have signed a petition against low standards on their course, which have included “tutorials” of more than 150 students taken by one academic and work returned after several months with no marking except one sentence and a tick.

At an angry meeting with senior academics, students have complained that some lecture notes were simply copied from textbooks.

The National Union of Students has approached David Willetts, the Conservative shadow universities secretary, to advise on the dispute.

Student “consumer militancy” over teaching quality — which has hit other leading universities including Bristol — is set to grow as universities implement Lord Mandelson’s budget cuts and sack staff. It will become more widespread if tuition fees rise as expected. The “revolt” at Manchester comes as Willetts considers the establishment of a new universities inspectorate, one of whose jobs would be to police teaching standards. Willetts is concerned that too many universities have simply demanded the right to charge higher tuition fees without giving any undertakings about improved teaching in return.

His proposed inspectorate would be set up by universities rather than the government and modelled on the Independent Schools Inspectorate which monitors private schools. Willetts said: “Universities have to focus on high quality education for their students. Now students pay thousands of pounds in fees they have a very consumerist attitude and we can all understand why.”

At Manchester, the vice-chancellor, Alan Gilbert, recently described the low level of student satisfaction with the university’s teaching as “totally unacceptable”.

Colin Bailey, dean of engineering and physical sciences, said students had raised issues on the quality of teaching. “[We] discussed possible solutions. This has resulted in addressing the quality of class notes, improving tutorials, improving communication, improving quality and timeliness of feedback.”

SOURCE



Seaweed bread could help fight obesity crisis (?)

Sounds like a re-run of Xenical -- which few people stay on for long because of the side effects

Seaweed bread could be the latest weapon in fighting Britain's growing obesity crisis, according to British scientists. A team from Newcastle University has found that seaweed added to bread, biscuits and yogurt can reduce the amount of fat absorbed by the body by up to 75 per cent. The secret is the natural fibre alginate, found in sea kelp and already used in small quantities in food as a thickener. Early taste tests have suggested the idea of adding in greater quantities could be successful.

The findings are being presented at the American Chemical Society meeting in San Francisco.

Dr Iain Brownlee said: "This suggests that if we can add the natural fibre to products commonly eaten daily - such as bread, biscuits and yogurts – up to three quarters of the fat contained in that meal could simply pass through the body. "We have already added the alginate to bread and initial taste tests have been extremely encouraging. Now the next step to to carry out clinical trials to find out how effective they are when eaten as part of a normal diet."

The seaweed may be more effective than current weight loss products sold over the counter, he said. Dr Brownlee added: "There are countless claims about miracle cures for weight loss but only a few cases offer any sound scientific evidence to back up these claims. "Alginates not only have great potential for weight management - adding them to food also has the added advantage of boosting overall fibre content." "These initial findings suggest alginates could offer a very real solution in the battle against obesity."

SOURCE



Burned girl 'turned away' from British hospital

A five-year-old girl with severe burns was turned away from hospital and her parents forced to drive 25 miles before doctors would treat her. Madison Healy was turned away from Coventry's University Hospital after her clothes caught fire in a freak accident at home. Her mother Alana Regan, 27, took her to A&E, expecting her daughter's injuries to be treated swiftly.

Instead, she says a doctor merely "poked at her leg" before telling her and her partner John Austin, 33, they would have to drive Madison to a specialist burns unit 25 miles away themselves. The Coventry couple, who had no money for petrol and did not know the way drove for an hour before doctors at Birmingham Children's Hospital were able to treat her. There it was discovered Madison had third degree burns requiring a skin graft plus years of treatment and physiotherapy in the future.

Now, Ms Regan has filed an official complaint against University Hospital, saying they let down her seriously injured child. Ms Regan said: "She is only a five-year-old girl and she should have been treated with more priority. "She suffered long term, life-changing injuries and they should have treated her with more compassion and urgency."

A spokesman for University Hospital said Madison had been seen by triage staff within four minutes of arriving at A&E and given painkillers. He added within 50 minutes she went on to be reviewed again by a doctor. "In line with our pediatric pathway relating to burns and scalds Madison was referred to Birmingham Children's Hospital who were advised to expect her arrival and provide ongoing specialist service.

"As the burn was categorised as a small burn covering less than one per cent of the total body surface it is considered safe and within guidelines to transfer by car with a written referral and full directions. "The Trust do apologise if the family felt distressed, however Madison did not require resuscitation or treatment during her transfer."

SOURCE



The British boy whose blue-tinted glasses have allowed him to read properly for the first time

Tom Heaffey is a bright 18-year-old with a string of good GCSEs [High School exam results] who wants to be an architect. Yet just three years ago, he was virtually illiterate and predicted to fail his exams. Remarkably, his life has been transformed by a pair of blue-tinted glasses, which have enabled him to read properly for the first time.

Tom, who lives near Norwich and is a BTech art and design student, suffers from a neurological condition called Meares-Irlen syndrome, also known as visual stress. Without glasses, when he looks at a printed page, the text appears to jump about, blur and distort. Other symptoms include headaches and migraines.

Some degree of visual stress may affect up to 20 per cent of the population. When Tom was a child, his mother Sarah, 50, knew he was underperforming at school. 'He used to say the words were "fizzing". Eye tests showed his sight was normal, so his teachers concluded he was a slow learner.' 'Trying to read was exhausting and gave me headaches, so I couldn't concentrate for long,' recalls Tom.

It was not until three years ago, just months before his GCSEs, that he was diagnosed with Meares-Irlen. According to Arnold Wilkins, professor of visual perception at Essex University, the condition is a result of the neurons in the visual part of the brain firing too strongly. 'Different neurons in the brain react to different colours,' explains ProfWilkins. 'We discovered that using tinted lenses and overlays reduces the overactivity of these neurons.'

As a patient will respond differently to each hue, Prof Wilkins developed the Intuitive Colorimeter, a testing device that diagnoses the exact colour an individual needs. Patients are asked to read text on a machine that can generate 110,000 different hues. The correct shade will allow the patient to read clearly. This information is used to make the right tint of coloured lens. Tom's lenses are a dark, turquoise blue. When he first put on his glasses, he felt emotional. 'Suddenly, when I looked at a book, I could see how I should always have been able to see.'

By doing three hours of extra work after school every night, Tom passed ten GCSEs, with one A and three Bs. 'Mum cried when I got my results,' he says.

Precision tints not only help sufferers to read but also reduce eye strain and headaches. They have been shown to help dyslexics, migraine and photosensitive epilepsy sufferers and some children with autism.

There are now about 500 Colorimeters in community optometrist practices and a few NHS hospital vision clinics in the UK. The machine is also used in every college of optometry. However, lenses are not available on the NHS. 'I was horrified that parents have to pay around £200 for them,' says Sarah, who has joined the campaign to ensure that any child who suffers specific reading problems and otherwise considered a normal learner, receives a full vision test. 'The cost of NHS provision would be large,' says Prof Wilkins, 'but in the greater context of the expenditure on learning support, the glasses would pay for themselves.'

SOURCE



UK: Three former ministers suspended amid new scandal: "Three former Cabinet ministers have been suspended from Britain’s ruling Labour Party over allegations that they tried to trade access to government officials for cash, as the country’s Parliament faces a new set of ethics scandals. Former defense secretary Geoff Hoon, former transport minister Stephen Byers, and ex-health secretary Patricia Hewitt have all been suspended from Britain’s Parliamentary Labour Party, the party said in a statement late Monday night, only hours after a documentary caught them apparently boasting of their influence to a fictional U.S. lobbying firm.”





22 March, 2010

Islamic cartoon row is latest case of libel tourism to Britain

UP TO 95,000 descendants of the prophet Muhammad are planning to bring a libel action in Britain over “blasphemous” cartoons of the founder of Islam, even though they were published in the Danish press. The defamation case is being prepared by Faisal Yamani, a Saudi lawyer acting for the descendants, who live in the Middle East, north Africa and as far afield as Australia. Mark Stephens, a British lawyer who has seen a “pre-action” letter sent by Yamani to 10 Danish newspapers, said it “specifically says” he will launch proceedings in London.

Yamani is expected to justify the action by claiming that the cartoons, including one of Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban, were accessible in Britain on the internet.

Critics say the case is a political stunt and yet another example of how England has become the leading destination for “libel tourism”. The English defamation laws make it easier to bring and win libel cases here than in jurisdictions such as America that place greater emphasis on freedom of speech.

Stephens said the descendants could argue that the cartoons — which first appeared in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in 2005, sparking violent protests around the world — were a direct slur on them. “Direct descendants of the prophet have a particular place within Muslim society . . . By effectively criticising and making fun of the prophet you are, by implication, holding them up to scandal, contempt and public ridicule,” he said. “So it may be that they will suffer some kind of damage among their own community. The question is, is that defamatory in English law?”

Stephens said a diplomatic backlash could be sparked if a judge refused to hear the case being brought by the Oxford-educated Yamani. “A lot of judges would throw it out, but it is obviously a very highly charged issue and if they do throw it out it becomes political.”

In a previous case of libel tourism, a Saudi businessman sued an American author whose book on the funding of terrorism was published in the United States but sold 23 copies in Britain via the internet. The businessman was awarded more than £100,000 in damages and costs.

In another example, the Ukrainian Rinat Akhmetov successfully used the courts in London to sue a Ukrainian language website over an article mainly read in Ukraine.

Ebbe Dal, managing director of the Danish national newspaper association, voiced concern that Britain was being used to settle libel actions that would struggle to withstand scrutiny in other parts of Europe. “It is unacceptable that Yamani should go to foreign courts and come after us with threats, and it is a pity that the British system allows this to happen,” he said.

SOURCE



End-phase of the Climate Wars?

History may see the interview of CRU's Professor Phil Jones by the BBC's Roger Harrabin on 12 February 2010 as the opening of the end-phase of the long-running "alarmists versus sceptics" debate.

The gap between these two schools has never yawned as widely as media reports often suggest. Both agree that climate is always changing, that we have recently been in a warming period (with tiny temperature changes), that "greenhouse theory" has some validity, and that human activities are capable of impacting climate. The core dispute lies in the detection and attribution of `anthropogenic global warming' (AGW), and is brought out in the following exchange:

Harrabin - How confident are you that warming has taken place and that humans are mainly responsible?

Jones - I'm 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 - there's evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.

Sceptics say any human causation was trivial. This dispute was addressed directly:

Harrabin - what factors convince you that recent warming has been largely man-made?

Jones - The fact that we can't explain the warming from the 1950s by solar and volcanic forcing.

"The warming from the 1950s" didn't actually commence until 1975, and the 1975-2009 warming is identified by Professor Jones as a trend-rate of temperature increase of 0.161C per decade. This decadal figure is significant, but only just. In the second interview question, Jones says a trend of "0.12C per decade is not significant at the 95% significance level".

The world has been experiencing a long-term gentle warming since the end of the Little Ice Age. Professor Jones has said elsewhere[i] that this natural variability has averaged 0.11C per decade. So, the "extraordinary" recent warming that calls for explanation is the balance of 0.051C per decade. This is the smoking gun. It is the sole evidence that a measurable but unexplained increase in global temperatures has coincided with the post-1950 increase in human-induced greenhouse gas emissions. Jones says that this correlation is evidence of causation, because the IPCC has no other explanation.

The first rejoinder by sceptics is that this is an argument from ignorance. Humanity cops the blame solely because IPCC researchers know so little about all the vast natural forces and cycles influencing global temperatures that they can't pin it firmly on any one suspect. Cast in this way, the strength of the IPPC's case is inversely proportional to the depth of their climatic understanding. But why should homo sapiens be the default option?

Secondly, doubters say it is not surprising that IPCC models can't explain an infinitesimal heat anomaly of five-hundredths of a degree over a 10-year period. They have a track record of being wrong about much larger matters, including their prediction of 0.2C warming over the past decade. Phil Jones says there has been no significant warming since 1995.

Thirdly, a very important question arises as to the precision of the instrumental record, as well as all the statistical processing, that produces this key trend figure of 0.161C per decade. This seems an impossibly precise figure for all the world's temperatures, over lengthy periods, in all seasons, using diverse and changing instruments. What are the margins of error for the thermometers? What are the statistical confidence intervals for the homogenization of records? What of the spatial and temporal gaps?

Error bars narrow over time, but the IPCC accepts that even the most modern gridded readings contain errors of +/- 0.17. When this level is applied to Professor Jones' trend for 1975-2009 it overwhelms it. The anomaly which "we can't explain" is so small as to be swamped by the margins of error.

Doubts about the accuracy of data processing are heightened by the ongoing unavailability of worldwide raw data and metadata. CRU evaded Freedom of Information obligations and then confessed that computer data was lost. This pattern was mirrored by the actions of NIWA in New Zealand, and perhaps others. What of the `Climategate' accusations of manipulation, also mirrored in New Zealand? There are a great many known unknowns, and perhaps just as many unknown unknowns.

The fourth objection is that a trend of 0.161C per decade is NOT outside the boundaries of internal natural variability. This is where the BBC testimony of Professor Jones becomes invaluable in settling the argument:

Harrabin - Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?

Jones - The 1860-1880 period is only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different.

It is common ground that the warmings commencing in 1860 and 1910 were not human-caused, so they must have resulted from oscillations or other cyclical or chaotic aspects of internal variability. An unexplained warming trend of 0.16C/decade, which has occurred three times in the last 150 years is, by definition, within the natural variability of the global climate system.

The first two IPCC reports accepted that the medieval warm period (MWP) was the warmest period of the millennium, but this was challenged in 2001 by the 'hockey sticks' produced by Mann, Briffa, and others. These projects, which focused on tree rings in North America and Siberia, were illuminated by the BBC interview:

Harrabin- There is a debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was global.

Jones - For it to be global in extent the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern Hemisphere. There are very few paleoclimatic records for these latter two regions.

So the `hockey team' go under a bus, along with the IPCC's dogmatic claim that current temperatures are the warmest experienced for a thousand years. The MWP which was established by history records still stands - as yet unchallenged by proxy temperature records.

The fifth argument accepts that all three warmings since 1860 (and the MWP) could have exceeded the bounds of natural variability, if all were forced by the same external influence. Possibilities are legion and include solar flares, cosmic rays, orbital anomalies, undocumented cycles, aerosols, ocean currents and magnetic realignments. Nobody actually blames these warmings on volcanoes or solar irradiance, which are the only two influences considered by Phil Jones.

The sixth problem is that the correlation between the respective increases of GHGs and temperatures, which has always been poor, has become non-existent in the past 15years. Whilst CO2 emissions have rocketed since 1995, Phil Jones confirms there has been no detectable increase in global warming.

The real value of the Harrabin/Jones interview is the fact that straight questions received straight answers, for the first time in recent memory.

Professor Jones, as co-inventor of the modern climate change hypothesis, principal archivist of global temperature records, co-author of the IPCC's AR4, Nobel laureate, and former CRU director, is the most authoritative source imaginable. He received written notice of the questions from a long-sympathetic interviewer, and his responses were pre-vetted by his lawyers and by the University of East Anglia media office. There will be no retractions.

Even if humans have in fact been responsible for the "unexplained" warming of 0.051C per decade over 35 years, it is comforting to note that allowing this rate to continue will produce only 0.5C by the end of the century. As only about half of the human-caused warming is attributed to CO2, the valuation of any net benefit from abandoning fossil fuels is becoming very obscure indeed.

Five-hundredths of a degree Celsius per decade produces extra nocturnal warmth at about the same rate as we grow toenails. It is far too insignificant to be detected by human sensors or even by standard weather thermometers - which are usually rounded up to the closest whole degree. It is a statistical fiction, created by computer-splicing of incompatible datasets, derived from averages of averages of inconsistent instruments.

The controversy continues. But with the imprimatur of Phil Jones to the key fact that recent warming is not unusual, the debate will never be the same. The two sides are edging closer to a common set of facts; and it surely cannot be too much longer before common conclusions are drawn from those facts.

SOURCE



There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.



MORE INSPIRATION FROM BRITAIN

Four articles below from ONE DAY show what Americans can expect under Obamacare

The NHS bungles never stop

Man left infertile after wrong testicle disabled

A man was left infertile when he had part of the wrong testicle removed by surgeons. Doctors were supposed to cut away the patient's right epididymis - one of two narrow tubes connected to the testes which is used to store mature sperm. But the patient's left epididymis was removed by mistake at the West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmunds. Surgeons had to operate on his again to take out his other epididymis after the blunder was discovered and the man was left infertile.

Officials at the NHS hospital have refused to identify the man or confirm if he was paid compensation.

A major investigation was launched into the error and the hospital has now introduced more stringent procedures to stop it happening again. Nigel Kee, the hospital's interim chief operating officer, said: "The safety of our patients is our number one priority. "As such, we take any incidents which compromise safety extremely seriously.

"A thorough investigation into this case was carried out by an independent consultant, who advised us to introduce an additional hospital-wide policy giving clearer instructions on marking and verifying sites prior to surgery. "We implemented this recommendation immediately."

SOURCE



British TV star's death was 'unnecessary and preventable': Her doctor launches attack on NHS

Jade Goody's death was preventable and a result of 'incompetence and neglect' by the NHS, a leading doctor and Harley Street consultant claimed today. One year after the 27-year-old died on March 22, Dr Ann Coxon said Goody's symptoms - which included heavy and irregular bleeding, pain and abnormal smear tests - were 'glaringly obvious'.

The former NHS doctor claimed the reality television star had a tangerine-sized tumour which medical experts failed to spot. 'There should have been alarm bells ringing,' she told The Sun. 'Jade's death was completely unnecessary and preventable. She died of neglect and incompetence.'

Despite strong evidence of cervical cancer, Jade did not suspect anything serious was wrong due to her medical history. 'She'd had abnormal smear tests since she was 16 so by the time she was 27 it didn't worry her much, because she didn't really know what it meant,' Coxon said. 'It had never been properly explained to her.

'After she was diagnosed she said to me, in that typically Jade way, "I'm not daft. If I'd known it was to do with cancer, I'd have been checked out every three months". She added: 'Jade realised she had been let down. She simply said, "Sometimes people make mistakes".'

The mother-of-two, who became a star as a contestant on Big Brother, refused to attend scheduled smear tests after being told she could not have any more children, Coxon alleged. This was nine months prior to her diagnosis.

Jade was given an ultrasound at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow, Essex, in August 2008. She then flew to India to appear in a reality television show after doctors had confirmed she could travel. However, results of a smear test - only performed because a nurse noticed she had skipped appointments - revealed cancerous cells. Goody received the news she had cervical cancer on camera and flew back to the UK where she was treated by Coxon.

The doctor said: 'An ultrasound should be able to pick up lesions just 1.2mm wide, and Jade had a tumour the size of a tangerine. It should have been blindingly obvious.'

Jade underwent an emergency hysterectomy, chemotherapy and radiation therapy - but it was too late to save the star. 'She probably had cancer for at least a year before her diagnosis. The abnormal smear tests were signs that she was high-risk,' said Coxon. 'She was only diagnosed because of one nurse bothering to do her job.'

SOURCE



Girl, 9, saved by optician after NHS doctors fail to spot plum-sized brain tumour SIX times

For money reasons, diagnostic scans are avoided

A nine-year-old girl whose brain tumour was missed by doctors six times was saved by opticians after her worried mother took her for an eye test. Shanice Bailey could have been left paralysed by a rare plum-sized 'schwannoma' tumour growing out of a nerve and pressing on her brain stem. She visited GPs six times between September 2009 and January this year complaining of headaches and sickness but was repeatedly diagnosed with asthma and sent away.

Only when Shanice developed a squint in her left eye did her mother Laura, 27, decide to take her for an eye test - where Specsavers optician Nadia Ahmed immediately spotted the growth. Ms Ahmen told Ms Bailey to take her daughter straight to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King's Lynn, Norfolk, where a scan revealed the two inch tumour. Eleven days later surgeons removed the tumour in a nine-hour operation.

Despite spending a month in hospital with side-effects Shanice is now at home recovering with her family. Ms Bailey, from Wisbech, Cambs., said she would be forever grateful to the optician. ‘It's so lucky we went to Specsavers when we did, otherwise the effects could have been devastating. ‘I kept taking Shanice back to the doctor as her symptoms got worse and more frequent. ‘Originally they said her symptoms could mean anything but then they thought it was asthma because she was coughing when she was sick. ‘She has been so brave it was unbelievable - she hasn't cried once.

‘If they hadn't have found the tumour she could have died because it was blocking fluid at the top of her spine. ‘I don't necessarily blame the doctors but they should be given more training to check for problems in these areas. Just because it's rare doesn't mean they should ignore it.’

Laura took Shanice to the Clarkson Surgery in Wisbech over five months where she was seen three times by one GP and by a different doctor on every other occasion. On their last visit, the doctor referred Shanice for an appointment with a paediatrician on January 20 to work out why her mystery symptoms were persisting.

But she had the eye appointment on January 3 where optician Ms Ahmen used a magnifying light that picked up swelling on the optic nerves.

The schwannoma tumour is usually only found in elderly women but the benign growth was coming out of Shanice's hyoglossal nerve and blocking fluid at the top of her spine. A week after her surgery the youngster also suffered from a vasospasm, where blood gets into the brain, and needed a second operation to drain cerebrospinal fluid.

Shanice said she felt great after her ordeal. ‘I feel so much better now. I can do things I couldn't do before like my favourite street dancing classes,’ she said.

Trevor Lawson, a spokesman for Brain Tumour UK, said Shanice's type of tumour was extremely rare in such a young child. ‘To my knowledge in the last five years no children were reported to have suffered that from type of tumour, which was responsible for only six per cent of all adult cases,’ he said. ‘The challenge for doctors is that brain tumours can present with common symptoms and we regularly support people who were diagnosed after an eye test.’

Paul Eagling, manager of Specsavers in Wisbech, said he was ‘extremely pleased’ they had been able to spot the growth. ‘Benign tumours can leave people with long term problems and we believe every brain tumour case should be given the same level of attention as cancer. ‘People tend to only go to the opticians when they have problems with their eyesight but regular visits to the optician are vital for checking general eye health.’

SOURCE



Hundreds may have died in British ambulance blunder

An inquiry is being demanded into ambulance services after a Sunday Telegraph investigation uncovered a major flaw in the 999 [emergency number] system that may have left hundreds dead. Doctors, politicians and charities have called for the inquiry to examine how a mistake by ambulance chiefs led to delays in despatching paramedics.

The scandal is exposed by the death of a woman who was left for 38 minutes after an emergency call was received despite the fact that she was unconscious and breathing abnormally, having fallen 12ft. Call handlers following automated advice provided by a computer program categorised the case of Bonnie Mason, who died last May, as a lower priority than that of a drunk woman who had fallen on the pavement. By the time paramedics reached Mrs Mason, 58, she could not be saved.

An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has uncovered a critical danger placed in the software used by most ambulance services. It meant that for a decade, 999 calls in which a patient lay unconscious and struggled to breathe after a fall of 6ft or more were “downgraded”, with call handlers told not to send the most urgent response. Some services told operatives to “override” the flaw, but The Sunday Telegraph has established that five out of 12 of England’s ambulance trusts told call handlers not to diverge from the automated advice.

Last night experts demanded an inquiry to establish how many patients had suffered because of the blunders. John Heyworth, of the College of Emergency Medicine, said the potential risks were devastating. He said: “Any system which isn’t prioritising accurately needs review because the consequences are so catastrophic.”

Peter Walsh, of the charity Action Against Medical Accidents last night expressed horror at the dangers. He said: “Who knows how many people this could have harmed and how many may have died? Given the volumes of 999 calls involving people who have fallen and are unconscious, there is a risk that thousands were affected. Who knows how many might have died – it could be hundreds, but even if it’s just one needless death, we need a full review.”

The problem occurred when a government committee which governs the use of computerised 999 software allocated a lower priority to falls of 6ft or more than had been recommended by the system’s makers. As a result, the automated system instructed call handlers to class such calls as category B even if the person was also unconscious or breathing abnormally – life-threatening conditions which should have had the most urgent response. The Department of Health said the risk had been eliminated from the latest version of the software, introduced last year.

SOURCE





21 March, 2010

Riot by Leftist street thugs in England

Despite their misleading name, The UAF are lineal descendants of Hitler's brownshirts. They deliberately converged on a patriotic demonstration with the aim of breaking it up. The arrests tell the story. Some of the patriots hit back, of course. Predictably, a common headline in news outlets was: "Riot police break up right wing protest". A more accurate headline would be: "Police fail to stop attack on patriotic rally"

At least 67 people have been arrested and several injured in violent clashes between right-wing and anti-fascist extremists and UK police during a town center demonstration in England. Controversial right-wing group The English Defence League (EDL) organised the rally in Victoria Square, Bolton, in England's north. A counter-demonstration by Unite Against Fascism (UAF) was also being held, and hundreds of police officers battled to keep control of the rival groups.

About 4000 protesters descended on the town, with roughly equal numbers in both camps. "This is not a peaceful protest and we are facing a lot of hostility. We will take swift action when confronted with disorder. "The number of arrests already made is a clear indication that this is not a peaceful protest and some demonstrators are determined to cause trouble. "The actions of some demonstrators is resulting in injuries to others. This is not acceptable."

Riot police and mounted officers armed with batons tried to keep the crowds in check in front of the town hall. Police dogs were deployed in a bid to control the crowds and a police helicopter was also dispatched. At least 55 of those arrested are from the UAF and nine are from the EDL, according to Greater Manchester Police.

Weyman Bennett, the UAF joint secretary who organised the rally, was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit violent disorder, police said.

Several protesters were taken to the hospital for treatment to minor injuries, police said. Two members of the public were also injured by protesters and taken to a nearby shop for treatment. Most of the protesters, from both groups, later left the square.

Officers frogmarched EDL demonstrators back towards the railway and bus stations, while they continued to chant: "We want our country back." UAF members left the square, chanting "Whose streets? Our streets." The EDL describes itself as a peaceful, non-political group campaigning against "militant Islam." But ugly scenes also marked one of their protests in Manchester last year, with 44 arrests and 10 injuries.

The two factions were meant to stay within two designated areas in the square, separated by steel barriers. But a large number of protesters "intent on causing disorder" broke away from the protest site, police said. Assistant Chief Constable Garry Shewan, from Greater Manchester Police, said earlier: "There have been unwarranted attacks on police lines that have resulted in injuries.

SOURCE (More pix and commentary here)



Hate-filled British Leftists close down under-fives' art club because children are 'too middle-class'

A children's centre set up by Labour to provide care for local youngsters has been forced to close... because the families using it were judged too middle-class. Paint Pots Arts Club was established in 2000 under the Government’s flagship £7billion Sure Start scheme, with the aim of teaching under-fives to paint, draw and sing. It is one of the busiest of Britain’s 3,500 Sure Start centres and caters for 500 children of all backgrounds who live within a two-mile radius. But despite its popularity, council bosses withdrew the club’s funding after deciding its users were too affluent.

Just last week Schools Secretary Ed Balls defended Sure Start, claiming that the Conservatives planned to slash £200million from the service, and declared that the scheme meant that ‘every parent of a young child will get help and advice on parenting, childcare, health and employment’.

However the education department of Labour-controlled Hackney Council in East London – known as The Learning Trust – was concerned the Paint Pots Art Club was not being used by enough poor people and pulled the plug on it. The area covered by Paint Pots is one of the most diverse in the country, including deprived council estates and houses worth £1million.

Paint Pots director Ella Ritches said the Learning Trust, which runs 19 childcare centres on behalf of the Government, ordered her to target more deprived families in 2008. She and her co-director leafleted nearby estates and organised numerous meetings with leaders in the local Turkish and Kurdish communities to try to spark interest. But in January this year, Mrs Ritches was called to a meeting with officials from the Ann Tayler Children’s Centre, a larger Sure Start programme which the Learning Trust used to fund Paint Pots. She discovered that the Learning Trust had scanned the postcodes of all parents using the centre and decided the home addresses indicated users were not sufficiently ‘vulnerable’.

She said: ‘Sure Start services are supposed to be available to everyone. Middle-class mothers struggle with work, sleep deprivation and post-natal depression just like any other mother. 'But the Learning Trust officials concluded that 68 per cent of all users were white. I told them that just because they are white does not mean they are middle-class. But they said you could work out their properties’ value from the postcodes.’

Mrs Ritches then received a letter from the Ann Tayler Children’s Centre, dated February 3, which said: ‘I am currently reconfiguring the budget for the next financial year to ensure that we can support vulnerable families and link play services to their needs. ‘Based on our monitoring information, the Art Club is not reaching the families who have the most difficult needs. Accordingly, I have to advise you that the contract for the Art Club will end on March 31.’

Ms Ritches added: ‘For two years we tried to involve “hard-to-reach” families from the Turkish community and the council estates but most were not interested in attending. ‘This decision penalises the middle-classes for being good parents.’

Regular Paint Pots user Eva Hawkins, 32, who worked in television before giving birth to her daughter Olive 18 months ago, said: ‘I live in a one-bedroom flat with no garden, so I need to come somewhere where there is space for Olive to let off steam. It’s a disaster it is closing.’

A Learning Trust spokesman said: ‘According to data collected by the centre, 54 per cent of the children who use Paint Pots regularly live outside its catchment area. ‘In light of this information and an increase in the number of vulnerable families requiring additional support within the centre’s catchment area, a decision was made to divert funding into direct support for these families.’

SOURCE



The Bloomsberries: Spoilt far-Leftist brats of the 1920s and 30s

Not a good augury for the spoilt Leftist brats of today


Standing on top of a statue with an arm and a leg held aloft a naked young woman strikes a pose

The rather provocative young woman in question is artist Dora Carrington, who in the early part of the 20th century was linked with the Bloomsbury Group. Such was their impact on history that one small corner of central London - Bloomsbury - is now indelibly linked with the Bohemian circle of friends, which included Virginia Woolf, EM Forster and critic Lytton Strachey.

Today the Bohemian group of writers, artists and intellectuals are remembered as much for the complicated romantic entanglements that led to them being described as 'artistic lions' who 'lived in squares and loved in triangles'. As these images show, members of the group did not live by more traditional constraints of the time, and were at ease in each other's company - with or without clothes. But perhaps significantly, Woolf is invariable clothed.

The photographs are part of a remakable archive featuring hundreds of intimate letters photographs of the group, which helped define British culture in the inter-war period. Open to the public for the first time, the unique archive comprises of thousands of pages of previously unseen correspondence between Bloomsbury luminaries and 30 albums of photographs, many of them nude shots. The archive, on display at King's College, in Cambridge, is charted through the letters and photographs of two lesser known members of the group - the writers Frances Partridge and Rosamond Lehmann.

But through them it gives a insider's view of pivotal events such as Virginia Woolf's suicide in 1941 and that of of the artist Dora Carrington in 1932. Woolf, author of Mrs Dalloway and To The Lighthouse filled her overcoat pockets with stones and drowned herself at the age of 59.

After her death in spring 1941 her brother-in-law, Clive Bell wrote to Partridge: 'I'm not sure whether The Times will by now have announced that Virginia is missing. 'I'm afraid there is not the slightest doubt that she drowned herself about noon last Friday ... Her stick and footprints were found by the edge of the river. 'For some days, of course, we hoped against hope that she had wandered crazily away and might be discovered in a barn or a village shop. 'But by now all hope is abandoned ... the loss is appalling; but like all unhappiness that come of 'missing', I suspect we shall realise it only bit by bit.'

The archive also offers a glimpse of history in the making. The group started as a circle of intellectuals who had studied at Trinity and King's Colleges, Cambridge, and began meeting at a salon in a house near Bloomsbury Square, central London. Their friendships were to last a lifetime despite the complicated tangle of love affairs between them.

The Bloomsbury group continues to fascinate and in 2002 Nicole Kidman played Virginia Woolf, right, in Stephen Daldry's film The Hours. In the 1995 film 'Carrington' Emma Thompson took the role of Dora Carrington and Jonathan Pryce as the openly homosexual Lytton Strachey with whom she was in love

'Many of them were quite free with sex as a reaction against their Victorian upbringing and seemed to have a very selective conscience,' said archivist Patricia McGuire. 'The letters are very revealing because everyone wrote to Frances Partridge and confided their secrets and intimate thoughts. 'There are also lots of pictures and almost everyone in the group is naked at some point in a least one shot, apart from Virginia Woolf.'

Lehmann and Partridge first became friends at Cambridge University after World War I. Lehmann, a famed beauty, became one of the most celebrated novelists of the 1920s and 1930s. Partridge, once described as having the 'best legs in Bloomsbury', infiltrated one of the group's infamous love triangles. She married Ralph Partridge, who was the ex-husband of artist Dora Carrington. In a bizarre and ultimately tragic triangle, Carrington was besotted with open homosexual Strachey, who in turn was in love with Ralph.

When Strachey died of stomach cancer in 1932 a heartbroken Carrington shot herself two months later. But the bullet missed its mark and she was still alive when her ex-husband and his wife arrived at the house hours later, a 'horror' also documented in one letter in the collection.

Miss McGuire added: 'In a way, these two women belonged to a generation that could only have existed between the wars. 'They had education, training and rights but they also had lots of free time and didn't necessarily have to keep a house. 'They had well-developed points of view, were articulate about their emotions and at the same time struggled with their bohemian lifestyles and the more conservative, older generation.'

SOURCE (More pix at link)



British police can't ask for Christian names (could offend other faiths)

We read:

"Police officers have been banned from asking for ‘Christian’ names for fear of offending other religions. fficers taking down a suspect’s particulars must now refer to their ‘personal’ or ‘family name’ as the word ‘Christian’ could offend Muslims, Sikhs and other faiths, according to new diversity guidelines.

They state bobbies on the beat should refrain from using phrases such as ‘my dear’ or ‘love’, when addressing women for fear it may cause embarrassment or offence. Well-meaning gestures like handshakes or putting a comforting arm around a victim or grieving family member are also prohibited as it could be deemed ‘unprofessional’.

They are also warned not to use terms like afternoon or evening as it could confuse people of ‘different cultural backgrounds’ about the time of day.

The booklet also contains a section on appropriate terms to describe ethnic origin, suggesting ‘mixed parentage’ or ‘mixed cultural heritage’ should be used instead of ‘mixed race’.

Staff are warned that when speaking to someone from Africa or Asia, they should refer to their specific country rather than the continent as a whole.

The rulebook has been described by Kent Police Federation secretary Peter Harman as a ‘useful and educational reference guide to dealing with different communities’. But it has angered some rank and file officers who say it is politically correct nonsense.

One officer said: ‘Most of us are fully aware of how to treat people from different cultural backgrounds, but being told we can’t even ask what their Christian name is just plain ridiculous. ‘That is what we are brought up with—Christian name and surname—and to be honest if you had an officer ask for your personal name and family name it’s just going to confuse people....

Source

The new challenge for British universities is to unravel Labour’s mess

Years of bad schooling cannot be put right at an academic university by massaging the entry requirements

‘Legacy” is a word that has sneaked into political fashion. It has begun to replace “delivery”, which has proved to be so awkward. Labour grandees are often said to be considering their political legacies and I wonder what they really do believe they have bequeathed to the nation over the past 13 years. It is just conceivable that they imagine they have achieved something with education, education, education, as promised, but their educational legacy is a perfect blueprint for what not to do.

Take universities. You could not hope for a better example of how to get everything wrong. The Blair-Brown years have demonstrated that it is actually quite easy to bring down standards in universities, wreck the chances and dash the hopes of hundreds of thousands of teenagers and reduce employers to complaining publicly about the quality of today’s graduates.

Labour’s legacy to education is a disastrous combination of inflation and devaluation. They have inflated schoolchildren’s expectations, urging them to believe that 50% of young people should go to university. To meet such expectations, they have continued with the Tory initiative to inflate the supply of universities by giving the status to all kinds of tertiary education colleges and deflating the idea of what a university is. Meanwhile, they devalued the standards of A-levels to inflate the numbers of children who could pass them to go to more and more universities.

Naturally this became more and more expensive. Even though the government spent more and more, it was never enough, so universities were obliged to deflate their teaching and pastoral care to lower, cheaper levels. At the same time they devalued their degree standards to inflate the numbers of students passing and getting high marks. Meanwhile, students had to borrow more and more money from a government loan scheme to pay for these places, so some were forced to drop out and others graduated with terrifying debt loads. They now face the world as graduates in inflated numbers with inflated expectations, inflated debt, devalued degrees and deflated prospects.

The consequences are making themselves painfully felt right now. Last week the government was forced to announce that more than three-quarters of universities in England are to have their budgets cut for this September — some by nearly 14%. And the government’s Higher Education Funding Council for England warned that yet further cuts may be imposed later in the academic year. We can now watch for the cuts to be made in precisely the wrong places — such as the disgraceful axeing by King’s College London of its chair of paleography, the UK’s only chair in the subject.

These cuts come in a year that has seen a record 23% rise in the number of students applying to universities. Last week the Conservatives claimed that 2750,000 sixth-formers with good qualifying grades will fail to get into a university course this autumn. The head of Ucas, the universities clearing house, advised students who had not got into their chosen universities to forget about the clearing system and “to reappraise their aspirations” instead. That is a lot of disappointed sixth-formers in a generation that Labour has deliberately encouraged to see university education as both entitlement and necessity.

There can no longer be any doubt that A-levels have got much easier. The number of pupils getting three A grades, once a rarity even at top schools, is now one in six — twice as many as when Labour came into office. Reliable long-term research from Durham University shows that individuals of the same general ability level would now be expected to score about two A-level grades higher than they did 20 years ago. The result, as Tesco for one has pointed out, is that it is now hard for employers to differentiate between candidates. The same is true at university entrance: Imperial College London warned in 2008 that grade inflation had made A-level results “almost worthless” in choosing between university applicants.

For those who do get to university, debt is often a heavy burden. A study published last week found that 28% of students expected to accumulate debts of £20,000 at university. Meanwhile, the student loan system, supposedly monitored by the government, is an alarming mess. Last week a damning report from the National Audit Office (NAO) blamed both the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Student Loans Company (SLC) for failing to learn from last year’s mishandling of the grant application system. The head of the NAO questioned last week whether the SLC is actually capable of dealing with twice as many applications this year. What this means for students is long delays and constant anxiety. It is a disgrace.

After all this worry and sacrifice, new graduates are not rewarded by the expected good jobs and high salaries. Work is scarce and employers are sceptical about their qualifications and are saying so openly. The independent Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) recently published a manifesto calling on all political parties to abolish the target of getting 50% of under-30s into university. Carl Gilleard of AGR said this target has affected degree standards and creates problems for employers of graduates because they cannot be sure of the value of certain degrees: “It does not help young people’s life chances or represent a good return on their financial investment. It does little for the reputation of our universities either.”

No doubt all this was done with high-minded intentions in the name of equal opportunities. But a university in the true sense of the word is not a place of equality.

It is a place of excellence. Academic excellence is elitist, of its nature. Years of bad schooling cannot be put right at an academic university by massaging the entry requirements or providing remedial classes. It is too late for that. As Chris Patten, the chancellor of Oxford University, said last week, diluting entry standards to make up for shortfalls in secondary education would soon mean we no longer had world-class universities.

What is so strange about Labour’s education policy is that it is at the same time both egalitarian and snobbish — egalitarian in insisting that all should have degrees and that higher education colleges are universities and snobbish in the old-fashioned belief that only a posh academic university degree really matters. And the tragedy of Labour’s education legacy is that is has done nobody much good.

SOURCE

Dangerous boots?



Squeezing into killer heels, many women are happy to endure a little pain in the name of fashion. But medical experts have warned that the trend for cheap Ugg boots is a price too high to pay. They have said that knock-off versions of the designer boots are crippling a generation of young women, 'literally breaking' their feet. With just six months of wear women could saddle themselves with a lifetime of foot deformities, backache and pain in their feet.

And a phrase has even been coined for the gait of devoted wearers - the Ugg 'shuffle' - which describes the lopsided, pigeon-toed way in which cheap versions of the boots force women to walk.

Top brand Ugg Australia boots, which cost from £150, are worn by celebrities including Kate Moss and Cameron Diaz, sparking a craze for the flat, furry generic boots. But low-cost imitations often provide inadequate foot support.

With each step the wearer's feet slide around. This can cause the feet to splay which flattens the foot arch and leads to wear and tear on the joints in the feet, knees, hips and back. As a result leading podiatrist and chiropodists have seen a stark rise in the number of women suffering toe deformities, backache and pain in their feet. They have expressed their concern and warned against children wearing the unsupported boots as their feet are still forming, increasing the risk of long-term damage.

Dr Ian Drysdale, head of the British College of Osteopathic Medicine, said: 'Because these boots are warm and soft, young girls think they are giving their feet a break. In fact, they are literally breaking their feet. 'Their feet are slipping around inside. With each step, the force falls towards the inside of the foot and the feet splay. This flattens the arch and makes it drop. 'The result can be significant problems with the foot, the ankle, and ultimately, the hip.'

Consultant podiatric surgeon Mike O'Neill called the cheap Uggs 'disastrous'. 'As the foot slides around, you get wear and tear on the joints on the inside of the foot. The ankle is in the wrong position, the thigh bone also changes position and you get an abnormal movement in the pelvis, which leads to back problems.' However he agreed that cheap Uggs are fine to wear at home, but not for walking long distances.

While there is often little to visibly distinguish a well-made pair of boots from a badly made pair, even brand leader Ugg Australia admits its boots are 'comfort' not 'performance footwear' and that buyers should be aware of 'knock-offs' which lack reinforced heels or insoles of their boots.'

SOURCE



MORE OF WHAT OBAMACARE HAS IN STORE FOR AMERICANS

Three new reports from just ONE DAY about Britain's NHS below

Life-saving cancer scans delayed in NHS funding crisis

Vital scans for patients who may have cancer are being postponed by up to six weeks as the NHS grapples with a major funding crisis. GPs have also been ordered not send elderly people for osteoporosis scans, to refer children with tonsillitis to specialists - or even allow men to have vasectomies. In addition, wards are threatened with closure and thousands of key staff have been told to work shorter hours or take unpaid 'career breaks'.

Charities and patient groups said the delays could have disastrous consequences if early signs for potentially fatal conditions go undetected.

The drastic cutbacks illustrate a funding nightmare threatening to overwhelm the NHS within months, as trusts battle to save millions of pounds in the wake of the credit crunch.

Last night the Royal College of Physicians warned ministers and NHS managers against 'slash and burn' cuts. In a strongly-worded pre-budget briefing to MPs, they said: 'Following a decade of growth, the NHS is being asked to deliver considerable efficiencies. 'There is a risk that without careful management, a supportive rather than confrontational culture and a high degree of medical engagement, any effort to reduce productivity could easily subside into a process where services and posts are indiscriminately slashed and burnt. 'Over-hasty decisions now to cut back on the medical workforce, biomedical research, and audit programmes could have implications for generations.'

Ministers say the NHS needs to save 20billion pounds over the next five years. Although both Labour and the Tories have pledged not to cut NHS funding, rising demand and an ageing population means the money will not go as far as in the past, necessitating cuts.

Dozens of hospitals are already considering closures of A&E departments and maternity wards, while others are asking staff to consider voluntary redundancy and early retirement. The respected King's Fund think tank says it may be necessary to freeze NHS pay until 2014.

One NHS trust under pressure is North East Essex primary care trust, which last month asked its GPs not to refer patients for MRI scans - used to diagnose possible tumours and kidney disease - and other tests until April 1.

Sarah Woolnough of Cancer Research UK said delays in MRI scans could run the risk of early signs of cancer being missed. She said: 'Speedy access to diagnostic tests and quick referral can help to diagnose cancer as early as possible which can ultimately lead to better treatment for patients and improved survival.'

Matt Bushell, director of commissioning at the trust, said: 'As part of the procedures to ensure budgets are balanced at the end of the current financial year, we have, just for the month of March, asked GPs to defer referrals for a very small number of non-urgent, therapeutic services: heel scans, vasectomies, ENT and nonurgent MRI scans. 'We have maintained priority for urgent MRI scans. These arrangements will remain in place only until April 1 2010.'

Other examples of cuts across the NHS include:

* GPs in Hertfordshire being told to get 'approval' before referring patients for hysterectomies, tooth extraction and removal of skin 'lumps and bumps';

* Planned closures of A&E wards at Whittington Hospital in North London, Queen Mary's in Sidcup, Chase Farm in Enfield and others;

* Almost 4,000 workers at Stepping Hill hospital in Stockport, and 2,000 at Scunthorpe general hospital, being asked to consider early retirement, voluntary job cuts or shorter hours.

Tory health spokesman Andrew Lansley said: 'This will be very worrying for patients. The NHS has had increased funding this year, so just where has the money gone?'

Matthew Elliott of the TaxPayers' Alliance said: 'It's infuriating that despite billions of pounds being poured into the NHS, patients are having treatment delayed thanks to a failure to plan properly.'

SOURCE



Blundering NHS surgeon in £10m lawsuit after 100 women patients take him to court

Bungling surgeon George Rowland was allowed to operate for almost FOUR YEARS after the first alarm was raised

More than 100 women suffered botched bladder surgery at the hands of a gynaecologist who continued to work for four years after the alarm was raised. Patients of George Rowland suffered chronic pain or worsening bladder symptoms after he operated on them. But it was only after doctors expressed concern about his behaviour that the scale of his mistakes was realised and he was told to stop carrying out procedures.

Yesterday, as a report criticised managers for not picking up on the problem sooner, it emerged that more than 100 of his patients are taking legal action - leaving the NHS facing a compensation payout of as much as £10million.

Ian Cohen, of Goodmans solicitors which is representing most of the women, said: 'There have been devastating, life-changing outcomes for many patients. We have a substantial number of women who should never have had that surgery, who have been left worse following the surgery. Some have been left in a bad state, with chronic pain. 'Some women have complete difficulty passing urine. 'The trust's board appears to have allowed an obsession with targets and anxiety about potential damage to its reputation - and that of the consultant - to bar earlier action to prevent patient harm.'

Mr Rowland, aged in his 50s, was a respected urogynaecologist performing hundreds of operations a year at Aintree Centre for Women's Health in Liverpool.

In 2004 concerns were raised that he was carrying out more surgery than colleagues, often 'bundling' different procedures into single operations, such as hysterectomies with surgery for incontinence. But it was not until colleagues began expressing concern in 2007 that an investigation was launched. Mr Rowland was not suspended until the following year.

Last year the General Medical Council barred him from performing urogynaecological procedures until further notice, and hundreds of his patients were recalled to the hospital for a further consultation. Some complained they had been left in chronic pain and that their incontinence had not improved. Lawyers representing others say the surgery was simply inappropriate for their conditions.

The highly regarded Liverpool Women's Hospital, which runs the Aintree centre, commissioned an independent report into the affair, and yesterday criticised bosses for not noticing the mistakes earlier. It pointed out that Mr Rowland was responsible for picking up such problems as the clinical governance lead - a clear conflict of interest, the women's lawyers say.

Its report found warning signs dating back to 2004 were not acted upon, criticised the 'cultural divide' between staff at the Aintree centre and the main hospital, and said more needed to be done to stop doctors from working in isolation from their departments. Jonathan Herod, clinical director of gynaecology, admitted Mr Rowland often worked alone. If the case was repeated, 'it would be picked up on straightaway', he added.

Trust chief executive Kathryn Thomson said: 'We decided it was important to look at governance practices more widely to ensure we learnt as much as possible.'

SOURCE



£250,000 victory for war vet who sold home to pay care bill that NHS should never have charged him

NHS bureaucrats don't care about people at all. Saving money is their no.1 priority

The family of a war veteran suffering from Alzheimer's has won more than £250,000 from the NHS for nursing home fees he should never have been charged. The payout, which is believed to be the biggest of its kind, was awarded to relatives of Leslie Terry, 86, whose home was sold to pay for his £3,500-a-month care. Despite being totally immobile - he has not been out of bed for four years - and in need of constant nursing, Mr Terry was denied funding under the NHS's ' Continuing Care' scheme.

The scheme is meant to fully fund patients with health needs resulting from conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. It applies mainly to those who are in nursing homes, or long-term hospital or home care.

Mr Terry's nephew, Bryan Talbot, 71, from Banbury, Oxfordshire, who mounted a legal challenge to recover the backdated fees covering eight years, said: 'My uncle has been unable to get out of bed for four years, he is at risk of choking, has to be fed, and is unable to communicate verbally. 'I felt it was clear that his health needs meant he should be the responsibility of the Health Service. I am amazed that, despite him having annual assessments, the NHS did not inform me about possible available funding. It's important people take advice. 'We've had a rough ride to get to this point but I want other people to know you don't have to sell your home to get the care you need. He has received first class care from very professional staff at Gloucester House Nursing Home.'

The payout comes after three families last year won a total of £350,000 - with the family home sold in two cases - after being wrongly denied Continuing Care. So far, more than £9million has been recovered by solicitors representing 2,000 families who claim they have been wrongly charged nursing home fees. Under English law, the elderly must pay for residential care unless their needs are health-related, when the whole cost is met.

However, Department of Health criteria on who qualifies for health needs are subject to interpretation by individual NHS trusts. The Daily Mail's Dignity for the Elderly campaign has repeatedly highlighted the unfairness of the system, which means many families of Alzheimer's sufferers are being charged for long-term nursing care. Many are denied funding by Primary Care Trusts, which have to foot the bill, because the disease does not automatically make the patient eligible for NHS 'continuing care'.

Mr Terry, who joined the Army in 1942 and fought in India and Burma, retired from his job as a porter at Sevenoaks Hospital in Kent, in 1983 before succumbing to dementia in his 70s. He never married. Mr Terry also suffers from a severe skin disease, which needs monitoring.

Solicitor Lisa Morgan, of Welsh law firm Hugh James, who acted for him, said: 'Under current government policy, there should be a full assessment on health needs, which determines whether patients pay for their nursing care fees. 'That is not happening in many cases. With the cost of nursing homes averaging £675 per week, families are still being left with huge fees to pay. There is a clear disparity across the country and, despite national guidance, Primary Care Trusts still apply their own judgment.'

Michelle Mitchell, charity director for Age Concern and Help The Aged, said: 'The system for deciding where the line is drawn between free NHS Continuing Care, and paid for social care has been a mess for years. 'We are still very concerned older people may wrongly be forced to pay for their care when it should be free. We strongly encourage anyone who believes they are unfairly missing out to fight for their rights.'

SOURCE





20 March, 2010

Why does such a well-informed man as Martin Rees support global warming?



When there are NO scientific facts (only a poorly thought-out 19th century theory) behind claims of man-caused global warming, one has to wonder why many prominent scientists support it. There are probably a variety of reasons but, given the Left-lean of academe, the opportunity it offers for more control over the despised "masses" is the obvious explanation.

In some cases, however, there may be other forces at work. An obvious second motive is the hunger for self-advertisement. Making scary utterances and posing as a "saviour" of the planet is obviously great for personal publicity. I suspect that Martin Rees is in the second category. He has got himself into all sorts of prominent positions and he is in addition a small man. Small men are often quite hilariously preoccupied with being taken seriously. Note in the interview excerpted below that he mentions not one scientific fact. He just says: "I am an expert. Believe me". Quite contemptible.

Maybe I should play the same game. I am a much-published psychologist so you should trust my expert diagnosis of what moves Martin Rees.

I find the last sentence in the excerpt below quite sickening. The likes of Martin Rees seem to think that their sh*t doesn't stink. He certainly conveys the contempt for the masses that I have mentioned.

Lord Rees of Ludlow, astrophysicist and Astronomer Royal, is running a little late. Not delayed by the hiccups of mere mortals, mind - the Tube, traffic, sick children - but a high-level meeting on global nuclear arms control and disarmament. As president of the Royal Society and Master of Trinity College Cambridge, Professor Martin Rees is one of Britain's foremost scientific brains, a cosmologist of world renown and a revered public intellectual.

When he arrives back in his office in an elegant Georgian terrace on Pall Mall, his PA, clearly practiced, places a cup of tea in his hand as if it were a relay runner's baton. He sits down deep into a blue velvet armchair looking, quite frankly, exhausted. A small man still blessed with the lean physique of a marathon runner, Rees is quietly spoken, but you sense the steel within. The corridor leading to his office speaks of the pantheon of scientific greats that have preceded him as Royal Society presidents or fellows: Samuel Pepys, Charles Darwin, Charles Babbage, Sir Joseph Banks. Behind his work table, an oil portrait of Sir Isaac Newton, nearby a remarkable and contemplative pencil sketch of Albert Einstein.

The Astronomer Royal's field might be theoretical physics and the very frontiers of science, but right now his greatest preoccupation is Carl Sagan's "little blue dot", our own planet Earth, and the imperatives posed by climate change are foremost in his mind. I ask him if he is aware that an Australian opposition leader effectively lost his post due to climate change scepticism among his political colleagues and he allows a small laugh: "Yes, yes, yes."

Then, a pause and the gentleman scientist leaves no doubt about what he thinks about that: "It is unfortunate that there is a debate about the science, and the reason that comes about is that many members of the public can't discriminate between genuine expertise and strongly-held opinions that aren't based on expertise. "To give an analogy: if you suffer from some unusual disease, you may go on the internet and get all kinds of alternatives [for treatment], but you would be very foolish if you attached as much weight to all the blogs on the internet as you would to a qualified specialist on the subject.

"And I think that in assessing the evidence for potentially dangerous climate change, it is very important that members of the public should behave in the same way that they would if some medical issue was at stake. They should accept that not everyone's opinion is of the same value and that those who have credentials and have studied the subject do deserve to be listened to."

In his celebrated book, Our Final Century, Rees pondered the threats faced by humans in the 21st century, from natural events such as super-eruptions to man-made catastrophe such as nuclear terrorism, bio-engineered viruses and over-population. The prognosis, from such an eminent thinker, is disquieting: humankind, he estimated, has a 50 per cent chance of surviving the next century.

Today, however, the scientist is keen to temper this world view with a glass-half-full message: salvation is possible in the hands of intelligent, global-thinking leaders working hand-in-hand with an ethical and united scientific community...

More HERE

The trust in experts among Warmist true believers is sort of touching. There is another example of it here. The many times that experts have been wrong seem unknown to them. And they accuse conservatives of being "authoritarian"! Those who live in glass houses ...



Thou shalt not enjoy thyself: British local council bans ice cream vans from trading outside schools because they 'encourage unhealthy eating'

There's absolutely no proof that ice-cream does any harm, of course. Leftists are uninterested in evidence. They just KNOW

The jingle of the ice cream van tells schoolchildren summer is on the way. But the traditional treat has been banned by one council, which claims they encourage unhealthy eating. Bureaucrats at Hillingdon council have declared that vans which park outside schools will be impounded under new rules. They claim they were forced to act because there is 'a need to encourage healthier eating habits in children'.

But the new regulations have been blasted as petty by ice cream sellers, who insisted that head teachers welcome them with open arms. Peter Bhogal, 45, who has worked as an ice cream man for the past 26 years, said: 'Ice cream is a dessert, it's not unhealthy. 'An ice lolly is only unhealthy if you have three or four in one go. I go round to schools in the afternoon and the head teachers even invite me there. 'Rules and regulations make our work more challenging, and the recession has made it harder too, as people are more cautious with their money.'

The vans have also been banned from high streets on the grounds that they 'cause congestion', leaving sellers with only residential streets in Uxbridge, Ruislip and Hayes in West London.

Mr Bhogal added that in some areas of London vans were being confiscated for flouting the rules. He added: 'I have seen traders who have had their vans confiscated in Westminster for not observing the rules. It costs £30,000 to 40,000 for a van, it's not right. 'You have to observe the law. But if the sun shines, I'll be out there, its a British tradition and they can't ban that.

The new healthy eating regulations apply to secondary schools, primary schools, special schools, under-five centres and nurseries. Kathy Sparks, deputy head of environment and consumer protection at Hillingdon Council, said the new rules were necessary to encourage healthy eating. She said: 'Hillingdon Council is not banning ice cream vans but is tightening rules on where they can stop and trade in light of ongoing complaints and concerns from residents and health organisations. 'Ice cream vans now need a licence to trade within the borough and a number of conditions of this licence will be in place. 'These include not trading outside schools where there is a local and national need to encourage healthier eating habits in children. 'The restrictions will also include town centres in a bid to ease congestion problems and respond to noise complaints that have been received.'

Last April, nearby Harrow council banned all ice cream vans for fear they would cause a nuisance or make children fat, as part of a general crackdown on fast food vans. The council will act on rogue ice cream sellers after being tipped off by residents or council officers in the area. Ice cream vans who break the rules will be given a Fixed Penalty Notice of £100, and if it is not paid they face a conviction in the Magistrates' Court and fine of £1,000.

Father-of-four Mr Bhogal said he feared ice cream sellers would quit as a result of the rule changes. 'You will definitely see a reduction in the number of vans in this area this summer because people will close their businesses. "The people who make these decisions will be completely unaffected by this but I have a family to feed and I have a family business to maintain. 'I was speaking to a friend of mine yesterday who does two schools and he was seriously thinking about finishing because of this. 'We are all licensed. We all do things by the book and pay tax on time and this is how we are repaid.

'It is a tragedy because eventually you won't see ice cream vans and they are a British institution.' He added: 'No-one at a school has ever complained to me and I have customers who I served when they were kids. Now they bring their children to me for a treat and that is how ice cream should be treated - in moderation. They can buy a lot worse at fast food restaurants.'

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UKIP makes freeze on immigration central to election campaign

A five-year freeze on immigration will be the centrepiece of the UK Independence Party’s election campaign, as the party’s former leader compared the fight against the EU to the struggle against Hitler in the 1930s. A doubling of prison places, workfare for benefit claimants, support for a free Tibet and a campaign for “real matrons" also feature in the party’s first full manifesto.

Launching the document in Milton Keynes today, Nigel Farage, the party’s former leader, said the main parties’ willingness to cede power to the EU would make the coming election, "the most boring, pointless, futile general election that has ever been held in the history of this country". Dismissing David Cameron as ‘the friendly game show host that leads the Conservative Party’, Mr Farage said that only UKIP could be trusted to give voters a real say in how Britain is governed.

"Straight talking" will be the campaign slogan, and Mr Farage said that other parties were unwilling to tell the truth about immigration. "We’re already overcrowded and we don’t want the population to go to 70 million," he said. "The only people who should decide who settles here should be the British people, but they can’t do that in the EU."

Mr Farage won cheers from the hall when he mentioned his recent harangue in the European Parliament, during which he compared the new president of the European Council, Herman von Rompuy, to a "damp rag" and a "low-grade bank clerk". "I will apologise to bank clerks the world over but I will not apologise to the president of Europe," he said today, before comparing the vilification he had received for the speech to the treatment of those who spoke out against the threat of Nazi Germany. "Those that were prepared to speak out were condemned in exactly the same terms. The entire political class said “we mustn’t be nasty to that nice Mr Hitler”’, he said.

To cries of ‘not yet’ from the hall, he added: "I am not pretending that the EU poses us a military threat - certainly not with Baroness Ashton in charge of the European army."

Mr Farage will give the party its first realistic change of a Westminster seat when he challenges the Speaker, John Bercow, in Buckingham. Mr Farage, who resigned as party leader to contest the seat, said he was standing because "I think he as Speaker of the House of Commons epitomises what is wrong with our professional class of career politicians."

In 2005 UKIP won just over 2 per cent of the vote, but party strategists are hoping for four times that share this time around as they capitalise on anger over the expenses scandal and public distrust of politicians. UKIP is also less divided now than it was five years ago, when it was rocked by battles over Robert Kilroy-Silk, the MEP and former daytime TV host, who defected to form his own party. The party’s election co-ordinator, James Pryor, urged the delegates to "end the infighting" for the campaign, adding to laughter, "We can start again after the election".

UKIP's first election posters focus on immigration, with the slogan "5,000 new people settle here every week. Say no to mass immigration".

But for the first time, the party has developed policies across the range of Westminster responsibilities, proposing a law and order crackdown, with new rights for homeowners to defend their property, longer prison sentences, a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ rule for persistent offenders and repeal of the Human Rights Act. UKIP has also committed to banning the burka and promoting a pro-British policy of ‘uniculturalism’ instead of ‘multiculturalism and political correctness’. Saving imperial weights and measures and a sceptical stance on global warming are also promised.

Once outside the EU, the party aims to build closer links to the Commonwealth and promote democracy around the world, including Tibet, Taiwan and Burma.

The party would allow private companies to bid to provide NHS services and the deputy leader, David Campbell Bannerman, promised to ‘bring back real matrons, not pretend ones’ with greater powers to keep hospitals free of super bugs.

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The unbelievable NHS again

Bungling foreign nurse can KEEP his job... despite barely speaking English and 'worrying' lack of competence

An Indian nurse who could barely understand English and refused to learn the language was told yesterday he could return to his hospital and carry on working. The decision by the Nursing and Midwifery Council came despite despite the watchdog commenting on his ‘worrying’ lack of competence.

Biju John, 38, had insisted he was able to understand instructions and wrote to the council stating: ‘I never be confused at all.’ But staff felt they were ‘carrying’ him and did not feel safe leaving patients in his care, an NMC hearing was told.

Mr John also had a limited knowledge of basic nursing skills and did nothing when a patient was struggling to breathe, it was claimed. The NMC heard Mr John should have started basic airway management as the man gasped for breath after coming round from an operation. But instead he had to be helped by a colleague who rushed over when she heard the man’s wheezing from the other side of the anaesthetic unit at Leicester Royal Infirmary.

On another occasion Mr John almost caused a patient to go into shock when he wore latex gloves to treat him despite being told he was allergic to the material. The hospital then devised a set of objectives for the nurse, including meeting the required standard of English so he could effectively communicate with staff and colleagues. But he failed to reach the targets and was kept on supervised practice.

A further incident on October 20, 2004 led to Mr John being suspended and a disciplinary meeting was scheduled for January 20, 2005, but he quit seven days before. He was later reported to his regulating body. Mr John, from Cambridge, was found guilty of seven charges relating to his lack of competency when he worked at the hospital between July 2003 and December 2004. These include failing to complete basic skills required of a nurse, not demonstrating his English was sufficient to communicate with colleagues effectively – which gave rise to the incident with the latex gloves – and failing to take appropriate action when a patient’s oxygen levels dropped. He was cleared of mistaking the Surgical Assessment Unit for the Surgical Acute Care Unit.

NMC chairman David Kyle said his lack of competence was ‘worrying’ but ‘not irremediable’. He added: ‘Although the registrant was a caring nurse, he lacked confidence, was reluctant to act on his own initiative and could not be trusted to work unsupervised. ‘Other nurses felt they were carrying him. ‘Anaesthetists were nervous about leaving their patients in his care and adopted a practice of returning to check on their patients because they were concerned about them.

‘The panel has heard evidence of a worrying lack of competence demonstrated over a considerable period of time and that lack of competence, in some basic areas of practice for any registered nurse, particularly in communication, is still present.’

But the panel ruled Mr John could return to work subject to conditions. Mr John must tell the NMC where he is working, remain supervised, complete a personal development plan and an English language test he complies with the conditions he will be allowed to return to normal practice after 18 months.

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What works in education reform

At lunch yesterday I met Anders Hultin, CEO of Gems Education in the UK, which is associated with the highly successful Konskapsskolan school chain in Sweden. So I was getting some good tips about what makes Sweden's school voucher system work. I thought I might pass on a few of them to the Tory schools spokesman Michael Gove MP, who wants to engineer the same supply-side revolution here. Though he probably knows it all already, but just can't say it because of political correctness.

In Sweden, the average cost of a municipal education follows the choices of parents. Even if they send their kid to a private school, that budget – about £6,500 – follows. To get the money, private schools are not allowed to charge top-up fees, and there is no academic selection. But it's easy to get a licence to enter this system, and 1,100 new schools have sprung up because of it. Most, about 800 of them (Gove please note), are profit-making. Many are small schools but in big chains (some with turnovers of £100m and more), which actually have a successful model for organising and running schools, and take that successful brand to one school after another.

Nor surprisingly, this supply-side revolution, a deregulation of the school sector, has brought plenty of new investment. In the UK it might cost £25m to set up a new school. In Sweden, it costs the state nothing, because parents, teachers, companies and others raise the money they need – and usually work out ways to do things far cheaper than the state can. And it works. the new schools have 20% better educational outcomes.

There seem to be four lessons from all of this. (1) Make it easy for new people to come in and provide education. Standards, yes, but allow people to start small, maybe renting empty office or warehouse space, rather than insisting that everything has to be built and run as the state builds and runs it. (2) Allow profit making, because that is what drives the investment and the risk-taking. (3) Don't keep subsidizing failure, but reward success. (4) Let people spread their success. That is what makes the Swedish system work: it's about knowing how to deliver education effectively, and taking that expertise far and wide.

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Racist Scots

Not really surprising. The Scots have always hated the English

Edinburgh University was yesterday accused of 'anti-English' bias after discriminating against applicants from the South. Admissions rules posted on its website state that 'additional weighting' will be given to students from Scotland and the far north of England. The move aims to ensure 'local' applicants get on popular courses.

But headteachers at leading English public schools condemned the policy as 'potentially illegal and racist' and unfair to English families whose taxes support Scotland.

The move triggered suspicions that the university - whose past students include Prime Minister Gordon Brown - is trying to change the social make-up of its campus. It has traditionally been a magnet for students from aristocratic and society circles, attracting the reputation of being 'English and posh'.

One of the unhappy English headteachers is Richard Cairns, of Brighton College. He said only two out of 27 applicants to Edinburgh had so far been successful this year. Yet more than half of pupils have been given offers by other prestigious universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol and University College London. They include Jo Saxby, 17, who was welcomed by Oxford, Bristol and Exeter but rejected by Edinburgh, his second-choice, without even an interview. 'You feel completely helpless,' he said. 'It feels quite unfair to feel you are not being judged on merit.'

Mr Cairns, who used to teach in Scotland, said: 'I asked around schools in the South East. They have all had the same experience. Edinburgh has opted to turn in on itself in a manner that strikes me as potentially illegal and racist.'

The university - among the top 20 in the world and a member of the Russell Group of leading UK colleges - is understood to be the only UK institution to give priority to applicants from certain areas. Its website stated: 'We want to make sure that local applicants are not prevented from studying their chosen subject.' It added 'additional weighting' will go to students who live in Scotland, Cumbria, Northumberland, Durham, Teesside, and Tyne and Wear.

Andrew Halls, head of King's College School, Wimbledon, South London, said he had been 'quite struck' by the lack of offers from the university this year. 'Edinburgh has been ruthless and, at worst, is adopting a depressingly xenophobic approach. 'They are losing a lot of very able candidates who would love to study in Scotland.'

A spokesman for the university said: 'The percentage of English entrants has risen year-on-year over the past few years. 'In 2009, 41 per cent of UK entrants were from England.'

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Britons powerless to remove illegal immigrants living in their back gardens

At first sight, the piles of rubbish and debris strewn across this garden make it look just like a rubbish tip. But on closer inspection, it is revealed to be a makeshift camp for desperate Eastern European immigrants. Around a dozen are camping out in residents' gardens, sheds and even their trees as they cannot afford their own homes.

Those who live in the street in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, have been told they are powerless to remove the trespassers taking shelter on their land. Groups of immigrants have moved into the gardens of at least six properties since November last year, leaving a trail of cider bottles, bags of human waste and drugs needles behind them.

Though homeowners have appealed for help, the police and council say they cannot arrest the trespassers - who have no passports and are mostly from Eastern Europe - because they claim it is a civil, not a criminal matter. The immigrants gained access to the land through an open alleyway and sleep on dirty mattresses, using rolled-up blankets as pillows.

Ian Treasure, 41, one of the homeowners affected by the camps, said a man named Joseph from the Czech Republic was living in his garden coal shed. Despite six phone calls to Peterborough City Council pleading with them to evict the immigrants and remove the mountains of dumped rubbish, he could not get the man to leave. Mr Treasure said: 'The area has become overrun. It is disgusting and the worst thing is that nobody is doing anything about it. Every day it gets worse. 'It all started in November. I was looking out of the window and I saw a mattress in my coal shed. I went out and it turned out I had a lodger there. 'I'm not sure how many there are because I try to stay away from them but I'm fed up because they regularly drink in our gardens and take drugs.'

Mr Treasure said he had asked the man, who speaks broken English and has scabs on his face, to leave dozens of times. 'The angriest I have got was the first time I saw drug needles there in January. I freaked out,' he said. Mr Treasure added that he was incredibly frustrated that the council and police had done nothing to help him. He added: 'The police's hands are tied. All they can do is just move them on and then they would be back so it would be a waste of time.'

Ricky Smith, 23, attempted to remove the squatter in his shed after catching him defecating on his lawn on Wednesday night. He said: 'I slung all his belongings into a pile and told him to get out. I haven't seen him since so hopefully he has got the message. 'I caught him defecating on my lawn, where my dog plays. I had to build a fence to keep him out of that part of the garden so my dog doesn't get ill playing in his mess.'

A spokesman for Cambridgeshire police said that the makeshift camps were not a criminal matter. He said: 'Anybody is allowed to use reasonable force to stop people trespassing and get them off their property - much like a bouncer in a pub or club. 'If there is some sort of confrontation then we can step in and prevent a breach of the peace, but we cannot act directly against the trespassers.'

A spokesman for Peterborough council said: 'We are aware of a number of people who are sleeping in these gardens. 'We will be working to help them access the services which are available to them.'

Peterborough's MP Stewart Jackson today said Labour had failed to deal with immigration problems that have led to jobless migrants camping in British gardens. The Tory MP said: 'The Labour government was warned that uncontrolled immigration would cause these sorts of problems. 'They have ignored Peterborough's needs and local taxpayers have been forced to foot the bill for their foolish and misguided policies.'

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19 March, 2010

The sky really has fallen: Some incompetent British social workers have been fired

Six social workers at a Birmingham City Council, criticised over the death from starvation of a seven-year-old girl have been sacked, after they showed "no sign whatsoever" of meeting expected standards. It emerged this morning that the staff at Britain’s biggest local authority were dismissed over the past year for not doing their jobs properly at the council which is taking part in a serious case review into the death of Khyra Ishaq. The girl died in May 2008 from starvation; her mother and stepfather were both jailed last week for her manslaughter.

Colin Tucker, director of children’s social care at the council who was brought in last year after Ofsted inspectors branded aspects of Birmingham City Council’s children’s department as "inadequate", told BBC news: "We are not appointing some staff, as well as that we have dismissed six staff in the last year. "There is a clear indication we are serious about our standards. "They did not adhere to standards and expectations that we laid down. "They showed no sign whatsoever that they were keen to do so, so we dismissed them."

The dismissals at the council follow a number of child deaths over recent years, although they are not believed to be directly linked to Khyra's death. More dismissals could follow once the serious case review is published.

An official report last year on child protection services in Birmingham written by the council's own councillors condemned them as “not fit for purpose" after the spate of young deaths. The criticism was made after eight children known to social services died in only four years after suspected neglect and abuse. The report found that there had been “a decade of underperformance”, with dozens of initiatives and projects being launched and then shelved, resulting in little improvement.

Lack of senior management was a “major risk” and a shortage of experienced staff “hampered progress”. One in five social workers was off work sick at any one time, undermining any continuity of care for children at risk.

Khyra Ishaq died when her body succumbed to an infection after months of starvation at her home in Handsworth, Birmingham. She had been removed from school in December 2007 and social workers made several attempts to visit her home. Her mother, Angela Gordon, was jailed last week for 15 years over her death, while her former partner Junaid Abuhamza was jailed indefinitely with a minimum term of seven-and-a-half years.

During the trial, judge Mrs Justice King said "in all probability" Khyra would not have died had there been "an adequate initial assessment and proper adherence by the educational welfare services to its guidance".

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British woman harassed because she was pregnant

A Mothercare worker claims she was ‘bullied’ into keeping silent about her pregnancy in case it upset colleagues who had experienced abortions or miscarriages. Traci Winchcombe, an assistant manager with the baby clothing giant, says she was told not to mention she was expecting in case it hurt the feelings of staff who had suffered birth traumas.

She told a tribunal that her former store manager's attitude towards her ‘changed’ when she broke the news that she was pregnant in March last year. An assistant at Mothercare claims she was asked not to discuss her pregnancy at work in order to avoid upsetting her colleagues. The 32-year-old said Jacque McDonald suddenly became ‘abrupt’ and ‘rude’ in her dealings with her at a high street branch of the store in Canterbury, Kent.

Ms Winchcombe, from nearby Westgate-on-Sea, said she was reduced to tears after the harassment she received daily at work got ‘worse and worse’. She told an employment tribunal in Ashford: ‘I didn't understand why I was not allowed to mention my pregnancy. ‘This really upset me - I felt I had been singled out. I was three months pregnant and felt some of my staff should know - I was beginning to show. ‘I felt Jacque and Mothercare wanted to get rid of me because I was pregnant.'

Ms Winchcombe claimed she was ordered not to discuss her pregnancy with other members of staff who had suffered abortions or miscarriages because staff were 'getting fed up with it'.

Mrs McDonald denied asking Ms Winchcombe not to mention her pregnancy but said she did request that she stop discussing abortions in front of staff, some of whom had suffered miscarriages. She added: ‘I found out from one of my staff members that she had been discussing abortion on the shop floor. ‘I felt this was inappropriate and asked her to refrain from these conversations on the shop floor. ‘I was aware of one employee in the store who had suffered two miscarriages.’

Ms Winchcombe was dismissed from her post in May after a series of administrative mistakes - unrelated to the bullying claims - over her handling of till procedures and gift cards. She was fired after admitting her performance had been at ’50 per cent'.

Whilst accepting those failures, Ms Winchcombe still alleges she was singled out and treated differently to other staff who were less harshly dealt with for similar breaches. And she insisted when she sent a text message to Mrs McDonald - informing her about her pregnancy - that the treatment towards her ‘deteriorated’ further. She added: ‘I don't know why she was like that - her attitude just changed. ‘It was fine when I first started but after I told her I was pregnant everything just got worse.’ ‘She would frequently shout at and abuse me in front of staff and colleagues.’

One colleague supported Ms Winchcombe's claims, saying she overheard ‘coarse to the point of shocking’ treatment directed against her. An internal review by an area manager found no evidence of bullying or discrimination.

Mrs McDonald said she had offered Ms Winchcombe the company's ‘maternity matters’ guidance and made sure she was not required to do any heavy lifting. ‘I deny my treatment changed in any way - I did not frequently shout at or abuse Traci in front of customers. ‘Given the nature of our business, a number of female staff become pregnant - I am well used to them taking maternity leave. ‘We talked about her pregnancy and we went through the maternity matters pack. I am abrupt and can be direct at times but only if someone does something wrong.

Chris Thompson, representing Mothercare, added: ‘Particularly in a store like Mothercare if there are conversations about abortion it's probably not a very sensible topic for the shop floor.’ He accused Ms Winchcombe of lying. A decision on the case is expected within six weeks.

If successful Ms Winchcombe - who is not claiming unfair dismissal - could be awarded a compensation sum up to £25,000 for ‘injury to feelings’.

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Brits finally grow tired of the bumptious Susan Greenfield

The smart Jewish girl who got herself made a Baroness but still wanted more attention. As I also have said on various occasions, her colleagues say that she was more interested in self-promotion than in science. The last sentence below is a polite version of my view about the crap she speaks

During her 12 years at the helm of the Royal Institution, Susan Greenfield has come to be known as “anything but beige”. Undeniably a gifted communicator, she was seen by many as a breath of fresh air blowing through a stuffy establishment when appointed as director. Her supporters see her as an inspiration to aspiring young scientists, a campaigner against sexism in the lab and a smart businesswoman.

However, she has accumulated at least as many enemies as fans. Her detractors accuse her of being more interested in self-promotion than science promotion.

Lady Greenfield has maintained a research career as Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Oxford, where she focuses on brain physiology and has founded three biotechnology companies investigating diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

In 1994, Lady Greenfield became the first woman to give the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, and in 1998 she became its first female director. She has appeared frequently on television, written several popular science books and was a recipient of the Royal Society Faraday Medal for science communication. She is probably also the first female scientist to have appeared in photoshoots for Hello! and Vogue and is known for her flamboyant dress sense.

After criticising the Royal Society, Britain’s national academy of science, for not having enough female fellows, she was nominated for fellowship in 2004. But some who felt that her scientific credentials were unworthy leaked her candidacy, details of which are normally kept secret, and she was subsequently turned down.

Most recently, Lady Greenfield has courted controversy by warning that the internet — in particular social networking sites — may harm children’s mental development. Others argue that there is insufficient evidence to back the claims.

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A spineless British council allows a State school to be taken over by aggressive Muslims

A headmistress forced from her job after a campaign by two Muslim governors to give Islam a greater presence in a state school is entitled to £400,000 damages, the Court of Appeal has ruled. Erica Connor, 57, left the New Monument primary school in Woking, Surrey, because of stress after she was accused of Islamophobia. A deputy High Court judge ruled in March last year that Surrey County Council had failed in its duty to protect her and to intervene when the actions of the governors created problems. He awarded her £407,700 damages. The council had appealed against the ruling, claiming it was not liable in law and had not acted negligently in dealing with the problem.

Lord Justice Laws, giving a ruling on Thursday, said that Mrs Connor, who was promoted to head of the school in 1998, had suffered psychiatric damage and had to stop work in 2005 and retired a year later on ill-health grounds. The school had a 80-85 per cent Muslim intake and problems began in 2003 when Paul Martin, a Muslim convert, was elected a parent governor and Mumtaz Saleem was appointed as a local education authority governor. Mr Martin started making allegations about anti-Muslim comments by members of staff, which led to an investigation by Mrs Connor. She found that all the staff denied the allegations, which she said had demoralised them. An official review also found no evidence of deliberate racism or religious bias but said the governing body had become dysfunctional. The High Court had been told Mr Martin tried to stir up disaffection in the community against the school and Mr Saleem was verbally abusive in school meetings.

Although during the first five years that Mrs Connor was in charge of the school there had been good relations with the local Muslim community and improved results, the situation changed when the two men were elected as governors. Judge John Leighton Williams ruled in the High Court that the men had an agenda to increase the role of the Muslim religion in the school and that this, combined with the authority’s failure to protect Mrs Connor, had led her to suffer serious depression.

When Mr Martin was removed from the board of governors in June 2005, he wrote a letter of complaint saying it was because he had been raising complaints of institutional racism within the school. A few days later a petition was circulated calling for Mrs Connor’s removal from the school and containing “defamatory and offensive remarks”, the appeal judges were told.

Lord Justice Laws said the High Court judge was right to find there had been negligence on the part of the council. He said it was an unusual case — “partly because of the council’s lamentable capitulation to aggression”.

Lord Justice Sedley said: “Surrey County Council found itself faced with the unenviable task of responding in an equitable fashion to an inequitable campaign designed to capture a secular state school for a particular faith which happened to be that of a majority of the families whose children attended the school.” He said the council had gone wrong by trying to compromise rather than protecting the head, the staff and the school.

“The picture that emerges from the careful and thorough [High Court] judgment is of a local education authority which had allowed itself to be intimidated by an aggressively conducted campaign to subvert the school’s legal status, a campaign which was plainly destabilising the school and placing the headteacher under intolerable pressure.”

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British hospital trusts warned over poor infection control

Five health trusts were issued with warnings about serious breaches in hospital infection control by the health regulator last year.

An assessment of hospital infection standards resulted in the five warnings from the Care Quality Commission but the trusts responded quickly to all five warnings, which are no longer in a “red flag” category on the issue, the regulator said.

In last year's infection assessment 42 of 167 trusts were found by the CQC to be in "breach" of NHS registration requirements, although the regulator said all but five were minor breaches.

Ambulance services in the north-west, east of England and east Midlands were the worst offenders, and received formal warnings for the state of vehicles and stations. The regulator said all had responded and now met the requirements in follow-up assessments.

The CQC carried out the assessment as part of preparations for a new licensing regime beginning on April 1. Several trusts are expected to receive conditions in the registration process because of concerns about some core care standards.

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Incompetent butcher doctors free to work in the NHS

An elderly woman died after a German locum doctor carried out one of the “worst botched operations” seen in a British hospital, an inquest heard yesterday. Ena Dickinson, a former NHS volunteer, was left unable to walk after the locum made a series of errors during a routine hip operation at Grantham & District Hospital. Werner Kolb removed bone that should have remained intact and severed a major artery during the operation.

Mrs Dickinson, a 94-year-old former nurse and Red Cross volunteer from Barrowby, Lincolnshire, was left bleeding to death on the operating table. It was only when a consultant at the hospital stepped in that her life was saved. However, two months after the August 2008 operation Mrs Dickinson died. Kathy Ingram, her daughter, said that after dedicating her life to the NHS it had “let her down” when she needed it most.

Orthopaedic specialist Professor Angus Wallace told the inquest it was “the worst botched operation” he had seen. The professor, who is based at Nottingham’s Queen’s Medical Centre, was so concerned about the case that he reported the doctor to the General Medical Council.

Last week MPs heard how a “gaping hole” in the rules on foreign doctors working in Britain is putting patients at risk. The Health Select Committee is currently investigating out-of-hours-care following the death of David Gray in Cambridgeshire in 2008. He was killed by another German doctor, Daniel Ubani, who administered 10 times the normal dose of diamorphine. Dr Ubani had flown to Britain to provide out of hours care under a contract from the local health authority.

In 2004, ministers gave GPs a controversial new contract that allowed them to give up responsibility for out-of-hours care. The General Medical Council said it is prevented from testing the qualifications of European locums who are brought in as cover.

Dr Kolb, 51, who is based in Stuttgart, was given an interim suspension by the GMC for 18 months last year. Giving a narrative verdict, coroner Stuart Fisher described it as a “most disturbing case”.

Mrs Ingram said: “We feel let down. We don’t quite understand how he got to operate on my mother. “My mother was somebody who was involved in the NHS and supported it even into her retirement working on the tea bar at her local hospital. After all those years the NHS let her down.”

A spokesman for United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust said: “The Trust has apologised to Mrs Dickinson’s family for mistakes made during her operation. “Errors were made by the surgeon concerned which were rectified immediately by a senior member of staff. After the operation Mrs Dickinson was recovering well and assessed to be medically fit for discharge by 25 September 2008.

“The Trust has done everything possible to learn from this incident and to prevent it happening to another patient. Changes have been made to the recruitment of medical staff, including the appointment of locums, and a new surgical safety checklist produced by the World Health Organisation has now been implemented throughout the Trust.”

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Corruption on the British Left: "The union behind the British Airways strike has received £18million from taxpayers under Labour, The Daily Telegraph can disclose. Unite, and the two unions that formed it, received the public money under two little-known funds to improve management and training for its members. It has been the biggest beneficiary of one of the schemes, the Union Modernisation Fund, and received a sixth of all the money given out under the Union Learning Fund. The figures have led to fresh claims that Britain’s biggest union has taken over the Labour Party after donating almost £30million over the past decade and employing a key adviser to Gordon Brown as its political director. It comes ahead of a planned three-day walkout by Unite members of BA’s cabin crew this weekend, which is set to cause travel chaos for thousands of passengers. Francis Maude, the Shadow Cabinet Office Minister, said: “This really looks like money laundering - taxpayers' money is being funnelled into Unite then put straight back into Labour's coffers. “It's a real racket, with taxpayers' money being round-tripped into Gordon Brown's re-election fund. We must have much greater transparency on what unions are receiving from the Labour Government in return for their backhanders.”





18 March, 2010

British High court knocks back compulsory servicing of homosexuals

High Court reverses ban on Catholic Care’s anti-gay adoption policy. Other Catholic agencies have cut their ties with the Church or given up adoption

A Roman Catholic child-adoption society has won a landmark High Court battle that could allow it and other Catholic agencies to discriminate legally against gay couples. Catholic Care, which serves the dioceses of Leeds, Middlesbrough, and Hallam, South Yorkshire, launched the legal action in an attempt to continue its work finding homes for children.

Catholic Care, which provided adoption services only to married couples in keeping with current Catholic doctrine, was seeking an exemption from the Sexual Orientation Regulations. The 2007 regulations made it unlawful to discriminate on the ground of sexual orientation in the provision of goods or services to the public. The Government previously rejected appeals for an exemption for Catholic agencies but ministers gave them a 20-month transition period, which ended last year. Other Catholic agencies have already given up adoption or cut their ties with the Church.

Catholic Care argued at the High Court that it had achieved particular success in finding adoptive parents for “hard to place” children. The support after adoption, funded by giving from within the Church, also meant that its adoptions had a lower failure rate.

Mr Justice Briggs, sitting in London, allowed the charity’s appeal and ordered the Charity Commission, which made the original decision against Catholic Care, to reconsider. The Charity Commission was ordered by the judge to pay the legal costs of Catholic Care, which is linked to the Roman Catholic diocese of Leeds, unofficially estimated at more than £100,000.

Arthur Roche, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Leeds, welcomed the ruling. He said: “We look forward to producing evidence to the Charity Commission to support the position that we have consistently taken through this process that without being able to use this exemption children without families would be seriously disadvantaged. “Catholic Care has been providing specialist adoption services for over 100 years. We have helped hundreds of children . . . as well as offering ongoing and post-adoption support to families.”

Jonathan Finney, head of external affairs at Stonewall, the gay rights charity, said: “It is clearly in the best interests of children in care to encourage as wide a pool of potential adopters as possible. All religious adoption agencies receive funding or subsidy in some form from the public purse. There should be no question of discriminatory behaviour by any organisation that benefits from the taxpayer.”

Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society, said: “It is unfortunate that the court has enabled Catholic Care to exploit what was obviously an error in the drafting of the equality legislation. The loophole this created was never intended to be used this way.”

The Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement also condemned the decision. The Rev Sharon Ferguson said: “We do not doubt that Catholic Care has done good work in the past but it should only continue to do so within the current legal framework. It makes no sense and is entirely unjust to allow exemptions of this nature. Would Mr Justice Briggs have reached the same decision if Catholic Care had asked to be allowed to discriminate against couples on the grounds of their race or physical ability?”

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Lazy British social workers let another kid die

If only they had been told that the offender disliked homosexuals, they would have LEAPT into action



Children's services today blamed 'human error' for failing to act on information about a man with a history of violence who then went on to kill his new-born daughter. Christopher Sellman, 24, had a conviction for assault and had been cautioned for child neglect before he was found guilty of killing 25-day-old Tiffany Sellman Burdge.

Social services in Kent were contacted by a relative before she was born informing them that Sellman's partner was pregnant with his child. But a failure to register the information meant Sellman went unchecked and he went on to kill Tiffany, who died from a fractured skull and bleeding to the brain. The baby girl died at Kings College Hospital, in London, on November 1, 2008, after Sellman called an ambulance earlier in the day telling the operator that she was losing colour and had 'gone floppy'. Tiffany was taken to the Kent and Sussex Hospital in Tunbridge Wells, before being transferred to the London hospital where a CT scan showed the extent of her injuries.

Sellman was arrested and charged with her murder, but it was reduced to manslaughter part-way through his trial at Maidstone Crown Court. He was convicted yesterday.

Today, Kent County Council conceded that an independent review of the case had identified a 'missed opportunity' within children's social services to share information. Rosalind Turner, managing director of children, families and education at the council, said: 'This was an isolated example of human error. 'We have a comprehensive training and professional development programme in place to make sure our social workers are equipped to do the difficult and challenging task that they are required to do.'

Ms Turner said the death was 'deeply distressing' and that the council had worked with the local safeguarding children board to examine the build-up to her death and identify lessons to be learned. She added: 'Human error is always a possibility. In this case, on a single occasion, a member of the family mentioned to the social worker that Christopher Sellman's partner was pregnant. 'The social worker, who had a 30-year career with an exemplary record, was not dealing directly with the young woman who was pregnant and this information did not get registered. 'We deeply regret this.'

David Worlock, chair of the Kent Safeguarding Children Board, said: 'This is a very distressing case and I would like to express my sadness at Tiffany's death. 'The death of any child is deeply upsetting and when a child dies in these circumstances it is only right for all of the agencies involved to look at their practices and seek to learn lessons wherever possible.

'An independent expert from the NSPCC was commissioned by the Kent Safeguarding Children Board to take a thorough and impartial look at all of the agencies' actions to identify what lessons could be learned. 'The findings have been accepted and several recommendations made, all of which are being acted on. 'The Kent Safeguarding Children Board will monitor the impact of these on practice in Kent. The board has an important role to play in evaluating how effective safeguarding arrangements are in Kent. 'Along with all local safeguarding children boards, it will be strengthening this quality assurance role to help improve the safety and well-being of Kent children.'

Every year, between 17,000 and 20,000 children are referred to Kent children's social services. In the year to March 2009, the total number of referrals was 17,358 children, of which 1,233 were children with child protection plans. In the case of Sellman, the court heard that throughout their investigation, police found he failed to give an accurate account of what had happened to Tiffany before his 999 call. It was also established that he told a number of people at least five different versions of events.

During the trial, which began on February 1, he denied both the murder and the manslaughter of his daughter, claiming that he had accidentally dropped her. Sentencing of Sellman, previously of Tunbridge Wells, was adjourned until April 28.

Following yesterday's verdict, Detective Chief Inspector Dave Chewter, of Kent Police, said: 'Tiffany was a well cared for baby, her mother Pamela looked after her with love and devotion. 'She left her daughter with Christopher, Tiffany's father, on just this one occasion whilst she visited family for the first time since the birth. 'When she left the house, Tiffany was well and had just been fed. She left her daughter in the hands of someone who should have been there to protect and keep her safe. 'Pamela's life has been turned upside down and to this day she continues to struggle with her terrible loss.'

The baby's mother, Pamela Burdge, said: 'The loss and pain I feel as a result of my beautiful daughter Tiffany's death is indescribable, I will never get over it. 'I will never be able to understand why Chris never told the truth, but I am relieved justice has been served.'

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Lazy British teacher lets boy die -- but no penalty



A boy of 11 who suffered an asthma attack at school was left dying in a corridor because a teacher was allegedly too busy to call an ambulance. Doctors believe Sam Linton could have been saved if he had received treatment sooner. Instead, he was left alone and gasping for breath because, it was claimed, his form tutor, Janet Ford, 46, refused to help him because she was in a meeting.

The teacher - who has not been suspended - allegedly told two of Sam's concerned friends to 'go away'. He was taken to hospital when his mother picked him up from school, but died hours later. Last night Sam's devastated parents, Karen and Paul Linton, launched a furious attack on staff at Offerton High School in Stockport after an inquest jury ruled their son was the victim of systemic failings and neglect. Mrs Linton, a company managing director, said she and her husband, a double glazing engineer, would take legal action against Stockport council.

She said: 'I am angry, very angry. When I arrived (at school), Sam was worse than I have ever seen him before. 'As soon as I saw him, I knew it was serious. He had a grey tinge to his skin and his mouth was blue. I had never seen him like that before in all of the 100 or so attacks he'd had. 'The fact that no one called an ambulance during the hours that Sam was suffering from a prolonged asthma attack is truly astounding and very troubling for all parents. 'When you send your child to school you believe they will be looked after and cared for.'

The inquest heard that, despite suffering from asthma all his life, Sam was a keen footballer and had a black belt in tae kwon do. On the day he died in December 2007, Sam was seen struggling for breath during the lunch hour. However, he appeared to recover, before suffering a full asthma attack in a lesson with Miss Ford at 2.15pm. After the lesson, Miss Ford telephoned the school's student services department, who were responsible for first aid, and was told to send him to them when he got his breath back and his symptoms had calmed down. She failed to do so, and went into a meeting. Sam was found at the end of the school day gasping for air on a bench by friend Paris Rafferty, who was so concerned she interrupted Miss Ford.

However, the court heard that Miss Ford told Paris to 'go away', adding: 'I know Sam is there and he will have to wait.' Instead, Paris went to find Sam's older brother, Jacque, then 13. Jacque told Miss Ford she needed to call an ambulance, but the teacher refused. Even though Sam could not walk unaided, she told Jacque to take him to the staff room and call his parents.

Mrs Linton took Sam to Stepping Hill Hospital, Stockport, at 5.20pm but he died two hours later in the presence of his parents. Dr Charlotte Doughty, who treated Sam, told the hearing that he may have survived had an ambulance been called earlier. She said: 'The people I have seen die from asthma attacks are the people who have delayed their attendance to hospital.'

Giving evidence, Miss Ford denied the pupils' accounts of events but admitted being 'vague' on school policy, which said an ambulance should be called if a pupil's condition did not improve within 10 minutes. ''In hindsight, I would have done things differently,' she added.

Giving their verdict of neglect, the jury listed 12 separate failings on the part of the school, ten of which 'caused or significantly contributed to' Sam's death. These included failing to put in place an adequate asthma policy or sufficiently training staff to help children with the illness. The jury was asked to consider whether Sam had been unlawfully killed, but dismissed this verdict, which means it is unlikely anyone will face a criminal prosecution.

A Stockport Council spokesman confirmed no one had been suspended following Sam's death, but added: 'We are now considering the inquest verdict and the recommendations of the coroner.'

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Mother's outrage as healthy five-year-old son weighing 58lb is branded obese by British health Fascists

With an active lifestyle and diet rich in fruit and vegetables, five-year-old Cian Attwood would appear to be the picture of health. So his parents were astounded to receive a letter from the NHS saying he is 'clinically obese'. It warned that he is in the fattest one per cent of his age group and risks heart disease, cancer and diabetes.



Cian is 4st 2lb when the recommended weight for his age is between 2st 13lb and 3st 11lb. But he is 3ft 10in, taller than average for a five-year-old, and is clearly not fat.

His mother Kriss Hodgson, 27, warned that labelling children as obese while they are still growing could make them anxious and lead to anorexia. 'There's not an ounce of fat on Cian,' she said at the family home in Overdale, Shropshire. 'When he takes his top off he has a concave tummy and you can see his ribs. 'The NHS is making everybody think they need to be celebrity size zero and it's going to give people eating disorders.'

Miss Hodgson and her partner John Attwood, 34, gave permission for their son to be weighed at his primary school last month. A letter from NHS Telford and Wrekin was delivered two weeks later with a chart showing that Cian is 'very overweight - doctors call this clinically obese'. Miss Hodgson added: 'Cian walks into town with his dad and that's a four-mile round trip. He also likes bike riding, fishing, running around the garden and football. 'His favourite foods are peas, sweetcorn, broccoli, chicken and grapes. When I said he'd been called obese our GP laughed in my face.'

Cian is one of thousands of children being weighed as part of the Government's National Child Measurement Programme. It is part of a wide-ranging campaign to combat child obesity, which also led to this week's announcement by chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson that secondary-school pupils would have to take an annual fitness test.

Mary George, from the eating disorder charity BEAT, said: 'Some of the messages these letters are sending out are not necessarily right for young people who are vulnerable-to pressure to have the right body image. 'If a friendly nurse could speak to parents directly, it might do more good. But such officialdom is a scare tactic that takes things to extremes.'

Clare Harland, spokesman for the NHS trust, said: 'Every year children in reception and year six are weighed and measured in school as part of the programme, which is now in its fifth year. 'The data is used locally and nationally to set goals to tackle obesity and deliver the right services to the right people. 'The height and weight measurement is carried out by trained staff and the families of any child can opt out.'

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British job centre not tolerant enough



A JEDI believer won an apology from a Jobcentre which threw him out for refusing to remove his hood. Star Wars fan Chris Jarvis, 31, was told he would have to leave if he did not take it down.

Chris is a member of the International Church of Jediism - based on the sci-fi films - whose doctrine states that followers should be allowed to wear hoods. But when he protested, security escorted him from his local branch in Southend, Essex.

He filled out a complaint form - and received a formal letter from the JobCentre Plus branch's boss just three days later. Wendy Flewers apologised, adding: "We are committed to provide a customer service which embraces diversity and respects customers' religion."

Chris said: "I was just standing up for my beliefs. "Muslims can walk around in whatever religious gear they like, so why can't I?"

Southend Jobcentre Plus refused to comment yesterday. A Department for Work and Pensions spokesperson said: "Customers may be asked by Jobcentre staff to remove their helmets and hoods for security reasons."

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SOCIALIZED MEDICINE IN PRACTICE

Below are five reports from just ONE DAY in Britain

Terrifyingly inept foreign doctors are a symptom of a sickness in the NHS - not the cause

By Professor Karol Sikora

When a supposed cure has instead become a new kind of sickness, then surely something is badly wrong. Yet that is what has happened in the modern NHS. The target culture brought in to benefit patients is having fatal consequences. A system that originally aimed to improve performance and efficiency is now threatening patients' lives, distorting clinical priorities and encouraging the use of foreign doctors, who may be too inexperienced or unqualified for the jobs they have been given.

The tragic case of 94-year-old Ena Dickinson is a heart-rending example of what can go wrong in a health service that puts compliance with political requirements above the real needs of patients. Mrs Dickinson, a Lincolnshire grandmother, died in 2008, soon after she underwent a hip replacement operation which was carried out at Grantham Hospital by a German locum surgeon, Dr Werner Kolb. In an appalling series of errors, Dr Kolb cut through the wrong muscle, severed an artery and used the wrong cutting tool, with the result that Mrs Dickinson lost almost half her blood in an operation that should have been routine. One witness, another doctor from the hospital, said he was 'horrified by what I saw', while an expert surgical witness, Professor Angus Wallace, told the inquest on Tuesday that he 'could not believe the level of neglect in the operation'.

The episode raises troubling questions about the NHS's increasing reliance on foreign doctors, both from the European Union and from further overseas, a practice that has been driven partly by the Government's fixation with meeting targets and partly by an inadequate supply in the number of domestic trained doctors.

We do not, of course, live in an insular world and overseas doctors have long been an integral part of the NHS. Indeed, when I first worked in the NHS in the early Seventies, I saw that the service would not have been able to function without the support of doctors from Asia. And, whether we like it or not, Britain is part of the European Union, one of whose guiding principles is the free movement of labour throughout the member states. So, without drastic political changes to the very nature of our society, we would not be able to adopt a siege mentality when it comes to employment in the NHS.

Nevertheless, the disastrously botched operation that Mrs Dickinson suffered highlights a worrying trend, where too often foreign doctors have been imported to provide cover in the NHS, without any proper checks on their background, their ability to speak English, their experience or their competence.

According to reports about Dr Werner Kolb, he had actually performed few hip operations during his career and had spent most of his recent years giving lectures, hardly a record to inspire confidence in the operating theatre. Dr Kolb's negligence may be particularly graphic, because of the way he sawed through the wrong muscle, like some grotesquely inept carpenter.

Some might argue, therefore, that it is particularly dangerous to let foreign doctors carry out surgery without rigorous monitoring. But this would be a fallacy. Every branch of medicine, from general practice to pathology, has the potential to do mortal harm because of its intimate connection with the delicate structure of the human body. In my own field of cancer care, disasters can occur because of a misdiagnosis or the administration of the wrong dosage of drug.

The calamitous risks of incompetence by GP locums were illustrated in early 2008 by Dr Daniel Ubani, who flew in from Germany to Cambridgeshire to provide weekend cover for a local practice, only to end up killing one pensioner, David Gray, by accidentally giving him ten times the maximum dosage of diamorphine. The coroner then said Mr Gray's death had been caused by 'gross negligence', words that carry a chilling echo in the Dickinson case.

One of the key problems is that, under an EU directive of 2004, doctors who qualify in any EU country can move to work in any other EU state without even the most limited examination of their skills, aptitude or language. In contrast, foreign doctors (ie from outside the EU) must pass a skills and English language test - yes, even the Australians and Americans.

EU countries are also not forced to provide information on their doctors' professional histories - for example, whether they have been struck off for committing a criminal offence or killing a patient through negligence.

There are estimated to be around 20,000 EU doctors registered to work in the NHS, a quarter of them from the former Eastern Bloc countries.

Now the vast majority of them are certainly perfectly competent, but, even so, difficulties will inevitably arise over language and culture. Every nation, for instance, has its own medical hierarchies, differing relationships between doctors and nurses, or unique approaches to patient care.

Moreover, foreign doctors without a sound grasp of English will not understand what their patients are telling them, something that is a particular concern in GP services.

It is telling that EU doctors are twice as likely to face disciplinary hearings before the General Medical Council as their British counterparts, in which foreign doctors from outside the EU are three times as likely to be struck off the medical register - statistics that point to the laxity of checks.

We cannot blame foreign doctors for wanting to work in the NHS. Britain has one of the best-rewarded medical professions in the world, with GPs earning on average over £100,000-a-year and leading consultants far more. These are incredible riches for doctors from the old Soviet sphere of influence. In Poland, where my family has some of its roots, a doctor is likely to earn around £500 a month or £6,000-a-year, a sum that can be made with a few weekend or holiday stints in Britain. As a consequence, one in six of Poland's doctors now works abroad.

Nor is the NHS management entirely to blame for the catalogue of controversies that has arisen from the employment of foreign staff. NHS bosses are under tremendous pressure to meet waiting lists targets set by the Government, so they will take any action, bear almost any cost, to achieve this. So rather than postpone operations during periods when staff are on leave, they bring in foreign doctors to keep the conveyor belt moving.

In Ena Dickinson's case, it would not have mattered if her hip replacement operation had been delayed by a week or two, but no doubt the management of Grantham Hospital was appalled at the idea of slipping behind the Government's arbitrary 18-week deadline for such routine surgery. So, in a disastrous misjudgment, Dr Kolb was brought in so the needs of bureaucracy, if not the patient, could be met.

The problem has been compounded by the Government's failure to assess correctly the needs of the NHS for doctors, with the result that foreign doctors have been brought in to cover gaps in supply. It must be admitted that the demands on the NHS have grown enormously in recent years as a consequence of increasing numbers of elderly patients, a growth in the British population and advances in medical care. Twenty years ago, the idea of carrying out a hip replacement operation on a 94-year-old grandmother would have been unthinkable.

Moreover, the EU working time directive drastically reduced the number of hours that any doctor could be on duty, which meant that more staff had to be made available. But the need to increase the supply of doctors only emphasises the need to scrutinise their competence more vigorously. What we need, therefore, is an assessment of their skills by practical and verbal demonstration, accompanied by checks on their background and a basic language test. We're doing it for our own graduates, after all. That is what our NHS patients deserve. We cannot allow any more tragedies like that of Ena Dickinson.

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Killer Muslim doctor with repeated disregard for patients is suspended for just FOUR MONTHS by British regulators

A doctor with a 'disregard' for patient safety was suspended for just four months today for sending home a baby girl who died the next day from blood poisoning. Dr Salawati Abdul-Salam failed to spot little Aleesha Evans' deadly condition and sent her home saying she had a viral infection that needed only Calpol and Nurofen. She died the next day.

A year before the baby's death, another of Abdul-Salam's patients died after a wrong diagnosis, while a pensioner suffered a collapsed lung under the trainee's care. GMC panel chairman Professor Denis McDevitt said the doctor's actions demonstrated a 'total lack of attention to detail' and a 'serious degree of carelessness.'

Colin Perriam, 66, had died after Abdul-Salam analysed six-month old blood samples, then wrongly diagnosed a ruptured ulcer as constipation. Mr Perriam was discharged from Cardiff's University Hospital of Wales on December 15, 2004 with a prescription of laxatives.

Widow Pamela Perriam had told the hearing: 'She said that he was suffering from constipation. 'We were given some powders that you mix with water for mild constipation and we were not given any other instructions. 'We were not given anything else except to say that it was mild constipation and mild laxatives should deal with the problem.'

But the next day Mr Parriam could not get out of bed and when his stomach appeared swollen and blotchy the following evening, his wife called an ambulance. By the time it arrived her husband was unconscious. Mr Parriam underwent emergency surgery but never recovered and died the next day on February 5, 2005.

A month earlier, Abdul-Salam gave a 79-year-old woman an unnecessary chest drain after reading the wrong x-ray. She had to apologise after the elderly woman's lung collapsed.

On August 9, 2006, Aleesha Evans was rushed to the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport, Wales, vomiting with a rash and a temperature of 37 degrees. But the trainee specialist registrar did not even examine the baby and discharged her two hours later after noting her condition was 'unremarkable.' The doctor had seen the patient by this stage and noted she appeared to be better than she had been and that she was playing. But her heart rate was still high and her temperature had risen to 39 degrees, the hearing was told. The baby was discharged at 11pm with a diagnosis of viral illness.

But she was suffering from meningococcal septicaemia - blood poisoning - and died the following day. Abdul-Salam was placed under supervision at the Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend after Aleesha's death. She was only allowed to perform three hours of clinical work a day and had to sign every patient off with a supervisor. But within three weeks Abdul-Salam had broken the terms of her training and more than a third of her patients had been discharged without her superior's consent.

One of these patients was a 10-year-old girl with a broken wrist who attended A&E on 22 September 2008. The child required treatment under anaesthetic but Abdul-Salam discharged her to the outpatient fracture clinic.

Prof McDevitt told Abdul-Salam: 'The panel has concluded that you have not yet fully appreciated the magnitude of your deficient performance and misconduct. 'You demonstrated poor judgment when under pressure. Your lack of careful clinical method resulted in the inadequate assessment and management of patients and you failed to appreciate fully the discordance between the patients' clinical condition and the results of investigations. 'The panel considers there remains of risk of you repeating errors and exercising poor judgment, particularly if you were to return to work in a more pressures environment than you are currently exposed to.'

Prof McDevitt said the panel had considered imposing conditions on Abdul-Salam's practice but concluded her actions involving baby Aleesha Evans were too serious: 'Taking all the factors into account, the panel concluded that your registration should be suspended for a period of four months. 'Your misconduct was sufficiently serious to undermine public confidence in the profession. It is also important that you, and the medical profession, are left in no doubt that such behaviour, which clearly had consequences for patient safety, is unacceptable.'

The doctor had been working as a locum at the Kent and Sussex Hospital in Tunbridge Wells, Kent for the last five months, but she will now be unable to keep her job.

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British doctors who wouldn't listen allow little girl to die

An eight-year-old girl with an acute fear of dentists who starved to death after her milk teeth were taken out under anaesthetic died because of a “lack of communication” between health agencies, an investigation has concluded.

Sophie Waller refused to open her mouth even to eat after the operation. She had developed her phobia at the age of four when her tongue was scratched during a routine check-up. When she refused treatment after cracking a tooth on a boiled sweet her parents became so concerned they took her to their GP who referred her to the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro.

Surgeons decided to remove eight remaining milk teeth under anaesthetic to avoid problems in future. But she was left so traumatised by it she refused to open her mouth to eat or drink.

A report by the Local Safeguarding Children Board has now found there was a “lack of clarity” from the agencies responsible for Sophie’s care after her discharge from hospital. She was sent home despite her condition and her parents did not know who to turn to when her health deteriorated.

By the time of her death in December 2005 Sophie, from St Dennis in Cornwall, was severely malnourished and weighed just 22kg. Her parents had been feeding her a diet of yoghurt and mashed fruit and tried to get help from their GP and the hospital but were instead referred to a child psychologist.

She was found dead in bed by her mother four weeks after her discharge and the cause of death was given as kidney failure as a result of starvation and dehydration. An inquest in February 2009 found there was no blame attached to her parents who had tried to get help for their daughter.

The serious case review found of a lack of communication between all the health agencies involved in her care. The report says: “No clear written plan was made on discharge and there was lack of clarity about responsibility for medical review following discharge.

“The clinical psychologist made telephone contact with the child’s parents in the week after discharge but did not see her again. “There was a lack of clarity over the open door arrangement which was intended to allow the child’s parents to bring her back in the week following discharge. When they phoned for advice on the seventh day, they were referred back to the psychologist for support.”

Her mother Janet Waller, a nursery school teacher who has two other children, said the report highlighted how their pleas should have been heard. She said: “All we’ve wanted all along is for people to listen to us. People ask me how many children I have, I say three, but technically I haven’t any more. I’ve got to live with this for the rest of my life.”

At Sophie’s inquest in February last year the Cornwall coroner, Dr Emma Carlyon, said that the Royal Cornwall Hospital was guilty of a number of failings which led to Sophie’s death. She said: “The severity of her malnutrition and dehydration was not recognised. This prevented her from receiving the medical support that could have prevented her death.”

Dr Ellen Wilkinson, Medical Director of Royal Cornwall Hospital Trust, said: “We would like to apologise to the family of Sophie Waller. Everyone involved in her care was saddened by her tragic death. This was a very unusual case. “There were shortcomings in the communication between the health organisation and Sophie’s parents.”

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'Blood-spattered walls and mouldy equipment': How a quarter of British government hospitals fail to meet basic hygiene tests

A quarter of NHS hospital trusts are failing to meet basic hygiene standards, with some treating patients on blood-spattered wards or with dirty equipment, a damning report has found. A third of ambulance trusts have also missed the targets set, according to the Care Quality Commission. The watchdog's report follows the introduction of tough new hygiene standards after a series of scandals at hospitals in Maidstone, Basildon and Stafford.

It also came as a survey of NHS employees found many are too overstretched to do their jobs properly because of staff shortages.

On hygiene, the CQC found 42 out of the 167 NHS trusts inspected were in 'breach' of registration requirements by failing to meet standards, with some hospitals being warned over blood-spattered wards and dirty equipment. In Basildon, where at least 70 patients died as a result of poor hygiene last year, investigators found a commode soiled under the seat and 'procedure trays, used by staff to carry equipment when they take blood samples or give injections, had blood spattered on them'.

At children's hospital Alder Hey, in Liverpool, the inspection revealed dirty toys, hair stuck to medical equipment and 'nappy changing mats stored on the floor next to a toilet'. Water 'ran brown' from taps in patient areas.

A total of 36 trusts did not provide areas to decontaminate instruments, three trusts failed to flush unused water regularly to control legionella outbreaks, and a dozen failed to keep clinical areas clean. The situation was so bad at four ambulance trusts that they were given written warnings about the state of their vehicles and stations.

Nigel Ellis, the CQC's head of inspection, said: 'We have on rare occasions found evidence of a direct risk to patients and have intervened using our enforcement powers to ensure swift improvements were made. 'In over half of trusts we have made some suggestions or requirements for improvements to ensure their practices are the best they can be.'

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: 'There's no doubt that the trusts rose to the challenge --we've seen swift and tangible improvements in their performance, and on follow-up meetings all met the required standards.'

Meanwhile, half of NHS workers claim that staff shortages are stopping them doing their jobs properly. Of the 160,000 workers questioned by the CQC, 46 per cent said they were unable to do a proper job.

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One in ten doctors in Britain is foreign and untested

Almost one in ten doctors on the medical register comes from the EU and has not had to take any language or competence tests before working in Britain. The shocking figure exposes the lax controls over European locums taking up hospital posts in the NHS and providing out-of-hours GP cover. Unlike doctors from elsewhere in the world - who are forced to prove language skills and medical knowledge before being registered - such testing is forbidden for doctors qualified in Europe and Switzerland.

Campaigners want a complete overhaul of the system after the death of a grandmother following appalling blunders by a German surgeon flown in by the NHS. Ena Dickinson, 94, lost nearly half the blood in her body during what was meant to be a routine hip operation at Grantham Hospital in Lincolnshire. Werner Kolb, who had been working in the NHS for three weeks, severed an artery and became so flustered he started speaking German in the operating theatre.

An expert witness described it as the worst case of negligence he had come across - yet Dr Kolb, pictured today for the first time, was left free to work in the UK for a further eight months before being suspended by the General Medical Council.

Dr Kolb, who had been mainly lecturing for four years before the tragedy, refused to attend the inquest and denied his conduct had anything to do with Mrs Dickinson's death eight weeks later from pneumonia. Last night a colleague at Bethesda Hospital in Stuttgart insisted: 'I find it hard to reconcile the words said against him in Britain with the precise surgeon I know.'

But Mrs Dickinson's daughter Kathy Ingram, 57, said: 'The system is disgraceful and clearly isn't working. NHS trusts have to assume that locum doctors' qualifications from Europe are reliable without doing their own checks. 'You trust your doctor because he's in authority but if he hasn't been verified and isn't monitored, you never know what standard of treatment you'll get. The law has to be changed so that there is closer monitoring.'

Figures show there are more than 230,000 doctors on the GMC register of which 21,451 - almost 10 per cent - gained their qualifications in other EU countries. The ban on checks comes from a European directive ordering member states to allow workers free movement. This means the GMC is forced to accept qualifications at 'face value', according to its chief executive Niall Dickson.

The GMC has protested about the rights of doctors to work freely across Europe being put ahead of a patient's right to safe treatment. In a presentation to the EU's Green Paper on the European Workforce for Health, it said: 'Legislation must be amended to allow healthcare regulators across Europe to establish that a doctor has the level of language proficiency necessary to practise safely. 'We are also prevented from adopting a general requirement to prove competence and cannot specify the standard of acceptable competence. 'The current situation is profoundly at odds with the pursuit of safe and high quality health care.'

Dr Vivienne Nathanson, head of science and ethics at the British Medical Association, said: 'Whilst it is essential doctors are able to communicate with their patients and the regulatory authorities are able to assess fitness to practise, it is also important we don't make it impossible for those that do have the appropriate skills to work in the UK.'

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17 March, 2010

British police being held accountable? Is the sky falling?

It's just a charade, most likely

Ten police officers are being investigated over the way they handled the case of a mother and her disabled daughter who suffered years of abuse from youths and were found dead in a burnt-out car, a watchdog said yesterday. Police were contacted 33 times in 10 years about yobs bullying Fiona Pilkington, her daughter Francecca Hardwick, 18, and her severely dyslexic son Anthony, 19, in the street where they lived in Barwell, Leicestershire. But despite repeated pleas for help, Ms Pilkington, 38, received only eight visits from police officers and was not offered sufficient protection.

Ms Pilkington, a single mother, became so depressed with the repeated failure of the police to respond to her pleas that she doused her car in petrol and set it alight. She was found dead alongside her daughter in the car, which was parked in a lay-by on the A47 in nearby Earl Shilton, in October 2007.

An inquest in September last year found that the failings of the police contributed to their deaths, the inquest jury ruled. After the inquest, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said it would look into the way Leicestershire Constabulary dealt with the family’s complaints in the years before their deaths.

Yesterday, the IPCC said that police and council officials had co-operated fully with its investigation. The officers under investigation range in rank from constables to inspectors. The statement added: “We have now served advisory notices on a total of ten Leicestershire police officers and this situation is being kept under review. “Such notices are not judgmental in any way, but are required under police misconduct regulations, and served on officers to advise that their conduct is under investigation.”

It added: “This complex inquiry is going back over police contact with Fiona Pilkington, her daughter and neighbours over a period of several years. “We are assessing information from family members, neighbours, the authorities involved, records of police contact, and the accounts of relevant police officers themselves. “The extensive nature of the investigation means there is still substantial further work to do, and enquiries to be made by the IPCC. “We are progressing this rigorous investigation as swiftly as possible and will make our findings public in due course.”

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Grandaddy of green, James Lovelock, warms to eco-sceptics

Just occasionally you find yourself at an event where there is a sense of history in the air. So it was the other night at the Royal Society, when a small gathering of luminaries turned up to hear that extraordinary nonagenarian, the scientist James Lovelock.

They had all come: David MacKay, chief scientist at the Department of Energy and Climate Change; Michael Green, Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge; Michael Wilson, producer of the James Bond movies; Chris Rapley, director of the Science Museum; and more. You knew why they had answered the Isaac Newton Institute’s invitation. They wanted to learn where one of the most interesting minds in science stood in the climate debate.

Lovelock has been intimately involved in three of the defining environmental controversies of the past 60 years. He invented an instrument that made it possible to detect the presence of toxic pollutants in the fat of Antarctic penguins — at roughly the same time as Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, her hugely influential book about pollution. In the 1970s the same instrument, his electron capture detector, was used to detect the presence of chlorofluorocarbons — CFCs — in the atmosphere. Although Lovelock mistakenly pronounced these chemicals as no conceivable toxic hazard, the scientists F Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina later won the Nobel prize in chemistry for proving they were destroying the ozone layer.

Then, in 1979, Lovelock published the book-length version of his Gaia theory, which postulates that the Earth functions as a kind of super-organism, with millions of species regulating its temperature. Despite initial scepticism from the Darwinists, who refused to believe that individual organisms could act in harmony, the Gaia theory has been widely accepted and now underlies most atmospheric science.

What, I wondered, would be the great man’s view on the latest twists in the atmospheric story — the Climategate emails and the sloppy science revealed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)? To my surprise, he immediately professed his admiration for the climate-change sceptics.

“I think you have to accept that the sceptics have kept us sane — some of them, anyway,” he said. “They have been a breath of fresh air. They have kept us from regarding the science of climate change as a religion. It had gone too far that way. There is a role for sceptics in science. They shouldn’t be brushed aside. It is clear that the angel side wasn’t without sin.”

As we were ushered in to dinner, I couldn’t help wrestling with the irony that the so-called “prophet of climate change”, whose Gaia theory is regarded in some quarters as a faith in itself, was actively cheering on those who would knock science from its pedestal.

Lovelock places great emphasis on proof. The climate change projections by the Meteorological Office’s Hadley Centre — a key contributor to the IPCC consensus — should be taken seriously, he said. But he is concerned that the projections are relying on computer models based primarily on atmospheric physics, because models of that kind have let us down before. Similar models, for example, failed to detect the hole in the ozone layer;

it was eventually found by Joe Farman using a spectrometer.

How, asks Lovelock, can we predict the climate 40 years ahead when there is so much that we don’t know? Surely we should base any assumptions on things we can measure, such as a rise in sea levels. After all, surface temperatures go up and down, but the rise in sea levels reflects both melting ice and thermal expansion. The IPCC, he feels, underestimates the extent to which sea levels are rising.

Do mankind’s emissions matter? Yes, they undoubtedly do.

No one should be complacent about the fact that within the next 20 years we’ll have added nearly a trillion tons of carbon to the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. When a geological accident produced a similar carbon rise 55m years ago, it turned up the heat more than 5C. And now? Well, the effect of man-made carbon is unpredictable. Temperatures might go down at first, rather than up, he warns.

How should we be spending our money to prevent possible disaster? In Britain, says Lovelock, we need sea walls and more nuclear power. Heretical stuff, when you consider the vast amount that Europe plans to spend on wind turbines.

“What would you bet will happen this century?” a mathematician asked him. Lovelock predicted a temperature rise in the middle range of current projections — about 1C-2C — which we could live with. Ah, but hadn’t he also said there was a chance that temperature rises could threaten human civilisation within the lifetime of our grandchildren?

He had. In the end, his message was that we should have more respect for uncertainties and learn to live with possibilities rather than striving for the 95% probabilities that climate scientists have been trying to provide. We don’t know what’s going to happen and we don’t know if we can avert disaster — although we should try. His sage advice: enjoy life while you can.

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Big rise in complaints about NHS nursing care

But complaints are usually responded to by bureaucratic coverups and there are no apparent changes

For 12 months, while her son Kane underwent treatment for cancer, Rita Cronin sat by her youngest child's bedside. She fed him, gave him drinks, washed him and ensured he had a bedpan. And if Rita was unable to be there, husband Peter, daughter Emma or other son Matthew would take over the nursing duties.

'We'd learnt, quickly, that if we didn't carry out his basic care then we couldn't rely on the nurses to do so,' says Rita, 50, a civil servant from Balham, South-West London. 'It wasn't just Kane who was affected. We saw buzzers being left out of reach and patients missing meals, as no one had the time to feed them. 'The attitude was that patients had to wait. That nurses had other, more important, things to do. The more you asked for things, the more irritated they seemed to become. The night nurses were the worst - they were always "too busy" even to bring a bedpan. But the day ones were often unhelpful, too.'

St George's hospital, in Tooting, where Kane was a patient, 'is an award-winning hospital, yet we may as well have been in a third-world country for the nursing care my son got,' says Rita.

Strong words, but Rita is, tragically, qualified to say them. For three days after being admitted to the hospital for a hip replacement, her 22-year-old son was dead from dehydration. Kane had suffered brain cancer - while treatment was successful, the chemotherapy and radiotherapy had weakened his bones, causing him to the need the surgery. The cancer had affected his pituitary gland, which regulates the body's mechanisms, such as hydration. So, Kane was on desmopressin, medication to control the flow of fluid in his body. We later discovered that the day Kane was admitted in to hospital was the last time he took desmopressin,' says Rita.

Following his hip operation, a routine test showed Kane's sodium levels were high; his fluid levels were out of balance. A ward nurse was told this by the hospital lab, but she went off duty without sorting out treatment. He began begging for water. When his requests were turned down he became - understandably - aggressive. Inexplicably, instead of reading his notes which would have indicated the problem, nurses called security staff who restrained him.

An increasingly desperate Kane then rang the police and begged for help to get a drink. The police turned up, but were sent away by nurses who reassured them Kane was confused.

By the time Rita went to see him before work the next day, it was clear her son was very ill. 'The night nurse was standing outside the room handing over to the day nurse and I said I thought Kane was really ill,' she says. 'It was clear she thought I was being neurotic and said he was fine.'

It wasn't until the ward doctor appeared on his rounds, nearly 15 minutes later, that suddenly everything changed. He took one look at Kane and quickly called for help.'

The post mortem revealed Kane had died from dehydration. Rita has other ideas, and so, it seems, does the coroner who adjourned the inquest, calling the police in to investigate.

'Kane died because of sheer incompetence of the nurses who failed to do their job,' says Rita. 'I found out later that the nurses were offered counselling. They should have been in another job.'

Over the past few years there have been far too many similar accounts. Despite all the money poured into the NHS, and the proliferation of training, job titles and initiatives, it seems patient experience is not improving. Poor nursing care was a key factor in the 400 deaths at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, according to the recent official investigation. Staff numbers were allowed to fall 'dangerously low', causing nurses to neglect the most basic care. While many staff did their best, others showed a disturbing lack of compassion to patients, said Robert Francis QC, heading the inquiry.

Basic nursing care and lack of hygiene have also been blamed for 70 deaths at Basildon University Hospital, where the Care Quality Commission, the health service regulator, found, among other basic failings, blood-splattered equipment and patients lying on stained and soiled mattresses.

And statistics would suggest they are not one-offs. Complaints about nurses have risen by 18.9per cent in the past year, according to the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) , the profession's regulatory body. Although the organisation points out that this figure represents just 0.2 per cent of their total membership, the fact is complaints investigated by them have risen by 30 per cent since 2005.

Experts think the problem is actually far more endemic than even these figures suggest, as many people don't know about the NMC - and instead complain through the hospital system. 'Even then, many incidents are not investigated properly,' says Vanessa Bourne, of the Patients' Association. 'Answers to complaints generally fall into one of two categories; either the letter will say: "You haven't been able to name the nurses responsible so we can't investigate". Or, "you have named the nurses responsible, but they deny any wrong-doing, so we can't take the investigation further".

'The NHS managers and nursing bodies like to say this poor treatment is from a minority of nurses, but it is more about a fundamental lack of decent nursing leadership and a refusal to admit that mistakes are being made. 'When the Staffordshire scandal broke last year, we were inundated with a deluge of heartbreaking cases where people had received careless, sloppy or even rude and cruel treatment at hospitals up and down the country, and where no investigation had ever been carried out. 'The Department of Health bring out endless guidelines and initiatives on patient satisfaction and safety, but our complaint rate doesn't drop.'

Nurses themselves are also concerned about levels of care. A recent survey for the Nursing Times found that only a third of nurses were confident the poor standards at Mid Staffordshire weren't being repeated to some degree in their own hospitals.

Last week, the government published the first comprehensive report on the profession in 40 years. The Commission into the future of nursing and midwifery made some recommendations on how nursing could be improved for the 'new challenges ahead'.

While it was initiated before the recent scandals broke, there's no doubt those events were key to its proposals. 'Events like Mid Staffs do tend to focus the mind,' says Heather Lawrence, a former nurse, now chief executive of Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and a member of the commission. 'And I would agree that in some areas of the country - not all - patient trust has been eroded. As a result there has now been an acceptance within the NHS that the way some wards have been managed has not always been in the patients' best interests.'

In order to help restore patient trust, the Commission wants all nurses to pledge their "commitment to society and service users... to give high-quality care to all and tackle unacceptable variations in standards". 'The Commission is clear that high-quality, safe and compassionate care must rise to the top of the agenda for a 21st-century worldclass NHS,' said health minister and commission chair Ann Keen.

It begs the question: if high-quality, safe and compassionate care is not a priority for some nurses, why are they nursing at all? 'We welcome the pledge, but it is a sad indictment that there is a need for one in the first place,' says Vanessa Bourne. 'Patients should expect compassion.'

'The bottom line is that in Mid Staffs - - and we believe in many other hospitals, still - - there was a culture of nurses saying "its not my job". But if everyone says that, then the job - whether it's feeding a patient, or getting them a bed pan simply doesn't get done. 'Nursing is about rolling up your sleeves and caring and too many nurses seem to forget that. 'Our response would be that if you don't want to do the nitty-gritty of spoon-feeding an elderly patient or changing soiled sheets, then don't go into nursing.

'Employers also have to accept that not everyone who comes into nursing will be cut out for the job. I was told by a university nursing tutor that some trainees on her course who were clearly not suited to nursing and not interested in caring, but it was impossible to remove them because of funding complications.

So what is the solution? The official response is that we need better leadership - giving ward sisters more authority. 'One of the things we found was that on many wards there was no one figure who had the authority to properly lead the ward,' says Heather Lawrence. 'In the Mid Staffs inquiry it was discovered that one nursing sister was in charge for three wards - an impossible task.'

Nurses acknowledge leadership is part of the problem; and the solution. The Nursing Standard magazine (the nurse's own trade magazine) is campaigning to boost the authority and status of ward sisters. 'All these NHS scandals have a common theme,' says editor Graham Scott. 'There was not a clear, identifiable person in charge of the ward. 'We have ward sisters, specialist nurses and nurse specialists, nurse consultants and modern-day matrons. No wonder people get confused about who is in charge.'

But will such a simple solution make the wards a better and safer place for patients? According to Graham Scott, it will. 'Research shows that on a ward where there is an identifiable - and, most importantly, accountable - person in charge, patients have a much better experience,' he says.

The finger of blame is also being pointed at healthcare assistants, who do the basic caring jobs, such as washing, feeding and changing bedpans. 'Some NHS Trusts do train nursing assistants properly,' explains Graham Scott. Others don't. Cleaning, washing and feeding a patient are actually quite complex tasks.'

The Commission recommended these staff need some form of regulation to ensure high-quality care. 'We have to be careful about blaming the healthcare assistants,' says Bourne. 'After all, they are supposed to be supervised by the nurses.'

But will any of this make a real --difference? It seems there will be no legal recommendations to abide by the regulations. 'We do tend to raise our eyebrows at these recommendations,' notes Bourne. 'There is a big noise about them, and then everything goes back to how it was. We still get horror stories like poor Kane's. We are told things will change and they don't.'

Indeed St George's has told Rita Cronin they've made changes to ensure what happened to her son can never happen again. 'But what exactly are these changes?' she asks. 'My son suffered a needless death. How I do know that the same thing isn't happening to someone else?'

A spokesman for the hospital said: "We are extremely sorry about the death of Kane Gorny. 'From the investigation it was clear that there had been failures in communication between clinical staff. Disciplinary action did result from our findings and a number of important changes have been introduced to help prevent such a tragic incident from happening again.'

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More than half of final British High School exams sat at private schools are graded A

More than half of A-level examinations sat at independent schools are graded A, new figures indicate.

They also show the extent to which fee-paying and selective schools dominate the best grades at A level, and the extent to which intensive coaching can help students to achieve top marks.

The figures, from Cambridge Assessment, one of the main examination boards, were released as a survey showed that pupils from independent schools were expected to do exceptionally well in achieving the new A* grade at A level this summer. A survey of A-level marks at 20 schools, conducted by the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference of leading independent schools, found that between almost a third and two thirds of students were expected to achieve A* grades. Half of students sitting A levels in further mathematics at several of the most selective independent schools, for example, had already achieved high enough marks to guarantee A* grades.

Students who sat maths Alevel modules in January, and who received their marks late last week, will be awarded A* grades if they achieved at least 90 per cent in each of their A2 modules. They must also have scored at least 80 per cent overall, including at AS level.

The Cambridge figures also showed that more than one in eight A-level candidates now achieve three A grades. Yet of this group, more than a quarter went to grammar schools — which teach fewer than one in ten of the school population. At the same time, more than a third of students achieving straight A grades were from independent schools, which educate just 13 per cent.

The Cambridge figures showed that, overall, the number of A-level candidates awarded an A grade rose by about one percentage point every year between 2006 and 2009. There was a corresponding increase in B grades, and a fall in papers graded C, D, E or U.

At City of London School for Boys, 67 per cent of students sitting further maths have already achieved an A* grade in maths. A similar proportion did so at Magdalen College School, Oxford, while between 60 and 65 per cent did so at Manchester Grammar School, whose High Master, Christopher Ray, conducted the survey.

Candidates studying further maths are likely to be among the brightest candidates. The figures suggest students from leading independent schools will continue to win disproportionate numbers of places at the most selective universities.

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Britain's yellow and not so pleasant land: Freezing winter leaves countryside looking ragged around the edges

England's green and pleasant land is looking a little faded around the edges right now. And the countryside of Wales and Scotland isn't faring much better. After the coldest winter in three decades, huge areas of Britain's pastures, meadows and downs have emerged bedraggled, tired and brown.

The problem is most noticeable in the South West, where normally glorious verdant fields look like they have struggled through a harsh summer drought. In Dorset's Hardy Country, the mighty Maiden Castle, an enormous fort built by ancient Britons, is perched on a murky brown mound. And the centuries old Cerne Abbas Giant - famously carved on a chalk hillside - is barely visible against the yellowing grass.

The phenomenon means dairy farmers will have to feed forage to their cattle until spring arrives and sheep will be eating last year's grass during the lambing season. Farmers believe the seasons are about three weeks later than usual, but they say that when the sun comes out, the colour will return to the fields in days.

Traditional British grasslands usually fade and turn yellow over winter. Unlike the grass varieties used in gardens, they are not hardy enough to survive persistent sub-zero temperatures. But after the mild winters of the last few years, the scale of the brown fields has come as something of a shock. Chris Barber, 45, who farms 35 acres in Martinstown, Dorset, said: 'It happens every year to a degree, but nothing like this. 'It's because we've had such a long spell of cold and the grass wants to grow, but there's no warmth or sun to do so. 'When there is a bit of warmth it will come back quickly with the photosynthesis. 'It's more common this year in the permanent pastures which is unusual. It does mean that during the lambing season the ewes are eating last year's grass. 'We had a good summer last year so there is plenty of food about. I would say we're three weeks later than usual.'

Mike Pullin who farms nearby said: 'The grass is actually a purple-red colour. What happened was the roots became wet and that froze, making the grass dormant. We've had frost and snow for long periods and that means we will be later turning the cattle out.'

Over the last 30 years, spring has arrived earlier and earlier and now typically arrives three weeks sooner than it did in the 1960s. However, this year's cold winter has delayed the first signs of spring, restoring the seasons to their pre-1970s pattern.

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16 March, 2010

Betrayal of 20,000 cancer patients: British rationing body rejects ten drugs (allowed in Europe) that could have extended lives

Up to 20,000 people have died needlessly early after being denied cancer drugs on the NHS, it was revealed yesterday. The rationing body NICE has failed to keep a promise to make more life-extending drugs available. Treatments used widely in the U.S. and Europe have been rejected on grounds of cost-effectiveness, yet patients and their loved ones have seen the NHS waste astronomical sums. Last week it emerged that £21billion - a fifth of the entire annual budget - was spent on failed schemes to tackle inequality.

NICE, the National Institute of health and Clinical Excellence, promised a year ago to make it easier for drugs for rarer cancers to be approved. But since then four drugs which could have benefited 16,000 people have been turned down outright and a further six which could have helped 4,000 more have been provisionally rejected. Just five drugs have been accepted - benefiting 8,500 people - says a damning report by the Rarer Cancers Forum. Drugs for rarer forms of cancer are often much more expensive than those for common tumours because pharmaceutical companies cannot make economies of scale.

NICE's promise to approve more drugs was in response to widespread anger over its rejection of sunitinib, also known as Sutent, for advanced kidney cancer - even though it had been proved to double the life expectancy of patients compared to standard treatments.

Andrew Wilson, chief executive of the Rarer Cancers Forum, said: 'Although progress has been made, there is still more to do. 'It is unacceptable that thousands of patients are still missing out on the treatment they need, and their doctors want to give them, because NICE has decided that their treatment does not meet some arbitrary criteria. 'The changes introduced by NICE should be benefiting more patients than they are. An urgent review of NICE's processes is needed.'

The RCF also says NICE works so slowly that it takes 21 months to decide on a drug, during which time many patients die. This is despite promises from NICE bosses to get the decision time down to six months by the end of this year. Mike Hobday, head of campaigns at Macmillan Cancer Support, said: 'The system is failing people with rarer cancers. It's time for a more flexible approach.'

NICE's treatment of rarer cancer drugs contrasts sharply with its breast cancer drug herceptin, which has received far more funding following successful campaigns. If a patient is refused a drug, they are allowed in many cases to appeal to their primary care trust. But the RCF report uncovered a huge postcode lottery, with some trusts much more likely to back down on appeal. Of 62 PCTs, 11 approved all drugs and two approved none. And while 26 per cent of English patients have their 'exceptional case' requests rejected, the figure in Scotland is just 11 per cent.

The RCF says appeals are so expensive in terms of staff time that it would be cheaper just to give everyone the drugs they want. Its report also warns: 'PCTs are frequently using inappropriate processes to determine funding applications and a small minority of commissioners may be breaking the law by operating a blanket ban on the funding of treatments outside their licensed indication.'

In Bromley, for example, cancer treatments were less likely to be funded than cosmetic procedures. Another difference between PCTs is that some reimburse the cost of any private treatment but others do not.

NICE said last night: 'We have introduced significant additional latitude in appraisal of treatments for cancer, particularly where they are designed to extend life. 'Our End of Life Treatments protocol, introduced at the beginning of 2009, has already made it possible for very expensive cancer treatments to be recommended when our standard approach would have resulted in more cautious guidance.'

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British retirees died after 'hospital staff ignored warnings over their conditions'

Two patients died after hospital staff repeatedly ignored warnings over their conditions, including one who choked on his false teeth, nursing chiefs admitted. Staff at Royal Sussex County Hospital, in Brighton, East Sussex, “could have done better” to prevent the deaths of two pensioners last year after failing to follow basic procedures, officials admitted.

After a corner’s damning ruling that staff at the hospital were guilty of repeated mismanagement and miscommunication, officials have made "major changes" [major bulldust, more likely] to nursing care and apologised to the patients' families.

An inquest at Hove Crown Court had heard that Brian Waller, 72, died after falling out of bed in April last year while a month later Edward Warneford, 66, died in the same ward after choking on his false teeth. In her ruling Veronica Hamilton-Deeley, the local coroner, strongly criticised the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, and said changes needed to be urgently made.

The inquest last month heard that Mr Waller, who was being treated for heart problems, fell out of his hospital bed despite wearing a wrist band with "risk of falls" written on it. He had landed on his head, broke his neck and suffered a massive bleed on his brain, which led to his death six days later. It was later discovered one of the guard rails on his bed had been left down. A doctor had also allegedly missed the fracture in his neck and cleared him to return to his ward, the inquest heard.

Mr Warneford, a former engineer, from Hove, East Sussex, died because staff did not even realise he was wearing dentures, his sister claimed. April Moss, 62, from Gosport, Hampshire, claimed her brother, who had alcohol problems, then choked on them as he ate, causing him to have a fatal heart attack.

Sherree Fagge, Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals’ chief nurse, admitted on Friday that staff could have done better. "We are however profoundly aware that for both Mr Waller and Mr Warneford we could have done better and we have met with both their families to apologise, listen to their concerns and assure them that lessons have been learned,” she said. "We have introduced some major changes focused completely on the quality of our nursing care. Every week all of our most senior nurses, including myself, are working on the wards undertaking direct patient care alongside front line nursing staff. "What I see … is that the majority of our nurses are working hard and carrying out their duties with the kindness and compassion we would want for our own families.”

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Warning - your child is unfit: Parents of British pupils who fail school fitness tests to get letters from health police

Parents of children deemed unfit are to be sent warning letters from schools. Secondary pupils will be forced to take an annual fitness test. If they fail, their parents will be told they are at risk of heart disease, brittle bones and obesity. The scheme was outlined yesterday by the Government's chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson.

He warned that lack of exercise is placing a greater burden on the economy than smoking - costing £8.3billion a year compared with £5.2billion. But the initiative was criticised by campaigners as yet another example of Labour's 'nanny state' interference in family life. Opposition parties said it also showed ministers' plans to improve school sport had completely failed.

The proposal is expected to be piloted at a small number of schools before being extended across the country. Under the scheme pupils will take so-called 'bleep' exercise tests which will see them perform a series of shuttle runs used to measure stamina and fitness.

Sir Liam also revealed ministers were planning to unveil recommendations on the amount of exercise children aged three and four should be doing, because 'many spend too much time on sedentary activities'. He acknowledged his plans would be 'shocking' to many parents, but insisted action was needed. His official annual report, entitled On The State Of Public Health, revealed only a third of adults meet the recommended amount of physical activity - 30 minutes at least five times a week.

It also found that overall child fitness is falling by up to 9 per cent every decade. Sir Liam said the situation was 'startlingly' bad, with only a third of schoolchildren doing the recommended 60 minutes of activity a day. Pupils are supposed to do at least two hours of PE a week, according to Government guidelines. But 10 per cent of children are not even getting this amount of school sport. Critics say Labour is to blame, particularly as since 1997 around 2,000 school playing fields have been sold off.

Parents in England are already sent letters about their children's weight as part of the National Child Measurement Programme. They are informed if their children are overweight for their height in their first and last years in primary school.

But the scheme has been heavily criticised for stigmatising children and labelling them as fat at a young age. In one recent example, five-year-old Lucy Davies, from Poole, was told she was at risk of health problems despite weighing just 3st 9lbs and standing 3ft 9 ins tall.

Parents said they feared their children would be bullied and made to feel inadequate by the new fitness tests. However, Sir Liam said: 'We might get a few shocks in some parts of the country but I think it's well worth doing....

In 2003, physical fitness testing became mandatory for 10 to 15 year olds in California. Each year, more than 1.3million students are assessed in six fitness areas. The children are each given a score representing their level of fitness. Over three years, an improvement of 8.2 per cent has been seen in the level of these scores. In 2007, a similar mandatory test was introduced in Texas for children aged eight to 17.

His report said if everyone did the recommended physical activity, heart disease would fall by 10 per cent, stroke by 20 per cent, type two diabetes by up to 50 per cent, breast cancer by 30 per cent, and osteoporosis-related hip fractures by 50 per cent.

But Margaret Morrissey, founder of the Parents Out Loud pressure group, described the warning letters as 'absolutely disgusting'. 'If the Government goes any further they will be completely intrusive in every aspect of the way parents bring up children,' she added. 'If they were to suggest that about my child, I would probably sue them for defamation of character for basically calling me a poor parent. 'Every child is different; they all have different genes. If you have the wrong genes, the chances are you won't conform to Government targets.'

Dylan Sharpe, from campaign group Big Brother Watch, said: 'While it is important that children are fit and healthy, these proposed annual tests are yet more Government interference and yet more tests for a generation of children who are already constantly under assessment.'

LibDem health spokesman Norman Lamb said: 'Sir Liam Donaldson is right to raise concerns about the state of our children's health but routine "bleep tests" won't by themselves solve the obesity crisis facing the country.'

The Department for Children, School and Families said: 'We think it's an interesting idea and we will consider it.'

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This lunacy about Latin makes me want to weep with rage

How can we understand our world unless we understand the ancient world first, asks Boris Johnson. I am a much more amateur Latinist than Mayor Johnson but I share his feelings about the importance and utility of Latin. Just for starters, it is a must for any lover of classical music. To understand what is being said in the wonderful "Stabat Mater" by Pergolesi is to double one's enjoyment of an already great work -- JR

Being an even-tempered fellow, and given that we have already put up with so much nonsense from the Labour Government, I find there are very few ministerial pronouncements that make me wild with anger. We have learnt to be phlegmatic about the mistakes of a government that has banned 4,300 courses of human conduct, plunged this country into the deepest recession in memory, and so skewed the economy that 70 per cent of the Newcastle workforce is in the pay of the state. But there are times when a minister says something so maddening, so death-defyingly stupid, that I am glad not to be in the same room in case I should reach out, grab his tie, and end what is left of my political career with one almighty head-butt.

Such were my feelings on reading Mr Ed Balls on the subject of teaching Latin in schools. Speaking on the radio, Spheroids dismissed the idea that Latin could inspire or motivate pupils. Head teachers often took him to see the benefits of dance, or technology, or sport, said this intergalactic ass, and continued: "No one has ever taken me to a Latin lesson to make the same point. Very few parents are pushing for it, very few pupils want to study it."

It is nothing short of a disaster that this man is still nominally in charge of education, science, scholarship and learning in this country. He is in danger of undoing the excellent work of his predecessor, Andrew Adonis, and he is just wrong. Of course he doesn't get taken round many Latin classes in the state sector. That is because only 15 per cent of maintained schools offer the subject, against 60 per cent of fee-paying schools. But to say that "very few" want to study the subject, to say that there is no demand for Latin – it makes me want to weep with rage. The demand is huge and it is growing, and I don't just mean that the public is fascinated with the ancient world – though that is obviously true, and demonstrated, for instance, by the success of Robert Harris's Cicero novels.

There is a hunger for the language itself and, thanks to the efforts of a small number of organisations and volunteers, Latin is fighting its way back on to the curriculum. The Cambridge Classics Project did a 2008 study that found that no fewer than 500 secondary schools had started teaching Latin in the past eight years. That is a fantastic thing. Those schools deserve support.

What do they get? The tragic and wilful ignorance of the Secretary of State – and in the face of such wrong-headedness it is hard to know where to begin. I suppose it is too much to hope that Balls would accept the argument from utility – passionately though I believe it to be true. Latin and Greek are great intellectual disciplines, forcing young minds to think in a logical and analytical way. They allow you to surprise your family and delight your friends by deciphering inscriptions.

They are also a giant universal spanner for other languages. Suppose your kid scrapes her knee on holiday in Italy. You are much more likely to administer the right first aid if you know that caldo means hot rather than cold – as you will, if you know Latin. Suppose you are captured by cannibals in the Mato Grosso, and you find a scrap of Portuguese newspaper in your hut revealing that there is about to be an eclipse; and suppose that by successfully prophesying this event you convince your captors that you are a god and secure your release – I reckon you would be thankful for your Latin, eh?

And even if you reject any such practical advantages (and, experto crede, they are huge), I don't care, because they are not the point. The reason we should boost the study of Latin and Greek is that they are the key to a phenomenal and unsurpassed treasury of literature and history and philosophy, and we cannot possibly understand our modern world unless we understand the ancient world that made us all.

If Ed Balls is still unconvinced, then let me make one final point, and remind him that in his supposed anti-elitism he is being viciously elitist. Like me, Ed Balls was lucky to be educated at a wonderful fee-paying school where they taught us Latin. For the past 30 years children from such schools have dominated the study of classics at university. They have a ladder up to follow great courses, under brilliant men and women, at some of the best universities in the world – and to go on to good jobs. How mad, how infamous, that a Labour minister – a Labour minister – should seek to kick that ladder away for children less privileged than him.

Ed Balls should remember that some of the greatest socialists of the past 100 years were classicists, from Denis Healey to Geoffrey de Ste Croix, the formidable Marxist historian and author of The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World. What would Ste Croix have made of a government that actively tried to restrict the study of a great and profitable discipline to the bourgeoisie? He would have denounced it as an act of class war, and he would have been right.

It is thanks to the efforts of hundreds of dedicated teachers and volunteers that the tide is now turning. This Government places insane obstacles in the path of all who want to teach Latin in the maintained sector. Labour refuses to recognise Latin as a language for Ofsted purposes, and even though 60 Latin teachers are retiring every year, the Government will find funding for only 27 teachers a year to graduate with a PGCE enabling them to teach classics. That is 27 for the entire country.

In spite of these restrictions, and in spite of all the snootiness of Ed Balls, the enthusiasts are winning. For the first time in decades there are now – in absolute numbers – more state schools than private schools that teach Latin. Ed Balls should be proud of that achievement. He should celebrate it, and encourage it in the name – if nothing else – of social justice.

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15 March, 2010

British health clubs that warn women not to lift heavy weights face prosecution under equality laws

Endless meddling from Britain's Leftist government

Staff in sports clubs who warn women not to lift heavy weights could be prosecuted under new equality laws. Legislation set out under Harriet Harman's forthcoming Equality Bill says that insinuating a woman might not be able to lift the same size weights as men could be considered 'unlawful sex discrimination'.

A code of practice drawn up by the Equality and Human Rights Commission explaining the legal implications of the Bill lists ways in which women might be unfairly stereotyped. It includes a long list of examples of 'unintentional less favourable treatment' including what might happen to a woman when she joins a gym and begins lifting weights.

It states: 'A general stereotype about men and women is that in terms of physique, most men are stronger than most women. 'Nevertheless it is likely to be unlawful sex discrimination for a gym to test every woman's strength but not every man's before allowing them access to weight-lifting facilities.' The code goes on to say that it will not be seen as an excuse if the motive of the gym staff is to help a woman or save her from injury.

The Bill could also make adverts giving preferential treatment to men or women illegal. This could signal the end of 'ladies' nights' at clubs, when women receive cut-price drinks but men pay full price.

SOURCE



Baby twins put in NHS hospitals 50 miles apart

Because of very limited facilities for premature births

The parents of two-month-old twins have criticised the NHS for placing their poorly daughters in separate hospitals, 50 miles apart. Stephanie Dawson, 25, and her partner Martin Collins, 38, have to take a 121-mile trip to visit Ruby and Krystal Dawson-Collins, which they said leaves them with just 10 minutes with each daughter.

The twins were born at just 26 weeks in Maidstone Hospital, Kent, weighing 1lb 9oz and 2lb 4oz respectively. They were suffering from Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome, where one twin gets more blood in the womb than the other. Following their birth by Caesarean section on January 18 they were transferred to a specialist neonatal unit at St Peter's Hospital in Chertsey, Surrey. After a few days Krystal was deemed well enough to be transferred to Pembury Hospital in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, and split up from her sister.

Her parents, who do not have a car, said they were struggling to visit each baby while still caring for their two other children Mitchel, 10, and Kym. They said that even with the help of friends and family the distance means they can only see their frail daughters twice a week as they cannot leave their Maidstone home until they have collected Mitchel from school. Mr Collins said: "We only get about 10 minutes with each of them, a quick update and a stroke of their heads, before we have to get going.

"It is so awkward getting up through Pembury then into Surrey. "I would have thought it was better for them to be together and it would be easier for us if they were in one place, even if that was in Surrey. "It's like no one realises we are miles away and don't have a car. It is a real struggle, but for the sake of our family, we cannot lose it."

A spokesman for the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust said the girls needed very specialist care only provided in a handful of hospitals in the South East. He said: "We recognise this is a tough time for Stephanie and Martin and are helping them in any way we can."

Dr Paul Crawshaw, clinical director for paediatrics at the Ashford and St Peter's NHS Trust, Surrey, said the separation was a short-term situation. He said: "We always regret the separation of twins and are well aware of the difficulties it is causing the family. "We hope to get them reunited in the very near future."

SOURCE



British government adverts banned for overstating climate change

TWO government advertisements that use nursery rhymes to warn people of the dangers of climate change have been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for exaggerating the potential harm. The adverts, commissioned by Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, used the rhymes to suggest that Britain faces an inevitable increase in storms, floods and heat waves unless greenhouse gas emissions are brought under control.

The ASA has ruled that the claims made in the newspaper adverts were not supported by solid science and has told the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) that they should not be published again. It has also referred a television commercial to the broadcast regulator, Ofcom, for potentially breaching a prohibition on political advertising.

The rulings will be an embarrassment for Miliband, who has tried to portray his policies as firmly science-based. He had commissioned two posters, four press advertisements and a short film for television and cinema, which started appearing in October last year in the run-up to the Copenhagen climate talks. They attracted 939 complaints — more than the ASA received for any advertisement last year. The deluge posed problems for the ASA, which is not a scientific body, so it decided to compare the text of Miliband’s adverts with the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Based on that comparison, it ruled that two of the DECC’s adverts had broken the advertising code on three counts: substantiation, truthfulness and environmental claims. Of the two banned adverts, one depicted three men floating in a bathtub over a flooded British landscape, and the text read: “Rub a dub dub, three men in a tub — a necessary course of action due to flash flooding caused by climate change.” It then explained: “Climate change is happening. Temperature and sea levels are rising. Extreme weather events such as storms, floods and heat waves will become more frequent and intense. If we carry on at this rate, life in 25 years could be very different.”

The second showed two children peering into a stone well amid an arid, post-climate-change landscape. It read: “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. There was none as extreme weather due to climate change had caused a drought.” It then added: “Extreme weather conditions such as flooding, heat waves and storms will become more frequent and intense.”

It was these additional claims, rather than the nursery rhymes or illustrations, that fell foul of the ASA, which ruled it was not scientifically possible to make such definitive statements about Britain’s future climate. The ASA said: “All statements about future climate were based on modelled predictions, which the IPCC report itself stated still involved uncertainties in the magnitude and timing, as well as regional details, of predicted climate change.” It added that both predictions should have been phrased more tentatively.

The ASA did, however, reject other complaints, including one suggesting the DECC adverts were misleading because they presented human-induced climate change as a fact.

Miliband said: “On the one issue where the ASA did not find in our favour, around one word in our print advertising, the science tells us that it is more than 90% likely that there will be more extreme weather events if we don’t act.”

Greg Barker, shadow minister for climate change, said: “It is so unnecessary to exaggerate the risks of global warming, and also counterproductive.”

SOURCE



French students invade UK universities to get better deal

UNIVERSITIES are facing a Gallic invasion as French students abandon their own institutions for degrees in Britain. More than 13,000 full-time students from France — enough to fill an entire university — have enrolled on British courses. They now make up the largest group of overseas students after the Chinese, with 3,194 freshers accepted on undergraduate courses last September.

The attraction of life across the Channel has been partly driven by dissatisfaction with standards at France’s state universities. However, it appears that England’s “study now, pay later” student loan system for tuition fees has also encouraged take-up. The UK is now the most popular foreign destination for French students, followed by Belgium and the United States. Numbers have risen each year since the introduction in 2006 of tuition fees that do not have to be repaid until after graduation. Last autumn’s intake was up by 18% on the previous year.

Some of the most ambitious students are using prestigious institutions in Britain, such as University College London, Oxford, Imperial College London and the London School of Economics, as a back door into France’s highly selective and independent grandes écoles. “Instead of paying for two years of prépa to prepare for the tough entrance exams to the grandes écoles, some students do a three-year degree in Britain and apply for the small number of places we have for first degree holders,” said Christine Escafit of the Grenoble Institute of Technology. “It takes a year longer but they do not have to reach the same high level to get in, as prépa is very competitive.”

British university courses that include a year at a grande école are also a draw for French students. David Chreng, 20, a Parisian studying chemistry at Imperial College, will spend the final year of his four-year degree at one of France’s leading grandes écoles. “By the end of the year I will obtain a diploma from Polytechnique Paris and a prestigious degree from Imperial,” he said.

The influx of French students at Imperial has had a typically Gallic cultural impact, with regular wine and cheese tasting sessions and organised bakery trips.

In total 8,770 undergraduates from France are studying in Britain and 4,320 postgraduate students. A further 4,000 students are on exchange courses.The University of Kent in Canterbury — one of the closest British institutions to French shores — is particularly popular, with 265 French students enrolling there last year, 165 on politics courses.

Funding issues weigh heavily on some scholars’ minds. Students from Britain and the rest of the European Union can borrow the £3,225 annual tuition fee and do not have to repay it until the April after graduation or until their earnings reach £15,000, whichever is later. Other EU countries have refused to collect repayments through their tax systems. However, court orders for non-payment can be enforced in other member states if the defaulters can be traced by the Student Loans Company.

Roxanne Jourdain, 18, a chemistry student at Imperial who comes from a village in the French Alps, said British universities often had greater international recognition than their French counterparts. “I don’t think it is any more expensive to go to the UK,” she added. “Tuition here is £3,000 a year but the fees at a private prépa are similar and the most prestigious grandes écoles can cost up to £7,000 a year.”

Student unrest and lecturers’ strikes over President Nicolas Sarkozy’s proposed reforms of French higher education are also fuelling the flight across the Channel. Students at the Sorbonne missed four months of lectures last year because of demonstrations against Sarkozy’s plan to allow the overcrowded and underfunded state universities to seek private finance.

The unrest was a deciding factor for Victor de Buisson, 19, from Lyons, who is studying computing at Imperial. He said: “I just got fed up with the French system. Striking is a big problem. In the Sorbonne last year they decided to make students take the exams without being taught properly. Friends of mine who go there hate it. In France it’s nothing to do with thinking — it’s about cramming facts into your brain.”

Chreng predicts more French students will seek a British higher education as word spreads about the opportunities, especially the links between universities and industry and the chance to do summer internships. “I found it challenging to go abroad, study in another language and have to build a new life in London,” he said. “But I do not regret my decision.”

SOURCE



There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.





14 March, 2010

British judge bans anti-immigration party from taking on any new members

In good Nazi fashion, the Leftist British establishment is using the law to hound an opposing party out of existence

The British National Party was ordered to stop taking new members yesterday after a judge said its rules were loaded against non-whites. Judge Paul Collins said that despite attempts by the far-Right group to clean up its constitution to comply with the law, the rules were still racist. While it is not illegal to hold racist views, it is against the Race Relations Act for a political party's recruitment rules to be based on discrimination, the judge said. Judge Collins instructed the party to close its membership list until the constitution had been re-written.

He told Central London County Court he believed the BNP was 'likely to commit unlawful acts of discrimination... in the terms on which they are prepared to admit persons to membership under the 12th addition of their constitution'.

The ruling and an injunction preventing new members follows a challenge to BNP rules from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). Last month the party abandoned its whites-only policy to try to comply with the law - but Judge Collins said the move was cosmetic. In particular he pointed to new rules which require new members to be vetted by existing members in their homes.

He also referred to a series of newly established core party organisations that appear to have been set up to ensure new ethnic minority members cannot influence BNP policies or leadership. Of the first rule, the judge said: ' Unsurprisingly it was argued on behalf of the commission that the purpose of this provision was to be intimidatory.' On the second, he said that one of the new core groups was able to veto any changes to the constitution.

'This veto may have been inserted as insurance against the possibility that large numbers of non-indigenous British might join the BNP to vote its essential principles out of existence,' the judge said. He warned that any breach of the injunction on members could result in a prison sentence for officials or seizure of BNP assets.

Party leader Nick Griffin, who was jeered by demonstrators at the court, said the judgement 'has given an organ of the state the power to interfere in the aims and objectives of any political party'. Mr Griffin said people who did not agree with the party's principles would not be allowed to join.

Susie Uppal, of the EHRC, said: 'The commission is glad that the judgment confirms our view that both the BNP's 11th constitution and the amended 12th constitution are unlawful. 'Political parties, like any other organisation, are obliged to respect the law and not discriminate against people who wish to become members. 'The BNP will now have to take the necessary steps to ensure that it complies with the Race Relations Act.'

SOURCE





Britain's malignant social workers again

They let a child die -- But if you say you disapprove of homosexuality you could get your kids taken off you. Political correctness is all. Real abuse does not matter

An eight-year-old girl found hanged in her filthy bedroom had been "abandoned to her fate" despite years of involvement by social services, a court heard. Charlotte Avenall was found dead in a the "foul and disgusting" room with faeces smeared on the walls, floor, bedding, and soft toys. Neither her mother, Susan Moody, stepfather, Simon Moody, nor any other adult had set foot there for at least a month before her death on September 12 last year.

Susan and Simon Moody both admitted child cruelty between August 14 and September 12 last year when they appeared before Nottingham Crown Court. They admitted they "did wilfully neglect, abandon or expose Charlotte in a manner likely to cause her unnecessary suffering or injury to health".

It will be up to a later inquest to decide whether Charlotte's death at the family's terraced home in Moor Street, Mansfield, Notts, was deliberate or accidental. But it believed she died in her sleep after a length of cord with soft toys attached to it became tangled round her neck.

The case comes as the mother and stepfather of seven-year-old starvation victim Khyra Ishaq were jailed for her manslaughter. Angela Gordon was handed a 15 year sentence while Junaid Abuhamza was jailed indefinitely for the public's protection, with a minimum term of seven and a half years.

The latest cases have again raised questions about the efficacy of social services staff. It emerged during the trial of Gordon and Abuhamza that Birmingham City Council was aware of concerns about the child's welfare almost five months before her death.

Charlotte, who attended a special school, is also thought to have been in the habit of smearing faeces around her room. Her parents spoke only to answer to their names and enter guilty pleas as they stood side by side in the dock.

William Harbage, QC, prosecuting, told the court: "Nobody had been in Charlotte's bedroom for a period of four weeks or more before her death. "Her room was in a absolutely foul and disgusting state with faeces smeared all over the walls, floor, bedding and soft toys. Mr Harbage said the prosecution accepted Susan Moody had been "unwell" at the relevant time but the extent of that illness was "open to dispute". Mr Harbarge added: "Each parent had a duty of care for Charlotte and each should have checked the room. "If they did not do so themselves they had a duty to make sure that each other did so, or they should have made sure an outside agency did. "She did not ensure her husband did so and she did not ensure that social services or any other outside agency did so. "Effectively they abandoned Charlotte to her fate and left her at risk to health and unnecessary suffering."

Judge Joan Butler, QC, adjourned the case for reports until April 9 and granted the couple bail until then. An immediate investigation was launched after Charlotte's death when it became known she suffered from severe learning difficulties and was known to welfare services. It later emerged social services and other agencies had been closely involved with Charlotte her whole life as her mother was only 16 and living in foster care when she was born.

A spokesman for Nottinghamshire County Council said:"A serious case review is underway which is being caried out by the Nottinghamshire Safeguarding Children Board. "Until that it is complete we will not be commenting."

SOURCE



British private schools attack Government interference

Independent schools will launch an attack this week on Government interference in how they are run and what they teach. The Independent Schools Council has drawn up a manifesto demanding that the party that wins the election strips away the unprecedented layers of regulation that have been imposed on the sector. It will say that the independence of schools is being worn away by Government interference, threatening their successful running and undermining the characteristics of private education that parents value.

At its annual conference next week it will call for Contactpoint, Labour's database of all children in England, to be scrapped; the controversial new vetting and barring scheme, which regulates who is deemed to be suitable to work with children, to be slimmed down; and school inspections to be streamlined. "Our excellent results are down to our independence and our ability to do things differently," said David Lyscom, the chief executive of the Independent Schools Council (ISC). "But over the last few years we have seen that independence whittled away in all sorts of areas.

"The irony is that while promoting the idea of 'independence', the current Government has operated in the opposite direction. "We share the concerns of the state sector that layer upon layer of regulation has been added. These layers conflict and overlap and make the running of a school very, very difficult." As The Sunday Telegraph revealed in December, the deluge of new regulations dictates to schools everything from the height of site walls to the specific wording of school policies, to what has to be taught to toddlers in private school nurseries.

The ISC will also criticise the Charity Commission's interpretation of the new law which requires schools to prove they provide a public benefit if they are to continue to benefit from lucrative charitable tax breaks. Its rulings have concentrated on private schools' provision of bursaries for the poor and little else. "What the Charity Commission is trying to do is tell schools how to run themselves in terms of how many bursaries they have to offer and whether they are 100 per cent or not," said Mr Lyscom.

Claims from the left that private school elitism is undermining social mobility in the UK will also be challenged. "The whole debate on social mobility is based on a false premise – that only 7 per cent of children go to independent schools," said Mr Lyscom. "Even that figure means a lot of families but our research shows that 14 per cent of adults have had part of their education in the independent sector. "This is a big and significant minority that cannot be dismissed as rich kids in posh schools. We have 1,250 schools that range from the big-name institutions to very small local schools that charge £5,000 a year. "We have been very successful at giving individual children, whatever their background, an excellent start in life, equipping them with the right sort of skills to get them good results, get them to university and on to life. It is not about privilege."

Drawn up by the eight associations that make up the ISC, the manifesto is the first produced by fee-paying schools. It comes as the Conservatives promised that the state sector would be allowed to mirror independents by setting up "state prep schools". The "free school" policy, which encourages parents, voluntary organisations and groups to establish their own state-funded schools, would move away from the uniformity of primary and secondary schools teaching fixed age ranges. Instead, "state prep schools" catering for children from seven to 13, for instance, would be allowed to be set up.

Michael Gove, the shadow children's secretary, said: "In the private sector they keep children at prep schools until the age of 13 before they move to secondary. "As a result, they have a particularly tailored form of specialised teaching in an intimate environment which allows these children to soar. "Why shouldn't we have state preps that allow children to stay in such an environment until they reach the age of 13? "If it is right in the private sector, why wouldn't it be right in the state sector? We will give parents that choice and teachers that opportunity to innovate."

The Tories have already said they would instruct the Charity Commission to adopt a broader vision of what constitutes public benefit, including partnerships with state schools.

SOURCE



Women who use the Pill can expect to live longer, Royal College of GPs finds

Some rare realism in red below

Research involving 46,000 British women over nearly 40 years has confirmed that the Pill is not linked to long-term health risks from cancer or heart disease, according to the report in the British Medical Journal. While younger women are at slightly higher risk of suffering heart attack, stroke or breast and cervical cancers while taking the Pill, researchers say this effect is negligible, and outweighed by wider benefits.

Any adverse effects of the Pill disappear within ten years of stopping take it, and could easily be counteracted by regular checks and a healthy lifestyle, they said.

Philip Hannaford, a professor at the University of Aberdeen who led the study for the Royal College of GPs, said that over a lifetime, women who took the Pill at any stage were less likely to die from any cause than those who did not. “Our best estimate is that if you took a group of 100,000 women, and they used the pill for a year, on average you would have 52 fewer deaths in those women compared to those using other forms of contraception.”

Professor Hannaford said that the beneficial effects may only be true for women who have taken older-style pills — rather than those on newer drugs, which may have slightly different formulations. But he added that the lower risks were probably not a direct result of the Pill. “It might be that the characteristics of these women, that they are more likely to use health services, have blood checks or other monitoring means they are at reduced risk.”

The study, organised by the Royal College of GPs, began in 1968 when 23,000 women who used oral contraceptives for an average of four years, and a similar number who didn’t, were recruited from 1,400 surgeries across Britain. Early results had suggested that taking the Pill could increase the risk of death, mainly from heart or circulatory disease. The latest findings show that there were 20 more deaths per 100,000 among women younger than 30 who took the Pill, and four more deaths per 100,000 among those aged 30-39. But by the age of 50, the benefits outweighed these risks, with 14 fewer deaths per 100,000 among those aged 40-49, and an even greater effect among older women.

Professor Hannaford said yesterday that the risks were small for women under 45, and were mainly seen in those who smoked, had high blood pressure, or were otherwise at risk of heart disease. “We know that the Pill does cause changes in clotting factors and some of the factors in biochemistry, so the increased risk of heart disease and stroke is explainable,” he said. “The way to minimise the risk is that you don’t smoke, have your blood pressure measured regularly, attend the cervical screening programme and maintain a healthy diet and exercise. That will make your risk very low, and there are also benefits.”

He added that although the Pill was associated with a increased risk of breast or cervical cancer, it could reduce the chances of developing ovarian, bowel or endometrial cancer.

While women should not be complacent about taking any medication, he said: “Many women, especially those who used the first generation of oral contraceptives many years ago, are likely to be reassured by our results. “However, our findings might not reflect the experience of women using oral contraceptives today, if currently available preparations have a different risk than earlier products.”

Patricia Lohr, medical director at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, said that the scale and length of the study was “unusual and very helpful”. “It’s reassuring to see that, over time, having used the Pill as a method of birth control is at least as safe as not having used the Pill at all,” she said.

SOURCE





13 March, 2010

The only politician with the guts to speak out about immigration: Frank Field reveals his candid opinion on the future of Britain

Surprisingly, it's not just ambitious Tory MPs with dreams of ministerial office who will be waiting by their phones the day after the General Election if David Cameron becomes Prime Minister. The maverick Labour MP Frank Field, who has had turbulent relations with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, may also receive a call.

During Mr Field's 30 years as an MP, hundreds of ministers have come and gone - few are remembered. Field himself was a minister for only 18 months in Tony Blair's first government. But far from being an also-ran, he is now - at the age of 67 - at the peak of his powers. More pertinently, he is one of only a handful of politicians in Britain with the courage to break the cross-party silence on immigration and propel it to the centre of the political stage.

With a rock- solid Merseyside seat, and a thick skin after three decades in public life, he doesn't care who knows that he thinks Mr Brown is a disaster who should never have been Chancellor, let alone Prime Minister. They repeatedly clashed when he was the minister charged by Mr Blair with 'thinking the unthinkable' on welfare reform back in the days of the first New Labour government.

So, with no chance of a return to office under Labour, what about serving David Cameron, who has pledged to mend 'Broken Britain' by radically overhauling the benefits system? 'If the Tories want to talk to me about a job, I will be happy to,' says Field. 'My door is open to any party to develop ideas. Tory, Liberal, or my own. I will always put the interests of my country and constituents before my party. I have never refused to speak to people on the other side.'

Pressed on whether he would take a ministerial job, he says: 'I would love to be asked by the Prime Minister, especially my own, to take on a role to help convince the world we are serious about our debts, getting immigration under control, and reforming welfare. I am up for that challenge.' So why not talk to our current PM? 'I would love to talk to him,' says Field, 'but he won't speak to me.'

Mr Field tips the scales at barely 11 stone, the same weight as when he was first elected, yet he never goes to the gym. He eats too much, and likes red wine. He rarely watches TV or goes to the theatre. He prefers to relax by reading political tomes such as the latest biography on Churchill. He represents one of Labour's safest seats, Birkenhead.

Even 20 years after the fall of Margaret Thatcher, she is still a hate figure among swathes of his electorate. Yet long before Mr Brown also professed his admiration for her, Field was hugely impressed by the woman he thinks was the most radical British leader since Clement Attlee's post-war government, which created the NHS. 'I have a good relationship with her. She has become much nicer as she has got older. In fact, I'm having coffee with her tomorrow.' His late father, a building labourer, and mother, a classroom assistant, would approve. They voted Tory.

Mr Field makes no apologies for being willing to talk to the Tories. His mission has been to create a Labour Party that speaks to ordinary working people, gets the poor off benefits, reduces state spending, and has full employment as a goal - admirable objectives, which his party has failed to achieve. So if the Tories can achieve them, he will engage with them....

It's inflammatory stuff for a Labour MP. But by his own admission, Field is a serial rebel in the Commons. 'On issues I really know about, I sadly usually disagree with the Government. For that reason, I try not to find out about the other issues so I can put in a reasonable number of votes on behalf of my party.' ...

But it was his decision to set up Balanced Migration, a cross-party political group to campaign against mass immigration, which has thrust him to the fore once more. According to government statistics, one immigrant arrives every minute, and a new British passport is issued every three. In the past ten years, almost 750,000 British people have left the country, and 2.5 million immigrants have arrived. The rate of inflow is 25 times higher than any previous period of immigration since the Norman Conquest.

Last month it emerged, under the Freedom of Information Act, that far from being unexpected, this massive increase was sanctioned by the Blair Cabinet - not least to ensure a strong backing for Labour from the new immigrants at successive elections. 'You can count on less than two hands the number of brave Labour MPs who have said we have to stop growing our population by immigration,' Field says. 'For his part, David Cameron has proposed a cap on immigration. He must put a figure on that.' Field proposes cutting it to 30,000 a year from 90,000. 'When people who have worked all their lives are unemployed because of the recession, we can't continue to have free movement from the countries that have recently become a part of the European Union. We have to withdraw temporarily from that.'

He warns that unless British people are put first, the Government risks serious outbreaks of civil unrest on a scale similar to the inner- city race riots that took place under Thatcher's first administration. 'It's like a drought. The tinder is very dry across Britain, particularly in areas which are most up against it. Despite what politicians say, the NHS and education budgets will all be cut. 'Yet schools will have to find new classrooms and teachers because we continue to grow our population through immigration.

'Parents know their children are not achieving what they might, despite unimaginable increases in the education budget, because teachers are disproportionately trying to make sure the new arrivals catch up with everyone else.'

The flashpoints could come in cities such as Bradford and in East London where the BNP is seeking to capitalise on simmering unrest among workingclass whites. 'The migrants come here and then people get nasty because they have created their own local villages in the inner cities. The charge sheets for this should be laid against the political elite who allowed this. 'The headlines will be dominated in the next few years by how we survive financially. Yet we won't survive longer term unless we put down the foundations for a new citizenship. 'And that must start with the fundamental truth that until you fulfil duties as a citizen there can never be anything such as rights. You should only get rights to benefits, for instance, if you have paid your contributions.

'We should ensure that the people who come here to work don't then have 300 members of their families who want to come, too. I don't think the British voters are going to put up with this for much longer. 'There is a risk of civil unrest. We have to turn off the immigration tap, so we can say to people: "You haven't trusted us in the past, but we are at least not going to make it any worse.'' '

As the polls point to the closest election fight since 1992, Mr Field is clear that although he might consider an approach from a Cameron government, he wants Labour to win. Even under Gordon Brown? 'I am looking forward to the election of a Labour government,' he says. Yes, but what about Mr Brown personally? 'I want to see Labour win,' he repeats. With Mr Brown at the helm? 'I want to see a Labour PM.'

His point is clear. Indeed, not only will he not endorse Mr Brown as PM, he has already identified his favoured candidate if there is a change of leader after polling day. 'If we have to look for a safe pair of hands, Alistair Darling has quietly put himself into the ring. He is quietly authoritative and has stood up to Brown.'

Frank Field predicts that the country is about to enter its stormiest waters since postwar reconstruction in 1945. 'I am not sure the country will necessarily be OK. But a country that was able to stand alone and beat the Nazis must have enormous inner reserves. We're going to need them.'

Source



Once again, the British police are on the side of the criminals

Curry house owner foils burglary... and then HE'S thrown in cell when yobs complain

When a restaurant owner found two teenage yobs raiding his beer cellar, he chased them and held them while his staff dialled 999. Sal Miah assumed police would commend him for catching the young criminals. But when officers arrived, they arrested 35-year-old Mr Miah on suspicion of assault and battery.

The married father-of-five spent five hours in a police cell and had his DNA, fingerprints and police mugshot taken. Mr Miah, who has run the Raj Poot restaurant in Crowborough, East Sussex, for 14 years, was finally released at 4am after receiving a caution for assault and battery, which will stay on his record for five years.

He said: 'The system is a joke. How can a man who tries to prevent a crime in progress end up being the criminal? 'People are living in fear of these kind of yobs but when you do take a stand and try and defend your home or your business you end up in trouble. 'It's the wrong way round. These boys told the police I had punched them and they believed them. 'This country is getting worse. You see these gangs tormenting people and they are just getting away with it. But who was looking out for my interests? 'This has been an unbelievable stress and strain on my family. The uncle of one of the boys even came to the restaurant making threats that he was going to smash it up and burn it down. 'But when I reported that the police said they couldn't find him.'

Mr Miah's ordeal began a fortnight ago when he heard the teenagers trying to smash their way into the beer cellar. They fled, but Mr Miah pursued them and managed to grab them and bring them back to the restaurant, where he sat them down by the bar. He told his diners not to worry and instructed staff to call the police.

But as he did so a large group of the teenagers' friends assembled outside and started to kick the door in. Fearing for the safety of his customers, Mr Miah locked the door to prevent the 'intimidating' youths getting in, he said. He also went outside to stop them from breaking his windows and pushed several of them away. But when the police arrived the youths accused Mr Miah of punching them and he was arrested.

As officers put him in the back of a patrol car, he said the laughing yobs hurled abuse and mocked him with shouts of 'You're nicked'. Mr Miah, who has no previous convictions, said: 'I could not believe it. 'I had stopped a crime from happening and even delivered the suspects to police on a plate.'

Sussex police said Mr Miah should have 'observed from a safe distance' before dialling 999. The spokesman said: 'On no account should any attempt at aggression be made as this could easily escalate into violence.'

A boy of 13 was later arrested and charged with burglary with intent.

SOURCE



Another charming British cop -- and another senior one at that too

Police inspector 'left student to die in road after knocking him down and driving away'



An off-duty police chief inspector [above] whose car struck a university student on a dual carriageway failed to stop and claimed he thought he had hit a post, despite having the victim's blood and skin on his shattered windscreen, a court heard today. Jamie Jones, from West Midlands Police, allegedly killed Warwick University student Raymond Cheung on the Coventry-bound carriageway of the A45 in the early hours of March 8 last year. Jones, 38, carried on driving after the fatal impact, leaving the victim's body in the road to be struck by a second car, Shrewsbury Crown Court heard.

Malcolm Morse, prosecuting, told jurors that Jones was not to blame for Mr Cheung's death as the student emerged on the road just a second or two before the collision. The inspector is charged with misconduct in a public office for failing to stop at the scene and dangerous driving. The charge of dangerous driving relates not to his driving before the collision, but to the allegation that he continued to drive with a smashed windscreen.

Mr Morse told the jury that on the morning of the collision Jones was travelling along the road, which links Birmingham and Coventry, in his BMW Series 5 at a speed just below the limit of 60mph. He said the collision with Mr Cheung was ‘entirely unavoidable’, explaining: ‘He is not criminally responsible for Raymond Cheung's death, there was nothing he could have done to avoid it.’

But the prosecutor said Jones ‘must have known’ he had hit a person and failed in his duty as a police officer when he did not pull over at the scene. Mr Morse said: ‘He did not stop. There is some evidence from a taxi driver who was on the scene at the time of the collision that he actually speeded up and he drove away.’

The court heard that a number of other motorists who spotted the body in the road pulled over and put on their hazard lights to alert other drivers to the obstruction. Despite their efforts the body of Mr Cheung was struck by a Volvo car and carried for some distance along the carriageway, Mr Morse said.

The prosecutor said Mr Cheung had driven to a service station on the Coventry-bound carriageway of the road, where he parked his car, leaving his mobile phone and wallet inside. The court heard that the 20-year-old, originally from Hong Kong, had recently had a ‘falling out’ with a female student at the university and may have walked into the oncoming traffic intentionally.

Mr Morse said: ‘He crossed the dual carriageway on the Coventry to Birmingham side and made his way in some way or another, over or under or through the central reservation. ‘Mr Cheung was a pedestrian wearing black clothes who will have emerged from a shadow on an unlit road. ‘It is most likely that, at the time when the defendant for the very first time saw him, he will have had something in the region of 1.5 to two seconds to react. In other words, no time at all.

‘He did hit the student. The consequence of that impact was that Raymond Cheung suffered multiple injuries and was killed.’ The prosecutor added: ‘Mr Cheung may have stepped into the defendant's carriageway intentionally. ‘It is one of the explanations that fits with the evidence that I have outlined to you.’

Mr Morse said a post-mortem examination found evidence that Mr Cheung had been standing upright in the road when he was struck and had subsequently hit the windscreen of the BMW. He said: ‘We know his body must have done that because, later on, hair and skin and blood from him was found in the damaged glass of the windscreen.’

The court heard that after the collision Jones, of Allesley, Coventry, drove home and called a police station in the city. He told officers he needed someone to come to his home and said he believed he had hit a post. When two police officers arrived at his home he told them he had heard a ‘loud pop’ as his windscreen smashed and he hoped he had not struck a person, Mr Morse said. He added: ‘In response to their silence he said words to the effect of, “Oh God, it was a person wasn't it?”'

Mr Morse said: ‘Albeit at a time when he could do nothing about it... at a time he must have seen that there was a pedestrian standing in the road in front of him. ‘At some point his windscreen has shattered. The most likely cause for its shattering is that Raymond hit it and one of the parts of Raymond Cheung's body that hit the windscreen are his head and face.’ He added: ‘It is the Crown's case that if one stops as dispassionately as can be and then examines these circumstances by that analysis, one is driven to the conclusion that the driver must have known that he had hit a person. ‘But as I have said, he did not stop. Other people did.

‘We say that when he drove on he was making an intentional choice to drive on.’

SOURCE



Lord Rees, President of Royal Society criticized for ‘surrender to politically driven Climate Change dogma’

The feeble defence today (BBC Radio4*) of the failed science of Man-made climate change by Lord Martin Rees President of the Royal Society is a “dereliction of his duty to defend the integrity of science and a surrender to the politically driven agenda of the UN which is mounting a ‘Custer’s last stand’ review of IPCC procedures in a desperate bid to save its credibility”, said Piers Corbyn astrophysicist and founder of WeatherAction long range weather and climate forecasters.

Piers further said: “Martin Rees is a great scientist but his support today of failed science over evidence-based factual observations is a betrayal of the scientific method in favour of anti-scientific dogma. One wonders at what point should political expediency ever over-rule evidence-based science?”

“His defence of the refuted** theory of man-made climate change on the grounds that ‘CO2 has been rising recently at an unprecedented rate and very simple physics’ is without foundation.

“Firstly the claim that current rates of rise of CO2 are unprecedented is neither relevant nor justifiable. Recognized published peer-reviewed work shows:

(i) measured data over hundreds, or thousands, or millions of years proves CO2 changes have no nett driving effect on world temperature or climate, indeed the relationship is observed to be the other way around – for example at the end of ice-ages temperature rises drive CO2 rises with a lag of centuries.

This means that current changes of CO2 are also of no consequence. This is demonstrated by world cooling for the last 8 years while CO2 has been rapidly rising.

(ii) ice core data smooths out rapid fluctuations in CO2 levels which occurred in the past and other methods of measuring CO2 in more recent times show rapid changes**.

The claim of unprecedented rises in something of no consequence is scaremongering nonsense.

“Secondly the ‘very simple physics’ he claims to draw on is just too simple and leaves out other pretty simple physics.

The supposed large magnifying effect of water vapour which is a more significant contributor to infra-red absorption and emission than the trace gas CO2 has been widely challenged along with other assumptions of the CO2 centred theory. More fundamentally wherever those considerations lead a number of feedback effects totally negate any impact CO2 changes may have on surface temperatures. For example extra CO2 enhances plant growth and photosynthetic transpiration which is a powerful cooling effect and the more CO2 the more the cooling. So any extra surface warming due to extra CO2 in the atmosphere is negated by extra cooling caused by extra photosynthetic transpiration. Warming also enhances plant growth so if at one point there were insufficient plants to do the cooling and therefore warming occurred that would enhance plant growth and extend the growing season until there are sufficient plants to provide cooling to negate any warming.

“Martin Rees and the IPCC should be prepared to defend their CO2-driven climate change position but they have still failed to produce any observational evidence for their hypothesis and the BBC consistently avoids allowing any air time to Climate Realist scientists who can easily refute the CO2 hypothesis. Nevertheless I am glad Martin Rees did not repeat the banal claims of Professor Corine Le Quere of the University of East Anglia that ‘There is no other explanation for it (= recent(?) Climate change)’. Perhaps he realizes that our WeatherAction verification of predicted chains of events leading from solar activity to extreme weather events is evidence that the Sun causes ‘it’.

More HERE



British toddler died of meningitis after five doctors failed to spot symptoms

A toddler who died of meningitis after five doctors failed to spot he was suffering from the disease was "completely failed by the medical profession", his family said.

An inquest heard 21-month-old Oliver Martin was rushed to hospital by his mother, a district nurse, when he fell seriously ill at home. He was displaying several of the major symptoms of meningitis, including a rash that disappeared when pressed, high temperature, pale complexion and lethargy. But the hearing was told the illness was "at the back of the mind" of the first doctor to examine Oliver who thought he was suffering from chicken pox.

He was subsequently seen by a further four other doctors - but was not given antibiotics until eight and a half hours after his arrival at the Leicester Royal Infirmary. By then it was too late, and Oliver, of Welford, Northants, died of meningococcal septicaemia, a type of blood poisoning caused by the same bacteria as meningitis, a short time later.

Oliver's mother, Louise Martin, 27, was too upset to attend the inquest at Leicester Town Hall. But speaking afterwards, his aunt, Susan Wilson, who sat through the evidence, said: "He was failed from the moment we walked through the door. "His treatment was disgusting. The medical profession let him down. I'm very, very angry. "The Government tells us through their leaflets to trust our instincts and not take any chances, to get children to hospital and get antibiotics. "And Oliver did - but eight-and-a-half hours later, and by then it was too late.

"If his mum had kept him at home and given him a dose of Nurofen, which is basically what the hospital did, she would be on a child neglect and manslaughter charge now. "But what have the Leicester Royal Infirmary got? Nothing. We've not even had an apology. "If this inquest prevents this happening again, then it will have been worthwhile."

Leicester City Coroner Catherine Mason, who recorded a narrative verdict, criticised "poor" communication between staff at the hospital which meant vital information about Oliver's condition and symptoms was not passed on when his case was handed over. She added: "Had earlier treatment been given Oliver may still have died, but on the balance of probabilities his chances of survival would have been better."

The inquest heard Oliver was taken to the hospital by his mother at around 10am on May 13 last year, and first seen by Accident and Emergency doctor Kalmjit Kaur. She noted a number of possible diagnoses, including meningitis, but suspected it was more likely he was suffering from chicken pox. Crucially, she chose not to administer antibiotics - and instead decided Oliver's condition should simply be monitored.

He was later moved to the children's ward, where concerned nurses tried to get the duty paediatric registrar, Dr Manjith Narayanan, to re-examine him. But he failed to do so for over an hour because he had been told at the start of his evening shift that Oliver's condition was "not serious". He said: "If I had been given all of the information I would've come out of the hand-over, gone to see him straight away and given him antibiotics." Doctors eventually suspected meningococcal septicaemia and ordered a course of the anti-viral drugs at 6.30pm. But Oliver died at around 10pm.

Kevin Harris, the acting medical director at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust said: "We accept the coroner's verdict following the inquest into Oliver Martin's death. "We would like to express our sincere condolences to his family for the upset and distress caused. "If Oliver's family have any questions following the verdict we would welcome the opportunity to discuss these with them." [In other words: So sad, too bad]

SOURCE



Britain voted worst place in developed world to bring up children (while Australia is the best)

Britain is the worst country in which to raise children, while Australia is the best, a study has found. The survey of [British] expatriates living in six different countries found there was a better standard of living Down Under, and a better quality of family life. A massive 78 per cent of children who moved there from countries such as the UK spent more time outdoors than they did before, and the majority ate more healthily.

In comparison, foreign children who moved to Britain were more likely to become lazy and inactive.

A third of parents who have moved here said their children watched more TV than they did before and 27 per cent saw an increase in the amount of time spent playing video games. Overall, Britain was also branded the most difficult country to move to. Schools were found to be less welcoming, and it was difficult to arrange child care.

A massive 45 per cent of parents said the quality of their family life had decreased since moving to the UK - just 16 per cent noticed an improvement, according to the survey commissioned by HSBC. Britain was rated the lowest of the six countries examined. The list, from best to worst, read Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, United Arab Emirates, the U.S. and the UK.

The results bode well for Leah Wood, 31, who recently emigrated to Sydney with her Australian husband Jack MacDonald and their nine-month- old daughter Maggie. Miss Wood, the daughter of Rolling Stone Ronnie said she wanted a 'fresh start'. She said: 'My husband is Australian and I love the lifestyle and the pureness of this city. It's really easy to be organic here. I want the best for my little Maggie.'

An HSBC spokesman said: 'When you're talking to an expat community you're obviously talking to people with a varied degree of experience in terms of different countries. 'The key centres around childcare and education... they were the things that were really highlighted. The UK has scored lower than some of the other countries in those respects.'

But Britain did rank highly in terms of cultural integration, with 83 per cent saying they were able to adapt to UK living 'well' or 'really well'. The spokesman said: 'The UK is a great place to be able to dip into a number of different cultural experiences.'

The Offshore Offspring report, commissioned by HSBC, examined children's integration, health and well-being by questioning 3,100 expats from 50 nations living in the six countries. In 2008, emigration from recession-hit Britain reached a record level with 427,000 people leaving, up from 341,000 in 2007, according to the Office for National Statistics.

SOURCE





12 March, 2010

British Libel laws silenced critic of lie detector system

England’s libel laws will come under fresh pressure today as a researcher tells MPs that they have been used to silence his criticism of lie detection technology on which the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has spent £2.4 million. An academic from Sweden claims that a paper challenging the principles behind the voice risk analysis (VRA) system was withdrawn by his publisher after legal threats from its manufacturer.

In an interview with The Times before speaking at a House of Commons seminar today, Francisco Lacerda, Professor of Phonetics at Stockholm University, said that libel law was suppressing information that should be available in the public interest. He said that English law was damaging science abroad as well as in Britain because English was the international language of research and many influential academic journals were published in Britain.

Amir Liberman, of Nemesysco, an Israeli company that devised the technology, said, however, that the withdrawn paper contained inaccuracies. In 2007 Professor Lacerda and Anders Eriksson, of Gothenburg University, published an article entitled “Charlatanry in Forensic Speech Science” in the International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law. It criticised the science behind VRA technologies that purport to identify stressed voices, which may indicate lying.

The VRA system is being evaluated in 24 pilot studies by the DWP, as a means of highlighting potential benefit fraud.

SOURCE



Slackers find a safe haven in the British public sector

Services are failing because it is so hard to fire poor staff

Margaret Thatcher transformed Britain. But there is one place where nothing much changed after May 1979; a lost world where strikes are commonplace and powerful trade unions still rule the roost. It’s a slice of 1970s Britain preserved in aspic, where productivity falls, pay surges and nobody gets the sack. All that’s missing are the Austin Allegros and Donny Osmond.

That place is the public sector. Review the facts: public sector productivity fell almost 4% in the 10 years after 1997, whereas private sector productivity grew 28%. Public sector pay has grown by 15% more than private sector pay. But despite that, people in the public sector aren’t happy: in fact, compared with the private sector, twice as many managers say morale is low in their workplace. Sickness rates are 50% higher and the number of days lost to strikes is 15 times higher.

What’s going on? There is no fundamental reason why a business or organisation should perform less well just because it is in the ownership of the state. But in practice they do. For years politicians have accepted this as inevitable and the strategy has been to “go around” the problem: to privatise, contract out, or introduce competition, in order to chip away at the public sector. But there are some public services that will never be privatised or outsourced. And we have avoided confronting the underlying problems.

There are many reasons why the public sector is underperforming. Four-fifths of public sector workers have their pay set not on the basis of individual performance but by national pay bargaining agreements. In much of the public sector, promotion is automatic each year and doesn’t reflect effort or ability. Public sector organisations are saddled with top-heavy management and expensive pension schemes.

Perhaps the most important reason is that it is very difficult to hire or fire anyone. Almost no one is ever sacked for underperforming in the civil service. And whole teams of people who are no longer really needed remain because it is difficult to make people redundant. According to the Cabinet Office: “There were fewer than 100 compulsory redundancies between 2005 and 2008.” That means just 25 people each year out of 525,000 civil servants.

You might think that making it difficult for anyone to be sacked or made redundant would be good for morale. In fact the reverse is true. Few things are worse for morale than having to “carry” people who are making little effort or are badly suited to their jobs. That’s why, in a survey of 60 public sector organisations conducted by the Cabinet Office, nine out of 10 employees agreed with the statement that their organisation “is too lenient with people who perform poorly”.

In 2008 the government and the trade unions agreed a “protocol for handling surplus staff situations” under which the government will almost never force through compulsory redundancies. So people have to be bribed to leave with generous pay-offs. For example, in 2005-8 almost 300 people agreed to take early retirement from the Foreign Office with an average payout of £162,000 — on top of their generous pensions.

This problem is compounded because public sector managers turn over so quickly. On average, a civil servant spends just 2½ years in a senior post. If reducing the number of staff will not “pay for itself” for many years, and their manager will be gone by then anyway, why should they bother with the hassle?

Worse still, hiring and firing in the public sector consumes huge amounts of time and money. Hiring someone in the prison service involves grinding through a gruelling 39 steps. The National Audit Office found that at HM Revenue & Customs it typically took 212 days to hire someone. Just imagine how long it takes to get rid of them. As a result, public sector managers have every incentive to allow slackly performing staff to drift on and unnecessary jobs to go on being done.

When Gordon Brown appointed Digby Jones to work in government, the former boss of the CBI said he was “amazed, quite frankly, at how many people deserved the sack and yet that was the one threat they never ever worked under, because it doesn’t exist”. There is indeed a clear link between the inflexible labour market in the public sector and its low morale and poor productivity.

Nobody wants to see people unemployed. But public services exist to serve the public, not their employees. So conditions in the public sector should be similar to those in the rest of the economy. Without a proper labour market, people coast, or remain in jobs they aren’t suited to. One in five people works in the public sector, so creating a more flexible labour market within it has the potential to boost the UK’s economic performance. But to get there we need to run public services on 21st-century principles, not the rules of the 1970s.

SOURCE



Dead body was left on bed next to me for eight hours: Patient tells of horror on packed NHS ward

An NHS patient has spoken of her horror after the body of a woman was left in an adjacent bed for up to eight hours. Sarah Stevenson, 64, said staff left the corpse on a packed ward from 1pm until after 8.30pm. Two other patients who died on the same day were also left for several hours behind thin curtains on the ward where Mrs Stevenson was being treated for pneumonia, she said. The three bodies were finally removed in front of distressed families and young children during visiting hours.

Bosses at Heartlands Hospital, in Birmingham, last night apologised. They said the wait was caused by delays in bringing specialist equipment to remove the bodies, but denied they remained for as long as eight hours.

Mrs Stevenson, a great-grandmother from Small Heath, Birmingham, was admitted to hospital on February 15 with suspected pneumonia. She was given a bed on a single-sex ward and was placed in a bay next to another woman. Two days later, at around 1.10pm, she noticed the woman had died. She told a nurse but says the body was not taken away until after 8.30pm. All that divided Mrs Stevenson - whose daughter is a nurse - and the patient was a thin curtain.

She said: 'At about 1.10pm the woman in the bed opposite me, a lady in her late-50s or early-60s, died and I had to alert the nurse that she had passed away. 'Another one died at around 2pm and the third a while later. I was upset because I was so ill myself and to lie next to a dead body all day was my worst nightmare. I don't think they showed the patient any dignity in death. My daughter is a nurse so I know bodies are only supposed to stay on the wards for a maximum of four to six hours, but it was nearly eight hours before they came to take her to the mortuary. 'It was appalling and it should never take that long. The nurses were pushed to the limit and couldn't control a lot of what was going on.'

Mrs Stevenson, who has been married and divorced twice and was a stay-at-home mother to her three children and four step-children, was discharged on February 22. Her allegations came after a damning survey revealed the Third World conditions on overcrowded NHS wards, despite the budget being tripled under Labour over the past ten years.

A survey of 900 nurses this week showed patients are routinely treated in kitchens, corridors, mop cupboards and TV rooms because wards are full. Four in ten told the Nursing Times that patients' dignity and privacy were not protected, while many spoke of chaotic mixed-sex wards where emergency buzzers were left out of reach. The shocking series of anecdotes followed a series of NHS scandals including the unnecessary deaths of up to 1,200 patients at Stafford Hospital.

The Heart of England Foundation Trust has launched an investigation into Mrs Stevenson's claims. Spokesman Charlotte Calder said: 'Three patients did die on the ward on the same day but two of those were further away from Mrs Stevenson. 'One terminally ill patient did unfortunately die in the bay where Mrs Stevenson was being treated. 'It was felt that it would be more respectful to prepare the deceased patient in the bay with the curtain drawn. 'The transfer of this patient took four and a half hours - longer than normal - due to the clinical condition of the deceased patient and the need for specialist equipment.

'We are sorry that this may have disturbed and caused Mrs Stevenson distress. 'Our stance is that no patient's body had been left on the ward for more than five hours but we are investigating the matter.'

SOURCE



NHS 'wasted £21bn tackling life gap between rich and poor'

Billions of pounds may have been wasted on a high-profile Government pledge to reduce the gap in life expectancy between rich and poor, a watchdog revealed yesterday. A total of £21billion - more than a fifth of the entire National Health Service budget - has been set aside to cut inequalities in this financial year alone. But an Audit Commission report says it can't find any evidence that it provides value for money.

The health of people in England has improved since Labour started pumping billions into the NHS, but the health of richer people has improved far more quickly than those in deprived areas. Instead of the Government meeting its much-vaunted goal of reducing health inequalities, the gap has widened.

Ministers pledged that by 2010, they would reduce by 10 per cent the gap in life expectancy at birth between people living in the bottom 20 per cent of the most deprived areas and the population as a whole. But the report has found that 'stark problems remain'. The report said: 'It is hard to see an obvious link between spending and improvement, or get any clear view of value for money. 'Progress in reducing inequalities, and in some aspects of health such as that of very young children, has been disappointing, even if general progress on, for example, life expectancy and other broad measures has been very positive. 'Without such a link, it is hard to argue that higher spending - even if it were an option - would itself result in significant gains.'

The report said problems such as teenage pregnancy 'have proved challenging, despite some progress'. 'New problems have emerged, for example obesity,' it added. 'Problems with alcohol have grown. If today's trends continue, NHS hospitals in England will admit one million patients with alcohol-related conditions in 2011.' A Government target to reduce teenage conceptions by 50 per cent by 2010 has also failed dismally. The rate has fallen by only 13 per cent and in some regions, it has soared by almost 50 per cent.

NHS spending in England rose from £40billion in 1999/2000 to £98billion in 2009/10, the report said. But it is hard to know how much has been spent on reducing health inequalities, or what the impact has been. The report said: 'There needs to be more ruthless targeting of money and services and close attention to outcomes. This requires much clearer sight of what is being spent and much sharper evaluation of its impact.'

The report did congratulate ministers on meeting targets to cut deaths from heart disease and stroke by 2010. It said life expectancy was on the up, and infant death rates were going down.

Andy McKeon, the commission's managing director for health, said: 'We know the health of the nation is improving. But variation in the health of people living in different parts of the country remains stark.'

A Department of Health spokesman said: 'We are pleased the Audit Commission recognises that life expectancy is the highest it has been and infant mortality is at an all-time low, but more needs to be done to narrow the gap between disadvantaged areas and the rest of England.'

SOURCE



British university graduates condemned to 'coffee shop jobs'

The majority of university degrees condemn graduates to menial jobs “serving coffee in Starbucks", according to a leading businessman. Good degrees from leading universities were the only qualifications with serious currency in the jobs market, it was claimed. Simon Culhane, chief executive of the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment, said many teenagers would be better off taking a gap year before directly entering the industry of their choice.

The comments come just days after the Association of Graduate Recruiters, which represents 750 major employers, called for the Government to abolish its target to get half of all school-leavers into higher education. The group said that Labour’s “artificial” target had devalued degrees and pushed too many students onto substandard courses.

Mr Culhane said: “Today’s graduates have a tough time. “There are simply not enough jobs, which is why too many graduates are either serving coffee at Starbucks, or the equivalent, or have entered the employment market in jobs for which they are over-qualified.” He added: “Many aspiring students – and their parents – should be, and are, asking themselves if a degree is worth it.

“The answer may be politically incorrect and unwelcome, but if a key reason for an individual wanting to take a degree is to get ahead, then unless they are studying a relevant, vocational qualification at a top university and expect to obtain a 2:1 or better, they would be well advised to take a gap year and then enter the industry of their choice.”

The Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment is the largest professional body for investment banking and securities. But last year, City firms hired half the number of graduates they employed in 2008 because of the economic downturn.

Despite the slump in jobs, competition for university places has already reached a record high. It is feared that almost 200,000 applicants could be turned away from courses this September after demand for places surged by a quarter.

His comments follow remarks by Lucy Neville-Rolfe, an executive director at Tesco, who said British school leavers have basic problems with literacy and numeracy and have major “attitude problems”. Mrs Neville-Rolfe, an Oxford graduate and former civil servant, said students’ attitudes to their appearance, work, authority and discipline were poor.

The 56 year-old, one of the most powerful and well paid women in British business, said despite many A Level students and university graduates not being able to read or write or understand maths, more were achieving better results.

She also attacked students who felt that it was their right to gain employment. "They (students) don't seem to understand the importance of a tidy appearance and have problems with timekeeping," she said in a speech to the Institute of Grocery Distribution's conference on skills on Wednesday. “Some seem to think that the world owes them a living. The truth is that a certain humility and an ability to work hard are important for success. “More broadly, a society where people don't feel the need to work to gain material possessions will not be a stable or successful society."

SOURCE





11 March, 2010

British police told to tackle crime that destroys communities

At the moment, they are too busy enforcing political correctness to tackle real crime. Photographers are at greater risk from the police than are youth gangs

Police forces are failing to protect the most vulnerable people in society from antisocial behaviour, the police inspectorate has said. Chief constables were told that they must understand the toll that harassment, criminal damage and verbal abuse is taking on communities.

Denis O’Connor, HM Chief Inspector of Constabulary, said more than half of the 44 forces in England, Wales and Northern Ireland could not identify repeat victims, leaving officers ignorant of the plight of vulnerable victims. This was evident in the case of Fiona Pilkington, who killed herself and her severely disabled daughter in 2007. She had called Leicestershire police for help more than 30 times while being subjected to constant abuse.

Mr O’Connor said: “The police database of information about antisocial behaviour incidents is inadequate and should be improved as a matter of urgency. An awful lot of police forces have real problems. “There is a lot of antisocial (ASB) behaviour, a lot of it is under-reported and there is a problem with nailing the intelligence around it. “It is like going back to the doctor’s surgery but you see a different doctor every time. We want everybody to take this issue seriously. It undermines confidence in the police. We are a long way from a police officer on his way to a report of ASB being told that it was the eighth time police had been called.”

Mr O’Connor was talking at the launch of a new website, MyPolice.org.uk, designed to give people more information about crime and the performance of local police forces. The website, which Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary hopes will be live in the next few days, shows that only four forces recorded a mark of “excellent” across the board, with Nottinghamshire rated as the worst in the country.

Of all the ASB cases the inspectorate looked at, the police failed to attend 23 per cent of them. There were 3.6 million reports of ASB in 2008-09 but senior officials said this figure could be doubled because of under-reporting.

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Useless British police again -- baby left outside in the cold for 80 minutes: Dies

All they are good for is harassing decent people

A baby abandoned on the steps of a mosque was left outside in the cold for 80 minutes by police officers who thought he was dead. The boy was eventually spotted breathing as forensic officers investigated the scene where he was left in a carrier bag at the weekend. He was taken to hospital where he died within the hour.

Witnesses told how the area was cordoned off and a white tent put up around the infant after police arrived at 10.30am on Saturday. Shouts for an ambulance were heard around midday before the child was taken away in a police car. By then, Staffordshire police had released a statement saying that a 'body' had been discovered at the Makki Masjid mosque in Shelton, Stoke-on-Trent.

Minutes after it was discovered the baby was still alive, an updated statement was issued to say a 'small baby' had been found and taken to hospital. The baby died at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire at 12.30pm. Staffordshire police have referred the incident to the Independent Police Complaints Commission which was yesterday investigating how officers could have failed to spot the child breathing. It is understood a note found with the child read 'Please bury him' and contained two £10 notes.

The child was found abandoned in temperatures of 5c (41f) by a teacher at the mosque's Saturday school. Detective Chief Inspector Phil Bladen, of Staffordshire police, said the baby's death was being treated as unexplained. [Really???] The force refused to comment on its initial response to the baby's discovery.

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British social workers get it badly wrong again -- despite many warnings

Their usual indifference to the deeds of the underclass allowed a British Fritzl to get his daughters pregnant 18 times

A MAN raped his two daughters and fathered nine babies with them during 35 years of physical and sexual abuse. And he escaped detection because care professionals missed numerous chances to intervene. Agencies involved with the family repeatedly failed to take action even though the father was accused of incest on seven separate occasions, with a further 12 reported incidents of violence. Today authorities issued an unreserved apology to the abused women.

The 57-year-old man, from Sheffield, England, was jailed for life in November 2008 after one of his daughters accused him of incest. The man, who cannot be named, admitted 25 rapes and four indecent assaults, with the attacks beginning in 1980. If his daughters refused his advances, they would be punched, kicked and sometimes held in the flames of a gas fire.

The case echoes of that of Josef Fritzl, the Austrian who imprisoned and raped his daughter.

Between 1975 and 2008 the family came into contact with 28 different agencies and more than 100 professionals. A review of the case made 128 recommendations for improving understanding, practice, procedures and training into intra-familial abuse. However, no staff were sacked or disciplined as the case was seen to be a "collective failure".

Chris Cook, the independent chairman of the Lincolnshire and Sheffield safeguarding children board, said: "We are genuinely sorry. We should have protected you. "This is a tragic and complicated case. The man responsible, who intimidated and frightened his family, was convicted of multiple counts of rape and is serving a life sentence."

The case review showed that the family moved home 67 times over a 35-year period so that the father could avoid detection.

The women's brother voiced anger that his sisters had not been protected, saying: "I blame a lot of people," he said. "I blame people that were meant to be looking after children because we were all meant to be under child protection at five, so I blame the people that should have been doing their jobs looking after us," he said.

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NHS doctors thought pregnancy was gout!

No scans, of course. They cost money



STUNNED Belinda Waite became a mum for the first time — just THREE hours after doctors discovered she was pregnant. The 21-year-old had been in and out of hospital for nine months after being told she was suffering from a severe case of Irritable Bowel Syndrome and gout. It was only after she was admitted to hospital in agony that medics realised she was expecting.

They told Belinda she was around three months pregnant and sent her back home to Bampton, Devon, just before midnight. But at 2.30am the following morning baby daughter Louise arrived weighing a healthy 8lb 14oz to the amazement of Belinda and partner Wayne Boyles, 28.

Wayne's mum Sylvia helped with the unexpected arrival and hairdresser Belinda said she had "not been feeling right" for eight months. She said: "I can't believe I was pregnant all this time - you'd have thought the doctors would have noticed something like that. "I think Wayne was even more shocked than me because we had no idea, but she is a beautiful baby and we're really happy. "I did feel like something was moving inside me as the months went on. "But I never considered I was pregnant - and it doesn't seem to have crossed the doctors' minds. "It was obviously a huge shock for us all but you have to get on with these things - and we are all really enjoying it."

Belinda gave birth after she was taken to Tiverton Hospital at 10pm on February 6 suffering with pains throughout her body. Doctors announced she was around three months pregnant and sent her home. Belinda said: "I was really shocked. They told me to get some rest and make an appointment with the doctors the following Monday. "Three hours later, Louise was born. I don't think Wayne could believe it was happening. "We hardly had time to think about it; no one believed us when we told them we suddenly had a child. "You read about these stories in magazines, but you never think they happen to real people - and I certainly never thought it would happen to me."

Belinda said Louise was perfectly healthy despite her being very active through her pregnancy. She said: "I went on rollercoasters at Alton Towers, on water slides in Spain, I probably ate all the wrong foods. Luckily I do not smoke and I stopped drinking alcohol as it made me feel sick." The hospital, run by NHS Devon, was unavailable for comment.

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NHS hospital ignores clear suicide danger -- even after warning

A woman leapt to her death hours after her father begged a psychiatric unit not to release her. Graham Nye warned them: 'If she goes back to her flat she will throw herself off the balcony.' Just seven hours later his chilling prediction came true when Victoria jumped from her 13th-floor flat.

Mr Nye is now demanding to know why his daughter - who had a history of suicide attempts - was allowed out of the unit at the Royal South Hampshire Hospital. The NHS trust has launched an independent investigation.

Mr Nye, 55, has told how his daughter had suffered for eight years with mental illness. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder two years ago but, after reacting badly to medication, experts told her they believed she was suffering from a personality disorder, which required separate treatment.

Miss Nye, 22, admitted herself to the unit in an attempt to turn her life around. But after a fortnight of treatment, Mr Nye claimed, she was told by psychiatrists that she 'could not be helped', despite a family doctor telling them she was in need of urgent care. She phoned her father around 5pm on March 3 to say she was being sent home. Within the hour he had called doctors asking them not to release her. He says he was told his comments would be shared with doctors. At 12.40am the next day Miss Nye's body was discovered by neighbours outside the tower block where she lived in Southampton.

Mr Nye, a freelance television producer, said: 'She said they told her they could not help her. She took this to mean that although she had something wrong with her she could not be helped. 'I have no doubt she killed herself because she felt there was no help for her.'

Dr Huw Stone, Hampshire NHS Foundation Trust's medical director, said: 'In any serious incident we always carry out a thorough investigation into all aspects of the patient's care.'

Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of mental health charity SANE, said: 'We find it unforgivable that people in distress can be discharged from hospital before they are ready to leave.'

SOURCE



Hamburgerology comes to Britain

Maccas is now handing out High School diplomas

Work experience for many teenagers involves making endless cups of tea or opening mountains of post, with no more reward than a week off school. But they will get the equivalent of a GCSE if doing a placement at McDonald’s from today, in recognition of their newly found skills.

The fast food multinational has for years been the butt of jokes about providing dead-end jobs flipping burgers and mopping floors. Yet it now has power to award its own qualifications, which include a diploma in shift management equal to an A level. It takes on 10,000 apprentices a year, thought to be more than any other company in Britain, and trains them in hospitality skills, and basic English and maths.

Now teenagers successfully completing a ten-day work experience placement, plus a lesson in school either side, will be awarded a BTEC level 2 in work skills accredited by Edexcel, one of the country’s biggest exam boards. This is the equivalent of a GCSE at grade B or C, and the first time a national qualification has been given for work experience. Academics said this devalued GCSEs, but praised the company for offering proper work placements during the recession. About a million young people are currently not in education, employment or training, and there are fears this could affect the job prospects of a generation.

The work experience is not guaranteed: pupils aged 14 upwards will have to fill out an online application form and submit themselves to interview by their local branch. Those who succeed will spend ten days being mentored by a “buddy”, working with them in every area of the restaurant. While not left in sole charge of cooking burgers, they will help for example by “preparing lettuce”, and will get to operate the drive-through window and handle money. They must also complete a work book, and attend an induction on safety, hygiene and food nutrition, and will have an “exit” interview at the end of the placement.

David Fairhurst, who is head of human resources at McDonald’s, did work experience — “many years ago” — at his grandfather’s store in Wigan. He said: “I learnt a lot of things, such as attention to detail and how to get along with colleagues when you were the boss’s grandson. Yes we will turn people down [for work experience], absolutely. We’re looking for people who’ve got the attitude to serve customers. “The students have a role to play in taking work experience more seriously than has been the case before. We have strict guidelines on supervision, every day they will have a buddy working alongside them.

“They will serve at drive-through windows, operate the till, prepare drinks from machines, and help to clear tables. It’s a big step for young people, it takes confidence to deal with customers. “We not just trying to recruit these people, we’re exposing them to the work of work, as we don’t want a lost generation of young people with no experience of the workplace.”

Mr Fairhurst defended the qualification from criticism, saying: “They’re with us for 80 hours, and do two lessons before and afterwards at school. In academic terms, 80 hours is enough for a Btec certificate — it’s a lot of time in terms of school.” He added: “The vast proportion of young people are disappointed about what they’re asked to do on work experience, either making tea or it’s unstructured or the company is surprised to see them turn up and don’t know what to do with them.”

A survey published today by Populus, for McDonald’s, found that more than half of young people believe there are not enough quality work placements available. One in five who had completed work experience felt their host employer had not planned for them well enough.

Professor Alan Smithers, director of the centre for education and employment research at Buckingham University, said: “The positive view of this is it might make work experience better for young people participating, but it’s absurd trying to value it in the terms of a GCSE. “Essentially, it’s what the experience does for young people’s future lives that matters. Schools and awarding bodies are being pushed into a situation of issuing qualifications for everything.

“There isn’t enough work experience to go round, and some schools have to resort to simulated work experience, or work-related experience such as writing about work. “Having ten days somewhere is a step forward, but making it equivalent to a GCSE is devaluing qualifications of that level, and could colour the way people view GCSEs in general.”

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10 March, 2010

Labour Party lies about crime revealed

The true scale of how violent crime has grown under Labour has been disclosed by Whitehall officials. Violent attacks are estimated to be 44 per cent higher than they were in 1998 after research on the way police record them allowed comparisons for the first time. The study, by the independent House of Commons Library, shows violence against the person increased from 618,417 to 887,942 last year. The devastating review comes despite repeated claims by the Government that violent crime has come down substantially since it took power.

It is the first time such a trend in police recorded crime can be made because a change was made in counting rules in 2002 which ministers have always insisted meant figures before that date were not, therefore, comparable. Instead, they have always used a separate the separate British Crime Survey which suggests violence has dropped by more than 40 per cent since 1998. The Tories, who requested the new research, said the findings make a mockery of such claims and reinforce the public's fear that violence is in fact rising.

Statiticians in the Commons Library have used a previous Home Office estimate on the effect of the change in counting rules to estimate the impact on previous figures, had those rules been in place then.

Just last week, Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, said violent crime had dropped by 1.5 million offences under Labour before attempting to blame a growing fear of crime on the Tories for "ramping up" public panic.

One criminologist accused the Government of "scheming and manipulation" who knew it was in their interests to avoid historical comparisons. The figures will also be a boost for the Conservatives who were accused by the head of the Statistics Authority of damaging public trust with their use of statistics on violent crime.

Sir Michael Scholar, the head of the authority, warned Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, that comparisons of police information on violent attacks between the late 1990s and 2008-9 were "likely to mislead the public" as it omitted Home Office warnings that the figures for periods before 2002 were not comparable. However, that comparison can now be made and shows recorded crime has continued to rise sharply in the last decade.

The row centres on the implementation of the National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) in 2002 which aimed to harmonise the way police recorded offences. Prior to that date, officers had more discretion to decided whether a crime had been committed and the system left the possibility of offences not being recorded. The change put the onus on recording the basis of whether the victim believed an offence had occurred, which led to an almost immediate increase in crime figures.

The research by the Commons Library uses an estimate by the Home Office that the change is likely to have resulted in a 23 per cent increase in recorded violent crime. On that basis, it estimates the official figure in 1998/99 of 502,778 would in fact have been 618,417 had the new counting rules been in force. Recorded violence in 2008/09 was 903,993 but 15,500 offences have been subtracted as they were recorded by the British Transport Police, whose figures were not included in 1998/99, resulting in the 887,942 figure.

It is in stark contrast with the British Crime Survey, which questions more than 40,000 people, which reports violent crime has dropped from 3.5 million to 2.1 million over the same period. The BCS also does not include certain offence, including murder and other homicides and offences committed by under 16-year-olds. [Amazing!]

Mr Grayling said: "This new analysis confirms that the level of violent crime actually reported to police officers in police stations up and down the country is much higher than it was a decade ago. "This just serves to underline the scale of the challenge the country faces in fixing our broken society. "Over the past couple of weeks we have seen a series of horrendous violent crimes committed around the country. Whatever the statistical debates it is absolutely clear that we have deep rooted problems that just have to be tackled.”

David Green, criminologist and director of Civitas, said the Government had a reputation for "scheming and manipulation", adding: "I think the Government knew perfectly well in 2002/03 that it would be very helpful to say 'sorry we cannot go back beyond this date' because they did not want a consistent historical series." Mr Green, who was a member of a Home Office Crime Statistics Review Group, which in 2006 recommended improvements in the collection of the crime figures, added: "It is very revealing and fits intuitively with what many people feel and what many people have been saying, if anecdotal. "For people to feel that violent crime is going up and to be told they are suffering from moral panic has always been of some concern."

In a major speech on crime last week, Mr Brown said: "Crime is falling. Fact. Down by more than a third since 1997. Fact. That’s 6 million fewer crimes each year. Fact. Almost 1 million fewer homes burgled. Fact. Almost 1 and a half million fewer violent crimes. Fact." He went on to claim the Conservatives had "cultivated" fears by abusing official statistics and claiming society was broken. He insisted that crime had come down under Labour but his own Government's figures show some forms of offences, including violence, were still on the rise.

But figures last November showed that the number of violent attacks committed by strangers had hit its highest level for at least a decade, now standing at the equivalent of 2,896 people every day. Strangers are responsible for half of all violent crime.

Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, said: "Chris Grayling has tried to get cover for his dodgy use of crime statistics and has failed. "As Sir Michael Scholar, the head of the UK Statistics Authority, states, the British Crime Survey is widely regarded as the most accurate way of recording crime levels, "This clearly shows a reduction in violent crime of 41 per cent since 1997."

SOURCE



Leftist British government ignored safety warnings for years over children's heart surgery

Ministers repeatedly ignored warnings about the safety of Britain's child heart surgery units, it can be revealed. In 2001, a public inquiry into the deaths of dozens of babies at Bristol Royal Infirmary said cardiac units should be barred from carrying out paediatric surgery unless they met safety standards, including carrying out a minimum number of operations per year. The recommendation to ensure surgery was only carried out by those skilled enough to perform the most delicate procedures was made to prevent the recurrence of a scandal such as Bristol – dubbed "the killing fields" in the 1990s.

Later this month, the Department of Health (DoH) will say no unit will be allowed to operate unless it has four surgeons and carries out at least 400 operations a year. The ruling will mean around half of Britain's 11 child heart surgery units must close, while the remainder expand. It means departments such as that at John Radcliffe Hospital, which suspended surgery last week following four deaths, and carried out just 100 operations in the last year, could not continue in their current form.

Today we reveal how:

* Ministers dismissed a warning in 2003 by the UK's most senior heart surgeon that half of Britain's units should be closed. As President of the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgeons (SCTS) of Great Britain and Ireland, Prof James Monro was commissioned by ministers to propose changes following the Bristol inquiry, yet "the Government did absolutely nothing" about his key demand, he told The Sunday Telegraph;

* Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of the health service, told NHS bosses two years ago that he feared "another Bristol" tragedy because specialists were so thinly spread;

* The consultant told this newspaper "there has been frankly little progress" reorganising services to make them safer since the public inquiry reported in 2001. Sir Bruce recently told colleagues that failing to make changes now would leave "a stain on the soul" of his profession.

* Britain's leading children's heart charity says Labour ministers "ran scared" from introducing an overhaul of the specialist system which could have saved lives, and prevented major disabilities.

The public inquiry into the Bristol heart deaths scandal was the most damning in the history of the NHS. It said botched heart operations killed 30 to 35 babies between 1990 and 1995, while over a longer period, up to 170 babies died who might have been saved elsewhere. Sir Ian Kennedy, the inquiry's chairman, ordered a reorganisation of services to improve safety, with each unit carrying out a specified minimum number of operations.

The DoH asked Prof James Monro, then President of the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgeons, to carry out a review, which in 2003 said the figure should be set at 300 operations annually – meaning the closure of at least half of the centres. Prof Monro told The Sunday Telegraph: "That was our main recommendation and the Government did absolutely nothing about it at all. Not a single unit was closed, and many of them should have closed years ago".

The surgeon, now retired, said he thought it was "extraordinary" that the whole process was being started again now, years after the recommendations were shelved. Prof Monro said he never received an explanation for the rejection of his report, but said "politicians had their fingers in the pie" and were fearful of making changes which might upset local constituencies. In 2003, Stephen Ladyman, the then-health minister, dismissed the recommendation claiming the report contained "no evidence" to justify such closures, despite its inclusion of studies showing higher mortality at small units.

Four years later, Sir Bruce Keogh, then President of the SCTS wrote to health service bosses, expressing concerns about the current and future safety of Britain's paediatric cardiac units. He wrote the letter because he feared several units had become perilously short-staffed. Sir Bruce told this newspaper: "A number of surgeons had retired or stopped doing paediatric work, and I was worried things were looking a bit unstable. "In short, I was worried about the risk of another 'Bristol', and I felt anxious that we had a situation where two or three units were working single-handed."

Months after sending the letter, he was appointed NHS medical director, and ordered an urgent review of the service, which will result in a blueprint for children's heart surgery, to be published later this month. The document will say each service should carry out at least 400 and ideally 500 operations a year, and have 4 surgeons, so it can provide safe around-the-clock cover and perform a larger range of complex procedures. As a result, about half of England's 11 centres will be earmarked to close.

Sir Bruce was so fearful of an immediate crisis in cardiac care that in a letter seen by this newspaper, and sent in May 2008, he warned the head of NHS specialist services to draw up a "risk strategy" in case immediate problems emerged before the reorganisation could be carried out. The letter followed his explicit warning to the NHS management board that "another Bristol" could emerge in the foreseeable future.

Anne Keatley-Clarke, chief executive of the Children's Heart Federation, said families who had experienced the trauma of high-risk surgery were furious that politicians had delayed changes which could have saved lives. "Parents who know about heart surgery are hugely angry and frustrated about this. The clinicians were ready to do this a long time ago, the parents expected it; we think the politicians ran scared and blocked it," Mrs Keatley-Clarke said. She added: "We will never know how many children these delays have affected; whether that is in terms of needless deaths, or more children ending up with learning disabilities because they suffered neurological damage which could have been avoided."

Sir Bruce said there had been "frankly little progress" to make the changes since Kennedy reported in 2001, but said it was "too easy" to blame politicians given the likelihood of fierce constituency battles once the names of the units to close become public. He urged fellow surgeons to show leadership, and support changes even if it meant uprooting themselves and moving hundreds of miles to a different unit. Any more delays would create "a stain on the soul" of his profession, he said.

The largest units at Great Ormond Street and Royal Brompton Hospital in London, and Birmingham Children's Hospital, currently carry out more than 400 operations a year, while Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool and Evelina Hospital, part of Guys and St Thomas' Foundation trust in London carry out around 350. The threat of closure looms largest over units at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, which carried out just 100 operations in the last year, while hospitals in Leicester, Southampton, Newcastle, Bristol and Leeds all did less than 300.

This review will report this autumn, after considering which hospitals can best expand, and taking into account transport links for families. However Sir Bruce indicated that the John Radcliffe, which last week suspended its service amid an investigation into the deaths of four babies operated on by surgeon Caner Salih, is at greatest threat of closure. Sir Bruce said: "All of the judgements have yet to be taken, but the eye does fall on Oxford, given it's got the lowest number of operations by far, and only one surgeon [since the departure of Salih]".

Yesterday grieving mother Aida Lo, 29, from Oxford, spoke of her shock and anger at finding out that the death of her daughter, three-week old Nathalie, was one of four cases in less than three months which will form part of the inquiry announced last week. The hospital said Mr Salih, who started work at the hospital just three months ago, has left the hospital to work elsewhere. A spokesman said his departure was not connected to the investigation.

Sir Ian, who headed the public inquiry into the Bristol deaths, has recently been appointed to run the Government panel which will decide which paediatric cardiac units can stay open. Asked about the delay of almost a decade since he made his recommendations, he said only: "I did my bit – it was for others to take action. "Obviously I made the recommendation in the expectation action will be taken; I look forward to that happening."

The DoH said it had been monitoring children's heart surgery closely, and that to date, all units were providing acceptable results.

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NHS patients routinely treated in mop cupboards and corridors, nurses' survey says

A shortage of space in overcrowded NHS hospitals means patients are routinely treated in television rooms, mop cupboards and corridors, a survey of nurses suggests today. Kitchens and storage areas are also used while extra beds are put on wards, increasing the the risk of infections spreading.

The poll of more than 900 nurses for Nursing Times found that 63 per cent were aware of patients being placed in areas not designed for clinical care. Almost eight in 10 respondents (79 per cent) said they believed this resulted in patient safety being put at risk, due to patients not having access to call bells or water, or fire exits being blocked.

Of those who were aware of the practice, 29 per cent said it happened every day, 29 per cent said several times a week and 11 per cent said once a week. The remainder said it happened once a month or less.

Reasons cited for the use of non-clinical areas included the hospital being “full”, A&E being “under pressure” or a risk that the Government’s four hour target for people to be seen in A&E may be breached, leading to unnecessary hospital admissions.

More than 300 nurses who responded to the survey revealed specific examples of what happened to patients. One anonymous nurse said the areas had been described as an “overspill car park”, while another said: “If a patient’s condition suddenly deteriorated resulting in them having a cardiac arrest we would not be able to get the crash trolley to them.” Another nurse added: “Urine bottles are not emptied, meals are missed, as staff are not aware of the patient.”

A total of 83 per cent of nurses said they had raised concerns about the practice with senior staff but only 4 per cent said it had then been stopped. Others said the move had been authorised by senior managers, while some nurses said they had been bullied and accused of “not being a team player” for raising their concerns.

In a statement, the Department of Health said that the vast majority of NHS patients experienced good quality, safe and effective care. “However, we acknowledge there is more to do and will continue to strive to make services even safer.”” It was for local health authorities and providers to assess services locally, a spokesman added. “Every nurse must comply with the standards, performance and ethics outlined in the Nursing and Midwifery Council code. In particular, any nurse who is concerned about any risk to their patients should report their concerns to their manager, in writing if necessary.”

Katherine Murphy, director of the Patients Association, added: “Not only is this potentially unsafe, but it is completely undignified. In extreme circumstances the NHS might need to resort to this, but the results of this survey suggest it is a widespread practice.”

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Russia's super-rich take advantage of recession to storm Britain's private schools

Note that the article below adheres in part to the old British practice of calling private schools "public" schools



While recession-hit Brits are forced to scrimp to send their children to private school, Russia’s super-rich are cashing in on the chance of an elite education. Louise Carpenter meets a woman who is grooming the offspring of oligarchs for England's upper classrooms.

She tells me that at first, when she turned up at the school gates, the other parents were wary: she looked too expensively pulled together, too exotic (the cheekbones are an immediate giveaway), but more than anything, she looked and sounded very Russian, and like a very, very rich Russian at that.

She sighs: 'I look like a damn model, which doesn't help me at all. The perception is always wrong. I am a very grounded person – and I don't even wear make-up. For the past 10 years, I have worked 16 hours a day as an international property broker. I am a single mother and I've worked in Moscow and Manhattan and I was very, very successful, so successful that in the end I set up my own company. I sleep only six hours a night and I start work very early every morning. Everything I have I have earned through hard work. My generation of Russians had to. There was no inherit