Two-thirds of women would want to avoid NHS hospitals
The word is getting out
More than two-thirds of women say they would rather suffer at home rather than go to hospital if they were ill, because of fears over the standard of care they would receive. Three-quarters of those questioned in a survey also said they or an elderly relative had been treated in an unsatisfactory way by the NHS.
The findings, in a poll carried out by the Townwomen’s Guilds ahead of a new campaign to give vulnerable patients more of a voice, come amid widespread concerns that basic standards of care on hospital wards are being missed by university-educated nurses and unregulated healthcare assistants.
The health watchdog, the Care Quality Commission, has found that doctors are having to prescribe water to some pensioners to ensure they do not go thirsty, while the head of the Royal College of Nursing has called for relatives to help feed loved ones in hospital and take them to the lavatory.
One Townswomen’s Guild member told how she twice found her elderly husband left naked in a hospital bed, while a nurse was unable to say if he had taken his medication. Another woman saw a nurse giving out food after taking a patient to the lavatory, while in a separate case a woman claimed her friend would have starved in a geriatric ward if she hadn’t gone in to help her eat and drink.
Pauline Myers, chairman of the Townswomen’s Guilds, said: “As one of Britain's leading women's groups, and with a membership of over 30,000 ladies, we are concerned that older and other more vulnerable patients are suffering due to insufficient care and staffing levels when they are required to stay in hospital.
“The stories we have heard from our own members have been extremely distressing and unfortunately they will not be alone as thousands of older people continue to suffer unnecessarily. The importance of this issue can’t be overstated as the current state of affairs amounts to nothing short of abuse.”
The survey of 222 members found that 74 per cent said the care they or an elderly relative had received in hospital was “less than satisfactory”, while 69 per cent said they would be reluctant to be admitted because of the expected standard of care.
In addition, 54 per cent said they had been left disappointed by hospital care and 49 per cent said they had been “spoken down to” by NHS staff.
The guild’s Hear My Voice campaign is called for every hospital to employ a consultant, known as a geriatrician, to provide specialist care for the elderly.
A mother was arrested for murder after hospital misdiagnosed her son, 3, and sent him home to die. Is every parent who loses a child to be treated as a murderer?
The young mother of a three-year-old toddler who died of a chest infection was arrested on suspicion of his murder and held in a police cell for 24 hours, an inquest heard today.
Abby Podmore, 20, whose son Alfie Podmore had been misdiagnosed by hospital staff, was prevented from seeing his body until 10 days after his death.
In a statement to the inquest at Birmingham Coroner's Court, Ms Podmore, from Quinton, Birmingham, described her arrest as a 'horrifying' event which had robbed her of the chance to grieve for Alfie.
In the statement, which was read to the court by Birmingham Coroner Aidan Cotter, Ms Podmore told how her son was taken ill while at his nursery on February 2.
Alfie, who was not known to social services, was taken to Birmingham Children's Hospital the following day, but was discharged after staff failed to diagnose a developing infection on his lung.
The inquest heard that antibiotics may have saved Alfie, but he was instead given antacid medication and he died at his home on February 6.
Ms Podmore was arrested on suspicion of his murder just hours after his death. In her statement, Ms Podmore said a doctor at the hospital had told her that Alfie, who had a fever and shoulder pain, was suffering from a virus.
The grieving mother, who works as a dental nurse, said: 'We just thought this was a 24-hour bug and he would get better.'
Relating how she tried in vain to revive Alfie when she found him on the morning of February 6, Ms Podmore added: 'I knew he was not breathing so I started to give him CPR.' An ambulance then arrived, the inquest heard, but police then asked Ms Podmore to leave the house and change out of her clothes.
Commenting on her arrest for murder, Ms Podmore said: 'I found it distressing because I wanted to be with his body. 'I was in a state of shock and didn't know what was going on.'
Two riot vans and a total of 15 police officers then arrived at the address and Ms Podmore's partner was also detained by the police. Ms Podmore continued: 'I couldn't believe what was happening - I felt like I was being treated like a criminal.'
Neighbours had looked on as Ms Podmore and her partner were arrested, Mr Cotter was told, and the pair were then taken to separate police stations.
It was only when a doctor acting on behalf of the Birmingham Coroner informed police that Alfie had died from natural causes that her innocence was recognised. A post-mortem later revealed that he had suffered from pneumonia, a bacterial infection and septicemia.
Although Ms Podmore's partner was released quickly, she was kept in custody until the following day. 'I remained in a police station for 24 hours,' she said. 'Looking back, I feel I have been robbed of the chance to say goodbye to Alfie.'
Ms Podmore only just returned home this week after living with relatives since the incident. She said some members of the community still believed she played some part in Alfie's death.
Paying tribute to her first son, she said; 'He was boisterous, happy. He was always smiling, dancing. Everything he did made me laugh. I have lost all that now. It has been hard to come back home because he is not here so it doesn't feel like the same place anymore. The happiness has been sucked out.'
In a statement released in July, West Midlands Police said it had launched an internal investigation into the circumstances of the 21-year-old mother's arrest.
Suspicious British social workers 'wouldn't even allow you to adopt your own children'
Most people would be barred from adopting their own children because of the rules imposed by social workers, the head of a children’s charity said yesterday.
Anne Marie Carrie, of Barnardo’s, said couples coming forward to adopt were treated with ‘enormous suspicion’ and their treatment was a tragedy both for them and the children left languishing in state care.
She spoke amid a chorus of disappointment from charity leaders, ministers and the Government’s ‘adoption czar’ over figures showing that the number of children escaping the care system to new adoptive families is in decline.
Although numbers in care, with regularly changing foster parents or in children’s homes, have shot up to 65,520, numbers adopted have fallen to 3,050, 5 per cent down in a year.
Only 60 babies, barely more than one a week, were adopted last year – even though all evidence shows that the younger a child is placed with a new family, the better their chances in life.
And the figures, released on Wednesday by the Department for Education, show that white children in care have a three times better chance of being adopted than black children. The failure follows years in which governments led by both Labour and Tories have promised to encourage adoption.
Earlier this year Children’s Minister Tim Loughton said the apartheid-style race rules that have long prevented couples adopting a child of a different ethnic background would be swept away.
But social workers still insist on extensive home trials of would-be parents and exhaustive examinations of both their parenting skills and their attitudes and thinking. Middle-class couples regularly complain that they are effectively bullied out of trying to adopt.
And in 1998 then council social services head Moira Gibb – now a government adviser on social work training – said society ‘has decided it no longer wants to see babies farmed out to middle-class mothers’.
On Radio 4’s Today Programme yesterday, Miss Carrie, chief executive of Barnardo’s, said: ‘It is a tragedy for those children who have been languishing in the care system, and it is a tragedy for those people who have come forward who want to be parents and adopt a child. ‘We treat them with enormous suspicion, and we set thresholds for people who want to be adoptive parents that frankly mean you and I would not be allowed to adopt our own children.’
She added that social workers still try too hard to return children to incapable or evil parents who cannot or do not look after them. ‘We are too slow to see that some parenting is not good enough,’ she said, adding that some mothers were allowed ‘chance after chance’.
Her criticisms were echoed by the Government’s adoption adviser, Martin Narey. He said there was a shortage of adoptive parents ‘because of a process of parental assessment that is attitudinally and procedurally flawed: a process that discourages too many applications in the first place, wears out excellent would-be adopters along the way and, even when it works satisfactorily, takes too long’. Mr Narey said the adoption figures would soon improve.
Within hours of the startlingly low figures being released, hundreds of Mail Online readers swamped our messages boards with details of their personal battles to adopt. The comments of one, Alistair from Co Durham, were typical. ‘We already have one child of our own but felt we could offer another child a home,’ he wrote. ‘But they want to know every single fact of our lives right back to childhood. It’s truly terrifying and of the 12 couples who applied with us I know of ten who withdrew. The entire fostering and adoption process is a brutal inquisition filled with threats and intimidation.
‘When we and some other couples who dropped out of the adoption inquisition got together we came to the conclusion that actually the social workers do not want to place children in homes as it would put their jobs at risk if all the kids were found homes and it would remove from them the almost god-like power they have over the families and children.’
Numbers of children taken into care rose quickly after the Baby P scandal in 2008. Children who are not adopted and remain in care are unlikely to do well in life. Wednesday’s figures showed that one in three teenagers who has recently left state care is a NEET – not in education, employment or training.
Van travels 100 miles to take a suspect in cuffs 60 yards to court... and, you've guessed, the farce is all to protect his human rights
A prison van was sent almost 100 miles to take a suspect to court because it was claimed that walking him in handcuffs for 60 yards could breach his human rights.
Oliver Thomas, 27, accused of public order offences, was due to face magistrates after spending the night in a cell at the police station next door in Banbury, Oxfordshire.
But to spare him the shame of a 30-second walk in public, the private company which transports prisoners sent a fortified van across three counties to drive him there at an estimated cost of £1,000.
This made him late for a separate appearance on an attempted robbery charge at Oxford Crown Court, where Judge Tom Corrie condemned the waste of taxpayer cash.
‘I’m not quite sure why he couldn’t be walked across the street rather than sending a van from Southampton,’ he said. ‘I wonder how much public money has been wasted.’
Thomas had been held at the police station after being arrested over two alleged public order offences. GEOAmey, the company responsible for transporting prisoners, is based in Oxford, a few miles from Banbury.
However, it claims, its local staff were all busy so it decided to send a van on the two-hour journey from Southampton to avoid walking Thomas between the two buildings and to protect his identity. A spokesman insisted: ‘Police wouldn’t expect us to turn up at Banbury, handcuff a prisoner and take him down the street and to the court.
‘Generally speaking we don’t see that in this country. It strays into the area of human rights. They have a right to have their identity protected.’
GEOAmey is paid more than £90million a year to transport defendants between prisons, police stations and courts on behalf of the Ministry of Justice. Glyn Travis, of the Prison Officers’ Association, said: ‘This is a prime example of how the privatised system is a constant drain on public resources.
‘In the past police would have been able to walk him to the station themselves but now because of the contracts with private companies they are not able to do so. It is wrong for the contractors to think they needed to move a van nearly 100 miles to protect the human rights of the prisoner.
‘It is not unusual to walk prisoners in handcuffs through the streets in situations where the distance is short or there is no access for prison vans. This is another example of where the human rights of offenders is completely disproportionate to reality.’
GEOAmey boasted it would bring ‘innovation and maximise efficiencies’ when its ten-year contract was awarded in March. Its spokesman added: ‘Our staff collected Mr Thomas from Banbury in the morning and assisted with duties at the court until mid-afternoon, then delivered prisoners to other prisons.’
A police spokesman said: ‘It may be possible for officers to assist with prisoner transport, as we work in partnership with the contractor. ‘However, every situation will need to be decided on its merits.’
British middle-class students face fresh squeeze on university places
Middle-class teenagers face missing out on university places next year after institutions were ordered to admit more disadvantaged students. Currently, universities set their own targets on increasing the number of applicants from ‘under-represented’ groups, such as those from low income families.
From today, universities have been ordered to set ‘at least one target’ on increasing the number of such students they actually admit, instead of simply focusing on attracting applications.
The change, demanded by the Office for Fair Access, the higher education watchdog, is a trade-off for being allowed to charge up to £9,000 a year in student tuition fees. Universities could be stripped of the right to charge the higher fees unless they meet the new demand.
Elite universities will face intense scrutiny from OFFA next year as figures show that only one in seven students at Oxford and one in eight at Cambridge qualify for full maintenance grants – available only to poorer students – from the Government.
This compares to more than 50 per cent at Bedfordshire University. All institutions wishing to charge above the basic current fee of £1,285 a year must have an approved ‘access agreement’ in place with OFFA. This lays out the targets set by the university for improving access among ‘under-represented’ groups.
A report for 2009-2010 published today by OFFA found that one in four universities had not yet met their targets. These included universities such as Cambridge, Bristol and Warwick.
Sir Martin Harris, director of OFFA, said he was ‘concerned’ to understand the reasons why the targets had not been met. He added that from 2012-13, OFFA will ‘require institutions to set themselves at least one target around broadening their entrant pool’. Sir Martin went on: ‘Up to now it has been possible for institutions to restrict their targets to broadening their applicant pool’.
But Dr Tim Hands, headmaster of Magdalen College School, Oxford, said: ‘It’s difficult to see that [this] isn’t social engineering. ‘It’s also difficult to see that it won’t affect subjects like engineering, maths and modern foreign languages which the Government has identified as crucial to the economy.’
British schools will be judged on gay and gipsy pupils' progress
Schools will be penalised if they fail to improve the progress of ‘vulnerable’ groups of pupils such as those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual.
New Ofsted guidelines reveal that heads of primary and secondary schools must show their education ‘meets the needs of the range of pupils’ in their classrooms, including gipsy and traveller children.
Schools could see their teaching being judged ‘inadequate’ if they do not reduce gaps in achievement between different groups who make up a significant proportion of their student population. New Ofsted guidelines reveal that heads of primary and secondary schools must show their education ¿meets the needs of the range of pupils¿ in their classrooms, including gipsy and traveller children.
New Ofsted guidelines reveal that heads of primary and secondary schools must show their education 'meets the needs of the range of pupils' in their classrooms, including gipsy and traveller children. Picture posed by models
However, critics hit out at the inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual pupils in an Ofsted list of groups that could be monitored for signs of progress.
They insist that head teachers will not wish to pry into the private lives of pupils and claim that youngsters should be treated as individuals, not groups.
There are also fears that teachers will feel forced to categorise pupils by their sexuality at a time when they are young and impressionable.
But an Ofsted spokesman insisted last night: ‘It is about schools being aware of the different groups of pupils that might attend their schools and doing all they can to ensure they reach their full potential. ‘These groups could differ depending on the nature and type of school and Ofsted does not have a prescriptive list.’
Today Ofsted unveils a new inspection framework which will make it harder for schools to be ranked ‘outstanding’. From next January, inspectors will concentrate on four key areas: achievement of pupils; quality of teaching and learning; effectiveness of leadership and management, and standards of behaviour and safety.
However, there will be an even greater focus on ‘narrowing gaps in performance’ for different groups of pupils such as ethnic minorities and children in care. Inspectors will evaluate the standards achieved and progress made by these cohorts compared with other pupils in the school and with national trends.
New Ofsted guidance says: ‘It is important to test the school’s response to individual needs by observing how well it helps all pupils to make progress and fulfil their potential, especially those whose needs, dispositions, aptitudes or circumstances require particularly perceptive and expert teaching and/or additional support.
‘In any particular school, such pupils may include disabled pupils; boys; girls; groups of pupils whose prior attainment may be different from that of other groups; those who are academically more able; pupils for whom English is an additional language; minority ethnic pupils; gipsy, Roma and traveller children; pupils known to be eligible for free school meals; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual pupils; young carers, pupils from low income backgrounds and other vulnerable groups.’
Brian Lightman of the Association of School and College Leaders criticised the highlighting of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual pupils. He said: ‘I’m not aware of any way in which such pupils might be identified in a school. It would be inappropriate for any headteacher to pry into the private lives of children.’
Russell Hobby of the National Association of Head Teachers said: ‘It would be simpler to say that every pupil should reach their potential. Each school will have different groups and communities.
‘What an inspector used to do, and should do, is go in and look and what the broad types of pupils are and look at whether there are any groups that are falling behind and home in on those. ‘But if you start getting rigid and start defining all these subcategories at length, the data can become less and less meaningful.’
Professor Alan Smithers of Buckingham University branded the list ‘absurd’. He said: ‘Schools have my sympathy. It’s political correctness that will get in the way of educating every child to his or her potential.’
The new Ofsted framework, which will come into effect in January, applies to all primary and secondary schools in England.
A 'vaccine' that protects people vulnerable to severe reactions from bee and wasps stings is to be made available on the NHS. People who have already suffered a serious reaction to a bee or wasp sting will be able to ask their GP for the 'vaccine'
About one in 200 people suffer from anaphylaxis when stung by a wasp or bee.
Every year between two and nine people die after going into anaphylatic shock - the most extreme form of anaphylaxis - as a result of being stung. Contrary to popular belief, wasp stings actually cause twice as many deaths due to anaphylaxis as bee stings.
Now the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), which decides on whether treatments can be prescribed on the NHS in England and Wales, has indicated it will approve a product called Pharmalgen.
Given in a series of injections, this works by gradually introducing higher doses of the allergens in bee and wasp venom. Over time, this desensitises a person by gently stimulating their immune system. Treatment is carried out in two phases: the initial phase and the maintenance phase, which lasts three years.
Anaphylactic reactions are when the immune system responds inappropriately to an allergen, releasing large quantities of chemicals called histamines, that cause blood capillaries to dilate and blood pressure to drop. In extreme cases airways can collapse and the heart can fail.
In draft guidance that is highly likely to be confirmed early next year, Nice announced it was recommending Pharmalgen for people who had experienced "a severe systemic reaction to bee or wasp venom".
Nice also recommended it for those who had experienced a "moderate systemic reaction" and were also at "a high risk of future stings", had a raised level of a blood serum known to indicate anaphylaxis, or were "anxious about future stings".
Professor Peter Littlejohns, clinical and public health director at Nice said: "The reactions that some people experience to stings from bees and wasps can be distressing, frightening and sometimes life-threatening.
"People who have had a serious reaction to a sting can often experience extreme anxiety about possible future stings, and this can affect their daily lives. "So we are pleased to be able to recommend Pharmalgen as an effective, preventative treatment in preliminary recommendations issued today."
Pharmalgen is the first preventative medicine for bee and wasp stings that Nice has recommended for approval.
Anaphylaxis can be effectively controlled by quickly administering adrenaline by injection. This constricts blood vessels, relaxes muscles in the lungs to aid breathing, stimlulates the heart to beat properly and stops facial swelling.
However, sometimes it cannot be given quickly enough. Last October farmer John Croall, 52, died after being stung while herding sheep in a remote field near Balkeerie, Angus. Ambulance crews were unable to reach him soon enough and the father-of-three died after suffering anaphylactic shock.
Moira Austin, of the Anaphylaxis Campaign, welcomed Nice's decision to approve it. She said: “The Anaphylaxis Campaign has been participating as a patient/carer consultee in the Pharmalgen appraisal, representing those living with severe allergy to bee or wasp venom.
"We have spoken with many individuals who have been successfully treated with Pharmalgen and who have, as a result, experienced a significant improvement in their quality of life. "We are delighted with the appraisal committee’s preliminary recommendations and look forward to their final recommendations.“
There could be some eyebrows raised about the cost of providing the treatment. Nice usually sets a ceiling of £30,000 per 'quality adjusted life year' (QALY) that a medication brings.
Its appraisal committee modelled the cost at £13,800 per QALY, but this was based on a course of Pharmalgen remaining effective for 20 years, for which members admitted there was no evidence.
The committee also said the cost assumption was highly sensitive to the number of stings a person might receive: the fewer, the less cost-effective it was.
Tens of thousands of surgical patients dying needlessly because of poor NHS care, says Royal College of Surgeons
Tens of thousands of elderly patients are dying needlessly after routine operations because they are not being properly looked after in hospitals, leading surgeons warn.
They are left 'languishing' on wards run by junior doctors rather than being moved to specialised units tended to by teams of consultants and nurses. The Royal College of Surgeons warns that care is so poor that these patients are four times more likely to die in British hospitals compared to the U.S.
They say the elderly – as well as patients with cancer and heart problems who are more at risk of complications – have been 'seriously underprioritised' and 'forgotten' by the NHS.
The report looked at more than 50 existing studies into care of these high-risk patients in NHS hospitals who had undergone common operations on their abdomen such as cancer and hernia operations, and removal of blockages in the bowel. It did not including heart surgery.
Of the 170,000 elderly and other high-risk patients who have these procedures every year more than half - 100,000 – will suffer some complication. And 25,000 – one in seven – will die. Many develop infections – including life-threatening blood poisoning sepsis - which is not spotted by inexperienced junior doctors.
The surgeons warn that the death-rate is far higher than other countries in the Western world – and four times more than in the US. They also say the failings are partly due to an obsession with meeting targets.
Managers and doctors are more concerned with getting patients booked into surgery within the required 18 weeks waiting-time, rather than ensuring the most vulnerable receive the highest standard of care.
Norman Williams, President of the Royal College of Surgeons said: ‘The focus on reducing waiting times for elective procedures has resulted in a large group, of mostly elderly patients, becoming seriously under prioritised to the point of neglect in the some NHS hospitals.
'These changes won’t happen on their own and we are calling on all surgeons and managers to work together to deliver the high quality care that these patients need and which some hospitals are already proving can be delivered.'
Mr Iain Anderson, report author and Consultant General Surgeon at Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, said: 'Every single emergency patient who comes through the door of an NHS hospital should have an individual risk assessment, diagnosis, treatment plan and post-operative care plan prioritised according to need. 'Instead we have some of the NHS’ sickest patients languishing on inappropriate wards, treated by juniors and with no plan in place to deal promptly with unexpected complications. 'These tend to be the patients who end up in intensive care units for lengthy periods of time or, sadly too sick to be helped.'
Michelle Mitchell, Charity Director of Age UK, said: 'This is just more evidence that the NHS is not responding to the needs of older people who constitute the bulk of its patients. 'It’s shocking that some of the UK’s sickest and most vulnerable men and women are not receiving the emergency surgical and post operative care they need – care which can mean the difference between life and death.
'Improved care and treatment and routine risk assessments should be the right of every vulnerable patient not just those lucky enough to be in the right hospital.'
A spokesperson from the Department of Health said: 'We have made clear that safety must be at the heart of the NHS. It is essential that hospitals provide the safest possible care for patients. 'Hospitals should follow this guidance and monitor the quality of care they are giving to their patients and ensure that they are providing appropriate levels of services and staffing. 'We want our NHS to be truly-world class and that’s why we are modernising the health service to improve results for patients and safeguard the NHS for future generations.' [Empty puff. When they fire some of their army of bureaucrats we will know they mean it]
U.K. Schools Ban Witches’ Black Hats for Promoting…Racism Among Children?
It seems nothing — from the traditional dress of age-old children’s storybook characters to the very sheet of paper those stories are written on — is above the scrutiny and condemnation of those seeking to push a politically correct agenda and tie even the most seemingly innocent of things to an assault on racial “equality.”
That’s correct, according to diversity and equality “experts,” the Wicked Witch of the West (or at least witches in general), promotes racism among children simply because she dons a black hat. Likewise, the pale, glistening colors typically worn by “fairies” — those ethereal creatures of middle earth so often portrayed in sweetness and light — are merely calculated, cynical wardrobe choices intended to dupe children into believing that all things light, or white, in color are inherently “good.”
Now, to combat that perceived threat, primary school teachers in Britain are allegedly being encouraged by equality advocates to censor fictional children’s characters, eliminating witches’ black pointed hats in favor of white ones, while dressing fairies in dark colors. Proponents of this technique claim the method will eliminate “racism” in children as young as two.
But that’s not all. Even white writing paper has come under fire. The Telegraph reports:
Another staple of the classroom – white paper – has also been questioned by Anne O’Connor, an early years consultant who advises local authorities on equality and diversity.
Children should be provided with paper other than white to draw on and paints and crayons should come in “the full range of flesh tones”, reflecting the diversity of the human race, according to the former teacher.
These rather drastic-sounding measures to ensure racial equality among children are reportedly outlined in a series of guides in “Nursery World” magazine.
Without providing any scientific proof to support the assertion, the guides posit that young children could possess the inclination to express racist views — and that it is therefore the obligation of nursery school teachers to help the children “unlearn” these undesirable traits.
Eerily, the term “unlearn” conjures images of uninstalling software programs on your laptop — or, perhaps more pointedly — the reconditioning sequence made famous in the movie A Clockwork Orange, in which the protagonist’s mind is wiped “clean” of thoughts deemed socially unacceptable, thereby erasing his free will.
One of the alleged goals of the program is to form positive association with dark colors. The Telegraph reports that this “anti-bias” method was developed in the U.S. as part of special interest group’s multiculturalism agenda.
That method, promising to challenge racism, sexism and ageism, has now traveled across the pond, infiltrating at least a portion of the British school system. O‘Connor has reportedly developed material for Lancashire council’s childcare service:
“This is an incredibly complex subject that can easily become simplified and inaccurately portrayed,” she said.
“There is a tendency in education to say ‘here are normal people and here are different people and we have to be kind to those different people’, whether it’s race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age or faith.
“People who are feeling defensive can say ‘well there’s nothing wrong with white paper’, but in reality there could be if you don’t see yourself reflected in the things around you. “As an early years teacher, the minute you start thinking, ‘well actually, if I give everyone green paper, what happens’, you have a teaching potential.
“People might criticise this as political correctness gone mad. But it is because of political correctness we have moved on enormously. If you think that we now take it for granted that our buildings and public highways are adapted so people in wheelchairs and with pushchairs can move around. Years ago if you were in a wheelchair, then tough luck. We have completely moved and we wouldn’t have done that without the equality movement.”
Not everyone is in agreement with color-mania, however. Margaret Morrissey, a spokeswoman for the advocacy group Parents Outloud told the Telegraph, “I’m sure these early years experts know their field but they seem to be obsessed about colour and determined to make everyone else obsessed about it too.”
“Not allowing toy witches to wear black seems to me nonsense and in the same vein as those people who have a problem with ‘Bar Bar Black Sheep’ or ‘The Three Little Pigs’. Children just see a sheep in a field, whether it be black, grey, white or beige. I have worked with children for 41 years and I don’t believe I have ever met a two year old who was in any way racist or prejudiced.”
Meanwhile, it might be worth pointing out that, at least in Technicolor, the most infamous witch of all was in fact the color green.
The make-up of modern Britain: 70% claim to be Christians... and only 1.5% are homosexual
Three Britons count themselves as Christian for every one non-believer, according to a major survey. And nearly seven in ten said they were Christian, even if they never go to church. Fewer than a quarter said they had no religion and only one in 12 follows another religion.
The finding that the nation remains overwhelmingly Christian comes days after it emerged that BBC programme-makers have been put under pressure to stop describing dates as BC or AD. Instead, they have been told to use the non-Christian alternatives Before Common Era and Common Era.
The Corporation’s religion and ethics department has said that ‘as the BBC is committed to impartiality it is appropriate that we use terms that do not offend or alienate non-Christians’.
Meanwhile, four Christians denied the right to wear crosses or act in accordance with their beliefs at work are taking cases to the European Court of Human Rights claiming the State is trying to suppress their religion.
Gay lobbyists and politicians have long claimed that 10 per cent of the population is homosexual. But the figures from the Office for National Statistics’ Integrated Household Survey show this is a wild exaggeration.
Some 94 per cent said they were heterosexual, 4.3 per cent declined to answer the question or said they didn’t know, and 0.4 per cent said their sexuality was ‘other’.
The Office for National Statistics’ new Integrated Household Survey, which collects the views of 420,000 people, found that 69 per cent of people in Britain said they were Christian.
Nearly nine in ten over-65s are Christian. But even in the least religious age group, 25 to 34-year-olds, more than half – 55 per cent – profess Christianity. Fifty-nine per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds and 60 per cent of under-16s said they were Christian.
Support for other religions breaks down as 4.4 per cent Muslim, 1.3 per cent Hindu, 0.7 per cent Sikh, 0.4 per cent Buddhist, 0.4 per cent Jewish, and 1.1 per cent who say they follow other religions.
Only 23 per cent of the population said they had no religion. Christian groups said the findings showed that State agencies which act as if Christianity was a minority hobby are wildly wrong.
Simon Calvert, of the Christian Institute think tank, said: ‘These figures must come as a shock to the BBC and the political class. It is about time that this reality, that people want to be identified as Christian, was reflected not only in the output of our major broadcasters but also in the policies of the Government.
‘Ministers are still barrelling along with enforcing civil partnerships in churches and redefining marriage. We can only hope that the reality will catch up with them and give them pause for thought.’
The Integrated Household Survey was put together from five ONS surveys which asked the same ‘core questions’ over a year.
British Leftist bid to curb Press freedoms met by howls of protest
The Fascist instinct rears its head
A shadow minister yesterday announced plans for a draconian crackdown on the Press. Shadow Culture Secretary Ivan Lewis provoked a storm of protest when he suggested journalists should be licensed – meaning they could be ‘struck off’ and banned from working.
But within hours Ed Miliband was forced to disown the policy – as critics warned it would turn Britain into a banana republic in which ministers were able to silence awkward members of the Press.
Mr Lewis, who has in the past faced embarrassing revelations in newspapers about his own private life, told the conference the phone-hacking scandal meant the media could no longer be trusted to regulate itself. He said existing media self-regulation was ‘broken’.
Mr Lewis suggested journalists should be licensed to practise, in a similar way to doctors. Any reporter found guilty of ‘gross malpractice’ could then be ‘struck off’ and barred from having their words published.
The idea was immediately condemned within the party and beyond. Critics warned it could even stifle Press investigations of the kind that exposed the hacking scandal.
Former Labour adviser Dan Hodges suggested the proposal must be a bad joke. ‘On the day of the leader’s speech we announce the state banning of journalists,’ he said. ‘Labour is ceasing to exist as a serious political party.’
Tory MP Philip Davies, a member of the Commons Culture Committee, which is investigating the phone-hacking scandal, warned Labour was in danger of ‘throwing the baby out with the bath water’. ‘Once the Government starts involving itself in the regulation of the media, that is a very slippery slope,’ he said. ‘It is the kind of thing that happens in Third World dictatorships.
‘We need a free Press and self-regulation – that is the cornerstone of a free society and democracy. ‘Where journalists have committed criminal acts we have the criminal law to deal with those people. We do not want to see people in Government deciding what can and cannot be written.’
His speech sparked panic in Mr Miliband’s office, with aides insisting the idea of striking off journalists had not been cleared with the Labour leader.
A senior party source said: ‘We’re not in the business of regulating journalists. We have always said self-regulation is the best policy.’
Woman unwittingly destroys her liver and dies from a paracetamol (acetaminophen) overdose
This is widely recommended as a "safe" painkiller but it is not. There have been many incidents like the one below. Aspirin is out of favour these days but it is much less likely to be fatal. Many medications contain paracetamol so if you are taking several medications you can very easily exceed the safe dose
A young mother died after overdosing on Lemsip and paracetamol to treat a cold, an inquest has heard. Tragic Donna Bishop, 25, downed a daily cocktail of over-the-counter medication when she fell ill two weeks before Christmas last year.
The pretty mum-of-one was diagnosed with a chest infection by her GP on New Year’s Eve, But she continued to self-medicate and swallowed pills washed down with hot Lemsip drinks and cough medicine. Her health rapidly deteriorated and she died in hospital on January 4 from liver failure caused by a paracetamol overdose.
The inquest at Worcestershire Coroner’s Court in Stourport-on-Severn heard how Donna had travelled to Scotland before Christmas to visit her friend Siobhan Dunn.
She had been suffering from a cold for two weeks before her death and Miss Dunn said Donna was taking ‘high’ amounts of over-the-counter drugs and she had been sick several times. This would lead her to take more medication in the belief she needed a top-up dose after vomiting.
After travelling back to her home in Warndon Villages, Worcester, on December 31 she saw her GP who prescribed antibiotics.
On January 2 she went to Worcestershire Royal Hospital complaining of mouth ulcers and having difficulty in swallowing. A doctor prescribed co-codamol and a throat spray but the next day her sister Kerrie Bishop visited her and found her forgetful, with a yellow jaundiced complexion and unsteady on her feet.
At 2.30am on January 4, she was admitted to hospital and given a bed on the gynaecological ward. Staff said she was ‘fidgety’ and suffering hallucinations.
According to nurse practitioner Andrew Eggleton, Donna denied taking paracetamol but she died later that day. A pathologist report concluded her death was due to liver failure caused by a paracetamol overdose.
A naive do-gooder describes how political expediency drove British climate legislation
She is living proof that a wrong initial premise (the effect of CO2 in this case) can led to wrong conclusions. She is clearly not a critical thinker -- just a useful tool for others
Dotty British conservatives declare war on plastic bags
So cut down more trees to make paper bags? And Rwanda is the example to follow?
Britain’s biggest supermarkets are today given an ultimatum by the Prime Minister: Radically reduce the number of plastic bags you hand out by choice, or I will force you to by law.
David Cameron warns that unless stores deliver ‘significant falls’ over the next 12 months, they could either be banned outright from giving out single-use bags or be legally required to charge customers for them.
The Prime Minister says it is ‘unacceptable’ that the number of single-use carrier bags rose last year by 333million – a 5 per cent increase from the previous year. Environmental campaigners say the bags, used for only 20 minutes on average, take up to 1,000 years to degrade.
As well as causing serious harm to marine animals and birds, they blight the coastline, with 70 bags littering every mile.
Mr Cameron paid tribute to the Daily Mail’s ‘Banish the Bags’ campaign, which encouraged the previous government to force retailers to pledge to reduce the amount they hand out to customers.
The campaign helped achieve a drop of nearly 14 per cent, but the issue was kicked into the long grass by the Coalition, and last month official figures showed the trend had gone into reverse and numbers of bags had risen for the first time in five years.
Government sources say that major retailers will be expected to cut the number by at least the 333million required to reverse the latest increase, although it is hoped they will go much further.
The Prime Minister told the Mail: ‘I am very concerned about the use of single-use carrier bags and the effect that they have on the environment. ‘The number of bags being used had fallen considerably, partly thanks to public pressure, including in particular the Daily Mail campaign, and due to the efforts of many major retailers.
‘Companies like M&S have considerably reduced the use of bags by charging and then donating the money raised to charity – £4million has already gone to good causes since they started charging in 2008 and they are doing more to clean up beaches over the next few years. ‘But progress overall went backwards last year, and that is unacceptable.
‘Retailers need to do better. I want to see significant falls again. I know that retailers want to do better too but if they don’t I will be asking them to explain why not.
‘Retailers also need to know that the Government has options at its disposal – including regulating as other countries have done. We will continue to look carefully at all options in order to make sure that we further reduce the use of single-use plastic bags.’
Last year, 6.4billion single-use carriers were handed out in the UK. A UK-wide bags charge could raise tens of millions of pounds a year – as much as £50million – for good causes and charities.
Recycling minister Lord Henley has pointed to a ban implemented in Rwanda that has led to the country, one of the world’s poorest, being hailed as the cleanest in Africa.
The European Commission is also investigating controls on plastic bags, including charges or a ban.
Jill Bell, of the Marine Conservation Society, said the Coalition should be ‘ashamed’ that it has not already required stores to charge for bags, as the authorities in Wales have opted to do.
Untrained healthcare assistants leave patients unfed and in pain, claims nursing watchdog
The lack of formal training for thousands of NHS healthcare assistants is leaving patients “unfed” and “in pain”, the head of Britain’s nursing watchdog has warned. Dickon Weir-Hughes argued that the hundreds of complaints made about carers each year were not being addressed as officials were powerless to act.
The chief executive of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) urged government ministers to set compulsory standards for the growing army of assistants.
He also called for the introduction of separate uniforms in hospitals to enable patients and their families to distinguish between unregulated assistants and qualified nurses.
“What’s worrying is when we get complaints about a so-called nurse but they turn out not to be a nurse. In other words it’s somebody who looks like a nurse, who is doing some things people associate with nursing, but is not a nurse,” Professor Weir-Hughes said.
“It’s very hard for members of the public to tell who people are, so one of our calls would be for distinctive uniforms and clear name badges.”
Ministers have so far resisted calls from the NMC and the Commons Health Select Committee to introduce compulsory regulation and training for healthcare assistants. Some 300,000 are understood to be currently working in the NHS, although there is no register and no compulsory training.
In an interview with the Times, Professor Weir-Hughes said the continuing failure to insist on formal qualifications represented a “national disaster” waiting to happen.
Without better regulation, he argued, nurses would continue to struggle to know when to perform certain tasks themselves, and when they could delegate to healthcare assistants.
Professor Weir-Hughes added: “We’ve struck people off as nurses who have then come back and worked as healthcare support workers. There’s nothing to prevent them from doing that. “All we can do is to say you either have to go to the person’s employer, or if it’s sufficiently serious call the police. There are no other mechanisms.
“Even if there aren’t massive high-profile hideous cases, the drip, drip, drip of thousands of unhappy, in pain, not-fed patients - that should carry some weight. “This isn’t just about waiting for some ghastly national disaster, it’s about saying, ‘How long do we leave this issue?’”
Britian's General Medical Council becomes a kangaroo court
Determined to suppress Christian expression even if they have to breach natural justice
A Christian doctor is still trying to clear his name after a complaint was made against him for speaking about his faith with a patient. Dr Richard Scott, 51, was in Manchester yesterday for a disciplinary hearing into comments he made to a patient during a one-to-one consultation at the Bethesda Medical Centre in Margate, Kent, in August 2010.
The complaint was made by the mother of the 24-year-old patient after he told her that Dr Scott had suggested the Christian faith could help him.
The General Medical Council (GMC) offered to resolve the issue by placing an official warning on Dr Scott’s file. It went to a full hearing after Dr Scott challenged the GMC’s decision on the grounds that an official warning would be unacceptable for his reputation and on his official file.
He continues to defend his conduct, saying that he only discussed faith with the patient after asking their permission and that he had acted professionally and within the guidelines.
Dr Scott had expected to cross-examine the patient at yesterday’s hearing and challenge their claims, but was unable to do so after the patient failed to turn up.
The case has now been temporarily adjourned by the GMC’s Investigatory Committee, which is trying to make the patient attend another hearing.
According to advocacy group Christian Concern, the GMC has decided to pursue the case with or without the witness, prompting concerns for other doctors. It warns that without the possibility of cross-examining a complainant, doctors will be made “extremely vulnerable to allegations” as they typically see patients in private.
Andrea Williams, chief executive of Christian Concern’s partner organisation, the Christian Legal Centre, said the GMC appeared “determined” to punish Dr Scott. She said: “An experienced GP has spent 48 hours in an aborted disciplinary hearing in Manchester when he could and should be helping his patients in Kent.
“The procedures of the GMC in this case are ones which every GP in the land should be concerned about as their future and reputation now seems to be able to be challenged by hearsay allegations with no opportunity to cross examine in order that a panel can make a just decision.”
Dr Scott expressed his shock at the way in which his case had been handled by the GMC. “As a member of the GMC, I look to my professional body to act with the same professional standards that any court in this land would,” he said. “I am astounded that the GMC are continuing to pursue this allegation on the basis of hear-say evidence from a witness that will not turn up. This case should have been struck-out, but the GMC appears to be determined to pursue this.”
“I cannot imagine that any court in the land would act like this, and so, on behalf of every GP I must insist that proper professional standards on cross examination be adopted in all disciplinary hearings. “Without it, a fair ‘trial’ is impossible and every GP is left totally vulnerable to any accusation.”
The child star of the Labour conference and the truth behind his 'life of poverty'
At just 16, Rory Weal was being feted yesterday as the ‘hero’ of the Labour conference for an impassioned speech telling how the welfare state saved his family from ruin.
The schoolboy tugged at delegates’ heartstrings with a tale of his home being repossessed and the family having ‘nothing, no money, no savings’, and only the benefits system to fall back on.
But Labour leader Ed Miliband may be surprised to know he was not so hard-up after all.
For it turns out he is the privileged son of a millionaire property developer who sent Rory to a private school until his business went bust. Even now he goes to a selective grammar school, which Labour policy opposes.
Rory’s father Jonathan Weal, 53, owned homes worth an estimated £2.25million in some of the most sought-after addresses in the land. He had a luxury penthouse apartment in leafy Blackheath, South London, valued at £1.3million, but it was repossessed and sold for £359,000 – which is still more valuable than the average British home. Then the banks sold Mr Weal’s £950,000 Grade II listed lodge house in Chislehurst, Kent, for ‘only’ half a million pounds.
In the good times, Mr Weal gave Rory an advantage over ordinary families by sending him to £13,788-a-year Colfe’s School in Blackheath. But when his business ventures failed, his son was lucky enough to be accepted by Oakwood Park Grammar School in Maidstone, Kent.
On Monday, Rory electrified the conference with his tub-thumping speech, giving Labour a ‘William Hague moment’ – a reference to 1977 when a teenage Hague wowed the Conservative Party conference.
Attacking the ‘vicious and Right-wing’ Government, Rory conjured up an image of his destitute family as he told Labour delegates: ‘Two and a half years ago, the home I had lived in since birth was repossessed. We had nothing, no money, no savings.
‘I owe my entire well-being and that of my family to the welfare state. That is why I joined the Labour Party, but that very same welfare state is being ruthlessly ripped apart by a vicious and Right-wing Tory-led government.
‘I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for that system, that safety net. So I take this opportunity to plead with the Government to reconsider their measures.’
Yesterday Rory’s own grandmother described the budding politician as an accomplished actor.
At her home in Stockbridge, Hampshire, Sandra Weal said: ‘He used to do a lot of acting and I think that’s why he was so confident in front of an audience.
After the banks repossessed the family’s homes in 2008, Rory’s parents split up. In a Sunday Times interview about his financial downfall, published earlier this year, Mr Weal said: ‘For my wife, Elaine, the humiliation was unendurable.’
He went on: ‘My father and sister are both architects. She went to Cambridge. I came last in everything at school and I’ve spent my life making up for that. It was so important to me that Rory had the best education.’ Colfe’s School is steeped in history as one of the oldest schools in London.
Rory’s mother was a director of a number of her husband’s companies before they went bust, and she, Rory and her eight-year-old daughter now live in a four-bedroom £300,000 semi-detached house in Allington, Maidstone.
There are only 164 grammar schools left in the country, 32 of them in Kent, where Rory lives.
The Labour mantra of hate finds a new star in 16-year-old Weal
The papers today are fawning over yesterday’s instant sensation at the Labour party conference -- an articulate 16 year-old schoolboy, Rory Weal, who became the conference darling when he ripped into the ‘vicious, right-wing Tory-led government’.
No surprise that he brought the conference to its feet. Gone were the crestfallen expressions at having been told by Tessa Jowell the unwelcome home truth that the country simply wasn’t listening to anything the Labour party was saying.
Lifted were the eyes that had been fixed to the floor as party big-wigs had mouthed synchronised apologies for mass immigration (but only by Poles – even the apology was politically correct). Banished was their terminal depression at their leader, Ed-trying-to-be-red-and-blue-at-the-same-time Miliband.
No, it was Rory Weal who gave them the rallying call, the three-word code, the mantra of hate that gives the left its entire purpose in life – to demonise ‘vicious right-wing’ Tories, and thus reinforce their own galvanising illusion that it is the Labour party which is the engine of decency and social justice.
In fact, Rory Weal was hailed as a hero for saying something that should have chilled the marrow. For he said: ‘I owe my entire well-being and that of my family to the welfare state.’
In the real world, what that means (if true) is that his entire life has been spent as a kind of state serf, that he and his family are wholly lacking in independence, that their entire subsistence has been funded by the state. Worse still, it would appear that in the mind of 16 year-old Rory Weal he has never gained any benefit to himself from anything other than the state.
No mention, note, of what he owes to his parents’ own efforts for his well-being. Indeed, to him they appear to have made no such contribution since he told us that he owes his ‘entire well-being’ to the welfare state.
To Rory Weal, all good things appear to come from the state – and so anyone who dares suggest otherwise is vicious and right-wing. Is that not terrifying?
To further illustrate the extent to which this self-designated creation of Britain’s welfare state is apparently incapable of mouthing anything other than crude propaganda on its behalf rather than connecting to viciously right-wing reality, look at what else he said.
Attacking tuition fees and cuts in student grants, he claimed that the government was threatening the British promise: '...where one generation does better than the last.' But it was under the Labour government that social mobility actually went backwards.
And look at where Rory Weal is doing his A-levels in English literature, geography, politics and history -- at Oakwood Park Grammar School.
But of course it is the destruction of the grammar schools which has been the single greatest cause of the betrayal of the promise that one generation does better than the last. It is the Labour party which has waged all-out war upon the grammar schools on the basis that selective education is elitist.
And the reason Rory Weal attends Oakwood Park Grammar School in Maidstone is that it is under the authority of Kent County Council, one of the few local authorities to retain selective education -- and which is run by the vicious right-wing Tories.
He also complained that, after his parents divorced,‘ two and-a-half years ago, the home I had lived in since birth was repossessed’. But two and a half years ago it was of course Labour that was in power.
So Rory Weal was blaming the Tories for a series of actions which were in fact taken by Labour governments! This boy will indeed go far.
Plan to give poor British pupils extra credit to discriminate against private school classes
Britain's biggest exam board is proposing to rank all A-level students according to the schools they attend. The proposal would allow universities to discriminate against pupils from private schools.
The Assessment and Qualifications Alliance plan means universities could offer places to students from disadvantaged homes who showed potential but had performed less well in exams than their peers at better schools.
Under the proposal, a pupil at a weak school who scored a lower grade than a rival at a good school could get extra credit in the form of university entrance points. Until now, boards have judged pupils only on their exams and not their schooling.
The plan is contained in a paper prepared for discussion by Dr Neil Stringer, senior research associate at the AQA centre for education research and policy, and being circulated at the party conferences for debate this month.
Critics fear candidates will be penalised for achieving good A-level results at a good school. Independent schools are also concerned the approach could discriminate against disadvantaged pupils to whom they have offered scholarships.
Dr Tim Hands, headmaster of Magdalen College, Oxford, and co-chairman of the Independent Schools’ Universities Committee, said last night: ‘It is extraordinary. It takes no account of home background or the amount of tutoring a pupil could have.’
Professor Alan Smithers, head of the Centre for Education and Employment Studies at the University of Buckingham, said: ‘The possibility for errors is enormous. ‘There must be concerns about the ranking the candidates are awarded.’
Dr Stringer gives the example of the medical school St George’s, part of the University of London, in support of his argument. The school offers places to students with lower A-level grades (BBC rather than AAB), providing their performance is 60 per cent better than the average for their school.
In another example, pupil A at a low-performing comprehensive in a disadvantaged area gets an exam score of 36 out of 40. But he is entitled to bonus points as a result of his school’s low ranking.
Pupil B goes to a top independent school with no pupils on free school meals and got 38 for his exam score. However, he faces being penalised on his school’s ranking.
It would be for a university to decide what to do with the information.
The crude social engineering of A-levels insults any child who wants to succeed on merit
Why do some societies succeed while others fail? Why is it that some nations can prosper while others decline? Is it a matter of natural resources, cultural factors or wise public spending? Or some indecipherable ingredient which is a matter of the purest chance?
History teaches us that it is none of the above. Nations succeed when they put talent first: those societies which have guaranteed the highest standards for all their citizens, throughout the ages, have been those which have been the purest meritocracies.
Those who don’t promote on merit, whether crony-ridden sheikhdoms or creaking Euro institutions, find they quickly decline, whatever riches they start out with.
Deciding that jobs, or positions of influence, should be allocated on the basis of where you come from, not what you can do, is the sort of thinking we should leave to defenders of the feudal system and discredited Marxists.
But, sadly, the deluded notion that background matters more than ability is still alive, well and undermining excellence in the cloistered seminar rooms of the Left-wing education establishment.
How else to explain the bizarre idea which has emanated from one of our examination boards that students with weaker A-levels, if they’ve attended a poor school, should be able to automatically leapfrog students who possess stronger A-levels in the race for university places?
Exam boards exist to measure ability, not engage in crude social engineering. And the A-level, as Britain’s most demanding school-level qualification, is the real test of their ability to maintain educational standards.
The point of the A-level is to equip students with the knowledge to flourish at university. A-levels should also help universities select the students best equipped to succeed, by the simple and old-fashioned expedient of giving the most able students the highest grades.
Sadly, in my job as Education Secretary, I’ve been confronted with more and more evidence from universities that A-levels are no longer doing the job they should. Professors tell me they have to provide catch-up classes for bright students who arrive at university with good grades, but who have not been provided with enough knowledge in the A-level syllabus to match the performance of students from other countries, or students who started the same course a generation ago.
The same academics also tell me they are finding it more and more difficult to identify the most able pupils, when so many come with fistfuls of As and A stars.
The delight that hard-working students feel when they get a string of great passes curdles into anger when they find that still doesn’t mark them out from the crowd or guarantee a cherished college place.
The last Government invented the A star because so many were getting As. Now the numbers walking off with a clutch of A stars means we may soon have to introduce a veritable galaxy of A double and triple stars simply to allow the top talent to stand out.
It’s quite wrong to blame pupils for this fiasco. They work harder than ever, what with GCSE modules and AS levels before their final A2 exams.
They deserve better. Exam boards should be working harder to get tests which are truly stretching, and provide marking schemes which are more rigorous. But instead we have the silly idea from one exam board, tellingly launched at the Labour Party conference, that we should further devalue the gold standard.
The education system, it is argued, should inflate the value of lower grades if a candidate comes from what is believed to be a weaker school. All students are to be treated equally, but some will be treated rather more equally than others.
The authors of this scheme, I am sure, imagine they are doing their bit to advance social mobility.
Well, as the beneficiary of old-fashioned ideals which genuinely advanced social mobility, such as hard work, great teaching and academic rigour, let me assure the authors of this modest proposal that they are insulting any child who wants to succeed on their own merits.
No one wants to think they’ve been admitted somewhere on sufferance rather than ability. And this scheme risks tipping the scales against the deserving. A child from a normal home on a scholarship at a private school, as I was, would suffer compared with a child from a wealthier background who goes to a state school, but benefits from expensive private tutoring, as the children of so many distinguished Labour politicians have.
It’s because I came from a modest background — my father was a fish merchant — that I am so passionate about the power of great education to transform people’s lives. I spent my first months in care, before being adopted and brought up by wonderful parents who believed in education, even though they’d both had to leave school before they were 16.
I was fortunate to go to good state schools, before winning a scholarship to a private school. At every point I benefited from excellent teachers who didn’t make excuses about their pupils’ backgrounds. They expected every child to succeed. And they demanded the same level of discipline, application and ambition from every student because they thought we were all capable of excellence if we tried our utmost.
That same attitude permeates our best schools today, including those in our poorest areas: London schools such as Burlington Danes in White City, or Mossbourne in Hackney, which have more than their fair share of students from disadvantaged homes. They do much better in exams than many schools, including private schools, in leafy areas.
Their students win places at Oxbridge on merit. All because their heads, from the moment any child arrives, refuse to accept excuses for under-performance.
Because once you accept that a child is likely to do less well than his contemporaries, you condemn that child to fall further and further behind, to never know the satisfaction of pushing himself beyond his limits, to be a prisoner of others’ prejudice. The victim of the bigotry of low expectations.
That is why, instead of covering up poor performance — or purposefully skewing university entrance procedures — we need to demand more of our education system.
The way to get students from poor homes in weak schools into good universities is not to rig exams, establish quotas or inflate grades. We should improve the state schools in the first place. All the ingenuity that academics devote to lowering the bar to entry to college should instead go into raising standards in the classroom much earlier.
The reason I am giving teachers more powers to impose tougher discipline, replacing heads in schools that are under-performing, reforming school league tables to reward rigour, getting rid of low-value qualifications in soft subjects and paying more to get top maths and science graduates into teaching, is because I want the scandalously high number of children who have been let down by poor schools to be given a proper education at last.
The children in our poorest schools are, overwhelmingly, from our poorest homes. Many of them will have the talent to rise to the very top. To become business leaders, academics, surgeons and head teachers. But they will achieve their full potential only if we ditch, once and for all, the dismally defeatist mindset which believes that, in education, second-best is good enough.
Painkiller heart alert: Don't stop taking pills, but do talk to your GP, British scientists urge
For once they mention the absolute risk and admit that it is tiny
A painkiller taken by millions can increase the risk of heart attack and stroke by 40 per cent, a study has found. Researchers say that while there is no need for patients to panic, diclofenac should be restricted to prescription only.
In completely healthy patients, a 40 per cent raised chance of heart problems is not at all significant. But for those who already have a high risk of a heart attack or stroke, taking the painkiller could present serious problems.
Last night the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said that patients should not stop taking the drug, but should consult their doctor if they have fears over its safety.
Last year almost 17million prescriptions were written by GPs in England for non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs, for conditions such as arthritis, back pain, gout, headaches and fever. Of these, diclofenac was the most commonly prescribed and given to 6million patients. It can also be bought over the counter under the brand name Voltarol Pain-Eze for around £6. It is at lower strength but still carries a 22 per cent higher risk.
Dr Patricia McGettigan of Hull York Medical School, who led the landmark review of studies looking at nearly 3million people, said: ‘Diclofenac on prescription was associated with an increase in cardiovascular risk of 40 per cent.
‘People take it because it’s effective, but it’s very important for patients and doctors to know the risks associated with these drugs for high-risk patients. ‘It is now available over the counter, and our study suggests there is a case for looking at that again and making it prescription-only as well as strengthening advice to doctors and patients about how it should be used.
‘There is a very clear increase in risk as the dose goes up, which says to people who perhaps can’t get out of bed due to arthritis and take diclofenac, take a different drug instead and you might be at a lower risk of heart attack and stroke. ‘We have reviewed all the previous studies and are confident that the results are robust enough to inform clinical and regulatory decisions.’
This is the first study to measure the relative risks of different drugs, and it found that ibuprofen and naproxen had the lowest risk of cardiovascular problems.
Many patients were transferred to diclofenac from Vioxx, the painkiller which was withdrawn by manufacturer Merck in 2004 after it was linked to heart attacks and strokes.
Patients will often be at minimal risk. For a young woman, the risk of having a heart attack will be around 0.1 per cent and a 40 per cent rise is still just 0.14 per cent. However for a pensioner who has already had one heart attack, a 40 per cent increase could be significant.
Doreen Maddock of the British Heart Foundation said: ‘The potential risks for heart patients taking certain painkillers have been known for some time and these findings shouldn’t be ignored. But scientists and drug regulators will need to delve deeper before we draw any firm conclusions.
‘As with any medicine there are benefits and potential risks to taking painkillers. If you’re already taking these types of drugs and are worried, don’t simply give up on your medication. You should always speak to your doctor first because the benefits may well outweigh the risks for you.’
A spokesman for the MHRA said: ‘Our priority is to ensure that the benefits of medication outweigh the risks. NSAID treatment is associated with a small increased risk of heart attacks and stroke. The risk is higher with long-term treatment.
‘Clear warnings about the risk of gastro-intestinal and heart problems, along with information about those patient groups in which NSAIDs either should not be used, such as those with severe heart failure, or only used with caution, are contained in the product information including the patient information leaflet that accompanies the medicine.
‘To minimise the risk of side effects, all NSAIDs should be used at the lowest possible dose for the shortest period necessary to control symptoms. ‘People should not stop taking their NSAID medicine, but if they have any questions or concerns about their treatment they should speak to their doctor. ‘The MHRA keeps the safety of NSAIDs under close review and any new data will be carefully evaluated.’
A spokesman for Novartis, which makes Voltarol, said: ‘In our view, this analysis, in the context of the vast clinical experience worldwide, does not change the favourable benefit-to-risk assessment for diclofenac when used as directed. ‘Novartis is confident about the safety profile of diclofenac products.’
Most Warmists would appear to be crooks, fools or Leftists (or all three) but Johann Hari has been caught bang to rights as dishonest. See a sampling of his supercilious "wisdom" about global warming here, here or here. Now read on:
The Orwell prize committee has accused Independent columnist Johann Hari of plagiarism over an article that won him the prestigious award in 2008.
Hari earlier this month said he stood by the Orwell prize-winning articles in a lengthy apology published by the Independent, but handed back the award on 14 September "as an act of contrition for errors I made elsewhere".
However, the high-profile columnist has not returned the £2,000 prize money from the 2008 award, the Orwell prize council said on Tuesday.
"The council concluded that the article contained inaccuracies and conflated different parts of someone else's story (specifically, a report in Der Spiegel)," the Orwell prize council said in a statement. "The council ruled that the substantial use of unattributed and unacknowledged material did not meet the standards expected of Orwell prize-winning journalism."
Hari handed back the Orwell prize after an internal investigation by the Independent founder and former editor Andreas Whittam Smith.
He said in his apology a fortnight ago: "Even though I stand by the articles which won the George Orwell prize, I am returning it as an act of contrition for the errors I made elsewhere, in my interviews."
Hari apologised for plagiarising the work of others to improve interviews and for editing the Wikipedia entries of people he had clashed with, using the pseudonym David Rose, "in ways that were juvenile or malicious". He admitted calling "one of them antisemitic and homophobic, and the other a drunk".
He is taking unpaid leave of absence from the paper until 2012 and is to undertake a journalism training course.
The Orwell prize council said it decided to revoke Hari's award in July, but declined to make the decision public because the Independent's investigation was ongoing. The Independent had "prohibited" Hari from responding to claims about his work during the investigation, the council added.
"The council is delighted to be able to put this difficult episode behind it finally, and get on with the important business of running the prizes and promoting the values of George Orwell into the future," said Bill Hamilton, the acting chair of the council of the Orwell prize.
Worth knowing for the next time this guy excoriates sceptics for their dishonesty in denying climate change!
Expert: Cold winters "a consequence of global warming"
Weather forecastera are predicting another cold winter. But believers in global warming caused by humans need not despair. Physical Oceanographer Tom Rippeth of Bangor University´s School of Ocean Sciences "knows" that it is all "a consequence of global warming":
“Whilst at first sight the recent spate of cold winters might be interpreted as not fitting the picture of a warming planet, they do in fact appear to be a consequence of global warming”
The secrets behind the new findings are - you guessed it - "complex computer models":
“Using complex computer models scientists have found that, as the ice cap over the ocean disappeared, this allows the heat of the relatively warm seawater (0 degrees C) to escape into the much colder atmosphere above, creating an area of high pressure surrounded by clockwise-moving winds that sweep down from the Arctic over northern Europe.”
“The result here in the UK is that instead of our normal winter conditions, which are dominated by warm and wet winds blowing in off the Atlantic, we experience much colder winds coming in from the North and the East.”
The climate alarmists really know how make it easy for themselves: Whatever happens, it is always a result of global warming. No wonder there has been an huge erosion of credibility for the warmist type of climate science.
On the buses: "The UK bus sector has prospered in recent years, despite all the prophecies of gloom when Lady Thatcher’s Conservative Government decided that competition was the best answer to reversing decades of under-investment, lousy service and poor time-tabling."
27 September, 2011
Don't give out cancer drugs if it's just to extend life: Treatment costs can't be justified, say British experts
In statistician's terms, the issue here is not the mean but the variance. Some people get very little benefit from the drugs while others have their life substantially extended. And the only way you can find out which is which is by giving the stuff to everyone. They are now however saying to give it to no-one, so in some cases are condemning to death people who could in fact have had many more years of life. But that's socialism. The individual doesn't matter. One size fits all
Patients with terminal cancer should not be given life-extending drugs, doctors said yesterday. The treatments give false hope and are too costly for the public purse, they warned. The group of 37 cancer experts, including British specialist Karol Sikora, claimed a 'culture of excess' had led doctors to 'overtreat, overdiagnose and overpromise'.
Campaigners dismissed the report, saying it was wrong to write off cancer victims. 'I would hardly call this type of treatment futile,' said Rose Woodward, of the James Whale Fund for Kidney Cancer. 'We have kidney cancer patients on a life-prolonging drug called Sutent who have been told they have only two to three weeks to live but who go on to live for a further five years.'
Around 310,000 Britons a year are diagnosed with cancer. But by 2030 this is expected to have risen to 400,000 as an ageing population succumbs to the disease. The NHS spends well over £5billion annually on cancer treatments, up from £3billion in 2002.
In the journal Lancet Oncology, the expert group warned many of the costly drugs produced by manufacturers brought little value. They said patients were offered treatment even where there was little evidence it was of use. Instead, money should be invested in better scans and tests to determine whether a tumour is beatable, leaving 'difficult decisions' as to who gets treatment.
'We clearly would want to spare the patient the toxicity and false hope associated with such treatment, as well as the expense,' the experts told the European multidisciplinary cancer congress in Stockholm.
The doctors point out that many patients do not want to spend their final days undergoing exhausting chemotherapy in hospital and would rather be at home surrounded by loved ones.
But a spokesman for the Rarer Cancers Foundation said: 'Describing all treatments near the end of life as futile is tantamount to writing patients off. 'Just because they cannot be "cured" does not mean that we cannot give them valuable treatment, care and support.'
Ian Beaumont of Bowel Cancer UK said money was not the sole issue. 'While cancer care can be expensive, it is unjust to put a cost on the lives of patients, especially when modern treatments can often give them precious time with their loved ones and increase their length and quality of life,' he added.
Only last week a pill for prostate cancer, Abiraterone, was made available in the UK for the first time at a cost of £35,000 a patient. Although on average it only extends lives by a few weeks, some patients survive for five years.
Similarly, Avastin, which is used to treat advanced bowel cancer and some other tumours, was initially thought to extend survival by an average of only six weeks. But some patients are still alive five years later and tumours have not returned.
Barbara Moss was given months to live when she was diagnosed with advanced bowel cancer that had spread to her liver in November 2006. She paid for Avastin privately and the drug shrank the tumours so much that they were small enough to be removed by surgery. She lived an extra five years.
Last week Professor Sikora warned that, in future, the best cancer treatments would be the preserve of the rich because they would be too expensive for the Health Service.
The terrorist Britain can't kick out: Released after half his sentence but still 'a risk to the public'... the suicide bomb fanatic who's free to stay - thanks to his "human rights"
A fanatical terrorist has escaped being thrown out of the UK because it would breach his human rights. Hate-filled Siraj Yassin Abdullah Ali, graded the highest possible risk to the public, was released after serving just half of his nine-year sentence for helping the July 21 bombers.
He now mingles freely among the Londoners his co-plotters tried to kill six years ago.
Government officials are desperate to deport the Islamic fundamentalist back to his native Eritrea but have been told they cannot because he could face ‘inhumane treatment or punishment’.
Ali was convicted of helping a gang of five Al Qaeda suicide bombers in their bid to repeat the carnage of the attacks of July 7, 2005, two weeks later.
Graham Foulkes, whose 22-year-old son David was killed on July 7, said he was ‘filled with despair’. He said: ‘These people were plotting to commit mass murder - what about the human rights of victims and families? ‘These people had no consideration for the women and children they were trying to kill. How can they claim we should look after and support them?’
The case is the latest to highlight how human rights laws have left the authorities powerless to remove some terrorists and convicted criminals.
Imposed human rights laws have left the authorities powerless to remove some terrorists and convicted criminals. Imposed by unaccountable European judges, they place the rights of the most dangerous wrongdoers above the risks faced by ordinary people.
The five would-be suicide bombers were jailed for life after trying to detonate bombs at Shepherd’s Bush, Warren Street and Oval Tube stations and on a bus in Shoreditch.
Ali, 35, knew about the potentially murderous July 21 conspiracy and helped the fanatics clear up their explosives factory.
He was jailed for 12 years in February 2008 for aiding and abetting the Al Qaeda cell. Judge Paul Worsley QC said he must have ‘harboured the hope’ the bombers would ‘destroy society as we know it’.
The sentence was reduced to nine years on appeal and after time Ali spent in jail while awaiting trial was taken into account, he was automatically released on licence several weeks ago. He is now living at a bail hostel on a leafy residential street in north-west London. He has been seen travelling on the Tube and catching buses.
With music headphones plugged into his ears and a bag slung casually across his shoulder, he appeared to be caught on camera chatting on a mobile phone.
It is understood that Ali is being monitored around the clock and must obey a curfew and other conditions, including a ban on using the internet.
He is the second high-risk terrorist linked to the July 21 attacks to win the right to remain in the UK on human rights grounds in recent weeks.
Ismail Abdurahman, 28, who hid would-be bomber Hussain Osman for three days, escaped being deported to his native Somalia after judges feared for his safety. Abdurahman is also living at a bail hostel in London despite the protests of police and Home Office officials.
The release of Ali and Abdurahman underlines the challenges faced by police, probation and MI5. There are fears that they will be stretched to the limit as they try to monitor dozens of freed fanatics in the run-up to the Olympics next year.
Research by one think-tank found that more than 230 people have been convicted of terrorist offences since 2001, but only around 100 remain in prison.
Under Article 3 of both the European Convention on Human Rights, and Labour’s Human Rights Act, individuals are protected against torture, inhuman or degrading treatment.
The clause allows foreign terror suspects to fight deportation on the grounds that they would be tortured in their home countries if returned.
In February, Lord Carlile warned that European judges have turned Britain into a ‘safe haven’ for foreign terrorists.
Tory MP Priti Patel said: ‘This is yet another example of how we have got to abolish this appalling human rights legislation that allows terrorists and violent criminals to waltz out of prison and stay in our country. ‘They should be deported instantly back to where they came from.’
Solicitor Cliff Tibber, who represents the families of several July 7 victims, said: ‘There is no doubt it is uncomfortable for the families to see someone like this back on the streets after what feels like an extremely short period of time.’
A UK Border Agency spokesman said: ‘We will do everything we can to remove this individual from the UK and are extremely disappointed by the court’s decision to grant bail, which we vigorously opposed. ‘In the meantime, we are working closely with public protection agencies to ensure that appropriate monitoring is in place.’
A Ministry of Justice spokesman insisted that public protection remains ‘top priority’ and that serious offenders face ‘strict’ controls and conditions.
Migration boom DID drive down wages and living standards, admits Labour
Labour’s open-door immigration policy drove down wages and living standards in Britain, party leader Ed Miliband has admitted. He conceded that the last government ‘got it wrong’ on border controls and said that British workers had been ‘undercut’.
The bombshell confession came amid revelations that, when in power, Labour suppressed a string of damaging reports about the impact of mass immigration on the UK. At the time Labour denied claims that migration – in particular the large number of skilled Poles – was making life harder for some British workers.
Mr Miliband conceded: ‘We got it wrong in a number of respects including underestimating the level of immigration from Poland, which had a big effect on people in Britain. ‘What I think people were worried about, in relation to Polish immigration in particular, was that they were seeing their wages, their living standards driven down.
‘Part of the job of government is if you are going to have an open economy within Europe you have got to give that protection to employees so that they don’t see workers coming in and undercutting them.’
However, Labour is still refusing to match the Tory commitment to reduce net migration – the difference between the number leaving the UK and the number of arrivals – to the ‘tens of thousands’.
Mr Miliband told Sky News: ‘I’m not going to make promises that I can’t keep. We need a tough immigration policy but I think free movement of labour is right for Britain.’
Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper admitted: ‘We did get things wrong on immigration. ‘We should have had transitional controls on migration from Eastern Europe.’
In a separate development, the Coalition published a string of reports, which cost £165,000 to produce, which ministers claimed had been suppressed by Labour.
The documents, commissioned by the Department for Communities and Local Government, revealed that immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria had low education levels and were more likely to claim unemployment-related benefits than non-immigrants or other migrant groups in Britain.
Migrants from the two countries were also more likely to have four or more children than those coming to Britain from elsewhere, placing a significant strain on the education system.
Housing Minister Grant Shapps said: ‘This is another disturbing cover-up by a Labour Party that failed on immigration and then tried to bury the truth. ‘This Government is bringing immigration under control to restore public confidence in the system left broken by Labour.’
Must not criticise the good and the great. The little people must know their place
The Law Society has been found guilty of discrimination after its executive in charge of promoting disabled workers' welfare sacked the only full-time member of staff to have a serious disability.
Solicitor Elizabeth Marshall, 44, who has cerebral palsy, won 'substantial' compensation at a tribunal after she was made redundant from her role as a policy adviser and speechwriter for the body's president and chief executive.
She said she was humiliated and shocked when told she was to lose her job after 11 years in the role.
Ms Marshall told the Central London Employment Tribunal she believed the real reason for her dismissal was a series of emails she sent to colleagues who were fellow union members accusing the Law Society of 'systematic discrimination'.
Six days after she wrote the last email she was summoned to a meeting with the director of corporate responsibility, Stephen Ward, who is also the Law Society's diversity champion.
It was at this meeting she was told her job had been made redundant. When she complained, she was told that the decision could be justified by sound business reasons.
Ms Marshall claimed she was the only full-time disabled employee at the headquarters of Britain's most powerful law body in Chancery Lane, Central London.
She added: 'Unfortunately... I have to take the view that my disability is potentially an issue.' She said at no time was her performance in her role criticised. To her knowledge the only other disabled workers were two work-experience staff.
The tribunal ruled that the dismissal was unfair and that the society failed in its duty to make reasonable adjustments to accommodate her disability.
The Law Society, which represents more than 100,000 solicitors and often advises the Government on upholding diversity rights, had denied discrimination. Despite repeated requests for a response to the ruling, the body declined to comment.
The Law Society claims that it 'is committed to playing a leading role in the elimination of discrimination and the promotion of equality of opportunity and diversity in all its activities'.
Pompous British bureaucrat persecutes kind-hearted woman
For 40 years, Joy Bloor has looked after tortoises at her home in St Austell, Cornwall. She’s always done it for love, not money. But now her sanctuary is being threatened with closure after council officials ruled that her 400 tortoises are ‘wild animals’. She has been told that she will be put out of business unless she applies for a zoo licence, which could cost £1,000.
Joy’s Lower Sticker Tortoise Garden has become a popular tourist attraction. Admission was free until the local council decided to make her pay business rates and she had to start charging £3 a head to cover costs.
That was just the beginning of the bureaucratic interference. The council is also insisting that all the tortoises should be tagged with electronic micro-chips. Presumably, officials are worried they might stage a mass break-out and start savaging the cattle on nearby farmland.
Someone at the Town Hall has been watching too many episodes of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
If the tortoises did break for the border, it wouldn’t be that difficult rounding them up. The average walking speed of a tortoise is just 0.17 miles an hour. That would give even the slowest-witted council jobsworth ample time to apprehend them and return them to captivity. Some of the tortoises are more than 100 years old. They are hardly likely to go on the rampage across the Cornish countryside.
Joy said: ‘Even if they did escape, they wouldn’t get very far. Our tortoises are fully domesticated and follow us like little dogs. They come when we call them. They couldn’t possibly survive without humans to keep them alive.’
Micro-chipping them would not only be near impossible, because of the thickness of their leathery skin, it could also cause considerable distress and life-threatening trauma in some cases. And what if the tortoises simply retreated into their shells and refused to come out? Would they send for the Black and Decker drills?
The council argues that it has no option other than to force Joy to comply with the provisions of the Zoo Licensing Act 1981. Bailiffs have already visited the sanctuary and issued an enforcement order. She is now being threatened with prosecution.
This could become the latest cause celebre, once those Irish ‘travellers’ have finally left their illegal site in Essex.
No doubt Vanessa Redgrave is hot-footing it to Cornwall to save the St Austell 400. I have visions of the tortoises barricading themselves into their sanctuary, chaining themselves to concrete pillars, hoisting the United Nations flag and chanting: ‘Hell. No. We Won’t Go.’
Swampy and his mates are probably steaming down the A30 in a fleet of old Bedford vans to provide reinforcements, while riot police from neighbouring forces tool up and flood into Cornwall, ramping up the overtime. Let the Battle of Lower Sticker commence.
OK, so it’s easy to make fun of this, but for Joy it’s no laughing matter. Why should she have a lifetime of hard work and devotion ruined by block-headed bureaucrats?
All she’s doing is giving a home to domestic pets who either been abandoned or have lost their owners. Where’s harm?
The idea that she’s running some kind of zoo is beyond preposterous. Somehow I can’t see tortoises jumping through hoops or propelling themselves on the flying trapeze.
Most tortoises spend all day mooching around doing very little and hibernate from the end of September to the beginning of March. The sanctuary closes to the public for the winter. There’s not much call for paying three quid to watch tortoises sleep. Archive image from the Lower Sticker Tortoise Garden
The Lower Sticker Tortoise Garden closes to visitors in the Winter while the tortoises are in hibernation
More to the point, think of the time and taxpayers’ money which has been wasted on this fatuous exercise — the officers’ reports, the site visits, the committee meetings, the legal opinions, the interminable discussions about whether tortoises are domestic pets or ‘wild animals’.
And this at a time when councils across the country are bleating about the ‘cuts’ to essential public services.
Actually, money is the motive force behind all this. First they slapped a massive bill for business rates on Joy, now they want her to buy an expensive zoo licence, call it a grand for cash.
The bold public servant responsible for this vindictive campaign is one Lance Kennedy, who styles himself ‘Cabinet Member’ of Cornwall Council and ‘Portfolio Holder for Community Safety and Protection.’
That grandiose title just about sums up everything which is wrong with the kind of individual who goes into local government these days.
He’s a jumped-up parish councillor, but has taken on the airs and graces of an international statesman. ‘Cabinet Member’ and ‘Portfolio Holder for Community Safety and Protection’. For heaven’s sake. Protection from what, exactly — wild tortoises?
Just who does this pompous oaf think he is? When the local MP wrote appealing for clemency, Portfolio Holder Kennedy accused him of ‘inciting’ council officials to break the law.
Major Lance says he sympathises with Joy’s plight, but rules is rules: the refrain of intransigent tyrants down the ages. He is impervious to reason.
British doctors failing 500,000 cancer patients by not spotting medical problems caused by treatment
Doctors are failing cancer patients 'far too often' by not spotting other medical problems caused by their treatment, according to a leading expert on the disease.
Professor Jane Maher, the medical director of Macmillan Cancer Support, said she feared 500,000 people's symptoms for conditions including osteoporosis and heart disease are being missed by GPs.
She said that their lack of knowledge about the long-term side-effects of cancer drugs and a lack of communication with hospitals were to blame.
'GPs and oncologists are failing cancer patients far too often,' Prof Maher told The Guardian. 'By not sharing vital information and recording clearly on the patients' medical records they are putting a significant number of cancer patients at risk of having their work, health, relationships and home lives unnecessarily spoiled by long-term side-effects of their treatment.'
The National Cancer Survivorship Initiative (NCSI) estimates that up to a quarter of those diagnosed with cancer go on experience a consequence of their treatment which affects their health or quality of life.
Prof Maher added: 'Based on the NCSI work looking into consequences of cancer treatment, I fear that up to 500,000 people's symptoms are being missed by GPs.
'GPs need to recognise that people who have had cancer may have health problems related to their treatment, and GPs are the best people to pick these up. But that doesn't happen nearly enough at the moment.'
The medical expert said doctors needed to ensure that cancer survivors' medical records included more detail about their disease and type of treatment. 'At the moment GPs aren't recording whether someone has had chemotherapy or radiotherapy,' she said.
'That's partly because they don't get enough information from hospitals, but also because they don't realise why it's important for them to do that.'
Professor Sir Mike Richards, the Government's national cancer director, said it was essential that GPs and oncologists worked together to ensure patients get the best possible care.
The fact that cancer survival rates are improving year on year with a growing number of long-term survivors made it more important, he added.
Dr Clare Gerada, chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners said doctors needed help with the issue.
Admitting that GPs were generally unaware of the risks associated with specific treatments, she said: 'If Prof Maher and the NHS tell us exactly what cancer someone has had, and what treatment, and what the possible risks are of that, and in a way that's easy to understand, we will do things better.'
Drug that 'shrinks children's brain tumours by 50%' is launched as once-a-day pill
Good to hear that some "orphan" drugs are in fact getting through the system
A drug that can shrink brain tumours by up to 50 per cent in children with a rare disease has been launched in the UK. NHS doctors will be able to apply for funding from health trusts for Votubia (everolimus) for children with growing non-malignant brain tumours associated with a condition called tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC).
The once-a-day pill offers an alternative to surgery and could provide a lifeline for up to 1,600 youngsters in the UK with the tumours.
The drug, which has been granted orphan drug status for rare diseases, has been shown to shrink subependymal giant cell astrocytoma (SEGA) tumours associated with TSC. TSC is a genetic disorder which leads to non-malignant tumours forming in organs, most commonly the brain and kidneys.
Brain tumours occur in up to 20 per cent of patients with TSC, causing physical and mental disability.
Chris Kingswood, head of research at the Tuberous Sclerosis Association, said: 'For a long time there has been a desperate need for a useful alternative licensed treatment to invasive brain surgery.
'Everolimus is the first licensed product we can offer patients to attack the cause of their debilitating condition; it works by blocking a protein that acts as an important regulator of tumour cell growth.
'The way it works in the signalling pathway can be simply likened to blocking a receiver so it cannot process signals from the aerial on an analogue radio, so that the signals can no longer transmit to drive in this case tumour cell growth.'
Dr Finbar O'Callaghan, consultant in paediatric neurology at the University of Bristol, said: 'SEGA is a serious complication in TSC, accounting for much of the increased mortality seen in this condition.
'Until now, brain surgery has been the only option for treatment and the availability of a pharmacological therapy is a major milestone and provides a treatment option in those cases where surgery is difficult or not possible.'
Revolution! British High School students to be docked marks over bad spelling and grammar in exams
GCSE candidates face losing as much as 12 per cent of their marks for poor spelling, punctuation and grammar. The writing errors will be punished to inject rigour back into qualifications taken by 600,000 pupils a year.
‘Bite-sized’ modules will also be axed in favour of final exams under the reforms outlined yesterday by regulator Ofqual.
From next September, pupils taking English language GCSEs will be assessed for their grammar, spelling and punctuation.
Twelve per cent of the total marks will be given for demonstrating writing skills in these subjects.
English literature, geography, history, ancient history and religious studies will follow in 2013, with 5 per cent of the marks granted for accurate writing.
Pupils will also be expected to use specialist terms.
For two-year GCSE courses starting next year, all examinations will be sat in summer 2014. Pupils will no longer be able to resit exams in order to boost their marks, except in English and maths.
The consultation sets out plans to allow students who need these qualifications to retake them – from November 2013 onwards – so that they do not have to wait another 12 months for the opportunity. The reforms were announced by Education Secretary Michael Gove last year and included in the Department for Education’s White Paper.
Speaking in the summer, Mr Gove attacked the ‘culture of resits’ that had resulted from allowing students to keep taking modules until they achieved the desired grade.
He told BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show: ‘The problem that we had is that instead of concentrating on teaching and learning, you had people who were being trained again and again to clear the hurdle of the examination along the way. ‘It’s a mistake and I think the culture of resits is wrong. ‘What we need to do is make sure, certainly at GCSE, that you have a clear two-year run.’
The consultation on the changes will run until November.
This year, nearly one in four exam papers – 23.3 per cent – were awarded a coveted A or A*, up from 22.6 per cent in 2010. While the pass rates were a record high for the 24th consecutive year, the annual increase of 0.8 per cent was small in relation to that seen in previous years. Experts said it signalled the end of relentless grade inflation, with pass rates expected to level out as early as next year.
They claimed the year-on-year increases have been fuelled by a lack of rigour in the exams.
The move effectively scraps the current system, which splits GCSEs into 'bitesize' units, with students assessed on these throughout the course.
Pupils will also no longer be able to re-sit exams in order to boost their marks. The only exceptions would be English and maths.
Torment of teacher cleared of sex attack claims: Accusations saw him barred from birth of son
Who'd be a male teacher in Britain?
A teacher cleared of sexually assaulting six pupils yesterday told of the agony of being ordered to live away from his wife and baby son.
Peter Wilson suffered the indignity of social workers attending the birth of his first child and making him swear he would not live with his family for the eight months it took to resolve the allegations.
Yesterday a jury took just 20 minutes to acquit him of all the charges, brought after girls at his primary school accused him of kissing them and touching their bottoms.
The 35-year-old said the allegations were ‘probably malicious’ – he had merely been trying to encourage the pupils with a clasp of the shoulder, a hug or a pat on the back.
He remains suspended from his job while the council carries out its own investigation. His 29-year-old wife Clare, a teacher at the same school, has also been barred because of her relationship to him.
After the case, Mr Wilson spoke of their ‘horrible ordeal’ and told of his delight at having his reputation restored. ‘The past 18 months or so have been the most stressful of my life and my wife’s,’ he said.
‘My greatest distress was that as a result of these unfounded allegations, social services were present at the birth of our first child and I was required to sign an agreement to say that I could not live in the same house as my wife and newborn baby.’
Mr Wilson was suspended from the school in Blackpool – which cannot be named for legal reasons – after two pupils reported him to a teacher. Other children gave similar accounts of him rubbing his hand down their backs or leaning close to them cheek to cheek before patting them on the bottom.
Mr Wilson was charged by police and released on bail on condition he had no unsupervised contact with under-16s.
The jury at Preston Crown Court heard he had been considered a well-liked and well-respected member of staff until his suspension.
Giving evidence, Mr Wilson broke down in the witness box as he denied gaining sexual gratification and insisted any touching was part of his job.
His barrister, Mark George QC, had told the jury: ‘Nowadays, it seems as if encouragement, a clasp of the shoulders, or a pat on the shoulders, or pat on the arm can be misunderstood and lead to someone like Mr Wilson becoming the subject of suspicion and a case of this sort.’ The teacher told police four of his accusers were lacking confidence and self-esteem and needed praise.
The jury yesterday cleared him of 11 counts of indecent assault relating to five girls. Earlier in the trial the jury was ordered by the judge to find him not guilty on three further counts in relation to another girl.
Mr Wilson, of Thornton Cleveleys, Blackpool, cried in the dock as he was cleared. He was supported in the public gallery by members of his family.
Last night Blackpool council said both Mr Wilson and his wife would remain suspended ‘ahead of an internal investigation following the conclusion of the court case’.
A spokesman for Lancashire County Council’s social services department said the authority could not comment on individual cases.
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.
26 September, 2011
Welcome to Third World Britain: Relatives 'need to help care for sick in hospital', says nursing leader
Relatives should go into hospitals to help staff care for the elderly, according to a nursing leader. Dr Peter Carter, head of the Royal College of Nursing, said families should be encouraged to assist patients during mealtimes and take them to the toilet.
He also wants hospitals to end restricted visiting times so relatives can stay as long as they want.
Dr Carter warned that on some wards there were too few nurses to help all frail patients eat their meals or go to the toilet. He said: ‘If you have a 24-bed ward and have got five nurses and everybody is having lunch at the same time and half the patients need feeding, it becomes difficult to get it all done.
‘If someone is coming in and sitting with their loved one, they are going to have the focused dedicated time. You get this business of wards, very, very busy people, patients dying to go to the loo, elderly patients wetting themselves, then they lie there feeling embarrassed – and it is about helping gran get out and go to the loo.’
Figures show the average ‘care of the elderly’ ward has just one nurse for 11 patients – substantially fewer than in other parts of many hospitals. A report by the RCN last year found nurses on these wards were looking after an average of three more patients compared with children’s wards, for example.
Only last week Dr Carter warned that nurses were beginning their career unable to care for patients as they spend too much time in lecture halls.
He also said untrained healthcare assistants with no medical qualifications now carry out many tasks once reserved for nurses, such as helping patients to eat and drink, cleaning bedsores and taking blood samples.
Dr Carter has asked the Royal College of Nursing to consider ways to encourage more families to help out on wards. ‘The NHS is just not going to deal with it. Neither are social services,’ he said. ‘You have got to get maximum family involvement. ‘The services need to gear themselves up to make people aware: You are very welcome to come in and look after mum, dad, husband and wife.’
Many hospitals will allow relatives to visit only during the afternoon, for example from 2pm to 8pm. And many have ‘protective mealtimes’ which ban visitors coming to the ward whilst food is being served in case it distracts patients from eating.
But Dr Carter wants visiting times to be more flexible, particularly during mealtimes so families can help patients eat.
His views are backed up by Dr Clare Gerada, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, who said the NHS could not afford to employ staff to sit with the elderly for hours on end. ‘Families should be more involved,’ she said. ‘Can we afford to have someone sitting by an elderly person in hospital and feeding them, which might take two or three hours.’
But Dr Ros Altmann, director general of Saga, the over-50s group, said the suggestion was ‘astonishing’. ‘If patients are in hospital then it is hospital staff who surely have a duty of care to look after patients’ needs such as feeding them and ensuring they are clean, washed and dry,’ she said.
Official NHS figures show that last year 214,888 patients were discharged from hospital with some form of malnutrition.
The Care Quality Commission watchdog this year found that in some hospitals the elderly were going without food for several days. This means their immune systems will be far weaker and they are less able to cope with potentially fatal illnesses such as flu and pneumonia. Lacking calcium and vitamin D, they will be prone to osteoporosis and associated hip fractures and other broken bones.
Some hospitals now employ volunteer feeders – members of the public who come in during meal times to help patients too frail to eat.
A London hospital’s trial of a prostate cancer drug has been stopped early because it was so successful doctors felt it would be "unethical" to deny the treatment to other patients.
But that is absurd. As Ioannides and others now often point out, the early results of a research project are often not typical and the effect observed in the research below was actually quite small in absolute terms. It is only the relative results that look good and even the .3 they report below is dismally short of the 2.0 that the Federal Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, Second Edition says (p. 384) is the threshold for concluding that an agent was more likely than not the cause of an effect.
Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology: below:
"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."
So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data not just a hasty first bite at it
Medics halted tests of the life-extending drug because it would have been “unethical” not to offer the treatment to all 922 cancer sufferers taking part in the trial.
Patients who were given the drug found that it eased pain and caused only minor side effects.
The new drug accurately targets tumours using alpha radiation, which doctors conducting the study said is the most effective form of radiation to eliminate cancer because it limits damage to surrounding tissue. Dr Chris Parker, lead researcher on the project at the Royal Marsden Hospital, said: “It’s more damaging. It takes one, two, three hits to kill a cancer cell compared with thousands of hits for beta particles.”
The drug, Radium-223 Chloride – known as Alpharadin TM – will also do less damage to surrounding tissue because it accurately targets calls, the doctors said. Speaking at an international gathering of cancer experts, Dr Parker, a consultant clinical oncologist, said: “They have such a tiny range, a few millionths of a metre. So we can be sure that the damage is being done where it should be.”
Patients taking the drug has a 30 per cent lower rate of death compared top patients taking a placebo pill. “It would have been unethical not to offer the active treatment to those taking placebo,” Dr. Parker said.
Radium-223 has “a completely different safety profile” to chemotherapy, he added.
The trial’s results were presented this week at the 2011 European Multidisciplinary Cancer Congress in Stockholm.
The researchers, who have pointed out the urgent need for an effective treatment for prostate cancer, will now submit their findings for approval by regulators.
Prof Gillies McKenna, Cancer Research UK’s radiotherapy expert said: “This appears to be an important study using a highly targeted form of radiation to treat prostate cancer that has spread to the bones.
“This research looks very promising and could be an important addition to approaches available to treat secondary tumours – and should be investigated further.”
Our language is being hijacked by the Left to muzzle rational debate
By Melanie Phillips
One of the most sinister aspects of political correctness is the way in which its edicts purport to be in the interests of minority groups.
This is despite the fact that, very often, they are not promulgated at the behest of minorities at all, but by members of the majority who want to destroy their own culture and who use minorities to camouflage their true intentions.
The latest manifestation stars once again that all-time world champion of political correctness, the BBC. Apparently, it has decided that the terms AD and BC (Anno Domini, or the Year of Our Lord, and Before Christ) must be replaced by the terms Common Era and Before Common Era. Actually, this edict seems to have been laid down merely by some obscure tributary of the BBC website rather than from on high.
Nevertheless, the terms CE and BCE are now increasingly finding their way onto news bulletins and on programmes such as University Challenge or Melvyn Bragg’s Radio Four show In Our Time.
The reason given on the website is that, since the BBC is committed to impartiality, it is important not to alienate or offend non-Christians. Well, I am a Jew, so I am presumably a member of this group that must not be alienated. It so happens, however, that along with many other Jewish people I sometimes use CE and BCE since the terms BC and AD are not appropriate to me. But the idea that any of us would be offended by anyone else using BC and AD would be totally ridiculous.
How could we possibly take offence, since these are the commonly used and understood expressions when referring to the calendar?Moreover, I most certainly would not expect society in general to use these Common Era terms rather than BC and AD.
Indeed, I would go much further and react with undiluted scorn and disapproval to any attempt to do so.
That is because I feel passionately that a society should be allowed to express its own culture – and this attack on BC and AD, fatuous as it may seem on the surface, is yet another attack on British culture and the Christian underpinnings which provide it with its history, identity and fundamental values.
The impulse behind changing such established terms – obviously as familiar to us all as the names of the days of the week – is part of the wider desire to obliterate Christianity in British culture.
The fact remains, however, that whatever terms are used the British calendar is calibrated from the birth of Jesus. As Ann Widdecombe remarked, whatever next - abolishing the calendar itself on the grounds that it too therefore offends non-Christians?
The reasoning behind this linguistic legerdemain is entirely spurious. There is no evidence whatever that any non-Christian group is offended by BC and AD, nor that they would like it to be replaced. Even if they did, it cannot ever be right for minorities to seek to replace fundamental majority cultural expressions or values with their own.
To do so has nothing whatever to do with impartiality – indeed, quite the reverse. For what about the need not to offend or alienate Christians?
To ask the question is to realise how far we have travelled down this invidious road. For Christians in Britain are now routinely offended and alienated – indeed, positively harassed, and with their religious rights denied – and all in the Orwellian cause of promoting ‘diversity’.
In the latest example, police have threatened a Christian cafe owner with arrest – for displaying passages from the Bible on a TV screen which are said to incite hatred against homosexuals. Why stop at a TV screen, one might ask. For in such a climate, it is hardly frivolous to wonder how long it will be before the Bible itself is banned.
At the weekend, a campaign was launched by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, to press for greater legal protection for Christians against such attacks.
The pressure on Christians, however, is merely part of a far wider onslaught on Western culture through the hijacking or censorship of language. Thus Christmas has been renamed in various places ‘Winterval’.
Last week, it was reported that Southwark council has renamed its Guy Fawkes fireworks display ‘The Colour Thief: A Winter Extravaganza Celebrating the Change of the Seasons’. This ludicrous gesture is presumably aimed at being more ‘inclusive’ of Catholics upset by references to the 17th-century Popish gunpowder plot. What is actually does is exclude Britons by airbrushing out part of their history.
Even more bizarre are the latest edicts by so-called ‘equality’ experts, who say that the traditional black garb of witches in children’s stories leads to racism (yes, seriously). Witches should therefore be given pink hats, and fairies dressed in dark colours.
Meanwhile Anne O’Connor, an ‘early years consultant’, advises that ‘white paper’, especially in schools, provokes racism since it does not reflect the range of hues of the human race. Maybe Ms O’Connor needs especially strong spectacles. Has anyone ever seen a human being with skin as white as paper?
And finally, teachers are told they should be ready to lie, if necessary, when asked by pupils what their favourite colour is and, in the interests of good race relations, answer ‘black’ or ‘brown’.
Can you believe this? What on earth has our society come to when grown individuals in receipt of public money descend to such mind-blowing imbecility?
Calling children as young as two ‘racist’ is simply grotesque. Helping them ‘unlearn’ negative associations with dark colours is to try to brainwash them in ways reminiscent of Soviet Stalinism.
But then, political correctness is all about dictating what people are permitted or forbidden to say as a way of controlling and reshaping a society and its values.
Look at the way the Labour leader Ed Miliband has refused to call people who defraud the welfare system ‘benefit cheats’. He has condemned abuses of the welfare system and said it must be stopped. So why does he say he cannot accuse the people who behave in this way of being ‘cheats’?
The answer is surely that political correctness means you can’t criticise anyone who does wrong if they belong to a group of people who are considered marginalised or oppressed. This is effectively to give such groups a free pass for any bad behaviour. And anyone who dares criticise is accused of ‘demonising’ such groups.
This means, of course, that those who criticise such bad behaviour are themselves demonised. Indeed, they can be positively victimised and even threatened with their lives by vicious campaigns on Twitter or the internet – all on the grounds that they have ‘demonised’ some ‘victim’ group or other. If this wasn’t so terrifying, it would be hilarious.
The result of this hijacking of the language is that debate becomes impossible because words like rights, tolerance, liberal, justice, truth and many more have come to mean the precise opposite of what they really do mean.
The result of this inversion of right and wrong is that morality itself has been reversed or negated. Politically correct language is thus a way of shifting the very centre of moral and political gravity. So what was once considered far-Left has become the centre-ground; and those who stand on the real centre-ground are now dismissed as extreme.
The attack on BC and AD is merely the latest salvo in the war of the words, part of the defining madness of our time.
Persecuted British Christians take Government to European Court so they can express their beliefs at work
The former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey is leading a campaign to urge David Cameron to back the rights of Christians to express their beliefs at work. He wants the Prime Minister to press for greater legal protection for Christians who have been sacked for following their consciences when a group of test cases are heard by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg next month.
Four Christians are taking legal action at a landmark hearing because they believe British laws have failed to protect their human rights to wear religious symbols or opt out of gay rights legislation.
The cases include those of Shirley Chaplin, a Devon nurse banned from working on the wards after she failed to hide a cross she had worn since she was 16, and Gary MacFarlane, who was sacked as a Relate counsellor after suggesting he would refuse to provide sexual therapy to gay couples.
The judges will also examine the cases of Nadia Eweida, a check-in clerk for British Airways who was told to remove her small crucifix at work, and registrar Lilian Ladele, who lost her job at Islington town hall, North London, after refusing to officiate at civil partnerships.
The Government must submit a formal statement by the end of next week outlining whether it believes the rights of Christians have been infringed in Britain. Lord Carey, along with 150,000 other campaigners from the lobby group Christian Concern, has written to Mr Cameron calling on the Government to back new safeguards for religious believers.
‘No one wants to deny homosexual people rights, but can a way be found for Christians to have rights as well? I would like the Government to acknowledge that something has to be adjusted in the law so people can express their faith in the workplace in a non-confrontational way.’
Both he and the former Church of England Bishop of Rochester Michael Nazir-Ali have made their own submissions to the ECHR, asking employers to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to accommodate the religious beliefs of employees.
Under this proposal, staff could refuse to do something against their religious consciences as long as the same service could be provided by a colleague.
Bishop Nazir-Ali said ‘reasonable accommodation’ could include ‘both expression and manifestation of belief. Thus a registrar refusing to officiate at a civil partnership because of religious belief would qualify because other registrars would be able to officiate and the delivery of a service would not be unduly hindered.
‘Similarly, a counsellor refusing counselling on the sexual lifestyle of same-sex couples would fall within the criteria for reasonable accommodation as there are other counsellors, even in the same agencies, who could deliver the service.’
In July, the watchdog Equality and Human Rights Commission announced its support for the concept of ‘reasonable accommodation’ but it appeared to backtrack within weeks following criticism from pressure groups.
Old-fashioned morals can rescue societies broken by bad behaviour
One of the more disturbing reports of rioting in London and other British cities was of the Malaysian student who was knocked to the ground, robbed, and had his jaw broken. That was bad enough, but what happened next seems somehow worse.
While passers-by helped him to his feet, they ransacked his rucksack. What sort of mentality lies behind that?
The student, as it happened, behaved with magnanimity, telling journalists that he still thought very highly of Britain, which was, he said, a great place. He did say, though, that he thought this sort of thing would not happen in Malaysia, which was a well-ordered country in which the police did their job well. Ouch.
There were plenty of other stories of breathtakingly bad behaviour. The reaction to all this was numbed shock, in some cases disbelief. Is this what Britain has become, where we have ended up? Yes, of course it is. And should we be the slightest bit surprised? We should not.
People have been talking about the "broken society" for some time now - all these riots demonstrated was just how broken. Australia is not in so bad a way but nobody should be complacent. The causes of this desperate situation are common, even if they are worse in some places than in others.
The broken society is a consequence partly of social change and cultural change. The social change is familiar: the destruction of the family as the fundamental social unit would be fine if we had replaced it with something. We have not.
It would be fine if we had devised ways of ensuring children had stability and security, but considerable numbers of them are brought up instead in chaotic households where there is no consistent authority. What do we expect from that, if not behavioural problems and damaged lives?
Teachers will spell that out for you, if you ask them. Arguments about that side of the picture are familiar to all of us, and there is room for disagreement.
What interests me more is the cultural side of the equation. Is there something going wrong with the sort of culture we are creating? It's a culture in which we seem to have abandoned many of the values on which we based our civilisation.
Civilisation? That's an unusual word these days, perhaps because people are embarrassed to talk about it, and therein lies at least part of the reason for the crisis. We don't know what we believe in and are busy bringing up children who share our confusion. The result is that we have massive numbers of people who are dishonest, indifferent to casual violence or aggression, and devoid of respect or consideration for others.
If you doubt this, look at the studies. In one piece of British research in 2009, it was discovered that a substantial proportion of the population - almost half - was prepared to steal and commit fraud. Another study of US students found that about three-quarters of them were regular cheats. There are plenty of these enlightening statistics.
Where does this come from? Mainly it comes from an espousal of moral pluralism - the idea that there is no such thing as a general right or wrong, only differing visions of them.
This means that there are few broad certainties that society can put as unequivocal values. Schools cannot teach values because not everybody shares those values. As a result, the goal of character education has been lost: children must decide for themselves.
In Britain, schools have even taken this to heart in school lunch programs. Children should be able to choose for themselves between healthy food and pizza, goes the argument. They choose pizza, and are becoming obese.
But the issue is more than educational. We have created a strange culture perpetuated by television and other media that rejoices in and celebrates dysfunction, violence and anti-social behaviour. Our popular films are highly aggressive in tone, our reality television holds a mirror up to selfishness, shallowness and often sheer nastiness. This is all presented as being the only form of reality.
The opposite choices - those of the virtues - are impossibly boring and therefore more or less totally excluded.
And the remarkable thing about this is that we do not see it! We have come to expect this vision of life as the default position. And so we should not be surprised if we create a culture that is selfish and aggressive, that has no interest in improving the extent to which concern for others, old-fashioned good manners, or any of the traditional virtues, including honesty, are actively stressed and propagated.
Hopelessly old-fashioned? If it is old-fashioned to yearn for a day when people's lives were not made a misery through bullying and intimidation, when one could rely on the honesty of others, then old-fashioned it is.
We must try to assert values. As societies we have to decide again to believe in something and begin to teach those values. That well-mannered Malaysian student, I suspect, might just agree.
British primary schools are being 'punished' if they stop sex lessons as secondaries are told to hand out contraceptives
Primary schools are being pressured into providing sex education under a scheme to promote ‘healthy’ lifestyles, a report claims today. And secondary schools are being encouraged to hand out contraception and hold condom demonstrations in class to prove they are sending out ‘healthy’ messages, it says.
Campaigners claim the Healthy Schools Programme is being used to impose ‘permissive’ sex education without a national debate.
Launched in 1999, it had its central funding cut this year, but is still being promoted by local authorities.
In a survey of all 152 English councils, the Family Education Trust found one in five told primary schools that decided not to teach sex and relationship education they would not be eligible for ‘Healthy Schools status’.
This is despite the fact that primary schools may decide if they want to teach sex education beyond the requirements of the curriculum.
This month, Schools Minister Nick Gibb ruled out implementing Labour’s commitment to compulsory sex education for those as young as five.
Norman Wells, director of the Family Education Trust, said it was ‘very concerning’ that primary schools were still being leant on to provide it. ‘Primary schools that make a principled decision not to teach sex education should not be stigmatised and denied a sought-after award for that reason,’ he said. ‘There is nothing inherently “unhealthy” about a primary school that decides not to teach sex education.’
To achieve ‘Healthy Schools status’ schools must meet 41 criteria covering personal, social and health education, healthy eating, physical activity and emotional health and well-being.
While there is no direct financial incentive, schools that achieve it can use a special logo on their websites promoting their status. More than 70 per cent of schools have the status and most councils are encouraging the remainder to follow suit.
Head teachers assess themselves against the criteria – which are on the Department for Education website – but local authorities provide a ‘quality assurance function’, checking they are on the right track.
The Family Education Trust found ‘considerable levels of inconsistency’ over how the Healthy Schools guidance is interpreted and applied.
Northamptonshire county council supported giving pupils as young as 12 the opportunity to practise putting a condom on a demonstrator device in the classroom. But it believed ‘it would not be appropriate to supply free condoms’ to pupils for the lessons.
However, this approach was not followed by all councils. South Tyneside, for example, believed it would be ‘good practice’ to give free condoms to pupils older than 14 for such lessons.
Overall, 8 per cent of councils believed pupils as young as 12 and 13 how to use freely supplied condoms would be in line with the guidance. Six per cent of councils said it would not be possible for secondary schools to get Healthy Schools status if they did not wish to refer pupils to contraceptive and sexual health clinics.
Mr Wells said: ‘In some parts, the programme is being used to impose a liberal and permissive type of sex education on schools by the back door
Expensive PFI hospitals could be left half-empty, NHS managers warn
Expensive new Private Finance Initiative hospitals could be left half-empty as the NHS cuts costs in order to save money, health leaders have warned.
Ministers are trying to reduce the costs of PFI schemes at 22 trusts across England, whose “clinical and financial stability” is at risk because of their growing debt burdens.
But the contracts are due to run for decades and are difficult to renegotiate, while the NHS’s budget has stopped growing and managers are under orders to make £20billion of efficiency savings by 2015.
At the same time, the controversial Health and Social Care Bill will open up more of the health service to competition and could see some state-run hospitals receive less business, while there are growing calls from the medical profession for patients to be cared for at home or in local clinics rather than in expensive wards.
As a result of these changes, experts fear that PFI-built hospitals could be left half empty while trusts still have to pay millions every year in interest payments on the “mortgages”.
David Stout, deputy chief executive of the NHS Confederation, the umbrella body for health trusts, said: “These deals were devised at a time when funding coming into the NHS was growing and income was stable.
“The issue now is that the NHS is undergoing fundamental change and income for hospitals to cover the costs of PFI will become less stable, primarily because the NHS faces an unprecedented financial challenge.
“PFI contracts are long term deals lasting up to 25 years but, in order to respond to the current unprecedented financial challenge, we will need to close some services or parts of hospitals in order to invest in more efficient services elsewhere that are better for patients. With resources locked into PFI contracts, we will find it harder to make these vital changes.
“There is a real danger that we will be paying for hospitals that are not being fully used.”
As The Daily Telegraph has disclosed, the Government has been contacted by 22 acute trusts who claim they are struggling to stay afloat because of the weight of their PFI deals, most of which were arranged under Labour as a way for new facilities to be built quickly with low upfront costs. Private investors fund, build and run the projects in return for annual interest payments that can run for up to 30 years, far outstripping the original construction costs.
The total PFI commitment of the hospitals in question is estimated at £5.5billion, after the credit crunch raised borrowing costs, making it difficult for them to balance their books and so attain the coveted Foundation Trust status.
The Department of Health is working with their chief executives to find ways to make the deals more affordable, with plans due later this year.
Options include the Treasury making one-off payments, akin to paying off a home loan early, or trying to renegotiate contracts.
Struggling trusts could also be merged with more successful ones, with the older facilities shut down in order to make the best use of the “shiny new” PFI buildings.
Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme there was an “enormous legacy of debt” within the NHS. “We have looked since the election and are working together with individual trusts to arrive at a place where they are financially, and in terms of the quality of their services, sustainable for the future,” he said.
But some commentators claimed that PFI payments only account for 1 per cent of the health service turnover and represent just a small part of the challenges hospitals face.
Prof John Appleby, chief economist at The King’s Fund think-tank, told Today: “What the Department of Health is doing is to put pressure on hospitals to be more productive while funding is frozen and in cash terms cut. “For those hospitals with PFI they've got fixed costs but prices they are able to charge are going down in real terms. That's where the pressure comes from.”
The British Labour Party's embarrassing immigration secrets revealed
Reports kept under wraps by Labour showing that immigrants who came to Britain from Romania and Bulgaria had low education levels and were more likely to claim out-of-work benefits are to be released for the first time by ministers.
The figures are contained in five separate controversial studies commissioned by the last Labour government but never published - amid claims the party wanted to avoid a damaging row about its record before last year’s general election.
Ministers accused Labour of a “disturbing cover up” and promised to publish the reports - which cost the taxpayer a total of £165,000 and have now been seen by The Sunday Telegraph - in full within days.
The documents also contain revelations that immigrants from all countries into Britain are more likely to be out of work than the native population - and are less likely to engage in any form of “civic participation.”
More than one third of London’s population, moreover, has now been born outside the UK.
The release will turn the spotlight once again on the party’s controversial record on immigration. Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, used a weekend interview to admit the party had “got things wrong” on the issue.
Up until 2008 the Labour government was criticised for effectively operating an “open door” policy which saw a massive rise in the number of visas, work permits and extended residency being granted.
Gordon Brown’s government then introduced a new “points based” system which was designed to make it harder for non-skilled people to come to Britain from outside the European Union.
However, particular controversy surrounded the rules governing immigration from countries which joined the EU during the first decade of this century - which included Bulgaria and Romania (which joined in 2007) and Poland (2004).
Labour ministers repeatedly promised that restrictions would be placed on those coming in from Eastern Europe in order to “manage” numbers and protect jobs for British workers. However, the secret reports show that 27 per cent of people coming from Bulgaria and Romania had “low education levels” while as of 2009 more than 15 per cent of them were claiming out-of-work benefits.
The documents, commissioned by the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) reveal that immigrants from the two countries are more likely to claim unemployment-related benefits than either non-immigrants or other migrant groups in Britain.
A report said that despite the implementation of a “cap” on numbers, the migration rate into Britain from Romania and Bulgaria increased significantly after the countries joined the EU in 2007.
Meanwhile, migrants from the two countries were shown to be more likely to have four children or more than people coming to Britain from elsewhere - placing a significant strain on the education system, particularly in London where over half the Bulgarians and Romanians who came settled. More than three in every 100 migrants from Bulgaria and Romania had five children or more.
One of the five reports, Identifying Social and Economic Push and Pull Factors for Migration to the UK by Bulgarian and Romanian Nationals, showed that while Bulgaria’s and Romania’s population declined between 2004 and 2010, Britain’s increased considerably.
During that period the two countries’ unemployment rate fell, while the UK’s rose.
Another report on overall immigration, The Socio-Economic Integration of Migrants, claimed: “Immigrants in the UK exhibit lower employment rates than natives....Immigrants are on average less likely than natives to engage in any form civic participation.”
A further document, Drivers of International Migration, stated: “The increase in immigration into the UK since the mid 1990s is entirely explained by a rise in the number of foreign-born people migrating to the UK from abroad, rather than by returning UK-born people.”
At the start of the 1980s the key annual “net immigration” figure for the UK was minus 42,000 - meaning tens of thousands more people left Britain every year than came here. By 1992-95 this figure had gone up to plus 9,200 - while by the period between 2004 and 2007 it had mushroomed to plus 178,000 a year.
Britain’s population was slated to increase by more than four million to 65.6 million between 2008 and 2018, while by 2008 over one third of London’s population (34 per cent) was born outside Britain.
Grant Shapps, the Housing Minister, said: “This is another disturbing cover-up by a Labour Party that failed on immigration and then tried to bury the truth. “‘This Government is bringing immigration under control to restore public confidence in the system left broken by Labour.”
The Coalition’s policy of putting an overall cap on immigrant numbers from outside the EU is designed to reduce net migration to Britain significantly.
David Cameron said in a speech in April that it should be “in the order of tens of thousands each year, not the hundreds of thousands every year that we have seen over the last decade.”
Damian Green, the Immigration Minister, said: “We have cut down on sham marriages, we have brought in a variety of policies which curb the number of people coming into the country and then overstay.
And we will continue to look at how we can further improve the balance between the people who at value coming into the country and those who do not.”
Labour’s record on immigration sparked bitter debates before last year’s election, exemplified by unguarded “bigoted woman” comments during the campaign by Mr Brown, on an open microphone, about Gillian Duffy, a Rochdale grandmother, when she questioned the former prime minister on it.
In an interview this weekend Ms Cooper admitted: "We did get things wrong on immigration. "We should have had the transitional controls on migration from Eastern Europe. We should have introduced the points-based system much earlier.”
BBC turns its back on year of Our Lord: 2,000 years of Christianity jettisoned for politically correct 'Common Era'
The BBC has been accused of 'absurd political correctness' after dropping the terms BC and AD in case they offend non-Christians. The Corporation has replaced the familiar Anno Domini (the year of Our Lord) and Before Christ with the obscure terms Common Era and Before Common Era.
Some of the BBC's most popular programmes including University Challenge, presented by Jeremy Paxman, and Radio 4's In Our Time, hosted by Melvyn Bragg, are among the growing number of shows using the new descriptions.
The BBC's religious and ethics department says the changes are necessary to avoid offending non-Christians. It states: 'As the BBC is committed to impartiality it is appropriate that we use terms that do not offend or alienate non-Christians. In line with modern practice, BCE/CE (Before Common Era/Common Era) are used as a religiously neutral alternative to BC/AD.'
But the move has angered Christians, mystified other faith leaders and been branded unnecessary by the Plain English Campaign. Critics say the new terms are meaningless because, just like AD and BC, they still denote years in relation to the life of Christ.
Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Bishop of Rochester, said: 'I think this amounts to the dumbing down of the Christian basis of our culture, language and history. These changes are unnecessary and they don't achieve what the BBC wants them to achieve. 'Whether you use Common Era or Anno Domini, the date is actually still the same and the reference point is still the birth of Christ.'
Marie Clair of the Plain English Campaign said: 'As with most politically correct innovations, I am sure this was done with the best of intentions. But it is difficult to see what the point of the changes are if people do not understand the new terms. It sounds like change just for the sake of change.'
The website for BBC Religion and Ethics, headed by commissioning editor Aaqil Ahmed, who is a Muslim, is littered with references to Common Era and Before Common Era. However, the BBC bizarrely insists the bbc.co.uk/religion website has nothing to do with Mr Ahmed and is actually the responsibility of BBC Learning.
The terms are not confined to religious output and have also been used in news bulletins. Some reports add to the confusion by switching between both terms in the same item.
A report on historic monuments in Jerusalem, for instance, informed viewers that Temple Mount, a shrine which is sacred to both Jews and Muslims, was built in '70 AD (the Common Era)'; while a recent report on frankincense quoted one reference to 7000 BC before describing another event as taking place in the 1st Century BCE.
One of the BBC's study guides highlights Greek philosopher Demokritos, whose dates are given as 460-370 BCE, while a section on GCSE Bitesize on American playwright Arthur Miller says that the first tragedies were written by the Greeks in the 5th Century BCE. Similarly, a section about the rules of Hindu warfare refers to 3000 BCE.
Often viewers have no idea why presenters, contributors and guests are using the new terms. In an edition of In Our Time broadcast in March, one contributor made several references to the Common Era in a discussion on sacred Hindu texts. Melvyn Bragg did not feel the need to clarify it.
This is not the first time the BBC has caused controversy over its use of alien language to promote a politically correct, Europhile agenda. Its increasing reliance on metric measurements rather than the imperial system and its occasional reference to expenditure in terms of euros rather than pounds has infuriated many viewers.
Several prominent Christians last night blasted the Corporation for sidelining Christianity.
The Rev Peter Mullen, Anglican chaplain to the London Stock Exchange, said: 'This is absurd political correctness and these new terms do not mean anything to anyone. 'I think it's an example of the BBC trying to undermine Christianity by pushing an aggressive secularism. 'I would be very surprised if any other faith had complained about the use of Anno Domini and Before Christ.'
Ann Widdecombe, the Catholic former Tory Minister, said: 'I think what the BBC is doing is offensive to Christians. They are discarding terms that have been around for centuries and are well understood by everyone. 'What are they going to do next? Get rid of the entire calendar on the basis that it has its roots in Christianity?'
A spokesman for the Church of England said that although both terms were common, BC and AD 'more clearly reflect Britain's Christian heritage'.
Several of the BBC's most well-known presenters said they saw no problem with the established system of AD and BC. John Humphrys, who presents Radio 4's Today programme and TV's Mastermind, said: 'I will continue to use AD and BC because I don't see a problem. 'They are terms which most people use and are clearly understood.'
Historian Simon Schama, who has presented several programmes for the BBC, said: 'As a Jew I don't have any problems with AD or BC. But CE and BCE are used frequently in Jewish circles. 'I have been familiar with them since the Fifties, so it's not like the BBC have just made them up.'
Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, of the Muslim Institute, said: 'I don't know anyone who has been offended by AD and BC, so why change them?'
British Police tell cafe owner: Stop showing Bible DVDs, or we will have to arrest you
Police have threatened a Christian cafe owner with arrest –for displaying passages from the Bible on a TV screen. Jamie Murray was warned by two police officers to stop playing DVDs of the New Testament in his cafe following a complaint from a customer that it was inciting hatred against homosexuals.
Mr Murray, 31, was left shocked after he was questioned for nearly an hour by the officers, who arrived unannounced at the premises. He said he had turned off the Bible DVD after an ‘aggressive inquisition’ during which he thought he was going to be arrested and ‘frog-marched out of the cafe like a criminal’.
But he added: ‘I have now checked on my rights and I am not going to be bullied by the police and the PC lobby out of playing the Bible silently in my cafe. It’s crazy. Christians have to stand up for what they believe in.’
The Salt and Light cafe in Blackpool has for years repeatedly played the entire 26-hour-long Watchword Bible, a 15-DVD set produced in America in which a narrator reads the whole of the New Testament, on a small flatscreen TV on the back wall.
The sound is turned down but the words flash on to the screen against a series of images. The cafe, which opened eight years ago, also prides itself on being an oasis of calm in a high-crime area of Blackpool.
Mr Murray said the two uniformed officers from Lancashire Constabulary arrived at lunchtime on Monday, the cafe’s busiest time of day. WPC June Dorrian, the community beat manager, told him there had been a complaint and he was breaching the Public Order Act 1986.
Mr Murray said: ‘I told them that all that appeared on the screen were the words of the New Testament. There is no sound, just the words on the screen and simple images in the background of sheep grazing or candles burning. I thought there might be some mix-up but they said they were here to explain the law to me and how I had broken it.
‘I said, “Are you really telling me that I am facing arrest for playing the Bible?” and the WPC fixed me with a stare and said, “If you broadcast material that causes offence under the Public Order Act then we will have to take matters further. You cannot break the law.” ’
Mr Murray, who worked in a homeless shelter for five years before taking over the cafe three months ago, said he realised the only way to appease the police was to pull the plug on the Bible.
‘I was worried about being handcuffed and led out of the shop in front of my customers. It wouldn’t have looked good so I thought it was better to comply. It felt like a betrayal. They left the shop and told me they would continue to monitor if we were displaying inflammatory material. At no stage had they spoken to me like I was a law-abiding citizen trying to earn a living. I felt like a criminal.’
Mr Murray said he had been given no indication of who had complained or which verses of the New Testament had caused the offence, but he guessed it may have been a reaction to the Book Of Romans that had been playing the week before. The Book takes the form of a letter from the apostle Paul to the people of Rome, in which he rails against all manner of godlessness.
In verses 26-28 of Chapter One he says: ‘God let them follow their own evil desires. Women no longer wanted to have sex in a natural way, and they did things with each other that were not natural.
‘Men behaved in the same way. They stopped wanting to have sex with women and had strong desires for sex with other men. They did shameful things with each other, and what has happened to them is punishment for their foolish deeds.’
The verses take 30 seconds to play and the Bible translation used is the 2005 Contemporary English Version (CEV), a plain English text by the American Bible Society. Experts at the British Bible Society, whose patron is the Queen, have described it as a well-respected text that, while using straightforward language, fairly reflected the meaning of the original.
The Christian Institute, which is supporting Mr Murray, said its lawyers had told him he is free to display the Bible in any way he chooses, and they are preparing a complaint against the police.
The Institute’s spokesman Mike Judge said: ‘I have no problem with the police looking into a complaint, but once they realised it was just the words of the Bible being shown on the screen then they should have walked away. ‘They did not even look at the offending DVD. They simply told Mr Murray that he had to stop showing the Bible and warned him that they would continue to monitor what he was doing. This is intimidatory and completely unacceptable.
‘It is a problem right across the country that the police are under huge political pressure to be seen to respond to anything homophobic.’
Lancashire Police said they had received a complaint on Saturday afternoon from a female customer who was ‘deeply offended’ by the words she had seen on the screen. A spokesman said they were ‘duty bound’ to respond to the complaint and had concluded the cafe could be in breach of Section 29E of the Public Order Act, which warns that people who play images or sounds that stir up hatred against homosexuals could be guilty of an offence.
However, it also says criticism of sexual conduct ‘shall not be taken of itself to be threatening or intended to stir up hatred’.
A police spokesman said: ‘At no point did the officer ask the cafe owner to remove any materials or arrest the man and we took a commonsense and objective approach in dealing with the complaint. We believe our response and the action we took was completely proportionate and our officers are always available should the cafe owner want to discuss the matter or need any advice in the future.
‘The Constabulary is respectful of all religious views. However, we do have a responsibility to make sure that material that communities may find deeply offensive or inflammatory is not being displayed in public. ‘No complaint has been received about the conduct of the officer in question and we are satisfied that they performed their duties professionally.’
British Labour Party leader refused to call people who falsely claim welfare benefits 'cheats'
Ed Miliband faced criticism from Labour MPs last night – for refusing to describe people who falsely claim welfare benefits as ‘cheats’.
The Labour leader was urged by aides to denounce welfare scroungers as ‘cheats’ in a speech this summer but insisted the word was not included in his final draft. He would not attack people on benefits in such stark terms, protesting: ‘You want me to accuse people who defraud the system of being “cheats”? I can’t do that.’
The disclosure came on the eve of the Labour conference in Liverpool, where Mr Miliband hopes to respond to growing claims that he has failed to make an impact since becoming Opposition leader a year ago today.
Labour MPs said Mr Miliband’s failure to condemn welfare cheats in explicit language undermined his claim to be taking a tougher line on people who abuse the benefits system. One Labour MP said: ‘Ed has got to convince people he is just as determined to end the obscenity of people who rip off benefits as he is to end the obscenity of bankers who get paid obscene bonuses. ‘He won’t do that by shying away from denouncing welfare cheats. ‘Ordinary people call them cheats, why can’t Ed?’
A Labour spokesman said he had ‘no recollection’ of Mr Miliband refusing to call welfare scroungers ‘cheats’. He claimed the Labour leader’s condemnation of ‘abuse’ of the system went further than calling the abusers ‘cheats’. ‘He has said people who abuse the welfare system must be stopped,’ said the spokesman.
‘Abuse is a much stronger word than cheat. For the record, he does believe people who do that are cheats and he is prepared to use the word.’
However, he did not do so in a keynote speech on the subject in June. The Mail on Sunday can find no record of him denouncing ‘welfare cheats’ in public.
Mr Miliband’s speech in June was hailed as an attempt to shrug off his ‘Red Ed’ image and relaunch his leadership by talking tough on welfare scroungers and overpaid bankers. He called for greater social responsibility from the idle and super-rich.
Sir Ian Botham: bring in corporal punishment and ban reality TV to save today's youth
Ian Botham is one of Britain's greatest cricketers but has also been very active in charity work. As such he is very well-known so his call for corporal punishment to be reintroduced into the schools might just break the ice on that subject
Sir Ian Botham, the former England cricket captain, believes a combination of cricket, corporal punishment and a ban on reality television can help to prevent the kind of break down in law and order that occured in the riots during the summer.
As the England cricket captain he showed ruthless determination and self-discipline on the pitch.
Now, in the wake of the August riots, Sir Ian Botham wants to see today's youth given the same combination of team sports and tough love which he credits for making him a success.
The former all rounder has set out how he believes parents must be allowed to deploy corporal punishment, the cane should be used to restore order in schools, police given respect - and reality television should be abolished.
And he also launched an attack on the previous Labour administration, saying they had to take some of the blame for the breakdown of law and order in the summer, which he found himself caught up in when looting and street violence affected Birmingham.
Sir Ian who has three grown-up children and four grandchildren aged from 18-months-old to 17-years-old, spoke as he launched his own sports initiative, to get inner-city youngsters and young offenders playing a version of his sport known as cage cricket.
The six-a-side version of the game is designed to be played on concrete in cities and towns.
The brainchild of former Hampshire player Lawrence Prittipaul, it is played in a “cage,” with separate coloured zones for scoring, positioning and refereeing, each game takes 30 overs to complete with just six players.
He said: "We desperately need to create an opportunity for youngsters to mingle, release and discipline themselves, play a game and also, make it national. The youth of today won't get bored with cage cricket either – this is when the problems start and carnage can set in as it did with the riots.
"The government can lie as much as they want, but half the playing fields are being sold off. I want to give these kids the opportunity to keep out of trouble.
"And who knows, we could find ourselves a cricketer, who'd never have had this chance, in the systems of schools where most don't play, unless you go to a private school. That is a fact.
"The same goes for those in prison. We give hard criminals a bat and a ball and they are pleased about playing. It's the best way of engaging the most disengaged of our population."
But he said that more radical measures than his own initative were needed. "Britain is in a mess," he said. "I believe in the cane. It didn't do me any harm as a child at school. Bring it back. Youngsters today, need discipline, and to get off their backsides.
"Parents also have to take greater responsibility too. I am afraid, at the end of the day; most of it is down to them."
Sir Ian told the Sunday Telegraph he believes these measures are the only way of solving Britain's deep-rooted social problems following the recent riots, which he was caught up in.
The 55 year-old was forced to lock himself in his Birmingham city centre hotel when rioting flared on the streets. Extra police were called when vigilantes smashed shop windows, looted stores and tried to hijack a bus.
Sir Ian said the experience has made him more resolute to get youngsters from deprived inner-cities off the streets and out of trouble, as well as engage prisoners with something positive.
He said: "Everyone thought Birmingham was going to go AWOL that night. We all sat there in total silence. No one went out. The hotel doors were locked, its shutters pulled down."
He said the experience had strengthend his resolved to get youngsters off the streets and involved in sport - especially after witnessing the racially tensions which followed the deaths of Asian men Haroon Jahan, 21, Shazad Ali, 30, and his brother, Abdul Musavir, 31, in a hit-and-run allegedly carried out by a young black man at the height of the disorder..
He said: "If it wasn't for the dignity of Tariq Jahan's father, I honestly thought Birmingham city centre could have gone up in flames."
Sir Ian ultimately blames the riots on the previous Labour government, holding them responsible for bankrupting the country. He said: "We have Ed Miliband telling us where the Conservatives are going wrong. But hang on a minute Ed. You are the ones who landed us in this situation, and we are in a perilous situation.
He added: "You guys borrowed ridiculously and sold our gold reserves at the lowest price. Have you forgotten about that dumpy thing called Brown? He's now in hiding. The man who was never elected and never to be re-elected. "Then they leave a note for the new Chancellor, saying, 'By the way, there's nothing left in the box. PS -Have a good time."
Probably the most expensive computerization failure ever
My husband’s business partner, an IT whizz, was offered a consultancy on the NHS project as soon as it began in 2002. It’s a painful memory: “I was getting £2,000 a day. After four weeks, I resigned.” Wait, wait, wait: £2,000 a day is £400,000 a year for a 40-week year. “I resigned because it was never going to work. You could see from Day One it was never going to work. In the room I was working in, there were about 25 consultants, all working a four-hour day. Nobody in the room had any medical knowledge or experience. There wasn’t one person who had any professional understanding of what the system was meant to do.
“One of the reasons it wasn’t going to work was that it was text-only. I was taking my daughter to the dentist a lot at the time. He would take X-ray pictures of her teeth and jaw, and put them on his screen, then he’d build up a 3D picture.”
The idea that two companies, BT and CSC, were building the NHS a system that couldn’t process pictures is incredible. The brave soul who had to confirm to the nation’s geeks and IT professionals that they had been right all along about the dog’s breakfast that is government procurement of IT systems is the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Margaret Hodge, MP (Barking, Labour). She’s not that brave, actually.
She said: “The Department of Health is not going to achieve its original aim of a fully integrated care records system across the NHS.” Oh, poor ducks. I expect they tried jolly hard though. She said: “Trying to create a one-size-fits-all system in the NHS has proven to be unworkable.” Possibly because, as she said, “NHS professionals were not consulted early enough” in the process. Early enough?
A dozen staff at a small NHS trust say they have suffered physical violence at the hands of colleagues or managers
And how is the NHS going to deal with that? By "a series of focus groups”, incredibly
In addition, 100 said they had been the victims of harassment, bullying or abuse from fellow members of staff, far more than the national average.
Board members at the Primary Care Trust in Birmingham say the claims are “very worrying” but have not been reported internally, and plan to deal with them “via a series of focus groups”.
Dr Robert Morley, a senior doctor in the area, told the trade magazine Pulse: “If it wasn't so serious it would be laughable. PCT staff are saying they are being subject to violent attacks by their colleagues and it would appear are too frightened to report it formally, yet the board’s only response is to set up focus groups and keep an eye on things. It beggars belief.”
The extraordinary reports of physical attacks among health service managers emerged in the minutes of the June board meeting of NHS Heart of Birmingham Teaching PCT.
The papers state: “With regard to the Staff Survey the number experiencing harassment, bullying or abuse from other members of staff remains very worrying but of even more concern are those experiencing physical violence at the hands of staff colleagues.
“The HR department are nonplussed by this since they are not receiving complaints or incident forms nor are they being approached for support and advice on how to deal with such incidents.
“Ms McLellan [Denise McLellan, the chief executive] said that this issue would be pursued via a series of focus groups currently being arranged by Ms Scott [Lynda Scott, Director of Communications].
“The Chairman [Ranjit Sondhi] stressed the importance of keeping a watching brief on this issue. Sir David [Winkley, Vice-Chairman] commented that despite this the report was better than previous years.”
The Staff Survey in question, relating to 2010, was published by the Care Quality Commission as part of its questioning of workers at all NHS trusts. It sent questionnaires to all 419 directly employed staff, 41 per cent of whom responded.
The survey found that no staff had experienced physical violence from patients, their relatives or other members of the public, and that 2 per cent felt harassed, bulled or abused by them, slightly lower than the national average.
However it went on: “3 per cent of staff at the trust [equivalent to 12 people] said that they had experienced physical violence from colleagues or managers in the previous 12 months.
“The trust's score of 3 per cent was above (worse than) average when compared with trusts of a similar type (note: the actual national average score is greater than 0 per cent but less than 0.5 per cent, so due to rounding it is displayed here as 0 per cent).”
In addition, 24 per cent of staff – 100 people – “said that they had experienced harassment, bullying or abuse from colleagues or managers in the previous 12 months”. This is double the 13 per cent recorded nationally.
Morale is known to be low among staff at England’s 151 PCTs as the entire tier of management is due to be scrapped as part of the Government’s controversial NHS reforms. New groups led by GPs will instead purchase treatment from hospitals, in an attempt to reduce bureaucracy and make the system more responsive to patients’ and doctors’ needs.
Although about two-thirds of PCT staff are expected to be re-employed within new organisations, it is still estimated that it will cost up to £784million in payoffs for the thousands who lose their jobs.
Childhood being eroded by modern life, British experts warn
This is a surprisingly reactionary letter from a group of Lefties. As long as they can interfere in other people's lives they are happy, I guess. But it is all just assertion and opinion so is not worth much.
Let me make some counter-assertions: I helped bring up a son and a stepson who spent most of their free time as kids playing computer games, with my approval. They are both now happy, well-adjusted achievement-oriented young men who work hard at what they do -- one in business and one in academe. So they came to no harm from their computer "addiction".
I think that there IS concern about the behaviours that young people learn these days but that lies at the feet of moronic "non-directive" modern schools and bombed-out parents. One of my "boys" went to a selective State school and the other to a private school but their genes and their civilized home life were probably more important factors
Childhood is being eroded by a “relentless diet” of advertising, addictive computer games, test-driven education and poor childcare, a powerful lobby of more than 200 experts warns today.
In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, the group of academics, teachers, authors and charity leaders says children’s wellbeing and mental health is being undermined by the pressures of modern life. They urge the Government to address a culture of “too much, too soon” in Britain.
This includes a ban on all forms of advertising aimed at the youngest children, the establishment of a play-based curriculum for infants and a public information campaign warning of the dangers of screen-based entertainment.
The comments came five years after many of the same experts sent similar letter to the Telegraph that criticised politicians and the public for failing to allow children to develop properly at a young age. It led to a debate on the state of childhood in Britain and coincided with the publication of Labour’s Children’s Plan — a policy document covering all aspects of young people’s lives.
But the group, which includes Philip Pullman, the children’s author, Baroness Greenfield, the Oxford University neuroscientist, Lord Layard, emeritus professor of economics at the London School of Economics, and the Bishop of Leicester, the Rt Rev Tim Stevens, claims that the “erosion of childhood in Britain has continued apace since 2006”.
A UN report published last week accused British parents of trapping children in a cycle of “compulsive consumerism” by showering them with toys and designer labels instead of spending quality time with them.
The academics say Britain has the “lowest levels of children’s wellbeing in the developed world” and is regularly placed “at or near the top of international league tables on almost all indicators of teenage distress and disaffection”.
The letter adds: “Although parents are now deeply concerned about this issue, the erosion of childhood in the UK has continued apace since 2006. Our children are subjected to increasing commercial pressures, they begin formal education far earlier than the European norm, and they spend ever-more time indoors with screen-based technology, rather than in active outdoor activity and play.
“The time has come to move from awareness to action.”
The letter, which is signed by 228 people, was circulated by Dr Richard House, senior lecturer at Roehampton University’s Research Centre for Therapeutic Education. It calls for major reforms to save children from a “relentless diet of 'too much, too soon’”.
This should include a public information campaign highlighting children’s developmental needs, the requirement to promote high quality child care and the dangers of a “consumerist, screen-based lifestyle”.
The group also criticises the education system, saying that five year-olds should be given a play-based curriculum in the first full year of school instead of formal lessons. The comments will be seen as a criticism of Coalition plans to subject all children to a reading test at the end of their first year in school.
The letter calls for a ban on all forms of marketing directed at children up until at least the age of seven.
Dr House told the Telegraph: “The inexorable momentum of moderntechnological life is such that despite the awareness raised through the September 2006 Telegraph open letter on 'toxic childhood’, matters have improved very little.
“We also live in an age of seemingly ever-mounting anxiety; and when the adult world is unable to contain and process its own anxieties in a mature way, they inevitably get projected on to children, resulting in countless well-intentioned but often highly inappropriate intrusions into children’s experience that leave children’s true needs misunderstood and neglected.”
Publication of the letter coincides with the publication of a book, Too Much, Too Soon?, featuring 23 essays on early learning and the erosion of childhood.
One study by Sally Goddard Blythe, the director of the Institute for Neuro-Physiological Psychology in Chester, concluded that up to half of children were not ready for school at the age of five because of “sedentary lifestyles”. They struggled to grip pencils properly, sit still, stand up straight and even catch a ball after failing to develop physical and communication skills at a young age.
Mrs Goddard Blythe said: “If I go back 23 years to when I first started to work in this field, the majority of people we saw were those for whom there was a primary underlying cause for their difficulties, such as mild cerebral palsy.
“Increasingly, I am seeing children with no single, obvious cause but general lifestyle issues that seem to be contributing to the fact that they are not developing motor skills in the way they did 20 years ago.
“They are spending more time in front of computer games and electronic media, meaning they have less opportunity to go out and play, explore and take risks.”
Sarah Teather, the Children’s Minister, said the Government was trying to help families but added: “Government can only do so much. As a society, we all have a stake in making sure there is time for family life and children are free to cherish their childhoods.”
British businessman boycotts Jobcentre school leavers because 'they have no work ethic and spend all their time checking their phones'
A businessman is boycotting Jobcentres [government offices designed to help the unemployed find work] after complaining that the school leavers they sent him trudged in with hangovers and spent all their time checking their mobile phones or Facebook.
Garden centre boss Richard Haddock, aged 54, despaired of the youngsters he was sent and has branded Britain’s new generation of teenagers as having no work ethic and unfit for the labour market. He is now recruiting older people and workers from abroad after abandoning hope of being able to find suitable candidates at the Jobcentre.
The frustrated boss says the only school leavers he now employs are those from his local grammar school. He has stopped advertising at the Jobcentre and has resorted to seeking staff by putting up a sign outside his farm shop at Churston, near Brixham, Devon, and interviewing those who apply. He invites them to work without pay for a two-hour trial and will take them on if he thinks they are suitable.
He said: 'I have had youngsters sent here from the Jobcentre and most aren’t interested in working at all. They just want their form signed to show they came for the interview.
'When we have employed school leavers they have generally been unsuited for the world of work. They turn up late, half asleep or with hangovers and spend half their time checking their mobile phones. 'They know they should not wear nail varnish because they are handling food but they turn up wearing it anyway. If you try to discipline them or help them, they throw it back in your face.
'I have had a fantastic experience with our local Churston Grammar School where I have taken children from 14 upwards on work experience. They are brilliant and they want to work.
'I have stopped taking people from the Jobcentre because they don’t want to work. Now we have a sandwich board outside and if anyone is interested I give them a trial. 'If they do well then I will take them on as an apprentice and put them through their NVQs. I also take on older people. I treat my staff like family and expect the same back.
'We need to change our attitude to education and stop telling young people they need to go to university and expect to come out to a £50,000 job. 'We have youngsters who have fantastic potential but we need to help them.'
Mr Haddock is one of Britain’s most high-profile farmers who led the fuel protests in the 1990s and the campaign against the last Government’s Foot and Mouth policy. He runs a cattle farm at Kingswear, near Dartmouth, in Devon, and has diversified into running a farm shop and garden centre at nearby Churston.
Local schools have rejected his criticism. Jane English, head of Paignton Community College, said: 'There are some fantastic young people out there. 'We do help our students prepare for work by learning about punctuality and respect. We know most have mobiles but we do explain there is a right time and place to do things.'
A DWP spokesperson said: 'The Government is now reforming the welfare system and Jobcentre Plus to give people the right support to get into work. 'We are helping young people into work in a number of ways including setting up work experience and apprenticeships and the Work Programme is now providing tailored support to help jobseekers into sustainable employment.'
British Christian charity told staff to remove cross 'in case it offends public'
It sounds like a case of "Stockholm syndrome"
Managers at a Christian charity told staff to remove a large cross from its entrance lobby over fears that the item could upset victims of clerical abuse.
The Kenward Trust, a 40-year-old Christian charity for drug and alcohol addicts, was accused of sidelining its religious origins in an attempt to make itself “more inclusive” to clients.
Tony Williams, who lost his job as head of communications at the charity last year, claimed at an employment tribunal that he had been fired for being “too Christian”. However, the tribunal ruled in favour of the charity’s managers and rejected his claim of religious discrimination and unfair dismissal.
Mr Williams, 57, from Maidstone, Kent, claimed that “overtly” Christian items were ordered to be removed from display because the charity’s management wanted to make sure that no one who entered the building felt “excluded”.
Mr Williams told the tribunal in Ashford, Kent, that he believed he was unfairly dismissed and that he had been discriminated against because of his religious beliefs. He said he felt he had been “set up to fail” after he was interviewed for another post during staff restructuring, before being made redundant.
“I did feel that what happened to me was an ill conceived business decision to secure contracts with the secular community and as such I was the sacrificial lamb,” Mr Williams said.
Godfrey Featherstone, a former director of the Kenward Trust, who retired in 2008, backed Mr Williams’s complaint. The 68-year-old told the tribunal: “I was becoming more uneasy that the Christian centredness that was at the very heart of Kenward was, in truth, being sidelined.”
The charity rejected the allegations. Angela Painter, the chief executive of the Kenward Trust, said Mr Williams had been selected for redundancy because he had performed badly at interview.
Mrs Painter denied the Christian ethos of the charity had been diluted. “One of the things we know from our service users was that at times a very obvious big cross can trigger the memory of abuse in a Christian setting which would be upsetting,” she said.
The tribunal found that Mr Williams had been “fairly selected for redundancy” and that he was not discriminated against because of his religious beliefs. He was ordered to pay £500 in costs.
After the hearing, Mrs Painter said one large wooden cross and one large religious picture had been removed from the entrance lobby of the charity’s building in Maidstone. But individual staff members were not asked to remove their own Bibles or crucifixes from their desks.
The trust, which is based in Yalding, Kent, offers recovery programmes for adults who have become addicted to drugs and alcohol and provided treatment for more than 800 people last year.
An area in northwest England may contain 200 trillion cubic feet of shale gas, putting it in the same league as some of the vast shale-gas plays that have transformed the U.S. energy industry.
The figure for the area near Blackpool, released Wednesday by Cuadrilla Resources, a small oil-and-gas company with operations in England's Bowland Shale, highlights the U.K.'s emerging position as a new frontier for unconventional gas exploration. But it inflamed environmental groups who say the technology used to extract shale gas is environmentally damaging.
"We have as much gas per square mile in Bowland as the successful North American shale plays," said Mark Miller, Cuadrilla's chief executive, in an interview. He said the company found nearly four times more gas than it was expecting to discover.
The discovery of such vast resources—200 trillion cubic feet would be enough to meet U.K. gas demand for 64 years—comes at a time when the U.K.'s conventional gas fields are in steep decline and as it is becoming increasingly dependent on imports such as liquefied natural gas from Qatar and piped gas from Norway.
The exploitation of shale gas has revolutionized American energy markets, helping the U.S. in 2009 to overtake Russia as the world's largest gas producer. Shale now accounts for about 20% of U.S. gas production, but total output is expected to quadruple in coming years. The boom has touched off a scramble for access to acreage in the Barnett, Marcellus and Haynesville shales in the U.S., where much of the new resource is concentrated.
Now the shale boom is beginning to spread to Europe, which also boasts large reserves of unconventional gas. But opposition from environmentalists has been fierce. Shale gas is produced using a technology known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," which involves injecting huge volumes of water, sand and chemicals deep underground, creating fissures—or fractures— that allow the gas trapped inside the shale rock to flow out. Critics fear that fracking can contaminate ground and surface water or even cause gas to leak into domestic water supplies. In June, France became the first country to ban shale-gas exploration.
In response to Cuadrilla's announcement, the environmental group WWF called Wednesday for a moratorium on shale-gas production in the U.K. and said the country should be more focused on investing in renewables than increasing its reliance on fossil fuels. "The government should at the very least halt shale gas exploration in Britain until more research can be undertaken on both the climate-change impacts and contamination risks associated with shale gas," said Jenny Banks, WWF-UK's energy- and climate-change policy officer.
Cuadrilla said a parliamentary committee had looked into the health and safety issues surrounding fracking and decided not to introduce tough new controls on the practice. Spokesman Paul Kelly said Cuadrillaswas trying to provide a transitional resource that would bridge the gap until renewables could be deployed on a realistic scale.
Cuadrilla had to suspend its fracking operations earlier this year after two small earthquakes shook the Blackpool area in April and May. Critics said they were caused by Cuadrilla's operations. The company commissioned a study by a group of independent experts to determine whether there was a link. They are expected to present their final report in the next few weeks, and Mr. Miller said he was "confident" it would provide a basis for Cuadrilla to resume fracking.
Cuadrilla stressed Wednesday that the 200 trillion cubic feet was "gas in place" and wasn't the same as the recoverable volume of gas in Bowland, which could turn out to be a much smaller figure. The Marcellus Shale has about 84 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable natural gas, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Cuadrilla has so far only drilled two exploration wells, with a third soon to be completed, but in its "high-end" scenario it envisages drilling 800 wells in the area over 16 years. Cuadrilla said it hoped to be able to present the U.K. government with a full-field development plan by the end of 2012 and start commercial production of gas in 2013.
Cuadrilla's announcement could lead to sharp upward revisions in estimates of Britain's shale-gas potential. The country has traditionally ranked low on the list of European shale-gas players, with the U.S. Energy Information Administration saying earlier this year it had only 20 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable shale-gas resources, compared with Poland's 187 trillion cubic feet. That could now change.
Degrees in "Management" versus "Business administration"
Some British developments
What happens if you are not good at people management
What’s the use of having a first-class degree in law/maths/economics if you don’t have a clue how to get the best out of the people working for you? It is your management skills you need to develop and, increasingly, providers of distance learning courses and other vehicles of executive education are developing products which address that deficit. There is more to business than poring over spreadsheets. The human landscape is far, far more important.
At Ashridge Business School in Hertforshire, the uptake for the new 'virtual’ Masters in Management course, introduced in April 2010, has been so good that the current 70 students are expected to expand eight-fold in the next four years. It is a remarkable rate of growth, but not untypical of the fast-moving business-studies environment of 2011, where good managerial skills are increasingly prized and education providers are falling over themselves to come up with attractive products.
"About a third of our students are from the UK, the rest from overseas," says course director Roger Delwes. "Some are from Australia, where we have a reciprocal arrangement with the Melbourne Business School at Mount Eliza, and others from emerging economies, from Nigeria to Eastern Europe."
Competitively priced at £16,000, less than half what you could expect to pay from an MBA from a good business school, the course comprises a three-term postgraduate certificate, a three-term diploma, a six-month special project and five days of face-to-face teaching at Ashridge. Although there is some flexibility, the full masters qualification is achievable in 2-3 years and would require an estimated 12-15 hours’ work a week over that period.
"Some of our students already have a first degree," says Delwes, "but most already have several years’ working experience, in fields ranging from financial services to sports administration to the hydrocarbon industry."
Although most of their students tend to come from the private sector, Ashridge has identified several public-sector areas of work, notably the health service, where enhanced management skills are likely to be in demand.
"Take GPs," says Delwes. "Ten years ago, they would have spent 99 per cent of their time exercising their clinical skills. With the re-organisation of the health service, they are going to have to learn to be managers as well as clinicians, understanding budgets as well as anatomy. Courses like ours can help them achieve that."
If the MBA is a familiar part of the education landscape, and can involve some quite rarefied theoretical study, masters degrees in management have a more practical relevance. "People doing MBS are typically investing in their intended future, whereas those who enrol for degrees in management are investing for the present," says Delwes. "They may have been frustrated by the day-to-day challenges of creating an effective working environment, and want the tools to improve their performance."
The Masters in Management is the first 'virtual’ course offered by Ashridge and, in terms of content, is learning-driven rather than curriculum-driven – in other words, students need to relate their studies to their own working situations, rather than get bogged down in abstract theory.
"A lot of distance learning courses require long, uninterrupted hours in front of a computer," Delwes explains. "We want to vary the mix and get students to apply what they have learnt to their own workplaces, particularly during the special project with which the course concludes."
If Ashridge has identified a lucrative niche in the market, it is not alone. More and more UK universities now offer masters degrees in management, delivered either on campus, through online courses or through educational models which blend the two.
"The MBA may remain the gold standard in business circles, but the value of strategic management skills is increasingly being acknowledged," says Barry Blackham, head of curriculum and student experience at the Derby Business School, part of the University of Derby. "There are just so many people in different stages of their careers who need to be taught to look at problems in the workplace in the round, not just make things up as they go along."
The Derby Business School has a proven track record of delivering online degrees, adding new courses every year. Its MSc in Strategic Management has proven particularly popular in southern Africa, notably Botswana, where there are 45 students enrolled on the course, and Malawi, where there are 80.
Whereas UK students enrolled on the course study entirely online, students in Botswana and Malawi benefit from what Blackham calls "the flying faculty model". Most of the time students have to work on their own, from textbooks or online materials; but two or three times a year, teachers from Derby will fly out to Africa to field questions and deliver face-to-face classes. In countries where internet usage is not widespread, the human touch is often vital in helping students achieve their full potential.
"They are a very mixed lot, and at very different stages in their career," says Blackham. "One of the students is the Malawi Minister of Transport, one of the most senior members of the government. Another is a chicken farmer. NGOs, we have found, are also prepared to fund key staff in their extra-curricular studies. But, if the students have arrived at us via different routes, they all seem to benefit from the course, mainly because it has direct application to their work."
One of the key modules in the course, which typically takes between two and three years, is Decision Analysis, which focuses on long-term strategic planning, particularly its financial aspects. "You’re not going to turn people who are not mathematically gifted into brilliant statisticians," says Blackham. "But what you can do is help them find their way around statistical reports prepared by others, and give them the intellectual confidence to deal with accountants, economic analysts and the like."
And it is not just individual managers and would-be managers benefiting from the new trends in executive education. Large and medium-sized companies are increasingly turning to business schools to help them resolve organisational and managerial issues that would once have been handled in-house.
'Our clients include some of the top FTSE companies, as well as major companies in the USA, Australia, Canada and other countries,’ says Bill Shedden, director of the Centre for Customised Executive Development at the Cranfield School of Management, part of Cranfield University in Hertfordshire, the UK’s only wholly postgraduate university.
Companies which use Cranfield’s services are typically looking for a strategy for developing a cadre of middle and senior managers or for implementing major organisational change. "They don’t expect us to tell them what they do," says Shedden. "They expect us to work with them to come up with solutions that are tailored to their needs. Those solutions, increasingly, will involve such teaching tools as network learning and 'webinars’, where you can work face-to-face with someone on the other side of the world."
A once leisurely world of residential staff colleges and week-long conferences at five-star hotels has been superseded by a much more concentrated form of executive education"Companies are under pressure to show tangible results quickly,’ says Shedden. 'They have also had to cut down on travel costs and are reluctant to let key staff take time off for study purposes."
It is a fast-changing environment and, as Shedden acknowledges, business schools have to learn from the mistakes of the past. "With the emergence of the net, a lot of schools thought e-learning was the future and put a lot of effort into developing appropriate online material. But that’s where they came unstuck. All they were basically offering was sophisticated books which were readable on a computer. But how many senior bankers or businessmen would have the time or inclination to read such books?"
Flexibility is the new by-word, with increasing emphasis on interactive forms of learning. A company in the United States or Australia which deployed Cranfield’s services might start off with a short immersion period, with managers studying podcasts and online material, but after that the group would be as important as the individual in the learning process.
"We recently did a full-blown business simulation with a company in Miami," says Shedden. "The entire exercise was virtual, with nobody having to move from their desks. But it was a huge success in education terms."
In a complex business world, learning the art of good management has never been harder. The good news is that there have probably never been more diverse or innovative ways to teach managers to manage.
Trainee nurses 'do not spend enough time with patients'
Nurses can start their careers unable to care for patients because they have spent too long in lecture halls, a nursing leader has warned. Peter Carter, head of the Royal College of Nursing, said many new recruits were ‘not up to the mark’ following degree courses that lacked practical work.
His comments reflect widespread concern that elderly and vulnerable patients are neglected in hospitals and care homes because nurses and other staff are not providing basic standards of care. The failings were highlighted in a damning report by the Health Service Ombudsman that revealed some patients were left so thirsty they could not even call for help.
Dr Carter called for a reappraisal of the training system in which nurses take a three-year degree with time divided equally between the classroom and the wards. He claimed some courses provided insufficient patient contact. Before nursing degrees were introduced in the 1990s, training was more hands-on.
Dr Carter also warned that untrained healthcare assistants now carry out many tasks once reserved for nurses, such as helping patients to eat and drink, cleaning bedsores and taking blood samples. Around 600,000 are employed in hospital wards and care homes, or as carers visiting people in their own homes.
Unlike doctors and nurses, they are not monitored by an official watchdog and cannot be struck off. If they abuse a patient or commit an offence there is nothing to stop them being employed at another hospital or care home.
‘What we have on hospital wards, and particularly in domiciliary care and care homes, is an unregulated, untrained workforce who are picking up so much of this job as they go along,’ said Dr Carter.
‘You don’t need registered nurses to do every task. ‘But things like wound care, nutrition, hygiene, moving people in bed, these are techniques that need to be properly taught, and not something that should be picked up on the job.
‘We require regulation and training in just about every other walk of life. Gas fitters have to be registered. But somehow when it comes to patient care we’ve got this unregulated, untrained workforce and then people wonder from time to time why there are problems.’
Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, said: ‘Healthcare assistants need to be properly trained and regulated. ‘Patients expect that the staff looking after them have had the appropriate rigorous training to fulfil their role. ‘It is shocking that healthcare assistants have little or no regulation or formalised training before they see patients.
‘It is particularly confusing for patients as it is very hard to identify on the ward between nurses and healthcare assistants. Patients don’t know the level of expertise of the person treating them.
‘Nobody should ever be allowed to undertake procedures on patients without appropriate training and real supervision.’
A Department of Health spokesman said the Government planned a register of healthcare assistants to ensure they are properly regulated.
‘The Government intends to establish the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care as the national accrediting body for a system of assured voluntary registers for groups that are currently not subject to statutory professional regulation, which includes healthcare assistants,’ the spokesman added.
In the 1960s, 70s and 80s nurses were given brief classroom work followed by apprentice-style training on the wards to learn at the bedside. They often covered night shifts when they were in charge of an entire ward on their own. Many started straight from school aged 17 and were qualified by the time they were 20. The average age of qualification today is 29.
Trainee nurses attended nursing schools which were attached to every hospital. Courses there lasted three years – the same as today’s degree courses – but only a quarter of the time was spent in the classroom, the rest being dedicated to gaining hands-on experience in the wards.
Christian GP fights for job after asking 'suicidal' patient about his faith
A doctor accused of ‘inappropriately’ discussing his devout Christian faith during a consultation with a patient yesterday launched a legal battle to avoid being struck off.
Dr Richard Scott, 51, appeared before a disciplinary hearing after allegedly talking to the patient about Jesus in a way the General Medical Council described as ‘insensitive, exploitative and inappropriate’. The GMC heard Dr Scott had ‘crossed the line’ by allegedly suggesting the ‘suicidal and vulnerable’ patient could be helped by Christianity rather than his own faith.
The married GP is one of six Christian partners at a medical centre which states on its website that spiritual matters are likely to be discussed with patients during consultations.
But yesterday Dr Scott, who was educated at Cambridge, began a fight to clear his name after the mother of one of his patients complained he had tried to foist his faith on her son.
Dr Scott refused to accept a formal warning, instead choosing to go to a full hearing. He claims he acted professionally and within the GMC guidelines, but if he loses he could be struck off.
The incident allegedly happened in August 2010, when the 24-year-old patient visited him at the Bethesda Medical Centre in Margate, Kent. Dr Scott, who used to be a medical missionary in Tanzania and India, says he gave the patient a full medical consultation, but felt he needed help to get out of a rut.
So at the end of the appointment, he began talking about his own Christian belief, saying it could give him ‘comfort and strength’. But afterwards, the 24-year-old told his mother ‘he just said I need Jesus’, prompting her to file a complaint.
Paul Ozin, counsel for the GMC, said: ‘A line was crossed because Dr Scott expressed his personal religious belief to a person who he knew was a vulnerable patient in a way that was plainly liable to cause the patient distress. ‘He suggested Jesus or Christianity – his own religion – offered something exclusive and superior to that offered by the patient’s own religion.’
The professional body placed an official warning on Dr Scott’s file as a ‘compromise’. But the GP, a doctor for 28 years, is calling on the GMC to strike out the complaint because it was made by the patient’s mother. Dr Scott claims she is not qualified to comment on what treatment a medical practitioner should prescribe her son.
Yesterday the hearing was told that the unnamed patient had been asked to attend the medical tribunal to testify against the GP, but he had not turned up because he was suffering from anxiety.
Lawyers are now arguing whether the panel can accept his written statement. Mr Ozin says it would be ‘unfair’ to call the witness when he is ‘ill’, but Dr Scott’s lawyer said he cannot defend himself properly if the man does not attend.
In an interview last May Dr Scott, a lay preacher, said: ‘I only discussed mutual faith after obtaining the patient’s permission. ‘In our conversation, I said that personally, I had found having faith in Jesus helped me and could help the patient. At no time did the patient indicate that they were offended, or that they wanted to stop the discussion. If that had been the case, I would have immediately ended the conversation.’
Dr Scott, whose wife Heather, 50, is also a doctor, said: ‘By appealing against the decision, it will go to a public hearing. But it is worth the risk as I wanted to do this because there is a bigger picture. ‘I wanted to give confidence and inspiration to other Christians who work in the medical profession.’
Busybody British Council bans NHS worker from living in her parents' garden while she saves up mortgage deposit
As most first-time buyers will tell you, getting on the property ladder these days is a minor miracle. The first major hurdle is getting enough money together for a deposit.
With this in mind, Victoria Campbell and her boyfriend came up with a cunning plan to save cash more quickly – they moved into a rent-free garden shed. And the idea might have succeeded, but for Miss Campbell's local council which has ruled that the structure does not provide 'adequate living conditions' and creates an 'undesirable precedent'.
Officials have given her and Bill Warden, 26, nine months to move out or face a fine.
NHS care worker Miss Campbell, 20, and Mr Warden have been living in the shed in Miss Campbell's parents' back garden in Havant, Hampshire, since last September. They had hoped to save around £20,000 for a deposit on a house within around five years. Miss Campbell makes £7.80 an hour in her job and Mr Warden is a £20,000 a year senior care assistant at a private home.
Miss Campbell said: 'My dream is to live in a three-bedroom home with Bill and start a family but it is so difficult to get on the property ladder these days. 'My parents have one spare room in their house but it is barely big enough to fit a single bed, so it is no use to us.
'I don't want to rent because it feels like we are throwing money away when we could be paying off our debts and saving. Living in a shed seemed like a perfect idea. 'I don't understand why the council are trying to make us move out. If they force us out, we will be homeless and the shed will remain anyway. 'Before we put it up we wrote to all neighbours within a 30-metre radius and did not receive a single complaint.'
The shed is 15ft by 15ft, has double-glazed windows and is heated by one oil radiator. It has no running water but draws electricity from the Campbell family's main three-bedroom terraced house. The couple sleep on a fold-down sofa and eat their meals and wash in the main house.
Having had her retrospective application to use the shed as accommodation refused, Miss Campbell is now trying to get temporary permission with the help of consultants made up of former local authority planning officers.
Havant councillor Paul Buckley said the authority had been 'sensitive' to Miss Campbell's circumstances. He said: 'Although planning permission was refused by the committee, it was resolved that a generous compliance period of nine months should be observed to allow Miss Campbell to find alternative accommodation.'
Conservative UK: Most Britons still oppose gay marriage
Most people still oppose gay marriage and the adoption of children by same-sex couples, a Government report revealed yesterday. More than half believe homosexual marriages should not be allowed and two thirds think the adoption of children by same-sex couples should not have become legal nine years ago.
The findings from the Office for National Statistics suggest the Coalition’s plans to upgrade civil partnership laws to let gay couples describe themselves as married may prove unpopular.
Lib Dem Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone said last week that to deny marriage to same-sex couples was ‘simply not fair’.
But the ONS findings show many Britons still cling to conservative values and suggest Miss Featherstone’s claim that the UK is ‘a world leader in gay rights’ only applies to a minority of the population.
The report, based on sources including the annual British Social Attitudes survey and research by the EU’s Eurobarometer research arm, said only 45 per cent of British people agree that ‘homosexual marriages should be allowed throughout Europe’.
Christian groups oppose the idea on the grounds that it undermines the rights of married couples and their children. The ONS findings suggest they may command majority support.
The report shows support for adoption by gay couples is even lower. Adoption of children by same-sex couples was made possible by Tony Blair’s 2002 Adoption Act. Since Labour’s 2007 Sexual Orientation Regulations, at least ten Roman Catholic adoption agencies have ceased trying to find families for children because the law now compels them to consider offering children to gay couples.
The law, however, is out of step with opinion, the ONS report found. It put support in Britain for the proposition that ‘adoption of children should be authorised for homosexual couples throughout Europe’ at only 33 per cent, with two thirds opposed.
The ONS report said: ‘While the majority of British people now accept the concept of same-sex couples as being rarely wrong, or not wrong at all, fewer people approve of same-sex couples adopting children.
‘On average females have more liberal attitudes to same-sex partnerships than males.’ Civil partnerships for same-sex couples were first registered at the end of 2005, giving a gay couple the same legal rights as married couples.
The process for dissolution of a civil partnership is identical to the legal process of divorce. But gay couples may not describe their partnership as a marriage.
The report said the number of civil partnerships being registered has declined after an initial rush when many couples who wanted to put their relationship on a legal footing took advantage of the new law. There are around 1,000 civil partnerships each year. One in 14 of the couples have children, most of whom are adopted or were born in a previous marriage or relationship.
Broadcasters must hand over UK riot footage to police
BRITAIN'S major TV networks were forced to hand over hundreds of hours of footage of England's August riots to cops after being served with court orders.
The BBC, Sky and ITN handed over the unbroadcast footage but voiced concern that staff covering future disorder could be attacked if people thought they would give evidence to the police.
Police forces can obtain production orders under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. A judge must weigh the interest of the police against the public interest of a free press.
Sky News said, "Our standard policy is that we do not supply material to the police without a court order. On occasions - as has happened with some of our footage of the riots - where police request untransmitted material and an order is obtained we will comply with it".
The BBC confirmed that it was obeying the court order. "Police requests for BBC untransmitted material are dealt with through our legal department, regardless of the subject matter. We require requests for untransmitted material to be made through the courts."
An ITN spokesperson said, "ITN's policy is that we do not release unbroadcast material to police. On some occasions when the police apply to a judge for a court order to force the release of such material, we have challenged the police's application."
A spokeswoman for the Met said, "The police are identifying people through pictures, CCTV and through the media to ensure that people are brought to justice. We would ask the media to work with the police to ensure that happens."
The Metropolitan Police has already made more than 2,500 arrests and are still examining thousands of hours of CCTV footage.
Trendy teachers cheat the poor and lay the groundwork for riots
Katherine Birbalsingh
WHEN I became a teacher some 12 years ago in London, I genuinely believed that the only way one could make a difference to the underprivileged was to work for the state. I believed the state education system stimulated social mobility.
But my time teaching in some of London's inner-city schools has taught me much. I have seen things you would never believe. As every year ticked by, I became more and more frustrated with the lies we teachers were having to tell the public. We had to pretend that our schools were better than they were in order to trick parents into sending us their children. Ninety three per cent of our children in Britain are educated in the state sector and there is a great divide between the private and state sectors.
The state sector is always trying to prove that it is just as good as the private sector, if not better. And because everyone knows, deep down, that this simply isn't true. Let's face it, British children are now rated 16th in the world for science, 25th for reading and 28th for maths, according to the OECD's 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) report. The 2000 PISA report ranked British children as fourth for science, seventh for reading and eighth for maths. We now spend more than 80 billion ($123bn) a year (double what we spent in the 1990s) on education and yet British schoolchildren have plummeted in the international league tables.
So I wrote a book, To Miss with Love, with the intention of it being published anonymously because I knew just how dangerous it was to speak to the truth. But then, before publication, I spoke at the Conservative Party conference in October last year about our broken education system, revealing some of my thoughts on what needs fixing. As a British teacher recently told me, there was nothing I said in the speech that teachers don't say everyday in staffrooms across the country. We simply aren't allowed to say it out loud. The state school system literally prevents its teachers from speaking their minds.
The riots in London did not come as a surprise to British teachers. We have not only been predicting that kind of general chaos for years, but we experience it on a daily basis in our schools. We have many Australian travelling teachers who enter our school system as supply teachers. Generally, they are shocked by what they see and experience in our classrooms. It is the same for German, French or Spanish teachers. The only visiting teachers who are used to our behaviour problems and low standards are those who come from the American inner cities. And riots, of course, are not unfamiliar to them. The difference between the American and British school systems is that the international community knows just how bad American schooling can be. But Britain still lives off its old reputation as the Mother Country, leading the Commonwealth and its empire in all that is true and good.
But the real truth is that not only does the state in Britain tie teachers' hands, but it does the same to parents, resulting in a breakdown of authority both in our schools and in our homes. Some parents try desperately to bring their children up properly and struggle. I have spent my career meeting parents who are brought to tears because of their unruly teenagers. Some say that they cannot discipline their children because their children threaten to call the police and cry abuse. Every time their child misbehaves, rather than being able to discipline them appropriately, they remember their neighbour or their friend or their cousin who was handcuffed in their own house and hauled away by the police, their children put into social care for a night, all because of some made-up story.
I remember one Jamaican woman pleading with me in school, desperately wanting to discipline her daughter but the parenting classes she was attending at the council suggested she use more praise. She said to me, "But how can I always be praising her when she gets so much wrong?" The "prizes for all culture" doesn't just exist in our schools. It is endemic in our society to a point where not only do we not question it, but those who have old-school values are forced to conform to the "gold stars for everyone" mantra dictated by the state.
The same thing happens at school. The bad children are constantly receiving prizes simply for remaining quiet or for turning up on time. The teachers, in order to win round the bad children, are taught by their line managers and teacher training institutions that praise is what is needed to motivate children. So we all use it to saturation point, devaluing the worth of the gold star. Meanwhile, the good children, who are left in the dark because no one notices, eventually become bad in an effort to gain some attention.
Eventually, the cool gangster lifestyle that these children have pumped into their minds six to seven hours a day from MTV takes over. Their understanding of "success" is not marriage, a job and a couple of kids. It is cars, women and bling. Our bookshops were not looted, and if you didn't have a sports or mobile phone shop on your High Street, you knew your community was probably safe. Who allows our children to watch so much MTV? The very parents who are exhausted because their children are spiralling out of control and yet are told by the council they should use more praise, or the single parents, encouraged to stay single by the state with promises of free flats and welfare cheques, who can't possibly juggle a full-time job, three or four children, a household and a life.
The schools struggle to keep order, partly because of the low standards of the education system but also because teachers are encouraged to constantly do group work and entertain the children. Children must never be bored, and if they are, or if they disrupt, it is the teacher's fault. Children are never held to account for what they do. Is it any wonder that some of them decided to show the police that they were in charge and went out looting?
State schools ought to promote social mobility. They should not simply perpetuate the class system and ensure that those who go to private schools are taught well, and only those taught in leafy suburb middle-class state schools stand a chance of a half-decent education.
Unfortunately a number of people with power believe that the way to improve education for our children is to ban tradition from our classrooms _ stop being so fuddy duddy and appeal to children by making things more "fun".
We believe it is unfashionable to have desks in rows and so some schools actually ban traditional rows in favour of always having desks in groups. Some schools abandon the more traditional academic subjects altogether and do not teach them at all. In an effort to raise their standing in the league tables, schools will have children take drama, PE, or media studies, abandoning, history, physics or French to do so, and our so-called progressive thinkers rejoice, saying that these subjects are more suited to certain children. It is funny how the children these subjects suit are never their own.
The tradition of competition which we celebrate in the world of sport has become unfashionable in the academic classroom and innovation requires that children never be given grades and are never allowed to know where they stand in comparison to their peers. Tradition in education has become a dirty word and is reserved for the elite while innovation is what is given to the poor.
The irony is that the rejection of all that is traditional comes from people who were themselves beneficiaries of a very traditional education but remembering some of their classes at school as being boring, are now trying to reform the education system for these kids to make it more interesting. So they can be very well meaning people. So, for instance, Richard Branson who famously dropped out of school at 15, thinks schools overeducate children, and stunt the early sparks of entrepreneurship. But what Branson forgets is that he had the most traditional of educations - having been educated at one of Britain's top private schools and yet he is the most extraordinary entrepreneur. And Branson underestimates just how much his education has contributed to his success. What Branson was able to take away at age 15 from school, far outstrips the standard of education that some of our Western youngsters are currently accessing even at university level. Some of our university degrees are the equivalent in standard to what children used to do at age 15 in school in the 1970s. Branson would probably find these degrees ludicrously easy.
General thinking around school being boring makes it possible for us to have reached a stage where teachers are no longer expected to teach and instead they must be facilitators of learning with constant group work going on, where the teacher is rarely standing in front of the class, but instead moves amongst the children who are all busy doing something. The idea here is that "doing" is more interesting than "listening". And that might very well be true. But the problem comes when we think that "doing" needs to happen most of the time. This means that the teacher, a great source of knowledge, almost becomes redundant as a fountain of knowledge and instead becomes a bit of a referee. We don't value the importance of teaching knowledge for the children to then do something with. Innovation is considered to be only "doing" - a complete rejection of all that is traditional.
The problem is that we all underestimate the knowledge that we have and use everyday. Try to read any article in the newspaper and you'll find that there is an assumption of background knowledge. Recently, I read an article about Carla Bruni. To understand just the title and subtitle, one would have had to know who she was, that she is married to Nicholas Sarkozy and you'd have to know that he was the President of France, what being a president means, and, indeed, you would have to know what France is - is it a city? Is it a country? Is it in Europe? You may laugh, but I have, as a teacher had conversations with 14-year-olds in which they simply don't understand the difference between France and Paris. For them, it is all the same! I can't tell you the number of times I've had conversations with kids about Winston Churchill where they think he's "that dog" off the insurance advert.
Ordinary people don't realise just how little some of our kids know. What we also forget is that the very thing that got us to where we are now was the kind of education that we had - our teachers actually teaching us knowledge, so that we know the difference between Paris and France, us sometimes being bored in lessons and learning the discipline to struggle through - how many people in business clinch a deal because they know the soft skills of being polite, know how to sit through a boring lecture, and are able to concentrate enough to still pick up what is necessary to impress the client? It is through the study of tough rigorous academic subjects that soft skills are often acquired. Traditional educations are not bad. And most of the progressives perpetuating this in our schools have benefited from one themselves. In other words they climb the ladder to the top and then unwittingly pull the ladder up from under them.
So in the past 30 years, the concept of teaching knowledge in our classrooms has nearly disappeared altogether. Teaching historical facts or lists of vocab which rely on memory skills is considered old-fashioned. Instead, we think it better to inspire children to be creative through constant group discussion and project work. But background knowledge is absolutely essential to enable children to capture new ideas. For instance, when cars were first invented they were called horseless carriages. So to understand the new concept of a car, one had to have knowledge of horses and carriages, and the idea of something being "less" something else. In fact, modern neuroscience has shown that in order to grasp new concepts, pupils require a great deal of background knowledge.
As background knowledge is provided unequally in different homes, it is our duty in schools to level out the playing field. In some homes children are lucky enough to have tutors employed, conversations over dinner about the day's news events and, as such, they can pick up facts about history, geography as they go. But instead of ensuring that all of our children should have access to that knowledge in school, we turn away from knowledge acquisition which is considered boring and teach skills like being empathetic or forming a point of view through what is a very seductive and seemingly better way of teaching. It seems more "fun" and the progressives like the idea of finally breaking free from the restriction of their own educational backgrounds.
So putting desks in rows in considered archaic, rote-learning is abandoned completely, even the idea of classrooms having walls is rejected _ encouraging chaos all around _ and our children quite literally are leaving school without basic knowledge in subjects such as English, maths and history. A recent study from the University of Sheffield showed that 20 per cent of the children leaving school in Britain are functionally illiterate. Schools, quite simply, need classrooms. And classrooms, in turn, require walls. When I first told my father that we were spending billions of pounds on schools building walless classrooms, he was baffled. You see, he grew up in poverty-stricken Guyana where he went to a school that had no walls because they couldn't afford them. So for us to now spend billions recreating what the developing world is trying to move away from seems like lunacy. But that's exactly what we're doing.
If we want to equip our children with the power to change the world, they must first have knowledge of it and understand it. Unfortunately the "progressives" think that somehow knowledge is right-wing and boring. But this is simply not true. What makes Tony Benn, the well known British socialist who has campaigned against injustice all over the world, such a great speaker, or what gave Ian Flemming such a creative mind that he should create James Bond? What ensured that Churchill would be an inspirational leader, moving back and forth between the Liberal and Conservative parties? What ensured that Obama would be the first black American president? Their very traditional educations! Thomas Jefferson had a classical education but was so forward thinking that he signed the Declaration of Independence and Mark Zuckerberg is obsessed with Classics but is the founder of the transformational and innovative Facebook. What made these people into successes was the traditional educations that they had, the inspirational teachers who taught them, the love of learning that they picked up with their walled classrooms, desks in rows, with the teacher teaching at the front.
Traditional education in Britain these days is reserved only for the rich. Yet tradition is what has given us our most explosive revolutionaries. Stokely Carmichael who led the Black Panthers and was a major player in the civil rights movement in America dropped gang life, so inspired was he at his science specialist school and so busy was he reading Darwin and Marx. Mandela went to an elite Methodist mission school. Revolutions are created with traditional thinking. That doesn't mean you can't ever do any type of group work, or can't ever go on to a computer. But it should not be a fight to have a school system where our poorest children should have access to an education that includes knowledge-acquisition, competition, a non-prizes for all culture, high standards of behaviour, and in an environment where everyone reaches for the very best.
This is where I believe there could be a real role for free schools in our inner cities in Britain. Our Conservative government has brought out these new proposals, copying the free school movement in Sweden and the Charter school movement in America. This month, our first batch of free schools opened - there were 24 of them. As free schools are free to do what is best for their children and do not have their hands tied behind their backs by the state, they are able to reject the cultural pressure that is felt in some of our ordinary state schools, and do something different. They are free to provide children with the tradition that is found in our better private schools.
They can offer an extended day, lessons that are about knowledge acquisition, and competition to drive up standards. They can provide classrooms with desks in rows and they can offer the more traditional subjects - and by this I don't mean Latin necessarily - I simply mean the opportunity to do Spanish or history or the chance to study biology, chemistry and physics as separate subjects. The tradition of benchmarking children can be upheld, standing at assembly and holding high standards for uniform and behaviour can simply become part of the norm. In fact, bringing traditional thinking of this kind is to trail blaze and indeed be innovative. How wonderful it is that the free school movement should allow individuals in any community, to take responsibility, to know what issues face their particular community and to have the freedom to set up a school that can do something positive and new.
So I am trying to set up a free school in the depths of south London to do exactly what I say is needed, and educate these children in such a way so that riots like the ones we witnessed last month will not happen again. The ordinary people of south London - the poor, the single-parent families - are desperate for another choice of school in the area because there aren't enough school places and they know how generally awful the schools are. Yet there are those from the National Union of Teachers and the Socialist Workers Party who oppose us. There are those, and it has to be said, they are the middle classes, who can afford to make up for their state school's issues by employing tutors at home - who want to stop free schools from opening because they hate the idea of individuals taking away responsibilities and power from the state.
The only way our poorest children can succeed is for them to receive the same quality of education as our richest. They need the privilege of a traditional education - the type of education that most of us, it not all of us in this room have been lucky enough to have had. There is a quote that I love which sums up what I am saying: The education that is best for the best is the education that is best for all. Why did the riots happen? Because 20 per cent of our young people are functionally illiterate and do not know the difference between right and wrong. Because the education that is best for the best is kept only for the very few.
I only wish that these problems were confined to Britain. But I believe that in the West, these trends are to be found everywhere, and no doubt in Australia too. Some countries, such as Britain, are simply more advanced in their decline. My advice to all of you is to learn from our mistakes in Britain. Do not go down the trendy and very tempting route of believing that all that glistens is gold. I believe in conservative values precisely because they conserve what is traditional. If Australia learns from the hideous mistakes that Britain has made, I am certain that the old-school values that we have lost in Britain will ensure your country's future success.
First-class? Top-level British degrees up by 34% prompting fresh concerns over grade inflation
The number of students graduating with a first-class degree has risen by a third over the past five years, prompting fresh concerns about grade inflation.
About one in seven graduates now obtains the top qualification, calling into question the worth of some degrees.
Almost 47,000 students gained firsts in 2009-10 compared with 34,825 in 2005-6 – a rise of 34.5 per cent, according to figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency. At the same time, almost half of graduates were awarded a 2.1 in 2009/10. Numbers gaining 2.1s have risen by 14.4 per cent – from 137,235 to 156,950 – over the same period. By contrast, there was only a 2.9 per cent increase in the number of graduates achieving a 2.2.
Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said degrees have been subjected to ‘extraordinary grade inflation’ since the expansion of higher education in the 1990s.
Calling for a ‘starred first’ degree to identify exceptional students, he said: ‘Grades are inflating to the point that the classes aren’t going to be useful to future employers. They are going to have to take into account the university and the A-level results to distinguish between applicants.’ ‘I suspect what we will have to do is what has already been done in A-levels and GCSEs, which is to have a starred first.’
Universities have been trialling a graduate ‘report card’, aimed at giving a more accurate picture of students’ achievements. But the new Higher Education Achievement Report – a six page document – continues to list graduates’ overall degree classification.
There have been claims some lecturers turn a blind eye to plagiarism in a bid to help institutions climb league tables. University whistleblowers have also alleged external examiners have been ‘leaned on’ to boost grades.
The Commons select committee on innovation, universities, science and skills noted different institutions demanded ‘different levels of effort’ from students to get similar degrees.
British government's wind farm plans are 'big gamble' and the numbers do not add up, say MPs
The Government’s wind farm plans are a ‘big gamble’ which may not pay off, according to a committee of MPs. They say ministers are banking on the cost of offshore wind going down and major improvements in efficiency to ‘make the numbers add up’.
In a report out today, they say a ‘supergrid’ – costing up to £60billion – may be needed to join Britain’s wind farms to plants in other European countries.
There are more than 500 turbines off the coast of the UK and another 1,000 approved or under construction. But thousands more will be needed to meet the target of generating 15 per cent of energy from renewable sources by 2020.
The Energy and Climate Change Committee report says: ‘Today the national grid is struggling to cope, because so much of our electricity is produced in remote areas, especially the North.
‘Our transmission systems do not always have the capacity to deliver power to where is needed. ‘If the Government hopes to deliver its aspirations at all, let alone in a cost-effective way…a more efficient way of connecting wind needs to be planned.’
It says offshore wind is necessary to reduce Britain’s dependence on oil. But the reports adds that it is ‘a notoriously expensive and intermittent source of electricity supply and imposing an unacceptable cost on consumers’.
It continues: ‘The Government is banking on reductions in the cost of offshore wind and improvements in efficiency to make the numbers add up.’
It was revealed this weekend that £2.6million was paid in compensation to 11 wind farm owners to switch off their plants because the National Grid could not cope with the surge in electricity.
The committee’s chairman, Tim Yeo, said connecting the UK’s electricity network to other countries would make the system cheaper and more efficient. He added: ‘At the moment we are paying some generators to switch off because we haven’t got the wires to deliver electricity from where it is produced to where it is needed. ‘An offshore grid can relieve some of this pressure.’
The cost of reinforcing the existing lines and cables to deliver electricity where it is needed has been put at £32billion by 2020, the committee said.
A spokesman for the Department for Energy and Climate Change said it was in talks with nine countries about the feasibility of a supergrid in the North Sea.
He added: ‘Offshore wind has a crucial role to play in the UK’s future energy mix, with huge potential benefits for our economy and our energy security, but we are clear that increasing offshore wind deployment is dependent on reducing the costs.’
Patient care is under threat at more than 60 NHS hospitals which are “on the brink of financial collapse” because of costly private finance initiative schemes, the Health Secretary will warn.
Andrew Lansley says he has been contacted by 22 health service trusts which claim their "clinical and financial stability" is being undermined by the costs of the contracts, which the Labour government used extensively to fund public sector projects.
The Daily Telegraph can disclose that the trusts in jeopardy include Barts and the London, Oxford Radcliffe, North Bristol, St Helens and Knowsley, and Portsmouth. Between them the trusts run more than 60 hospitals which care for 12 million patients.
There is already evidence that waiting lists for non–urgent operations have begun to rise as hospitals delay treatment to save money. Adding to this are growing fears over the impact of the financial crisis on care this winter.
Under the PFI deals, a private contractor builds a hospital or school. It owns the building for up to 35 years, and during this period the public sector must pay interest and repay the cost of construction, as well as paying the contractor to maintain the building.
However, the total cost of the deals is often far more than the value of the assets. As a result, Mr Lansley says, the 22 trusts "cannot afford" to pay for their schemes, which in total are worth more than £5.4billion, because the required payments have risen sharply in the wake of the recession.
Mr Lansley told The Daily Telegraph: "Over the last year, we've been working to expose the mess Labour left us with, and the truth is that some hospitals have been landed with PFI deals they simply cannot afford.
"Like the economy, Labour has brought some parts of the NHS to the brink of financial collapse. Tough solutions may be needed for these problems, but we'll help the NHS overcome them. We will not make the sick pay for Labour's debt crisis."
Over the next few weeks, Department of Health officials and executives at the 22 trusts will develop detailed plans for dealing with the crisis. Their proposals are expected to include significant cost–cutting and the renegotiation of PFI contracts.
Money will also be moved from NHS trusts that are in better financial shape to cover the debt costs at those that are struggling. However, officials are braced for the need to use Whitehall funds to bail out some hospitals.
Among the trusts which have contacted Mr Lansley to inform him of their severe financial problems are several London institutions, including South London Healthcare, Barking, Havering and Redbridge, and North Middlesex. Outside the capital, other trusts to have approached the health department include Wye Valley, Worcester Acute Hospitals, Mid Yorkshire, and Walsall.
After the general election last year, Mr Lansley ordered officials to establish why some NHS hospitals were under–performing. The health department is assessing the financial position of every hospital. It is understood that the PFI costs have emerged as a leading factor in poor patient care in some areas. The Health Secretary decided to disclose the list of hospitals in difficulty and is expected to announce the rescue plans for each trust next month.
Earlier in the year, The Daily Telegraph disclosed the extremely poor value offered by many PFI schemes. Taxpayers are having to pay more than £200billion for schools, hospitals and other projects whose capital value is little more than £50 billion. In one example, a hospital in Bromley, south east London, will ultimately cost the NHS £1.2billion, more than 10 times what it is worth. Another hospital was charged £52,000 for maintenance that cost £750. The annual cost of the schemes is almost £400 for each household.
The public payments for PFI deals are typically linked to inflation and therefore the cost to taxpayers has increased by up to a third since the beginning of the credit crisis, according to the National Audit Office. Last month, MPs on the Treasury select committee effectively called for a moratorium on new PFI projects, which it said were "like a drug" as the costs were not apparent at the outset. George Osborne, the Chancellor, has tightened the rules on the deals.
Earlier this year, John Healey, the shadow health secretary, admitted in an interview that Labour ministers had failed when negotiating the multi–million pound schemes for hospitals. "There is definitely a case for saying we were poor at PFI, poor at negotiating PFI contracts at the outset," he said.
Companies who run PFI schemes boast profit margins of up to 71 per cent on the projects, but have come under growing pressure from MPs and ministers to return some of their "windfall profits".
Cash-strapped NHS hospital paid chief £3,163 a day for 141 days' work
The NHS paid a hospital chief executive £3,163 a day – nearly twice as much as a nurse takes home in a month, figures reveal. Derek Smith received £387,220 for the 141 days he worked on a temporary basis as boss of the cash-strapped Dorset County Hospital.
Mr Smith’s massive daily rate hit the headlines in July last year after hospital accounts showed he was paid £248,041 for 97 days’ work – or £2,557 a day – during the 2009/10 financial year. But the final tally shows the NHS stumped up a further £139,179 for the remaining 44 days he worked at the hospital in Dorchester. That is the equivalent of £3,163 a day – £606 a day more than his previous rate. The accounts for 2010/2011 show that in addition he was paid £10,793 in expenses.
The hospital was £5.1million in the red when Mr Smith was hired and has since reduced staffing levels through natural wastage to cut costs. Most nurses earn around £1,800 a month after tax.
The figures also show that an interim director of finance hired by the same hospital was paid £280,621 for 201 days work, or £1,396 a day, in 2010/2011.
Simon Newell, a spokesman for Unison, the UK’s largest union, said: ‘Staff at the hospital will be shocked to learn of this continuing saga. It is absolutely outrageous. ‘The idea that you pay a manager £139,000 for just 44 days’ work – and that’s excluding expenses – when the hospital is desperate to save money is ludicrous. ‘This has gone up from what was calculated less than a year ago at £2,557 a day. That’s nearly a 25 per cent increase.
‘To then claim his expenses as well Mr Smith is adding insult to injury. Most nurses earn around £1,800 a month after tax and to see someone earning hundreds of pounds more than that for just one day will be galling. ‘I can’t see how anyone can justify this use of taxpayers’ money.’ Mr Newell calculated that Mr Smith’s rate of pay meant he was worth more than 73 full-time hospital cleaners or 40 staff nurses.
At least 1,600 NHS chief executives and managers are paid more than the Prime Minister – with average pay at £158,800 beating David Cameron’s annual salary of £142,500, according to figures released by Income Data Services earlier this year. Average salaries for chief executives have risen by 5 per cent in the last year – nearly twice the rise given to nurses.
Mr Smith, 62, who came with 30 years NHS experience, joined the hospital in September 2009 and left in July last year. He was ‘provided’ for the role by Durrow Ltd – a health management consultancy where he is described as interim chief executive. A spokesman said he did not wish to comment.
The most recent accounts show the hospital trust has reduced its £5.1million deficit to £3.3million. Mr Smith was in post for the first three months of the period when the deficit began to shrink.
Jeffrey Ellwood, chairman of the NHS trust, said: ‘We now have a strong permanent executive team in place and they, along with the hard work of all staff, are getting the hospital back on a firm footing. We are now planning for a £700,000 surplus in the current year.’
The final death-blow for a vast British boondoggle
The idea of computerizing all data on people gives Leftists erections. It represent CONTROL over people for them. The fact that most large computer projects fail does not deter them
Ministers are to axe Labour’s disastrous £12billion NHS computer scheme. The Coalition will today announce it is putting a halt to years of scandalous waste of taxpayers’ money on a system that never worked. It will cut its losses and ‘urgently’ dismantle the National Programme for IT – a monument to Whitehall folly during Labour’s 13 years in power.
The biggest civilian IT project of its kind in the world, it has already squandered at least £12.7billion. Some estimates put the cost far higher. Analysts say the sum would have paid the salaries of more than 60,000 nurses for a decade.
The announcement follows strong criticism from MPs who accused Labour of wasting a further £500million of taxpayers’ money on a failed bid to set up a network of regional Fire Brigade control centres. And it comes as Chancellor George Osborne was warned he faces a £12billion black hole in his deficit reduction plan – the same amount as that lost to the NHS scheme.
Following an official review, the ‘one size fits all’ IT project will be replaced by much cheaper regional initiatives, with hospitals and GPs choosing the IT system they need. And a new national watchdog will be established to ensure such huge sums can never again be thrown away on uncosted projects.
Labour’s National Programme for IT included a range of schemes to modernise the Health Service, including a national email system and the ability to transfer X-rays and prescriptions electronically.
It also included the ‘electronic care record’, a process allowing hospitals and surgeries to share patients’ medical information, but which was criticised by the British Medical Association for putting privacy at risk.
The decision to accelerate the dismantling of the scheme has been made by Health Secretary Andrew Lansley and Francis Maude, the Minister for the Cabinet Office. It follows new advice produced by the Major Projects Authority, set up by the Coalition to review Labour’s big financial commitments to see if they provide value for money.
The authority said the IT scheme, set up in 2002, is not fit to provide services to the NHS – which as part of austerity measures has to make savings of £20billion by 2014/15. It concluded: ‘There can be no confidence that the programme has delivered or can be delivered as originally conceived.’
'A monumental waste of money': Judge's verdict on council who took firm to court for giving away a CARDBOARD BOX (and it cost taxpayer £15k)
When company boss Linda Bracey gave away spare cardboard boxes to a passer-by, it didn’t seem like a situation to warrant the attentions of a court. But her local council took a different view, prosecuting her in a case branded by a judge as a ‘monumental waste of public time and money’.
The authority ran up legal bills of £15,000 after accusing Mrs Bracey of ‘illegally disposing of business waste’ when she handed over the boxes following a request from a member of the public.
It brought the action after one of the boxes, bearing the company’s name, was found among other rubbish on a fly-tipping site.
Mrs Bracey, 54, said that if successful, the prosecution would have seen supermarkets and other businesses effectively banned from giving away spare boxes to customers who might want to carry their shopping or use them for packing when moving house.
But, following a trial during which Judge Alex Milne QC called for an outbreak of ‘common sense’, a jury at Snaresbrook Crown Court acquitted her company, Electro Signs, in Walthamstow, East London, of breaching environmental protection laws. Giving directions to the jury, Judge Milne said: ‘Were the cardboard boxes in question waste? ‘Packaging such as boxes received by a company like Electro Signs is not waste when it is delivered to the company. Nor do boxes become waste as soon as the contents are removed.
‘If a company chooses to keep and re-use boxes, they remain the property of the company and an asset. If the company keeps boxes for its own use but then chooses to give or sell boxes to another party that is not discarding them.’
Following the hearing Mrs Bracey, a mother of three, labelled as ‘mad’ Waltham Forest Council’s decision to spend £15,000 on a court case over a cardboard box. ‘It is a ridiculous situation, because not only are the council, as the judge said, wasting taxpayers’ money, but also preventing the re-using of a cardboard box, since the company that gives a person a box could be facing prosecution. The world’s gone mad. ‘The ironic thing is that the council brought the action against us under the Environmental Protection Act.
‘The council had ample opportunity over many, many court hearings to stop this. It didn’t have to go this far.’
Faisal Saifee, Mrs Bracey’s barrister, added that the prosecution did not allege the fly-tipping, in October last year, was carried out by the company, which makes neon signs, or any of its employees.
Waltham Forest councillor Clyde Loakes described the outcome of the case as ‘incredibly disappointing’. Mr Loakes added: ‘Our residents are fed up with people treating our streets as a rubbish dump, which is why this council has carried out a well-publicised drive to wipe out environmental crime.’
Global warming and the twisting of British children's minds
The Times Atlas Of The World, regularly updated since the Victorian age, proudly presents itself as ‘the most authoritative atlas in the world’. But its latest hefty edition, published at the eye-watering price of £150, has become the focus of a bizarre climate change row.
The new atlas shows the ice in Greenland — the northern hemisphere’s largest ice cap — to be melting so fast that, since 1999, nearly a sixth of it has vanished. An area the size of Britain and Ireland combined, once covered in ice and snow, has now become ‘green and ice free’.
The U.S. climate-change sceptic science blog Watts Up With That pointed out that one reason why satellite images might have shown such a huge ice-loss was that a lot of Greenland’s coastal ice sheet has been blackened by soot and volcanic ash, so that it no longer shows up white on photographs from space.
Richard Betts, head of Climate Impact at the UK Met Office — who actually wrote the part of the Times Atlas text which covers climate change — then insisted on another blog that he had not been responsible for ‘any of that Greenland rubbish’.
Britain’s leading polar ice experts at the Scott Polar Research Institute said recent satellite images of Greenland made clear that there are numerous glaciers and permanent ice cover where the Times Atlas shows ice-free conditions and the emergence of land. ‘There is to our knowledge no support for this claim in the published scientific literature,’ they said.
So one of the world’s most respected reference books, it seems, has been caught out perpetrating what amounts to yet more propaganda for the belief in global warming.
One of the most disturbing features of this is that copies of the new atlas may soon be found in school libraries, where it will be cited by teachers as yet more evidence that climate change is now dramatically changing the world we live in.
With active encouragement from the Government, whole generations of school-children have now had the apocalyptic threat of climate change pushed down their throats — not just in science classes, but in almost any subject you can think of (questions on the need to fight global warming have even cropped up in English GCSE papers).
In geography, the present curriculum no longer concentrates on countries, continents, rivers, mountains or cities. Instead, it insists that pupils should learn about global warming and climate change and the likely effects of rising sea levels.
The propaganda is all-encompassing. The Climate Change Schools Project, an outfit that exists in partnership with the Environment Agency and other government-funded bodies, promises on its website ‘to put global warming at the heart of the national curriculum ...... We want schools to become the “hub” of excellence in climate change teaching, learning and positive action in their local communities.’
When David Miliband was Labour’s education minister, he ordered that copies of Al Gore’s propaganda film An Inconvenient Truth should be sent to every school in the country. A High Court judge decided that the ‘apocalyptic vision’ of global warming presented in the film was politically partisan and not an impartial analysis of the science of climate change. Mr Justice Barton ruled that the film contained nine errors so serious that the schools must be issued with corrections.
The Government’s response was to compile a 77-page document so long that scarcely a single school in the country used it and no pupil was any the wiser.
And now the new Times Atlas can be added to the approved propaganda list, to ensure that once again school students are being fed with the right-on, politically correct message — even though in this case it has been so damningly challenged by real scientific experts.
In a wider perspective, this embarrassing blunder by a commercial publishing house might not seem anything like so significant as all those grievous errors identified last year in the latest report of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the body that once prided itself as being the most prestigious source of authority on global warming in the world.
Few predictions of the IPCC’s 2007 report drew more attention, for instance, than its claims that, thanks to global warming, most of the Himalayan glaciers would have disappeared within 30 years; 40 per cent of the Amazon rainforest would similarly have vanished; while Africa could expect mass-famine as its crop yields were halved.
All these claims were eventually revealed as not to have been based on science at all. Like many others in that IPCC report, they were no more than reckless scare stories, dreamed up by environmental activists and pressure groups.
But the fact that responsible scientists who are by no means climate sceptics should have been so anxious to point out the errors in the Times Atlas is perhaps an indication that some of the lessons of those blunders by the IPCC have struck home.
The more responsible members of the ‘warmist’ scientific community seem now rather more on their guard than they were against the peddling of baseless scare stories to promote the case for global warming.
When so much now hangs on whether or not there is genuinely reliable evidence for man-made climate change, it is more vital than ever that the claims made to support that change are grounded in proper science.
The Climate Change Act passed by the Labour government in 2008 threatens to become the most expensive piece of legislation in history as we try to reduce our carbon emissions by 80 per cent, building all-but-useless windmills and trying to find carbon-free energy sources at an unimaginable cost of £18bn every year for the next 50 years.
Our politicians still believe this is the best way to fight the warming threat. But too much evidence has come to light in recent years to suggest that much of their belief in global warming may be little more than a vastly over-blown scare.
If there is cheer to be derived from this story of the Times Atlas error, it might be that the people quickest to knock it on the head were scientists who still believe in proper scientific evidence before trying to scare the world witless. We’re going to need much more of that if the world — and our schoolchildren — are going to be returned to sanity on the matter of climate change.
Exposed: The health drinks that don't live up to the hype
Comment from Britain
Claims that health drinks help slimming, boost digestion and lubricate joints have been rejected by consumer experts.
Britons spend more than £700million a year on ‘functional’ drinks and food. But research by Which?, published today, suggests that using these products to treat ailments is often a waste of money.
The consumer group said the slimming drink Aspire claims ‘you can burn over 200 calories a can’. The firm’s website boasts that Aspire, which contains several stimulants, ‘raises your body’s metabolism and suppresses appetite’.
Which? tracked down research which found that those who drank it did indeed burn off an average of 209 calories over a three-hour period. But this was only 27 calories more than someone who had consumed a drink making no calorie-burning claims. Twenty-seven calories is the equivalent of one bite of a chocolate digestive biscuit. Aspire costs £1.69 for 250ml.
The consumer group was also critical of NeuroTrim, a drink which promises weight loss support. Ingredients include a fibre gel the company calls LuraLean. In August, the Advertising Standards Authority ruled that a website claim that the drink was ‘designed to promote weight loss’ was misleading.
The orange cordial ActivJuice for Joints, which costs £7.39 for 500ml, contains glucosamine. It claims this will ‘help maintain healthy joints, bones, muscles, tendons and ligaments’. But Which? pointed to a finding by the European Food Safety Authority, which has decided there is ‘not enough evidence’ to back up such claims.
A host of probiotic yoghurt drinks, such as Actimel and Yakult, have in the past made claims that they can help boost digestion and the beneficial bacteria that exist in the gut. But Which? said the EFSA has rejected general claims linking prebiotics and probiotics to improved digestive health. The brands have submitted new evidence to justify their claims, but have had to change their marketing claims in the meantime.
Which? said that some health drinks do offer genuine benefits, particularly those designed to reduce cholesterol levels.
British Internet troll jailed for posting abuse about dead teenagers
We read:
"An internet troll who targeted the grieving families of dead teenagers has been jailed.
Sean Duffy, 25, targeted Facebook tribute pages and posted videos on YouTube taunting the dead and their families. One of his targets was Natasha MacBryde, 15, who threw herself under a train after suffering bullying.
Duffy, who is unemployed and did not know any of his victims, posted an anonymous video on YouTube called Tasha the Tank Engine, which her family said left them feeling "shocked, outraged and physically sick".
He pleaded guilty to two counts of sending malicious communications relating to Natasha. He asked for three other cases of Facebook trolling to be taken into consideration when he appeared before magistrates in Reading, southern England.
Jailing Duffy for 18 weeks, the maximum possible sentence, the chair of the bench, Paul Warren, said: "You have caused untold distress to already grieving friends and family. "The offences are so serious only a custodial sentence could be justified."
Duffy was banned from social-networking sites for five years. He will also have to inform police of any phone he has or buys that comes with internet access.
He might have gotten away with it in America on free speech grounds but maybe not: It comes very close to libel.
21 September, 2011
Wait weeks to see a GP: Some patients face delays of more than a fortnight for appointment with family doctor
Many patients are having to wait up to three weeks or more to see their GP, a survey has revealed. A poll of more than 2,000 patients has found that well over two-thirds are not able to see their family doctor within two days. More than a quarter cannot get an appointment within a week, including some who are made to wait longer than a fortnight or even three weeks.
There are concerns that waiting times have steadily increased ever since the Government scrapped a bonus last year which encouraged family doctors to see patients within 48 hours. In addition, GPs say they are being forced to spend increasing amounts of their time filling in forms, attending meetings and ‘appraising’ themselves.
Patient groups say the situation is ‘abysmal’. They warn that in some parts of the country people count themselves as ‘very lucky’ if they manage to secure an appointment within three weeks.
The poll, commissioned by the Daily Mail, found that fewer than a third – 30 per cent – were able to get an appointment within 48 hours the last time they had needed to see a GP. Forty-three per cent were made to wait between two days and a week. More than a quarter – 27 per cent – waited longer than a week, according to the poll carried out by insurers Aviva Health UK. This included 5 per cent who waited longer than a fortnight, of whom 2 per cent were made to wait longer than three weeks.
If the results of this survey are representative of Britain, it means that more than one million patients routinely wait longer than three weeks to see their family doctor.
Joyce Robbins, of Patient Concern, said: ‘It is a completely unsatisfactory situation. It is abysmal. I myself would normally allow three weeks to see my own doctor. My practice in London serves 12,000 patients and people are very lucky if they manage to get an appointment within three weeks.’
David Stout, director of the NHS Confederation’s Primary Care Trust Network, which represents primary care trusts, said: ‘Many GPs successfully manage to see and treat their patients within reasonable time.
‘But with the removal of government targets for GP access and growing financial pressures throughout the NHS, it is not surprising there will be an increase in some places in the numbers of patients waiting longer.’
A spokesman for the British Medical Association, the doctors’ union, said GPs ‘always strive to meet demand, but the reasons why some people may wait longer than a week for an appointment will vary’.
It's heating or eating in winter for us, retirees warn London Mayor
British electricity bills are heavily laden with government charges used to support Warmist projects
Pensioners today urged Boris Johnson to tackle fuel poverty as it emerged that more vulnerable people than ever are struggling to pay their energy bills.
More than one in four people in the capital are currently unable to meet their energy bills as rising prices and welfare reforms threaten to send even more into fuel poverty.
A report by London Councils today warns that rising fuel prices means that fuel poverty could be a key issue this winter.
A group of pensioners submitted a petition to City Hall last week calling on the Mayor to do more to assist vulnerable people across the capital who are unable to pay their bills.
Fuel poverty in London is defined as when a household has to spend more than a tenth of its income to "maintain an adequate level of warmth" after housing costs. George Durack, 87, a retired post office worker who chairs the Islington Pensioners' Forum, today warned that elderly people could die if something is not done to combat the problem.
He said: "Something needs to be done about this. They are reducing the fuel poverty allowance and a lot of people are going to struggle. "There are pensioners dying because of fuel poverty. It's horrible. A lot of pensioners are really going to feel it this winter. The cost of living has already gone up so much and this just makes things much worse."
Mr Durack added: "It has got to the point where, for a lot of pensioners, you either heat or you eat. People are going without meals - it is that bad. Something needs to be done and that is why we are taking our petition to City Hall."
Between 2004 and 2009 domestic electricity prices increased by over 75 per cent and gas prices increased by over 122 per cent. A number of suppliers including British Gas and NPower, this year announced further price rises.
Catherine West, chairwoman of London Councils' Transport and Environment Committee, said: "Fuel poverty is a real and growing danger to low-income families in the capital. With rising living costs and fuel bills, more households face a miserable winter fighting off the cold.
"While boroughs will do what they can to support families with advice and through energy efficiency schemes like Re:New, we also need Ofgem to bear down more aggressively on energy companies who are benefiting from lower wholesale prices."
If it's good enough for Eton: State comprehensive sees grades rocket after headmaster cuts class sizes to 15 pupils
These relatively small gains are entirely consistent with a placebo ("Hawthorne") effect rather than any effect due to class size itself
A comprehensive has seen its pupils’ grades rocket after cutting class sizes in English and maths to levels normally found in private schools. Headmaster Adam Dare slashed the number of 11-year-olds in these lessons from 26 to 15. Pupils studying English GCSEs have equally small classes.
As a result, the number of pupils achieving five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C – including English and maths – has risen from 35 per cent to 43 per cent this year. The A* to C pass rate for English has increased from 41 per cent to 59 per cent.
Mr Dare has employed extra teachers at King Richard School in Paulsgrove, Portsmouth, to enable him to honour the class size pledge.
The secondary school used money it received from government funds for specialist status, deprivation and free school meals.
The head said: ‘If you were at Eton like our Prime Minister you wouldn’t expect to be in a class of 30. If small class sizes are good enough for Mr Cameron, they’re good enough for our kids.’
He added: ‘I am in no doubt that our class size guarantee has contributed to an improvement in grades. ‘The core of good progress is good teaching but it’s hard to provide good teaching in a big class. ‘Children need individual support and to have their voices heard in the classroom. If all you are expecting from students is a C grade, you can afford to have class sizes of 30-odd. ‘But if you want them to achieve their full potential and aim for the As and A*s, less is more.’
This year King Richard School, which has 760 pupils, recorded 120 A* and A grades at GCSE, with 14 students achieving five or more A* and As. Just seven students achieved five or more A*s and As last year.
Mr Dare said that in a perfect world he would apply the small class guarantee to all subjects. He has applied it to Year Seven to give pupils ‘the best possible start’ in the basics and to Year Eleven because of the importance of their exams.
Year Eleven pupil Lily-May McQuilken, 15, said: ‘Last year there were 26 of us in an English lesson and our teacher didn’t have time to come round to everybody. Now that has changed and it feels much more personal. It has also given me extra confidence to speak out in class.’
Figures from the Department for Education show the average class size in state secondary schools is 20.4.
Schools are often criticised for focusing on lifting the D students to a C to improve league table ratings. But Mr Dare said he is aiming for the top grades so his school-leavers can aspire to the best universities. 'We want more of our kids thinking "when I leave here I'm going to go to University College London or Cambridge".'
Walking through traffic fumes 'can raise risk of heart attack for six hours' (?)
This is a very ambitious study, correlating the TIME of heart attacks with the known level of pollution in the air at the time. Journal article here.
It seems unlikely that epidemiological data can answer the question asked. A firm conclusion would depend on the time of each person's heart attack being known and accurately given in official records -- a very dubious assumption. On the other side of the correlation, the air quality data is taken from the UK National Air Quality Archive. Is that archive specific enough to record what exposure EACH PERSON had to pollution? Surely not. Just being indoors versus outdoors could have a large effect.
The only cautious conclusion we could draw from the results reported is that they are a random walk
Higher levels of air pollution can increase the risk of having a heart attack for up to six hours after exposure, warn UK researchers. Even moderate levels of pollution from traffic carry an extra risk, according to a new study in the British Medical Journal.
The findings come from a detailed analysis of almost 80,000 heart attack cases and the level of pollution to which they were exposed.
Air pollution is currently estimated to reduce the life expectancy of everyone in the UK by an average of seven to eight months, probably by affecting the heart and lungs.
In the latest study Krishnan Bhaskaran, an epidemiologist from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and colleagues found rising air pollution was linked to a rise in heart attacks up to six hours after exposure. However, there was no increased risk after the six-hour period, with the number of heart attacks then falling to a lower level than expected.
The researchers reviewed 79,288 heart attack cases from 2003 to 2006 and exposure, by the hour, to pollution levels. They used the UK National Air Quality Archive to investigate the levels of specific pollutants in the atmosphere. These included pollutant particles (PM10), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulphur dioxide (SO2) and ozone. Higher levels of PM10 – tiny toxic particles - and NO2 are well-known markers of traffic related pollution from vehicle exhaust fumes, said Dr Bhaskaran.
National air pollution warnings on weather reports alert people to changes using bands ranging from low, to moderate, to high, to very high. People who are sensitive to air pollution are advised to spend less time outdoors during high and very high episodes of air pollution, and not to exercise, along with those suffering asthma and heart disease.
Dr Bhaskaran estimated there would be an extra five per cent risk of a heart attack caused by a change in air pollution from ‘low’ to ‘moderate’ in the following six hours. The risk would increase further during ‘high’ and ‘very high’ episodes but they are uncommon in Britain, he added.
Dr Bhaskaran said the data suggested that after the first six hour period following pollution peaks, the number of heart attacks was lower than expected. Some people who were going to have a heart attack in that later period may have simply had their heart attack brought forward by a few hours as result of the pollution exposure, he said.
‘We know from many studies that there are more deaths when pollution levels are higher, but whether heart attacks make a major contribution to this is not clear.
‘Although we found a short period of increased risk of heart attacks in the few hours after air pollution peaks, the risk was small and had little net impact on the overall number of heart attacks’ he added.
Professor Jeremy Pearson, Associate Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation, which co-funded the study, said: ‘This large-scale study shows conclusively that your risk of having a heart attack goes up temporarily, for around six hours, after breathing in higher levels of vehicle exhaust.
‘We know that pollution can have a major effect on your heart health, possibly because it can "thicken" the blood to make it more likely to clot, putting you at higher risk of a heart attack.
‘Our advice to patients remains the same – if you’ve been diagnosed with heart disease, try to avoid spending long periods outside in areas where there are likely to be high traffic pollution levels, such as on or near busy roads.’
The study looked at heart attacks in England and Wales.
Electric-shock therapy lifted me from the hell of depression
There is a strong body of thought that the good attention that medical staff give to the patient while conducting the electroshock procedure is the curative influence -- a type of placebo effect. The fact that a series of treatments is needed before any progress is seen supports that view
Life for Tania Gergel could not have been more thrilling. Captivated by academic study, she quickly became one of the highest-achieving students on her Classics degree course at Bristol University, finding time to play percussion with several bands and orchestras, too. Tania, then 19, also met and fell in love with Matthew, a maths student, now her husband.
Then tragedy struck: the couple just returned from their first holiday together when Tania was told that her best friend, Ali, had been killed in a car accident. ‘It was a terrible shock — as though a screen suddenly came down between me and the rest of the world,’ recalls Tania, now 38, from North London. ‘After the funeral, when I went back to university, I felt detached from everyone. My mind had started racing and I couldn’t sleep.’
Within a month, Tania had stopped studying altogether. ‘I remember sitting in a common room waiting for a lecture. It felt like everything was swimming around me and I had to get out of the building.’
Tania was experiencing depression, specifically an episode of bipolar disorder, previously known as manic depression. According to the NHS, around 500,000 Britons have been diagnosed as bipolar, although recent studies suggest the true incidence may be more than five million. Sufferers typically swing between two phases — manic and depressive.
During the manic phase they may experience feelings of euphoria, talk at extreme speed and go for days without food or sleep. The depressive phase is characterised by severe low mood, a loss of sense of purpose and, at its most extreme, thoughts of suicide.
Several weeks after her friend’s death, Tania sought help from her GP who prescribed tricyclic anti-depressants — the standard treatment at that time. ‘It was a shock to be diagnosed with depression,’ she recalls. ‘When the doctor prescribed medication, I realised something was very wrong with me.
‘I’ve since learned that my grandmother had been hospitalised twice for psychiatric depression: she had heard voices.’ (There is strong evidence for a genetic vulnerability to developing the illness.)
However, after five months of taking anti-depressants, Tania was forced to acknowledge they were having no effect. ‘The depression got worse. I was getting two hours’ sleep at night, if that, invariably with sleeping pills involved. ‘I gave my pills to Matthew to look after as I felt I couldn’t trust myself any more not to take them all as an overdose.’
Eventually, Tania went as a voluntary inpatient to a private psychiatric hospital in London, where she stayed for two months. But despite being given every type of major antidepressant, nothing seemed to help and Tania and her family became desperate.
Then, by chance, Tania met a friend of a friend who was a psychiatrist at London’s Charter Nightingale Hospital (now Capio Nightingale). ‘He said it was clear the drugs weren’t working and suggested I come off all the pills and have electroconvulsive treatment.’
Many will recoil at the thought of electroconvulsive treatment (ECT), which was famously depicted in the 1975 Jack Nicholson film One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. But it is considered an effective treatment for severe depression which is resistant to medication and talking therapies such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.
About 20 per cent of all depression sufferers fall into this category, of which more than half would benefit from ECT, says Dr Cosmo Hallstrom, consultant psychiatrist at the Royal College Of Psychiatrists in London.
The treatment involves sending an electric current through the brain, under general anaesthetic, to cause a fit. Although it is not exactly known how it works, one theory is that the fit triggers certain brain chemicals, including the ‘feel-good’ chemical, serotonin, which is thought to be depleted in patients with severe depression.
The treatment was first introduced around 70 years ago but it fell out of favour following the introduction of antidepressant medication in the Fifties and Sixties.
In the past, ECT has been used indiscriminately, at times under duress and without general anaesthetic. As a result, it remains the most controversial treatment in modern psychiatry.
Indeed earlier this year the British Psychological Society called for it to be banned, describing the treatment as ‘inhumane and degrading’, and having only a short-term effect on people with manic depression.
However, many clinical studies show ECT is significantly more effective than antidepressants in inducing a speedy remission for severe treatment-resistant depression, says Dr Hallstrom. ‘It can cure a particular bout of depression — although it does not prevent relapses,’ he says.
Indeed, it is even recommended by the National Institute For Health And Clinical Excellence (Nice).
In 2008 Nice published guidelines on the management of bipolar disorder, which recommended ECT ‘to achieve rapid and short-term improvement of severe symptoms after an adequate trial of other treatment options has proven ineffective and/or when the condition is considered to be potentially life-threatening’.
Tania’s brother, then a practising psychiatrist, had himself carried out ECT many times and told her he had seen it have remarkable results. ‘He was very much in favour,’ she says. ‘You know your own brother has your best interests at heart.’
‘It wasn’t what people may think — being restrained in some sort of straitjacket. It was all very civilised. You go under a general anaesthetic for a few minutes and that’s really all you know.’
Dr Hallstrom says patients see an improvement after six twice-weekly treatments. Tania started to feel things changing after five. ‘It was a very sudden thing. I just woke up one day and thought: “I feel like something’s lifted.” Suddenly you’re released from internal torment.’
Six months after completing her course of ECT, Tania returned to her studies and got a First.
The treatment is not risk-free — half of those who undergo it experience side-effects, such as confusion and disorientation, after each treatment. ‘But this tends to fade after a few days,’ says Dr Hallstrom.
A trial is under way in Australia on a new form of ECT, which involves running an electric current through the brain for less time, and has been shown to have less of an effect on memory.
Tania had some memory loss in the period during which she received ECT, ‘but nothing really substantial’ she says. Indeed, after university she went on to gain a Masters and eventually a PhD in Classics, and fulfilled her dream of teaching.
For 11 years, she remained off medication and had no contact with any psychiatrist. Tania and Matthew married and had a daughter who is now seven.
ECT does not cure the problem for good, though, as Tania discovered. When her daughter was two, she became pregnant again. But then she miscarried, plunging her into a severe depression.
‘Within three weeks I was in hospital. My consultant psychiatrist suggested I try ECT again. It worked and after six treatments, all of a sudden I didn’t feel suicidal any more.’
Dr Hallstrom believes more people suffering with severe, medication-resistant depression should be given the option of ECT.‘It can be a lifesaver,’ he says.
Tania can only agree. ‘ECT won’t cure you, but it will get you out of the crisis state,’ she says. ‘Hands down I owe my life to ECT.’
NHS surgeon who needlessly amputated a woman's leg doesn't even get a warning, let alone any restrictions or penalty
As soon as I saw the headline to the article below, I thought: ANOTHER "overseas-trained" doctor. It seems I was right. There are many of them in the NHS
A surgeon who needlessly amputated a woman's leg in a shocking hospital blunder has escaped punishment from the General Medical Council. Amit Sinha, an orthopaedic consultant at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd, Bodelwyddan, carried out an above knee amputation on Michelle Richards' right leg in 2006 after diagnosing osteomyeltitis, a serious and potentially life-threatening bone infection.
Mrs Richards, from Towyn, Conwy, already had a below-the-knee amputation on the same leg in 1995, partially as a result of her spina bifida. But, after the operation, subsequent tests - carried out at the insistence of the mother-of-three - found no evidence of the disease and Mrs Richards was told: 'Sorry there's been a mistake.'
She then sued the surgeon's employer, the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, for medical negligence. At the turn of this year the health board paid out an undisclosed sum to Mrs Richards in an out-of-court settlement and she received a formal apology from chief executive Mary Burrows for the error. However she failed to receive a personal apology from the consultant.
In January, after the case was settled, she reported him to the GMC. But last month, in a letter from its investigation officer, Tariq Massod, the GMC said it would be taking 'no further action' against Mr Sinha, the Daily Post reported.
The GMC case examiners accepted that there was 'no evidence of infection' in the stump and that Mr Sinha had failed 'good medical practice' in not referring for a second opinion. They also said the amputation was not 'justified' and that his error could 'obviously be considered serious'.
'Having said that, this appears to be a single, isolated event and there is a possibility that the claimant may have undergone conversion to an above knee amputation due to subsequent neuropathic ulceration,' they added.
The case examiners went on to note that Mr Sinha had shown 'insight and remorse'. They considered issuing a 'warning' but felt this would be a 'disproportionate response'.
The finding has angered Mrs Richards. She told The Daily Post: 'The letter says Mr Sinha has 'shown remorse' but not to me. He has never apologised to me personally and as far as I can gather he still stands by his diagnosis. This is not even a rap around the knuckles.'
She was also furious at the 'insensitive assumption' that she may well have lost her leg anyway, as she says she cared for partially-amputated leg.
Before she lost the whole of her right leg she was mobile, could walk without the aid of a stick and push her grandchildren around in a pram. It was in 2005 that she began to experience pain and a rash in her 'stump' and was told amputation was the solution to stop the infection spreading.
'After the amputation I lost a lot of mobility and now need a stick to get around. I am now finding it difficult to play with my younger grandchildren the way I used to.'
A spokesman for the GMC told the MailOnline that it did not comment on individual cases.
Mr Sinha provided a written statement to the GMC through his representatives. It said: 'We would submit that this error of judgement is a single isolated incident and an unusual departure from Mr Sinha's practice. We note that the GMC's expert, Mr Macdonald, acknowledges that there is a possibility that 'patient A (Mrs Richards)' would have had to have undergone an above knee amputation at some stage in the future.'
A health board spokeswoman added: 'The GMC have, at the request of Mrs Richards, investigated her complaint against Mr Sinha and found that there is no case to answer therefore the matter is closed. 'A full investigation was carried out during the litigation process and an apology has been issued to Mrs Richards by the chief executive of the health board.'
British parents want more time with children (so much for Ms Jowell's working mum dogma!)
An overwhelming majority of parents want to spend more time at home with their young children. Asked in a survey if they agreed with the statement: ‘In an ideal world, one parent should stay home with the children’, more than 80 per cent of parents of all ages said ‘yes’.
In a bitterly ironic twist, the research was commissioned by MP Tessa Jowell for the Labour Party, which during 13 years in power repeatedly discouraged mothers from staying at home. Successive Cabinets in which Miss Jowell was a prominent minister pushed hard to persuade mothers of young children to go out to work. Her colleague Patricia Hewitt even described mothers of children under two who choose to stay at home as a ‘problem’.
The survey of 2,000 adults found ‘a yearning for traditional family values’, which many feel have disappeared, saying the ‘ideal’ family should have a mother and a father.
Many of those questioned called for a tax system ‘that rewards couples who stay together’ – a condemnation of Labour’s decision in 2000 to scrap the married couple’s tax allowance.
The report, from the consultancy Britain Thinks, reveals the devastating impact on family life of working parents.
Researchers said: ‘Mums often say they would have liked to have spent more time at home with their children in their younger years.’ It said mothers ‘valued time with their children’, adding: ‘Those who had needed to go back to work had some regrets.’
Deborah Mattinson, co-founder of Britain Thinks, said many mothers feel terrible guilt for returning to work just a few months after the birth of their baby. She said women would regularly become emotional and tearful during focus groups held as part of the research. They expressed their sadness that they wanted to enjoy a longer maternity leave, but simply had to go back to work to help pay the bills.
The report comes just days after a study by Unicef laid bare how exhausted parents are trying to buy their way out of guilt. It said many British parents are plying their children with expensive toys and gadgets in an attempt to make up for the lack of time spent together.
The Britain Thinks report also reveals the words those questioned would use to describe the ‘modern British family’. They are: ‘broken’, ‘juggling’, ‘hectic’, ‘fragmented’, ‘struggle’, ‘dysfunctional’, ‘disillusioned’, ‘diverse’, ‘under-pressure’, ‘skint’, ‘stressful’ and ‘stretched financially’. Just one person used the word ‘happy’.
Nearly one in three mothers with children as young as six months are working full-time, according to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics. Experts say it is the extreme pressure of the massive mortgages needed to buy a home which is forcing many women back to work.
Jill Kirby, a family expert and author of The Price Of Parenthood, said: ‘This survey shows how out of touch current political parties are with what families really need and what most women want. ‘They want more time with their children.’
Miss Jowell said the findings will ‘really help steer Labour’s policy review into family life’.
Ban teaching creationism at school, say British academics
The teaching of creationism should be outlawed in school science lessons, a group of leading scientists have said.
And the curriculum should be changed to ensure evolution is taught from when children start school, according to academics including Sir David Attenborough and Professor Richard Dawkins
Those behind the call for ‘evolution not creationism’ say teaching that God created the world is dangerous and must be prevented by law.
Drives by creationist groups at schools mean there is a sense of urgency, they add.
Evolution – the idea that we are shaped by advantageous genes being passed through generations over billions of years – does not feature in the national curriculum until the time of GCSEs.
The discussion of creationism and the theory of intelligent design – a view that evolution is fine-tuned by God – is encouraged but not part of the curriculum.
Prof Dawkins, a geneticist and author of the God Delusion, said last night: ‘We need to stop calling evolution a theory. It is as solidly demonstrated as any fact.’
Jack Valero, of Catholic Voices, said evolution should not be used to suggest God does not exist.
Dr Peter Saunders, of the Christian Medical Fellowship, said pupils should be taught to respect all views about how life began.
Self-important pen-pushers are neglecting the most vulnerable
By Janet Street Porter
Did the head of the Care Quality Commission, Cynthia Bowers (salary £200,000, pension fund currently £1,350,000) feel as angry as I did reading the coroner’s report on the death of Mary Roberts at Gwynedd Hospital in Bangor last week?
Admitted to A&E with a stomach bug, Mrs Roberts suffered a cardiac arrest the next day and died. Described as ‘a full circle of disaster following disaster’ by the local MP, last week an inquest heard how Mrs Roberts’ last hours in an NHS establishment couldn’t have been any worse. The coroner called the catalogue of errors ‘appalling’.
Twice a nurse asked a doctor for help yet nobody checked on Mrs Roberts as her condition worsened, there was no care plan and her medical notes were missing. This was a preventable death and no apology can recompense grieving relatives.
Thank goodness I do not live near Gwynedd Hospital, but many of my elderly relatives do and the saga of Mary Roberts will distress them greatly. Elfyn Llwyd, leader of Plaid Cymru at Westminster, says this story is ‘reminiscent of the Third World’.
If only it were an isolated case, but it’s not. Many of you emailed and wrote to me with similar stories last June when I said Cynthia Bowers was a disgrace and should resign. The CQC is supposed to monitor standards and ensure scandals such as Mary Roberts don’t happen in modern Britain.
Unfortunately, they are common, in spite of over-paid bureaucrats, self-important quangos and endless inquiries. Last week, a House of Commons inquiry revealed the awful truth behind Cynthia Bower’s regime at CQC. The commission carried out 70 per cent FEWER inspections in the second half of 2010-11 compared to the year before!
Asked to make cuts and take on the extra burden of registering providers of social care, dentists and private ambulance services, the CQC prioritised box-ticking and form filling at the expense of its core activity: ensuring standards are met in hospitals and care homes.
Told to recruit 70 extra inspectors, it took eight months to fill the much-needed posts. MPs said the CQC had been ‘distracted’ and had failed to alert the Government and public to the fact they were swamped with extra work and not doing their job properly.
During those six months when inspections plummeted, how many more deaths were there like Mrs Roberts? Stephen Dorrell, who chaired the inquiry, said on the radio it was unacceptable that patients now accept second best and asked the CQC to focus on central issues.
Exactly — if Cynthia Bower was running a factory making anything from cupcakes to cars, it would have gone out of business ages ago, while she sat in the back office making sure the paper clips were lined up and the stationary order was up to scratch.
Because the recipients of the CQC’s standards are generally the old, those with learning difficulties and extra social needs, the concept of care has become rather elastic. Battery chickens have higher standards of care, it seems.
In its annual report, the CQC says 51 per cent of nursing homes and NHS hospitals do not comply with basic standards of care. Spot checks on geriatric wards showed one in ten failed to treat patients with dignity or feed them properly.
The CQC says it will visit all care providers annually and that the number of inspections has risen to more than 2,500 between April and June, compared with just 886 between October and December last year. It is hiring another 100 inspectors — hopefully, the recruitment process can be speeded up.
Earlier this year, Cynthia Bowers failed to spot that Southern Cross — the leading private care home provider — was in difficulty. She did not respond to a whistleblower who contacted the CQC over horrific abuse at Winterbourne House near Bristol, filmed for an edition of Panorama, which resulted in staff being arrested and the home closed.
Dereliction in the care of the vulnerable should be addressed by a charismatic patient’s champion — not a professional pen-pusher and bureaucrat, who last week was addressing yet another conference in Westminster, when she could have been visiting unannounced a sub-standard NHS hospital somewhere in the UK.
Cynthia Bowers must resign — and hand over to someone who puts people before pamphlets, care before quotas and results before damage limitation.
A wealthy family man was arrested on suspicion of murder yesterday after allegedly stabbing a burglar to death with his own knife.
Businessman Vincent Cooke, 39, was relaxing when he heard a knock at the front door of his detached home.
When he answered he was confronted by two men, at least one armed with a knife, who threatened him and tried to force their way into the £350,000 house in the Cheshire stockbroker belt.
With his wife and young son due home any minute, Mr Cooke fought desperately to keep the men out. In the struggle burglar Raymond Jacob, 37, was stabbed with his own knife and fell to the ground fatally injured. The second intruder fled.
Minutes later Mr Cooke’s wife, Karen, 35, and 12-year-old son Anthony arrived and watched in horror as the raider lay dying.
The incident happened in Bramhall, which boasts millionaire footballers, soap stars and TV presenters as residents.
It is the third time in six months that intruders have been stabbed to death by homeowners. The killings come after the Government pledged to bring in legislation which clarified the law on self-defence in England.
Justice Secretary Ken Clarke promised that householders who used ‘whatever force necessary’ on intruders in their homes would not be committing a criminal offence.
Last night Mr Cooke, who runs a same day courier and logistics business, was being questioned by detectives while his stunned family were being comforted by relatives.
He and his wife drive luxury cars, a gold Maserati and a silver Range Rover both with personalised registration plates, and detectives will be investigating whether they were targeted by the raiders for their wealth.
They will also examine whether the two men were known to Mr Cooke or had done business with him.
But sources close to the case were adamant that Mr Cooke is an ‘upstanding family man who was protecting his property and fearful for his family’s safety’.
A police source said last night: ‘At this moment it looks as if Mr Cooke was confronted at the door of his home by two men, at least one of whom was believed to have been armed with a knife. Officers are examining the possibility that the dead man was stabbed with this knife.’
The gender-free British passport: UK travellers may no longer have to declare their sex, to spare feelings of 'transgender people'
Britain is preparing to rip up centuries-old rules by introducing passports which do not contain details of the holder’s sex.
The move, following pressure from the Lib Dems, is designed to spare transgender people and those who have both male and female sexual organs from having to tick ‘male’ or ‘female’ on their travel papers.
Currently, everybody must identify themselves as a man or woman, even when they are undergoing a sex-change operation or if they are considered ‘intersex’.
But with the Lib Dems promising to be ‘fierce champions of equality’, the Home Office has begun a consultation on changing the rules.
To satisfy international laws, the passport would still list a category titled ‘sex’, but would then contain a simple ‘X’ for everybody. Supporters say it will solve the problem of embarrassing situations at border controls, where people whose sex appears to differ from that in their passport are grilled for long periods by guards.
But some Home Office officials are concerned the change could make life harder for the already stretched UK Border Agency by giving them one fewer piece of information to work from.
Last night, the Home Office said: ‘We are exploring with international partners and relevant stakeholders the security implications of gender not being displayed in the passport.’
Home Office Minister Lynne Featherstone is under pressure to act from her fellow Lib Dem MPs.
One backbench MP, Julian Huppert, said: ‘There does not seem to be a need for identity documents of any kind to have gender information. It is not a very good biometric; it is roughly a 50:50 split.
Military ID, such as the MOD90, which obviously can have quite a high security clearance, contains no gender information. That might be what we should look at.’
Mrs Featherstone – who has just announced plans for gay weddings – has made a string of promises committing the Government to do more for transgender people.
While on my travels as a champion for women’s rights, I am and will be a champion for gay rights too. Britain must not get complacent. We are a world leader for gay rights, but… there is still more that we must do.
She said: ‘The UK Government is totally committed to creating a society that is fair for everyone. ‘We are committed to tackling prejudice and discrimination against transgender people at home and around the world. We need concerted government action to tear down barriers and help to build a fairer society for transgender people.’
And she said in a speech on Saturday: ‘While on my travels as a champion for women’s rights, I am and will be a champion for gay rights too. Britain must not get complacent. We are a world leader for gay rights, but… there is still more that we must do.’
Under existing rules, a ‘transgender’ person undergoing a sex-swap is free to change their identity to a new sex, once the procedure is complete and a gender recognition certificate has been issued.
While undergoing a sex change, a person can also nominate their intended new sex, and place that on their passport. They must produce a certificate from a doctor saying that is the gender under which they live their daily lives.
But people who are classed as intersex – a condition which people carry from birth, where they have male and female reproductive organs – are forced to make a choice.
Home Office officials say the review is wide-ranging and they are considering ‘all the gender options’.
The law in Britain could be changed in a matter of days. Passports come under the royal prerogative, so only a simple ministerial order would be required.
Nanny state health targets take the taste out of the traditional British fry-up
The traditional British fry-up is under threat from government health targets, industry experts warned yesterday. Butchers and retailers say a drive to cut salt levels will make breakfasts with bacon and sausages less appetising.
More than 60 food firms and supermarkets have to cut salt levels by next year to meet targets set by the Government.
At least 80 per cent of sausages are thought to exceed the threshold, which allows 1.13g of salt per 100g. The sausage maker Richmond’s products, for example, typically contain around 2.2g per 100g, while Tesco’s own-brand bangers contain 1.5g per 100g.
For bacon, which will be limited to 2.88g of salt per 100g, most supermarkets’ own brands exceed the threshold with up to 3.6g.
Ministers want to reduce our salt intake to 6g a day from 8.6g in 2008, the last year for which figures are available. They say eating too much salt can raise blood pressure, contributing to thousands of premature deaths every year from heart disease and strokes.
But Andrea Martinez-Inchausti, of the British Retail Consortium, said it was ‘pointless’ to keep reducing salt in products if it meant shoppers just added it at the table. She said: ‘If salt is reduced further there’s a danger that products will no longer taste the way consumers want them to.’
The BRC and the Food and Drink Federation have drawn up a list of eight products for which it is proving difficult to reduce salt without losing flavour. As well as bacon and sausages, they include bread, cheese, cakes and pastries, pesto and other sauces, and canned fish.
So far 62 retailers, including Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Waitrose and Asda, have agreed to comply with the Government’s targets on salt reduction.
Top Economist Warns Green Jobs 'Creation' Will Undermine British Recovery
One of the UK's leading energy and environment economists warns that the government's promise that green energy policies will create tens of thousands of jobs and stimulate competitive industries is an illusion.
In his report The Myth of Green Jobs, published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Professor Gordon Hughes (Edinburgh University) dispels this assumption by finding that
* The government target for generating electricity from renewable energy sources will involve a capital cost that is 9-10 times the amount required to meet the same demand by relying upon conventional power plants.
* The extra investment required for renewable energy - about £120 bln - will be diverted from more productive uses in the rest of the economy.
* Increases in the cost of energy together with the diversion of investment funds means that many manufacturing firms will either go bankrupt or relocate.
* It is impossible for the UK to acquire a long-term comparative advantage in the manufacture of renewable energy equipment by any combination of policies that are both feasible and affordable.
* Policies to promote renewable energy could add 0.6-0.7 percentage points per year to core inflation from now to 2020.
* The cumulative impact of these policies could amount to a loss of 2-3% of potential GDP for a period of 20 years or more.
"Claims by politicians and lobbyists that green energy policies will create a few thousand jobs are not supported by the evidence. In terms of the labour market, the gains for a small number of actual or potential employees in businesses specialising in renewable energy has to be weighed against the dismal prospects for a much larger group of workers producing tradable goods in the rest of the manufacturing sector," Professor Hughes said.
One in five pupils learns nothing after the age of 11, says former British private school head
One in five British pupils 'learns nothing' at secondary school, according to head of the country's leading private schools' group. He says children in this country are falling behind the rest of the world, with those of all abilities failing to reach their potential.
The chairman of the Independent Schools Council said that the underachievement of the bottom 20 per cent - especially boys - was more exaggerated than in countries such as China, Finland and Japan.
Barnaby Lenon, a former headmaster at Harrow School, also said in a Daily Telegraph interview that the most gifted children were not reaching their full potential. 'The biggest problem that this country faces is the underachievement of the bottom 20 per cent of pupils, particularly boys, who appear to learn nothing at school after the age of 11,' he said.
'That's the biggest challenge. But the research is also pointing to the fact that those at the top end - the top 50 per cent academically - are not reaching the level that the top 50 per cent are reaching in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Finland.'
Mr Lenon waded into the debate after recent revelations that one in five children leaves primary school without having reached the standard reading level for an 11-year-old. 'The contrast in achievement between the best and the worst is greater than in many other countries,' he added.
He said that private schools could help address these problems by holding 'masterclasses' and by sponsoring state academies - but he denied that they were responsible for the problems. The chairman of the ISC, which represents 1,234 schools, said it was 'silly' to blame the private sector when it only accounted for 8 per cent of British schools.
He called for wider reform of the curriculum and exam system in order for the country to raise its standards to a competitive international level. He said: 'When I was headmaster at Harrow, I recruited 15 to 20 boys a year from Hong Kong. In every case, they were two years ahead of English boys at maths. 'You do not get that same sort of tail of underachievement in countries like China, Japan and Finland.'
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.
18 September, 2011
NHS lost CD with data on 1.6 million patients
Thank goodness that their attempt to put up a nationwide database of info on all NHS patients was a big fiasco. Before long everyone and his dog would have been able to look up your medical history -- such is the dismal record of official Britain at data security
An NHS trust has been forced to take action after accidentally sending a CD containing personal information on 1.6 million people to a landfill, Publicservice.co.uk has learned.
In one of the latest data law breaches for the NHS, Eastern and Coastal Kent Primary Care Trust lost the CD during an office move, putting at risk personal information including addresses, dates of birth, NHS numbers and GP practice codes for millions of people.
An undertaking issued by the UK's information watchdog revealed that trust officials failed to communicate the CD's existence to the project manager co-ordinating the office move. This led to the CD being left in a filing cabinet which was then sent to landfill.
Investigations from the regulator revealed that staff failed to access guidance on how to dispose of the CD. And it has emerged that the team responsible were "not up to date" with information governance training.
Attempts were made to retrieve the filing cabinet once the mistake was realised by the trust, but by then it had already gone to landfill and could not be recovered.
Trust chief executive Ann Sutton has now committed to put in place clear policies and procedures to support staff during office moves. She also pledged to make sure necessary training was given to staff and that all employees would be told how to follow policies on the retention, storage and use of personal data.
Sutton, who described the breach as "unfortunate", said the trust had taken significant measures to improve their data protection. "I would like to reassure patients that the data stored in the filing cabinet was not current - the most recent information was from 2002," she said. "There was no clinical data involved and the data is beyond retrieval.
"It is important to stress that information systems now are far more secure than they were at the time these files were produced - we no longer store information on floppy disks or CDs and use sophisticated systems of encryption."
The Information Commissioner's Office noted that Eastern and Coastal Kent Primary Care Trust had taken "substantial remedial measures" to prevent a repeat occurrence. But it said the case highlighted that need for clear policies and procedures to support staff.
Information Commissioner Christopher Graham has warned of a "systemic" problem over data protection in the NHS, a body regularly criticised for mishandling sensitive information.
In the same week as the Kent breach another NHS body, Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust, was found to have breached the Data Protection Act after losing personal information on 49 patients.
And earlier in September the London Ambulance Service was found to have broken data laws after a personal laptop containing information on thousands of patients was stolen from a contractor's home.
Muslim immigrants to Britain have children for the welfare benefits, says Asian peer
The UK's first female Asian peer has used a debate in the Lords to criticise Pakistani and Bangladeshi families for having too many children.
Baroness Flather suggested people in some minority communities had a large number of children in order to be able to claim more benefits. The peer, born in Lahore before the partition of India, said the issue did not apply to families of Indian origin.
The cross-bencher said benefit cuts could help to discourage extra births.
Baroness Flather, speaking during a debate on the government's welfare changes, said: "The minority communities in this country, particularly the Pakistanis and the Bangladeshis have a very large number of children and the attraction is the large number of benefits that follow the child.
"Nobody likes to accept that, nobody likes to talk about it because it is supposed to be very politically incorrect."
The 67-year-old said that immigrant families must stop having lots of children "as a means of improving the amount of money they receive or getting a bigger house."
Indians 'different'
The former Tory peer also claimed Indian families had a different mentality to Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities in the UK.
"Indians have fallen into the pattern here," she told peers. "They do not have large families because they are like the Jews of old. They want their children to be educated.
"This is the other problem - there is no emphasis on education in the Pakistani and Bangladeshi families."
Baroness Flather called for a gradual reduction in benefits in order to discourage large families and suggested payments should be reduced after a couple's first two children.
She said: "I really feel that for the first two children there should be a full raft of benefits, for the third child three-quarters and for the fourth child a half."
Baroness Flather's comments were not well-received by Labour work and pensions spokesman Lord McKenzie.
Concluding the argument for the opposition, he told the Lords: "I had not expected the treatise on the family sizes of the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities and hope I don't again."
Welfare reform minister Lord Freud, replying to the debate, did not refer to Lady Flather's comments.
The Welfare Reform Bill is the biggest shake-up of the benefits system for 60 years. A universal payment to replace income-related work-based benefits, such as child tax credit, is planned, as are stricter rules for people losing their benefits if they refuse a job.
Sex education will NOT be taught to children as young as five, after British Coalition ditches plans
Proposals for compulsory sex education for children as young as five have been ditched. Schools Minister Nick Gibb said the Coalition would not implement the controversial plans put forward under Labour and had ‘no plans to change the law on sex education’. This means that teaching sex education will remain optional in primary schools.
Family campaigners feared that statutory sex and relationship education (SRE) could lead to teenage pregnancy being seen as acceptable by impressionable youngsters.
SRE is taught in Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education lessons, although elements such as the facts of reproduction are also contained in biology classes.
Under Labour, the then Schools Secretary Ed Balls planned to make PSHE classes a part of the compulsory national curriculum in primary and secondary schools from this month. This would have seen lessons in relationships and sex starting at five, with prescribed content for each age group.
The Coalition has now launched a review of PSHE but Mr Gibb said ‘the Government has already ruled out making PSHE education as a whole a statutory subject within the curriculum’.
In a letter to Graham Stuart, chair of the education select committee, he added: ‘The Government has no plans to change the law on sex education or parents' right to withdraw their children from sex education.'
Over 2,000 people signed a letter last March calling on Parliament to ‘decisively' oppose the plans contained in the Children, Schools and Families Bill.
Mr Balls was forced to drop the proposals - along with another ten flagship policies - a month later in a bid to push through the Bill in the final days of Parliament - a period known as the ‘wash up'.
At the time, the Tories said the party had agreed to compulsory sex education but wanted parents to be able to choose to ‘opt out' if their children were below 16.
They claimed Mr Balls ‘preferred petulance' by scrapping the plans entirely in the ‘wash out', after disagreements between the two parties over the opt out age.
The Coalition has now launched a review of PSHE, proposing a strengthening in the priority given to teaching about relationships, the importance of positive parenting and teaching about sexual consent.
Primary heads and governors will continue to decide whether or not to provide sex education and what it should involve beyond the compulsory science requirements - such as the biological facts of reproduction - laid down by the national curriculum.
'Shy' children at risk of being diagnosed with mental disorder
Children who are merely shy or sad are at risk of being diagnosed with mental disorders and given powerful drugs. Psychologists say that new guidelines being developed in America will lead more young people seeing their common problems regarded as illnesses that must be treated, rather than just being given support.
They fear that pupils who are quiet at school could be diagnosed with “social anxiety disorder” while those who become withdrawn after suffering a bereavement are classified as having a “depressive disorder”.
Children who just talk back to adults or lose their temper regularly could be diagnosed with “oppositional defiant disorder”.
As a result, those found to have these increasingly broad mental disorders could be prescribed powerful medication such as Prozac or Ritalin to control or alter their behaviour.
Now the pressure is increasing for a national review of the use of such drugs on schoolchildren as well as more research into their long-term effects, following a vote at the TUC Congress on Wednesday.
Kate Fallon, general secretary of the Association of Educational Psychologists, told delegates: “Behaviours develop over a long period of time, often with a range of complex causes; we can’t ‘cure’ the behaviours we don’t like with a quick fix of medicine. They usually require careful management by all the adults around the child.
“In 2013 we’re expecting new criteria for the definition of mental illness to be adopted here in the UK. These criteria will lead to many more children being diagnosed as mentally ill, based on reports of their behaviours.
“A shy child could be diagnosed with social anxiety; a sad or temporarily withdrawn child could be diagnosed with depression.
“These are conditions which are also likely to be treated with medication – and under these circumstances, Congress, we will be putting potent drugs into children with little or no understanding of what it will lead to.
“In a society that wants quick results using drugs to improve behaviour is very tempting. But there can be other ways of improving children’s behaviour which typically involve time and energy from people.”
Research has found that children under the age of six are being prescribed the drug Ritalin for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, prompting calls for the Department of Health to investigate the scale of the problem and the potential long-term damage it may be causing.
Recent figures show 650,000 children aged between eight and 13 are on the pscyhotropic drug, up from just 9,000 two decades ago, while others are taking Prozac for depression or anxiety.
Fears are growing that the number of children diagnosed with mental disorders and prescribed drugs will increase still further after 2013, when a new “bible” of the psychiatric profession is published.
Known as DSM-5, the book widens the diagnostic criteria for many supposed conditions including social anxiety disorder, better known as shyness, and will likely be adopted by the health authorities in Britain after appearing first in the US.
The proposed new definition for social anxiety disorder states that it is marked by “fear or anxiety about one or more social situations in which the person is exposed to possible scrutiny by others. Examples include social interactions (e.g., having a conversation), being observed (e.g., eating or drinking), or performing in front of others (e.g., giving a speech)”.
In children this fear could be expressed by “crying, tantrums, freezing, clinging, shrinking or refusal to speak in social situations”.
Young people will be deemed as having oppositional defiant disorder if they display symptoms including losing their temper, arguing with adults, deliberately annoying people or being “spiteful or vindictive at least twice within the past six months” to people other than their brothers or sisters.
The British Psychological Society has also raised concerns about the proposed revisions to the DSM.
It does not dispute that some children have emotional and behavioural problems but says that patients and the public are “negatively affected” by the continued “medicalisation” of natural and normal responses to their experiences, and that classifying such problems as “illnesses” ignores their wider causes.
Prof Peter Kinderman, chairman of the society’s Division of Clinical Psychology, said: “We’re not certain that a diagnosis and a medical response is the best way to help these kids.
“Absolutely understand and help, not necessarily diagnose and treat.”
A 10p vitamin B pill a day from middle age may ward off Alzheimer's
This looks very encouraging but the very high doses used raise serious concerns about damaging side-effects
Taking one vitamin B pill a day from middle age could protect your memory as you grow older – and even ward off Alzheimer’s, British researchers say. The supplement, which costs just 10p, is described as the ‘first glimmer of hope’ in the battle to find a drug that slows or stops the development of the disease.
Pensioners who took high doses of the vitamin once a day for two years did 70 per cent better on a simple memory test than those who did not. The Oxford University scientists say the pill prevents the memory lapses that can be a precursor to dementia. They also found it cut brain shrinkage linked to memory loss by up to 500 per cent.
They say people should consider taking high-dose vitamin B from middle age – but only after seeking their doctor’s advice.
Alzheimer’s and forms of dementia blight the lives of more than 800,000 Britons. That number is expected to double within a generation, as the population ages.
In landmark research published last year, Dr Celeste de Jager and her colleagues, who are also behind this study, showed that high doses of vitamin B cut brain shrinkage linked to memory loss. The latest results, presented at the British Science Festival in Bradford, show that it also helps stop memory from failing.
In the trial, 270 pensioners with mild cognitive impairment – the slight memory lapses that can be a precursor to Alzheimer’s – were asked to take a vitamin B tablet once a day for a year, or given a dummy pill to take instead.
The tablets contained extremely high amounts of vitamins B6, 9 and 12. For instance, the dose of B12 was up to 300 times higher than could be obtained by eating foods rich in the vitamin, such as bananas, wholegrains and meat.
The pill reduced the shrinkage of the brain, which happens naturally with age, by 30 per cent on average – but it halved it in those with the highest levels of a chemical called homocysteine in their bloodstream. In one case, it was cut five-fold.
Homocysteine is a natural compound that builds up in the body as we age and, at high levels, is linked to memory loss and Alzheimer’s. Vitamin B breaks it down. In the study, those with higher than average levels of homocysteine who took vitamin B performed almost 70 per cent better on a memory test than those who took the placebo pill.
It specifically bolsters episodic memory, the type needed to remember things such as shopping lists – and one of the first to deteriorate in Alzheimer’s.
In addition, those with the very highest levels of homocysteine who took vitamin B were less likely to have progressed towards Alzheimer’s, and in some cases, their memory lapses disappeared entirely after the two years.
Researcher Professor David Smith termed the effects ‘striking’. But while the team said those in middle age could benefit from the treatment, they stressed they must speak to their doctor.
High-dose vitamins may trigger cancer and are known to fuel existing cancers. They may also react with medicines including arthritis and psoriasis drugs.
Christians Face a 'Freedom Gap' in modern British and American Culture
It’s sad to say, but freedom has been relegated to “flavor of the month” status for years now. Not freedom as our Founding Fathers thought it, but freedom as same-sex couples, pro-abortion activists, and those disillusioned with Western Civilization mistakenly think of it.
In other words, it’s not an ordered freedom based on the sound footing of natural law, but an abstract freedom based on the whims and desires of fickle men and women who have concurred with the maxim that “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”
Goodbye to universal ethics and enduring norms, hello to whatever makes us happy in this moment. This is freedom in the 21st century.
But changing something so near to the heart of our culture doesn’t come without a price. And one of the obvious prices is that this new brand of freedom is only extended to those who meet the criteria for it. That is, it only goes to those who share the opinions of same-sex couples, pro-abortion activists, and those disillusioned with Western Civilization. Others not need apply.
What this also means is that an olive branch is extended to certain faiths – those viewed as “tolerant” – and withheld from others. As a result, Christianity and Orthodox Judaism are not being handed any olive branches, and more times than not, they are actually being shown the door.
Therefore, throughout our Western Civilization, there is a freedom a gap. Both in Europe and here in the U.S., Christians and Orthodox Jews are denied the right to exercise their faith and traditions in ways that other faiths and traditions enjoy.
In Europe, for example, Lord Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, claims Christians of “deep faith” face discrimination. (By “deep faith,” he is referencing those who make their faith evident, rather than keeping it a private matter.) He reached this conclusion from watching how people of faith in Europe are penalized “for activities such as wearing crosses and offering to pray for other people.”
And reports from Britain’s BBC validate Lord Carey’s evaluation of Europe’s attitudes toward Christians in the 21st century. The BBC does this by providing examples such as Gary McFarlane, a Christian marriage guidance counselor from Bristol, who “lost a court bid earlier this year to challenge his sacking for refusing to give sex therapy to homosexuals,” and Lydia Playfoot, a 19-year-old student who was “told by her school three years ago to remove her purity ring - symbolizing chastity - or face expulsion.”
Sadly, for Christians in America, these examples aren’t hard to believe because the incremental secularization of our culture has led to the same kinds of discrimination and beyond. From high school and collegiate textbooks that ridicule or try to expunge our historically Judeo-Christian roots, to shameless lawsuits against the public display of symbols identifiable with Christianity, to the hampering of the religious speech of public officials, and of course, the ongoing governmental limitations on the First Amendment protected rights of pastors in the pulpit, Christians (and Christianity) are forced to fight for the freedom so many others readily enjoy.
For years, this freedom gap has been witnessed in our government schools, where “Easter Eggs” are renamed “Spring Spheres” and even a student-led “Easter Can Drive” is renamed a “Spring Can Drive.” And while many have treated these efforts to rename holidays as innocuous, over time it’s becoming clear that there is in fact an undercurrent working against Christians in our culture.
Freedom is more than “just another word for nothing left to lose.” It is an ordered framework of liberty for which our Founders risked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. As such, it should be extended to people of every race and tribe, and of every faith and tradition.
This applies to those who value the Judeo-Christian tradition as much as it applies to anyone else.
Judge takes pity on British community hero who fired shotgun to scare off thugs who plagued neighbourhood
A café owner who fired his shotgun into the air to scare off yobs vandalising a park escaped jail yesterday after a judge took pity on him.
Francis McDonald has been cleaning up after teenage vandals in the park where he runs his café for two years. But a court heard yesterday how he lost his cool when he saw youths damaging new plants and twice fired his shotgun into the air to frighten them off.
Judge Alan Goldsack told him he would normally be locked up for such an offence. But, after reading letters from residents expressing gratitude for McDonald’s good work in the park, the judge said he would be spared custody due to his good character and the circumstances of the offence.
McDonald, 42, who admitted possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence, was given an eight-month prison term suspended for a year and ordered to carry out 100 hours of unpaid community work.
Judge Goldsack, sitting at Sheffield Crown Court, told him: ‘It is clear from the letters I have received about you from many people in that area that you have transformed that place into somewhere where the public can enjoy going and they are very grateful to you for doing that.’
McDonald lives in a cottage next to the café he runs in Elsecar Park, near Barnsley. But in the wake of the case, he has lost the lease on the café and will have to move out.
Prosecutor Nicola Quinney told the court teenage yobs had been causing trouble in the park – with vandalism and verbal abuse – as a result of drinking. The problems escalated on the evening of May 13 this year when McDonald padlocked the gates and about 15 girls and boys began damaging plants by the park bandstand.
McDonald, a father of five, grabbed his legally owned shotgun and asked the teenagers to leave. When they refused, he fired two shots in the air from about 7ft away.
After his arrest, McDonald told police the teenagers had verbally abused and threatened him. ‘He wanted to scare them and frighten them off,’ said Miss Quinney. She added one of the girls was frightened that he might shoot her and had suffered a panic attack. Another youth suffered sleepless nights, but had now recovered.
McDonald, a gun club member who has never been in trouble with the police before, said after the trial: ‘I regret what I did, but those kids were never in any danger. ‘I wouldn’t hurt a fly. It was just a mad moment of frustration.
‘They were treading on plants which had just been planted that day at a cost of £1,000. I was ashamed of what I did, but since the incident I have not had any more trouble.
‘For the past two years, there has been a load of trouble in the evenings with drinking, drug-taking and even youngsters having sex in the park. It usually happens at weekends and then I have to go out in the morning and clean it all up. ‘I do it because the park is for the public to enjoy.
‘Locals who use the park complain all the time, but I have had no help from the council or the police. It is not fair.’
It's obviously an attempt at humour but some people have none
"A LAUNDRY list of excuses and none of them cut it. Top clothing line Topman has pulled two T-shirts from production after being accused of promoting domestic abuse and sexism.
One of the offending tees, pictured above, was ripped apart on social networks after people perceived it to be a list of excuses for hitting women.
"Promoting the excuses that men use to get away with abusing women is clearly wrong, whether it's on a T-shirt or not," said one Facebook user. "Many woman and children flee for their lives every year from domestic violence. It's very poor taste to promote it," another wrote.
The Guardian's Bella Mackie sarcastically tweeted that another T-shirt - "Nice new girlfriend - what breed is she?" - was "classy" for comparing women to dogs.
Topman has heeded the complaints and pulled the offending garments from shelves. "We have received some negative feedback regarding two of our printed T-shirts," a statement read. "... we would like to stress that these T-shirts were meant to be light-hearted and carried no serious meaning."
The stealthy transformation of England's green and pleasant land
By PETER HITCHENS
You cannot get much deeper into England than you do under the huge skies of Lincolnshire, where land and sky and water meet and the impossibly beautiful tower of Boston’s ancient church reaches towards the clouds.
I came here first nearly 30 years ago and had a sense of penetrating a sleeping, utterly undisturbed part of the country. The Sixties had not really happened. There were no motorways. Life was slow, a little shabby, but untroubled by the fake urgency of more modern places. I half-expected to meet Lord Peter Wimsey, Dorothy L. Sayers’ aristocratic detective, on his way to solve the mystery of The Nine Tailors, set in this haunting countryside of fens, dykes, floods and bell towers.
Respectability was still strong, and so was the sense of belonging. Because I was from outside Lincolnshire, they rather charmingly called me a ‘foreigner’. How shocking it is, then, to return and find Boston so strangely and unexpectedly transformed. In the past few years this place has seen drunken street battles between locals and migrants, some nasty assaults and a continuing air of suspicion and dislike that it is hard to miss – yet which cannot be openly expressed.
At one major road junction, a huge poster demands a ban on the public drinking of alcohol. Knowing that rowdy street-drinking (and public urination) is one of the main local complaints against migrants, I cannot help wondering if this is not some sort of covert protest against their presence.
If you look carefully as the train from Grantham rolls into the station, you can see the blasted, scorched lock-up garage where, a few weeks ago, five men died in an explosion that could be heard five miles away across the great fields of leeks, sprouts and beetroot that surround the town. We may say with some certainty that they were trying to make illegal vodka, and that they came from Eastern Europe. Police investigations are still continuing into the background of this nasty business.
But another, slow-motion explosion has also hit Boston. Here, of all the unlikely places, a somnolent and kindly town has been upset, alarmed and riven by mass immigration in its hardest and most uncompromising form.
Note here that I use the word ‘immigration’, not ‘immigrants’. All the people who have been hurt, uprooted and upset by this rather cynical piece of social engineering are pretty much free of blame.
Who can honestly disapprove of the poor person from Lisbon, Riga or Bucharest, with a family to house and feed, tempted to uproot his or her life by the promise of wages unthinkable at home?
There is something brave and commendable about their willingness to live in crowded, shared lodgings, eating cheaply and saving hard; an experience we should all go through at some time or another.
Who can frown on the farmer who welcomes the fact that he suddenly has a reliable source of hard-working young men and women ready to lift his crops for long hours without complaint?
And who can blame the people of this ancient place, nervous, baffled and disquieted by the sudden arrival of hundreds of people who do not speak English, who are ignorant of our customs, who move among us like interplanetary visitors, so cut off that they could not even understand a shout of ‘Help!’, let alone laugh at our jokes?
If you seek a villain, you’ll need to look elsewhere, in warm and comfortable rooms occupied by complacent, powerful people whose only experience of immigration is cheap, exotic restaurants and cheap servants.
Here in the English fenland, everyone involved is a victim of enormous, irresistible powers. Those abstract ideas called ‘market forces’ and ‘free movement of peoples’, so beloved of academics, politicians and journalists far away in London, come to life and stalk the streets. Like most grandiose ideas, they are not as nice as they sound.
In Boston, what they mean is this. On a 20-minute walk from railway station to bed-and-breakfast, I meet and see almost nobody who speaks English. Most of the few I do see are the kind of people nobody wants to employ: the only players in this sad melodrama who might conceivably have chosen a different outcome.
In the shadow of the great church, big enough to be a cathedral and now absurdly large for the mainly Godless town at its feet, the home-grown English youths are there with their cans of lager and their hoodies, shouting and cackling. I have to mention this because there is also no shortage of young Eastern Europeans who end up in court here charged with urinating in public places, obviously drunk.
The difference is that the British louts are the end-product of decades of social tenderness, child-centred education and welfare. But the newcomers, emptying their bladders where they stand or driving drunk and uninsured after an evening of illegal hooch, are the end of 70 years of miserable communism, deliberate demoralisation and a culture of desperation and drunken oblivion. Both systems have more in common that you might suspect.
I came to Boston at the invitation of a man I shall call Ted. He wanted me to see at first hand a place that cannot really cope with what is happening to it. He tells a disturbing story about strange events soon before the migrants arrived, around the turn of the century.
A small advertisement in one of the local papers asked people who were worried about immigration to contact a phone number. Ted did. He describes what happened.
‘The advertisement read, roughly, “Are you concerned about large numbers of migrants arriving in Boston?” with a mobile phone number to contact. I felt very concerned with the number of immigrants being talked about at that time, 5,000 Portuguese! We little knew that was only the beginning of a much greater number from all over Eastern Europe, Iraq and Russia who would be arriving in their thousands.
‘I phoned the mobile and was only given a Christian name, “John”, I think. He was quite vague and would not give more information, only to say he was a concerned resident and was looking to meet anyone who felt the same. He said he was going to organise meetings etc and would be in touch and asked for my contact details, which I gave.
‘As I had not heard from him or seen anything in the paper, I rang the mobile again. He suggested we meet up in the Red Cow pub in the town at midday. He was about 5ft 10in to 6ft, short fair hair (not skinhead), looked fit, casually dressed but smart. He definitely did not have a Lincolnshire accent.
‘He bought half a pint of bitter and we sat in a quiet corner. He asked me what I did, and would I be prepared to go on a demonstration march through Boston; what were my thoughts on the proposed mass immigration into Boston and how far would people be prepared to go to register their disapproval.
‘I told him how I felt, that a small community like Boston should not be swamped with immigrants. It is not about race, it is about keeping things in proportion. Nothing materialised, no leaflets no demonstration, nothing. So I rang him again, and got a very short answer that “he would be in touch”. After that, the number was not in use.
‘I am fully convinced the guy I met worked for the Government and was sent to Boston to see what the public reaction would be. Not long afterwards, there was a public meeting on the subject. Among the listed speakers was a representative of the BNP.’ As Ted, a mainstream, conservative-minded businessman, says: ‘If you want to kill off any political opposition to any issue you invite the BNP.’
I include this story because I have long been haunted by the extraordinary and astonishing revelations of Andrew Neather, a former New Labour speech writer who worked for, among others, Jack Straw. He wrote in a London newspaper in 2009 that the huge immigration increases in the past ten years were at least partly caused by a desire in government to change the country and ‘rub the Right’s nose in diversity’.
He said Labour’s weaker border controls were a deliberate plan to ‘open up the UK to mass migration’ but that Ministers were nervous about discussing this openly, for fear of losing working-class votes. So instead, they just went on and on about the supposed economic benefits of welcoming more migrants. Boston, interestingly, is a mainly Tory area, where Labour did not need to worry about lost votes.
Well, as Boston shows, there definitely are benefits to immigration. Thousands of hard-working young men – no one seems to know how many thousands – are helping to harvest the dull but necessary vegetables that Lincolnshire grows. Local landlords have no trouble in renting property, and Boston is going through a small housing boom, with lots of new blocks of flats and housing estates, as well as some pretty dispiriting caravan encampments close to the farms. Officially, Boston’s population is 61,000, but the borough council believes the true figure is more like 70,000.
The immigrants are paying their council tax and their income tax, and spending a bit in some of the local shops – but I’ll come to that. Their children are now arriving in the schools. At one, Park Primary, just over half the pupils do not have English as a first language. We might expect this in London’s Tower Hamlets or parts of Manchester or Bradford. But in Boston?
I’ve spoken to teachers who are actually quite pleased by the new arrivals. Their presence has forced the local authority to pour money into schools that were previously at the back of every queue and at the bottom of every pile. In some classes there are now as many as four expensively hired adults trying to overcome the language barriers caused by the presence of children who speak Russian, Polish or a Baltic language at home.
Teachers insist that all is well. How would you prove it wasn’t? Parents may suspect otherwise but they will have learned, like everyone else in Britain, that it is all too easy to be dismissed as ‘racist’ if you make a public fuss about such things. And as usual, the parts of the town most affected are the poorest streets, where people are least equipped to protest.
Of course ‘race’ has nothing to do with it. Boston’s migrants are white-skinned Europeans. What separates them from us is culture: upbringing, manners, tastes in food, history and language.
A few dozen such people in any place would be easy, even beneficial. But thousands of them, all at once, in a small town, mean the creation of a great invisible barrier, snaking down every street and cutting through every district and many lives.
On West Street, known by locals as ‘East Street’ for obvious reasons, there are half a dozen independent shops selling Baltic, Polish and Russian food, an internet cafe used mainly by Eastern Europeans and a Polish restaurant. Nearby there’s a rather inviting Latvian pastry and cake shop.
Almost certainly, without the migrants, these places would be boarded up, or charity shops. But what consolation is that to born-and-bred Bostonians who see parts of their home town transformed into a foreign zone?
Enter these shops and you will find them selling vodka (one brand rather tactlessly named ‘Boom’), and the pickles, spicy salami and smoked meats that are the staples of the Baltic diet. The brands of cereal, biscuits, beer and sweets are all unfamiliar. They are a little piece of Eastern Europe. I suspect I am the only English-speaking customer most of them have seen.
In one shop I find a middle-aged Polish businessman who is happy to talk to me. I ask what brought him here. His answers may surprise you. ‘Britain is the best country in Europe to work in. You are more open-minded, more helpful, more friendly to newcomers than anyone else in Europe.
‘I like this country ..... I like to live and work here.’ He compares us most favourably to the unwelcoming, prejudiced Germans who are far closer to his home region in Western Poland.
But – and I have to press him to talk about this which he says is ‘a very delicate matter’ – he is baffled by the unwillingness of the British to take the jobs on offer. ‘Many of you just don’t want to work. You take incapacity benefit [he knew the exact English phrase]. You just assume you’ll get money from the Government.’
He finds this attitude unbelievable. It wouldn’t be possible in Poland. ‘It’s just not true that we take your jobs,’ he says emphatically, ‘I’ve been working here for a long time now, and I know this – that all businesses want reliable, friendly, helpful workers. That is all we do. You can do it too.’
Of course, there are British workers who complain with justification that they have been undercut by cheaper East European rivals – and are then asked to go round and fix the mess that they have made. But in the end such people face the horrible truth, well known to the British Government and the EU, that one of the purposes of mass immigration and open borders is to push down our wages.
Perhaps if TV presenters and MPs could be replaced by cheaper Polish immigrants, they would be more concerned about this. As it is, they just rejoice that nannies cost less than they used to, and restaurant meals are cheap.
But there is another reason the locals may be failing in this competition. It is summed up in a smart and obviously well-financed little establishment, paid for by taxes, itself not far from a flourishing business specialising in providing interpreters.
Slip inside this ‘Resource Centre’ and you find it full of advice on how to poison yourself with illegal drugs. There is information on nine different types of syringe, and warnings not to mix your drugs with lemon juice; to rotate your injection sites, and to angle the needle correctly. There are posters threatening unconvincingly that, if you sell the methadone provided to you by the taxpayer, you could face penalties ‘up to life in prison’.
The very existence of this establishment, with all that it implies, helps to explain why young men and women growing up around here have been so easily supplanted by strangers who do not even speak the language of our country.
No, it is not that they are all drug-takers. It is that our welfare state assumes that any weakness, any failing, any bad habit, requires help and public money rather than moral guidance and stern limits to behaviour. The same is true in the classrooms, and in thousands of homes.
The newcomers have been in a harder school. They have grown up in a cold grey world where if you don’t learn, you fail your exams, if you don’t work, you go hungry, and where if you don’t obey the law, it lashes out at you with a club.
Offer such people free entry to Britain, and they will think they have come to paradise, even if they have to sleep ten to a room and work until their backs break for the minimum wage. Sooner or later they, too, will be corrupted by it.
There is nothing here for our comfort. I came away from Boston wanting to tell the truth about it, without making it worse. It is easy to understand the frustrated resentment of decent people whose friendly, known world has been destroyed by distant politicians.
It is not hard to sympathise with a young man or woman with the guts and energy to come hundreds of miles to find work that locals do not much want to do.
But it is impossible not to be angry with the politicians who either couldn’t imagine what their policies would bring in practice, or did not care. The destruction of familiarity and security cannot be measured in money.
And I suspect they encouraged this vast migration because they lacked the courage or the will to confront the huge problems of broken families, feeble schools and welfare dependency: the real causes of the so-called labour shortage.
By doing so, they have done deep and lasting damage which has already led to bloodshed and hatred, and which could easily lead to more in the years to come. Yet nothing will bring them to admit it, or to change their minds. They never visit their own country and I do not think they give a damn about it.
Foreign doctors 'must be trained to work here': Watchdog steps in as fears over patient safety grows
Foreign doctors should complete a basic training course before starting to work for the NHS, the medical watchdog has ruled. Many overseas doctors arrive with ‘little or no preparation’ for working in the UK and need more support to practise safely, said the General Medical Council.
It is to run induction courses for all doctors new to the Health Service, including graduates from British medical schools and those arriving from abroad – including the continent.
There is growing alarm that patient safety is being put in the hands of overseas doctors whose training is not up to scratch.
There is particular concern over doctors from Europe. Unlike other overseas doctors, they cannot be tested by the GMC on their competence or even their ability to speak English because this would breach European Union ‘freedom of movement of labour’ laws.
Earlier this year, it emerged that a Nigerian doctor who qualified in Italy had been allowed to work in 14 English hospitals although he could not perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and did not understand basic medical terms.
In 2008, pensioner David Gray died after Dr Daniel Ubani, who could barely speak English, gave him ten times the dose of painkiller after flying in from Germany for his first NHS shift.
The EU law also covers nurses, prompting Lord Winston, the IVF pioneer and broadcaster, to speak out twice in the past week about the threat posed by poor communication skills.
In a report on the state of medical education and practice in the UK, the GMC said that more than a third of doctors working here qualified overseas.
‘While there are some good local schemes for supporting doctors who are new to this country, there are too many examples of new doctors undertaking clinical practice with little or no preparation for working in the UK,’ said the report.
The short induction programme will cover areas such as bedside manner and the importance of explaining medical details to patients, confidentiality and the importance of raising concerns about incompetent colleagues, including senior ones.
EU regulations mean that tests of English and medical skills will not be included. However, in a separate move, the GMC will require all doctors working in the UK to be annually appraised from next year.
GMC chief executive Niall Dickson said that while some of the NHS’s best doctors were trained overseas there had been a ‘shameful’ lack of support and training available. He also said that being unable to test the English ability of EU doctors was a ‘real concern’.
Dr Tom Dolphin, of the British Medical Association’s junior doctors committee, said: ‘Being a doctor in Britain requires much more than just clinical expertise. ‘It is also important to have highly developed communications skills, knowledge of UK medical ethics and culture, and an understanding of how the NHS works.’
Illegal immigrant lived in British hospital for more than a year despite being well because red tape prevented doctors discharging him
An illegal immigrant who had no entitlement to NHS care has spent 13 months blocking a hospital bed – at a cost to taxpayers of £100,000.
The Pakistani national should have left the country when his visa expired four years ago. He became an ‘overstayer’ and was still in Britain when he suffered a heart attack last summer.
The unidentified man received treatment and was declared fit enough to be discharged in August last year. But he has remained on a ward ever since because the UK Border Agency has been unable to fix a date with Pakistan International Airlines to fly him back to his home country. Although fit to be discharged, he does need long-term nursing care, which would ordinarily be provided in the community or by a care home.
The case came to light after it was raised in Parliament by Tory MP Margot James, who branded the delays ‘an outrageous abuse of NHS resources’ and an ‘appalling case of bureaucratic inertia’.
It is understood the delay in discharging him from Russells Hall Hospital in Dudley has in part been caused by difficulties in arranging for a medical escort to accompany him home, while his family in Pakistan have struggled to find suitable nursing care for him there.
The patient could not be transferred to an immigration removal centre pending deportation because they do not have the facilities to care for his medical needs.
Miss James, MP for Stourbridge, decided to raise the matter in Parliament after Paula Clark, chief executive of the Dudley Group of Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, contacted her saying she was still awaiting a discharge date from the UK Border Agency.
During Home Office questions on Tuesday, Miss James called on immigration minister Damian Green to ensure illegal immigrants who receive NHS treatment are repatriated as soon as that treatment is concluded.
The minister said the Government took a robust stance on abuse of NHS services and the patient would be removed in the ‘near future’. The MP said although the man was not eligible for NHS treatment, ‘we’re not the sort of country to refuse medical care and I don’t think we should be’.
She added: ‘The failure in the system was the failure to remove him when his visa ran out and the fact that the UK Border Agency and Pakistan International Airlines couldn’t get their act together.’
The patient was initially treated at the Royal London Hospital following a heart attack and subsequent hypoxic brain injury, but was transferred to Dudley in July 2010 because he had a relative there.
Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘NHS managers need to explain why they spent so much money on a bed blocker not entitled to free health care in the UK. They’re running a hospital not a hotel. Taxpayers can’t afford to pay for an international health service.’
Julie Bailey, of campaign group Cure the NHS, said it was ‘absurd’ that an illegal immigrant had been able to block a hospital bed for more than a year.
In theory, any foreigner who receives NHS treatment is meant to pay back all of its costs. But human rights laws state NHS staff must treat every patient who comes through their doors who has a life-threatening condition, even if they are not actually entitled to it. Many foreign patients fly home and illegal immigrants disappear without ever paying the NHS for their treatment.
The latest figures show that the NHS is owed around £7million from so-called health tourists who received some form of treatment in the last year alone.
In a statement on behalf of the hospital trust, Miss Clark said: ‘We are working with the UK Border Agency to ensure our patient is discharged safely and are awaiting a discharge date from them.
‘Our patient needed acute hospital care when admitted into hospital with complex medical conditions and was medically fit to be discharged in August 2010 but required ongoing nursing care. ‘The cost of care to the hospital has been in excess of £100,000.’
The UKBA said it first became aware of the case last December. Gail Adams, its regional director, said: ‘The NHS is a national, not an international, health service and we will not tolerate its abuse which is why arrangements for removal have been made in this complex case. We will remove those not entitled to remain in the country, even where medically difficult, and will provide medical escorts to remove those undergoing treatment if needed.’
The Leftward drift of the police — pretty much conceded this week by former top copper Lord Blair — continues.
Exhibit one: the Deputy Chief Constable of Cumbria, one Stuart Hyde, is a busy user of Twitter (alarm bells start to tinkle). He expresses vigorous disapproval of Right-wing think-tanks, accusing them of being secretive (unlike, ahem, the Police Federation, which he supports).
Guvnor Hyde does not think much of elected police commissioners. He is apparently no fan of Boris Johnson. He snorts that it is ‘an understatement’ to say Coalition policy on the police is being ‘fudged’. He suggests that ministers have no proper plan.
In short, DCC Hyde is politically gobby, and not in a pro-Coalition way. In elevated Whitehall offices this has been noticed.
Exhibit two: in rural Sussex, members of the Crawley and Horsham Hunt were recently arrested by police officers who behaved as though they were in some sort of SWAT team. Dawn raids. Sirens. Skidding stops. Handcuffs in the home.
One of those arrested runs a City investment company. Another was a veteran film-maker. Both these middle-class pillars would have happily reported to the local nick, but instead were treated like Al Qaeda suspects. Actually, that’s not fair. If they had been bearded Jihadists, they would have been offered translation services and a prayer mat and other amenities.
Some £200,000 has been blown by Sussex constabulary on prosecuting the hunt matter. Local MPs Francis Maude and Nicholas Soames have made official complaints about the police’s heavy-handedness. Mr Maude is Cabinet Office minister. He sees David Cameron and Nick Clegg almost every day.
When thick or mouthy rozzers behave like the uniform branch of New Labour, is it any surprise the Coalition cuts their budgets?
Paedophile's park ban lifted by judge because of his human right to keep fit
A paedophile banned from public parks to keep him away from children has had the court order relaxed because it was ‘a breach of his human rights’.
Christopher Williams, 49, was jailed for seven years for tying up and molesting a 12-year-old boy, and the ban on entering parks and play areas was imposed when he was released from prison. But the paedophile claimed it prevented him from keeping fit – and now, after an appeal, a judge has relaxed the terms of the order.
Judge Andrew Woolman ruled that Williams, who has health problems, should be allowed to exercise in his local park under certain conditions. He will be able to do so for an hour at a time on weekdays when children are attending classes, but not during school holidays or weekends.
Judge Woolman, sitting with two magistrates at Burnley Crown Court, said: ‘If we did not allow him, it would be potentially damaging to his health and would probably be a breach of his human rights.’
Child-welfare campaigners condemned the decision yesterday and said the human rights of children should come first. Rosie Carter, of the child-protection charity Safechild, said: ‘We despair of this decision. ‘When that individual was risk-assessed, they thought he would possibly molest children and that’s why he was banned from entering parks and play areas.
‘I fail to understand why they would disregard that consideration. This decision would not have been taken lightly by experienced and qualified professionals.
‘There must have been a serious risk identified, and parents and carers will be horrified that the Crown Court has overturned that decision. It’s truly appalling. They mention his human rights, but the welfare of children is paramount in English law, so we fail to understand how the court could overwrite the Children Act 1989. It’s frightening.’
Williams was jailed at Chester Crown Court in 1996 for indecent assault and gross indecency for his horrific attack on the boy.
On his release, he was given a Sexual Offences Prevention Order that banned him from public parks and play areas in an attempt to prevent him from coming into contact with children.
But last April a fresh warning was issued by the courts after he and another convicted paedophile, David Higgs, 28, set up home together in Rishton, Lancashire, and hosted visits by local children.
Police arrested both men for breaching Sexual Offences Prevention Orders and Higgs was jailed for 18 months. Williams escaped with a suspended prison term. After the latest conviction, Williams, who lives at a probation hostel in Carlisle, applied to Hyndburn Magistrates’ Court for his prevention order to be varied so he could go walking in his local park and play golf.
Magistrates refused the application after police objected, saying he could go walking in the nearby Lake District. But this week Williams appealed against their decision, claiming he had health problems and needed regular exercise. Relaxing the terms of the prevention order, Judge Woolman said: ‘We recognise that the possibilities for exercise under the existing regime, the existing orders of the court, are very restrictive.
‘It would be oppressive to leave the orders as they are and some limited alteration is appropriate.’
While Williams can now use his local park, he is still banned from going anywhere near the children’s play area. He is also allowed to play golf.
Williams – who also has a 1980 conviction for indecent exposure and a lifetime ban on working with children – told the court: ‘I have no reason at all to go anywhere near the swings. It doesn’t interest me. ‘I admit I have done wrong and I know my risk level will never change, but from 1996 to 2010 I have not been in trouble.’
He said doctors had told him to lose weight as he suffered from a heart condition, asthma and rheumatoid arthritis.
The judge said no order of the court could prevent all contact between Williams and children – he would, for example, come into contact with them when he was out shopping.
The court order allows Williams out of his probation hostel between 9am and 3.15pm, 4pm and 7.30pm, and 8pm and 11pm.
Last Tuesday two events occurred within hours of one another that perfectly demonstrate the gulf between rhetoric and reality.
In London, the Prime Minister announced that benefits claimants who cannot speak English will be ordered to take language classes or have their handouts stopped for up to three years.
A hundred miles away in Birmingham, a 51-year-old woman by the name of Halima Hameed was being ushered into court number 18 at the city’s magistrates court.
The single mother was accused of working while claiming more than £9,000 in Income Support.
For the three magistrates who made up the panel hearing the case, the details were laid out as follows: Hameed has been claiming benefits since 1998, but in 2007 started work as a printing press operator, doing 36 hours a week. However, she did not inform the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) of her new job.
Had she done so her benefits would have been stopped. Hameed would later claim in her defence that she did what she did only ‘because of the situation she found herself in’ — namely that her daughter and grandchild had moved back in, making money tight.
Such sob stories are familiar fodder to the magistrates. But what they were especially struck by as they browsed a pre-sentence report prepared on the legally-aided Hameed is the fact that she required the proceedings to be relayed to her by a Punjabi-speaking translator who sat by her side.
‘Miss Hameed has been in England since the age of six,’ Mary Small, chair of the bench, pointed out, ‘so why does she still need an interpreter?’
She is told (via the interpreter) that while Hameed understands English she ‘lacks confidence to express herself in it’. ‘After spending 12 years in our education system?’ Mrs Small responded incredulously.
That acute observation aside, Mrs Small gets on with sentencing. She is told that Hameed, who has admitted the offence, has started paying back the money she claimed fraudulently. But because she is no longer working, illegally or legally, the repayments come from the Income Support she is still allowed to claim. At the current rate of £40 a month, it will take more than 18 years to clear the debt.
On top of that Hameed is sentenced to a 12-month community order — where the criminal serves time in the community, under the supervision of a probation officer, rather than in prison. Miss Hameed was also ordered to do 200 hours of unpaid work and told to pay costs of £100.
So you see, Mr Cameron, it is not simply the case that there are those claiming benefits who cannot speak English; there are those claiming benefits who cannot speak English but are perfectly happy to rip off the system. And, to add further insult to injury, when they are caught they are then able to milk the same system further as they attempt to mitigate their criminal behaviour.
As for ‘getting tough’, there was precious little sign of that in Birmingham. In the 18 cases I witnessed on that single day it was alleged that a total of £160,000 had been cheated out of the benefits system. But not one of those attending court was jailed.
The nearest to prison any defendant came was Lesley Barrett, 39, who over a decade had claimed Income Support, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit as a single mother when, in fact, her partner lived with her.
As a result of the deceit she had received some £60,000 in benefits to which she was not entitled.
Despite the sum involved, Barrett was given a suspended prison sentence after a judge at Birmingham Crown Court was told that she had to care for her two epileptic daughters.
The re-payment arrangement for Barrett, as with the other defendants, had been made prior to her arriving in court. In most cases, all fraudulent claims will be paid in instalments from their future benefits.
While a sympathetic view needs to be taken in some cases, Barrett’s case also serves to reinforce the feeling that whatever a Government promises to do to reform the benefits system, there is always something that stops it being put in to action on the ground.
Benefit fraud is now so widespread that it costs the country more than £1billion a year.
What became apparent from the stream of cases I witnessed during the day I spent at court in Birmingham this week is that many of those who plead guilty to the offence commit benefit fraud out of greed and opportunity — not survival.
British women turning Right: Female voters back spanking in the home, armed police and teen curfews
Large majorities of women are calling for hardline measures to improve discipline in the wake of last month’s riots, supporting curfews on under-16s, the arming of police and smacking in the home.
A startling survey reveals that women voters have turned sharply against the culture of ‘children’s rights’ built up over several decades and want the Government to take radical steps to redress the balance.
The poll of 1,000 women by a new female-only polling company, HerSay, shows that 58 per cent now believe youngsters have too many rights and 67 per cent believe the rioters are the product of a ‘violent society’, described by some as Broken Britain.
Some 87 per cent support the naming and shaming of children found guilty of a criminal offence, 72 per cent want under-16s banned from going outside after 9pm and 76 per cent say rioters should be sent to army boot camps to be disciplined.
The poll found 40 per cent of women think parents should stop children wearing hoodies, 45 per cent support the use of the cane in schools and 49 per cent think parents of children caught rioting should have their benefits removed.
A startling 57 per cent of women support the arming of the police, and 52 per cent agree with the use of smacking in the home to instil discipline.
Some 41 per cent wish they could do something when other people’s children are misbehaving in public, while 37 per cent say that in the past they have felt threatened by children in their communities.
HerSay director Jo Tanner said: ‘This research clearly illustrates that UK women recognise the importance of personal responsibility in disciplining their children. ‘They are, however, looking for support from the wider community and the authorities, whether it be tougher measures in schools or curfews for under-16s. ‘This survey dispels the myth that British women are a soft touch on parenting and discipline.’
Tory MP Priti Patel said the findings of the poll were ‘clear and striking’. She added: ‘There has been a fundamental breakdown in society whenit comes to law and order and discipline. 'This poll shows women in this country want a restoration of discipline and responsibility. Women want more respect for figures of authority. ‘Schools should be able to do more to discipline their pupils and off the back of what has just happened with the riots, the police do need more power to take action.
‘The riots were terrible and unfortunate, but they have focused government thinking and energy as to how we can deal with a lot of these areas. 'We need people who step out of line to fear the full force of the law.’
You may not be old enough to remember the disaster incurred by the widespread practice in Europe in the 1950's of treating depression with the then newly discovered drug Thalidomide. When you take a Lipitor tablet you are taking a drug that, like Thalidomide, is labeled "Class X" with respect to its potential harm to the fetus, and is even worse than Thalidomide in terms of the kind of damage it can do to your unborn child. A woman who is in the childbearing age group should never be advised to take a statin drug. While there are warnings associated with the ads and on the labels claiming that you should "stop taking Lipitor" should you become pregnant, the drug companies seem intent on hushing up the fact that these drugs are toxic to the developing fetus.
Clearly it would be unethical to conduct a controlled experiment that intentionally exposes a pregnant woman to statins, and therefore such controlled studies have not been done. However, in one of the few available retrospective studies of statins and pregnancy, researchers from the U.S. National Institutes of Health found that statin use during the first trimester of pregnancy led to severe central nervous system defects as well as limb deformities. Twenty out of 52 women who had been exposed to statins during the first trimester had babies with severe deformities, which is nearly a 40% rate of severe birth defects.
"Of the 20 babies born with malformations, five had severe central nervous system defects, and five had malformed limbs. One baby had both, according to Muenke. There were also two cases of a very rare birth defect called holoprosencephaly, which occurs when the brain fails to divide properly." (Statins and Birth Defects) .
Doctors in Liverpool have even had the audacity to propose that statins be prescribed to pregnant women, an idea that these authors find wildly disturbing: (Statins during Pregnancy) . There seems to be a general lack of awareness, even among doctors, of the degree of harm these drugs can inflict on the developing fetus.
Great Britain now has the dubious distinction of being the only country where you can buy statin drugs over the counter (NonPrescription Statins) . This means that any naive young woman thinking she can self-treat high cholesterol may end up with a severely malformed baby, and chances are she won't even realize it's due to the drug.
Bring back the cane, say half of British parents as Cameron pledges to restore order in schools following riots
Almost half of parents would be happy to see the return of the cane to restore discipline in the classroom, a survey suggests today.
It found 49 per cent of parents – and 19 per cent of pupils – believe caning or smacking should be used to punish ‘very bad’ behaviour.
In more general cases of ill discipline, 40 per cent of parents and 14 per cent of children favour corporal punishment.
While 53 per cent of parents and 77 per cent of children are against the cane, the poll found nine out of ten parents – and two thirds of pupils – want teachers to have more power to crack down on bad behaviour.
The survey, conducted by YouGov, comes just a week after David Cameron pledged to restore order and respect in schools in the wake of last month’s riots.
Education Secretary Michael Gove continued the tough line yesterday when he said: ‘Parents and students know we have to give teachers more authority. Strong discipline is vital for effective teaching.
‘In some of our most challenging areas there are profound problems, as the events of last month underlined. That’s why we need to give teachers more power to keep order and emphasise that adult authority should be respected and teachers obeyed.
‘Every child deserves to be taught properly. This right is currently undermined by the twisting of rights by a minority who need to be taught an unambiguous lesson in who is boss.’
Corporal punishment ended in state schools in 1987, and in the fee-paying sector in 1998.
The YouGov researchers, commissioned by the Times Educational Supplement, polled 2,014 parents with children at secondary school and 530 secondary-age pupils between August 19 and August 30.
While significant numbers favoured corporal punishment, sending pupils out of the class was the most popular method of dealing with indiscipline, chosen by 89 per cent of parents and 79 per cent of children.
Other popular ways of cracking down on bad behaviour were lunchtime or after-school detentions and writing lines.
More than four in five parents (84 per cent) and nearly two thirds of children (62 per cent) backed expelling or suspending naughty pupils.
The survey raises parents’ concerns that behaviour in schools is worse now than when they were young.
More than four fifths of parents (85 per cent) said teachers are given less respect by pupils now than when they were at school, with 86 per cent saying teachers need to gain more respect to discipline youngsters properly.
Nine in ten (91 per cent) said they were concerned that teachers have become more fearful of their pupils.
British mother-of-four threatened son's bullies with baseball bat after 'school did nothing to help'
A mother threatened her son's bullies on a school bus with a baseball bat because she felt his school and the police 'did nothing' to help the youngster. Natasha Hayley, 30, resorted to extreme measures after her 11-year-old's tormentors assaulted and robbed him.
A judge said although she had been 'incredibly stupid', he said he was not going to deprive her children of their mother by sending her to prison.
Recorder James Mulholland QC, at Maidstone Crown Court, in Kent, was shown footage of the incident caught on security cameras on the bus.
He heard how Ms Hayley from Dartford, Kent, acted on November 29 last year over her 11-year-old son being bullied at Wilmington Academy.
Michael Smalley, defending, said Hayley's son was the victim of an assault by a group of pupils on the school bus at the beginning of November. He said Ms Hayley had tried contacting the school and the police without any success. Kent police say they did act on the mother's complaints.
Although he was reluctant to return to school, Mr Smalley said the boy's mother made him go and there he was robbed in a classroom and bullied. But after informing the school she thought nothing would be done, which is why Ms Hayley says she took matters into her own hands.
When arrested, she told police she had got onto the bus to stop the bullies and took the bat in case she was 'rushed', after calls to the school and the police had failed to bring any action.
Mr Smalley said Miss Hayley, who admitted affray: 'She accepts she went over the top. She has remorse and regret. She says she was stupid.' Her son had since left Wilmington Academy and has settled at a new school.
Miss Hayley received a six-month sentence suspended for 12 months and ordered to do 150 hours' unpaid work and was handed a curfew. She said her punishment was 'unfair'. Speaking at her home in Dartford, Kent, she said: 'Nothing had been done about my son being bullied. 'If my son was to be robbed in the street that's robbery but because it was in the classroom he did not even get questioned. I am now planning to sue the school for misconduct.
'My son was the victim in the beginning of this - he had barely turned 11. All I wanted to do was to get to their parents.' Speaking about the incident on the bus, the single mother said: 'The people who beat my son up should never have been allowed on the bus. 'I should never have got on the bus with the baseball bat. I should have gone to the parents' house and spoken to them. 'If the school and police had done their work I would never have had to do it.'
The vigilante mother also claims she never intended to use the bat. She added: 'I know you can't touch children - they're children for God's sake. 'Not one parent I know would accept [their son being beaten up]. I do not feel like I am wrong because I feel like I had to do something to stop my son being bullied.
'I would never touch a child. I'd never dream of it in a million years. I hope [what my son went through] never ever happens to any one of my children. 'My son was a victim and all of all of a sudden that was ignored. My son then had to deal with people thinking I was a bully and I'm not a bully. 'I do not send my children to school to be bullied - I cannot believe the school allowed it. I think it's atrocious really.'
Recorder Mulholland said he sympathised over the 'horrific' bullying but Miss Hayley had 'gone off the scale'. He added: 'It is so far removed from what one would hope a parent would do.'
But chief Inspector Mark Arnold said the matter had been resolved: 'Kent Police was contacted in relation to an assault which occurred on 15 November 2010. The matter was fully investigated and regular contact was made with the victim's mother.
'The matter was dealt with by the school and was resolved without further police involvement, at the agreement of those involved and in line with the Kent County Council and Kent Police Schools Policy.
'Advice was provided that should further issues arise or a satisfactory outcome not be achieved, officers should be contacted. No further allegations were made to police by the victim or his family.'
Coldest British summer in 20 years wipes out two-thirds of the common blue butterfly
Hey! Where did that global warming get to??
Butterfly numbers have fallen after the coldest summer in two decades, a survey shows. In particular, nearly two thirds of the common blue species were wiped out.
Numbers of all butterflies were down 11 per cent on last year as winds and heavy rain devastated their reproductive patterns.
The figures come from more than 34,000 people who joined the Big Butterfly Count, organised by the Butterfly Conservation charity. A spokesman described the results as ‘very worrying’. Butterflies play a key role in pollination. But they are unable to fly, feed, find mates or lay eggs in cold, rainy weather. Almost half of the 59 British species are now under threat.
Experts are concerned about the future of the brightly-coloured species, which was once a regular sight in Britain’s gardens and parks.
The Big Butterfly Count was launched last year by Sir David Attenborough who is president of the charity Butterfly Conservation and has spoken of the ‘catastrophic drop’ in numbers.
‘It used to be that if you had a buddleia in your garden, you couldn’t get to the flowers because of the sheer number of butterflies,' he said. ‘I live in Richmond near the park and river and Kew Gardens but the variety and number I get in my garden has gone down. ‘Walking in the countryside in my youth there were so many butterflies. But I don’t know anywhere where I could match that today.’
Must not hint at the fact that most of the London rioters were black
Boris Johnson is the Mayor of London
"One of Boris Johnson’s closest political aides was tonight facing calls to resign after he was accused of making a racist joke about the London riots.
Tory Richard Barnes, who is Johnson’s deputy mayor, was apparently overheard making the offensive comments by colleagues.
Barnes, who is openly gay, is reported to have said: ‘Why did police put Persil in the water cannons? To stop the colours running?’
Today his comments have been described as 'disgusting' and there are calls for him to resign as Equality Advisor.
Linda Perks, UNISON’s Regional Secretary for London, said: 'It beggars belief that the Equality Advisor to the Mayor should make racist jokes.
Persil is an old-fashioned laundry detergent, apparently marketed as good for washing colored clothes, which can sometimes "run" (i.e. lose some of their dye)
16 September, 2011
How half our hospitals and care homes are failing the nation's elderly
Once again: Don't get old in Britain
Half of the UK's hospitals and care homes are failing to look after patients, a damning report warns. Shockingly, nurses at some institutions are serving up people’s evening meals at 3pm – just because it is more convenient, inspectors found.
And several hospitals do not have enough nurses on wards to feed or wash patients, or help move them to prevent bedsores.
The critical report by the Care Quality Commission watchdog found that, in some hospitals, patients are wheeled away to have major surgery without doctors properly explaining details of the operation and the potential risks.
In addition, nurses arrive unannounced at elderly patients’ bedsides and strap blood pressure monitors round their arms without telling them what they are doing.
In a further example of the poor standards, it was noted that pills may be dumped in front of patients but nobody tells them what the medication is for or why it must be taken.
Campaigners warned that the basic care of the most vulnerable in society was being ‘cast aside’ as it was deemed ‘too costly or difficult’.
This latest report is yet further evidence of the poor treatment and neglect of the elderly in hospital wards and care homes.
The Daily Mail has long called for an end to this appalling standard of care as part of our Dignity for the Elderly Campaign.
Of the 137 hospitals visited by inspectors at the CQC in the last year, 49 per cent were found to be failing basic standards of care and wellbeing.
In a handful of cases, investigators found that ‘do not resuscitate’ orders had been placed in patients’ medical notes without informing them. Medical guidelines insist these orders – which tell doctors not to carry out CPR if someone’s heart stop beating – are issued only following discussion with a patient or their family.
Similarly, 49 per cent of 799 care homes inspected were deemed to be failing basic standards of care and wellbeing. Some 39 per cent were not protecting patients health and safety, the report found.
Michelle Mitchell, charity director of Age UK, said: ‘It’s not acceptable that NHS hospitals and care homes with nursing are not complying with basic minimum standards required for the wellbeing and welfare of older people.
‘It’s shocking to see that only half of NHS hospitals and care homes with nursing are meeting their obligation to provide effective, safe and appropriate treatment which meets their needs and protect their rights and that 30 per cent fail on nutrition, welfare and safety.
‘The demand for high quality of health and social care will only increase as our population continues to age. ‘The care of the most vulnerable in our society is one of the most important issues facing the country and too important to cast aside and be labelled as 'too costly or difficult'.'
Earlier this year, another report by the CQC found that doctors in hospitals had resorted to prescribing patients drinking water alongside their medications because nurses had allowed them to become so dehydrated.
Mothers-to-be at risk as parts of England are dangerously short of midwives
A dangerous shortage of midwives is putting the lives of mothers and babies at risk, experts have warned. While there are shortfalls across the country, some areas are worse than others, putting mothers and babies at risk, the Royal College of Midwives said.
The RCM said 4,700 more midwives were needed across England to keep up with added pressures, such as growing numbers of obese and older pregnant women. The college claims midwife numbers have not kept pace with the birthrate in England, which has risen 22 per cent in the past two decades.
Their figures showed the North East and North West had a shortfall of less than 10 per cent, while the East Midlands and east of England needed 41 per cent more midwives. Meanwhile, the South East is said to be more than a third short of staff.
Cathy Warwick, RCM's general secretary told the BBC: 'This is a real problem in England. 'We believe women should have the same choice over giving birth wherever they live. Once you get to really critical shortfalls, maternity services won't be safe.'
The calculations were made by measuring the number of midwives in an area against the number of babies born there. The disparity is a result of different levels of investment in different areas, the RCM said. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland do not have midwife shortages at the moment, it added.
The charity Action against Medical Accidents said the situation was becoming desperate in some areas. Chief executive Pater Walsh told the BBC: 'Having a baby should be the happiest time in a couple's life, but failure to deal with this problem is all too often turning it into a tragedy.'
The number of midwives has increased by 17.7 per cent from 2000 to 2010, according to the Department of Health. The country's birthrate has risen 19.9 per cent in the same period, according to the Office for National Statistics. There were 26,825 midwives working in the UK at the end of September last year. There were 493 more midwives working in May 2011 than in May 2010.
A DoH spokeswoman said: 'Record numbers (of midwives) entered training last year and there are 2,490 planned midwifery training places this year.
'Safety is paramount in the NHS and all mothers and their babies should expect and receive consistently excellent maternity care. 'Most women tell us that they feel positive about their maternity care experience. 'The Care Quality Commission last year found that 94 per cent of women rated their care during labour and birth as "good, very good or excellent". 'This is a testament to the hard work that our maternity staff provide every day in the NHS.'
Most migrants to Britain on a marriage visa have never visited the UK
Two-thirds of immigrants who come to Britain on a marriage visa have never before set foot in this country, it has emerged. Every year some 40,000 migrants enter the country either to marry or to join an existing spouse – bringing with them another 9,000 children and other dependants.
An examination of Home Office files from 2009 revealed 67 per cent were coming here for the first time.
The research will raise concerns that many of those coming here to marry or to join partners have little knowledge and understanding of British culture.
It will be published today as Immigration Minister Damian Green calls for support for Government plans to prevent family visas being used to bypass immigration laws. In a speech to the Centre for Policy Studies think tank, he will tell anyone attempting sham marriages or coming here to live off benefits that they are not welcome.
Mr Green will say: ‘These are sensitive issues which have been ignored for far too long but ones we are determined to tackle. ‘We want a system that lets everyone know where they stand and what their responsibilities are. ‘If your marriage is not genuine, if you have no interest in this country and its way of life, if you are coming here to live off benefits, don’t come in the first place.
‘That is why our focus is on delivering better family migration – better for migrants, for communities and for the UK as a whole.’
The research shows that around eight out of ten of those who arrived on family visas from Pakistani and Bangladesh in 2004 had settled here permanently within five years. That compares to just one in ten family migrants arriving from Australia.
Worryingly, one in five of those sponsoring marriage visas were either unemployed or was earning less than the minimum wage, the research found. One in three was living with family members or friends and not supporting themselves financially.
Last night Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, said: ‘A surprisingly high proportion of those granted marriage visas appear to be total newcomers to Britain. ‘An inflow of this kind can only add to continuing problems of integrating very large numbers of foreign migrants into our society.’
Mr Green will also condemn the abuse of Article 8 of the Human Rights Act – the right to a private and family life – by foreign criminals to stay in the country. A series of outrageous rulings have allowed serious offenders to remain here despite breaking the law repeatedly.
Official figures show more than half the offenders who win their appeals do so using Article 8. Of the 162 cases lost by the Home Office in the last three months of last year, 99 were based on family life rulings.
Ministers are set to radically overhaul family immigration rules in coming months, including tough income tests for sponsors who want to bring in their partner. They will have to show they have the means to support both their partner and any children or other dependent relatives.
New powers will be given to register offices to refuse to marry people or insist on a delay if it is feared the marriage is not genuine, and tough new ‘Mr and Mrs’ style tests brought in to guard against sham marriages.
Spouses and partners would have to wait five years, rather than the current two, before they could apply to settle in the UK permanently, and the same period before they can claim benefits.
Ministers also want to rein in Article 8 by making it explicit in immigration rules what weight should be given to family rights.
Soft sentencing blamed for British riot rampage as it is revealed two thirds had criminal past
Soft sentencing was last night blamed for allowing hardened criminals to go on the rampage during last month’s riots. Official figures showed two thirds of rioters with criminal histories have never tasted prison. That is despite rioters having amassed more than previous 16,000 offences between them – an average of 15 each. One in four of those charged over the riots has committed more than ten offences, and one in 20 has committed 50 or more.
It also emerged that one in ten charged for their part in the violence and looting were either serving a community sentence at the time of their arrest or were ‘on licence’ after release from prison.
Justice Secretary Ken Clarke said the statistics confirmed it was ‘existing criminals’ who had gone ‘on the rampage’.
Last week he revealed that nearly three quarters of rioters have criminal histories, and claimed this showed that the penal system was ‘broken’. He has also argued for sending fewer criminals to jail, saying that short sentences do not provide time for rehabilitation.
But criminologist Dr David Green, from the Civitas think-tank, said locking up would-be rioters would have been ‘100 per cent effective’ at preventing them from joining in the widespread looting. ‘Ken Clarke says prison doesn’t work to rehabilitate people and we need effective community punishments,’ he said.
‘But what these figures actually show is many of the rioters were hardened criminals who should have been in prison. If they had been they would not have been able to go rioting – it is 100 per cent effective at stopping crimes against the public.
‘We are talking about career criminals, and people like that deserve to be sent to prison for a prolonged period to protect ordinary people. There is no evidence that any community sentences are more successful than prison at rehabilitation.’
The figures confirmed that the courts are dishing out tougher punishments to rioters than ordinary offenders.
At five months, the average magistrates’ court jail term for a rioter is twice the average for non-riot crimes. Crown Court jail terms are more than 50 per cent higher.
Crown Court judges have jailed 90 per cent of the riot-related burglars they have dealt with, and every violent offender to have appeared in the dock. But very few riot cases have yet reached the courts.
The Ministry of Justice figures showed 1,715 convicted criminals stand accused of involvement in the riots that hit English cities between August 6 and 9, causing millions of pounds in damage.
Of the 1,561 whose criminal histories were examined by statisticians, nearly three-quarters – a total of 1,133 – had at least one criminal offence to their name. Although the vast majority of offenders were under 25, they have amassed 16,598 offences – or an average of 15 each. But only 406 had ever received a jail term, compared with 727 who had received community punishments, cautions, and other non-custodial sentences. Nearly two thirds were serious offences, including burglary, robbery, drugs crimes and violence.
Mr Clarke said: ‘These figures confirm that existing criminals were on the rampage. I congratulate the courts for delivering swift and firm justice, which stopped the riots spreading further.
‘I am dismayed to see a hard core of repeat offenders back in the system. This reinforces my determination to introduce radical changes to ensure both effective punishment and reform to tackle reoffending.’
In the Guardian last week, he wrote: ‘Close to three quarters of those aged 18 or over charged with riot offences already had a prior conviction. ‘That is the legacy of a broken penal system – one whose record in preventing reoffending has been straightforwardly dreadful.
‘The riots can be seen in part as an outburst of outrageous behaviour by the criminal classes – individuals and families familiar with the justice system who haven’t been changed by past punishments.’
British schools go back to basics with return of phonics tests for six-year-olds
Long overdue
Every six-year-old will be tested on their ability to read words such as ‘cat’, ‘zoo’ and ‘pride’ as part of a return to traditional teaching. Schools minister Nick Gibb will today announce that every six year old will be screened with a 10-minute test during one week of June from 2012.
The tests will be based on phonics – where pupils learn the sounds of letters and groups of letters before putting them together. It is a move away from the ‘trendy’ teaching methods which have been blamed on the decline of youngsters’ grasp of the 3Rs.
Around one in six seven-year-olds and one in five 11-year-olds fail to reach the levels expected of their age group in reading, according to official statistics.
Ministers hope the test will enable teachers to pinpoint any child struggling with reading at an early stage – so they can be given extra help.
The announcement follows the successful completion of a pilot scheme in 300 schools this summer. A report, published today, shows almost half of teachers, 43 per cent, discovered pupils with reading problems of which they were not previously aware.
It is therefore hoped that the national tests will flag up the needs of thousands of struggling youngsters each year.
Mr Gibb, said: ‘There is no doubt we need to raise standards of reading. Only last month we learnt that one in 10 boys aged 11 can read no better than a seven-year-old. ‘The new check is based on a method that is internationally proven to get results and the evidence from the pilot is clear – thousands of six-year-olds, who would otherwise slip through the net.’
At present, pupils in England are assessed in Year 2 by their teachers in English, maths and science.
Phonics focuses on sounds rather than, for example, having children try to recognise whole words. In analytic phonics, words are broken down into their beginning and end parts, such as ‘str-’ and ‘eet’, with an emphasis on ‘seeing’ the words and analogy with other words.
In synthetic phonics, children start by sequencing the individual sounds in words – for example, ‘s-t-r-ee-t’, with an emphasis on blending them together. Once they have learned all these, they progress to reading books.
Mr Gove has said he believes that it is impossible for schools to drill pupils to pass the new test. Some teachers are unconvinced by the move, believing reading is best taught using a mixture of methods.
Assistant head who 'shoved' 15-year-old pupil who swore at him is cleared of assault
An assistant head teacher, who was accused of assaulting a 15-year-old pupil, has been cleared. William Stuart, 47, was today found not guilty of assaulting the girl at Graham School in Scarborough following a two-day trial.
After the verdict was read out the court erupted into cheers largely from dozens of Mr Stuart's supporters from the local community. The teacher's wife, Sarah, who had been anxiously sitting in court, burst into tears at the news.
Mr Stuart, who has 23 years of unblemished experience, was charged after the girl, who cannot be named, claimed the science teacher shoved her to the ground and against some coat pegs.
It was alleged that Mr Stuart had become angry and 'out of control' after the pupil ignored his instructions to stay behind when food was smeared on the wall of the school canteen.
But chairman of the bench Paul Osborne said the girl's evidence was inconsistent and did not tally with that of two other pupils who gave evidence for the prosecution.
Ian Glen QC, defending, had earlier told the court 19 incidents were detailed in the school’s bad behaviour log from September 2009 to July 2011 about the girl’s poor attitude in class and on school grounds. The court also heard the girl has already been excluded this term after assaulting another pupil.
Mr Osborne said her terrible school record did nothing for her credibility, especially as she tried to tell the court she was a good pupil.
He said: 'Mr Stuart's evidence was credible and convincing. 'He has a 23-year unblemished teaching record across several schools.'
Speaking after the hearing, Anne Swift, from the National Union of Teachers (NUT), said the strain of the case has had an 'enormous impact' on Mr Stuart's family. She said teachers accused in this way should be granted anonymity until they are convicted by a court. Mrs Swift said: 'He (Mr Stuart) was made to feel a criminal before anything was found.
'It's too easy for youngsters and their families to make false accusations. There should be consequences for those who make false allegations.'
Mrs Swift said both his children went to the school where he teaches and, because of the accusation, he was not able to see his daughter's final concert before she left. Asked how she would describe Mr Stuart, she said: 'An excellent teacher. A man of a good character. A pillar of the community.'
Mrs Swift said she also believed a matter like this should never have involved the police at all and should have been dealt with internally.
Asked whether Mr Stuart would return to his job, she said: 'It would be a great loss to his profession to have an experienced teacher decide they can't face it any more.'
Ban on NHS rationing of cancer scans to save cash: Health Secretary cracks down on 'blanket restrictions'
Health trusts will be banned from telling GPs to ration the number of patients they send for cancer scans.
Last week the Daily Mail revealed how dozens of Primary Care Trusts were trying to save money by ordering doctors to refer fewer patients for hospital tests commonly used to spot tumours. Experts warned that the cost-saving measures increased the risk of patients being diagnosed too late and dying unnecessarily.
Now Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has ordered NHS chief executive David Nicholson to write to every single trust telling them they must not impose such ‘blanket restrictions’.
In a speech to the National Association of Primary Care in London yesterday, Mr Lansley said: ‘We have always been clear with commissioners that decisions on access to treatment must be sensitive to individual circumstances and clinical needs. They cannot be based on blanket restrictions.’
In a letter which will be sent out in the next fortnight, trusts will be told that they cannot deny patients life-saving scans purely on the grounds of costs.
Family doctors will be reminded to consider every patient on an individual basis, and that the only acceptable circumstances for denying a scan would be if it is unlikely to be of any use.
The edict comes as new research shows that thousands of patients are being denied hip and knee replacements, cataract operations and IVF as PCTs try to save cash.
A survey of 300 family doctors by Pulse magazine found that many had been told to ration certain procedures not deemed urgent, which also include hernia operations and blood-testing for diabetes.
It also revealed that 13 per cent of GPs had been told to reduce the number of patients they sent for MRI and CT scans, which are commonly used to diagnose cancer.
98,000 asylum seekers have been 'lost' by bungling British immigration workers
Nearly 100,000 asylum seekers have been ‘lost’ by bungling immigration officials, it was revealed last night. The 98,000 cases were among nearly half a million found abandoned in boxes at the Home Office in 2006 in a major immigration scandal.
Five years later, officials have finally announced that the backlog has been cleared. But Jonathan Sedgwick, the acting chief executive of the UK Border Agency, admitted yesterday that in 98,000 cases they had not been able to track down the applicant.
Those cases have now been placed in a ‘controlled archive’ – effectively put on ice indefinitely – after officials could find no trace of their existence.
When the scandal emerged, the Daily Mail predicted around 160,000 would be granted the right to stay here in what was effectively an amnesty. At the time, the prediction was dismissed as ‘scaremongering’ by the pro-immigration lobby. But yesterday’s figures revealed even that prediction was too optimistic. Of the total, 172,000 have been given the right to stay in the country, claim benefits and bring in family members, or more than one in three of the total.
Many gained the right to stay simply for being here for so long. Others had children or relationships and used Article 8 of the Human Rights Act to argue they should not be removed. Only 37,500 – or less than one in ten – have been kicked out or left voluntarily. Around 170,000 have been written off as duplicates or errors.
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, said: ‘Now we have it. Nearly half a million case files left lying around in a warehouse for years on end. ‘This must be one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the Home Office, not to speak of the immense cost to the taxpayer.’
Appearing before the Home Affairs Committee of MPs, Mr Sedgwick said there were another 18,000 cases which had ‘barriers to conclusion’.
They have now been passed to a special group at the Border Agency called the Case Assurance and Audit Unit, Mr Sedgwick said. Many have been told they must leave but are mounting human rights or other legal challenges to escape deportation.
Committee member and Labour MP Alun Michael said: ‘We were told they were going to be cleared up by this summer. They should be cleared up by now.’
Committee chairman Keith Vaz also criticised the agency for making overpayments to both staff and asylum seekers totalling some £4million last year, and for paying out £14million in compensation claims.
A Border Agency spokesman said: ‘We are improving the asylum system across the board, clearing the backlog of claims, bringing down costs and resolving cases more quickly.’
Britain shows the way? 111,000 state jobs go in record losses as Government cuts public sector
I didn't think it was possible
A record number of public sector jobs were lost between March and June in the biggest cull of the State workforce since records began, official figures revealed yesterday. Some 111,000 state workers lost their jobs in that three-month period when the private sector workforce grew by 41,000.
Experts warned the problem is likely to get worse as the Government continues to cut the public sector, which accounts for one in five workers. Women will be hit particularly hard as around two-thirds of the state workforce is female. Already 1.06million women are unemployed – the largest number since 1988 – with another 450 a day becoming jobless.
The Office for National Statistics figures were published yesterday, which was described by Labour as ‘a day of misery’.
Nida Ali, economic adviser to the accountant Ernst & Young’s Item Club, said: ‘The labour market has turned for the worse. There is no good news in the figures.’ On all fronts, the figures are heading in the wrong direction. Between May and July, employment dropped by 69,000 people – and unemployment rose by 80,000 to 2.51million. It is only the second time since 1994 that unemployment has breached the landmark 2.5million level.
The number of job vacancies is falling, and there are 5.6 unemployed people chasing every opening, according to the figures.
To make matters worse, many of the women who do have a job are frustrated because they have been forced into part-time work. The ONS said the number of women who are working part-time only because they ‘could not find a full-time job’ has reached an all-time high of 701,000.
Young people are also being hit hard by the jobs crisis. The ONS said 20.8 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds are unemployed – the highest rate since records began. Between May and July, an extra 78,000 youngsters became unemployed, raising the total to 973,000.
Graeme Leach, chief economist at the Institute of Directors, warned that the situation was unlikely to improve in the short-term. He said: ‘The storm clouds are gathering. It is difficult to see how this might reverse.’
Employment Minister Chris Grayling admitted yesterday’s figures ‘underline the scale of the challenge that we face.’
British Conservatives scrap Labour Party plan to force boards to appoint more women
Plans to force companies to publish the pay of their women workers and move towards compulsory gender quotas in the boardroom were ditched yesterday.
Theresa May abandoned the proposal, introduced by Labour’s deputy leader Harriet Harman during her time as women’s minister, saying forced equality laws ‘frighten the horses’.
Instead the Home Secretary told business leaders they should voluntarily go public with pay and promotion comparisons between men and women, saying it made ‘good business sense’.
Her decision frees companies already struggling in the economic downturn from the threat of yet more burdensome regulation.
The move brought condemnation from Labour and the unions. But it won backing from business lobby group the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), which said: ‘The last thing that anybody would want at this time is more equality red tape.’
Mrs May, who is also Minister for Women and Equalities, spoke as she launched a programme to persuade companies to ‘Think, Act, Report’ in order to improve pay and promotion for women workers.
In October 2009 Miss Harman left open the prospect of new laws to force companies to promote more women, saying: ‘If you want to make sure you don’t have the nightmare of men-only boards, you have got to change the terms on which men and women participate.’
And a report for the Coalition by former Labour Minister Lord Davies of Abersoch said in February that FTSE 100 companies should double the proportion of women in their boardrooms to 25 per cent by 2015, or face laws to enforce quotas.
But Mrs May told business chiefs yesterday: ‘Go out and spread the message, not that it is an equality thing to do, because that tends to frighten the horses.
‘But actually go out there and give the message that we have heard directly from companies and from the Confederation of British Industry that this makes good business sense.
‘In a difficult economic climate, everybody is looking for what is going to make a difference; in a difficult economic climate you want to be attracting the talents of the best people – and this can be a tool in doing that.’
Labour’s equality spokesman Fiona Mactaggart said Mrs May had ‘set back progress towards equal pay even further’.
Miss Mactaggart added: ‘We share the hope that voluntary measures might speed up progress towards equal pay, which was estimated recently by the Chartered Institute of Management to be 98 years away at the present rate of progress, but without the power to enforce pay audits on reluctant employers, women who face pay discrimination will not have the information they need to get justice.’
Fierce debate about the gender pay gap continues, with one side insisting women need laws to overcome discrimination blocking equal pay, and the other pointing out that women under 30 now earn more than men of the same age.
A spokesman for the state-run Equality and Human Rights Commission said: ‘Britain needs a better gender balance in its boardrooms and in politics. 'Without positive action it could be another 70 years before there are an equal number of men and women directors of FTSE 100 companies.’
Welcoming Mrs May’s decision, Katja Hall of the CBI said: ‘We are very pleased that the framework is voluntary. 'We think that is important, because this will help ensure that businesses have actually bought into the process and that they do not feel that this is something that is being dumped on them.’
'Box-ticking care home watchdog put elderly at risk': MPs say commission is more interested in paperwork than safety
The elderly are being put at risk because the Government’s watchdog is too busy ‘box-ticking’ to inspect care homes, MPs warn today. They accuse the Care Quality Commission of putting form-filling ahead of ensuring vulnerable residents are safe.
One of its jobs is to register every care home, hospital, GP surgery and dentist in England and Wales and in doing so make sure each meets safety standards.
In a scathing report, the health select committee said there was a ‘significant distortion of priorities’ at the commission, which meant it was too busy compiling this register to inspect more care homes. Chairman Stephen Dorrell said this had led to ‘increased risk to patients’.
Rosie Cooper, a Labour MP who also sits on the committee said it was 'totally unacceptable' that the CQC had allowed itself to get so bogged down in bureaucracy. 'It has left elderly people and the disabled who rely on these services at risk,' she added.
The report describes how the watchdog’s officials often carry out ‘desktop’ inspections from the office rather than visiting homes to check them.
The report comes months after the commission was accused of repeatedly ignoring warnings about Winterbourne View, a residential home in Bristol where adults with learning difficulties were ‘barbarically’ abused.
An investigation by BBC’s Panorama uncovered how vulnerable residents at the home were routinely trapped under their chairs, slapped and dragged across the room by their supposed carers.
The report describes the CQC’s actions in this case as 'woefully inadequate', pointing out that it did not bother sending inspectors round despite repeated warnings from a whistleblower nurse.
The report shows the number of homes inspected by the watchdog has slumped in the last 12 months, from 10,856 to 3,805. The commission said it is now carrying out more inspections and that numbers have doubled in the past six months.
A CQC spokesman added: ' We welcome the committee’s recommendations on the need to further incorporate the concerns of sector professionals, and those who use services, into the information we use to make.'
'Outstanding' British schools that should only be rated average: Education Secretary wants focus on standard of teaching
More than half of secondary schools and nearly one in four primaries officially rated ‘outstanding’ do not deserve the accolade, the Education Secretary has warned.
Michael Gove highlighted the shame of Ofsted inspections, revealing 410 schools were rated ‘outstanding’ when the quality of their teaching is not.
Disturbingly, they have been given a reprieve from the dreaded inspections unless one is triggered by a dramatic slump in grades – reducing incentives to raise teaching standards.
Inspectors rank schools on 18 factors, some of them woolly and only one of which refers to ‘quality of teaching and learning’.
These include ‘the extent to which pupils adopt healthy lifestyles’, ‘the extent to which pupils feel safe’, and ‘the effectiveness with which school promotes equal opportunity and tackles discrimination’.
Some 150 secondary schools were given the top rating by inspectors last year – even though they failed to score high marks for their teaching. And 260 primaries were similarly trumpeted after inspectors found their teaching was just ‘satisfactory’, or ‘good’.
Under Ofsted, nearly one in ten secondaries, 9 per cent, are ranked outstanding. But Mr Gove has pointed out that the true percentage is just 4 per cent.
And for primaries, Ofsted figures claim 7 per cent are outstanding, while just 5 per cent actually have outstanding teaching. The revelation means 410 schools could be downgraded from ‘outstanding’ to ‘good’.
The stark warning reveals tens of thousands of parents – who fight to ensure they secure the best possible education for their children – are being misled. And it highlights the devastatingly low level of excellent teaching in schools.
Mr Gove’s comments coincide with a report, by exam board Pearson, which shows a resounding 97 per cent of parents believe quality of teaching is the most important factor about a school.
The Education Secretary, in a damning indictment of inspections, has called for an urgent review.
‘It is a worry to me that so many schools that are still judged as “outstanding” overall when they have not achieved an outstanding “teaching and learning”, he told the National College’s Teaching Schools conference in Nottingham. ‘I intend to ask the new Chief Inspector to look at this issue and report back to me with recommendations.’
The method of inspecting schools was introduced by Labour in 2005. They are given an overall ranking by Ofsted following an inspection – outstanding, good, satisfactory or inadequate. It is this ranking that is widely published to parents and plastered over websites.
Last night Rob Bristow, president of exam board Pearson, said inspections must be brought in line with the concerns of parents. ‘When our report asked parents what the most important factors were in choosing their child’s school, an overwhelming 97 per cent told us that their impression of teaching quality was important,’ he said.
‘Parental choices aren’t based solely on exam performance and league tables. ‘They want to be sure that their child receives the very best teaching, to help them reach their potential. This needs to be reflected in the information parents receive.’
The shameful over-inflation of hundreds of schools was also damned by former chief inspector of Ofsted, Christine Gilbert, before she stepped down in June.
The most recent Ofsted annual report highlights the shocking lack of good teaching. It states: ‘The quality of teaching is still too variable.’
Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said: ‘It’s concerning that quality of the teaching is hidden beneath the outstanding rating especially as those schools are not due to be re-inspected. ‘I hope the Government will rethink its decision not to inspect outstanding schools to ensure they are achieving the highest possible levels of teaching quality.’
British teacher on trial for allegedly pushing and hitting 'rude and defiant' pupil who swore at him
An assistant headmaster was put on trial today accused of assaulting a ‘rude and defiant’ teenage girl. Science teacher William Stuart, 47, was angry that the 15-year-old pupil ignored his instructions to stay behind after food was smeared on the wall of the school canteen, a court heard.
He is accused of following her into a corridor where allegedly he grabbed her arm and caused her to fall over before pushing her against coat pegs. She then swore at him. The teenager complained to police five days after the incident at Graham School, Scarborough, in March. Three days later, Stuart was suspended.
He denied a charge of assault at the town’s magistrates court. He has an unblemished career spanning 23 years and five schools, and if convicted he could be forced to quit teaching.
The girl, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, told the court a friend had smeared icing from a sticky bun on the canteen wall. When the group went to leave, she said she heard Stuart shouting: ‘Get back into the hall you three.’
She told him: ‘No, I’m not coming back because I’m not involved,’ and walked away. The girl claimed the teacher was ‘really angry’ and said: ‘How dare you walk away from me?’ But she said she ignored him and went upstairs.
‘He was coming up behind me quite fast, he was still angry and shouting,’ she added. ‘He came up beside me, put his arm on the banister and wouldn’t let me get past. ‘I turned to get away, but he kept trying to get in front of me to block my path. He was still shouting, “Stop, don’t walk away from me.” ‘I was scared because he wasn’t shouting like a teacher, collected and calm, trying to get the situation under control.’
The teenager said she managed to get up the stairs and into a corridor. ‘He lunged at me with his hand, grabbed my upper right arm and pulled me towards him. I spun round, hit a wall and fell down. ‘I was shocked because I know teachers aren’t supposed to make that sort of contact with a student. I felt scared and wanted to get away. He then grabbed my right arm again and forced me to my feet.’
The teenager claimed Stuart ‘used force and aggression’ to pull her up, adding: ‘We were facing each other and he grabbed my shoulders and pushed me backwards into coat pegs. It really hurt my back when I hit the pegs.’
The girl said she then swore at him and pushed him out of the way. Prosecutor Jessica Strange also told the court the teacher hit the girl ‘again in the back before she ran away down the corridor’.
The pupil went to the school office and reported the incident before being taken home by her mother.She claimed she was left with red marks the size of 50p pieces on her lower and upper back and her right arm.
Ian Glen QC, defending, accused her of telling lies about what happened and ‘exaggerating grossly’. He told the girl: ‘You were out of control that day with anger and defiance weren’t you?’ She replied: ‘No.’
Mr Glen told the court 19 incidents were detailed in the school’s bad behaviour log from September 2009 to July 2011 about the girl’s poor attitude in class and on school grounds. The court also heard the girl has already been excluded this term after assaulting another pupil.
She admitted defying a rule not to wear hoodies at school. She has also been involved in incidents of throwing food and Plasticine and was repeatedly described by different teachers as ‘rude and defiant’.
Colleague David Thompson said of Stuart: ‘He upholds standards in the school and will not tolerate disobedience or misbehaviour, but will work with students to overcome difficulties.’
ANOTHER death at Furness baby unit: Mother claims errors by midwives cost newborn daughter her life
A seventh death at a controversial maternity unit is being investigated by police, the Daily Mail can reveal. Detectives were already examining the deaths of two mothers and four babies in a matter of months amid allegations that midwives may have colluded to hide errors.
Yesterday, as the unit was ordered to improve or face closure, 21-year-old Kelly Hine told how she lost her first child, Amelia, a day after she was born there in April. Miss Hine claimed midwives at Furness General Hospital used a defective monitor which kept falling off the bed, and then rudely berated her partner Carl Bower, also 21, for failing to hold it in place for them.
The scans failed to pick up the fact that Amelia was in distress, and she suffered brain damage and died.
Miss Hine, who is taking legal action against the hospital, alleges her medical records have been altered by staff and says a series of errors during labour led to the loss of her baby.
It emerged last week that police are examining the six earlier deaths over seven months in 2008, when all but one of those who died were from ethnic minorities. Last night officers were preparing to interview Miss Hine amid fears that there could have been other preventable tragedies in the past three years.
The maternity unit in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, was yesterday put on red alert by Monitor, which oversees standards at flagship foundation trusts, after being given a final warning by the Care Quality Commission to make dramatic improvements within two months or face being closed down.
Fears of continuing problems at the unit were raised following an unannounced inspection by the CQC in July after fierce criticism of midwives at an inquest into the death of one of the victims, nine-day-old Joshua Titcombe. The visit found problems in six areas and said mothers and babies were still being put at risk through dirty wards and poor staffing levels.
Miss Hine, a care home worker who has just learnt she is expecting another baby, had a normal pregnancy with Amelia, but her due date arrived and she hadn’t gone into labour. After suffering pains, she was told to take painkillers and have plenty of baths.
But on April 2 – now two weeks overdue – her pains returned, and she went to Furness General where midwives confirmed she had begun to dilate, but she was sent home with the same instructions. Her contractions began later that day, but when Mr Bower drove her in again from their home in Dalton-in-Furness they were again turned away, only to be admitted when she went back an hour-and-a-half later.
At this stage, according to hospital records, she was checked with a foetal heart monitor – something Miss Hine and her partner ‘100 per cent’ refute. She wasn’t seen by a doctor, but at 9pm her waters broke suddenly. Instead of a clear watery liquid it contained dark streaks – an indicator of a substance called meconium which, if inhaled by the baby, might obstruct its breathing leading to brain damage.
‘My midwife didn’t bat an eyelid and took no notice,’ Miss Hine claimed yesterday. ‘A care assistant came in and cleared it up.’
The midwife then strapped a heart monitor to her stomach, but the elastic was worn and it fell off, she said. ‘She bellowed at Carl to make himself useful and hold the monitor against my tummy. Then she went away for 15 minutes.’
Unable to get a proper read-out on Amelia’s heart, a doctor drew blood directly from the baby’s scalp, and tests showed her oxygen levels had dropped dangerously low. Miss Hine was rushed into theatre for a caesarean but was told later that Amelia’s breathing was erratic. The next day she and Mr Bower were advised that the machine keeping Amelia alive should be turned off.
An inquest has been opened into Amelia’s death and a full hearing will be held later.
University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay Foundation Trust, which runs the unit, has said it fully accepts the CQC’s concerns and will ‘leave no stone unturned’ in making improvements.
The trust’s medical director, Peter Dyer, said it would not be appropriate to comment on the death of Amelia while police were still investigating. But he added: ‘We offer our sincere condolences to any family for the tragedy of losing a child.’
Liberal claim that migrant cap would harm the British economy is rubbished
Liberal Democrat claims that the Government’s controversial cap on immigration would harm the economy were rubbished yesterday. There is ‘no evidence’ the policy is harming business, said Professor David Metcalf, the Home Office’s most senior adviser on migration.
He also revealed that just half of the work permits available under the cap – which limits the number of visas available to non-EU skilled migrants to 20,700 each year – are being taken up.
The intervention is a blow to Business Secretary Vince Cable and his Lib Dem colleagues. Along with business groups, they repeatedly argued the policy would harm Britain by leaving firms short of skilled labour. If anything, the figures suggest the cap could be made stricter. Mr Cable is now likely to face ridicule if he makes any attempt to further water down the cap.
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch, said: ‘There is growing evidence that business has been crying wolf over immigration controls.’
Professor Metcalf, who was appointed independent chairman of the Migration Advisory Committee by the last Labour government, made his remarks at the launch of the latest list of so-called ‘shortage occupations’, which means British workers do not have the skills to fill them.
Non-EU workers qualified to fill these jobs are the ones most likely to be allowed in under the cap. He said that, in the 12 months to June this year, 8,900 non-European Economic Area skilled workers came to Britain – less than half of the total number allowed. The permits are made available on a monthly basis and half are going unused.
Asked if there is any evidence of harm to the economy, Professor Metcalf replied that he had ‘not seen any’. He added: ‘Those concerns have not manifested themselves.’
He published a list of 29 job titles which he says can no longer justify recruitment from outside the EEA. It includes vets, biology teachers, consultants in obstetrics and gynaecology, and orchestral musicians.
The committee recommends that 70,000 jobs in occupations where there is a UK shortage should no longer be open for migrant workers to apply for. Instead, they could only be filled by UK citizens or workers from the EEA countries. If approved, the number of posts covered by the shortage occupation list would be reduced from 260,000 to 190,000.
As recently as 2008, one million jobs were open to migrants via the list. They are not all jobs which will be taken by a non-EU worker, but only posts for which they will be allowed to apply. Maths teachers are being recruited from abroad because British graduates are heading to the City
One of the reasons why there is so little demand for the visas is that the economic recovery is sluggish.
During tense negotiations over the level of the cap, Mr Cable repeatedly claimed it was bad for business. His party is known for being strongly pro-immigration. At one stage, he said: ‘We have now lots of case studies of companies which are either not investing or just not able to function effectively because they cannot get key staff – management, specialist engineers and so on – from outside the EU.’
He was also said to have privately described the idea of a tight limit as ‘crazy’ when Britain is trying to boost trade.
Entrance requirements for entry to British police forces dumbed down to aid minority recruitment
Some police officers are ‘barely literate’ because the educational standards required to join the service are so low, it was claimed last night. Tom Winsor, the lawyer reviewing police conditions, said reading, writing and mathematical skills have fallen ‘significantly’ since the 1930s. He suggested that the public could be at risk if poor academic skills damage the effectiveness of potentially vital evidence.
Mr Winsor said criminal barristers sometimes ‘speak in contemptuous terms’ of the ‘barely literate’ quality of police evidence. While checking and rewriting poor quality paperwork was increasing the cost and bureaucracy of policing.
And in an extraordinary aside, he added that two senior officers told him standards were lowered to help black and ethnic minority recruits. He said the claim was ‘astonishing’ and an ‘insult’ to anyone from such a background who wanted a career in policing.
Speaking to an audience of superintendents in Warwickshire, Mr Winsor said it was unfair to expect overworked prosecutors to correct documents.
Mr Winsor said: ‘Why is the entrance test for a police constable now so low? The educational requirements, why are they so low? ‘We looked at the basic questions, one of which is, 'You find a purse in the street, it contains a £5 note, four 20p pieces and five two pence pieces, how much is in the purse?' ‘That's the standard.
‘We've looked at the educational standards for the police from 1930 and 1946 and I can tell you they are very very significantly harder.
‘It seems to me that public safety is critical and we want the most all-round effective police officers. So I ask again, should it be higher, the entrance standard?’
Mr Winsor has already inflamed tensions between himself and the police in his review of their conditions, recruitment and training.
Home Secretary Theresa May has asked him to look at entry requirements for the police in order to widen the pool of talent for top officers. This could include allowing leaders from other areas of the public sector or industry to directly enter the top ranks.
Police training could also be opened up to universities, colleges and specialist companies in the private sector.
Mr Winsor admitted that many people who are ‘entirely unsuitable to be police officers’ could pass academic test. He said: ‘It takes more than a clever person to be a cop, I get that. It takes maturity, judgment, bravery, the ability to deal with people.
‘Now those are things that need to be tested in other ways. But you also need to be bright - bright enough, because you are part of a criminal justice system.’
Mr Winsor said he was told by a former Met Commissioner and serving national Police Federation officer that standards were lowered to get more diverse applicants. He said: ‘I find that astonishing because if I was of that background I'd be insulted. Is it true, this assumption? It can't be so.’
Asked if police officers have poor standards of literacy, Mrs May replied: ‘That is not what I have found. I have found officers committed and dedicated to getting on with their job. ‘But it is still right for Tom Winsor to look at entry requirements and the possibility of senior entry at higher ranks.’
'Racists' aged THREE: British toddlers among thousands of children accused of bigotry after name-calling
Teachers are branding thousands of children racist or homophobic following playground squabbles. More than 20,000 pupils aged 11 or younger were last year put on record for so-called hate crimes such as using the word ‘gaylord’. Some of them are even from nursery schools where children are no older than three.
One youngster was accused of being racist for calling a boy ‘broccoli head’ and another was said to be homophobic for telling a teacher ‘this work is gay’.
Two primary school children were reported for homophobia after quarrelling over a rubber and calling each other ‘gay’ and ‘lesbian’.
Those youngsters reported for petty offences at nursery classes included four in the London borough of Tower Hamlets and three in Hertfordshire.
Schools are forced to report the language to education authorities, which keep a register of incidents. Although the Department for Education recently pledged to cut unnecessary red tape and bureaucracy, it has given no guidance on such ‘offences’.
In total, 34,000 nursery, primary and secondary pupils were effectively classed as bigots because of anti-bullying rules. The school can keep the pupil’s name and ‘crime’ on file. The record can be passed from primaries to secondaries or when a pupil moves between schools. And if schools are asked for a pupil reference by a future employer or a university, the record could be used as the basis for it, meaning the pettiest of incidents has the potential to blight a child for life.
Figures for the year 2009-10 were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the civil liberties group the Manifesto Club.
Adrian Hart, of the Manifesto Club, called for the Government to roll back the policy of hate speech reporting in schools. He said: ‘Children need space to play and to learn the meaning of words, without being reported to the local education authority. ‘These policies are an inappropriate intervention into playground life, and undermine teachers’ ability to set a moral example to children and to teach them right from wrong. ‘There is a world of difference between racist abuse and primary school playground spats.’
The figures show 34,000 racist incidents reported by schools to local education authorities in England and Wales. Of these, 20,000 were at primary schools. Figures for 2008-9 – obtained earlier this year – showed 29,659 reported incidents. Last year, Birmingham City Council had the highest number, with 1,090 racist incidents, followed by 672 in Leeds and 567 in Hertfordshire. In West Berkshire there were just 15.
In the majority of cases, the ‘racist’ spats involved name-calling.
Schools were required by the Labour government in 2002 to monitor and report all racist incidents to their local authority. Teachers must name the alleged perpetrator and victim and spell out the incident and the punishment. Local authority records show the type of incident but not the name of the child involved.
LEAs are expected to monitor the number of incidents, look for patterns and plan measures to tackle any perceived problems. Heads who send in ‘nil’ returns are criticised for ‘under-reporting’.
A DfE spokesman said: ‘Parents expect that heads take a very tough line on any poor behaviour and stamp out bullying – that’s why we’re toughening up teachers’ disciplinary powers. ‘It is down to schools themselves to exercise their own common sense and professional judgment about the best way of taking on bullies.’
Burglars? You'll have to sort it out, lazy British police tell oldster in pyjamas who heard neighbour's alarm
A good neighbour who dialled 999 to report burglars ransacking a nearby house was shocked when the police asked him to investigate it for them. Tony Goodeve, 67, called police when he was woken by his neighbour’s burglar alarm in the early hours. But a control room operator told him they needed ‘proof’ of a break-in before they could respond. Mr Goodeve – dressed in his pyjamas and armed only with a torch – refused to scout the back of the five-bedroom property in case he met the crooks.
No police officers attended and the next day he learned that his neighbour’s jewellery box had been stolen.
The father of four, a financial adviser and Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinator from Harpenden, Hertfordshire, said he is livid that police failed to turn up to the crime, which happened at 3.15am on August 20 in a leafy cul-de-sac where homes go for up to £1.5million. ‘I heard the alarm go off and knowing my neighbours were on holiday I shot out into the street in my pyjamas armed with a flashlight and my mobile,’ he said. ‘I dialled 999 but was told that the police would only come out if I could see any signs of a break-in. They told me they needed proof.
'As an OAP I was not prepared to go round the back of a property in the dark and potentially disturb a burglary. I don’t think that is a sensible option for anyone.
‘I was told the police get hundreds of false call-outs after alarms go off, but that is just not good enough. You expect to have a 999 call responded to.
‘I had an argument with the call handler. I explained that I was not prepared to check the back of the property and was told that in that case the police wouldn’t respond.
‘It is dangerous for the police to encourage people to investigate a burglary. You just don’t know what you may walk into, and they could have been armed.
‘There was someone in the house and they took my neighbour’s jewellery box. We could have had someone arrested. I was livid. ‘The next day I went over and found the back window was broken. A very nice police officer came round – but it was too late by then.’
Mr Goodeve has written to Hertfordshire’s Chief Constable Andy Bliss to complain and has referred the incident to the force’s Professional Standards Department. He added: ‘Our Neighbourhood Watch was set up in 1983. It has worked very well, crime rates have dropped dramatically and we have seen our insurance premiums drop. ‘But it relies on police response. I want them to stop this nonsense of asking for proof of a break-in before responding.’
A Hertfordshire Police spokesman said: ‘A complaint has been received about the police response. ‘This is currently being thoroughly investigated. As a result, we will not be able to make a comment on this individual case until the investigation has been completed.’
British schools 'axing traditional science experiements', warn MPs
Children are being forced to study science “second hand” as schools dump traditional experiments in favour of teaching from textbooks, MPs warned today.
The Commons science select committee said that exaggerated fears over health and safety were occasionally used as a “convenient excuse” for avoiding practical work. In a report, it was claimed that this often disguised a lack of confidence among physics, chemistry and biology teachers.
MPs insisted that a decline in experiments and fieldwork was actually down to weak teacher training, a lack of lab technicians, the poor quality of science facilities and crowded timetables.
The conclusions came as a separate international study showed the amount of time children spend in conventional lessons during the school day had a direct bearing on their chances of securing decent grades in science.
Andrew Miller, the committee’s Labour chairman, said: “This is worrying. “If the UK is to be confident of producing the next generation of scientists, then schools - encouraged by the government - must overcome the perceived and real barriers to providing high quality practicals, fieldwork and fieldtrips.”
MPs took evidence from dozens of organisations as part of a review of science experiments and fieldwork in English schools.
The study said high-quality science lessons were needed to enable students to study the subject at college and university. But it was claimed that pupils “cannot and should not do this exclusively second hand, through books without direct practical experience both in and out of the classroom”.
The study found “no credible evidence” to support the claim that health and safety rules got in the way of practical work in the subject. However, the committee was told that it “may be used as a convenient excuse” for avoiding serious science experimentation in some schools.
Teachers may cite health and safety when they are “unsure of their ability to carry out a field trip or believe that the volume and nature of paperwork will outweigh any benefits of taking on the trip”, MPs said.
The committee criticised the poor standard of teacher training, saying that there was “no requirement for student teachers to demonstrate their ability to lead and carry out a field trip” as part of their induction.
Today’s report acknowledged that the Government was attempting to address weaknesses by giving student teachers more on-the-job training in schools and bursaries of up to £20,000 to attract the brightest science and maths graduates into the profession.
But it said schools also needed “fit for purpose facilities” and the support of qualified and experienced technical staff.
MPs heard evidence that some schools were sacking technicians to save money and the design and standard of science labs was “poor”.
“High quality science facilities and qualified and experienced technical support are vital,” said the report. “A career structure for technical staff should be provided and the Government should ensure schools provide science facilities to match its aspirations for science education.”
The conclusions came as a major international report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found that a focus on the basics helped boost standards in science.
The study – based on evidence from 37 nations – found that providing one additional science lesson a week was a cheaper and more effective way to raise achievement than extracurricular clubs, homework and visits to museums and galleries.
Britons Question Global Warming More Than Americans and Canadians
Half of respondents in the two North American countries think climate change is a fact and is caused by emissions—fewer Britons concur.
While Canadians continue to be more likely than Americans and Britons to blame global warming on man-made emissions, they are not as unwavering about it as they were last year, a new three-country Angus Reid Public Opinion poll has found.
The online survey of representative national samples also shows that belief in man-made climate change has reached the highest level in the United States since 2009, and has fallen considerably in Britain.
Overall, half of Canadians (52%, -8 since October) and Americans (49%, +7) say that that global warming is a fact and is mostly caused by emissions from vehicles and industrial facilities. Only 43 per cent of Britons (-4) agree with this assessment.
In the United States, one-in-five respondents (20%, -5) think that global warming is a theory that has not yet been proven, along with 20 per cent of Britons (+2) and 14 per cent of Canadians (=).
More than half of Canadians (55%, -6) believe it is more important to protect the environment, even at the risk of hampering economic growth, while 22 per cent (+4) would prefer to foster economic growth, even at the risk of damaging the environment.
In the United States, 47 per cent of respondents (+2) would emphasize protecting the environment, while 26 per cent (-4) would foster economic growth. The biggest change since last year comes in Britain, where only 40 per cent of respondents would protect the environment (-11) and 33 per cent would prefer to foster economic growth (+11).
Analysis
Since 2009, Angus Reid Public Opinion has conducted five three-country surveys on global warming. The latest poll outlines one of the lowest proportions of believers in man-made climate change ever recorded in Canada (52%). Still, Canadians are more likely than Americans or Britons to both believe in emissions as the primary source of global warming and to choose environmental protection over economic growth.
In the United States, despite the economic crisis, belief in man-made global warming has reached the high level that was observed before the so-called “climate-gate” controversy. In addition, the proportion of Americans who brand climate change as an unproven theory fell by five points, the biggest fluctuation observed in the past three years.
Britain has become the main source of skepticism, with the lowest proportion of believers in man-made global warming, and with a third of Britons acknowledging that they would foster economic growth even at the risk of damaging the environment—the largest proportion observed in all three countries.
A lesson for now: How Britain escaped the worst of the Great Depression
By economic historian Martin Hutchinson
In the 1930s, those hoping for economic recovery got lucky in the British political cycle and unlucky in the American one (and even more unlucky in the German cycle.) In Britain, the economically capable National Government took office in August 1931. Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain promptly banished Maynard Keynes from the Treasury (condemning him to six years of inferior investment returns, since he had been cut off from his sources of information) and instituted an anti-Keynesian economic policy of public spending cuts and a modest Imperial Preference tariff that proved remarkably successful. By 1933, the British economy was recovering fast, and 1932-37 provided the fastest peacetime five year growth period since Lord Liverpool’s era over a century before.
A few weeks ago I carried out a Gross Private Product analysis for the United States, subtracting government spending from GDP and looking at trends in private sector output, from which all wealth and jobs ultimately derive. The same calculations can be done for Britain, using the helpful website ukpublicspending.co.uk, and taking figures from before 1950 with a pinch of salt.
As in the United States, the greatest falls in Britain’s GPP came during the two World Wars, as output was converted to military usage – GPP fell by 45% between 1914 and 1917 and by an astonishing 57% between 1940 and 1945. In both wars, private sector output fell to levels not seen since the nineteenth century, in the second war to the level of 1870.
However the British Great Depression was not all that Great -- GPP fell by 11.7% between 1929 and 1932. This fall has since been exceeded twice in peacetime, by the Heath/Wilson downturn of 1973-75 (14.1%) and the Gordon Brown one of 2007-09 (13.2%.) The Thatcher downturn of 1979-81 and the Thatcher/Major downturn of 1989-93, both of which caused endless angst among the chattering classes and the left, were barely half as severe. Thus while the Chamberlain policy of cutting public expenditure, even slightly (by a mere 2.1% in real terms, peak to trough) opened opportunities for the private sector and turned the Great Depression into rapid recovery, the Keynesian stimulus policies pursued in the much milder global downturns of 1973-75 and 2007-09 produced significantly deeper economic troughs.
In the United States, the political cycle in the Great Depression was as unlucky as that in Britain was lucky. The Republican elected just before the downturn began followed government-enlargement, protectionist and tax-increasing policies, thus making matters much worse. Then the Democrat elected at the bottom of the slump intensified the enlargement of government and added a heavy layer of regulation, ensuring that while output recovered from the appalling depths to which it had fallen, the recovery was only partial. Only when centrist policies were restored in 1939-40 did vigorous growth resume. In summary therefore, while the first year of vigorous growth in Britain was only four years after the beginning of the Great Depression downturn, in the United States there was a full ten years delay before recovery occurred.
From previous discussion in these columns, three things need to occur before we get a vigorous recovery. First, short-term and long-term interest rates need to be raised above the level of inflation. This will allow the U.S. capital base to recover through higher saving. Moreover, a higher cost of capital relative to the cost of labor will lead the corporate sector to refocus from outsourcing jobs by investing in emerging markets to creating jobs in existing U.S. facilities.
Second, the budget deficit, both short-term and long-term needs to be brought down to at most 3-4% of GDP ($500-600 billion) initially and balance thereafter, so that the private sector ceases to be crowded out. Ideally this will be achieved as it was by Chamberlain, simply by cutting out waste in government, but closing tax loopholes can help in this process if it appears necessary – removing the tax deductions for mortgage interest and state income taxes will have little adverse economic effect, while removing that for charitable contributions will have an economically positive effect.
Finally, the blizzard of regulations that has proved a substantial additional obstacle to economic growth in 2011 needs to be cut back. Ideally some of the most egregious new regulations must be repealed, and at least the flow of new regulatory activity must be halted.
Tries to minimize it by comparing it with an earlier plane crash
Controversial comedian Jimmy Carr sparked outrage on the anniversary of 9/11 - by making a joke about air disasters.
The 38-year-old stand-up tweeted: 'Sept 11th Date of terrible air disaster. When Eastern Airlines Flt 212 crashed in 1974. Killing 69. No one will forget that in a hurry.'
But his followers, including Crimewatch presenter Rav Wilding, 33, blasted him for having a sick sense of humour. Wilding tweeted: '@jimmycarr why would you even attempt to make a joke about 09/11? Seriously bad taste.'
And other users were quick to blast the stand-up with scores of his 1.25million followers unfollowing him in protest.
Hospital admits responsibility over one baby death
The hospital being investigated by police over the deaths of babies born in its maternity department, Furness General Hospital in Cumbria, has admitted responsibility for one incident, as concerns rise that a preoccupation with natural births led to problems there.
Alex Brady was delivered stillborn at the hospital on September 5, 2008, with the placenta wrapped tightly around his neck. Midwives failed to involve doctors, an inquest later found.
Two months later Joshua Titcombe died after being born there, when midwives failed to spot he had a serious lung infection.
Now the mother of Alex, Liza Brady, has said the trust which runs the hospital has admitted responsibility. The matter of compensation is being dealt with by the NHS Litigation Authority, according to a spokesman for University Hospitals of Morcombe Bay NHS Foundation Trust.
Miss Brady, 26, said: "With Alex, they delayed and delayed delivering him even though the machine monitoring his heart showed he was in distress. "A doctor was prepared to help as he came on duty but he was shooed away by the midwives who said he wasn't needed."
Police are investigating the deaths of at least 15 newborn babies and three mothers over less than a decade at the hospital in Barrow-in-Furness.
Miss Brady, from Walney Island, Cumbria, added: "The last few years have been very hard and it's heartbreaking hearing about so many other deaths."
Yesterday (MON) it emerged that the consultant gynaecologist on call when Miss Brady's baby died raised "grave concerns" over the care she had received, which he said led to Alex's death.
Dr PK Misra wrote to colleagues in October 2008 that midwives had "ignored" a doctor's advice to perform an episiotomy, even though the baby was large and they had failed to detect a heartbeat.
He wrote: "My main concern is that trying to make every labour and delivery as normal and [this has led to] not thinking laterally [about] the possible complications."
He warned senior members of the trust: "This has happened in our unit in the past and I am sure if we don't take appropriate precautions and positive steps, I am sure that this is going to happen again in the future."
James Titcombe, who has pursued the trust for answers since his son's death, said last night (MON): "The trust had an opportunity to learn from its lessons which may have saved Joshua from dying. But it immediately refused to accept it was to blame. As a result more babies were put at risk."
Commenting on the Alex Brady case, Peter Dyer, medical director of the trust, said: "We offer our sincere condolences to Liza Brady and and Simon Davey for the tragic loss of their child. "As we are still in discussions with the family, we do not feel that it is appropriate to add any further comments at this time."
Criminals must fear the police again, vows Scotland Yard's new chief
A plain-speaking police chief renowned for his ruthless obsession with cutting crime was yesterday appointed head of the beleaguered Metropolitan Police.
Bernard Hogan-Howe, 53, vowed to put fear back in the minds of criminals after winning the race to become commissioner at Scotland Yard.
Britain’s new top officer faces an enormous task trying to restore morale in the Met in the aftermath of the phone hacking scandal, widespread criticism of the force’s handling of the London riots and concerns about burglary and robbery figures.
He will also assume overall responsbility for counter-terrorism in the run up to next year’s Olympic Games in London.
Mr Hogan-Howe is the force’s third chief appointed in six years following the controversial exits of his two predecessors, Sir Ian Blair and Sir Paul Stephenson, making it the hottest seat in British policing. He was handed a five-year contract after convincing interviewers he could lead a ‘new, more transparent’ era for the force.
The former Merseyside chief constable could not disguise his delight at landing the job. ‘It’s the highest accolade that any police officer could have,’ he said. Outlining his targets, he added: ‘The idea is to make the criminals fear the police and what they are doing now.’
One of Mr Hogan-Howe’s priorities will be ensuring the Olympic Games pass off peacefully at a time of unprecedented police funding squeezes.
He is expected to run a tight ship at the Yard and will move quickly to shake up the Met’s senior management team. Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick is tipped as a strong contender to be his deputy.
Mr Hogan-Howe beat off a strong challenge from Sir Hugh Orde, the much respected but outspoken president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, to land the £276,000 a year job.
The other contenders were acting commissioner Tim Godwin, who now reverts to being deputy commissioner but who is expected to leave the Met in the next few months, and Strathclyde’s chief constable Steve House.
A number of members of the Metropolitan Police Authority were keen for Sir Hugh to be appointed but Home Secretary Theresa May, who has been angered by Sir Hugh’s attacks on government policy, was never likely to sanction such a move.
She said: ‘Bernard has an excellent track record as a tough single-minded crime fighter. He showed that in his time as chief constable of Merseyside, and I’m sure he’s going to bring those skills and that ability to fight crime to the Metropolitan Police here in London.’
London Mayor Boris Johnson said: ‘It was a very strong field but I think the Home Secretary and I were agreed that Bernard’s performance was outstanding, and he really commended himself above all by his relentless focus on building on the work of Sir Paul Stephenson and Tim Godwin in driving down crime.’
Mr Hogan-Howe was parachuted into the Met as acting deputy commissioner after Sir Paul and Britain’s anti-terror chief, assistant commissioner John Yates, quit in quick succession.
The surprise move was a clear indication that he was in line for the top job on a permanent basis. He had previously been working for Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary.
This sounds very similar to Luther's attack on the sale of indulgences
Ministers should abandon a central pillar of their energy policy and abolish a carbon floor price that amounts to a "tax" on British industry, according to the head of the manufacturers' association.
Terry Scuoler, chief executive of the EEF, told the Financial Times that UK companies were deeply concerned by the cost of the government's ambition to cut carbon dioxide emissions and expand renewable energy.
"There's a fundamental view that the direction of travel, in terms of particularly the renewables targets and the taxation, is wrong," he said.
The last Budget announced a floor price on carbon emissions from 2013 onwards. The aim is to tip the balance of the UK energy mix in favour of nuclear power and renewable technologies by making it more expensive to generate electricity using coal or gas.
But one consequence will be rising electricity bills across the board, with energy-intensive manufacturing particularly exposed. The EEF calculates the floor price will cost British industry œ250m when it begins in 2013 at a rate of œ16 per ton of carbon. The price will then rise each year to reach œ30 per ton by 2020, which would cost industry œ1.2bn.
Business groups have previously urged the government to provide compensation for the extra cost or delay the policy's introduction. But Mr Scuoler said: "We are calling for its abolition." The measure was, he added, "not in line with the government's stated policy of rebalancing the economy, regenerating the British manufacturing sector, encouraging exports". Chart: carbon floor price
Mr Scuoler described the floor price as "clearly a tax on business", pointing out that no other European Union country is planning a similar measure. This unilateral decision would damage Britain's competitive position.
"Perhaps we in the UK, an advanced economy, should accept - maybe - that our electricity prices will be more expensive than China, India, perhaps even North America," said Mr Scuoler.
"But why on a unilateral basis would you wish to push us into a situation where our cost of energy is more expensive than even our EU partners? There's a non-sequitur there that lies uncomfortably on our shoulders."
The coalition has adopted the toughest carbon reduction targets in the developed world, promising to cut British emissions by 50 per cent by 2025. To achieve this, it aims to generate 30 per cent of the country's electricity from renewable sources by 2020, compared with 7 per cent today.
Such ambitions require investment of œ200bn in new energy infrastructure by 2020, a burden that would inevitably cause electricity bills to rise. Mr Scuoler said: "British manufacturing has a right to be somewhat disappointed."
"Given the rhetoric and some very positive messages from the coalition government post-recession about the importance of British manufacturing, the importance of exporting and the importance of the sector in general, many of these policies are not matched up to that rhetoric," he added.
The government has promised a compensation package before the end of this year to help companies affected by its energy policies. Chris Huhne, the energy secretary, argues that his reforms will cut bills in the long term by reducing the UK's exposure to volatile oil prices. "Getting off the oil hook will make our economy more independent, more secure and more stable," he said earlier this year.
Mr Huhne has argued that his policies will save consumers money whenever oil prices exceed $100 per barrel.
But his analysis is controversial, with experts pointing out that gas prices are the key determinant of electricity bills - and they are becoming less dependent on oil.
Mr Scuoler said: "I'm fearful that some elements of government could be viewing environmental and climate change policy as an article of faith and not adequately using analytical and empirical evidence to support informed decision-making".
Bring back grammars schools! Selective schools must be set up wherever families demand them, leading Tories tell PM
New grammar schools should be set up to boost academic achievement, senior Tories have told David Cameron.
In the latest in a series of challenges to the Prime Minister ahead of the party conference, a leading backbencher called for an increase in academic selection.
Graham Brady, chairman of the influential 1922 Committee, says: ‘We should end the “Henry Ford” approach to school choice by which we allow parents to have whatever kind of school they want as long as it is a comprehensive. ‘Selective schools should be available in the state sector where there is demand for them.’
The Tory MP made his remarks in a book – being serialised by the Daily Mail – which calls for a return to traditional Conservative policies. Twenty-six MPs and advisers on the centre right of the party have contributed essays that reflect their growing unease at the power and influence of Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.
John Redwood, a former cabinet minister, calls for lower taxes while others press for more conservative policies on the European Union and law and order.
Mr Cameron’s refusal to back the opening of more grammar-style schools made for one of the most toxic rows of the early years of his leadership and culminated in the resignation of Mr Brady from the Tory frontbench in 2007.
The fact the MP has raised the issue again shows that Tory backbenchers are increasingly confident of trying to steer Mr Cameron down a more traditional path. Although there are no Government plans to add to the country’s 164 grammar schools, Education Secretary Michael Gove is encouraging other types of selective school.
Mr Brady, a former Tory education spokesman, called for fully selective grammar schools or partially selective schools to be set up where parents want them. He says academies should be allowed to select 20 per cent of their pupils on the basis of academic ability – and even more with Government approval.
In the book, called the The Future of Conservatism, Mr Brady says: ‘If we really believe in giving more autonomy to schools and more freedom to parents and communities, it follows that we should allow the creation of selective or partially selective schools where there is local demand for them. ‘These opportunities should be provided wherever parents want them and should be available within the state sector – not just for those who can afford to pay.’
He said one in four families in the London borough of Camden goes private because local schools are so bad. In Bromley, a wealthier borough in the capital’s south, the figure is nearer one in 11.
‘Research shows that academic selection can raise standards in the selective schools and in neighbouring non-selective schools,’ Mr Brady added. ‘We now have 40 years of evidence showing that, while it is possible to achieve good results in comprehensive schools, areas with selective schools as a whole tend to perform better.’
David Davis, who helped plan the book, said the goal was to draw up ‘a distinctively Conservative point of view both as a foundation for fighting the next election and as a basis for debate in formulating policy’.
An internet tool that allows parents to compare their local schools has gone online. Available on the Department for Education website, it draws on a range of previously hidden data, including spending per pupil, staff salaries and school meal budgets. It also carries the more familiar Ofsted ratings and exam results so that schools can be judged against local, regional and national averages. Up to five can be compared against each other through a postcode search.
Education Secretary Michael Gove says the initiative is the ‘educational equivalent of Go Compare’, which helps families shop around for everything from insurance to mortgages.
Racial aspect to six deaths on an NHS maternity ward
Five of the six mothers and babies who died at a maternity unit, triggering a major police investigation, were from ethnic minorities, it emerged yesterday.
Police are examining the deaths of four babies and two mothers at Furness General Hospital in Cumbria between April and November 2008.
It comes amid fresh allegations that midwives may have conspired to destroy crucial documents in a bid to cover-up appalling errors.
A team of 15 detectives assigned to the case is also expected to investigate whether ethnicity may have played a part in any of the deaths.
Data released by the hospital revealed that just 2 per cent of all mothers treated at the maternity unit in 2008 were from ethnic minorities.
But perhaps crucially, five of the six ‘serious and untoward cases’ recorded at the hospital that year involved women and babies from ethnic minorities.
Last night a source told the Mail: ‘It’s impossible to say definitively whether there is a connection between the ethnicity of the mothers and the deaths, but the figures speak for themselves. All I can say is that the care given to mothers in the cases we know about was nothing short of shambolic. They were repeatedly ignored by staff on the unit. ‘The figures are astounding and very worrying.’
The police investigation at the hospital was widened to include ‘a number of other deaths’ after a coroner said it was ‘not beyond the balance of possibility’ that crucial information relating to the death of nine-day-old Joshua Titcombe had been deliberately destroyed. If that was done it can only have been deliberate, he added.
One midwife employed by the hospital is alleged to have been involved in at least two of the births where a baby died.
Hoa Titcombe, 34, gave birth to Joshua at the end of a normal delivery. But nine days later the baby bled to death after suffering a lung infection which could easily have been treated with antibiotics.
Thai-born Nittaya Hendrickson and her unborn son Chester both died at the hospital on July 31, 2008 after the midwife in charge of her labour dismissed her fits as ‘fainting’.
Mrs Hendrickson later died of a heart attack, while her son died after suffering brain damage.
Crucial heart monitor records which are said to reveal the critical delay before the midwife finally sought help from a doctor are ‘missing’. Her husband, Carl Hendrickson, 46, along with other families, is taking legal action.
In another case Niran Aukhaj, 29, collapsed and died in April that year. Her unborn baby also died. The mother of one, from Ulverston, had experienced a number of problems during her pregnancy, including high blood pressure. Yet midwives failed to take her blood pressure and a urine sample during a routine check-up just a week before she died.
Tony Halsall, of University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust, said he was not aware of any widening of the police investigation but added that he would co-operate.
Putting baby in nursery 'could raise its risk of heart disease' because it sends stress levels soaring
There has been evidence of increased stress for some time. Little kids belong in a loving home, nowhere else
Sending babies and toddlers to day-care could do untold damage to the development of their brains and their future health, a leading psychologist has claimed.
Aric Sigman, a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, has warned that spending long periods being cared for by strangers in the first years of life can send levels of stress hormones soaring.
This could raise the odds of a host of problems, from coughs and colds in the short-term, to heart disease in the years to come.
Children deprived of their mother’s attention during the vital years in which the brain blossoms may also find it harder to form relationships as adults.
Dr Sigman, who has worked with the Department of Health on education campaigns, said that the emphasis on women’s rights, including the right to return to work after becoming a mother, means that the potential dangers of day-care are ignored.
He added: ‘The uncomfortable question remains: which is better for a young child during weekdays – the biological mother or a paid carer at an institution?’
With half of British mothers going out to work before their child is 12 months old, the claims will make uncomfortable reading for many. But other experts have disputed his views, arguing that attending nursery may help equip a child for the challenges of day-to-day life.
In an article for The Biologist journal, Dr Sigman cites studies which show higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol in children who go to day care.
The increase only appears up until the age of three or so, but Dr Sigman says it is still important, as the brain develops rapidly during these years.
High levels of cortisol are linked to lower resistance to infection in the short-term and heart disease in the long-term.
Dr Sigman concludes: ‘The effects of day-care on the child continues to be discussed through the prism of adult sexual politics and women’s rights.
‘This has been a significant impediment, involving a serious conflict of interest: Women’s rights and self-fulfilment are not the same issue as a child’s well-being and may often compete for precedence.’
But Dorothy Bishop, professor of developmental neuropsychology at Oxford University, said: ‘There is broad consensus that day-care influences cortisol levels in the short term, but there is no evidence that this has long-term detrimental consequences.’
Dr Stuart Derbyshire, a University of Birmingham psychologist, added that children in day-care may have higher levels of cortisol not because they are stressed, but because they run around more.
Crimes against the British disabled 'ignored by police and courts' leaving them living in fear of harassment
Thugs who attack and intimidate the disabled hardly ever face punishment, an inquiry has found. Instead it is the victims who are more likely to be asked to change their lives to stay away from tormentors, it said.
The report blamed a series of institutions for failing to do anything about victimisation of the disabled, including police and the courts, housing associations, local authorities, social workers, and schools.
It said: 'Hundreds of thousands of disabled people regularly experience harassment or abuse but a culture of disbelief is preventing public authorities from tackling it effectively.'
The Equality and Human Rights Commission inquiry follows the case of Fiona Pilkington, the mother who killed herself and her disabled daughter Francecca Hardwick, 18, in 2007 following a decade of abuse which was repeatedly dismissed by police.
Researchers looked at ten other cases, nine of which ended in a death. They said: 'Perpetrators rarely face any consequences for their actions, while their victims continue to live in fear of harassment. There is often a focus on the victim, questioning their behaviour and vulnerability, rather than dealing with the perpetrators.'
It said 1.9million disabled people were victims of crime last year and they were more likely to be targeted by criminals than others. But police and public sector managers failed to notice what was going on, researchers said.
The report also called on courts to ensure that those convicted of assaults, theft or harassment of the disabled face 'appropriate sanctions'.
The researchers cited the case of David Askew, a 64-year-old with learning disabilities who died of a heart attack in his garden last year, shortly after a gang had thrown his wheelie bin around and tampered with his mother's mobility scooter.
Mr Askew was targeted by 26 different people over 12 years, but the response by Manchester police was often slow and his family's housing association put pressure on the Askews to move.
After Mr Askew's death one man was prosecuted and sentenced to 16 weeks in prison. However he was released immediately because he had been on remand before his trial.
EHRC commissioner Mike Smith said the police only recorded 1,567 cases of disability hate crime last year. He said it was probably 'a drop in the ocean' compared with the high proportion of people reporting disability-related harassment.
Unruly British pupils' parents should be told: Work with school or lose your benefits, says influential think-tank
Parents with unruly children should have their benefits [welfare payments] taken away if they fail to co-operate with schools, according to an influential report published today.
Respected think-tank the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) has found that schools expel pupils too regularly because parents will not work with them to improve their children’s behaviour. As a result, a staggering 22,000 pupils aged five to 16 are sent to pupil referral units (PRUs) – a doubling since Labour came to power in 1997. And the direct burden to the taxpayer is £308million, as it costs £14,000 a year more to educate a child in a PRU than in normal lessons.
The CSJ will today launch its new publication 'No Excuses: A review of educational exclusion' with a keynote address from Nick Gibb MP, Minister for Schools at the Pimlico Academy in London, close to Westminster.
The report, written by a number of education experts, calls on the Government to embark on ‘radical reform’. It believes schools should be handed stronger sanctions to coerce irresponsible parents to co-operate with their child’s school to tackle their behaviour. These include the axing of benefit and welfare payments to parents who will not accept the help of their school.
At present, schools can fine parents up to £100 or, in extreme cases of truancy, get them jailed. But only a handful of parents have been convicted and jailed, and just 20,000 fines a year are paid.
Meanwhile violence, bad behaviour and truancy are endemic in England’s schools. Children turn up at primaries wearing gang colours and youngsters as young as seven have been found carrying knives, the report found.
Some children stop attending because they fear for their safety, or even their lives.
Biomass schemes will boost destructive timber imports, claims wood industry. Wood companies and green campaigners say subsidies to power companies threaten both jobs and rainforests
Big wood companies are trying to halt Drax, RWE and others pressing ahead with a raft of lower-carbon energy schemes which would see large power stations switch from burning coal to timber.
The wood industry fears thousands of jobs in its factories will be threatened by the "green" power plans and wants government to remove the subsidies facilitating them.
Wildlife and environmental groups are also alarmed that the new biomass schemes could trigger a huge escalation in wood imports and threaten rainforests.
The Wood Panel Industries Association said: "We have already seen a 50% increase in wood prices over the last three years because of these kinds of energy developments and we do not think they should be receiving subsidies for schemes which we believe are not carbon-friendly and which will require a huge amount of imported wood to support a tenfold increase in planned capacity."
The lobbying has started ahead of a planned consultation by the Department of Energy and Climate Change into the future level of subsidy through the renewable obligation certificate (ROC) system.
The current subsidy regime for biomass and other clean technology such as wind power runs until 2013. New "banding" is being considered that will run until 2017.
A DECC spokesman said the department was aware of concerns from interest groups about a major escalation in biomass but said it had safeguards in place. "The very clear sustainability criteria we now have in place under the renewables obligation will mean we know where biomass has come from and how it has been grown.
"The UK criteria also include a minimum greenhouse gas emission saving of 60% compared with EU average fossil-fuel use, and restrictions to prevent use of land, such a primary forest and other land important on carbon or biodiversity grounds, from being converted to grow biomass. These criteria apply to both imported and UK biomass."
It is not just companies such as Canada's Norbord and Austria's Egger which are worried about the future of the British factories they run to supply the construction industry and others with wood.
The RSPB wildlife campaign group also says it is "by no means certain" biomass is a low-carbon energy source. Its new report , Bioenergy: a burning issue, says the power companies will move from a 74% dependency on British wood to an 80% dependency on imports where sustainability will be far harder to verify.
Friends of the Earth says it is also concerned about the large-scale imports of biomass wood from overseas which would be "impossible" to control and could create terrible damage through deforestation in the developing world.
The RSPB claims there are 31 biomass plants in operation but 14 more have been approved, 16 are in the planning stage and a further nine have been proposed.
Drax has been co-firing its main 4,000-megawatt plant using coal and a small amount of biomass but has talked about introducing three standalone biomass plants on the same Yorkshire site if the right subsidy regime is in place.
RWE has plans to convert its 1,050-megawatt coal-fired power station at Tilbury in Essex to run entirely on wood pellets, which would make it the UK's largest biomass plant. The German company has made clear it will import most of the wood supplies from the US.
The Biomass Energy Centre, run by the UK Forestry Commission, argues that wood derived from sustainable forests, where new trees are planted when others are cut down, releases far less carbon than traditional fossil fuels.
"The critical difference between biomass fuels and fossil fuel is that of fossil and contemporary carbon," it says. "Burning fossil fuels results in converting stable carbon sequestered millions of years ago into atmospheric carbon dioxide when the global environment has adapted to current levels.
"Burning biomass fuels, however, returns to the atmosphere contemporary carbon recently taken up by the growing plant, and currently being taken up by replacement growth."
Wind farms: the monuments to lunacy that will be left to blot the British landscape
Three separate news items on the same day last week reflected three different aspects of what is fast becoming a full-scale disaster bearing down on Britain. The first item was a picture in The Daily Telegraph showing two little children forlornly holding a banner reading “E.On Hands Off Winwick”.
This concerned a battle to prevent a tiny Northamptonshire village from being dwarfed by seven 410-foot wind turbines, each higher than Salisbury Cathedral, to be built nearby by a giant German-owned electricity firm. The 40 residents, it was reported, have raised £50,0000 from their savings to pay lawyers to argue their case when their village’s fate is decided at an inquiry by a Government inspector.
In the nine years since I began writing here about wind turbines, I have been approached by more than 100 such local campaigns in every part of Britain, trying to fight the rich and powerful companies that have been queuing up to cash in on the vast subsidy bonanza available to developers of wind farms. Having been the chairman of one such group myself, I know just how time-consuming and costly such battles can be. The campaigners are up against a system horribly rigged against them, because all too often – although they may win every battle locally (in our case we won unanimous support from our local council) – in the end an inspector may come down from London to rule that the wind farm must go ahead because it is “government policy”.
I long ago decided that there was little point reporting on most of these individual campaigns, because the only way this battle was going to be won was by exposing the futility of the national policy they were up against. My main aim had to be to bring home to people just how grotesquely inefficient and costly wind turbines are as a way to make electricity – without even fulfilling their declared purpose of reducing CO2 emissions.
Alas, despite all the practical evidence to show why wind power is one of the greatest follies of our age, those who rule our lives, from our own politicians and officials here in Britain to those above them in Brussels, seem quite impervious to the facts.
Hence the two other items reported last week, one being the Government’s proposed changes to our planning rules (already being implemented, even though the “consultation” has scarcely begun) which are drawing fire from all directions. The particular point here, on page 43 of the Government’s document, is a proposal that local planning authorities must “apply a presumption in favour” of “renewable and low-carbon energy sources”.
What this means in plain English is that we can forget any last vestiges of local democracy. Our planning system is to be rigged even more shamelessly than before, to allow pretty well every application to cover our countryside with wind turbines – along with thousands of monster pylons, themselves up to 400 feet high, marching across Scotland, Wales, Suffolk, Somerset and elsewhere to connect them to the grid.
All this is deemed necessary to meet our EU-agreed target to generate nearly a third of our electricity from “renewables” – six times more than we do now – by 2020. This would require building at least 10,000 more turbines, in addition to the 3,500 we already have – which last year supplied only 2.7 per cent of our electricity.
Obviously this is impossible, but our Government will nevertheless do all it can to meet its unreachable target and force through the building of thousands of turbines, capable of producing a derisory amount of electricity at a cost estimated, on its own figures, at £140 billion (equating to £5,600 for every household in the land).
Which brings us to the third of last week’s news items, a prediction by energy consultants Ulyx that a further avalanche of “green” measures will alone raise Britain’s already soaring energy bills in the same nine years by a further 58 per cent.
A significant part of this crippling increase, helping to drive more than half Britain’s households into “fuel poverty”, will be the costs involved in covering thousands of square miles of our countryside and seas with wind turbines. The sole beneficiaries will be the energy companies, which are allowed to charge us double or treble the normal cost of our electricity, through the subsidies hidden in our energy bills; and landowners such as Sir Reginald Sheffield, the Prime Minister’s father-in-law, who on his own admission stands to earn nearly £1,000 a day at the expense of the rest of us, for allowing a wind farm to be built on his Lincolnshire estate.
Even more damaging, however, will be the way this massive investment diverts resources away from the replacement of the coal-fired and nuclear power stations which are due for closure in coming years, threatening to leave a shortfall in our national electricity supply of nearly 40 per cent. If we are to keep our lights on and our economy running, we need – as the CBI warned in a damning report on Friday – urgently to spend some £200 billion on power supply,
But our politicians have been so carried away into their greenie never-never land that they seem to have lost any sight of this disaster bearing down on us. Instead of putting up turbines on the fields of Northants, E.On should be building the grown-up power stations we desperately need. But government energy policy has so skewed the financial incentives of the system that the real money is to made from building useless wind farms.
Sooner or later, this weird policy will be recognised as such a catastrophic blunder that it, and the colossal subsidies that made it possible, will be abandoned. That will leave vast areas of our once green and pleasant land littered with useless piles of steel and concrete, which it will be no one’s responsibility to cart away.
If the Government really wishes to make a useful change to our planning laws, it should insist that every planning permission to build wind turbines should include a requirement that, after their 25-year life, they must be removed at their owners’ expense. Alas, by that time the companies will all have gone bankrupt, and we shall be left with a hideous legacy as a monument to one of the greatest lunacies of our time.
Crocus drug that can kill tumours in one treatment with minimal side effects
In mice. The approach is however a clever one so it is to be hoped that its toxicity can be controlled enough to make it usable in humans
A drug derived from plant extracts could wipe out tumours in a single treatment with minimal side effects, according to research. Scientists have turned a chemical found in crocuses into a ‘smart bomb’ that targets cancerous tumours. Crucially, healthy tissue is unharmed, reducing the odds of debilitating side effects.
And unlike other side effect-free drugs, it is able to kill off more than one type of the disease, including breast, prostate, lung and bowel cancer. Potentially, all solid tumours could be vulnerable to drugs developed this way, meaning it could be used against all but blood cancers.
In some tests of the drug, half of tumours vanished completely after a single injection, the British Science Festival will hear this week.
The drug, based on colchicine, an extract from the autumn crocus, is at an early stage of development, and has so far been tested only on mice. But the University of Bradford researchers are optimistic about its potential in humans.
Professor Laurence Patterson said: ‘What we have designed is effectively a “smart bomb” that can be triggered directly at any solid tumour without appearing to harm healthy tissue. ‘If all goes well, we would hope to see these drugs used as part of a combination of therapies to treat and manage cancer.’
Colchicine has long been known to have anti-cancer properties but has been considered too toxic for use in the human body. To get round this, the researchers attached a chemical ‘tail’ to it, deactivating it until it reaches the cancer. Once there, the tail is cut off by an enzyme called MMP, which is found in tumours.
Removing the tail activates the drug, which then attacks and breaks down the blood vessels supplying the tumours with oxygen and nourishment. Cancers use the blood supply to spread around the body and it is hoped that the treatment, called ICT2588, will also combat this.
The first tests on humans could start in as little as 18 months. If successful, the drug could be on the market in six to seven years.
Henry Scowcroft, of Cancer Research UK, said: ‘This is exciting but very early work that hasn’t yet been tested in cancer patients.’ Professor Paul Workman, of the Institute of Cancer Research in London, said the results so far were promising. He added: ‘If confirmed in more extensive laboratory studies, drugs based on this approach could be very useful as part of combination treatments.’
There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc. I don't share all of Chris's views but I applaud his "incorrectness".
11 September, 2011
Police probe four baby deaths: Missing records in maternity unit of Furness General Hospital, where two mothers also lost lives
Police are investigating the deaths of at least four babies and two mothers at a hospital maternity unit after concerns were raised that midwives may have tried to cover up mistakes by destroying medical records.
The inquiry, involving a team of 15 officers, was launched after a coroner raised the possibility in the inquest into the death of nine-day-old Joshua Titcombe that midwives had colluded to hide crucial errors.
Yesterday, police confirmed they are widening the investigation to include a number of other deaths at Furness General Hospital in Cumbria.
The Mail on Sunday has spoken to the relatives of four babies and two mothers who died at the hospital during 2008, who said police had told them the deaths were being investigated.
It comes after a damning report into the ailing maternity unit was published on Friday by health watchdog the Care Quality Commission, which found patients were at risk from poor staffing levels and dirty wards.
The report, based on an unannounced inspection on July 18, was commissioned following the inquest into Joshua’s death, and reveals serious problems within the maternity unit more than three years after a series of deaths.
If the issues are not immediately addressed, the CQC has the power to shut the unit down.
At Joshua’s inquest, coroner Ian Smith said ‘it was not beyond the balance of possibility’ that an observation sheet, which recorded measurements such as his temperature, had been destroyed. ‘If that was done it can only have been done deliberately,’ he added. However, he admitted there was no proof that this was the case.
The widening of the investigation to include the additional deaths is understood to have come after officers made a ‘big step forward’ in recent days, according to a source.
One midwife employed by the hospital is alleged to have been involved in at least two of the births where a baby died. It is not known whether the midwife has been questioned by police or whether any of the staff are still employed by the trust. The six deaths thought to be at the centre of the investigation all took place in 2008.
Niran Aukhaj, 29, was 23 weeks pregnant when she collapsed and died in April that year, also claiming the life of her unborn child. The mother of one, from Ulverston, had experienced a number of problems during her pregnancy, including high blood pressure.
But an inquest into her death found staff at the hospital had failed to take her blood pressure and a urine sample during a routine check-up just a week before she died, and she was sent home without seeing the consultant in charge of her care.
The coroner recorded a verdict of death by natural causes but added, ‘we can never know’ whether not seeing her consultant ‘is significant or not’. Her husband Jay said police had told him that his wife’s death was one of those being investigated.
Mr Aukhaj, 41, who now lives in Hayes, Middlesex, said: ‘A detective from Cumbria is looking at it. For the moment they haven’t said much. ‘They just said they are taking the case further on. That’s all I know. They told me last week. I can’t give any further details at the moment.’
Nittaya’s husband, Car claims medical records which would have shown Thai-born Nittaya’s heart rate have gone missing
On July 31, 2008, Nittaya Hendrickson, 35, and her son, Chester, died after she suffered a relatively rare amniotic fluid embolism, where the fluid from the womb enters the mother’s bloodstream. Her son died from brain damage after she suffered a series of fits. There is a risk of a mother dying in such a situation but it is highly unusual for the baby to die as well.
Nittaya’s husband, Carl, 46, a former Army medic from Ulverston, near Barrow, claims medical records which would have shown Thai-born Nittaya’s heart rate have gone missing. He says the missing readings showed that midwives delayed acting in getting a Caesarean performed.
Two months later, on September 6, 2008, Liza Brady lost her baby, Alex. She said that midwives delayed delivering him even though a heart monitor showed he was in distress. He was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck and died just before he was born.
[It is a disgrace if a baby dies these days because of an umbilical cord around his neck. A new arrival in my family was born that way recently but was delivered in a PRIVATE hospital and through immediate expert attention survived unharmed. The story and a picture of the now thriving boy here and here]
Liza, 26, from Walney Island, near Barrow, said: ‘We are helping police with their inquiries and have given them a full statement. ‘They are certainly looking at the case but nothing has been confirmed. It means we’re now closer to getting answers and hopefully that means something can change.
‘With Alex, they delayed and delayed delivering him even though the machine monitoring his heart showed he was in distress. A doctor was prepared to help as he came on duty but he was shooed away by the midwives who said he wasn’t needed. ‘The last few years have been very hard and it’s heartbreaking hearing about so many other deaths.’
At the inquest into Alex’s death, coroner Ian Smith said: ‘I don’t believe the doctors integrated. The midwives ran the show.’
Just a few weeks after the incident, Joshua Titcombe was born at the hospital and later died. His mother Hoa, 34, delivered normally but her son bled to death after suffering a lung infection which was not picked up quickly enough. He was airlifted to two major hospitals, but died nine days later.
Joshua’s inquest, in June this year, heard the infection could have been easily treated with antibiotics. But all 11 midwives who gave evidence said they had no knowledge that a low temperature in a newborn was an indication of infection, a claim the coroner refused to accept.
Police are investigating claims, raised at the inquest by Joshua’s father James, a 33-year-old project manager, that missing charts and notes relating to Joshua’s care have been hidden or destroyed.
Mr Titcombe would not comment on the circumstances of his son’s death because of the ongoing police investigation. But he expressed shock that the maternity unit was still being criticised for failures several years after Joshua died. He said: ‘Three years after Joshua’s death they still need to take urgent action on their maternity service. ‘The CQC report said they are not managing the risks to patients and babies and they are not reporting serious incidents correctly.’
The maternity unit at Furness employs 59 midwives and has seven labour rooms and two assessment rooms, with 24 beds available.
Last year, a report commissioned by University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Furness General Hospital, still found ‘dysfunctional’ team work between midwives and maternity unit doctors.
It said that midwives dominated and medics were kept away as much as possible. Mr Hendrickson and other families are taking legal action against the hospital, but the Titcombes settled their case in 2009.
A spokeswoman for Burnetts Solicitors, which is representing the families, confirmed it was launching several cases against the trust, but said it was ‘fewer than ten’.
Solicitor Ruth Keenleyside said: ‘We’re representing a number of families who have got claims of serious clinical negligence against the Furness General Hospital maternity unit. The police investigation is at different stages but legal proceedings have not yet commenced.’
Tony Halsall, chief executive of University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust, said the hospital was ‘not aware’ of any widening of the police investigation. He added: ‘As I’ve said before, we will not be complacent and we will always strive to keep improving the standards of care we provide for mothers and their babies.’
Cumbrian Police say the investigation is still in its early stages and that it is ‘too soon to say’ how many deaths will be formally investigated or whether any criminal charges will be brought. Detective Inspector Doug Marshall said: ‘Because of the delicate nature of the inquiry as a whole we can’t release anything further about it. ‘The reason we can’t be specific is we can’t be certain which deaths will be investigated. ‘It would be more accurate to say that several deaths are going to be investigated but we cannot comment on a specific number.’
When asked what charges were being considered, Det Insp Marshall said: ‘The investigation is still at a very early stage and that’s the whole point of an investigation – to work out whether there is any criminal element. ‘We are not at that stage. It would be speculation. ‘My intention is not to upset any of the families who are potentially involved in this case and we cannot add anything further.’
A statement from Cumbria Police said: ‘We are continuing an investigation into a number of deaths that occurred after mothers and infants received care at the maternity unit in Furness General Hospital. ‘The investigation began following the death of Joshua Titcombe and detectives have now widened their investigation to include a number of other deaths.
‘The enquiries are detailed and complex so it is too early to determine exactly which of these cases, or how many others, the investigation may include as it progresses.'
Fraud probe councillor wins six-figure payout after claiming he was deselected because he was Asian
A former Labour councillor who was deselected following allegations of vote-rigging has won a six-figure payout after claiming he was deselected by the party because he is Asian.
The Labour party has been ordered by an employment tribunal to pay Raghib Ahsan £123,000 following a 13-year legal battle, in which his costs were met by taxpayers.
The 65-year-old was dropped as Labour's candidate for the Sparkhill ward in Birmingham city council in 1997 following claims - strongly denied - that he was helping Asian families jump the queue for housing repair grants in return for votes.
It is believed to be the first time a councillor has been awarded compensation by a tribunal after being dropped by a political party.
Mr Ahsan's case was initially backed by the Commission for Racial Equality, a publicly-funded race watchdog which has since been abolished.
It is estimated to have cost the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds in court costs.
Two-thirds of the compensation payout is based on allowances which Mr Ahsan would have been able to claim from the council had he continued in office.
Mr Ahsan, who has since faced separate allegations of "violence, intimidation and serious membership abuse amounting to fraud", said he was "delighted" with his win.
Speaking from his £500,000 house in Handsworth, Birmingham, the father-of-two said: "It is the end of a very long struggle that took over my life for many years but I am very pleased that I have been awarded compensation. "All of the allegations against me were unfounded and my deselection was entirely unjustified. Now I feel as though I have been vindicated – and I have the cheque to prove it."
However, John Spellar, Labour MP for Warley, called the payout "absurd". He said: "Mr Ahsan was a fairly controversial figure in the Labour Party. "He was involved in a long-running controversy that some felt damaged the image of the party locally. But there are political factions and battles in every political party. For a court to stick its nose in and get involved is absurd. "It demonstrates the sheer arrogance of the legal system."
Mr Ahsan first brought his claim for race discrimination in 1998 – a year after being deselected and replaced with a white candidate.
Labour argued he should not be allowed to bring a case as he was not an employee of the party, but in 1999 the tribunal ruled that the claim should be allowed to go ahead.
In a subsequent case, the Court of Appeal ruled that employment tribunals do not have jurisdiction to hear such claims - yet the tribunal in Mr Ahsan's case insisted its original decision to allow the claim to go ahead "remained binding, even though it had now been shown to be wrong".
Labour appealed the decision, first at the Court of Appeal, which ruled in its favour, and then at the House of Lords, which ruled in favour of Mr Ahsan – not because the tribunal had jurisdiction to hear his claim, but because the original decision could not be reversed.
His case was then sent back to the employment tribunal, where Mr Ahsan claimed £863,000 in compensation, a figure described as "methodologically flawed in various ways" by the tribunal.
It found that the Labour party had deselected him partly because it felt the electorate would identify a candidate from the Pakistani community with the housing grant scandal, and this amounted to racial discrimination.
In July, he was awarded £43,000 in compensation for "injury to feelings" and £80,000 for loss of earnings that he would have received in the form of allowances between 1998 and 2004 – the period during which, the tribunal decided, Mr Ahsan would have most likely been a councillor.
Mr Ahsan now works as a solicitor and has since represented three former Labour councillors who were sacked from the city council for their part in a postal vote fraud. He said: "I don't think Labour has learnt the lessons it should have learnt from the way I have been treated.
"I don't think the party is inherently racist but I think there are still some racist practises which persist and I hope it reassess its selection procedures. "I hope that one day I get an apology from them. But I don't think that will happen."
Mr Ahsan was president of the Birmingham Trades Council in the 1980s, and was elected as a councillor in 1991. He also worked at the taxpayer-funded Birmingham Employment Tribunal Unit helping workers bring claims against their employers.
In 1994, while campaigning to succeed Roy Hattersley as the party's parliamentary candidate for Birmingham Sparkbrook, he faced unproven allegations he had encouraged Asian families to apply for housing repair grants in return for their support at council elections. Mr Ahsan was deselected even though an internal investigation cleared him of any wrongdoing.
He was shortlisted as a candidate for the 2002 local elections but suspended after a rival accused him of "intimidating" party members. On one occasion, one of Mr Ahsan's supporters is said to have drawn a knife during a party meeting.
Mr Ahsan was again suspended pending investigation of what the party described as "allegations concerning violence, intimidation and serious membership abuse amounting to fraud".
He was once again cleared of any wrongdoing but he left Labour in 2003, partly because of his opposition to the Iraq War.
A spokesman for Labour said "We are clear that unfairly discriminating against someone because of their race is totally unacceptable, and this principle is embedded in our party rules."
British couple send their kid to school in Albania -- because the local British school discourages learning of basic subjects
A couple have taken the extraordinary step in sending their six-year-old son to study in Albania - 1,321 miles away. Petrit and Juliette Muca are sending their eldest son Aleks to school in Eastern Europe - because he will have a better chance to master maths, science and reading there.
Mr Muca is originally from Albania while his wife is from Northampton where their son was born.
The couple, who now live in Sunderland, had enrolled their son at the nearby Benedict Biscop Primary which was described in an Ofsted report as 'good and improving.' However when their boy returned home from his first year at school, his mother Juliette noted that having initially loved books that he 'went backwards,' and hadn't made any progress in his quest to read.
She revealed: 'My complaint with the system - it's all about being creative. But children need to learn science, maths and reading.'
Britain is trailing in the World Economic rankings, and is now sat in 43rd place, but that comes as no shock to Mrs Muca who insisted: 'It doesn't surprise me. Labour created a system where kids get 10 A stars at GCSE - but what does that mean if everyone gets them.'
And now young Aleks will live with his father Petrit's parents and will study in Tirana where schools follow a more traditional set-up.
The couple who own a shop in the North East will spend £1,500-a-year on school fees as they bid to prevent their son from failing. Juliette added: 'It's a major sacrifice but we have to do what's best,' with Aleks set to return to England during the holidays.
Another infliction on ordinary people by the food Fascists and their absurd theories
HP Sauce's recipe secretly changed after 116 years by American owners of the Great British Condiment
For more than a century HP Sauce has been a staple of many a British dining table.
But after 116 years of being produced to a carefully guarded recipe, the brown sauce which famously bears a picture of the Houses of Parliament on the label has been secretly altered at the request of Government health chiefs.
Heinz, the American company which bought the famous British brand in 2005, has changed the celebrated concoction that includes tomatoes, malt vinegar, molasses, dates, tamarind and secret spices to reduce the salt content.
The new recipe of Britain's best-loved brown sauce, synonymous with bacon sandwiches, fry-ups and sausage and mash, now contains 38 per cent less salt. But critics argue the change in salt levels for such small amounts of food makes no difference to our diet.
The previous version of HP Sauce contained 2.1g of salt per 100g. The new version contains 1.3g – but fans claim the change has come at a high price. They say it just doesn't taste the same.
The US company has altered the recipe despite launching a Reduced Salt And Sugar version at the same time. The new HP sauce recipe got the thumbs down from Michelin-starred chef Marco Pierre White.
He said he sent back a meal of sausages and mash at Mail on Sunday columnist Piers Morgan's Kensington pub The Hansom Cab last week. 'I sent the meal back, because I thought it was off,' he said. 'At first, I thought it was the sausages, but it wasn't. It was the HP, which tasted disgusting. It was definitely dodgy. I had no idea they had changed the recipe.
'I was brought up on HP Sauce in Yorkshire. My old man used to say ketchup was for Southerners and HP was for Northerners. My father would turn in his grave if he discovered they changed the recipe.'
Heinz made the changes after signing up to the Coalition Government's Responsibility Deal, a programme of targets for reducing the level of fats and salts used by food manufacturers. The key pledges include an agreement to reducing salt in food so people eat 1g less per day by end of 2012.
Health experts claim this measure will save the NHS £46 million a year within three years and prevent more than 4,000 premature deaths a year.
But as a result of the decrease in salt in the old sauce, the new line has more calories and carbohydrates. The new version also has less fibre, an essential part of a balanced daily diet. It has been reduced from 1.2g per 100g to 0.4g per 100g.
John Northey, from the Isle of Man, contacted Heinz to complain. In a letter to a newspaper, he wrote: 'Gone was the familiar tang and the sauce seemed bland and sickly. Heinz has spoiled a product enjoyed by generations, adversely affected its keeping qualities and, incidentally, increased the calorie count at a time when we're all being warned about obesity.'
The HP brand has not been without controversy in recent years. There was uproar in 2007 when production of this symbol of 'Britishness' was moved from Birmingham to Elst in the Netherlands, with the loss of 125 jobs.
A year later the company was again forced to defend the move after it was revealed that 18 months after axing HP Sauce in Birmingham on the grounds that production costs would be cheaper in Holland, it had also begun making it in Spain.
The sauce's appeal has crossed Britain's class divide, with generous dollops enjoyed at thousands of 'greasy spoon' cafes and by Prime Ministers. In the Sixties, it became known as 'Wilson's Gravy' after the wife of Prime Minister Harold Wilson let slip that his one fault was that 'he will drown everything in HP'.
Pope: Riots show UK's lost moral sense of right and wrong
The Pope yesterday blamed the riots that swept Britain last month on a loss of awareness of what is right and wrong.
Benedict XVI said that ‘moral relativism’ had permeated British society to such a degree that many people no longer held shared values and were confused about what constituted wrongful actions.
And he urged the Government to remedy the crisis by spreading wealth – and ensuring its policies were underpinned by an objective belief in what is right.
The Pope told Nigel Baker, Britain’s ambassador to the Holy See, that it would be wise for the Government ‘to employ policies that are based on enduring values that cannot be simply expressed in legal terms’. He went on: ‘This is especially important in the light of events in England this summer.
‘When policies do not presume or promote objective values, the resulting moral relativism tends instead to produce frustration, despair, selfishness and a disregard for the life and liberty of others.’
He added: ‘Policy-makers are therefore right to look urgently for ways to uphold excellence in education, to promote social opportunity and economic mobility, and to examine ways to favour long-term employment.’
The remarks of the 84-year-old Pope were the first time he has commented on the riots that began in Tottenham, North London, in August before engulfing other parts of the capital and spreading to other British cities.
He spoke as a funeral was held in Tottenham for Mark Duggan, the 29-year-old armed man whose shooting by police on August 4 led to the wave of rioting and looting that lasted for four days. The unrest claimed five lives and has resulted in more than 2,000 arrests.
He made his comments as he was formally introduced to Mr Baker, recently appointed Britain’s ambassador to the Vatican City. Mr Baker, 45, fills a position left vacant by the departure last year of Francis Campbell, the first Catholic ambassador to the Holy See since the Reformation.
A non-Catholic, Mr Baker was previously British ambassador to Bolivia and worked briefly with David Cameron in the Conservative Research Department in the 1980s before he joined the Foreign Office. Mr Baker is familiar with Italy and speaks Italian, after living and studying in Verona and Naples.
Benedict XVI been a harsh critic of ‘relativism’ for a number of years. On the day before he was elected as Pope in 2005, he declared that Western societies were becoming so oblivious to objective standards of morality that they risked becoming engulfed by a ‘dictatorship of relativism’.
The theory of relativism holds that there can be no objective standard on which to base morality.
Tory councillor sacked from teaching job at grammar school after calling rioters 'jungle bunnies' on Facebook
We read:
"A grammar school teacher and Tory councillor has lost his job after calling rioters who brought havoc to the country last month ‘jungle bunnies’.
Bob Frost, a maths teacher at the prestigious Sir Roger Manwood’s grammar and boarding school, made the comment on the social networking site Facebook on August 7.
Soon afterwards the 49-year-old was suspended from his position as a Tory councillor on Dover District Council in Kent after fellow councillors spotted his offensive comments on the social networking site.
Then on Monday this week Mr Frost lost his job at the highly-regarded 912-pupil grammar school, the 96th oldest school in the UK, which was founded in 1563 by barrister Sir Roger Manwood.
Mr Frost wrote on August 10 - three days after writing ‘jungle bunnies’ in reference to the rioters on his Facebook wall - that he had been phoned up by a fellow councillor and accused of racism.
‘Needless to say I did not mean to use any offensive racist term and was referring to the urban jungle.’
He added: ‘As for the bunny bit it was originally ‘animals’, but I thought people might object to me calling fellow humans this so I chose something I thought was innocent and also cuddly.’
You lose your job if you criticize black thieves?? Their behavior certainly owed more to the jungle than to civilization.
10 September, 2011
'Timebomb' fear as 'rationing by stealth' of operations hits NHS
"Rationing by stealth" is hitting the NHS, the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) has claimed, after official figures were released showing a steep fall in the number of people referred to hospital by GPs. Department of Health statistics show the number of referrals made by GPs in the year up to July was 4.7 per cent lower than for the same period in 2010. These referrals had shown a 3.5 per cent increase at the same stage last year, according to the department.
The number of patients attending for outpatient appointments has also fallen, by 2.7 per cent.
Professor Norman Williams, president of the RCS, described the figures as "extremely disturbing". He said: "These data provide further evidence that rationing by stealth is occurring across the NHS. "Such a steep reduction in the number of referrals by GPs suggests that patients are being given limited access to specialist clinical advice and could be missing out on treatments."
He went on: "If correct this is extremely concerning for surgeons across the NHS. "Stopping referrals is only storing up problems for the future – a timebomb which will end up costing the NHS and taxpayer more in the long-term.
"The rise in waiting times for orthopaedic surgery is an indicator that demand for surgery is not reducing and that the issue of rationing needs to be addressed. It will not go away."
The British Medical Association (BMA) was also worried. A spokesman said: "The NHS is under a lot of pressure to do less, for example through referral management initiatives, which seem to be on the increase. "These may save money but for every lost referral there is a patient who is not getting diagnosed or treated, and a hospital that is more likely to encounter financial problems."
The figures come after numerous reports of health authorities tightening up on referral criteria, such as insisting those who are obese go on weight control programmes before receiving surgery, and adding procedures - in some cases including hip and knee replacements - to 'low priority' lists.
Last week Prof Peter Kay, president of the British Orthopaedic Association, also aired concerns in The Daily Telegraph that some authorities were actively trying to put patients off surgery to save money.
However, a Department of Health spokesman said the figures demonstrated that people were being treated in "the most appropriate setting". He said: "The Government has protected NHS spending and will continue to deliver improvements in care.
"These figures suggest that the NHS is starting to treat more people in the most appropriate setting, with a movement of care away from hospital settings and towards care closer to home - preventing unnecessary admissions.
"Our modernisation plans will safeguard the future of the NHS, improve care for patients, drive up quality and support doctors and nurses in providing the best possible care for their patients."
Dr Clare Gerada, chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners, said the decrease in the number of referrals could be down to "a combination of any number of things". She added: "There has, however, been an immense amount of work carried out in recent years to reduce the number of referrals and offer a more preventative style of healthcare, and these figures could be reflecting the fruits of this work."
And where is the longditudinal double-blind evidence for this assertion? It's just opinion
HAVE you found yourself watching TV while talking on the phone and checking your emails? Already distracted reading that sentence? Well, you're not alone, the Herald Sun reported.
The internet has not only changed our lives, it's changed the way our brains work, according to research by visiting UK social psychologist Sheila Keegan.
Dr Keegan says the internet is reducing our ability to think and concentrate and, with long-term use, could cause brain dysfunction. "We spend huge and a growing number of hours on the internet and, as a result, our brains are returning to shallow thinking," she said. "We are being more easily distracted, and our thinking has developed a staccato quality that lacks concentration.
"The problem is so widespread that studies have also concluded that long-term internet addiction would result in chronic dysfunction of our brains, which is a pretty scary thought!"
Dr Keegan said more research was needed to be done on the long-term effects of persistent use of the internet, particularly in young children.
She said US research had revealed some children as young as five spent up to six hours a day in front of a screen. Lengthy periods spent alone in front of the TV or on the computer meant many young children were not developing the social skills they needed for later life.
"Kids need to have a good balance. They can learn a lot from the internet," she said. "But the human brain is quite malleable. It's hard to say what the long-term effects will be. There needs to be research. But it's a bit like climate change. We can't wait for it to happen."
Dr Keegan presented her paper, Are we losing our minds and should we be bothered?, at the Australian Marketing and Social Research conference in Sydney this week.
Postal workers in British dependency refuse to deliver Bible recordings because the CDs are ‘offensive’
Postal workers refused to deliver CDs of Bible readings after deciding they were ‘offensive material’. Several churches had paid for discs with recordings of St Mark’s Gospel to be produced to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible.
They were due to be delivered to all households on the Channel Island of Jersey, but church leaders were stunned when they were told postal workers would not handle the 45,000 CDs.
Rev Liz Hunter of St Helier Methodist Centre said: ‘Initially Jersey Post seemed quite positive about helping us deliver the CDs. ‘But then a couple of weeks ago somebody from their marketing department phoned to say they would be unable to deliver them on the grounds that they could be deemed offensive.
‘They said there were guidelines about mass material that is sent out across the island and that religious recordings could offend people.
'This is not openly aggressive evangelism it was just a nice idea to give everyone a CD which they can chose to listen to if they wish.'
Church groups around the island united on the project, with the goal of delivering 45,000 recordings of St Mark's Gospel to every house in Jersey.
Reverend Hunter added: 'The impact has been somewhat lost now. 'We launched the Switch On scheme last Monday and we wanted every house to have their CD at the same time this week. 'Now we are relying on volunteers to drop them off to individual houses so it will probably take most of September.'
Jersey Post apologised for the incident, saying staff had misinterpreted guidelines. Chief Executive Kevin Keen, said: 'I understand that one of my colleagues did say the material was offensive.
'This decision was made on the basis of our terms and conditions which states that we have the right to refuse to distribute something that falls under the category of 'promotional material which could cause offence'.
'Clearly this was interpreted in the wrong way. I have spoken to the person involved and have written to all of my colleagues asking that they come to me if there is any doubt in their mind in the future.' The CDs are now being delivered by volunteers.
Where my wife comes from, they SHOOT squatters: Doctor whose £1m home was taken over by spongers hits out at the law
As more families fall victim to organised gangs of squatters, a blood-boiling interview with the couple forced out of their £1m home who are leading the fightback...
Dr Oliver Cockerell is, by his own admission, an unlikely champion for a popular cause. But for nearly two weeks, the Harley Street doctor has fought a very public battle to evict 14 squatters who broke into, and took occupation of, his £1million dream home.
It has been a struggle that has put him on a collision course with the Government, as the 49‑year-old neurologist argued for a ‘common-sense’ change to the law which governs squatting.
Above all, he believes the gangs of anarchists and Eastern Europeans who are increasingly taking over people’s homes so shamelessly must be treated as criminals, rather than dealt with in civil courts.
Although he has taken the crusade on reluctantly, he is well aware that his case will inspire other victims to fight back.
His story started when squatters took over the five-bedroom Edwardian home he and his heavily pregnant wife planned to move into in time for the birth of their first child.
The raggle-taggle group of foreigners and drop-outs ignored his repeated pleas to leave the West London property despite telling them that his 35-year-old wife Kaltun was being put under emotional strain and the ordeal was placing their unborn baby at risk.
He said: ‘These people think that because I’m a Harley Street doctor I’ve got lots of money, and so this doesn’t matter. 'But I’m not very rich. Like so many people, I have a 90 per cent mortgage and I have to work more than 60 hours a week to pay that off.’
His anger is, in part, borne out of his own struggles to succeed. The son of a Hammersmith businessman, he was sent to private school courtesy of a bursary for gifted children. Next, he funded his studies at King’s College Medical School in Camberwell by taking two jobs — one as a security guard and another at McDonald’s — while living in a council flat.
Speaking at his desk at The London Clinic, he asks: ‘Do these squatters’ families know what they are doing and the effect they are having on people?’
Across London and other cities around the country, gangs of squatters have been occupying people’s homes, sometimes forcing their way in after the owner has gone out for only a few hours.
Quickly, the squatters barricade themselves in by changing the locks, nailing windows shut and then putting up posters which state that the property is ‘vacant’ and is being squatted in.
Alternatively, they create bogus tenancy agreements which they give to police when questioned in order to try to prove they are legally renting the place.
An estimated 20,000 squatters in the UK are exploiting lax laws. Although it is illegal for squatters to stay if the property owner demands they leave, police will usually intervene only after the despairing householder has spent thousands of pounds obtaining a court eviction order.
The squatters’ ultimate goal — which, thankfully, is rarely realised — is to squat in a property for ten years, at which point they become the new legal owner.
In one area of East London, squatting is so rife that residents have set up a local ‘home guard’ to monitor the activities of gangs of Eastern Europeans who have seized — and gone on to ransack — a number of homes in the area.
The problem was highlighted last month when Julia High, a 55-year-old immigration officer, returned from a concert at The Proms to discover that a group of Romanian gipsies had broken into her home in Leytonstone, east London, and barricaded themselves inside. To add insult to injury, the Romanian women put on Miss High’s clothes. When challenged by neighbours, they said she was dead, before uncorking some of her wine.
Miss High spent two weeks cleaning up the mess after finally managing to get them evicted.
Similarly, this week, sisters Amelita and Lilia Olasa (both retired nurses) fell victim to another family of Romanian squatters.
They wept as they surveyed the damage done to the £500,000 North London home where they have lived for 27 years. Furniture, kitchen appliances and personal possessions were taken, and makeshift ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts were littered throughout the three-bedroom house.
The gang had struck when the sisters went away on holiday. After breaking in, the squatters produced a bogus six-month ‘contract’ claiming they were paying a ‘landlord’ £1,200 rent.
Wiping tears from her eyes, Lilia asked: ‘How are people allowed to do this?’
It is that very same question to which Dr Cockerell and the ever-increasing number of other victims of squatting are determined to get an answer. He says: ‘These are organised groups who use the internet for a support network. It is remarkable.’
He went on to criticise judge Fiona Henderson, who this week caused outrage when she said that ‘squatting is not a crime’. Incredibly, this is the truth — squatting is merely a civil offence.
Judge Henderson also went on to order that a list of empty homes in north London should be made public to the Advisory Service for Squatters, an east London-based organisation known as the ‘estate agency for squatters’.
While Judge Henderson acknowledged that publication of the list could have ‘a negative impact’ on crime prevention and might be of use to organised criminals looking to burgle and gut empty homes, she insisted: ‘The tribunal does not consider that any perceived social disadvantage of living next door to squatters, or the costs of eviction of squatters, are matters that the tribunal is entitled to take into consideration since squatting is not illegal.’
There is a whole industry which supports the activities of squatters. An 83-page Squatters Handbook (now in its 13 edition since its initial publication in 1976) lists the tricks that home-wreckers can use.
The Advisory Service will even post information abroad to help anyone thinking of coming to England to become squatters and exploit the fact that they are not criminals and are dealt with only in the civil courts.
‘Politicians have got to change these laws,’ Dr Cockerell argues. ‘It’s simply wrong that stealing a car is a criminal offence but moving into someone else’s home falls under civil law.’ His wife, a NatWest financial adviser, who fled Somalia 20 years ago when civil war broke out, is astonished that British law is so feeble.
She says that property-ownership is sacrosanct in her home country and that ‘if someone takes it over, you shoot them’. She is furious that English law allows feckless people to use others’ electricity, gas and water without paying for it.
Her husband says he was so upset that he considered exacting a more immediate revenge on the squatters: ‘I was angry at the injustice of it all. If I was not a consultant, I could well have lashed out — got ten heavy friends together and done what most people would do in such circumstances.’
Of course, such action would have risked him getting a criminal record which would bar him from practising medicine. So, instead, he hired a barrister and began the legal eviction process.
The procedure took nearly two weeks and was almost derailed due to a ‘technicality’. For the squatters — who included an American, Australians and Italians — set up a ‘textbook’ squat. While the advice manual warns squatters not to commit ‘criminal damage’, it tacitly encourages such action by saying that police can prosecute only ‘if there were witnesses’. Not surprisingly, no neighbours witnessed them break into Dr Cockerell’s home.
The manual also advises squatters to ‘control entry’ by changing locks (three new ones were fitted at Dr Cockerell’s place).
If, and when, the police arrive, it suggests a ‘polite but firm’ manner when insisting that no law has been broken. To make sure there is proof that the squatters live there legally, it even suggests posting a letter to members of the squat!
Dr Cockerell recalls standing on his doorstep, pleading with them to leave. When he failed, he hoped hard cash would succeed and offered them £500 to leave. But this was rejected as ‘paltry’. ‘It was blatant extortion,’ he says.
Meanwhile, after the case hit the headlines and reporters visited the address, they were met with a barrage of abuse from the squatters, as well as complaints that an impromptu band practice in one room was being interrupted.
One complained that the ‘peace and quiet’ was being shattered and a meditation session in another of the three reception rooms would have to be postponed.
On Wednesday, nearly two weeks after they arrived, the eviction order was finally executed and the gang made a hasty retreat, with a few glib apologies to Mrs Cockerell.
But, like so many other squatters, they simply moved on to another empty address in the area which they had scouted out.
One squatter explained his actions, saying that as a struggling musician, he needs the solitary lifestyle of squatting as it lets his creative juices flow.
There’s little sympathy from victims like Dr Cockerell. Describing his two-week ordeal as ‘a nightmare’, he said he remained philosophical because his work has given him perspective on the situation: ‘I have just come from the intensive care unit where I saw a young man who has had a life-threatening stroke. My problems are nothing in comparison to his.’
Nevertheless, Dr Cockerell is keen to continue his campaign against squatters, explaining that his own experience has made him realise the huge emotional importance of our homes. ‘A home is more than merely a possession. It’s something we hold very dear,’ he says. ‘When burgled, people feel it’s the invasion and violation of their home that upsets them far more than the loss of items stolen.’
Tragically, he and his wife no longer see their new house as a dream home. ‘The trouble is that we’ve come to loathe the house now. This cannot be allowed to happen to other people.’
British police tell victim of bike thief ‘you can’t take it back, the crook could sue you’ ... and then let him escape
A cyclist whose bike was stolen was flabbergasted when bungling police stopped him from taking it back - and then let the thief ride off on it. Simon Turner, 48, spotted his bicycle chained up on a busy high street as he shopped with his six-year-old son, Giles.
But after he approached a Police Community Support Officer in his home town of Maidenhead he was told not to break the lock and retrieve his stolen bike. The PCSO told him it was not his property and the crook would be able to sue him if he took it. Mr Turner was told police would monitor the area using CCTV and catch the criminal.
But the next day he heard the thief had slipped through their fingers and had walked off with his bike for a second time.
Two men, who could not be identified, had unlocked the bicycle and taken it away from the high street in Maidenhead, Berkshire.
Mr Turner said: 'I'm absolutely appalled. The worst thing was, when we found the bike, we had to explain to Giles why we had to leave it and let the thief get it. 'He was scared that maybe his bike would be stolen as well.'
Thames Valley Police apologised to Mr Turner for the botched operation after he went to the station on Wednesday to give a statement about the 're-theft'.
The father-of-one's black and burgundy Universal bicycle - which was stolen from his shed in early August - had cost him £55 second hand, and he had made various improvements.
When he saw it chained up outside a McDonald's in the town centre later that month, he even offered the PCSO £5 to pay to replace the lock so that he could get his bike back. But he was advised that the thief could sue for damage.
'The PCSO was taking advice from another officer over the phone and was just as incredulous as I was.'
Mr Turner, who runs a home tuition company, then had to sit back and wait while the police allowed the thief to get away. 'I was tempted to hang around and see who came to take it back but I was with my son and it wouldn't have been practical,' added Mr Turner, who lives with wife Anu in Maidenhead.
A Thames Valley Police spokesman said: 'The PCSO was acting on the advice of a colleague and we've yet to establish exactly what happened. 'However, it does appear the incorrect advice was given to her and there were other steps that could have been taken at the time. 'We'd like to apologise for this mistake and reassure the gentleman concerned that we are doing all we can to track down the person or people who stole his bicycle.'
The Citizens Advice Bureau advises that police can seize goods if they have reasonable grounds for believing they have been obtained illegally, or are evidence in relation to an offence.
Lessons are too easy, say most pupils at British primary and secondary school
Most children think their school work is easy, research has found.
Academic rigour at both primary and secondary school has been called into question as more than 50 per cent of youngsters admit they are not stretched in their studies.
The proportion of pupils who say they are not pushed has sharply increased during the last three years.
Today's figures follow evidence that England is slipping down the international education league tables and is now lagging behind countries such as Slovenia.
The findings have prompted accusations that Labour's education policies and obsession with targets led to a dumbing-down of standards despite a doubling of spending from an annual œ35.8billion in 2000 to œ71billion in 2009.
Professor Alan Smithers, of Buckingham University, said: `Under Labour, exam results were used to judge schools so it was imperative that children didn't fail. `So the examining boards have tended to make the examinations user-friendly and schools have pre-processed the information.
`The children are drilled and taught to the test, and coursework is given back to them with suggested improvements.
'This takes the fun and the challenge from education and makes it rather dull, as the pupils seem to be saying in response to this research.'
Dr Karina Halstead, who runs private tutor firm, London Home Tutors, has witnessed first-hand a `dramatic slump in standards' that has left pupils needing to do little more than `follow instructions' to pass exams.
She said: 'There has been a remarkable change in the level of difficulty.
'While more people are hiring private tutors today, they use them for far fewer sessions than a decade ago.
'This is because there is less need. Today, we mostly teach strategic exam passing technique, rather than give weekly tutorial so help students develop an in-depth knowledge and understanding of a subject.'
The three-year study of 8,334 children was conducted by the Centre of the Use of Research in Education.
It found that more than half of primary-age pupils, 52 per cent, disagreed or strongly disagreed that lessons were too difficult, as did 57 per cent of secondary pupils.
Amongst the older pupils, maths was considered the hardest subject, but also rated the most useful, after PE, for life outside school.
Religious education was seen as the least useful.
The findings also showed the number of children believing work is not too hard for them rose between the first year of the survey, in 2008, and the final round, in 2010.
Professor Philippa Cordingley, director of the project, said: `These findings seem to us to support the inference that even though the majority of learners report a reasonable level of difficulty, a small but significant proportion of learners are not being challenged sufficiently, and that, in the primary phase particularly, this is more true of higher achieving learners.'
Rise of the tutor as British parents lose faith in classroom teaching
More parents are hiring private tutors for their children as fears grow about slipping standards in the classroom. Almost a quarter of pupils aged 11 to 16 have received hired help to boost exam results, a sharp rise since 2005, a study has found. In London, this increases to almost four in ten children - a trend which reflects the scramble for places at leading schools in the capital.
In some secondary schools it is thought as many as 65 per cent of pupils will benefit from a tutor at some point.
The findings suggest successful schools are climbing exam league tables thanks partly to the work of private tutors. And with prices for such teaching sessions set at up to œ60 an hour, children from affluent families are more likely to get a boost than those from a disadvantaged background.
In the study, market research company Ipsos MORI polled 2,739 children between the ages of 11 and 16 in England and Welsh state schools and compared findings with a similar poll in 2005. It found the proportion sent to tutors had increased from 18 to 23 per cent.
It is believed the increase in tutoring among 16 to 18-year-olds was prompted by unprecedented competition for scarce university places this year, which is the final year before fees hike to œ9000.
The study follows recent evidence of a surge in the number of children as young as three receiving private tuition.
Asian and black families are the most likely to hire private tutors, with 42 per cent of Asian children and 38 per cent of black children getting extra help, compared to just 20 per cent of white families. And of today's figures, 25 per cent of tutored children are from affluent families, while 18 per cent come from poorer backgrounds.
Yesterday, educational charities warned the trend could widen the educational gap between the `haves and have-nots' with poorer parents unable to afford private tuition.
Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust, said: `Private tuition appears to be booming despite the recession. `While it is natural that parents should want to do the best for their children, it does give well off families an advantage, particularly when money to help children from poorer homes is being cut.'
The Sutton Trust has funded a pilot scheme of 100 pupils from poor homes in London who will be given one-to-one tuition in a bid to boost GCSE maths scores.
Insane Britain: Nurses who can't speak English put patients in danger
Lord Winston's stark warning over NHS workers from Romania and Bulgaria
Nurses from Eastern Europe put NHS patients in danger because they can’t speak proper English, one of Britain’s top doctors has warned. Lord Winston said yesterday that he was particularly worried about those from Romania and Bulgaria who had limited communication skills ‘even in their own language’.
He told the House of Lords they had been trained in a ‘completely different way’ to British nurses, and were not used to speaking to doctors or their own patients.
Lord Winston, professor of fertility studies at Imperial College London, warned that these poor communication skills were becoming widespread across the NHS and could only worsen if action wasn’t taken.
Under strict EU laws, the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) watchdog is banned from testing nurses coming in from European countries on either their language or clinical skills. Such tests are deemed to restrict the ‘free movement of labour’ – the same rules apply to doctors.
Some countries, however, including France, get round the rules by ensuring candidates are tested by local health boards rather than a national watchdog. As the tests are not at a national level, they are not deemed to break the rules.
Lord Winston’s views were later supported by Lord Kakkar, who is a surgeon. He told peers the situation was ‘intolerable’. ‘It is not right for fellow practitioners to have to work with these individuals,’ he said.
‘But most of all it is not right for citizens of our country, who at times when they are unwell and becoming patients in our healthcare systems need to be absolutely certain that the practitioners to whom they are exposed are competent, meet the standards required of medical practitioners in our country and therefore can with certainty provide the quality of care that citizens in our country deserve.’
Hearing evidence at the Lords’ inquiry into free EU movement of medical workers, the peers were told that patients were being put at risk by incompetent doctors and nurses who cannot speak English or understand basic medical terms such as ‘nil by mouth’.
Lord Winston said his own experience working abroad had shown him that nurses from Eastern Europe were not used to communicating with doctors or patients. ‘That communication between the patient and the professional is of vital importance,’ he said. ‘We run the risk of losing it with this issue of nurses who can’t speak the English language.’
The number of European nurses registering to work in Britain has doubled since strict checks on their competence – including language skills – were scrapped last October. In the first five months alone, almost 1,500 new nurses arrived.
The General Medical Council said that 22,060 – around 10 per cent – of doctors licensed to work in the UK were from the European Economic Area, including 1,862 doctors who qualified in Romania and 722 with Bulgarian qualifications.
In one case, a GMC spokesman said, a foreign doctor’s husband contacted the council to register her because she could not speak English herself.
Crime by EU migrants trebles - and we still can't throw them out
Britain is suffering an explosion in crimes by EU nationals, who are amassing more than 2,700 convictions every month. Since 2007, the number of EU citizens punished for breaking the law in the UK has more than trebled. The total is expected to hit a record 33,000 this year, placing huge pressure on the police, courts and overcrowded jails.
But because of EU diktats and Labour’s Human Rights Act, officials are finding it extremely hard to remove European lawbreakers once they have completed their sentences. According to the latest Home Office figures, 27,563 EU nationals were convicted in 2010, up from 10,736 in 2007. Yet only 1,480 EU citizens were removed from the country last year.
Top of the list of offenders were Poland, whose citizens collected 6,777 convictions, reflecting the large numbers who have headed here since the controversial expansion of the EU. Next came Romania with 4,343. Bulgarians were responsible for 296 crimes in 2010. Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU in 2007, three years after Poland and other Eastern European states.
Tory MP Dominic Raab said: ‘This staggering increase in the number of crimes committed by EU nationals in Britain since Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU highlights a hidden cost of further EU enlargement that must be properly debated.
‘Far from helping us tackle crime, the current straitjacket EU arrangements for securing our borders, deportation and law enforcement are imposing a massive net burden on policing and prison cells.’
EU rules make it far harder to remove European citizens than those from the rest of the world. Normally, criminals may be considered for deportation if they have been sentenced to at least a year in jail. But for EU nationals the bar is set twice as high with a starting point of two years in jail.
The Home Office must also show the offender poses a ‘present, genuine and sufficiently serious threat’ to society.
The situation becomes even more complicated thanks to Labour’s Human Rights Act, which prevents the removal of anybody who can claim to have established a family life in the UK.
In reality, all except the most serious EU offenders, such as killers and rapists, are unlikely to face even an attempt at deportation. At the same time, the EU free movement directive prevents Britain from refusing entry to all but the worst overseas criminals.
Sir Andrew Green of Migrationwatch said: ‘This is another of the unspoken costs of the massive levels of immigration we face. ‘The fact that it is so difficult to remove EU nationals only rubs salt into the wound.’
Andrew Percy, Tory MP for Brigg and Goole, said: ‘These people should be treated the same as every other foreign national and kicked out. ‘It’s not acceptable at all to have EU nationals committing crimes then being able to continue living here.’
Overall, the number of EU convictions since 2007 is 109,568. This includes 19,164 in the first seven months of 2011 – a figure pointing to a record end-of-year total of almost 33,000.
Prophecies of an egalitarian utopia based on false assumptions
As the British parliament rose for its summer recess this year, Opposition Leader Ed Miliband handed the members of his shadow cabinet some holiday homework. He told them to read a book that has been capturing the attention of the Left, not only in Britain but across the Western world.
Written by a couple of socialist academics, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, the book is called The Spirit Level. The clue to why so many on the Left have been drawn to it is in the subtitle: Why Equality is Better for Everyone.
This book seeks to reinstate radical income redistribution at the heart of the Left's political agenda. Socialists always have believed in greater equality, of course, but until now their case has rested on an ethical principle that it is morally wrong for some people to have a lot more money than others.
As with all ethical principles, this can be challenged. Why should people who work hard have the fruits of their labour taken away to be given to lazier folk, for example? The Right points out that hard work and risk deserve reward, and equalising shares can be quite immoral.
The Spirit Level aims to break away from these ethical conundrums and to replace them with the authority of science. It says governments should redistribute incomes, not because it is moral but because equality produces happier people and better-functioning societies. It claims everybody stands to benefit from income redistribution, rich and poor alike.
If this claim were true, it would pull the rug from under the feet of the Right. If a radical redistribution of income and wealth really did benefit everybody, how could the Right continue to hold out against it? The case for high taxes, big government and massive income transfers would be unanswerable. But it's not true. This book has many flaws (even though Miliband, and others on the Left appear blind to them).
The book's evidence consists of a series of graphs apparently showing that people in more equal countries live longer, are less likely to get murdered, enjoy higher literacy rates, suffer less mental illness and trust each other more. These findings are repeated for the 50 US states, where the authors find that states with the widest income spread have worse outcomes. But little of this evidence stands up to critical scrutiny.
Their sample of countries is biased. It excludes nations such as South Korea, where strong social outcomes coexist with high income inequality, as well as those such as the Czech Republic, with poor social outcomes despite a compressed income distribution.
Their choice of measures is also biased. Community strength is measured by whether people say they trust their neighbours, but membership of voluntary organisations is ignored. Drug dependency is included as an indicator of social pathology but not alcohol abuse. Murders likewise are in, but suicides are out. Prison numbers are analysed, but not crime figures. Government aid to foreign countries is included as a measure of generosity and compassion, but not private donations to charities. High teenage births are analysed as an indicator of family dysfunction, but not high divorce rates.
What is striking about this list of inclusions and exclusions is that, in every case, the measures that Wilkinson and Pickett selected fit their argument while the alternative measures would have undermined it. In short, they cherry-picked.
Their data analysis, too, is suspect, for they allow extreme cases to create the appearance of an association where there is none. For example, they claim that inequality produces a higher homicide rate, but this depends entirely on the US, where the murder rate is three times higher than anywhere else. Look beyond the US and you often find the most equal countries, such as Sweden and Finland, have a worse murder rate than less equal ones, including Britain and Australia. Yet appealing to their misleading graph, the authors claim Britain's murder rate would be three times lower if it had Scandinavian levels of income inequality.
The Scandinavians, it is true, do fare better than the "Anglo" countries on many of their measures, but this is not because inequality is lower in Scandinavia. It rather reflects the homogeneity of the Nordic countries as against the diversity of the Anglo nations, for the greater the social mix, the weaker the social bonds tend to be. We see this clearly in the variations between US states. Wilkinson and Pickett find the more equal states (usually those in the northeast) do better than the less equal ones (concentrated in the south).
But had they taken account of the ethnic mix of these states, they would have found ethnicity is a much stronger predictor of social outcomes than income distribution. Ethnicity is 18 times more powerful in predicting a state's infant mortality rate, for example.
The issue of equality is important, and it generates strong and impassioned arguments on both sides. But The Spirit Level is little more than polemic. It is to be hoped that we do not allow its spurious claims to scientific status to muddy the waters of our political and moral debate.
The complexity and constant change of the modern world has generated fear of the unknown in many
Mick Hume
Contrary to what we have been told a thousand times over the past decade, and particularly this week, 9/11 was not ‘the day that changed the world’. No act of terrorism alone, even one as bloody as the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001, could ever do that. What 9/11 and, more importantly, the fear-driven responses to it did was to confirm that the world had already changed, and to act as a further catalyst accelerating the end of the old political order.
As I wrote on spiked a day after the collapse of the twin towers: ‘It is not the act of terrorism itself that has changed the course of history, but the reaction to it may well do so.’ Our expectations have been borne out over the subsequent decade. The dreadful events of 9/11 came just six months after we had launched spiked, with me as its first editor. spiked was the online successor to LM magazine (née Living Marxism). In LM and elsewhere, writers subsequently associated with spiked had already gone a long way towards establishing a framework for understanding the post-Cold War world, navigating a shifting political map without the safety of the old signposts. Among the key features of this developing analysis were the end of the traditional ideologies of left and right; the crisis of authority in Western societies from the top downwards; and perhaps most pertinently, the creeping advance of the new politics of fear.
These trends created a context in which to situate the attacks on 9/11. It did not mean that we were any less shocked than anybody else. But it did allow spiked to make more sense of these events and the fallout from them. From the first, we emphasised the importance of the powerful culture of fear in Western societies shaping reactions to 9/11. As one US columnist wrote on the day of the terror attacks, ‘the next big thing… is likely to be fear’. On spiked, however, we had already identified the culture of fear as a dominant characteristic of the age, evident in seemingly trivial panics over public health and wellbeing about everything from food to flying. The result, as we put it afterwards, was that ‘we were scaring ourselves to death long before 9/11’.
The terror attacks on America did not create the culture of fear. But the reactions to 9/11 did demonstrate how powerful the politics of fear had become. That first spiked editorial on 12 September 2001 noted how the actions of a few zealous terrorists had effectively caused ‘the collapse of the American government’, with President George W Bush sent off around the country in search of a bolthole, Congress closed down, and all in chaos: ‘In the heart of the only superpower on Earth, the traumatised authorities suddenly seemed bewildered and powerless.’ These events, I also argued, gave ‘an insight into the fearful state of the contemporary Western mind’, as the authorities everywhere moved to pull up drawbridges and lash out at their invisible enemies. As another spiked editorial two days later had it, after 48 hours of bellicose panic-mongering in Washington and London, ‘It’s war – but against whom?’.
spiked’s immediate response to 9/11 and the forces it helped to unleash was to step up our own war of words against the culture of fear, arguing on 12 September that ‘by adopting a precautionary approach to modern life, and reorganising society on the basis of worst-case scenarios, we risk squandering opportunities to create a more progressive, civilised world’. This, I recall, caused confusion among some readers who had expected a more routine left-wing response. spiked, after all, came from a political and intellectual tradition of anti-imperialism, where the response to an attack by the IRA or the PLO in the 1980s would have emphasised the context of oppression that gave rise to such movements.
But we saw straight away that 9/11 was different. There was no shred of anti-imperialism in the attacks on New York and Washington, launched by Westernised and affluent young Saudis who appeared to have been shaped more by the malaise in Western society than any oppression in the Third World. Instead these acts of nihilistic terror-for-terror’s-sake – of adolescent ‘apocalyptic barbarism’, as one spiked writer described them – were in part a product of the global demise of the progressive left and of the national liberation movements it had supported, leaving behind a vacuum to be filled by terrorists whose explosive tantrum was so incoherent they could not even claim responsibility for their attacks or articulate a cause.
The same decay of radical politics was evident in the response of those left-liberals in the West who tried to speak for the suicide attackers, some even claiming that people working in the New York finance industry should not be considered innocent victims.
If 9/11 was both a product of, and an attempt to prey on, a weakness at the heart of the West, the response of the authorities suggested that the attackers were banging on an open door. At another time such a terrorist attack, however deadly, might have been seen in a wider sense as ‘throwing snowballs at our castle walls’. This time, however, the politics of fear dictated that it was treated as if posing a mortal threat not only to the people in those planes and the twin towers, but to Western civilisation itself.
The politics of fear is often understood too narrowly and conspiratorially, as a conscious attempt by those in power to control the population by spreading fear and justifying authoritarian measures. An element of that has often been evident over the decade since 9/11. But arguably more important has been the impact of the politics of fear on the insecure authorities themselves, who increasingly live in fear and loathing of a world that appears beyond their authority and control. That was evident in the panicky reactions on 9/11, and in the years of turmoil that followed.
We saw the influence of the politics of fear in both the launch and the conduct of the West’s desperate wars of intervention that came after 9/11, in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. It was witnessed, too, in the reorganisation of domestic politics around ‘homeland security’, not only in the US but in Europe. Here in the UK we might recall Tony Blair’s New Labour government making plans to flee London in the event of a fantasy terrorist dirty-bomb attack on the capital, while after the 7/7 attacks on London transport Gordon Brown declared that every department of government must effectively become a security department (see Gordon Brown’s tyranny of security, by Brendan O’Neill).
Meanwhile, spiked fought running battles against both sides of a ‘culture war’ that came to dominate and distort much public debate: on one hand, the fearmongers spreading panic about ‘Islamofascism’, as if the handful of Islamists really were the equivalent of Nazism on the march; and on the other, the rival fearmongers worrying about ‘Islamophobia’, imagining an army of white racists about to set fire to Britain’s inner cities.
And the politics of fear has not only been focused on terror. It predated 9/11, and it has since been behind many of the new forms of authoritarianism and lifestyle control that have flourished in recent years. Yet many critics of the ‘war on terror’ have focused only on the most extreme legal attacks on civil liberties, such as the infamous attempt to extend detention without charge to 90 days for terrorism suspects in the UK. The fact that many celebrated keeping the legal limit to ‘only’ 28 days, and welcomed new attacks on free speech as a defence against ‘Islamophobia’, confirmed how far the politics of fear has helped to drive liberty out of our public life over the past decade.
The identification of the politics of fear as a central theme of Western culture has shaped much of what spiked stood for since 9/11, first under my editorship and then, since 2007, under that of Brendan O’Neill. We take no pleasure in the way that our warning about the dangers of ‘reorganising society on the basis of worst-case scenarios’ 10 years ago has been proved right, most recently in the panicky, precautionary reaction of the New York authorities to the prospect of Hurricane Irene (see The politics of fear blows into New York, by Tim Black). But it has convinced us to redouble our efforts.
Back on 12 September 2001, that first article also tried to sound a more optimistic note, expressing the hope that, ‘in the face of adversity, people will rediscover the resilience and resourcefulness that made us capable of going out and building a modern wonder like Manhattan in the first place’. In the decade since then, many people have indeed shown remarkable resilience in the face of adversity. But the Western authorities and their apologists have ensured that post-9/11 political life remains weighed down under an atmosphere of misanthropy, miserabilism and fear. Ten years is more than enough of that.
David Cameron will signal a return to “elitism” in schools in an attempt to mend Britain’s “broken” society and secure the economic future.
The Prime Minister will attack the “prizes for all” culture in which competitiveness is frowned upon and winners are shunned.
In a significant speech, he will outline Coalition plans to ensure teaching is based on “excellence”, saying that controversial reforms are needed to “bring back the values of a good education”.
Failure to do so would be “fatal to prosperity”, he will say.
The comments mark the latest in a series of attempts to focus on education in response to the riots that shocked London and other English cities last month.
They follow the announcement by Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, of back-to-basics discipline in state schools. He plans to give teachers more freedom to search pupils suspected of carrying banned items and to let them use reasonable force in removing the most disruptive children from the classroom.
Mr Cameron will seek to move the debate on to standards, saying that a rigorous focus on the basics is needed to give young people “the character to live a good life, to be good citizens”.
The Prime Minister will say: “For the future of our economy, and our society, we need a first-class education for every child. Of course, everyone’s agreed on that. “The trouble is that for years we’ve been bogged down in a great debate about how we get there. Standards or structures? Learning by rote or by play? Elitism or all winning prizes?”
Mr Cameron makes it clear that he is in favour of elitism and not prizes for all. He will add: “These debates are over – because it’s clear what works. Discipline works. Rigour works. Freedom for schools works. Having high expectations works. “Now we’ve got to get on with it – and we don’t have any time to lose.”
Ministers have already outlined plans to insist on at least a 2:2 degree before students join teacher training courses, and to hand generous bursaries to the brightest graduates who want to teach key subjects such as science and maths.
The Government has also introduced the English Baccalaureate, a new school leaving certificate that rewards pupils gaining good grades in academic subjects including maths, English, science, languages, history and geography.
In his speech, Mr Cameron will also champion the opening of the first free schools, state-funded institutions run by parents, charities and faith groups, independent of local council control. Some 24 have opened this month.
The measures have provoked fury among teaching unions who claim they smack of elitism and represent an attempt to dismantle the state education system.
But Mr Cameron will say that free schools will “have the power to change lives”. He will also seek to link improvements in education to mending “our broken society.”
“We’ve got to be ambitious if we want to compete in the world,” he will say. “When China is going through an educational renaissance, when India is churning out science graduates, any complacency now would be fatal.
“And we’ve got to be ambitious, too, if we want to mend our broken society. Because education doesn’t just give people the tools to make a good living – it gives them the character to live a good life, to be good citizens.”
The comments come days after Nick Clegg said that parents must take more responsibility. The Deputy Prime Minister insisted that teachers should be left to educate, and not be expected to act as “surrogate mothers and fathers”.
Britain even worse at maths than Albania as UK schools rank 43rd in the world
Britain is languishing behind Albania in a league table for maths and science education, according to an authoritative international study. A report by the World Economic Forum has ranked UK schools 43rd in the world – behind countries such as Iran, Trinidad and Tobago and Lithuania.
The findings are a damning indictment of Tony Blair’s pledge to prioritise ‘education, education, education’ and come after education spending doubled from £35.8billion to £71billion under Labour.
The WEF findings reveal British pupils are at a disadvantage compared to many others around the world, with the country at risk of developing a core skills shortage.
While the UK languishes in 43rd position in the table, Singapore tops the list, followed by Belgium and Finland.
New Zealand takes seventh place, Canada eighth, France 15th and Bosnia and Herzegovina 41st. Just below the UK sit Jordan and Romania.
And Britons do not only fare poorly when it comes to maths and science, as a recent OECD report showed a fifth of 15-year-olds are ‘functionally illiterate’.
The WEF annual study, carried out between January and July, is based on in-depth surveys of 142 countries and takes into account each nation’s economic and business standing.
Conservative MP Chris Skidmore said: ‘After 13 years in which Labour failed to grasp the importance of maths and science education to our future prosperity, this report shows how much ground we have to make up.’ ‘We should be competing with the likes of Singapore, not Iran and Albania.’
The UK’s ranking in 2008 was 47th, meaning there has been a slight improvement over the last three years. It is thought this is because during the recession, teenagers have heeded calls from employers for more graduates who have core skills in maths and science.
GPs ordered to ration cancer scans: Lives 'being put at risk' by bureaucrats' new cost-saving directive
Family doctors have been ordered to ration the number of patients they send for life-saving cancer scans to save money. They are being told to slash the number they refer to hospital for tests including ultrasounds, MRIs and CT scans commonly used to spot tumours.
Last night experts warned the cost-saving measures increased the risk of patients being diagnosed too late and dying unnecessarily. Britain has one of the lowest cancer survival rates in Europe, and experts say late diagnosis is to blame.
The cuts are being brought in despite Government pledges to give GPs better access to cancer tests in the hope of saving 5,000 lives a year.
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley promised to set aside £750million to help family doctors send patients directly for scans instead of having to refer them to a consultant to decide whether or not they should have a scan.
This process could add several weeks on to the diagnosis by the time patients have waited for an appointment and a slot for a scan.
But it has since emerged that a quarter of Primary Care Trusts are actively discouraging GPs from sending patients for these tests. The figures were obtained through a freedom of information request by GP Newspaper. Of the 116 PCTs which responded, a quarter said they had policies to reduce ‘inappropriate’ referrals by GPs for scans.
And five – Bury, Salford, South West Essex, Southampton, South West Essex, Southampton and Stockport – have banned family doctors from sending patients directly for scans, flying in the face of the Government’s pledge. Instead they are being encouraged to refer patients to hospital doctors who will decide whether or not they need a test.
Dr Clare Gerada, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, warned that stopping GPs from sending patients for scans will delay diagnosis of cancer. She said: ‘This is about money and finances, not about putting patients first. ‘How can a junior doctor in a hospital refer for an ultrasound while I – with 25 years’ experience – have to refer a patient to a specialist?’
Lindsay Wilkinson of Macmillan Cancer Support said: ‘Earlier diagnosis makes a huge difference to the chance of surviving cancer. It is vital that GPs are given direct access to diagnostic tests so that those with suspected cancer are diagnosed at the earliest opportunity. ‘Stopping GPs directly accessing scans could be a false economy if GPs have to refer to a hospital specialist who orders the scan anyway.’
Sarah Woolnough of Cancer Research UK said: ‘It is very worrying to hear of PCTs setting referral targets and decommissioning direct access to tests that could speed up a cancer diagnosis.’
Millions of patients a year are referred to hospital for scans including MRIs, ultrasounds, CTs and colonoscopies. They are often used to check for tumours but also to diagnose heart disease, strokes, Alzheimer’s and problems with joints. PCTs have to pay a hospital for every patient referred for a scan. A CT scan costs up to £600, an MRI around £500 and an ultrasound about £100, on top of the cost of a patient seeing a specialist.
Last year a major study showed that the UK had consistently lower survival rates for some of the most common cancers compared with Australia, Canada, Denmark, Sweden and Norway.
In January Andrew Lansley promised to ensure Britain’s cancer survival rates were ‘the best in Europe’ by giving GPs better access to tests.
Professor Sir Mike Richards, National Clinical Director for Cancer, said: ‘Early diagnosis of cancer is a very high priority for the Government. That is why the Cancer Outcomes Strategy, which we published earlier this year, put an emphasis on improved GP access to diagnostic tests. ‘We are working to improve access to relevant diagnostic tests for GPs and will shortly be publishing guidelines which have been developed by GPs working with radiologists and other specialists.’
Although the NHS has been protected from the Coalition’s programme of spending cuts, in reality it needs big above-inflation rises every year just to ‘stand still’. This is because of factors such as the ageing population and rapid medical advances. So many workers in the NHS argue that the 0.1 per cent real terms annual rise in the NHS budget is, in reality, a fall.
Health trust bosses have also been told to make £20billion in efficiency savings over the next few years.
Long overdue victory for right to defend your property in Britain
Florist, 72, will NOT face charges for stabbing to death gunman who raided shop
Anti-crime campaigners last night hailed ‘a victory for common sense’ after an elderly florist who stabbed an armed raider to death was told he will not face criminal charges.
Cecil Coley, 72, was playing dominoes with a friend in his family shop in Old Trafford, Manchester, when four masked men armed with knives and guns forced their way in and demanded the takings.
During the ensuing struggle a pistol was fired but the florist grabbed a knife from the shop counter and lashed out, causing one of the raiders, Gary Mullings, to reel back with a serious stab wound to his chest. The 30-year-old dropped his pistol, staggered out into the street and collapsed. He later died.
Tory MP Patrick Mercer, a long-time campaigner on the issue, said last night that the case vindicated David Cameron’s promise to clarify what measures the law permits a person to take in defending themselves and their property against intruders.
Otherwise, he said, those who act in self-defence face the threat of prosecution, leading to a ‘waste of time and intense discomfort for the householder and their family’.
A spokesman for local campaign group Families Against Crime said: ‘Confronted with a masked gang armed with guns and knives, anyone would react in the way Mr Coley did to defend himself and his friend. ‘It has been a long time coming but finally the justice system has caught up with living in the modern world. This is undoubtedly a victory for common sense.’
Nafir Afzal, chief crown prosecutor for the North West, said of the July raid: ‘It is difficult to envisage a more frightening set of circumstances than these. Four men, armed with guns and a knife, forced their way into the shop.
‘Mr Coley received a number of injuries, including a serious facial injury, and his friend was knocked unconscious. At some point in the incident one of the guns, a blank firing pistol, was fired. ‘All the evidence indicates that when Cecil Coley took hold of a knife that was on the shop counter and struck out with it, he was acting in a way that he felt instinctively necessary to protect himself, whilst fearing for his life.’
He said: ‘Householders, shopkeepers and anyone going about their lawful day-to-day activities can be reassured that the law will protect them if they use reasonable force to protect themselves, their families and their property.’
Mullings’ brothers Joseph, 24, and Kyle, 18, both of no fixed abode, along with Nathan Walters, 26, of Liverpool, have been charged with robbery of the shop and are due to appear in court next month.
The decision comes after householder Peter Flanagan, 59, was cleared of murder after being arrested over the fatal stabbing of a burglar who broke into his house in nearby Salford.
In June Justice Secretary Ken Clarke said a householder who knives a burglar will not have committed a criminal offence under plans to clarify the law on self-defence in England. He said people were entitled to use ‘whatever force necessary’ to protect themselves and their homes.
Political correctness endangers a village cricket club
A red tape nightmare has hit our village cricket club for six The demands made on our little village cricket club in Litton, Somerset, reflect wider problems with the way Britain is run.
Compared with some of the weightier matters addressed in this column, the threatened closure of a tiny Somerset cricket club might seem trivial. But the team for which I play on Sundays is battling for survival because it has been caught by a bizarre bureaucratic doube-whammy which reflects much of what is going askew with the way our country is run – not least the extent to which our mighty government machine has lost contact with the everyday lives of those it is meant to serve.
On the one hand, our club has been told that, for the field and two semi-derelict sheds where we change and keep our mowers, we must pay “non-domestic rates” equivalent to more than £100 for every home game we play.
On the other, we are told by Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs that we cannot get any relief on this exorbitant demand because our constitution does not state explicitly that membership is open to anyone regardless of “sex, age, disability, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, religion or other beliefs”.
Litton Cricket Club’s constitution has always stated that we are open to anyone who wants to join. Our players range in age from 11 to 73 and have included a Nigerian and my son’s 12-year-old Indian nephew. Wives help with teas, children play on the boundary; the club is warmly supported by many villagers, not least at our fund-raising annual dinners and quiz nights. But because our constitution does not include a “non-discrimination” clause worded in exactly the way laid down, we must pay rates 10 times larger than any other village club in our area, and more than our members could be expected to pay.
Our battle to win rate relief began 10 years ago, when we were first faced with a demand for over £700. We discovered that this was only £400 less than a demand that was being objected to by one of the top city clubs in southern England, with 150 playing members and a large, fully-equipped clubhouse. Eventually we won relief, thanks to the intervention of local councillors.
Some years back, however, our council outsourced responsibility for its business rates to Capita, a private firm based in Bromley, Kent, which last year told us the policy had changed. In March we were told we would now have to pay the full tax unless HMRC classified us as a CASC, a Community Amateur Sports Club.
We filed an application to HMRC and paid £70 as a first instalment, but were then threatened with court action unless we paid the full sum. Thanks to the intervention of our local councillor, we were given a stay of execution until our CASC application had been processed. Last month we finally had a letter from Liverpool to say that our application had been refused. This was because our constitution did not in effect make it absolutely explicit that the club would not discriminate against any one-legged Inuit lesbian Druid pensioner who might wish to join,
We appealed, explaining that the club’s survival depended on it. Having rewritten our constitution exactly according to the formula suggested on HMRC’s website, we asked whether, if we made a new application, this would now be acceptable. Liverpool’s refusal of our appeal last week explained that it was not HMRC’s concern whether our club closed. It said nothing about our new constitution, but merely repeated its insistence that the old one had not stated. the prescribed wording that our club was open to anyone (it merely said “membership is open to anyone”).
There was a time when matters like this could have been quickly sorted out by a couple of councillors familiar with our village. Instead, this battle, involving enough paperwork to fill an inch-thick file, has taken so many months that, if only I were a lawyer and able to charge £500 an hour, I could retire on the proceeds.
We have now made our new CASC application, which we hope will tick every one of the many required boxes. Meanwhile the fate of our club hangs on the ruling of one official in Liverpool and another in Bromley, Kent, each more than 100 miles from the little Someset village where their decisions are awaited with considerable interest.
I went on the BBC News Channel yesterday afternoon defending free schools against the charge that they would lower standards and lead to social segregation.
First, it is worth re-capping what the ‘free schools agenda’ is all about. Essentially, it has two purposes. The main one is to increase the supply of good school places by letting independent providers set up new schools, and receive state funding on a per pupil basis. The idea is that this allows parents to exercise a meaningful choice over where their child is educated. That drives schools to compete for pupils, which increases accountability and drives up standards. The second purpose of the free schools agenda is to give schools greater freedom from bureaucratic interference: let them innovate, let them focus on teaching the child in front of them, and stop thinking the man in Whitehall always knows best.
School choice may be a radical idea, but it isn’t a new one, and it has worked where it’s been tried – most famously in Sweden, that well-known socialist nirvana. Moreover, it is hard to deny that the British education system is in need of serious reform: despite the fact that spending has practically doubled in real terms over the last decade, Britain has tumbled down the international league tables. Academic research has even suggested that 17 percent of British 16-19 year olds are illiterate, while 22 percent of them are functionally innumerate – a shocking indictment of a failing system.
Moreover, the claims made by the critics of free schools do not hold water. They suggest that free schools will promote inequality, but this has not been the experience in Sweden or the US. In fact, American evidence suggests the opposite: that privately operated schools can be better integrated, since attendance is not as closely linked to where one lives as it is in the state sector. Indeed, it is worth remembering that our current schools system is deeply unequal precisely on these grounds – in many cases it amounts to little more than segregation by house price. Live in a nice area, and chances are you’ll get to attend a fairly decent school; live on a sink estate, and you probably won’t be so lucky. Free schools offer an escape route.
At this stage, however, it is worth making a point about the profit motive – which Nick Clegg today ruled out of bounds vis-à-vis free schools. The trouble with not allowing for-profit companies to run free schools is that it dramatically narrows the pool of potential school operators. Fewer new schools will be set up, and those that are established are more likely to be concentrated in relatively affluent areas, where parents have the time and the ability to push for them. By contrast, if we were to allow profit-making free schools, we would get far more of them, and see more of them being set up in deprived areas – where both the demand and the need for them is greatest. Whatever Nick Clegg says, the profit motive in education could easily be a force for social mobility, not against it.
Finally, a point on standards: there simply isn’t any convincing evidence to suggest that free schools will provide a lower standard of education than state comprehensives, or that standards at those state comprehensives will suffer because of the existence of free schools. True, part of the rationale behind school choice is that irredeemably bad schools should go out of business. But that is surely as it should be: a system where good schools can grow and be replicated, and where bad schools are not kept interminably on life support, will lead to standards being driven up across the board.
"Britain's advertising watchdog has banned a mobile phone company commercial which featured a cartoon Jesus who winked and gave a thumbs-up gesture.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled that the Phones 4 U campaign, which carried the slogan: "Miraculous deals on Samsung Galaxy Android phones", appeared to be mocking the Christian faith.
"We considered that, although the ads were intended to be light-hearted and humorous, their depiction of Jesus winking and holding a thumbs-up sign, with the text "miraculous" deals during Easter, the Christian Holy Week which celebrated Christ's resurrection, gave the impression that they were mocking and belittling core Christian beliefs," the ASA said today.
"We therefore concluded that the ads were disrespectful to the Christian faith and were likely to cause serious offence, particularly to Christians."
Are Christians that thin-skinned? I guess some may be. But compared to the abuse that gets hurled at American Christians, it's pretty trivial.
Anyway, Christians are heavily discriminated against in Britain so I suppose it's good to see them getting a bit of recognition.
7 September, 2011
'Take your drugs or I'll stab you': What 'bullying, intimidating' nurse told 76-year-old patient
A hospital nurse who threatened to 'stab' an elderly patient if he did not take his pills faces being kicked out of the profession today. Lynette Freeth, 32, was seen by colleagues treating pensioners roughly on a geriatric ward in Wakefield, West Yorkshire.
She called 74-year-old Alzheimer's sufferer Barbara Beeforth a 'silly old cow' and yanked her wrist before pinning her down on a bed, the Nursing and Midwifery Council heard.
Freeth also restrained 76-year-old Roy Glover in a chair after he refused to take medicine at Pinderfields Hospital, Wakefield. Colleagues heard Freeth tell Mr Glover: 'Take your drugs or I'll stab you,' the hearing was told.
Freeth was convicted of two counts of assault, handed an 18-month suspended prison sentence and ordered to perform 200 hours of unpaid work by Wakefield Magistrates in November 2009.
The panel heard she had a history of 'intimidating' and 'bullying' behaviour, including an incident in August 2008 when she punched an elderly patient.
In a witness statement, nurse Katie Stevenson said the man had been getting out of bed and tampering with medical equipment. She said: 'He suffered from dementia and was prone to violent mood swings and had on occasion become physically violent.
'Miss Freeth pointed a finger at his face and shouted at him an order to get back into his bed. In my opinion that was the worst thing she could have done.' The man, identified only as Patient C, then punched Freeth in the stomach so she 'doubled over' in pain.
Straightening up, the nurse retaliated with a blow to the left side of his chest, saying: 'If you hit me, I'll hit you.' Ms Stevenson added: 'She then went over to the staff room which is where I found her crying uncontrollably and in hysterics. 'I found Lynette to be intimidating and over-sensitive, and her behaviour was bullying to both staff and patients.'
Her attack on Ms Beeforth, referred to as Patient A, took place during a night shift on January 13, 2009, in the presence of Ms Stevenson and another colleague.
She then assaulted Mr Glover at about 11pm during the same shift. Kristian Garsed, for the NMC, said: 'She grabbed Patient A by the wrist and threw her onto the bed. 'She then pinned Patient A down, at which point the patient raised her hand and Miss Freeth was heard to say, "If you hit me it'll be the last thing you do". 'Then she walked away saying something like "silly old cow".'
Miss Freeth, who has not attended today's hearing in central London, has admitted charges of hitting Patient C and shouting at him in an aggressive manner. She also admitted the two assault convictions and that her fitness to practise was impaired.
Two further charges of grabbing a patient and using aggressive language towards patients were denied and will not be considered by the panel.
The disputed doll above. It's legal to buy and sell them so why is it illegal for them to be seen? The shop below must be an unimaginable horror
The delightful homes nestle side by side in acres of open countryside. One is an elegant, listed manor house, said to be the oldest in the village. The other is a £1million barn conversion behind a red-brick wall and sweeping gravel drive.
But the harmony of this idyllic Suffolk community has been shattered – by a golliwog. Yesterday a 65-year-old grandmother was preparing to appear in court charged with a race hate crime after placing the doll in her window.
Jena Mason was arrested when her black neighbour, Rosemarie O’Donnell, complained that it was a racial taunt following a long dispute between the two households.
Now lawyers representing opposing sides in the battle of the Worlingham golly will argue whether putting it on display so close to the home 48-year-old Mrs O’Donnell shares with her husband Steve and their mixed race children was an act of ‘racially aggravated harassment’ – the charge Mrs Mason faces.
Underlying the allegation is a disagreement over plans by Mrs Mason and her husband Terry to build new stables on their land.
Their son-in-law, Daniel O’Dell, who also lives at the 16th century manor, is in training for the British Olympic dressage team and needs the space for his horses.
But the O’Donnells hired a planning consultant to object to the application, citing boundary and right-of-way issues, traffic increase and problems from disposing of liquid and solid waste from the horses. They have also complained about the Masons’ dogs allegedly coming on to their land.
Days after the local council granted planning permission, Mrs O’Donnell made a formal complaint to police about it, and supplied a photograph. It had appeared in a ground floor annexe window near the main entrance to the barn, and close to the only road out of the property.
The businesswoman and mother of two, who has Jamaican roots, said the sight of it left her ‘shocked and upset’. Mrs Mason was arrested, questioned at Lowestoft police station, charged, bailed, and told to appear before the town’s magistrates next Tuesday.
Now, in a dispute that looks set to attract international attention, a court will have to decide if it was a deliberate act of racism – or, as Mrs Mason insists, that the golly simply ended up on the window sill when she tidied it up with her grandson’s other toys.
Whatever the outcome, the case appears to be dividing the community. One associate of the O’Donnells said they were ‘a perfectly nice couple’, adding: ‘Some people round here need to move into the 21st century.’
But a villager complained that ‘newcomers’, as he called them, ‘should go back to the city if they don’t understand living in the country’.
The O’Donnells moved to Manor Farm Barn in 2003 from Kent. The conversion gave them five bedrooms, six bathrooms and eight reception rooms. Photos on the internet show statues of twin horses’ heads on the front wall and a Porsche Cayenne and Mercedes saloon in an open garage. Mr O’Donnell, 54, an IT executive, recently valued it at £1.2million on a house information website.
Yesterday he admitted there had been a history of disputes with his neighbours over the stable plans, and the Masons’ dogs.
He said the golliwog had been placed in the only window visible from his property. ‘It’s not a children’s toy,’ he said. ‘You can see it has buttons and other items on it. It was clearly deliberately placed on the window sill facing out of the window.
‘I do not believe it was casually tossed up there. It has caused immense upset. You live in the countryside and you think you have got away from all this nonsense.
‘I would much rather they went after me with a baseball bat rather than insulting my children and wife. We came to East Anglia because we thought it was beautiful, scenic and very safe with an extremely low level of crime.’
Mrs O’Donnell said: ‘I’m sorry – I’m not allowed to say anything.’
Mrs Mason also refused to comment yesterday, although earlier she had said she was ‘completely and utterly surprised’ by the complaint.
The manor house, also believed to be worth in excess of £1million, is a former farmhouse with architectural and historic connections that give it a Grade II listing.
Terry Mason emerged yesterday to say his wife was ‘very ill’ – and told callers to contact her solicitor. The solicitor, James Hartley, confirmed she intended to plead not guilty to the charge. He added: ‘There have been various disputes between the O’Donnells and the Masons. Mrs Mason denies acting in a racial or abusive manner.
‘The golly toy belongs to Mrs Mason’s 16-month-old grandson and was put on the window sill along with other items while she was tidying up. ‘There was no malicious or racial intention on the part of Mrs Mason and it is regrettable that the matter has been blown out of proportion.’
The maximum penalty that magistrates can impose for the race offence she faces is a £5,000 fine. If the case goes to Crown Court, however, it could lead to a maximum two years in jail if proven.
Toddler taken into care after mother was branded a 'drunk' by presumptuous British police... when she had collapsed in the street from brain aneurysm
A mother had her young son taken into care after police accused her of being drunk when she was actually suffering a brain aneurysm. The woman, who is her 20s, collapsed on her doorstep in front of the child.
She was spotted by police asleep in the street in Chatham, Kent, last December when temperatures had dropped to minus 2C. Her son, who is under the age of five, was sitting beside her without shoes or a coat on, and his toes had turned blue.
Police said the woman was drunk, but her lawyer told Medway Magistrates' Court that her slurred speech, glazed eyes and unsteadiness were symptoms of a brain aneurysm, for which she later underwent surgery.
Her son was placed in foster care for eight months and spent Christmas away from his mother. The single mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said she had been through 'hell' but was now reunited with her child.
However she was handed a six-month conditional discharge after admitting threatening and abusive behaviour towards police officers who took her son.
She told the court: 'It's been hell but I have been honest from the start. The past eight months have been a real struggle. I didn't see him for almost a month and we spent Christmas apart.'
Officers assumed that the woman was intoxicated as her eyes were glazed, she was slurring her words and could barely walk.
Her solicitor Alan Balneaves said she was admitted to hospital with the aneurysm and viral meningitis just days after the incident. She had previously had several seizures.
The young mother said she had taken her son to stay overnight at a friend's home in Chatham and admitted having 'a couple of drinks'. After a fight broke out at the house, she decided to return home with her son, leaving his coat and her keys behind in his buggy. She said that she only had a hazy recollection of what happened but suffered two black eyes and bruising to her arms and body.
She said: 'It happened all of a sudden. I was scared and I just panicked. I wanted to get out of the house and left the buggy and his coat as I was very confused.'
The woman said that she hopes to make a full recovery after her brain surgery but is being monitored closely by doctors for five years.
'It's been madness and it was really scary going to court but I'm glad it's over and we can now move on with our lives. 'My son is really active now and we are enjoying doing things together. He is happy to be home,' she added. 'He will be going to school soon and when he does I'm going to get a job. I've now got a lot of support around me.'
Victory for marriage (for now): U-turn on rights for live-in British couples
Live-in couples will not be given the same rights as those who have married, ministers ruled last night. In a victory for family campaigners, plans to give a raft of new legal entitlements to unmarried couples have been abandoned.
The Law Commission proposals, published under the last Labour government, were condemned for undermining the institution of marriage. And last night ministers said they would not be introduced during this Parliament.
The measures would have given inheritance rights to cohabiting couples after just two years of living together, and couples who had been together for five years would have been treated the same way as if they were married.
Unmarried couples who had a child together would have been given automatic inheritance rights if one of them died without a will – irrespective of how long they lived together.
The 2009 commission report said it wanted to update the law covering the death of a person who hadn’t left a will to better reflect the make-up of ‘modern families’. It said: ‘While some may find this idea controversial, research indicates that it would match public expectations and attitudes.’
Last night critics welcomed the Ministry of Justice decision to ditch the proposals. Patricia Morgan, an author on family policy, said: ‘There has been a long-running campaign by femi-nazis such as Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt to undermine marriage with a thousand cuts. One way is to take the remaining benefits of marriage and giving them to all and sundry.’
Kathy Gyngell, research fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies, added: ‘These proposals were completely wrong in principle and always impractical.’
Two-thirds of British schools ignore legal requirement to provide daily act of worship
Most schools ignore the legal requirement to hold a daily act of worship for their pupils, a new study has found.
Almost two-thirds of parents told a survey that their children do not attend a daily act of collective worship at school.
And a majority of people thinks that the law on daily worship on schools should be no longer be enforced.
A Church of England spokesman pointed out that the BBC Local Radio poll did not differentiate between primary and secondary schools, and argued that most primary schools do have collective worship or a daily period of reflection.
'The law states that all maintained schools must provide a daily act of collective worship, with the exception of those withdrawn by their parents,' he said.
'The Church of England strongly supports this - although it is not its job to enforce it - as it provides an important chance for the school to focus on promoting the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of its pupils.
'Collective worship is when pupils of all faiths and none come together to reflect - it should not be confused with corporate worship when everyone is of the same belief.'
However, 60 per cent of the public do not support enforcing the law which prescribes a daily act of worship in all state schools, with older people more favourable towards the law than the young.
A small majority (51 per cent) of those aged 65 or over believe it should be enforced, but only 29 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds agree.
Following the release of these findings, National Secular Society executive Keith Porteous Wood called for the law on collective daily worship to be repealed, saying it infringed pupils' human rights.
'As the BBC survey confirms, the law requiring daily collective worship is being widely flouted, and because the law should not be brought into disrepute in this way, it should be repealed,' he said.
'England is the only country in the western world to enforce participation in daily worship in community schools. 'To do so goes beyond the legitimate function of the state and is an abuse of children’s human rights, especially those who are old enough to make decisions for themselves.'
The survey was carried out by telephone in July and interviewed over 1,700 adults, including 500 parents with children at school in England.
£830m pay-off for NHS penpushers. . . and most of them will be rehired by the State
More than £830million is being spent paying off National Health Service penpushers – even though most will be handed new jobs. Thousands of managers and staff are being made redundant under reforms that will scrap primary care trusts and strategic health authorities and switch their work to GPs.
Ministers have admitted that seven in ten staff laid off are likely to be re-employed by the new GP purchasing groups.
Figures uncovered by Labour show that up to £750million is being spent on pay-offs for care trust staff and £84million on health authority workers. Hospitals and health trusts have been told to set aside more than £3billion of their budgets to cover the cost of bringing in the changes – stopping them spending it on patient care.
And figures also show that the number of administrative organisations in the NHS will more than treble under the changes, despite pledges by the Coalition to reduce bureaucracy. Currently there are 163 primary care trusts and strategic health authorities but under the changes there will be 521 organisations and quangos. These include clinical commissioning groups, health and well-being boards, clinical senates and the NHS Commissioning Board.
John Healey, Labour’s health spokesman, said: ‘We have had a wasted year of chaos and confusion in the NHS which is set to drag on as David Cameron forces the Health Service through the biggest reorganisation in its history. ‘£850million will be spent on redundancies, while 2 per cent of PCT budgets, almost £2billion, is being held back from patient care to cover the costs and risks of the Tories’ reckless reorganisation.’
Nearly 21,000 staff are expected to be made redundant under the changes. The Government claims that more than 3,000 managers have already gone. Some are likely to have received packages of as much as £130,000. But details buried in the Health and Social Care Bill published earlier this year show that as many as seven in ten of staff made redundant would be given jobs elsewhere.
Emma Boon, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘It’s very worrying that the proportion being spent paying people off is so high.' ‘People should get what is legally entitled to them but careful planning would have meant less stress for those involved and would have made the whole process much quicker and cheaper for the taxpayer.’
The reform Bill, which is due to be debated in the House of Commons today, centres on putting GPs in charge of buying in treatment and services and encouraging private companies to play a greater role.
Initially ministers claimed it would cost £1.4billion – but this prediction is likely to be increased when fresh estimates are published over the next few weeks.
A spokesman for the Department of Health said: ‘We are passionate about the National Health Service and want to safeguard it for the future. ‘We are spending money on redundancy now so we can reduce back office administrative costs and save money in the longer term.' ‘These savings will be reinvested into front-line services and improving patient care.’
Primary care trusts have been told to hold back 2.5 per cent of their annual spending – nearly £2billion – and hospitals to set aside the same 2.5 per cent, or £1.1billion.
Once again careless British doctors try to kill a healthy baby
They knew that the first scan could be wrong and should have done a second one but could not be bothered. Once again it was only mother's intuition that saved a dear little boy who has given great happiness to his parents
Doctors told first-time-mother Amy-Lou Howard she should seek a termination because her son Edward didn't show up on the screen. The scan appeared to show an empty sac in Amy-Lou's womb, which lead them to diagnose an ectopic pregnancy.
This potentially fatal condition is where the foetus grows outside the womb and Amy-Lou was advised she would need an injection to flush out her fallopian tubes to remove the foetus.
But Amy Lou's aunt, Louise Turner, who happened to be with her in hospital, insisted her niece should wait for a second scan. Louise realised Edward might actually be hiding as she had the same experience when she was pregnant with her first child. Ms Howard defied doctors' advice and a week later a scan showed the baby was in fact there all along and growing normally. She went on to give birth to a healthy baby boy, Edward, now eight months old.
The 19-year-old from Norfolk said: 'It was the tiniest dot you have ever seen. He must have been hiding, it was like he was playing peek-a-boo. 'My aunt was having chemotherapy for breast cancer in the same hospital at the time and came to visit me for the first scan. 'It was devastating when I saw the empty sac on the screen. 'They told me an ectopic pregnancy could kill me because if the baby got any bigger my tubes could burst. It could also have left me infertile.
'I'm so glad my aunt was there. If I'd been there by myself I would have gone along with the doctors' advice. 'It makes me feel so sick when I think about what could have happened.'
Sadly Amy-Lou's aunt never got to meet Edward after she lost her battle with cancer in October last year shortly before he was born.
Amy-Lou said: 'We were very close. She was like a second mum. She was desperate to see him but missed him by seven weeks. 'If it wasn't for her, Edward wouldn't be here. 'It shows doctors are not always right but mother's intuition is.'
Amy-Lou, a full time mother from Norfolk, went on to give birth to a healthy baby boy, Edward, now eight months old.
Amazingly, Ms Howard fell pregnant after being fitted with a contraceptive implant. It is understood hormone levels in her body stopped the implant from working.
In April last year, Amy-Lou developed stomach cramps so her worried partner Dan Mulligan, 20, took her to Norfolk and Norwich Hospital. Doctors ruled out pregnancy after a test came back negative and thought it could be irritable bowel syndrome.
Three days later, Amy-Lou returned to hospital in excruciating pain. This time, she was told it was appendicitis and doctors prepared to operate. But Amy-Lou's mother, Carol Taylor-Bird, who was sure her daughter was pregnant asked for another pregnancy test. This time the test was positive.
Amy-Lou said: 'Dan and I are childhood sweethearts and we've been together for six years but we weren't ready to start a family. We didn't even live together at the time. 'I'd had the implant fitted but somehow I was pregnant. It was a real shock. I was so confused.
'But I knew straight away I wanted to keep the baby. Dan struggled a little bit at first but he was really supportive. He's a brilliant dad.'
Plant technician Dan added: 'I was at work when Amy rang to say they thought it was an ectopic pregnancy. 'Immediately I drove to the hospital. She was in tears. She thought she was going to lose the baby until her auntie told the doctors to wait.
'We call him our little miracle. He was clearly meant to be here. I couldn't imagine my life without him.'
A spokesman for Norfolk and Norwich hospital said: 'Ectopic pregnancies are where the embryo develops in the fallopian tube rather than the womb.
'It can take some weeks following a positive pregnancy test before ultrasound scans can reliably confirm the whereabouts and/or viability of a pregnancy. 'So it is common to find that scans are unhelpful in the very early weeks of pregnancy. In these circumstances, we often rely on serial measurements of the pregnancy-related hormone, HCG, in the patient's circulation.
'It is common to find an empty uterus when women are scanned in the very early weeks of pregnancy, only to finds that the foetus "shows up" on a later scan. 'In this case, we are pleased to say that the despite the initial difficulties, Amy-Lou went on to have a successful pregnancy.'
Five members of a gang [below] who stripped a 16-year-old girl in a park then posted the pictures on Facebook have been jailed for a total of 18 and a half years.
The nude photographs were taken by Victoria Beckford, 27, and Siobhan Vaughan, 29, who added them to the teenager's profile page on the social networking website.
The shocking images, taken in Crystal Palace park, south London, were spotted by friends and family who contacted the girl's mother.
As the thugs were sentenced it emerged the girl had tried to kill herself two days after she was abducted and subjected to the 'humiliating and degrading' ordeal. Inner London Crown Court heard she then spent two months recovering in the Maudsley Hospital in Camberwell, south-east London.
Victoria Beckford, 27, and Siobhan Vaughan, 29, who took the shocking images, were both jailed for four years. Fellow gang members Daniello Johnson and Antonio Williams, both 19, were also sentenced to four years each while Sian Roberts, 24, was caged for two and a half years.
Judge Usha Karu said: 'A vulnerable 16-year-old girl was subjected by each of you to a terrifying ordeal which culminated in her humiliation and degradation. 'This was then distributed on the internet for everyone to see - and unfortunately for you, it was that last act which led to the discovery of what had happened.
'Her humiliation, fear and reluctance must have been obvious to you, yet you persisted, determined to achieve some kind of revenge for a sum of money that amounts to about £50.'
The five defendants had denied the attack but were convicted of false imprisonment in July after a three-week trial.
The victim, who cannot be named, had been taken hostage by the gang as punishment for an unpaid £50 debt. She was locked in a cupboard, punched and whipped with a leather belt during the ordeal on August 14 last year, before being taken to the park and stripped.
The girl had been lured to Brixton, south-west London, believing that a friend was going to remove braids from her hair. Williams and Johnson were waiting for her there. Johnson tied her wrists with a dressing gown cord and demanded her phone and PIN number, then locked her in a cupboard for more than an hour
During that time he slid the blade of a knife through the gap between the doors, before letting her out and beating her with a leather belt.
Roberts, who was owed the cash, then arrived with Beckford. Roberts 'dragged' the 16-year-old to her car and drove her around south London before collecting Vaughan.
With dusk approaching, the group is then said to have headed to a 'poorly lit' corner of Crystal Palace Park, where Beckford ordered the girl to strip, telling her: 'This should teach you a lesson.'
The girl was also offered the alternative punishment of immersing her hands in boiling water, which she said she would prefer. But her tormentors decided they did not want to 'leave visible marks' and forced her to undress.
Mr Polnay said: 'She removed the entire top half of her clothes, but this was not enough for the defendants - and both Victoria Beckford and Siobhan Vaughan demanded that she remove the entire bottom half. 'She was now completely naked, and Victoria Beckford and Siobhan Vaughan then took out their mobile phones and took photographs.'
Giving evidence, the girl said at one point during her ordeal, Johnson handed a penknife to his one-year-old son and told him to 'get' her.
Asked how he handed the blade to the baby she replied: 'He just gave it to him, handle first, and he walked towards me holding the knife.' Mobile phone experts subsequently recovered a deleted copy of the nude photograph on Williams' handset, which had been saved at 8.58pm on August 14, the court heard.
Williams and Johnson were arrested on August 17 and Roberts and Beckford were arrested six days later. Vaughan was arrested on September 20.
Johnson, of no fixed address; Williams, of Thornton Heath, south London; Roberts, of Bromley, Kent; Beckford, of Gypsy Hill, south London and Vaughan, of Croydon, and the 17-year-old, of West Norwood, south London, were convicted of false imprisonment.
Beckford and Vaughan were also found guilty of one count of making an indecent image of a child.
Speaking after the case Police Constable Andrew Birks, from the Lambeth police CID said: 'This is a horrific case where the victim was subjected to hours of abuse, assault and humiliation by five defendants who when arrested told police a string of lies to try and conceal their involvement.
'Through the bravery of that child, the jury has been able to recognise the truth behind the events of that day and to reach the verdicts that they have.
'The events themselves left a traumatic mark on her life, made worse by having to appear in court and relive them because these defendants continued their trail of deceit.'
Huge police presence needed for British kids to get to and from school safely
As a grade-school kid in the '50s I walked a mile to school in bare feet every day under NO supervision at all. And I never once had trouble. But there were no Muslims or Africans around then
Thousands of children returned to school yesterday under police guard. Scotland Yard is deploying 1,000 officers to stand at school gates and escort pupils on to buses to deter robbers.
The move follows a 20 per cent rise in street robberies in London to 13,254 this year, with a third of the victims aged ten to 19. Youngsters carrying expensive smartphones and MP3 players are increasingly being targeted, even though robbery rates overall are down since 2006. Blood-stained necklaces have been offered to pawnbrokers as jewellery theft has risen, driven by the high price of gold.
Assistant Met Commissioner Ian McPherson said: `Smartphones and media players are becoming must-have items for many people. Young people, especially secondary school-aged children, are targeted - usually after school by other young people.'
Hundreds of police and community support officers are taking part in the crackdown until half-term starts on October 21, a period when thefts from pupils surge.
Figures show 10 per cent of muggings take place around transport hubs and the Met is stationing officers outside schools, Tube stations and on buses.
Met Commander Maxine de Brunner said the end of the school day between 3pm and 6pm was when many thefts take place. She said: `It is a really busy time for us, especially at the start of the school term.
`Ten years ago the figures were much higher. But we have seen a spike in robbery in recent months which is down to the upward trend in the availability of really expensive phones and iPads.
`It is unprecedented to focus this amount of officers on just the journey to and from school and around transport hubs.' But she added: `I think it makes young people feel safe that we are there.'
Bring back danger: Councils should build old-fashioned playground as British children have been softened up
Old-fashioned playground equipment like climbing frames, sand pits and paddling pools are set to be re-introduced after research found a degree of risk helps children to develop.
For years councils have felt forced to remove older attractions from their sites fearing any potential injuries could result in costly legal battles.
But recent research has shown that children actually benefit from risk when they play as it helps them develop the judgement skills they need in later life.
In an article for the scientific Journal Evolutionary Psychology, Ellen Sandseter a professor at Queen Maud University in Norway said: 'Children must encounter risks and overcome playground fears - monkey bars and tall slides are great. 'They approach thrills and risks in a progressive manner. 'Let them encounter these challenges from an early age and they will master them through play over the years.'
In July, High Court judge Mr Justice Mackay ruled the National Trust could not be held responsible for the death of an 11-year-old boy who was killed when a branch fell from a tree at Felbrigg Hall in Norfolk in 2007. He told the court that the Trust's tree inspectors had exercised a reasonable amount of caution saying 'even the most careful risk assessment can be proved wrong by events.'
This landmark ruling is believed to greatly reduce the prospect of legal action in the event of injuries in play areas.
Last year David Cameron commissioned the report Common Sense, Common Safety, to look into the problem of unnecessarily strict health and safety regulations being enforced.
Outlining the problem he wrote: 'A damaging compensation culture has arisen, as if people can absolve themselves from any personal responsibility for their own actions, with the spectre of lawyers only too willing to pounce with a claim for damages on the slightest pretext.'
The report, written by Lord Young concluded: 'There is a widely held belief within the play sector that misinterpretations of the [Health and Safety] Act are leading to the creation of uninspiring play spaces that do not enable children to experience risk.
'Such play is vital for a child's development and should not be sacrificed to the cause of overzealous and disproportionate risk assessments. 'I believe that with regard to children's play we should shift from a system of risk assessment to a system of risk-benefit assessment, where potential positive impacts are weighed against potential risk.'
South Somerset Council has recently spent œ50,000 re-fitting two playgrounds in Chard and Yeovil, building sand pits, climbing equipment stepping logs and net swings.
Playlink, a national advisory body on outdoor activity, helped draw up the plans for the new playgrounds.
Chairman Bernard Spiegal told the Sunday Times he believed Britain had been obsessed with risk assessment which was having a negative effect on children. He said: 'We were crippling their confidence by not letting them learn through experience. 'We don't want children losing fingers in badly designed swings or getting their heads trapped under a roundabout. But there's nothing wrong with a bump, bruise and graze.'
British green energy reforms ‘to put £300 on household energy bills'
Green energy policies are set to add more than £300 a year to the average household energy bill, according to Downing Street calculations. David Cameron has been warned that there will be a 30 per cent rise in consumer bills by 2020 as a direct result of the Coalition’s policies.
The note from the Prime Minister’s senior policy adviser Ben Moxham also labels as ‘unconvincing’ Energy Secretary Chris Huhne’s claims that price increases would be offset by lower consumption due to energy efficiency measures.
The projected rise of nearly a third in the average household energy bill of £1,059 is blamed on policies designed to promote the use of renewables and nuclear power sources.
New obligations on energy firms to use increasing amounts of electricity from renewable sources and to help low-income homes become energy-efficient are also major factors.
Worryingly, the 30 per cent rise is not described as a worst-case scenario, merely a ‘mid-case’ projection.
‘Over time it is clear that the impact of our policies on consumer bills will become significantly greater,’ Mr Moxham states.
He adds: ‘DECC’s (Department of Energy and Climate Change) mid-case gas price scenario sees policies adding 30 per cent to consumer energy bills by 2020 compared to a world without policies.’
The note is dated July 29, 2011, and is copied to senior Downing Street advisers including Mr Cameron’s chief of staff Ed Llewellyn, permanent secretary Jeremy Heywood and policy chief Steve Hilton.
Mr Moxham also warns: ‘We find the scale of household energy consumption savings calculated by DECC to be unconvincing’.
The projected rise in energy bills is a major headache for Mr Cameron, who promised before last year’s general election to tackle soaring prices by giving regulators more powers.
Mr Huhne has repeatedly dismissed claims that fuel bills will rise by hundreds of pounds as ‘absolute nonsense’ and ‘rubbish calculations’.
The rise projected by No 10 is still far lower than that made by independent experts.
Earlier this year, experts at Unicredit banks said that a raft of green measures could mean energy bills double within just four years. Their report said: ‘According to our analysis, a typical UK energy bill could rise from the current level of £1,000 per year to over £2,000 per year by 2015. ‘As investment occurs, bills could double every five years until 2020, in our view.’
BAD SCIENCE by Ben Goldacre (Harper Perennial 2009) £12.99
Book Review by Dr. Alick Dowling.
This book is unknown to many MedChi members despite being hugely popular – it has entered the best-seller list recently. I, by chance, received a copy at Christmas from a nephew, who with his wife were fellow medical students with Goldacre in Oxford, qualifying in 1995.
The book proved an enjoyable read. Abounding with common sense as well as much combative material from his Bad Science weekly column in the Guardian, Goldacre’s aim is to correct much nonsense written by ‘scientific’ or ‘medical’ journalists that is wrong, frightens many readers and yet escapes editorial correction. His column has a large and devoted following, many of whom were at the Bath Literary Festival when Ben Goldacre spoke on March 1st 2009. Three hours earlier I had heard James Le Fanu introducing his Why Us? to his audience that Spring morning in the splendid Guildhall Banqueting Room. The review of Why Us? appeared last month on the MedChi website.
I had no thought then of doing the same for Ben Goldacre’s book. It had already reached a wide public; my only criticism would have been that it lacked an index. There are many reasons not to review a book – for example in the Spectator (May 2nd 2009) Nigel Lawson wrote: "As a general rule, I do not believe in reviewing bad books. Review space is limited, and the many good books that are published deserve first claim on it."1
My reason for not reviewing Goldacre’s book was the opposite. It is a good book and needed no more praise. When we were told the astonishing reason why a new (actually the original) version was now available I changed my mind. This includes the pivotal Chapter 10 The Doctor Will Sue You Now, omitted from the version published last year. Goldacre’s account of how this came about is lucid, revealing and gives an example of his style:
Ben Goldacre‘s website April 9th, 2009
Chapter 10 in the original book – The Doctor Will Sue You Now, on Matthias Rath was removed, together with the index, from the first published version in Sep 08.
This is the “missing chapter” about vitamin pill salesman Matthias Rath. Sadly I was unable to write about him at the time that book was initially published, as he was suing my ass in the High Court. The chapter is now available in the new paperback edition, and I’ve posted it here for free so that nobody loses out.
Although the publishers make a slightly melodramatic fuss about this in the promo material, it is a very serious story about the dangers of pseudoscience, as I hope you’ll see, and it was also a pretty unpleasant episode, not just for me, but also for the many other people he’s tried to sue, including Medecins Sans Frontieres and more. If you’re ever looking for a warning sign that you’re on the wrong side of an argument, suing Medecins Sans Frontieres is probably a pretty good clue.
Anyway, here it is, please steal it, print it, repost it, whatever, it’s free under a Creative Commons license, details at the end. If you prefer it is available as a PDF, or as a word document. Happy Easter!
You are free to copy it, paste it, bake it, reprint it, read it aloud, as long as you don’t change it – including this bit – so that people know that they can find more ideas for free at www.badscience.net
This chapter did not appear in the original edition of this book, because for fifteen months leading up to September 2008 the vitamin-pill entrepreneur Matthias Rath was suing me personally, and the Guardian, for libel. This strategy brought only mixed success.
For all that nutritionists may fantasise in public that any critic is somehow a pawn of big pharma, in private they would do well to remember that, like many my age who work in the public sector, I don’t own a flat. The Guardian generously paid for the lawyers, and in September 2008 Rath dropped his case, which had cost in excess of £500,000 to defend. Rath has paid £220,000 already, and the rest will hopefully follow. Nobody will ever repay me for the endless meetings, the time off work, or the days spent poring over tables filled with endlessly cross-referenced court documents.
On this last point there is, however, one small consolation, and I will spell it out as a cautionary tale: I now know more about Matthias Rath than almost any other person alive. My notes, references and witness statements, boxed up in the room where I am sitting right now, make a pile as tall as the man himself, and what I will write here is only a tiny fraction of the fuller story that is waiting to be told about him. This chapter, I should also mention, is available free online for anyone who wishes to see it.
The missing index is explained. This is also available on the internet for owners of the original paperback, but unless it is completely rewritten it will only be valid for the first 9 chapters. Read the missing chapter free, and then decide whether to buy the new paperback.
The Chapter Bad Stats and its precursor Why Clever People Believe Stupid Things is of particular interest to doctors – not because they can be assumed to be Clever People, but because many do not realize how easily promoters of dubious theories manipulate us to accept ‘facts’ that are cleverly presented. Older doctors, never taught statistics, are more vulnerable than our younger colleagues. Goldacre uses clarity and simple terms to elucidate the subject. Malcolm Kendrick wrote a similar account about statistics in his book The Great Cholesterol Con (also reviewed on the MedChi website). For a comparison see below.
Goldacre’s aim to make ‘science’ accessible to ordinary readers is difficult to achieve, but he has the knack of doing so. He repeats the mantra: “I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that” when exasperated by the simplistic ‘explanations’ by ‘science’ journalists and even suggests it as a T-shirt slogan for the whole book.
His chapters on other individuals (including the new extraordinary account of Rath) are riveting. Professor Patrick Holford, the academic lynchpin at the centre of the British nutritionism movement, is dealt with in Chapter 9. It is not surprising that the ‘nutritionist’ Gillian McKeith took exception to Goldacre’s exposure in Chapter 7, but someone who has survived a legal encounter with Rath can easily dismiss her threats of legal action.
Goldacre’s introduction mentions the 50th anniversary of C.P. Snow’s lecture on the ‘Two Cultures’ of science and the humanities. Then arts graduates simply ignored science. No progress apparent since, but he is perceptive in seeing there has been a positive regression: "Today, scientists and doctors find themselves outnumbered and outgunned by vast armies of individuals who feel entitled to pass judgment on matters of evidence – an admirable aspiration – without troubling themselves to obtain a basic understanding of the issues."
The structure of the book is sensible and cleverly laid out – a steady crescendo from a gentle introduction in how science should be taught, through an increasingly serious range of how we should view what we are told by ‘experts’ with suspicion, then through the milder and less dangerous forms of foolishness – homeopathy makes its appearance here – through the placebo effect, onwards to the bigger fish such as Nutritionists, the way the pharmaceutical industry pulls the wool over the eyes of doctors and patients, the misuse of statistics already mentioned and culminating in what Goldacre finds most worrying, how people in positions of great power still commit basic errors when dealing with health scares. If we disagree with him he tells us that we’ll still be wrong but with a lot more panache and flair that we could possibly manage right now.
Received from the author. The chapter about Rath -- who claimed to cure AIDS by vitamins -- is here
Two examples of statistical jiggery pokery:
Goldacre:
Newspapers like big numbers and eye-catching headlines. They need miracle cures and hidden scares, and small percentage shifts in risks will never be enough for them to sell readers to advertisers (because that is the business model). To this end they pick the single most melodramatic and misleading way of describing any statistical increase in risk, which is called the ‘relative risk increase’.
Let’s say the risk of having a heart attack in your 50’s is 50% higher if you have high cholesterol. That sounds pretty bad. Let‘s say the extra risk of having a heart attack if you have high cholesterol is only 2%. That sounds OK to me. But they’re the same (hypothetical) figures. Let’s try this. Out of a hundred men in their fifties with normal cholesterol, four will be expected to have a heart attack. That’s two extra heart attacks per hundred. Those are called ‘natural’ frequencies.
Natural frequencies are readily understandable, because instead of using probabilities, or percentages, or anything even slightly technical or difficult, they use concrete numbers, just like the ones you use every day to check if you’ve lost a kid on a coach trip, or got the right change in a shop. Lots of people have argued that we evolved to reason and do maths with concrete numbers like these, and not with probabilities, so we find them more intuitive. Simple numbers are simple.
The other methods of describing the increase have names too. From our example above, with high cholesterol, you could have a 50% increase in risk (the ‘relative risk increase’); or a 2% increase in risk (‘the absolute risk increase’); or, let me ram it home, the easy one, the informative one, an extra two heart attacks for every hundred men, the natural frequency.
Malcolm Kendrick:
(p 192) quoting the Heart Protection Study (HPS) press release: If now, as a result, an extra 10 million high-risk people were to go onto statin treatment, this would save about 50,000 lives a year, that’s a thousand each week. Leaving aside the point that this 50,000 figure actually equates to one life ‘saved’ for every 200 taking the statin – ten million is an awful lot of people to use as your denominator – the concept of saving lives, suggesting as it does, that each of the 50,000 whose lives have been saved will go on to live a healthy life, is not best chosen.
In reality, taking a statin can only delay death, not prevent it. By how much? Well, if one in two hundred more people are alive after one year of taking statins, this means that if you wait another two-hundreths of a year (plus another little bit) the statin group will have caught up on the ‘placebo’ group in total number of deaths.
This represents an increased life expectancy of slightly under two days. So rather than stating that fifty thousand lives would be saved every year by taking statins, it would be considerably more accurate to state that if ten million people (at very high risk of heart disease) took a statin for a year they would live – on average – two days longer.
And if all ten million took a statin for two hundred years, they would all live – on average – an extra year. If we assume that most people would take a statin for thirty years maximum, this would lead to an average increase in lifespan of approximately two months.
Which doesn’t sound quite as dramatic as saving fifty thousand lives a year, or a thousand a week – or however you choose to hype up your figures. But there you go, it happens to be considerably more accurate.
Also remember that this benefit would only be seen in men with pre-existing heart disease. Women and men without pre-existing heart disease would not live a day longer. They would just have the dubious pleasure of thirty years of paying for drugs, worry and side effects.
5 September, 2011
NHS makes patients wait 'to lower expectations’
This is appalling. When I compare this with my recent treatment in the Australian private health system the difference is like night and day
NHS managers are making patients wait longer than necessary for operations, with one claiming that treating them quickly “raises expectations”.
At least 10 primary care trusts (PCTs) have told hospitals to increase the length of time before they see patients in order to save money, an investigation by The Daily Telegraph has found.
In some areas, patients endured delays of 12 or 15 weeks after GPs decided they needed surgery, even though hospitals could have seen them sooner.
The maximum permitted time between referral and treatment is 18 weeks. In one case a manager said the policy keeps patients in line as “short waiting times also create more demand for treatment due to the expectations this raises”.
It comes after an NHS watchdog suggested that if patients are forced to wait a long time, they will remove themselves from lists “either by dying or by paying for their own treatment”.
The disclosures have been seized on by the Government as more evidence of the need for its health service reforms, which will give GP-led bodies the power to buy treatment from a range of providers.
Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, said: “This practice is simply unacceptable and one of the many reasons we need to modernise the NHS and put patients’ interests first.
Too many PCTs have been operating in a cynical environment where they can game the system — and in which political targets, particularly the maximum 18-week waiting time target, are used to actually delay treatment.”
An investigation by the Co-operation and Competition Panel, which advises the Department of Health on unfair practices, uncovered the increased waiting times.
The Government monitors the upper limit of 18 weeks only between referral and treatment, which has allowed managers to impose minimum waiting times or higher average waits even though hospitals – particularly private ones – may have spare capacity and could treat patients more quickly.
The PCTs believe the policy saves them money as they can predict the number of elective procedures they will have to pay for — such as hip replacements or cataract removal — and if necessary delay them into the following financial year when they will have fresh funds.
The Daily Telegraph contacted more than 100 PCTs in England to ask if they have lengthened waiting times. The original submissions to the competition panel’s inquiry were also studied. Of those that replied, 10 admitted increasing minimum or average times.
Managers in both Gloucestershire and Wiltshire imposed blanket minimum waiting times of 15 weeks for elective surgery while in Hertfordshire patients must wait 12 weeks.
In South West Essex appointments are made for between eight and 12 weeks, while in Eastern and Coastal Kent managers asked hospitals to “push” the average waiting time from 13 to 16 weeks as it was a measure “that would not be detrimental to patient care”. It says providers refused to comply with the request.
Evil Scottish social workers want to take young children away from their loving parents
Parents of seven told: Your children are too fat, so you will never see them again. I imagine, however that the "right to a family life" in the Human Rights act will eventually thwart the Fascists
Four obese children are on the brink of being permanently removed from their family by social workers after their parents failed to bring their weight under control.
In the first case of its kind, their mother and father now face what they call the ‘unbearable’ likelihood of never seeing them again.
Their three daughters, aged 11, seven and one, and five-year-old son, will either be ‘fostered without contact’ or adopted.
Either way, the family’s only hope of being reunited will be if the children attempt to track down their parents when they become adults.
The couple, who have been married for nearly 20 years and are not being named to protect their children’s identities, were given a ‘draconian’ ultimatum three years ago – as reported at the time by The Mail on Sunday.
Warned that the children must slim or be placed in care, the family spent two years living in a council-funded ‘Big Brother’ house in which they were constantly supervised and the food they ate monitored.
But despite subjecting them to intense scrutiny, social workers did not impose rules on what food the children should eat, and there was apparently little or no improvement.
News of the decision to remove them was broken to the couple, from Dundee, on Tuesday. Critics called it a disgraceful breach of human rights and a chilling example of the power of the State to meddle in family life.
In an emotional interview, the 42-year-old mother said: ‘We might not be the perfect parents, but we love our children with all our hearts. To face a future where we will never see them again is unbearable.
‘They picked on us because of our size to start with and they just haven’t let go, despite the fact we’ve done everything to lose weight and meet their demands. We’re going to fight this to the bitter end. It feels like even prisoners have more human rights than we do.’
The couple have not committed any crime and are not accused of deliberate cruelty or abuse. Their solicitor, Joe Myles, said there was ‘nothing sinister lurking in the background’ and accused social workers of failing to act in the family’s best interests.
‘Dundee social services department appear to have locked horns with this couple and won’t let go,’ he said, adding that the monitoring project caused more problems than it solved. ‘The parents were constantly being accused of bad parenting and made to live under a microscope.
We have tried very hard to do everything that was asked of us. My wife has cooked healthy foods like home-made spaghetti bolognese and mince and potatoes; but nothing we’ve done has ever been enough.
The couple have three older children who are all distraught and angry at the ruling.
Speaking through tears, their 15-year-old daughter said: ‘The social workers should hang their heads in shame. A person’s weight is their own business and only we can do anything about it, not them. My parents are good people and they love us all. The four little ones don’t know what is about to happen to them.’
Social workers became aware of the family in early 2008 after one of the sons accused his father of hitting him on the forehead. In truth, he had fallen and hit his head on a radiator – a fact he later admitted. However, the allegation opened the door to the obesity investigation.
While the couple admit experiencing what their lawyer calls ‘low grade’ parenting problems, which would have merited support, they were aghast when the issue of weight was seized on as a major concern.
A council report at the time said: ‘With the exception of [one of the names], the children are all overweight. Advice has been given regarding diet but there has been no improvement. Appointments with the dietician have been missed.’
At that point their then 12-year-old son weighed 16 stone; his 11-year-old sister weighed 12 stone; and his three-year-old sister weighed four stone. It is not known how much the four younger children weigh now.
The couple were ordered to send their children to dance and football lessons and were given a three-month deadline to bring down their weight. When that failed, the children were placed in foster homes but were allowed to visit their parents.
After the couple objected to this arrangement, the council agreed to move them into a two-bedroom flat in a supported unit run by the Dundee Families Project. They insisted on the couple living with only three of their children at a time.
At meal times, a social worker stood in the room taking notes. Doctors raised concerns that the children put on weight whenever they spent time with their parents, a claim they vehemently denied.
The couple and their children also had to adhere to a strict 11pm curfew. This involved ‘clocking’ in and out by filling in a sheet held by an employee who lived on site.
Although the children’s weight was the major concern, other allegations were included in a report. It showed that social workers were worried when the youngest child was found crawling unsupervised. The parents point out they were never far away and the flat had no stairs.
They also found her ‘attempting to put dangerous objects’ in her mouth. The family say this is natural in toddlers and she was never successful.
To have a social worker stand and watch you eat is intolerable. I want other families to know what can happen once social workers become involved. We will fight them to the end to get our beloved children back.
Social workers were further worried when she crawled through the contents of an upturned ashtray – an ‘unfortunate one-off incident’, claim the parents. All the concerns were dismissed by the family’s legal team as ‘low grade’ problems.
It is understood the father crumbled under the strain of being so closely monitored in January this year and moved into a council flat elsewhere in the city.
In the next few months, the mother breached the lunch and dinner meal observations, by her own admission, on ‘several’ occasions while taking the children to see their father.
She personally never broke the 11pm curfew but once allowed her seven-year-old daughter to remain at her father’s flat after she fell asleep. She did not want to disturb her and argued the child had ‘two parents, not one’ and was in ‘good hands’.
These breaches led staff to declare the trial a failure and the mother was asked to leave the unit in April this year. She moved in to her husband’s flat but the children were then handed over to foster parents.
Her solicitor said he planned to use independent experts to prove that the children want to live with their parents and have been damaged by the social workers’ intervention. He added: ‘We may ultimately look towards human rights laws.’
The father, aged 56, said: ‘We have tried very hard to do everything that was asked of us. My wife has cooked healthy foods like home-made spaghetti bolognese and mince and potatoes; we’ve cut out snacks and only ever allowed the kids sweets on a Saturday. But nothing we’ve done has ever been enough.
‘The pressure of living in the family unit would have broken anyone. We were being treated like children and cut off from the outside world. To have a social worker stand and watch you eat is intolerable. I want other families to know what can happen once social workers become involved. We will fight them to the end to get our beloved children back.’
It is estimated 26 million British adults will be obese by 2030, with obesity levels running at an all-time high among children. Official statistics show those who are overweight spend 50 per cent more time in hospital, placing extra strain on the NHS.
Tam Fry, honorary chairman of the Child Growth Foundation, said: ‘This is a disgrace. These parents have clearly attempted to comply. They have, if you like, played Dundee City Council’s game and yet they are still losing their children.’
Dundee City Council said: ‘The council always acts in the best interests of children, with their welfare and safety in mind.’
Christian group ditched by British charity... for offering to pray for debt victims
A Christian organisation has been ditched by a national charity for offering to pray for people with debt problems.
Christians Against Poverty (CAP) has been forced to leave AdviceUK, an umbrella group representing the interests of thousands of advice workers, after it was judged that praying was ‘incompatible’ with membership.
The decision was described by campaigners yesterday as an ‘extraordinary curtailment of freedom of expression’. It follows a series of similar cases involving Christians who claim their freedoms have been curbed following the introduction of controversial equality laws.
She added that anyone seeking help from a group with ‘Christian’ in its title would not be surprised by an offer of prayer from a counsellor.
Yesterday, Steve Johnson, chief executive of AdviceUK, described the offer of prayer by CAP as an ‘emotional fee’. Asked to explain what he meant, Mr Johnson replied that CAP was effectively expecting clients to ‘pay’ for their advice by agreeing to pray with the counsellors. ‘Advisers must not offer or impose their values,’ he added.
CAP has been a member of AdviceUK for six years and says it has never made prayer a condition of its free service.
In a statement, it said: ‘While CAP is committed to providing impartial help and advice to all members of society, as an expression of our care for clients we do offer to pray with people. 'This adds to the chilling notion that there is something wrong, something sinister, about being motivated by faith.'
‘In discussions around ethos and purpose, AdviceUK made it clear that they saw any form of promotion of faith to be incompatible with membership criteria.
‘In order to protect the integrity of both organisations, it was amicably agreed that CAP would not continue to be an AdviceUK member.’
CAP said that its counselling service would be unaffected by AdviceUK’s decision. A spokeswoman added: ‘Given the right support, people can and will pay off what they owe.
‘We help people in debt regardless of age, gender, faith or background. In our most recent questionnaire of more than 1,000 clients, 88 per cent said that prayer was appreciated or OK.’
AdviceUK, which has 870 member organisations, boasts of being ‘in a unique position to influence Government departments and other bodies’. It says it ‘provides a voice to funders and supporters’.
In April, The Mail on Sunday revealed how electrician Colin Atkinson was threatened with the sack for displaying a Cross in his work van.
And last year nurse Shirley Chaplin took the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Trust Hospital to an employment tribunal after she was ordered to remove her crucifix at work.
Ignore the doomsayers, and eat what you darn well please. Now for the wine, duck and Armagnac...
By Terry Wogan, a "leading media personality" in Britain
Hardly has the dust settled on urban rioting, than we’re faced with another, apparently major, crisis. Obesity. Don’t panic, Mr Mainwaring! This scare raises its weighty corpse from the dead every three years or so, when the public is perceived as breathing a little more easily. How long ago was it that young women, and girls particularly, were being warned against eating too little, and endangering their health? Now, they and the rest of us are being warned that we’re eating ourselves into an early grave, and worse, costing everybody, including the undeserving fit, a fortune in medical care.
I remember casting aspersions on the sanity of some utter dumbbell of a politician, whose name escapes me, but who, unless the old memory is playing hide and seek, counted obesity as great a danger to the human race as global warming. He’d already claimed that the same global warming was a bigger danger to mankind than terrorism. The logical conclusion: being overweight was more dangerous to life on earth than terrorism.
This time around, the bleating of the doomsayers is well up to speed: the British public should eat only as instructed, and those rotters, the food producers, should be similarly forced to come up with only what some expert has decided is good for us.
Yet doctors, dieticians, scientists and every deranged health-food guru have been at odds about what exactly is good for us since people could afford to be worried about what the next meal was going to be, rather than if there was going to be one.
In the tranquil area of France from which I write at present, the diet of the man in the street with the beret and baguette is one of wine, duck in all its forms (including the fat), lots of bread, and Armagnac to wash it all down. Heart attack on a plate, the rocky road to obesity? The inhabitants of this département live longer than any others in France.
In Spain, I was regularly presented with a chunk of country bread, grilled on an open fire, on which I was invited to spread liberal amounts of lard, until my stomach thought my hand had gone mad. I know, I know. The “experts” will tell me that this is “good” fat, far better for the children of Britain than an oven-baked chip, or a cheap pizza.
Maybe, but what is certain is that nobody, however qualified, has the right to tell anybody else what they should be eating. Or drinking. President Sarkozy of France, a great man for jumping on a bandwagon, is proposing a tax on fizzy drinks. What about human rights? The idea that tax should be levied on “wrong” food and drinks smacks too closely of dictatorship. It is the inalienable right of every man and woman in a free society to go to hell in their own handcart, as long as nobody else gets hurt.
Obesity is not catching, it’s up to you. And only you.
New £2.50-a-day stroke pill 'will help 1 million patients'
Almost anything would be better than warfarin. It's a very dangerous drug if you get the dose just a bit wrong. They poison rats with it
A stroke drug hailed as the biggest advance in blood-thinning for almost 60 years goes on sale today. More than a million Britons could benefit from Pradaxa, which is up to a third more effective than warfarin, the gold-standard blood-thinner, when it comes to preventing strokes.
The £2.50-a-day drug is the first of a new generation of anti-clotting medicines. Its release follows news of a similar drug, apixaban – also known as Eliquis – which was also found to be better and safer than warfarin.
The traditional treatment, which has been in use for more than half a century, is very effective but reacts with countless foods, alcohol and other medicines, with sometimes fatal consequences.
Pradaxa could vastly improve patients’ quality of life by allowing them to eat what they want without fear of upsetting the levels of medication in their blood and triggering a stroke or haemorrhage. It would also remove the need for the frequent blood tests associated with warfarin, which is also used as rat poison.
From today, Pradaxa, which is also known as dabigatran etexilate, can be used to thin the blood in people with atrial fibrillation, in which erratic beating of the heart raises the odds of stroke five-fold.
In a trial with more than 18,000 sufferers of the condition, it was 35 per cent better than warfarin at preventing strokes. Overall, around three-quarters of strokes were prevented. It also had fewer serious side-effects – although some patients struggled with indigestion.
One of the biggest advantages will be its ease of use. Warfarin users have to undergo blood tests as often as every two days to ensure they don’t accidentally take too much or too little of it. Most of them – including many pensioners – must make regular visits to their GP, even when they have been on the drug for years.
Some 1.2million Britons suffer from atrial fibrillation – which is blamed for more than 20,000 strokes a year – but many do not take warfarin because of its associated problems.
Trudie Lobban, of the Atrial Fibrillation Association, said: ‘Our members live in fear of suffering a disabling or fatal stroke. They have waited years for an alternative to current treatment.’
Professor John Camm, of St George’s Hospital in London, added: ‘This is a big leap forward. There are very few interactions with Pradaxa, so patients don’t have to be monitored every few weeks and they still get significant protection. It’s win-win.’
It remains to be seen whether the drugs rationing body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, will judge the treatment, made by Boehringer Ingelheim, to be a good use of taxpayers’ money. Warfarin costs less than £15 per year.
A ruling on NHS use in England and Wales is expected by the end of the year. The equivalent body in Scotland is set to decide within two weeks.
There is a new Jumbo-sized lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.
1 September, 2011
Doctors apologise after they missed 39 chances to diagnose tumour that killed pensioner
Health chiefs have apologised to the family of a woman whose lung cancer was missed - even though she was seen by doctors 39 times in three years. Jean Cross, 60, died alone in a hospital toilet after being misdiagnosed with a ‘frozen shoulder’ when she actually had a tumour so large it was pressing into her arm.
She repeatedly visited her local health centre over three years and was prescribed painkillers and advised to have physiotherapy for a frozen shoulder. But Jean, of Moray, Scotland, died on a hospital toilet floor on April 5, just hours before scan results finally revealed the tumour.
Representatives from the hospital and her GP have now admitted mistakes were made by doctors who treated her. A doctor at the GP surgery told her family: ‘Clearly, what we thought was wrong with her sadly did not turn out to be the case.’
Mrs Cross' husband Colin broke down in tears after meeting with NHS Grampian representatives and said all he had wanted was for someone to acknowledge there had been blunders and apologise.
Carer Mrs Cross started to get pains in her shoulder in February 2008 and was seen repeatedly at Ardach Health Centre in Buckie, Moray, Scotland. Her family said medical records showed she went to the doctor 39 times before she died at Dr Gray's Hospital in Elgin.
Her death stunned her husband. He demanded an investigation and called for her family doctor, Gordon Pringle, to resign.
Representatives from Dr Gray's Hospital, the Grampian Medical Emergency Department (G-MED) out-of-hours service and Ardach Health Centre met Mrs Cross's relatives in Elgin.
Her husband told them there were a number of inaccuracies in a letter he received from NHS Grampian Feedback Service in June. He claimed a report written by an on-call doctor who visited Mrs Cross at her home on April 3rd was incorrect. He also rejected claims by the doctor that she had a ‘lengthy discussion’ with them and that they were happy to contact their GP ‘first thing in the morning’.
Mr Cross said no lengthy discussion took place and that he ‘begged’ the medic to admit his wife to hospital because she was in agony. He said the doctor assured him that the hospital would ‘just send her home again’.
Dr Alison Douglas, a partner at Ardach Health Centre, stressed that the team there regretted the handling of Mrs Cross's care. She said: ‘On behalf of everyone, all of us, at Ardach Health Centre, I would like to apologise.
‘Clearly, what we thought was wrong with her sadly did not turn out to be the case and everyone who was involved with your wife thought that they were acting in her best interests and they were deeply shocked to find that wasn't the case.’
Mr Cross said after the meeting: ‘I cried on the stairs in front of my daughter and son. An apology is all wanted. I feel a lot happier now. I feel that 20 tonnes have been taken off me. ‘I just wanted justice for Jean. I knew she had been treated badly. I wanted them to admit that.’ A spokeswoman for NHS Grampian said issues not raised in the original complaint would be examined.
She said another meeting scheduled with Mrs Cross's family would take a ‘detailed look’ at the investigation into the care she received at Dr Gray's Hospital.
NHS should close hospitals and sack consultants, says former head
The NHS needs fewer hospitals and senior consultants, its former chief executive claims today in an important intervention.
Lord Crisp, who led the fourth-biggest organisation in the world under Tony Blair but has since worked on health care in the developing world, breaks his silence to argue that older people and those with long-term illnesses need to be treated at home or the community rather than in expensive wards.
In addition, many of the tasks currently carried out by top doctors in the "top heavy" system could be done instead by nurses.
But he says that such radical changes are difficult to make in an NHS which has a lot of historical "baggage" as well as the "vested interests" of hospital managers and clinicians who do well under the current system.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Lord Crisp also claiming the Government's controversial health reforms have been too narrow by concentrating on changing how treatment is purchased.
"This is about releasing money from the old infrastructure to put into the new, and it's about moving from the 20th century model of healthcare to the 21st.
"They're putting GPs in the driving seat, which may or may not be a good thing, but they're not concentrating on what really needs to be done, which is building a different sort of NHS.
"I think they need to set out a vision for the NHS and I just don't think they've done it."
As Sir Nigel Crisp, he was both chief executive of the NHS and permanent secretary at the Department of Health from 2000 to 2006, at a time when Labour massively increased investment in health and introduced more competition in order to reduce lengthy waiting times and improve services and buildings.
In a new book, he argues that the NHS was "saved" by this "remarkable act of political will" but it is "not yet sustainable" as the population ages and costs grow.
Although many experts believe these pressures will lead to an "erosion" of the cornerstone of the welfare state to a strictly rationed insurance model involving more payments by patients, Lord Crisp says further upheaval on the scale carried out by Labour can keep it going.
However this will be "enormously difficult" because of resistance from the health institutions, professional bodies and powerful individuals who would lose power and money under a system less centred around hospitals and doctors.
"Over time there will be less need for large hospital outpatient departments and some services and some whole hospitals will need to close," he writes in 24 Hours to Save the NHS.
"No one from the local constituency MP onwards relishes the prospect of doing so.
"The second major problem is that the NHS is still a largely hierarchical organisation where some groups are more powerful than others and influence what happens. At the top of the list of the powerful are the doctors and the professional associations, the great hospitals, the research institutes, the universities, the managers and the commercial suppliers or pharmaceuticals and other products.
"These groups mostly earn their living from a system where hospitals and professionals operate."
Lord Crisp told this newspaper that the NHS was right to invest in hospitals and doctors during the previous decade to improve the state of A&E departments and to cut waiting times.
But now the main problem facing the health service is the growth in long-term conditions such as diabetes and the increasing number of elderly people in England, who can be treated better and less expensively outside of hospitals and by staff other than consultants.
"What we've got at the moment is an inefficient infrastructure that isn't being used to its full capacity. You've got beds closed and people not working to their full capacity because there are too many sites."
In addition, "In some ways we provide too many very highly trained people who then have to work below their capacity. If you're going to effect the cost base of the NHS you're going to have to effect the staff costs, and some of that will be about changing the staff mix rather than just changing numbers - changing the staffing pyramid so there are more people at the base and not so many at the top."
He said more of what doctors do could be done by nurses, just as GPs had delegated some of their responsibilities to junior staff in recent years.
Lord Crisp, who is likely to speak out further when the Health and Social Care Bill finally reaches the upper house of Parliament later this year, admitted the transition will be difficult but insisted that politicians can take such "brave" decisions.
Few MPs broach the subject of hospitals closing, partly in order to keep their local seats at the election, but Lord Crisp said they should have the right to defend services in their constituencies even if their party is calling for something different.
He also said England had much to learn from how health care is being delivered in areas such as India, Africa and Latin America, where the authorities have not had the money to run expensive hospitals.
His comments come after senior figures including the head of the Royal College of Nursing, a leading union, have said that some NHS hospitals will have to close.
But although the Department of Health has insisted that failing trusts will no longer be "bailed out" with taxpayers' money, ministers have been reluctant to axe services for fear of fuelling accusations that the Conservatives want to privatise or run down the health service.
Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, is due to make a decision about the future of maternity and casualty services at Chase Farm Hospital in north London, which experts have long argued are unsustainable, but is expected to call for a face-saving merger instead.
“In those days, there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” -- Judges 17: 6 (ESV)
You have to hand it to the British… they don’t mince words. Speaking of the violent civil unrest that erupted across London in recent weeks, Prime Minister David Cameron offered a frank assessment of the motives – or lack thereof – behind the chaos:
"These riots were not about race," he said. "These riots were not about government cuts ... And these riots were not about poverty. No, this was about behavior ... people showing indifference to right and wrong; people with a twisted moral code; people with a complete absence of self-restraint."
In America and most of the western world, where political correctness rules, such conclusions strike a dissonant chord. How dare Mr. Cameron dismiss the certain sociological, cultural, and political underpinnings of the civil unrest! How dare he ignore the obvious culpability that he and the rest of the government bear for inciting what is clearly just a cry for help from London’s masses? What’s needed is a study, not a crackdown! These people need help in the form of government assistance, and above all, understanding.
Of course, this is balderdash, and Mr. Cameron deserves credit for saying so. He is absolutely correct when he says that the reigning cult of moral relativism that has begun to erode civil society from the inside out must be countermanded. Champions of a postmodern society in which “anything goes” like to imagine they are advocating a noble and just view of human liberty and dignity, but in their quest for absolute autonomy, they cast aside the moral obligations inherent to our humanity.
Of course, what more can we expect from a society that increasingly embraces a materialist worldview, in which man is not a Created Being but a biochemical product of random chance? Having rejected the idea of any metaphysical significance, the only thing left to define human society and the individuals that comprise it is the material world, where virtue is moot, might makes right, and values are in the eyes of the beholder. In such a world, there is no basis for rational discourse. Everything in the moral arena is subject to dispute; it’s all relative, whatever floats your boat. All we can know is that which can be quantified and verified, and since we can do neither with so-called moral and spiritual truths, there are no absolutes in those arenas of life.
Therefore, if you feel unhappy about your life, or are merely bored and decide you don’t want to work but would prefer to riot in the streets, assault peace officers and violate private property, who’s to tell you that it’s wrong? Who’s to tell you that you ought to respect the rule of law regardless of how you feel about it at the time, or whether there is anyone to stop you from breaking it?
Our culture is paying a price for such nonsense. As we lose our cultural consensus on basic questions of right and wrong, the fabric of society is unraveling. There was a time, not too long ago, when shared cultural conceptions forged the basis for our interactions with others and the way we ordered ourselves. It was understood that there is a God to whom every man is ultimately accountable; that human beings are created in God’s image and of infinite worth, value and dignity and that we should treat each other as such; that because of our special nature, we have been endowed with unalienable rights by our Creator; that government exists to secure those rights and is to operate with the consent of the governed.
Because this consensus was widely shared, ordered liberty flourished and the role of government was limited. Thanks to notions of moral relativism however, the social consensus is unwinding. As Mr. Cameron has pointed out, notions of radical individualism are prevailing and we are losing any sense of larger social obligations. If it feels good do it; if the baby is inconvenient, kill it; if you want it take it; if you want to marry it, be my guest! As the social consensus erodes, chaos ensues until ultimately, the people look to government to restore order and Hobbes’ Leviathan is born.
It’s not too late to turn things around, but it will take a monumental effort on the part of every person to live lives of responsibility, dignity, and virtue and to teach their children to do the same. Failing this, we’re slowly but surely weaving the web of our own destruction.
English football fans must not display the English flag
For almost 130 years the proud supporters of Berwick Rangers have revelled in the fact that they are a British team playing in the Scottish Football League. They call themselves The Borderers, and proudly display both the St Andrew's cross and the St George's cross on their scarves and merchandise.
But now the club's supporters have been told that they can't show the St George's cross when attending away games - because it incites sectarian tension.
The call comes from Stranraer FC, a rival of Berwick in the Scottish Third Division. Officials at Stranraer told The Times that there had been escalating tension at their ground, Stair Park, and that Berwick supporters would from now on be asked not to bring Union flags or the St George's cross into the stadium.
The decision has naturally angered fans, with one calling it a 'ludicous over-reaction'.
Tom Maxwell, who wrote The Lone Rangers about the club's history, said: 'It seems particularly ridiculous when no Scottish fans get told to take down the saltire when they come to Berwick.'
Berwick-on-Tweed, in Northumberland, is the northern-most town in England. The old town is on the Scottish side of the traditional border, the River Tweed, and Berwick was at one time part of Scotland.
The club prides itself on being able to draw both English and Scottish fans - Berwick is a little over two miles from the current border.
Free schools will recruit the staff they want, set their own pay levels and create their own curricula
Next week sees the most innovative education experiment in memory, when 24 new free schools open their doors. Inspired by the charter school programme in the US and the free school movement in Sweden, they represent an important victory for parental rights over the power of the state. The schools, both primary and secondary, are non-selective, non-profit making, and independent within the state sector. They will be able to recruit the staff they want, set their own pay levels and create their own curricula. What they all have in common is that they have been brought into being by concerned parents who were prepared to fight for the kind of local schooling they want – and a Government that has had the good sense to allow it to happen.
The progress of the guinea-pig schools (there are hundreds more applications in the pipeline) will be watched with interest. Many are located in deprived areas where state schools are failing to deliver the excellence all parents have a right to expect. There will be variety in the kind of schooling on offer, but a uniformity of ambition. Free secondary schools expect all their students to achieve good GCSEs in English, maths, science and a foreign language. In the state sector, just a fifth of pupils manage that.
Many on the Left abhor the notion that parents should be allowed to create the kind of schools they want for their children, rather than putting up with what the state sees fit to offer them. Their criticism has been rather undercut by the decision of Peter Hyman, Tony Blair’s former education adviser, to set up a free school next year in Newham, east London, with the simply stated aim of educating its pupils for the top universities and successful careers. It is salutary that he feels impelled to bypass the state system in order to do that.
Postings from Brisbane, Australia by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former member of the Australia-Soviet Friendship Society, former anarcho-capitalist and former member of the British Conservative party.
Some TERMINOLOGY for non-British readers: The British "A Level" exam is roughly equivalent to a U.S. High School diploma. Rather confusingly, you can get As, Bs or Cs in your "A Level" results. Entrance to the better universities normally requires several As in your "A Levels".
Again for American readers: A "pensioner" is a retired person living on Social Security
Consensus. Margaret Thatcher in a 1981 speech: "For me, pragmatism is not enough. Nor is that fashionable word "consensus."... To me consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects—the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner "I stand for consensus"?
For my sins I have always loved G.B. Shaw's witty comment: "No Englishman can open his mouth without causing another Englishman to despise him". But Shaw was Irish, of course.
Britain has enormous claims to fame -- most of which the Labour goverment has been doing its best to destroy. But one glory no-one can destroy is British humour. And if you don't "get" British humour, your life is a dreary desert indeed. A superb sample here
Here is a link to my favourite British political speech since WWII. It is by Nigel Farage, the Leader of the UK Independence Party. He is referring to the Fascistic decision by the EU parliament to act as if their huge new "constitution" had been approved by the voters when in fact majorities in France, Ireland and Nederland (Holland) have rejected it at the ballot box. He points out that abuse is all they have to offer when he points out the impropriety of their actions.
Farage's expression, "A complete shower" is British slang meaning a group of completely incompetent and useless failures. It originated in the British armed forces where its unabbreviated version was "A complete shower of sh*t".
Britain appears to be the first country where anti-patriotism gained strong hold. Even Friedich Engels (the co-worker with Karl Marx who died in 1895) was a furious German patriot. Much of the British elite were anti-patriotic from the early 20th century onwards, however. The "Cambridge spies" (from one of Britain's two most prestigious universities) are a good example of that. Although Cambridge appears to have been the chief nest of spies-to-be in Britain of the 30s, however, Oxford was also very Leftist. In 1933 (9th Feb.) the Oxford Union debated the motion: "This House will in no circumstances fight for King and Country". The motion was overwhelmingly carried (275 to 153).
I have an abiding fascination with the Church of England. It is the sort of fascination one might have for a once-distinguished elderly relative who has gone bad and become a slave to the bottle. But nothing I can say about the C of E (which these days seems to stand for The Church of the Environment) could surpass what the whole of English literature says of it -- which ranges from seeing it as a collection of nincompoops and incompetents to seeing it as comprised of evil hypocrites. Yet its 39 "Articles of Religion" of 1562 are an abiding and eloquent statement of Protestant faith. But I guess that 1562 is a long time ago.
Links about antisemitism in 21st century Britain here and here and here and here and here
The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) could well have been thinking of modern Britain when he said: "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."
On all my blogs, I express my view of what is important primarily by the readings that I select for posting. I do however on occasions add personal comments in italicized form at the beginning of an article.
I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.
I imagine that the RD are still sending mailouts to my 1950s address
The kneejerk response of the Green/Left to people who challenge them is to say that the challenger is in the pay of "Big Oil", "Big Business", "Big Pharma", "Exxon-Mobil", "The Pioneer Fund" or some other entity that they see, in their childish way, as a boogeyman. So I think it might be useful for me to point out that I have NEVER received one cent from anybody by way of support for what I write. As a retired person, I live entirely on my own investments. I do not work for anybody and I am not beholden to anybody. And I have NO investments in oil companies, mining companies or "Big Pharma"
UPDATE: Despite my (statistical) aversion to mining stocks, I have recently bought a few shares in BHP -- the world's biggest miner, I gather. I run the grave risk of becoming a speaker of famous last words for saying this but I suspect that BHP is now so big as to be largely immune from the risks that plague most mining companies. I also know of no issue affecting BHP where my writings would have any relevance. The Left seem to have a visceral hatred of miners. I have never quite figured out why.
I am an army man. Although my service in the Australian army was chiefly noted for its un-notability, I DID join voluntarily in the Vietnam era, I DID reach the rank of Sergeant, and I DID volunteer for a posting in Vietnam. So I think I may be forgiven for saying something that most army men think but which most don't say because they think it is too obvious: The profession of arms is the noblest profession of all because it is the only profession where you offer to lay down your life in performing your duties. Our men fought so that people could say and think what they like but I myself always treat military men with great respect -- respect which in my view is simply their due.
Although I have been an atheist for all my adult life, I have no hesitation in saying that the single book which has influenced me most is the New Testament. And my Scripture blog will show that I know whereof I speak.
Many people hunger and thirst after righteousness. Some find it in the hatreds of the Left. Others find it in the love of Christ. I don't hunger and thirst after righteousness at all. I hunger and thirst after truth. How old-fashioned can you get?
My academic background
My full name is Dr. John Joseph RAY. I am a former university teacher aged 65 at the time of writing in 2009. I was born of Australian pioneer stock in 1943 at Innisfail in the State of Queensland in Australia. I trace my ancestry wholly to the British Isles. After an early education at Innisfail State Rural School and Cairns State High School, I taught myself for matriculation. I took my B.A. in Psychology from the University of Queensland in Brisbane. I then moved to Sydney (in New South Wales, Australia) and took my M.A. in psychology from the University of Sydney in 1969 and my Ph.D. from the School of Behavioural Sciences at Macquarie University in 1974. I first tutored in psychology at Macquarie University and then taught sociology at the University of NSW. My doctorate is in psychology but I taught mainly sociology in my 14 years as a university teacher. In High Schools I taught economics. I have taught in both traditional and "progressive" (low discipline) High Schools. Fuller biographical notes here
