Saturday, September 30, 2006
NHS HOSPITAL TREATS ELDERLY PATIENTS LIKE ANIMALS
And kills them!
A coroner has criticised a hospital for offering "despicable" and chaotic treatment after hearing that four elderly patients died in painful and degrading circumstances. John Pollard, who conducted inquests into all the deaths on the same day, said that he would be raising his concerns with the management of Tameside General Hospital in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire. He condemned as "absolutely despicable" the treatment of Watkins Davies, an 84-year-old war veteran, who went into hospital with a fractured hip and contracted MRSA, the hospital superbug, The inquest was told that Mr Watkins, a widower, was the victim of a catalogue of failures in basic nursing care. When he fell out of his chair, while trying to wash himself, no X-ray was carried out to assess any additional injuries.
His family claim that he was left to lie in his own waste and was in severe pain for hours because of shortages in nursing staff. His meals were left up to 6ft out of his reach. Relatives told the inquest that they repeatedly had to ask a nurse to help him. Ivor Davies, his son, said: "My father did not receive adequate medical and nursing care. There was a lack of communication between nursing staff and us. "I went in one day and my dad was lying in excrement. God only knows how long he was like that. I asked whether the infection was MRSA, only to be told it wasn't. A couple of days later I was told it was MRSA after all."
Mr Pollard recorded a verdict of accidental death. He also heard that Hilda Douglas, 75, died at the hospital from a heart attack after fracturing her pelvis. The family of Mrs Douglas, a voluntary worker from Droylsden, near Manchester, said that she broke her hip when she fell from a hospital trolley without sides. There was no record of the fall. Edward Douglas, her son, said: "There was one nurse per three beds and the nurse said she could not cope." He said that medication had been left on the floor.
Recording a verdict of death by natural causes, the coroner said he found this astonishing. "What if that had been vital medication?" he asked. "It is absolutely chaotic." A third inquest heard that Raymond Lees, from Ashton-under-Lyne, who died in May, contracted MRSA after undergoing a knee replacement operation. During his time in the hospital his waist shrank by 14 inches. John Lees, his son, said that it had taken him three hours to discover that his father had not been bathed and that hospital staff did not appear to know his name. "The nurse said, `He gets himself up, dresses himself and does his own teeth'," Mr Lees said. "In fact, he was wearing the same pyjamas he had been wearing for three days. The nurse was cruel and cynical."
A fourth inquest was told that James Kelly, a pensioner from Stalybridge, Tameside, was recovering from surgery but died from pneumonia after he was left sitting in his dressing gown in a draught. Mr Pollard said: "In most of the issues, the nursing care, not the operations or the general medical staff, but the basic care of people, has been in question. I shall be contacting the chief executive and looking at all future deaths at Tameside General Hospital very carefully."
Andrew Burnham, a Health Minister, said: "I understand that the hospital trust has in place a range of measures to ensure that patients receive the high-quality nursing care they have every right to expect. These include daily rounds by matrons to check on patient care, including nutrition and hydration, all of which are reported back to the director of nursing, who has ultimate responsibility for the standard of care." A spokesman for Tameside and Glossop Acute Services NHS Trust said: "These cases are being investigated internally and the trust will act on the results of these investigations."
Source
CANADIANS NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR THE NHS
Too white, probably. That many Canadians and Australians died for England in two world wars apparently deserves no gratitude or recognition from England's present Leftist government -- regardless of the offence that causes to Canadians and Australians
As many of you know my wife and I have recently emigrated to the UK from Edmonton, Alberta. My wife is a Canadian nurse with a first class degree in nursing from an English speaking university, and she herself is a native English speaker. In fact it is her only language, though, like many English-speaking Canadians, she does have 'cereal packet French'.
Before coming to the UK we had to travel down to Calgary, some 300km away, in order that she could sit an British Council English exam (cost $400), which is a prerequisite for 'foreign' nurses coming to work in the NHS (perhaps unsurprisingly for a native English speaker with a degree from an English-speaking university she passed the six hour ordeal - spoken English, understanding spoken English, written English and reading - with a 100% pass mark). Canadian nurses have to go through this costly ordeal in order to get professional registration with the Nursing and Midwifery Council, bizarrely EU nurses do not.
Upon getting here she understood that she would have to be retrained to 'NHS standards', which in itself is laughable due to the fact that Canadian nurses are trained to a much higher level than the average UK nurse. But still, we accepted that this was the price (œ300 to be precise) that we would have to pay.
The whole moving and shipping process took some time, as you can imagine, and when we arrived in the UK and phoned the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) we were informed that it was not really worth her while retraining and applying to register as a nurse in the UK because the Government had just changed the rules of engagement between health sector employers and foreign nurses. Essentially employers, if they wanted to employ a foreign nurse, had to prove that there was no British or EU nurse that could fill the role. Consequently she would be unable to get a job. Tears.
Eventually, after several weeks enquiry, and in the face of ongoing and insistantly negative NMC advice, a man at the Foreign Office informed us, as we expected, that it was illegal to discriminate against anyone with a valid UK work permit (which of course we obtained when we were in Canada). The bureaucracy of the NMC (a body created by Nu Labour); their general incompetence and bad advice; added to the fact that retraining courses for foreign nurses are now very difficult to come by because foreign nurses are actively discriminated against and no longer come here, means that by the time she can get on a course and retrain she will have been out of work as a nurse for six months. And incurring retraining costs along the way.
She (we) decided not to bother. The result is that the NHS, and the country, has lost a specialist paediatric nurse, a skilled immigrant, who can work to an extremely high standard to the benefit of us all. But this is not a story of complete woe; as soon as she decided not to persue a career in the NHS she was immediately snapped up by the private sector to fulfill a paediatric training role. She now earns about the same as she would as a nurse in Canada - 40% more than a UK nurse - but the problem is that she desperately wants to nurse; it is a vocation, not just a career. And to add insult to injury there is a chronic national shotage of paediatric intensive care nurses.
The result of all this is that I have on my hands a wife who is deeply embittered about the way she has been treated by the UK Government. I regret, and she regrets, that we came back, which is a crying shame as we moved here because we love England.
Anyway, I thought I would get that off my chest. In our dealings with government organisations (mostly the NMC) during this whole saga (which would take me a week to relate to you in full) we have found them to be, almost to a man and woman, completely incompetent and unhelpful. The one redeeming organisation was a non-governmental professional body called the Royal College of Nursing, the general secretary of whom is Dr Beverley Malone.
Dr Malone is an extremely politically astute woman, a credit to her organisation, who has railed against the Government's discrimination against foreign health workers. She objects, in particular, to the way the government cherry picked third world nurses from abroad, depleting those countries of their greatest natural resource, and now intends to pack them off against their wishes as soon as their work permit expires and their employers are forced to employ an EU nurse.
We have been the unfortunate victims of the Government's scramle to recruit foreign nurses and then their scramble to unemploy them in the face of criticism of falling standards, poor English, and third world cherry-picking. Wrong place. Wrong time. But our experience probably pales into insignificance compared to some poor souls.
Dr Beverley Malone now turns her attention to government discrimination against the English:
Well said that woman. The sad fact is that we no longer have a national health service. It is, of course, beyond her remit to point out the constitutional and funding reasons why this might be so. But I have no doubt that she is aware of the facts.
Source
BRITISH LEFTIST LEADER FINALLY FACES THE OBVIOUS
Alan Johnson displayed his leadership credentials to the Labour Party conference yesterday when he announced plans to restore confidence in school exams and to help children in care. The Education Secretary unveiled an overhaul of GCSE coursework to combat internet plagiarism by pupils. He said that all coursework for maths would be scrapped and that coursework for other subjects would be supervised in classroom-style conditions. "Technology has changed the way we teach, but can also be used by some students to gain an unfair advantage," Mr Johnson said. "We have one of the most rigorous exam systems in the world [Who does he think he is kidding??] - we cannot have it devalued and undermined by the few who cheat by copying from the internet."
He also announced extra funding for children in care, including a 2,000 pound bursary for those who wanted to go to university. "Every child in our society must have access to the educational opportunities that have always been available to a small elite," he said.
The tone of Mr Johnson's speech was crafted deliberately to dampen speculation about his leadership ambitions and instead concentrated on policy, with a theme of using education as a tool to tackle inequality, poverty and injustice. Received politely rather than enthusiastically, it came amidst a heated row over health policy - a distracting backdrop for Mr Johnson.....
Mr Johnson's decision to halt GCSE maths coursework comes after two reviews by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, the examination watchdog, which reported last November that there was widespread evidence of cheating. Maths was the subject that gave rise to the greatest concern. Two thirds of maths teachers questioned said that they suspected students had cheated by using the internet or asking parents or siblings for help. However, the authority also expressed concern about science coursework, which Mr Johnson will let continue, but under tighter supervision. The changes may take two years to introduce and enforce.
More here
Town planning blamed for obesity (!)
Poor town planning which limits opportunities for children to take exercise has been blamed for fuelling an increase in obesity. Leading US paediatrician Professor Richard Jackson called for a rethink in the way towns and cities are developed. He said living in a walkable neighbourhood helped people keep off an average of seven pounds (3.17kg). Professor Jackson made his comments at a lecture at London's Institute of Child Health.
He said humans were so adaptable that they quickly adjusted to the environment in which they found themselves. However, while this was an advantage in evolutionary terms, it spelled bad news when that environment provided little opportunity for exercise. Humans were designed to keep active, he said, and they were not designed for the modern, sedentary lifestyle that had become the norm. He said the environment should support people to make healthy choices, but increasingly children were not given the option of walking. "Prescribing a minimum of physical activity is useless if there is nowhere to exercise," he said. "How a neighbourhood is designed dictates how people get around, for example walking or bicycling versus automobile use."
Professor Jackson, who is professor in both public health and urban design at the University of California at Berkeley, said technology had brought both "good" and "bad" news. He said: "Technology has eliminated a lot of the really backbreaking labour from our lives. "But we have also "designed" a lot of incidental exercise out of our lives, such as walking. "In 1969, 48% of American students (90% of those who lived within a mile) walked or bicycled to school. "In 1999, only 19% of children walked to or from school and 6% rode bicycles to school."
Dr Ian Campbell, medical director of the charity Weight Concern, said Professor Jackson was "absolutely right". He said: "The development of obesity in the past 30 years is a direct result of environmental change. "The fact that environment sustainability and health are inextricably linked needs to be recognised by politicians and public health officials and definitive action taken. "Then, and only then, will we see decreases in levels of childhood obesity in this country."
Source
Scotland: More Encouragement for Lying, Deception and Dissimulation
We read:
We have of course known since La Piere's study in the 1930s that attitudes are no guide to actions but that will no doubt not deter the dumb Scottish cops concerned.
Reference:
La Piere, R. (1934) Attitudes and actions. Social Forces 13, 230-237
And kills them!
A coroner has criticised a hospital for offering "despicable" and chaotic treatment after hearing that four elderly patients died in painful and degrading circumstances. John Pollard, who conducted inquests into all the deaths on the same day, said that he would be raising his concerns with the management of Tameside General Hospital in Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire. He condemned as "absolutely despicable" the treatment of Watkins Davies, an 84-year-old war veteran, who went into hospital with a fractured hip and contracted MRSA, the hospital superbug, The inquest was told that Mr Watkins, a widower, was the victim of a catalogue of failures in basic nursing care. When he fell out of his chair, while trying to wash himself, no X-ray was carried out to assess any additional injuries.
His family claim that he was left to lie in his own waste and was in severe pain for hours because of shortages in nursing staff. His meals were left up to 6ft out of his reach. Relatives told the inquest that they repeatedly had to ask a nurse to help him. Ivor Davies, his son, said: "My father did not receive adequate medical and nursing care. There was a lack of communication between nursing staff and us. "I went in one day and my dad was lying in excrement. God only knows how long he was like that. I asked whether the infection was MRSA, only to be told it wasn't. A couple of days later I was told it was MRSA after all."
Mr Pollard recorded a verdict of accidental death. He also heard that Hilda Douglas, 75, died at the hospital from a heart attack after fracturing her pelvis. The family of Mrs Douglas, a voluntary worker from Droylsden, near Manchester, said that she broke her hip when she fell from a hospital trolley without sides. There was no record of the fall. Edward Douglas, her son, said: "There was one nurse per three beds and the nurse said she could not cope." He said that medication had been left on the floor.
Recording a verdict of death by natural causes, the coroner said he found this astonishing. "What if that had been vital medication?" he asked. "It is absolutely chaotic." A third inquest heard that Raymond Lees, from Ashton-under-Lyne, who died in May, contracted MRSA after undergoing a knee replacement operation. During his time in the hospital his waist shrank by 14 inches. John Lees, his son, said that it had taken him three hours to discover that his father had not been bathed and that hospital staff did not appear to know his name. "The nurse said, `He gets himself up, dresses himself and does his own teeth'," Mr Lees said. "In fact, he was wearing the same pyjamas he had been wearing for three days. The nurse was cruel and cynical."
A fourth inquest was told that James Kelly, a pensioner from Stalybridge, Tameside, was recovering from surgery but died from pneumonia after he was left sitting in his dressing gown in a draught. Mr Pollard said: "In most of the issues, the nursing care, not the operations or the general medical staff, but the basic care of people, has been in question. I shall be contacting the chief executive and looking at all future deaths at Tameside General Hospital very carefully."
Andrew Burnham, a Health Minister, said: "I understand that the hospital trust has in place a range of measures to ensure that patients receive the high-quality nursing care they have every right to expect. These include daily rounds by matrons to check on patient care, including nutrition and hydration, all of which are reported back to the director of nursing, who has ultimate responsibility for the standard of care." A spokesman for Tameside and Glossop Acute Services NHS Trust said: "These cases are being investigated internally and the trust will act on the results of these investigations."
Source
CANADIANS NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR THE NHS
Too white, probably. That many Canadians and Australians died for England in two world wars apparently deserves no gratitude or recognition from England's present Leftist government -- regardless of the offence that causes to Canadians and Australians
As many of you know my wife and I have recently emigrated to the UK from Edmonton, Alberta. My wife is a Canadian nurse with a first class degree in nursing from an English speaking university, and she herself is a native English speaker. In fact it is her only language, though, like many English-speaking Canadians, she does have 'cereal packet French'.
Before coming to the UK we had to travel down to Calgary, some 300km away, in order that she could sit an British Council English exam (cost $400), which is a prerequisite for 'foreign' nurses coming to work in the NHS (perhaps unsurprisingly for a native English speaker with a degree from an English-speaking university she passed the six hour ordeal - spoken English, understanding spoken English, written English and reading - with a 100% pass mark). Canadian nurses have to go through this costly ordeal in order to get professional registration with the Nursing and Midwifery Council, bizarrely EU nurses do not.
Upon getting here she understood that she would have to be retrained to 'NHS standards', which in itself is laughable due to the fact that Canadian nurses are trained to a much higher level than the average UK nurse. But still, we accepted that this was the price (œ300 to be precise) that we would have to pay.
The whole moving and shipping process took some time, as you can imagine, and when we arrived in the UK and phoned the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) we were informed that it was not really worth her while retraining and applying to register as a nurse in the UK because the Government had just changed the rules of engagement between health sector employers and foreign nurses. Essentially employers, if they wanted to employ a foreign nurse, had to prove that there was no British or EU nurse that could fill the role. Consequently she would be unable to get a job. Tears.
Eventually, after several weeks enquiry, and in the face of ongoing and insistantly negative NMC advice, a man at the Foreign Office informed us, as we expected, that it was illegal to discriminate against anyone with a valid UK work permit (which of course we obtained when we were in Canada). The bureaucracy of the NMC (a body created by Nu Labour); their general incompetence and bad advice; added to the fact that retraining courses for foreign nurses are now very difficult to come by because foreign nurses are actively discriminated against and no longer come here, means that by the time she can get on a course and retrain she will have been out of work as a nurse for six months. And incurring retraining costs along the way.
She (we) decided not to bother. The result is that the NHS, and the country, has lost a specialist paediatric nurse, a skilled immigrant, who can work to an extremely high standard to the benefit of us all. But this is not a story of complete woe; as soon as she decided not to persue a career in the NHS she was immediately snapped up by the private sector to fulfill a paediatric training role. She now earns about the same as she would as a nurse in Canada - 40% more than a UK nurse - but the problem is that she desperately wants to nurse; it is a vocation, not just a career. And to add insult to injury there is a chronic national shotage of paediatric intensive care nurses.
The result of all this is that I have on my hands a wife who is deeply embittered about the way she has been treated by the UK Government. I regret, and she regrets, that we came back, which is a crying shame as we moved here because we love England.
Anyway, I thought I would get that off my chest. In our dealings with government organisations (mostly the NMC) during this whole saga (which would take me a week to relate to you in full) we have found them to be, almost to a man and woman, completely incompetent and unhelpful. The one redeeming organisation was a non-governmental professional body called the Royal College of Nursing, the general secretary of whom is Dr Beverley Malone.
Dr Malone is an extremely politically astute woman, a credit to her organisation, who has railed against the Government's discrimination against foreign health workers. She objects, in particular, to the way the government cherry picked third world nurses from abroad, depleting those countries of their greatest natural resource, and now intends to pack them off against their wishes as soon as their work permit expires and their employers are forced to employ an EU nurse.
We have been the unfortunate victims of the Government's scramle to recruit foreign nurses and then their scramble to unemploy them in the face of criticism of falling standards, poor English, and third world cherry-picking. Wrong place. Wrong time. But our experience probably pales into insignificance compared to some poor souls.
Dr Beverley Malone now turns her attention to government discrimination against the English:
Under English law, patients in homes are entitled to state support for their nursing care but must foot the bill for "personal" care. In Scotland, by contrast, the whole bill is paid.
And there have been allegations that English patients have been subject to a "postcode lottery" caused by variations in interpretation of the rules around the country.
The Royal College of Nursing claimed the new proposals would fail to solve the problems. It called for a single national policy - and objected to plans to hand policy-making to local primary care trusts.
RCN general secretary Dr Beverley Malone,pictured, said: "It is nurses who are put in the impossible position of having to explain complicated and often unfair decisions to patients and their families.
"The RCN believes that anyone who needs nursing in a care home should get this care fully funded by the NHS. Nursing care is a fundamental part of healthcare and should be funded by the NHS.
Well said that woman. The sad fact is that we no longer have a national health service. It is, of course, beyond her remit to point out the constitutional and funding reasons why this might be so. But I have no doubt that she is aware of the facts.
Source
BRITISH LEFTIST LEADER FINALLY FACES THE OBVIOUS
Alan Johnson displayed his leadership credentials to the Labour Party conference yesterday when he announced plans to restore confidence in school exams and to help children in care. The Education Secretary unveiled an overhaul of GCSE coursework to combat internet plagiarism by pupils. He said that all coursework for maths would be scrapped and that coursework for other subjects would be supervised in classroom-style conditions. "Technology has changed the way we teach, but can also be used by some students to gain an unfair advantage," Mr Johnson said. "We have one of the most rigorous exam systems in the world [Who does he think he is kidding??] - we cannot have it devalued and undermined by the few who cheat by copying from the internet."
He also announced extra funding for children in care, including a 2,000 pound bursary for those who wanted to go to university. "Every child in our society must have access to the educational opportunities that have always been available to a small elite," he said.
The tone of Mr Johnson's speech was crafted deliberately to dampen speculation about his leadership ambitions and instead concentrated on policy, with a theme of using education as a tool to tackle inequality, poverty and injustice. Received politely rather than enthusiastically, it came amidst a heated row over health policy - a distracting backdrop for Mr Johnson.....
Mr Johnson's decision to halt GCSE maths coursework comes after two reviews by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, the examination watchdog, which reported last November that there was widespread evidence of cheating. Maths was the subject that gave rise to the greatest concern. Two thirds of maths teachers questioned said that they suspected students had cheated by using the internet or asking parents or siblings for help. However, the authority also expressed concern about science coursework, which Mr Johnson will let continue, but under tighter supervision. The changes may take two years to introduce and enforce.
More here
Town planning blamed for obesity (!)
Poor town planning which limits opportunities for children to take exercise has been blamed for fuelling an increase in obesity. Leading US paediatrician Professor Richard Jackson called for a rethink in the way towns and cities are developed. He said living in a walkable neighbourhood helped people keep off an average of seven pounds (3.17kg). Professor Jackson made his comments at a lecture at London's Institute of Child Health.
He said humans were so adaptable that they quickly adjusted to the environment in which they found themselves. However, while this was an advantage in evolutionary terms, it spelled bad news when that environment provided little opportunity for exercise. Humans were designed to keep active, he said, and they were not designed for the modern, sedentary lifestyle that had become the norm. He said the environment should support people to make healthy choices, but increasingly children were not given the option of walking. "Prescribing a minimum of physical activity is useless if there is nowhere to exercise," he said. "How a neighbourhood is designed dictates how people get around, for example walking or bicycling versus automobile use."
Professor Jackson, who is professor in both public health and urban design at the University of California at Berkeley, said technology had brought both "good" and "bad" news. He said: "Technology has eliminated a lot of the really backbreaking labour from our lives. "But we have also "designed" a lot of incidental exercise out of our lives, such as walking. "In 1969, 48% of American students (90% of those who lived within a mile) walked or bicycled to school. "In 1999, only 19% of children walked to or from school and 6% rode bicycles to school."
Dr Ian Campbell, medical director of the charity Weight Concern, said Professor Jackson was "absolutely right". He said: "The development of obesity in the past 30 years is a direct result of environmental change. "The fact that environment sustainability and health are inextricably linked needs to be recognised by politicians and public health officials and definitive action taken. "Then, and only then, will we see decreases in levels of childhood obesity in this country."
Source
Scotland: More Encouragement for Lying, Deception and Dissimulation
We read:
"Screening tests might be used to bar corrupt and bigoted police officers from promotion. Senior officers yesterday said they will look to extend psychometric tests, which will be introduced to identify racist applicants from the spring, to other ethical concerns, in particular sectarianism, sexism and dishonesty.
Source
We have of course known since La Piere's study in the 1930s that attitudes are no guide to actions but that will no doubt not deter the dumb Scottish cops concerned.
Reference:
La Piere, R. (1934) Attitudes and actions. Social Forces 13, 230-237
Friday, September 29, 2006
BUREAUCRATIC HEAVEN PROPOSED FOR THE NHS
For the past couple of days I've been wondering what it is that the rest of the world sees in Mr Brown's NHS reform that I've missed. Those people who don't confidently reply "son of the manse" when asked about Mr Brown instead say "man of substance" and cite his NHS reform plan as evidence of his sagacity. And there am I thinking that it is completely daft.
The policy of giving the Bank of England the power to set interest rates, free from political interference, has been an undoubted success. So now Mr Brown wants to extend that model to the public services, with the NHS most commonly named as the first to be reformed in this way. An independent board will be established to administer the service, with the role of politicians restricted to setting overall goals and strategy. Conservatives are sufficiently enthusiastic about the idea to claim that Mr Brown has stolen it from them. The day will come when the Tories will pretend that they had nothing whatsoever to do with it....
The NHS is not like the Bank of England. The Bank is setting the price of money. The NHS has an output not far off that of Portugal. It handles something like 10 per cent of our national income. It employs thousands and thousands of people. It is a very different animal.
There are two ways of holding such a body to account. The first is through voice - the right to protest to a political representative who depends on your vote. The alternative is exit - the right to take your custom elsewhere, with the seller dependent on your patronage in order to thrive. Mr Brown plans to remove both these forms of accountability. When he describes the new board as independent, you just have to ask: independent of what, exactly? And the answer, it turns out, is independent of you and me.
Sir Peter Lachmann, former president of the Royal College of Pathologists, felt moved to write to this newspaper that Mr Brown's new policy was "probably the best news the NHS has had in the past 30 years". I was not surprised to read this endorsement. The senior management of the service is bound to conclude that the interference of meddling politicians is nothing but a nuisance. They want to run their NHS with our money and without us pesky voters sticking our nose in the whole time.
The Chancellor is arguing that the closure of a local hospital ought to be decided by health service managers without the right of politicians to prevent it. If he isn't saying this, he is saying nothing. But is it really acceptable that such sensitive decisions be made only by a group of unelected people, accountable only to each other and without appeal to the local electorate? The model that Mr Brown intends to apply to the NHS is not really the Bank of England at all. It is, well, the model that the Tories tried to apply to the NHS in the mid-1980s.
In 1985 Norman Fowler, then the Health Secretary, appointed Victor Page as the chief executive of the NHS with the idea of relinquishing political control of administrative matters. It was perhaps with this experience in mind that another former Health Secretary yesterday told me that he thought Mr Brown's plan was "bonkers". Political pressure from voters and the media ensured that it didn't last five minutes. And neither will Mr Brown's plan.
There is an alternative. If Mr Brown truly wants to stop political interference in the day-to-day decisions made by clinical staff and local management there is something he can do. He can replace accountability by voice with accountability by exit. If a local hospital were to close because everyone was using a better service near by it might anger some residents. But no one could claim that the service providers were unaccountable.
The Chancellor has set his face against such a Blairite (actually Tory) solution. But his third way between two forms of accountability is to provide no accountability of all. His NHS board idea was intended to reinforce his image as a man of substance. I think he would have been better off with one of Doddy's wisecracks.
More here
BRITISH TEACHERS BAD AT TEACHING CITIZENSHIP
Compulsory citizenship classes covering subjects such as the law, the electoral system, human rights and economics are unsatisfactory in a quarter of all secondary schools - often because teachers do not know what they are talking about, research suggests. A devastating report from the schools watchdog Ofsted has found that gaps in teachers' subject knowledge and an insecure grasp of what the lessons were supposed to achieve, led to dull or irrelevant classes that were counter-productive. The report called for more training of specialist teachers and gave warning that the subject citizenship often strayed into areas such as immigration or racial, religious and ethnic diversity, "where little knowledge can be a dangerous thing".
In one of the worst classes observed by inspectors, a lesson on the principles of decision-making in society drifted into a discussion of the bodily needs of people stranded on a desert island. A more common failing was for lessons on conflict resolution - which should include discussions of the role of Parliament, the UN, nongovernmental organisations, and pressure groups - to turn into discussions on friendships and relationships. Inspectors were also appalled by the lack of written work, which they attributed not to any failing by the children but to the low expectations of their teachers. "Very good and lively discussion can be followed by dismal written activities," the report said.
Citizenship education has been part of the national curriculum in secondary schools since 2002 and is compulsory for pupils aged 11 to 16, but there have long been concerns that teachers are ill-prepared to teach it. The report found that while a minority of schools teach it well, in most the teaching was found to be merely adequate. Provision in a quarter of schools was inadequate.
Although growing numbers of schools are entering pupils for a short GCSE course, the report concluded that too few schools taught citizenship as a subject in its own right, with many lumping it in with classes in other core subjects, such as history or geography. Some schools merely assumed that the good ethos and behaviour of their pupils meant they were "doing it already". Others were wary of engaging pupils in political discussions.
The findings raise important questions about the purpose of citizenship education, which was introduced amid concerns about political apathy among young people and fears that society faced a "moral crisis". These worries have since been overtaken by public and political concerns about immigration, diversity and multiculturalism, raising questions about what the focus of citizenship lessons should be. Sir Bernard Crick, one of the architects of citizenship teaching in schools, said the subject should educate children in how to be politically literate, using real issues.
The Department for Education said that 1,200 new citizenship teachers were being trained over the next two years. "Citizenship has had a positive impact on the curriculum in the majority of schools and we are confident it will continue to improve as it becomes more embedded," a spokesman said.
More here
For the past couple of days I've been wondering what it is that the rest of the world sees in Mr Brown's NHS reform that I've missed. Those people who don't confidently reply "son of the manse" when asked about Mr Brown instead say "man of substance" and cite his NHS reform plan as evidence of his sagacity. And there am I thinking that it is completely daft.
The policy of giving the Bank of England the power to set interest rates, free from political interference, has been an undoubted success. So now Mr Brown wants to extend that model to the public services, with the NHS most commonly named as the first to be reformed in this way. An independent board will be established to administer the service, with the role of politicians restricted to setting overall goals and strategy. Conservatives are sufficiently enthusiastic about the idea to claim that Mr Brown has stolen it from them. The day will come when the Tories will pretend that they had nothing whatsoever to do with it....
The NHS is not like the Bank of England. The Bank is setting the price of money. The NHS has an output not far off that of Portugal. It handles something like 10 per cent of our national income. It employs thousands and thousands of people. It is a very different animal.
There are two ways of holding such a body to account. The first is through voice - the right to protest to a political representative who depends on your vote. The alternative is exit - the right to take your custom elsewhere, with the seller dependent on your patronage in order to thrive. Mr Brown plans to remove both these forms of accountability. When he describes the new board as independent, you just have to ask: independent of what, exactly? And the answer, it turns out, is independent of you and me.
Sir Peter Lachmann, former president of the Royal College of Pathologists, felt moved to write to this newspaper that Mr Brown's new policy was "probably the best news the NHS has had in the past 30 years". I was not surprised to read this endorsement. The senior management of the service is bound to conclude that the interference of meddling politicians is nothing but a nuisance. They want to run their NHS with our money and without us pesky voters sticking our nose in the whole time.
The Chancellor is arguing that the closure of a local hospital ought to be decided by health service managers without the right of politicians to prevent it. If he isn't saying this, he is saying nothing. But is it really acceptable that such sensitive decisions be made only by a group of unelected people, accountable only to each other and without appeal to the local electorate? The model that Mr Brown intends to apply to the NHS is not really the Bank of England at all. It is, well, the model that the Tories tried to apply to the NHS in the mid-1980s.
In 1985 Norman Fowler, then the Health Secretary, appointed Victor Page as the chief executive of the NHS with the idea of relinquishing political control of administrative matters. It was perhaps with this experience in mind that another former Health Secretary yesterday told me that he thought Mr Brown's plan was "bonkers". Political pressure from voters and the media ensured that it didn't last five minutes. And neither will Mr Brown's plan.
There is an alternative. If Mr Brown truly wants to stop political interference in the day-to-day decisions made by clinical staff and local management there is something he can do. He can replace accountability by voice with accountability by exit. If a local hospital were to close because everyone was using a better service near by it might anger some residents. But no one could claim that the service providers were unaccountable.
The Chancellor has set his face against such a Blairite (actually Tory) solution. But his third way between two forms of accountability is to provide no accountability of all. His NHS board idea was intended to reinforce his image as a man of substance. I think he would have been better off with one of Doddy's wisecracks.
More here
BRITISH TEACHERS BAD AT TEACHING CITIZENSHIP
Compulsory citizenship classes covering subjects such as the law, the electoral system, human rights and economics are unsatisfactory in a quarter of all secondary schools - often because teachers do not know what they are talking about, research suggests. A devastating report from the schools watchdog Ofsted has found that gaps in teachers' subject knowledge and an insecure grasp of what the lessons were supposed to achieve, led to dull or irrelevant classes that were counter-productive. The report called for more training of specialist teachers and gave warning that the subject citizenship often strayed into areas such as immigration or racial, religious and ethnic diversity, "where little knowledge can be a dangerous thing".
In one of the worst classes observed by inspectors, a lesson on the principles of decision-making in society drifted into a discussion of the bodily needs of people stranded on a desert island. A more common failing was for lessons on conflict resolution - which should include discussions of the role of Parliament, the UN, nongovernmental organisations, and pressure groups - to turn into discussions on friendships and relationships. Inspectors were also appalled by the lack of written work, which they attributed not to any failing by the children but to the low expectations of their teachers. "Very good and lively discussion can be followed by dismal written activities," the report said.
Citizenship education has been part of the national curriculum in secondary schools since 2002 and is compulsory for pupils aged 11 to 16, but there have long been concerns that teachers are ill-prepared to teach it. The report found that while a minority of schools teach it well, in most the teaching was found to be merely adequate. Provision in a quarter of schools was inadequate.
Although growing numbers of schools are entering pupils for a short GCSE course, the report concluded that too few schools taught citizenship as a subject in its own right, with many lumping it in with classes in other core subjects, such as history or geography. Some schools merely assumed that the good ethos and behaviour of their pupils meant they were "doing it already". Others were wary of engaging pupils in political discussions.
The findings raise important questions about the purpose of citizenship education, which was introduced amid concerns about political apathy among young people and fears that society faced a "moral crisis". These worries have since been overtaken by public and political concerns about immigration, diversity and multiculturalism, raising questions about what the focus of citizenship lessons should be. Sir Bernard Crick, one of the architects of citizenship teaching in schools, said the subject should educate children in how to be politically literate, using real issues.
The Department for Education said that 1,200 new citizenship teachers were being trained over the next two years. "Citizenship has had a positive impact on the curriculum in the majority of schools and we are confident it will continue to improve as it becomes more embedded," a spokesman said.
More here
Thursday, September 28, 2006
ARTS CENTRE FUNDED BY BIG BUSINESS SHOWS UP THE REST
(The "City" is London's financial district. It is a very small part of London as a whole)
Should we be surprised that the best-run and most critically acclaimed arts centre in Britain receives not a penny from the Arts Council? Should we be astounded that, without the benefit of a single directive from the Government’s culture quango about the importance of multiculturalism, access, diversity, outreach — or any of the other new Labour buzzwords rammed down the throats of people in the arts for the past nine years — this arts centre should nevertheless be pulling in 770,000 socially diverse punters a year? And what does this say, by inference, about the stifling effect of the nanny state on less independent organisations?
These questions popped into my head last week as the Barbican Centre in London announced plans to celebrate its 25th birthday in March with 25 brilliantly devised “landmark events”, ranging from an Icelandic epic and an Islamic festival to glitzy concerts and a celebration of punk. At the same time its management unveiled the finishing touches to a £30 million transformation that has swept away the worst features of the once-derided architecture. The hopeless non-entrance, Kafkaesque corridors, baffling signs and dry-as-dust acoustics in the concert hall: all have been remedied, leaving the place looking sleek, chic, and fit for service for at least the next 50 years.
What makes this feat close to miraculous is that, only 12 years ago, the Barbican was a byword for fear, loathing and chaos. The Royal Shakespeare Company, then resident in the centre, was locked in perpetual war with the management, which was itself chronically dysfunctional. When an abrasive woman from the Milk Marketing Board was appointed to run the centre — on the grounds that if you can sell a full range of dairy products you can surely flog King Lear — the nadir was reached. Even the City of London Corporation, which built the place, seemed in despair about its future.
But in 1995 John Tusa, a former BBC mandarin with an insatiable taste for culture, was appointed managing director, and a quiet visionary called Graham Sheffield brought in as artistic director. They have wrought a renaissance. Today, the Barbican must rank as the world’s top arts centre — easily outclassing the Lincoln Centre in New York for adventurous programming and sustained quality.
Enough about Tusa and Sheffield, however. They aren’t short of cheerleaders. What interests me about the Barbican is its funding. Its £18 million subsidy comes not from the Government via its poodle, the Arts Council — with the mandatory clump of social-engineering strings attached — but from the City of London Corporation. Which, rather astonishingly, makes that local authority the third biggest funder of the arts in Britain.
I have my dozy moments, but I’m not so naive as to think that the City is coughing up such substantial dosh out of pure altruism. In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a war going on. The Square Mile, centre of the financial universe for so long, is facing competition not just from Frankfurt and Tokyo, but from an upstart on its doorstep — Canary Wharf. The battle to retain the big bank HQs and dealing-rooms is being fought on many fronts, not least the phallic rush to erect the tallest tower in town. But one vital area is “quality of life”. And the fact that the City has an arts centre that mounts 900 top-class events a year is a huge advantage.
But the City’s motives for funding the Barbican don’t really matter. What’s important is that it doesn’t interfere in how the centre is run. It appoints top arts professionals, then lets them get on with the job. It doesn’t try to micro-manage areas beyond its competence. It liberates those it finances, rather than stifling creativity with endless red tape and petty “accountability” procedures.
Well, you can see where I’m heading. The way the Barbican is run is in stark contrast not only to every other subsidised arts organisation, but to most other areas of public life in Blair’s Britain. What we have seen over the past nine years has been an unprecedented increase in the number of political diktats that attempt to regiment every facet of our existence — from health, diet and education to the law and liberty. At the root of this trend are power mania and arrogance. We are now ruled by people who not only want to control the smallest aspects of our lives, but who are vain enough to think that they know better than the experts in any field.
Of course I accept that, in a democracy, politicians must regularly scrutinise publicly-funded professions on our behalf. But it’s a question of degree. The endless, pointless meddling of recent years has simply stopped good people doing their jobs well. I see that Gordon Brown has promised more “devolved” decision-making in future. It’s hard to believe, since under his iron rule the Treasury has broken all known records for control-freakery and arrogant interference in areas that have nothing to do with the economy — a prime instance being the way that arts organisations operate. The Barbican is a shining example of the good things that can happen when politicians keep their clumsy fingers out of the pie. Let’s see more abstinence in future.
Source
BENEDICTINE SCAPEGOAT IN SCOTLAND
A sleepy community of Benedictine monks in south Devon is the latest, and perhaps most unlikely, target in the battle against binge drinking. Alcopops come and go, but Buckfast wine is a perennial favourite among young drinkers keen to test their alcohol limit. Now the tonic wine produced by the Benedictine monks of Buckfast Abbey, Devon, has fallen foul of law makers, who believe it has much to answer for. Scottish health minister Andy Kerr is the latest politician north of the border to express concerns about the effects of the drink commonly known as Buckie - citing its link to binge drinking. "There's something different about that drink," says Mr Kerr, calling it "seriously bad".
Buckfast Tonic Wine originates from Roman Catholic monks - not a group traditionally associated with the drunken masses - and was first produced by them more than 100 years ago, using a recipe brought from France. It is red wine-based, with a high caffeine content. Tellingly, the label on the bottle reads "the name tonic wine does not imply health giving or medicinal properties." It is sweet and viscous. At 5 pounds for a 750ml bottle, it is cheap but powerful - alcohol content is 15% - and considered a rite of passage by many an ambitious young drinker. "It tended to precede a rather spectacular night, because it's horribly potent," recalls Paul, a former student at Manchester.
But it is the drink's prevalence in the so-called Buckfast Triangle - an area east of Glasgow between Airdrie, Coatbridge and Cumbernauld - that has raised concerns. It even spawned its own episode of the Scottish TV comedy Rab C Nesbitt and is known locally by several pet names: Buckie Baracas, a bottle of "what the hell are you looking at?", Wreck the Hoose Juice and Coatbridge Table Wine. More seriously, there have been calls to have it sold in plastic bottles, because of the mess created by broken ones on the street, and, in court, it has been implicated, along with vodka, in one car crash death in Doune, north of Stirling.
David, a Glasgow pub manager, confesses to having enjoyed Buckfast in his formative drinking days, and perceives a strong social stigma linked to its abuse. "There's a huge problem with it in the streets," he says. "Fifteen and sixteen-year-olds drink Buckfast and they'll have no qualms about tooting someone over the head. It all stems from boredom. They'll have two to three bottles and it's like lighting a touch-paper, they go wild." But the drinks industry, and Buckfast's maker, say it is being made a scapegoat for what is a wider social problem of alcohol abuse. Spokesman for distributors J Chandler & Co (Buckfast) Ltd, Jim Wilson, points out that Buckfast trails other drinks, like whisky, in sales. It has only a half a per cent of the total alcohol market and does not feature in the top 100 brands.
Of its £30m annual turnover, 10% is sold in Lanarkshire and much exported to Spain, Australia, and the Caribbean - where its not blamed for a society's ills, says Mr Wilson. At the request of the monks, Buckfast is not advertised in areas perceived to have difficulties, no two-for-one or 20p off offers here. Talks between the distributor and Mr Kerr have been slated for 30 October. "The problem with anything alcoholic is if it's abused," says Mr Wilson. "Why target Buckfast? If your policies aren't working, and you're looking for a scapegoat, have a go."
Source
KILLER NHS HOSPITAL
Government health inspectors are to investigate how Maidstone Hospital in Kent handled an outbreak of an infection that killed six patients and contributed to the deaths of fourteen others. The Healthcare Commission announced an inquiry yesterday into Clostridium difficile, which it said followed concerns about the rates of infection at the hospital since 2004. C. difficile is the main cause of diarrhoea infections in British hospitals, and contributes to more deaths than MRSA.
The inquiry into Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust will examine whether the rates of C. difficile are high, taking into account all factors. The investigation, one of only two the commission has conducted into C. difficile, will look at outbreaks of the infection and evaluate the trust's systems and procedures for controlling it. It is also likely to consider the trust's arrangements for identifying and notifying cases, the factors contributing to the rates of infection, the trust's response on the wards, and the priority given to its control.
The investigation was requested by the South East Coast Strategic Health Authority and the trust, whose three hospitals serve Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells and surrounding areas including Tonbridge, Sevenoaks and parts of East Sussex. C. difficile can cause a wide range of symptoms, from mild diarrhoea to life-threatening conditions.
Nigel Ellis, head of investigations at the Healthcare Commission, said: "Our investigation will examine how the trust identified and dealt with cases of C. difficile. "We recognise that outbreaks of infection are not always easy to control, but when they do happen they pose a very serious risk to patient safety. "We need to find out what happened, what systems the trust has in place to ensure this does not happen again and whether further improvements are needed to protect the safety of patients."
The commission, which is the independent inspection body for the NHS and the private and voluntary healthcare sectors, will publish its findings and recommendations for improvement in a report expected next year.
Maidstone is by no means the first hospital to suffer a serious outbreak of C. difficile. A total of 334 patients were infected with the bacterium and at least 33 died between October 2003 and June last year at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. In a highly critical report into that outbreak, published in July, the commission said that there had been serious and significant failings in the way in which senior hospital managers had responded to it.
According to the Office for National Statistics, in 2003 there were 1,748 mentions of C. difficile on death certificates, of which 934 noted the infection as the underlying cause of death. Between April and June, 136 patients at Maidstone Hospital were found to be infected with C. difficile, the trust said. The infection was the definite cause of death of six patients; in fourteen others it contributed to their deaths but was not the main cause, and it was unlikely to have led to the deaths of four other patients who had had the infection.
Source
(The "City" is London's financial district. It is a very small part of London as a whole)
Should we be surprised that the best-run and most critically acclaimed arts centre in Britain receives not a penny from the Arts Council? Should we be astounded that, without the benefit of a single directive from the Government’s culture quango about the importance of multiculturalism, access, diversity, outreach — or any of the other new Labour buzzwords rammed down the throats of people in the arts for the past nine years — this arts centre should nevertheless be pulling in 770,000 socially diverse punters a year? And what does this say, by inference, about the stifling effect of the nanny state on less independent organisations?
These questions popped into my head last week as the Barbican Centre in London announced plans to celebrate its 25th birthday in March with 25 brilliantly devised “landmark events”, ranging from an Icelandic epic and an Islamic festival to glitzy concerts and a celebration of punk. At the same time its management unveiled the finishing touches to a £30 million transformation that has swept away the worst features of the once-derided architecture. The hopeless non-entrance, Kafkaesque corridors, baffling signs and dry-as-dust acoustics in the concert hall: all have been remedied, leaving the place looking sleek, chic, and fit for service for at least the next 50 years.
What makes this feat close to miraculous is that, only 12 years ago, the Barbican was a byword for fear, loathing and chaos. The Royal Shakespeare Company, then resident in the centre, was locked in perpetual war with the management, which was itself chronically dysfunctional. When an abrasive woman from the Milk Marketing Board was appointed to run the centre — on the grounds that if you can sell a full range of dairy products you can surely flog King Lear — the nadir was reached. Even the City of London Corporation, which built the place, seemed in despair about its future.
But in 1995 John Tusa, a former BBC mandarin with an insatiable taste for culture, was appointed managing director, and a quiet visionary called Graham Sheffield brought in as artistic director. They have wrought a renaissance. Today, the Barbican must rank as the world’s top arts centre — easily outclassing the Lincoln Centre in New York for adventurous programming and sustained quality.
Enough about Tusa and Sheffield, however. They aren’t short of cheerleaders. What interests me about the Barbican is its funding. Its £18 million subsidy comes not from the Government via its poodle, the Arts Council — with the mandatory clump of social-engineering strings attached — but from the City of London Corporation. Which, rather astonishingly, makes that local authority the third biggest funder of the arts in Britain.
I have my dozy moments, but I’m not so naive as to think that the City is coughing up such substantial dosh out of pure altruism. In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a war going on. The Square Mile, centre of the financial universe for so long, is facing competition not just from Frankfurt and Tokyo, but from an upstart on its doorstep — Canary Wharf. The battle to retain the big bank HQs and dealing-rooms is being fought on many fronts, not least the phallic rush to erect the tallest tower in town. But one vital area is “quality of life”. And the fact that the City has an arts centre that mounts 900 top-class events a year is a huge advantage.
But the City’s motives for funding the Barbican don’t really matter. What’s important is that it doesn’t interfere in how the centre is run. It appoints top arts professionals, then lets them get on with the job. It doesn’t try to micro-manage areas beyond its competence. It liberates those it finances, rather than stifling creativity with endless red tape and petty “accountability” procedures.
Well, you can see where I’m heading. The way the Barbican is run is in stark contrast not only to every other subsidised arts organisation, but to most other areas of public life in Blair’s Britain. What we have seen over the past nine years has been an unprecedented increase in the number of political diktats that attempt to regiment every facet of our existence — from health, diet and education to the law and liberty. At the root of this trend are power mania and arrogance. We are now ruled by people who not only want to control the smallest aspects of our lives, but who are vain enough to think that they know better than the experts in any field.
Of course I accept that, in a democracy, politicians must regularly scrutinise publicly-funded professions on our behalf. But it’s a question of degree. The endless, pointless meddling of recent years has simply stopped good people doing their jobs well. I see that Gordon Brown has promised more “devolved” decision-making in future. It’s hard to believe, since under his iron rule the Treasury has broken all known records for control-freakery and arrogant interference in areas that have nothing to do with the economy — a prime instance being the way that arts organisations operate. The Barbican is a shining example of the good things that can happen when politicians keep their clumsy fingers out of the pie. Let’s see more abstinence in future.
Source
BENEDICTINE SCAPEGOAT IN SCOTLAND
A sleepy community of Benedictine monks in south Devon is the latest, and perhaps most unlikely, target in the battle against binge drinking. Alcopops come and go, but Buckfast wine is a perennial favourite among young drinkers keen to test their alcohol limit. Now the tonic wine produced by the Benedictine monks of Buckfast Abbey, Devon, has fallen foul of law makers, who believe it has much to answer for. Scottish health minister Andy Kerr is the latest politician north of the border to express concerns about the effects of the drink commonly known as Buckie - citing its link to binge drinking. "There's something different about that drink," says Mr Kerr, calling it "seriously bad".
Buckfast Tonic Wine originates from Roman Catholic monks - not a group traditionally associated with the drunken masses - and was first produced by them more than 100 years ago, using a recipe brought from France. It is red wine-based, with a high caffeine content. Tellingly, the label on the bottle reads "the name tonic wine does not imply health giving or medicinal properties." It is sweet and viscous. At 5 pounds for a 750ml bottle, it is cheap but powerful - alcohol content is 15% - and considered a rite of passage by many an ambitious young drinker. "It tended to precede a rather spectacular night, because it's horribly potent," recalls Paul, a former student at Manchester.
But it is the drink's prevalence in the so-called Buckfast Triangle - an area east of Glasgow between Airdrie, Coatbridge and Cumbernauld - that has raised concerns. It even spawned its own episode of the Scottish TV comedy Rab C Nesbitt and is known locally by several pet names: Buckie Baracas, a bottle of "what the hell are you looking at?", Wreck the Hoose Juice and Coatbridge Table Wine. More seriously, there have been calls to have it sold in plastic bottles, because of the mess created by broken ones on the street, and, in court, it has been implicated, along with vodka, in one car crash death in Doune, north of Stirling.
David, a Glasgow pub manager, confesses to having enjoyed Buckfast in his formative drinking days, and perceives a strong social stigma linked to its abuse. "There's a huge problem with it in the streets," he says. "Fifteen and sixteen-year-olds drink Buckfast and they'll have no qualms about tooting someone over the head. It all stems from boredom. They'll have two to three bottles and it's like lighting a touch-paper, they go wild." But the drinks industry, and Buckfast's maker, say it is being made a scapegoat for what is a wider social problem of alcohol abuse. Spokesman for distributors J Chandler & Co (Buckfast) Ltd, Jim Wilson, points out that Buckfast trails other drinks, like whisky, in sales. It has only a half a per cent of the total alcohol market and does not feature in the top 100 brands.
Of its £30m annual turnover, 10% is sold in Lanarkshire and much exported to Spain, Australia, and the Caribbean - where its not blamed for a society's ills, says Mr Wilson. At the request of the monks, Buckfast is not advertised in areas perceived to have difficulties, no two-for-one or 20p off offers here. Talks between the distributor and Mr Kerr have been slated for 30 October. "The problem with anything alcoholic is if it's abused," says Mr Wilson. "Why target Buckfast? If your policies aren't working, and you're looking for a scapegoat, have a go."
Source
KILLER NHS HOSPITAL
Government health inspectors are to investigate how Maidstone Hospital in Kent handled an outbreak of an infection that killed six patients and contributed to the deaths of fourteen others. The Healthcare Commission announced an inquiry yesterday into Clostridium difficile, which it said followed concerns about the rates of infection at the hospital since 2004. C. difficile is the main cause of diarrhoea infections in British hospitals, and contributes to more deaths than MRSA.
The inquiry into Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust will examine whether the rates of C. difficile are high, taking into account all factors. The investigation, one of only two the commission has conducted into C. difficile, will look at outbreaks of the infection and evaluate the trust's systems and procedures for controlling it. It is also likely to consider the trust's arrangements for identifying and notifying cases, the factors contributing to the rates of infection, the trust's response on the wards, and the priority given to its control.
The investigation was requested by the South East Coast Strategic Health Authority and the trust, whose three hospitals serve Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells and surrounding areas including Tonbridge, Sevenoaks and parts of East Sussex. C. difficile can cause a wide range of symptoms, from mild diarrhoea to life-threatening conditions.
Nigel Ellis, head of investigations at the Healthcare Commission, said: "Our investigation will examine how the trust identified and dealt with cases of C. difficile. "We recognise that outbreaks of infection are not always easy to control, but when they do happen they pose a very serious risk to patient safety. "We need to find out what happened, what systems the trust has in place to ensure this does not happen again and whether further improvements are needed to protect the safety of patients."
The commission, which is the independent inspection body for the NHS and the private and voluntary healthcare sectors, will publish its findings and recommendations for improvement in a report expected next year.
Maidstone is by no means the first hospital to suffer a serious outbreak of C. difficile. A total of 334 patients were infected with the bacterium and at least 33 died between October 2003 and June last year at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. In a highly critical report into that outbreak, published in July, the commission said that there had been serious and significant failings in the way in which senior hospital managers had responded to it.
According to the Office for National Statistics, in 2003 there were 1,748 mentions of C. difficile on death certificates, of which 934 noted the infection as the underlying cause of death. Between April and June, 136 patients at Maidstone Hospital were found to be infected with C. difficile, the trust said. The infection was the definite cause of death of six patients; in fourteen others it contributed to their deaths but was not the main cause, and it was unlikely to have led to the deaths of four other patients who had had the infection.
Source
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
HOLLOW VICTORY AGAINST THE NHS OVER HOSPITAL CLOSURE
A former nurse who won her High Court battle against hospital ward closures yesterday said that it was not a genuine victory. Pat Morris, from Altrincham, Greater Manchester, risked her home and savings on waging a campaign against Trafford Healthcare NHS Trust after it decided to cut beds at her local hospital without consulting the community. Mrs Morris, 65, resigned her nursing job to concentrate on her legal battle and faced having to pay the trust's legal costs had she lost the case.
Yesterday Mr Justice Hodge backed her view that the trust's decision in March to close 26 rehabilitation beds for older people without consultation had been illegal, and ordered that it be quashed. However, he refused to order that the two wards at Altrincham General Hospital, where Mrs Morris worked for several decades, be reopened immediately. Mrs Morris and her barrister, Anthony Eyers, who worked on her case for no charge, said that they expected NHS managers to pay lipservice to consultation but to keep the wards closed.
Mrs Morris said: "There are no winners today, only losers. They will just go through the motions only to tell us the wards will stay closed. The challenge has been made and the trust have been found wanting, but the elderly, vulnerable people of Altrincham still don't have their care close to home. "I don't have to pay thousands of pounds, but in human terms we have still lost a lot in the last few months. I have no regrets about bringing the case, except that the judge decided it was not his duty at this time to reopen the beds."
Mr Justice Hodge said that the trust would have to reach a new decision after public consultation. He added: "It cannot be right for this court in its discretion to order the reopening of the wards on the basis that there will be a public consultation which might legitimately then decide to close them again."
Mrs Morris has led the campaign against the cuts at Altrincham General since resigning from her job there in 2003 after 16 beds were cut. She was a member of the Patient and Public Involvement Group, a watchdog representing local residents, but left to fight her battle. At one stage the entire hospital was threatened with closure, but Mrs Morris, a former Tory councillor, organised a self-funded series of public rallies, letters and petitions. Hundreds of people turned up to her public meetings, but it was Mrs Morris who sought the judicial review on behalf of the group Health in Trafford. She risked an 80,000 pound bill for legal costs if the judgment had been made against her.
Trafford Healthcare NHS Trust, which is 9 million in debt, will now have to pay its own legal costs. Mrs Morris was awarded her costs, which were less than 1,000 pounds.
Mr Eyers described the ruling as a "Phyrric victory". He said: "It has ramifications for the whole country because it gives a green light to trusts that they can act first and take the legal flak later. They may have to fight, but they can act with some certainty that their decisions will not be reversed. I now expect the trust to make a series of empty promises that they won't deliver on." Mr Eyers said he had taken the case pro bono as a matter of principle: "I live in the Altrincham area and so it had some personal resonance, but NHS trusts, like any public body, should be accountable to the people they serve." He said the same principles had been behind Mrs Morris's fight: "She would have given every last penny she had if it had achieved something for the people of Altrincham."
Trafford Healthcare NHS Trust said that it had cut the beds because "it was no longer a safe place for patients to receive care. Anyone visiting the hospital would be struck by the dilapidated state of the buildings and the nursing and medical staff were no longer confident that they could provide safe services". [And whose fault would that be?] It added that four public meetings would be held next month to decide the future of in-patient wards at the hospital
Source
Jamie Oliver: what a 'tosser' [jerk]
St Jamie's school-dinners crusade returns tonight, providing yet another unhealthy serving of food fears with a side order of parent-bashing bile.
The man in the checked shirt wobbles towards the bus, ice-cream cone in hand, not sure whether to keep licking or run faster. Then disaster strikes: he drops the cone. As he looks down in horror, the bus pulls away. Unperturbed, the fat feckless f*** scoops up the ice-cream from the ground and stuffs it in his mouth.
The man in the checked shirt is Jamie Oliver, all padded up in a fat suit. And the scene is the trailer for the latest phase in his ‘school meals revolution’, Jamie’s Return to School Dinners, which airs tonight on Channel 4. The implication is that unless we all respond to Jamie’s call to arms, we’re ignorant scum condemning many of today’s children to a life of disabling obesity and chronic ill-health.
Giving children the option to eat relatively fresh and nutritious food during the school day is an attractive one. But Oliver’s crusade is based on distortions about the quality and importance of children’s diets, and a contempt for any parent who doesn’t fit in with his idea of how they should be raising their kids.
This contempt no doubt extends to Julie Critchlow and Sam Walker, two mums who have started a ‘junk food’ run for kids at a school in Rotherham, northern England. They’re taking orders and cash through the school fence and returning with food from local takeaways. ‘This is all down to Jamie Oliver. I just don’t like him and what he stands for’, Walker told the Sun. The Sun, never afraid to take a cheap shot, described the women as ‘junk mothers’ who exhibit ‘the kind of feeble parenting that turns kids into fat, lethargic burger addicts in the first place’ (1). Oliver is not the only one who thinks that parents who won’t toe the line are neglecting their kids.
In tonight’s programme, Oliver doesn’t hold back. ‘I’ve spent two years being PC about parents. It’s kind of time to say if you’re giving very young kids bottles and bottles of fizzy drink you’re a fucking arsehole, you’re a tosser. If you’ve giving bags of shitty sweets at that very young age, you’re an idiot.’
The programme demonstrates that running a one-man revolution is hard work. In Lincolnshire (a relatively poor farming county) he discovers that many children aren’t offered hot meals at all because school kitchens were closed under the last Conservative government. He tries to get local businesses to fill the gap – and then discovers that even those model ‘healthy schools’ he set up down south are running into problems. Kidbrooke School in the London borough of Greenwich, the place where it all started in the first series of Jamie’s School Dinners, is losing thousands of pounds because it no longer sells crisps, chocolate and fizzy drinks at break times. The kids buy their treats on the way to school, handing their money to local shops rather than the school. The extra government money provided after the last series is insufficient to cover the shortfall.
Oliver seems to spend his whole time firefighting. Up in Lincolnshire, he arranges for a local pub to provide meals to nearby primary schools. That means mass catering in a totally unsuitable kitchen before parents and taxi drivers deliver the food to the schools. Unsurprisingly, hygiene standards at the pub are well below what would be expected in a school, the food quality suffers as the chef tries to eke out a profit, and parents drop out as their initial enthusiasm fades. In the end, the pub pulls out, no doubt thinking they needed the whole loss-making operation and bad publicity like a hole in the head.
Oliver makes his life a lot harder by his prejudices about processed food and local production. Why a Panini filled with meat and a couple of sprigs of basil is any better in terms of nutrition than a ham sandwich made with white sliced bread is never explained. He insists on emphasising small and local provision – even when it is clearly unsuitable – over trying to persuade the big caterers with their economies of scale to alter what they provide. The whole operation is doomed to be unprofitable, so businesses quickly lose interest. His schemes only keep going because dinner ladies work unpaid overtime – which they eventually tire of, considering that even when they’re getting paid, it is only the measly minimum wage.
So Oliver’s tone becomes increasingly intolerant. He is unable to comprehend why others are not as motivated as he is. ‘This is not the Jamie Oliver show, this is not a fucking pantomime.… I’m here because I truly care. I’ve got other shit to do’, he says. When a mother drops out of the Lincolnshire pub scheme because her little boy isn’t keen on the pasta and rice served up, Oliver suggests dismissively that they have a chat with the nutritionist who came up with the menus, implying that she was letting her son down. And when a young teacher is found with some junk food ‘contraband’ in her bag, he charmingly suggests: ‘That’s no way to live, darling. You’ve got to have some pride in yourself.’
Oliver’s crusade is the product of the panic over obesity and children’s diets and his campaign only helps to stoke these fears further. Far from being an unwelcome critic, he is helpfully touting the New Labour line on food, health and the inadequacies of parents. No wonder that when he meets Tony Blair at the end of the latest programme, Blair says he will happily extend the increased funding for school dinners for another three years. Oliver leaves triumphant, perhaps forgetting that at the start of the show he was moaning that the same amount of money was inadequate.
If we were facing an impending health disaster, changing the kind of meals children are served during the school year would make little impact. But in fact, as we’ve noted elsewhere on spiked, no such disaster looms. A diet of Turkey Twizzlers, chips and beans is not perfect, but it is perfectly adequate. Oliver’s horror stories about children vomiting their own faeces and dying en masse before their parents have no basis in reality.
As for adult eating habits, they are not determined in the school canteen. Children have always been rather conservative eaters who prefer all the ‘wrong’ foods, yet experience shows that they still grow up healthy and that their tastes mature. If our childhood eating habits mattered that much, most of us would have long since perished. What Oliver fails to comprehend is that he could provide haute cuisine and lots of kids would still refuse. Rejecting school meals in favour of bunking off down the chip shop is just another minor act of teenage rebellion.
While Oliver has been received with almost universal praise in the media, there are signs of a backlash from catering staff sick of working longer hours and parents sick of being lectured on how to bring up their kids. If the Rotherham example is anything to go by, maybe eating junk food will become more than teenage rebellion – perhaps it’s a way for parents to tell the patronising ‘tosser’ where to go, too.
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BRITISH CEMETERIES GOING MUSLIM
A new cemetery is to have all its graves aligned with Mecca - making it the first council graveyard in the country to bury the dead in Islamic tradition, regardless of their religion. Headstones in the new 2.5 million pound High Wood Cemetery in Nottingham will face north-east - as Muslims believe the dead look over their shoulder towards Mecca. This is the way in which all followers of Islam in the UK are buried. But the move has upset the Church and led to complaints that the policy discriminates against the city's majority Christian population. The traditional direction of burial for Christians is facing east.
The Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham, the Rt Rev George Cassidy, criticised the decision. He said: "This is a sensitive issue to all people. I hope the situation will be reviewed with wide consultation and a policy introduced that takes account of the needs of all." The decision was made by Steve Dowling, Nottingham City Council's Services Director for Environment and Public Protection, after liaising with the city's multi-faith Cemeteries Consultative Committee. He said: "For people of the Muslim faith this fits in with a religious requirement, but it will also ensure a tidy appearance for the site. People can choose to be buried facing another direction but if they do not specify that, they will be buried facing north-east. The vast majority of people do not express a preference."
But Brendan Clarke-Smith, Tory councillor for Clifton North, said: "I was totally bewildered when I read about this decision. I spoke to one of the local Muslim groups in my area and they were equally surprised by what had been done. It is utterly ridiculous and I know it'll create a lot of ill feeling both in Nottingham and the country generally." The clergy and critics of the policy at the new 40-acre cemetery are supported by Raza Ul Haq, Imam at the Madni Masjid Mosque. He said: "It is part of our religion for the dead to be aligned with Mecca. It is very important. But for Christians, if they want to face somewhere else we support them."
Last night a spokesman for the Institute of Cemeteries and Crematorium Management said it was the first time he had heard of any public cemetery in Britain choosing to have all its gravestones facing north-east, in line with Muslim tradition. "It is unusual,' he said. "It would seem appropriate if there was a large population of Muslims." In Nottingham, however, Muslims make up less than five per cent of the region's 500,000 population.
Nigel Lymn Rose managing director of A.W. Lymn Funeral Directors, and a past president of the National Association of Funeral Directors, said Mr Dowling had told him of the decision when he went to High Wood for a site visit and asked whether Muslims had been taken into account. He said: "I was astonished to be told, "Oh yes, we're burying everyone so they are aligned to Mecca. It will make things easier." "It's one thing to be buried facing north-east because that is the way the cemetery lies, or the plot within it - it is quite another thing to learn that you have been buried facing that direction because it follows Islamic law."
Brian Grocock, a councillor who took part in the consultation process, said: "I don't know how this has become such a big issue. "The consultations went on for three or four years. We had people of all faiths represented at the meetings - or they certainly had the chance to attend. Nobody I know had any objections to the plan." So far at Highwood there have been just six burials - of which three were Muslim.
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Should childhood come with a health warning?
This week, a group of experts raised critical questions about how we mollycoddle children - but they also indulged some childish prejudices
The modern world is damaging our children, according to a group of eminent experts. More than 100 children's authors, scientists, health professionals, teachers and academics joined Sue Palmer - education consultant, broadcaster and author of Toxic Childhood: How The Modern World Is Damaging Our Children And What We Can Do About It - in signing a letter to the London Daily Telegraph on 12 September 2006. It ran under the headline: `Have we forgotten how to bring up our children?'
Children are suffering, the experts claim, as a result of junk food, school targets and mass marketing. The modern world is not providing them with what they need to develop, apparently, which includes: `real food (as opposed to processed "junk"), real play (as opposed to sedentary, screen-based entertainment), first-hand experience of the world they live in, and regular interaction with the real-life significant adults in their lives.'
I share some of the concerns of the signatories, particularly the fact that children now have fewer and fewer opportunities to play outdoors. Children are often no longer able to play in the streets, walk or cycle to school, play in local parks, or just mess about with their friends away from the supervision of parents and teachers. And yet, many of the letter-signers' concerns seem to be shaped more by contemporary prejudices about modern living than by expert insights into what makes children tick.
Take the denunciation of junk food. As has been argued elsewhere on spiked, `there is no such thing as "junk" food. Our digestive systems do not distinguish between fish fingers and caviar.' (See Hard to swallow, by Rob Lyons.) We are bombarded with warnings about unhealthy modern diets and eating habits, yet life expectancies continue to rise - in great part due to vast improvements in most children's diets over the past 100 years.
And consider the warnings about new technologies. We are told that `since children's brains are still developing, they cannot adjust - as full-grown adults can - to the effects of ever more rapid technological and cultural change'. Most serious neuroscientists would dispute such a crass statement. Also, the idea that children find it difficult to adjust to `ever more rapid technological and cultural change' runs entirely counter to our everyday experience and to most scientific research. Numerous studies highlight the extent to which children are able to grasp and master new technologies. Indeed, many adults don't understand or use new technologies with the same ease that children do, which perhaps explains why they are so prone to seeing such technology as scary. We should be careful not to transpose our own, adult discomfort with technological and cultural changes on to children.
As former commissioning editor of spiked and freelance writer Jennie Bristow argues in an online debate sponsored by O2 to be launched on spiked next week, titled `Young People, Mobiles And Social Networking': `The fact that mobiles and the internet allow children access to "social networks" beyond the geographical boundaries of their daily lives is often seen as deeply scary, but it shouldn't take too much imagination to see that there is a positive side as well.'
It is not screen-based entertainment that is restricting children's play-space. Instead, it is adults' over-anxious desire to remove children from all risks. Adults are overly concerned with keeping children under their control and protection, and out of harm's way - which means they often end up restricting children's opportunities for `real' play. It could be argued that it is precisely because children are increasingly denied the freedom and space for experimentation and play in the `real' world that they are using the virtual world to try to gain some autonomy and independence.
The best thing experts can do for children is to argue for them to be given more freedom - not to do whatever they want, of course; they need clear boundaries set by parents. But unsupervised play isn't just some kind of childhood luxury that kids can do without. It is vital for children's healthy emotional and social development. Study after study has shown that it helps to develop children's ability to negotiate social rules and to create their own rules. Children need to learn to deal with risks and develop the capacity to assess challenges. They also need to be given the opportunity to develop resilience to life's inevitable blows. In short, taking risks in childhood goes hand-in-hand with developing new skills.
There is a danger that the experts feed into current fears for children's safety, thereby exacerbating the problem they are trying to alleviate. As Frank Furedi, spiked contributor and author of Paranoid Parenting, argued in the online magazine The First Post this week: `Despite their admirable intention, the authors of this letter may unintentionally contribute towards reinforcing a culture where every childhood experience comes with a health warning.'
The letter in the Telegraph ends with a call for a public debate `as a matter of urgency', in order to address the `complex socio-cultural problem' of an increasingly restricted childhood. Although children's lives have improved in very many ways over the decades, the signatories are right in highlighting that we do face a problem. Clearly, we need to ask some serious questions about what an increasingly structured, sanitised and relentlessly supervised world is doing to children. But it is important that we identify what the real problem is, rather than pointing the finger at easy `junk' targets and labelling children as fragile and easily damaged. So, let the debate begin.
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Impoverishing and disruptive effects of land-use restrictions in Britain
Appeasing the property-owning English middle classes, the green lobby, the National Trust and the Campaign to Protect Rural England, the government insists that newly-built housing confine itself to brownfield sites. Britain's antiquated planning system is always absorbing yet more government guidance on housing design, energy use and all the rest. But it gets more Byzantine each year for a reason: to make houses more difficult to build. In particular, the government will not allow working-class people to spread out and invade Britain's green and virgin soil.
The government prefers to cram people it regards as plebs into transport-free cities that are more and more tightly packed. Land must not be claimed, cheaply and easily, from nature. Instead, it must be expensively and with great effort `reclaimed' from horrid, man-made contamination.
As prices for houses around East London's Olympic Village will soon attest, the result is, once again, that the demand for a decent home with reasonable transport links far exceeds supply. It has long been evident that the Thames Gateway area, billed as Europe's largest housing development, will in fact see relatively few new homes built. But it has now become clear that the 40-odd overlapping quangos responsible for the Thames Gateway have, to all intents and purposes, turned it into the London Thames Gateway. An area which was supposed to fan houses out to the east coast will confine them to the east of the nation's capital.
Powered by green dogma, the government's rush for brownfield development is truly zealous. Some 74 per cent of new dwellings in England are now on brownfield land. By reaching this figure, the government is, in 2006, far exceeding its own target for 2008, which was that 60 per cent of new-build should by then be brownfield.
What an achievement! This is a beating of targets of which Joe Stalin would be proud. But through its eagerness to achieve high levels of housing density, the government also fuels the current wave of Malthusian sentiment around the issue of immigration.
As Neil Davenport has pointed out previously on spiked, today's elite outcry over levels of immigration panders to the backward idea that society's problems are caused by there being too many people. But a recent report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, a London think-tank, has just highlighted a related but highly important issue. `What will bring the worst of all worlds', its chief executive Douglas McWilliams writes, `is to have the immigration but not the infrastructure, which will condemn all of us to traffic jams, rising house prices and overcrowding in schools, hospitals and elsewhere'.
We can leave Mr McWilliams to his own views on immigration. But his point about infrastructure is absolutely right. In certain local authorities, services such as education and health may well be unprepared for a relatively rapid build-up of local concentrations of immigrants. But in relation to accommodation, it is not the immigrant influx that leads to the perception that Britain is overcrowded and overpopulated, so much as the government's fanatical pursuit of high density in housing - a kind of Brownfield Brutalism that would condemn us all to a nicely designed broom cupboard. I am always suspicious of the view that the white working class feels itself `swamped' by immigrants. But to the extent that towns - Dover, for example - feel this way, it might be apt to blame, not immigrants, but the government's failure to fund expanding infrastructure and greenfield housing.
Ministers fairly crow that the average density being achieved across England is now 42 dwellings per hectare (6). Indeed, Yvette Cooper, minister for housing and planning, has boasted that while densities were `only' 25 homes per hectare in 1997, New Labour can now build 1.1million homes `on less land than the previous government set aside for just 900,000 homes - saving an area of greenfield land greater than the size of Oxford'. But what is a hectare, anyway? It is 10,000 square metres. So 25 dwellings per hectare of land in 1997 = 400sqm for each dwelling, or a land area of 20x20m. And 42 dwellings per hectare in 2006? That's 238sqm for each dwelling - in other words, little more than 15x15m of land.
This is a really drastic reduction in living space - and New Labour has achieved it in just nine years. Today, when so many of New Labour's policies increase urban atomisation and anomie, we are forced into a cheek-by-jowl huddle of smaller and smaller flats, at bigger and bigger prices. And then New Labour has the nerve to turn around and blame a surge of Rumanian criminals as a threat to Britain's social fabric.
Like Gordon Brown's sale of public sector assets, and like green efforts to conserve energy, the rush for brownfield land in fact produces very few savings - in this case, of greenfield land. Why? For two reasons. First, Britain is already predominantly green. Brownfield land is so modest an expanse that even the tightest patterns of house-packing can, at best, free up little land for greenfield status. Second, the government, not content with restricting people's ability to find housing, has anyway long been busy creating new green pastures.
Take Yvette Cooper's saving achieved by going brownfield - an area `the size of Oxford'. That turns out to be a saving of 3,300 hectares; in other words, a colossal 0.01 per cent of the land cover of Great Britain. On top of that, the government has already been adding more land for the Green Belt: a total of 19,000 hectares between 1998 and 2003. A further potential 12,000 hectares of Green Belt has been proposed in emerging development plans.
As it happens, 19,000 hectares is an area the size of Liverpool. So the Green Belt, which we are always being told is on the point of being `concreted over', has actually undergone an expansion that is modest, but much bigger than Cooper's Oxford-sized `saving' of greenfield land through Brownfield Brutalism. It bears remembering that the land cover of Great Britain is 23.5million hectares, used in 2002 as follows:
-- intensive agricultural land - 10.8million hectares, or 45.96 per cent;
-- semi-natural land - 7.0million hectares, or 29.78 per cent;
-- woodland - 2.8million hectares, or 11.91 per cent;
-- settled land accounts for 1.8million hectares, or 7.65 per cent;
-- water bodies - 0.3million hectares, or 1.28 per cent;
-- sundry other categories - 0.8million hectares, or 3.42 per cent.
If settlements are added to the `sundry' component (largely transport infrastructure such as roads and railways), then built-up Great Britain consists of about 2.3million hectares, or just 10 per cent of the land available. But in terms of `settled' houses and workplaces, the figure is actually well under 10 per cent - it's 7.65 per cent. In terms of housing alone, it must be heading towards five per cent, or lower, perhaps. But there is more. It turns out that more than half the land cover of England - 55.2 per cent of the most urbanised part of the UK - is officially `designated' as more or less untouchable: it is of special scientific interest, a special protection area, a special area of conservation, an area of outstanding natural beauty, a National Park, or a part of the Green Belt. In fact, among countries belonging to the Organisation of Economic and Commercial Development (OECD), the UK as a whole has about twice as high a proportion of protected land as the average. Everything is already being done, and then some, to ring-fence the pastoral idyll of the property-owning classes.
We can now see just how immature Ruth Kelly's call for a `mature' debate about immigration really is. Even when we omit Dartmoor, Snowdonia and other great swathes of beauty, Britain has room enough for immigration. But in practice, government policy continues to ensure that housing is both a growing symptom of the British economy's narcissism, and something that is powerfully hard for anyone - immigrant or not - to get hold of. The British economy is narcissistic because its whole focus is on face, not on the creation of genuine wealth. `Look at me!', cries the City to international money capital: `Come into my parlour.' `Look at me!', cries Britain's housing stock: `I am an ageing legacy of the past, but the government guarantees that I will always cost you more and more money.' ....
For the middle classes and a fair bit of the working class, housing has become that much more central to students, newlyweds and parents. For fortysomething parents, indeed, `parenting' is an issue that, to a large degree, revolves around housing. And as if that were not enough, Blairite ex-minister Stephen Byers has confirmed the centrality of housing to family discourse in the UK by setting a hare running about the abolition of inheritance tax, most of which revolves around houses. Alasdair Darling, tipped as Brown's successor at the Treasury, has repudiated Byers. But whatever the outcome, Britain's preoccupation with the money tied up in housing promises only to grow more intense.
Britain's problem is too few houses, not too many immigrants. Nowadays, all roads lead to housing - even if none of them are real roads. In more than seven years, from 1997 to 2004, New Labour has managed to build just 145km of new motorways. It has blighted rural areas with a colossal 400km, or 250 miles, of A roads. And in urban areas it has managed just 99km of A roads. No wonder people feel congested in cities, and cut off in rural areas. The genuine wealth that investment in new infrastructure represents is not part of Gordon Brown's brief. He would rather delude himself, and us, that he is taking what he calls `tough' choices; choices, he says, that will `safeguard stability'. His choices are not tough. They are all too easy. Sooner or later, Brown's choices will bring financial and social instability
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A former nurse who won her High Court battle against hospital ward closures yesterday said that it was not a genuine victory. Pat Morris, from Altrincham, Greater Manchester, risked her home and savings on waging a campaign against Trafford Healthcare NHS Trust after it decided to cut beds at her local hospital without consulting the community. Mrs Morris, 65, resigned her nursing job to concentrate on her legal battle and faced having to pay the trust's legal costs had she lost the case.
Yesterday Mr Justice Hodge backed her view that the trust's decision in March to close 26 rehabilitation beds for older people without consultation had been illegal, and ordered that it be quashed. However, he refused to order that the two wards at Altrincham General Hospital, where Mrs Morris worked for several decades, be reopened immediately. Mrs Morris and her barrister, Anthony Eyers, who worked on her case for no charge, said that they expected NHS managers to pay lipservice to consultation but to keep the wards closed.
Mrs Morris said: "There are no winners today, only losers. They will just go through the motions only to tell us the wards will stay closed. The challenge has been made and the trust have been found wanting, but the elderly, vulnerable people of Altrincham still don't have their care close to home. "I don't have to pay thousands of pounds, but in human terms we have still lost a lot in the last few months. I have no regrets about bringing the case, except that the judge decided it was not his duty at this time to reopen the beds."
Mr Justice Hodge said that the trust would have to reach a new decision after public consultation. He added: "It cannot be right for this court in its discretion to order the reopening of the wards on the basis that there will be a public consultation which might legitimately then decide to close them again."
Mrs Morris has led the campaign against the cuts at Altrincham General since resigning from her job there in 2003 after 16 beds were cut. She was a member of the Patient and Public Involvement Group, a watchdog representing local residents, but left to fight her battle. At one stage the entire hospital was threatened with closure, but Mrs Morris, a former Tory councillor, organised a self-funded series of public rallies, letters and petitions. Hundreds of people turned up to her public meetings, but it was Mrs Morris who sought the judicial review on behalf of the group Health in Trafford. She risked an 80,000 pound bill for legal costs if the judgment had been made against her.
Trafford Healthcare NHS Trust, which is 9 million in debt, will now have to pay its own legal costs. Mrs Morris was awarded her costs, which were less than 1,000 pounds.
Mr Eyers described the ruling as a "Phyrric victory". He said: "It has ramifications for the whole country because it gives a green light to trusts that they can act first and take the legal flak later. They may have to fight, but they can act with some certainty that their decisions will not be reversed. I now expect the trust to make a series of empty promises that they won't deliver on." Mr Eyers said he had taken the case pro bono as a matter of principle: "I live in the Altrincham area and so it had some personal resonance, but NHS trusts, like any public body, should be accountable to the people they serve." He said the same principles had been behind Mrs Morris's fight: "She would have given every last penny she had if it had achieved something for the people of Altrincham."
Trafford Healthcare NHS Trust said that it had cut the beds because "it was no longer a safe place for patients to receive care. Anyone visiting the hospital would be struck by the dilapidated state of the buildings and the nursing and medical staff were no longer confident that they could provide safe services". [And whose fault would that be?] It added that four public meetings would be held next month to decide the future of in-patient wards at the hospital
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Jamie Oliver: what a 'tosser' [jerk]
St Jamie's school-dinners crusade returns tonight, providing yet another unhealthy serving of food fears with a side order of parent-bashing bile.
The man in the checked shirt wobbles towards the bus, ice-cream cone in hand, not sure whether to keep licking or run faster. Then disaster strikes: he drops the cone. As he looks down in horror, the bus pulls away. Unperturbed, the fat feckless f*** scoops up the ice-cream from the ground and stuffs it in his mouth.
The man in the checked shirt is Jamie Oliver, all padded up in a fat suit. And the scene is the trailer for the latest phase in his ‘school meals revolution’, Jamie’s Return to School Dinners, which airs tonight on Channel 4. The implication is that unless we all respond to Jamie’s call to arms, we’re ignorant scum condemning many of today’s children to a life of disabling obesity and chronic ill-health.
Giving children the option to eat relatively fresh and nutritious food during the school day is an attractive one. But Oliver’s crusade is based on distortions about the quality and importance of children’s diets, and a contempt for any parent who doesn’t fit in with his idea of how they should be raising their kids.
This contempt no doubt extends to Julie Critchlow and Sam Walker, two mums who have started a ‘junk food’ run for kids at a school in Rotherham, northern England. They’re taking orders and cash through the school fence and returning with food from local takeaways. ‘This is all down to Jamie Oliver. I just don’t like him and what he stands for’, Walker told the Sun. The Sun, never afraid to take a cheap shot, described the women as ‘junk mothers’ who exhibit ‘the kind of feeble parenting that turns kids into fat, lethargic burger addicts in the first place’ (1). Oliver is not the only one who thinks that parents who won’t toe the line are neglecting their kids.
In tonight’s programme, Oliver doesn’t hold back. ‘I’ve spent two years being PC about parents. It’s kind of time to say if you’re giving very young kids bottles and bottles of fizzy drink you’re a fucking arsehole, you’re a tosser. If you’ve giving bags of shitty sweets at that very young age, you’re an idiot.’
The programme demonstrates that running a one-man revolution is hard work. In Lincolnshire (a relatively poor farming county) he discovers that many children aren’t offered hot meals at all because school kitchens were closed under the last Conservative government. He tries to get local businesses to fill the gap – and then discovers that even those model ‘healthy schools’ he set up down south are running into problems. Kidbrooke School in the London borough of Greenwich, the place where it all started in the first series of Jamie’s School Dinners, is losing thousands of pounds because it no longer sells crisps, chocolate and fizzy drinks at break times. The kids buy their treats on the way to school, handing their money to local shops rather than the school. The extra government money provided after the last series is insufficient to cover the shortfall.
Oliver seems to spend his whole time firefighting. Up in Lincolnshire, he arranges for a local pub to provide meals to nearby primary schools. That means mass catering in a totally unsuitable kitchen before parents and taxi drivers deliver the food to the schools. Unsurprisingly, hygiene standards at the pub are well below what would be expected in a school, the food quality suffers as the chef tries to eke out a profit, and parents drop out as their initial enthusiasm fades. In the end, the pub pulls out, no doubt thinking they needed the whole loss-making operation and bad publicity like a hole in the head.
Oliver makes his life a lot harder by his prejudices about processed food and local production. Why a Panini filled with meat and a couple of sprigs of basil is any better in terms of nutrition than a ham sandwich made with white sliced bread is never explained. He insists on emphasising small and local provision – even when it is clearly unsuitable – over trying to persuade the big caterers with their economies of scale to alter what they provide. The whole operation is doomed to be unprofitable, so businesses quickly lose interest. His schemes only keep going because dinner ladies work unpaid overtime – which they eventually tire of, considering that even when they’re getting paid, it is only the measly minimum wage.
So Oliver’s tone becomes increasingly intolerant. He is unable to comprehend why others are not as motivated as he is. ‘This is not the Jamie Oliver show, this is not a fucking pantomime.… I’m here because I truly care. I’ve got other shit to do’, he says. When a mother drops out of the Lincolnshire pub scheme because her little boy isn’t keen on the pasta and rice served up, Oliver suggests dismissively that they have a chat with the nutritionist who came up with the menus, implying that she was letting her son down. And when a young teacher is found with some junk food ‘contraband’ in her bag, he charmingly suggests: ‘That’s no way to live, darling. You’ve got to have some pride in yourself.’
Oliver’s crusade is the product of the panic over obesity and children’s diets and his campaign only helps to stoke these fears further. Far from being an unwelcome critic, he is helpfully touting the New Labour line on food, health and the inadequacies of parents. No wonder that when he meets Tony Blair at the end of the latest programme, Blair says he will happily extend the increased funding for school dinners for another three years. Oliver leaves triumphant, perhaps forgetting that at the start of the show he was moaning that the same amount of money was inadequate.
If we were facing an impending health disaster, changing the kind of meals children are served during the school year would make little impact. But in fact, as we’ve noted elsewhere on spiked, no such disaster looms. A diet of Turkey Twizzlers, chips and beans is not perfect, but it is perfectly adequate. Oliver’s horror stories about children vomiting their own faeces and dying en masse before their parents have no basis in reality.
As for adult eating habits, they are not determined in the school canteen. Children have always been rather conservative eaters who prefer all the ‘wrong’ foods, yet experience shows that they still grow up healthy and that their tastes mature. If our childhood eating habits mattered that much, most of us would have long since perished. What Oliver fails to comprehend is that he could provide haute cuisine and lots of kids would still refuse. Rejecting school meals in favour of bunking off down the chip shop is just another minor act of teenage rebellion.
While Oliver has been received with almost universal praise in the media, there are signs of a backlash from catering staff sick of working longer hours and parents sick of being lectured on how to bring up their kids. If the Rotherham example is anything to go by, maybe eating junk food will become more than teenage rebellion – perhaps it’s a way for parents to tell the patronising ‘tosser’ where to go, too.
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BRITISH CEMETERIES GOING MUSLIM
A new cemetery is to have all its graves aligned with Mecca - making it the first council graveyard in the country to bury the dead in Islamic tradition, regardless of their religion. Headstones in the new 2.5 million pound High Wood Cemetery in Nottingham will face north-east - as Muslims believe the dead look over their shoulder towards Mecca. This is the way in which all followers of Islam in the UK are buried. But the move has upset the Church and led to complaints that the policy discriminates against the city's majority Christian population. The traditional direction of burial for Christians is facing east.
The Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham, the Rt Rev George Cassidy, criticised the decision. He said: "This is a sensitive issue to all people. I hope the situation will be reviewed with wide consultation and a policy introduced that takes account of the needs of all." The decision was made by Steve Dowling, Nottingham City Council's Services Director for Environment and Public Protection, after liaising with the city's multi-faith Cemeteries Consultative Committee. He said: "For people of the Muslim faith this fits in with a religious requirement, but it will also ensure a tidy appearance for the site. People can choose to be buried facing another direction but if they do not specify that, they will be buried facing north-east. The vast majority of people do not express a preference."
But Brendan Clarke-Smith, Tory councillor for Clifton North, said: "I was totally bewildered when I read about this decision. I spoke to one of the local Muslim groups in my area and they were equally surprised by what had been done. It is utterly ridiculous and I know it'll create a lot of ill feeling both in Nottingham and the country generally." The clergy and critics of the policy at the new 40-acre cemetery are supported by Raza Ul Haq, Imam at the Madni Masjid Mosque. He said: "It is part of our religion for the dead to be aligned with Mecca. It is very important. But for Christians, if they want to face somewhere else we support them."
Last night a spokesman for the Institute of Cemeteries and Crematorium Management said it was the first time he had heard of any public cemetery in Britain choosing to have all its gravestones facing north-east, in line with Muslim tradition. "It is unusual,' he said. "It would seem appropriate if there was a large population of Muslims." In Nottingham, however, Muslims make up less than five per cent of the region's 500,000 population.
Nigel Lymn Rose managing director of A.W. Lymn Funeral Directors, and a past president of the National Association of Funeral Directors, said Mr Dowling had told him of the decision when he went to High Wood for a site visit and asked whether Muslims had been taken into account. He said: "I was astonished to be told, "Oh yes, we're burying everyone so they are aligned to Mecca. It will make things easier." "It's one thing to be buried facing north-east because that is the way the cemetery lies, or the plot within it - it is quite another thing to learn that you have been buried facing that direction because it follows Islamic law."
Brian Grocock, a councillor who took part in the consultation process, said: "I don't know how this has become such a big issue. "The consultations went on for three or four years. We had people of all faiths represented at the meetings - or they certainly had the chance to attend. Nobody I know had any objections to the plan." So far at Highwood there have been just six burials - of which three were Muslim.
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Should childhood come with a health warning?
This week, a group of experts raised critical questions about how we mollycoddle children - but they also indulged some childish prejudices
The modern world is damaging our children, according to a group of eminent experts. More than 100 children's authors, scientists, health professionals, teachers and academics joined Sue Palmer - education consultant, broadcaster and author of Toxic Childhood: How The Modern World Is Damaging Our Children And What We Can Do About It - in signing a letter to the London Daily Telegraph on 12 September 2006. It ran under the headline: `Have we forgotten how to bring up our children?'
Children are suffering, the experts claim, as a result of junk food, school targets and mass marketing. The modern world is not providing them with what they need to develop, apparently, which includes: `real food (as opposed to processed "junk"), real play (as opposed to sedentary, screen-based entertainment), first-hand experience of the world they live in, and regular interaction with the real-life significant adults in their lives.'
I share some of the concerns of the signatories, particularly the fact that children now have fewer and fewer opportunities to play outdoors. Children are often no longer able to play in the streets, walk or cycle to school, play in local parks, or just mess about with their friends away from the supervision of parents and teachers. And yet, many of the letter-signers' concerns seem to be shaped more by contemporary prejudices about modern living than by expert insights into what makes children tick.
Take the denunciation of junk food. As has been argued elsewhere on spiked, `there is no such thing as "junk" food. Our digestive systems do not distinguish between fish fingers and caviar.' (See Hard to swallow, by Rob Lyons.) We are bombarded with warnings about unhealthy modern diets and eating habits, yet life expectancies continue to rise - in great part due to vast improvements in most children's diets over the past 100 years.
And consider the warnings about new technologies. We are told that `since children's brains are still developing, they cannot adjust - as full-grown adults can - to the effects of ever more rapid technological and cultural change'. Most serious neuroscientists would dispute such a crass statement. Also, the idea that children find it difficult to adjust to `ever more rapid technological and cultural change' runs entirely counter to our everyday experience and to most scientific research. Numerous studies highlight the extent to which children are able to grasp and master new technologies. Indeed, many adults don't understand or use new technologies with the same ease that children do, which perhaps explains why they are so prone to seeing such technology as scary. We should be careful not to transpose our own, adult discomfort with technological and cultural changes on to children.
As former commissioning editor of spiked and freelance writer Jennie Bristow argues in an online debate sponsored by O2 to be launched on spiked next week, titled `Young People, Mobiles And Social Networking': `The fact that mobiles and the internet allow children access to "social networks" beyond the geographical boundaries of their daily lives is often seen as deeply scary, but it shouldn't take too much imagination to see that there is a positive side as well.'
It is not screen-based entertainment that is restricting children's play-space. Instead, it is adults' over-anxious desire to remove children from all risks. Adults are overly concerned with keeping children under their control and protection, and out of harm's way - which means they often end up restricting children's opportunities for `real' play. It could be argued that it is precisely because children are increasingly denied the freedom and space for experimentation and play in the `real' world that they are using the virtual world to try to gain some autonomy and independence.
The best thing experts can do for children is to argue for them to be given more freedom - not to do whatever they want, of course; they need clear boundaries set by parents. But unsupervised play isn't just some kind of childhood luxury that kids can do without. It is vital for children's healthy emotional and social development. Study after study has shown that it helps to develop children's ability to negotiate social rules and to create their own rules. Children need to learn to deal with risks and develop the capacity to assess challenges. They also need to be given the opportunity to develop resilience to life's inevitable blows. In short, taking risks in childhood goes hand-in-hand with developing new skills.
There is a danger that the experts feed into current fears for children's safety, thereby exacerbating the problem they are trying to alleviate. As Frank Furedi, spiked contributor and author of Paranoid Parenting, argued in the online magazine The First Post this week: `Despite their admirable intention, the authors of this letter may unintentionally contribute towards reinforcing a culture where every childhood experience comes with a health warning.'
The letter in the Telegraph ends with a call for a public debate `as a matter of urgency', in order to address the `complex socio-cultural problem' of an increasingly restricted childhood. Although children's lives have improved in very many ways over the decades, the signatories are right in highlighting that we do face a problem. Clearly, we need to ask some serious questions about what an increasingly structured, sanitised and relentlessly supervised world is doing to children. But it is important that we identify what the real problem is, rather than pointing the finger at easy `junk' targets and labelling children as fragile and easily damaged. So, let the debate begin.
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Impoverishing and disruptive effects of land-use restrictions in Britain
Appeasing the property-owning English middle classes, the green lobby, the National Trust and the Campaign to Protect Rural England, the government insists that newly-built housing confine itself to brownfield sites. Britain's antiquated planning system is always absorbing yet more government guidance on housing design, energy use and all the rest. But it gets more Byzantine each year for a reason: to make houses more difficult to build. In particular, the government will not allow working-class people to spread out and invade Britain's green and virgin soil.
The government prefers to cram people it regards as plebs into transport-free cities that are more and more tightly packed. Land must not be claimed, cheaply and easily, from nature. Instead, it must be expensively and with great effort `reclaimed' from horrid, man-made contamination.
As prices for houses around East London's Olympic Village will soon attest, the result is, once again, that the demand for a decent home with reasonable transport links far exceeds supply. It has long been evident that the Thames Gateway area, billed as Europe's largest housing development, will in fact see relatively few new homes built. But it has now become clear that the 40-odd overlapping quangos responsible for the Thames Gateway have, to all intents and purposes, turned it into the London Thames Gateway. An area which was supposed to fan houses out to the east coast will confine them to the east of the nation's capital.
Powered by green dogma, the government's rush for brownfield development is truly zealous. Some 74 per cent of new dwellings in England are now on brownfield land. By reaching this figure, the government is, in 2006, far exceeding its own target for 2008, which was that 60 per cent of new-build should by then be brownfield.
What an achievement! This is a beating of targets of which Joe Stalin would be proud. But through its eagerness to achieve high levels of housing density, the government also fuels the current wave of Malthusian sentiment around the issue of immigration.
As Neil Davenport has pointed out previously on spiked, today's elite outcry over levels of immigration panders to the backward idea that society's problems are caused by there being too many people. But a recent report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research, a London think-tank, has just highlighted a related but highly important issue. `What will bring the worst of all worlds', its chief executive Douglas McWilliams writes, `is to have the immigration but not the infrastructure, which will condemn all of us to traffic jams, rising house prices and overcrowding in schools, hospitals and elsewhere'.
We can leave Mr McWilliams to his own views on immigration. But his point about infrastructure is absolutely right. In certain local authorities, services such as education and health may well be unprepared for a relatively rapid build-up of local concentrations of immigrants. But in relation to accommodation, it is not the immigrant influx that leads to the perception that Britain is overcrowded and overpopulated, so much as the government's fanatical pursuit of high density in housing - a kind of Brownfield Brutalism that would condemn us all to a nicely designed broom cupboard. I am always suspicious of the view that the white working class feels itself `swamped' by immigrants. But to the extent that towns - Dover, for example - feel this way, it might be apt to blame, not immigrants, but the government's failure to fund expanding infrastructure and greenfield housing.
Ministers fairly crow that the average density being achieved across England is now 42 dwellings per hectare (6). Indeed, Yvette Cooper, minister for housing and planning, has boasted that while densities were `only' 25 homes per hectare in 1997, New Labour can now build 1.1million homes `on less land than the previous government set aside for just 900,000 homes - saving an area of greenfield land greater than the size of Oxford'. But what is a hectare, anyway? It is 10,000 square metres. So 25 dwellings per hectare of land in 1997 = 400sqm for each dwelling, or a land area of 20x20m. And 42 dwellings per hectare in 2006? That's 238sqm for each dwelling - in other words, little more than 15x15m of land.
This is a really drastic reduction in living space - and New Labour has achieved it in just nine years. Today, when so many of New Labour's policies increase urban atomisation and anomie, we are forced into a cheek-by-jowl huddle of smaller and smaller flats, at bigger and bigger prices. And then New Labour has the nerve to turn around and blame a surge of Rumanian criminals as a threat to Britain's social fabric.
Like Gordon Brown's sale of public sector assets, and like green efforts to conserve energy, the rush for brownfield land in fact produces very few savings - in this case, of greenfield land. Why? For two reasons. First, Britain is already predominantly green. Brownfield land is so modest an expanse that even the tightest patterns of house-packing can, at best, free up little land for greenfield status. Second, the government, not content with restricting people's ability to find housing, has anyway long been busy creating new green pastures.
Take Yvette Cooper's saving achieved by going brownfield - an area `the size of Oxford'. That turns out to be a saving of 3,300 hectares; in other words, a colossal 0.01 per cent of the land cover of Great Britain. On top of that, the government has already been adding more land for the Green Belt: a total of 19,000 hectares between 1998 and 2003. A further potential 12,000 hectares of Green Belt has been proposed in emerging development plans.
As it happens, 19,000 hectares is an area the size of Liverpool. So the Green Belt, which we are always being told is on the point of being `concreted over', has actually undergone an expansion that is modest, but much bigger than Cooper's Oxford-sized `saving' of greenfield land through Brownfield Brutalism. It bears remembering that the land cover of Great Britain is 23.5million hectares, used in 2002 as follows:
-- intensive agricultural land - 10.8million hectares, or 45.96 per cent;
-- semi-natural land - 7.0million hectares, or 29.78 per cent;
-- woodland - 2.8million hectares, or 11.91 per cent;
-- settled land accounts for 1.8million hectares, or 7.65 per cent;
-- water bodies - 0.3million hectares, or 1.28 per cent;
-- sundry other categories - 0.8million hectares, or 3.42 per cent.
If settlements are added to the `sundry' component (largely transport infrastructure such as roads and railways), then built-up Great Britain consists of about 2.3million hectares, or just 10 per cent of the land available. But in terms of `settled' houses and workplaces, the figure is actually well under 10 per cent - it's 7.65 per cent. In terms of housing alone, it must be heading towards five per cent, or lower, perhaps. But there is more. It turns out that more than half the land cover of England - 55.2 per cent of the most urbanised part of the UK - is officially `designated' as more or less untouchable: it is of special scientific interest, a special protection area, a special area of conservation, an area of outstanding natural beauty, a National Park, or a part of the Green Belt. In fact, among countries belonging to the Organisation of Economic and Commercial Development (OECD), the UK as a whole has about twice as high a proportion of protected land as the average. Everything is already being done, and then some, to ring-fence the pastoral idyll of the property-owning classes.
We can now see just how immature Ruth Kelly's call for a `mature' debate about immigration really is. Even when we omit Dartmoor, Snowdonia and other great swathes of beauty, Britain has room enough for immigration. But in practice, government policy continues to ensure that housing is both a growing symptom of the British economy's narcissism, and something that is powerfully hard for anyone - immigrant or not - to get hold of. The British economy is narcissistic because its whole focus is on face, not on the creation of genuine wealth. `Look at me!', cries the City to international money capital: `Come into my parlour.' `Look at me!', cries Britain's housing stock: `I am an ageing legacy of the past, but the government guarantees that I will always cost you more and more money.' ....
For the middle classes and a fair bit of the working class, housing has become that much more central to students, newlyweds and parents. For fortysomething parents, indeed, `parenting' is an issue that, to a large degree, revolves around housing. And as if that were not enough, Blairite ex-minister Stephen Byers has confirmed the centrality of housing to family discourse in the UK by setting a hare running about the abolition of inheritance tax, most of which revolves around houses. Alasdair Darling, tipped as Brown's successor at the Treasury, has repudiated Byers. But whatever the outcome, Britain's preoccupation with the money tied up in housing promises only to grow more intense.
Britain's problem is too few houses, not too many immigrants. Nowadays, all roads lead to housing - even if none of them are real roads. In more than seven years, from 1997 to 2004, New Labour has managed to build just 145km of new motorways. It has blighted rural areas with a colossal 400km, or 250 miles, of A roads. And in urban areas it has managed just 99km of A roads. No wonder people feel congested in cities, and cut off in rural areas. The genuine wealth that investment in new infrastructure represents is not part of Gordon Brown's brief. He would rather delude himself, and us, that he is taking what he calls `tough' choices; choices, he says, that will `safeguard stability'. His choices are not tough. They are all too easy. Sooner or later, Brown's choices will bring financial and social instability
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Tuesday, September 26, 2006
POLITICALLY CORRECT BRITISH POLICE RAID A SERIOUS CRIMINAL
They regularly ignore complaints about "Yobs", and Muslims can do as they please but a cat with one flea is a serious matter
Pet owner Robert Emberson was stunned as two cops swooped on his home - to seize his KITTEN. The bobbies went round after pet charity workers were tipped off that the moggy missed a routine appointment. Robert had adopted the rescue kitten named Plume.
But Cat Protection workers swooped to demand it back - and called in a police escort in case there was trouble. Horticultural student Robert, 18, accused the charity of being heavy-handed. He said: "They were so rude - barging in without warning. I was horrified." It followed an earlier visit by a Cat Protection worker who claimed to have seen a SINGLE FLEA on the cat. Robert, of Canvey Island, Essex, agreed to treat Plume. But he was waiting for his pay from his part-time job.
He said: "The flea treatment cost me a day's wages, but I paid for Plume to be vaccinated and everything. "I missed just one treatment, but they said they might take Plume away." The charity - criticised for refusing to let a man with an artificial leg adopt a cat - refused to comment. Robert was eventually allowed to keep the cat.
An Essex Police spokeswoman said: "We are frequently asked by other agencies to support them when there could be public order issues." [Fierce cat?]
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NHS SEMI-PRIVATIZATION WORKING -- BUT NOT WHOLLY AS INTENDED
They are helping BritGov's battle with its public servants, but at a cost
Private health centres are being paid tens of millions of pounds by the NHS for operations that are not happening. Hardly any of the independent centres set up under generous contracts are meeting their targets, an investigation by Health Service Journal has found. But they still get paid, unlike NHS hospitals, which are paid on the basis of how many operations they do.
The 20 centres were open by March. Information gathered by the journal from public documents, freedom of information requests and parliamentary answers indicates that so far they are doing only 59 per cent of the operations for which they are contracted. The Will Adams Treatment Centre in Gillingham, Kent, is performing at the rate of 945 procedures a year, compared with the 3,954 needed to meet its targets. It carries out hernia operations and day-surgery orthopaedic, gastroenterology and urology procedures.
The Department of Health denies that there is a problem. The centres were set up with five-year contracts and a spokesman said that it was completely misleading to say that activity below 100 per cent represented a waste of money. That could be determined only at the end of the contracts, when it would be clear how many operations the centres had done.
Its own figures put a different gloss on the situation by including other short-term programmes launched to shift the backlog. When those are included, it says that the programme is working at 84 per cent of capacity. Independent sector treatment centres (ISTCs) are controversial because NHS traditionalists say that they take money away from health service hospitals, disrupting their finances. The first ISTCs were set up under contracts that guaranteed an income based on the number of patients they undertook to treat, regardless of whether that many were treated.
Overall, HSJ calculated that the 20 centres should be treating patients at the rate of 78,242 a year, assuming that the target numbers are averaged over the whole of the five-year contract. But in the period to March their treatment rate was 46,073 patients a year, 59 per cent of the target.
In defence of the centres, many have not been open long, and the numbers they treat have not had time to build up. The main cause of the shortfall appears to be a reluctance by doctors to refer patients to them. Attempts have been made to persuade GPs to increase referral rates, but one obstacle is that ISTCs are staffed largely by doctors from abroad who are not known personally to GPs. This may affect judgments and make it less likely that patients will choose to go there.
The centres are costing primary care trusts a lot of money. Local reports suggest, for example, that the underperformance of the Will Adams ISTC is costing Medway PCT 100,000 pounds a month. The trust’s deficit in 2005-06 was £2.4 million.
A survey by HSJ of 42 NHS chief executives found considerable disquiet. More than three quarters felt that their own finances had been damaged by the centres — including 7 per cent who called the effect disastrous. Almost 60 per cent doubted that the centres had added to NHS capacity, and question marks were raised about whether the NHS needed any extra capacity anyway.
The health department, and 10 Downing Street, are unlikely to be unduly alarmed by the findings. The hidden agenda behind the ISTCs was an attempt to break the power of surgeons in NHS hospitals to control waiting lists, and that seems to be succeeding. The policy to allow patients a choice as to where they are treated has had such a dramatic effect on waiting times that top advisers regret that it was not introduced much sooner.
Source
NHS fails as an insurer once again
A new drug that could transform the lives of children with a rare genetic condition might be judged too expensive for the NHS. Hunter Syndrome was in the headlines last year when Andrew Wragg, 40, a former SAS soldier, was driven to despair by the decline of his son Jacob, 10, and smothered him with a pillow. The father, from Worthing, was cleared of murder and given a suspended sentence for manslaughter with diminished responsibility.
The fatal syndrome, suffered almost exclusively by boys, is caused by a defective enzyme that is unable to break down complex sugars produced as waste products in the body. These compounds, called mucopolysaccharides, accumulate in the tissues and organs and cause worsening physical and mental health problems.
The new drug, Elaprase, developed by Shire Pharmaceuticals, has been approved in the US and is expected to be licensed in Europe by the end of the year. Given by infusion, it improves breathing and movement. Parents of some Hunter children say it has transformed them. But it will cost at least 100,000 pounds per child per year, and as much as 300,000 for older, heavier patients who need bigger doses. Although the number of Hunter children in the UK is small — no more than about 100 — the cost of providing it for all of them could well be prohibitive.
A patients’ group has been lobbying ministers to confirm that the drug will be funded under a special scheme for children with rare diseases. Christine Lavery, chief executive of The Society for Mucopolysaccharide Diseases (SMD), said: “Funding for treatments for rare diseases similar to Hunter Syndrome is due to end at Christmas. We expect that to be extended. But there has been no promise that the DoH will fund the new drug for Hunter Syndrome. “All our questions and requests for clarification of the position have met with a lack of response, which leads us to fear the worst.”
Although not a cure the drug, which replaces the missing enzyme, may allow affected children to lead near-normal lives if the condition is picked up early. Dr Ed Wraith, a consultant at the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, said: “With this disease, there is damage to the heart, liver, brain and other organs which invariably leads to death well before the age of 20. The treatment is a major breakthrough and it would be a tragedy if the Department of Health didn’t provide the money.”
The Department of Health said: “No decision has yet been made on whether this expensive drug will be funded.” The same is likely to be the case north of the Border, where the Scottish Medicines Consortium has refused a related drug for a girl with a similar condition.
Bob Wragg, 64, grandfather of Jacob, said: “Thank God they have found a treatment at last.” His wife, Anne, a nurse, said: “A lot of people just don’t understand the torment that Andrew went through caring for Jacob and seeing him get worse and worse.” An adult sufferer of the syndrome, Colin Arrowsmith, 26, from Newcastle, has been receiving Elaprase weekly as part of a trial since February 2004. He had already defied doctors’ predictions that he would be dead by his early teens and until five years ago was able to live independently. He worked in the mailroom of an electricity company but was forced to give it up because his hips began to crumble. This forced him into a wheelchair and made him more reliant on his parents.
His mother, Barbara, said: “He was picking up lots of infections and his liver and spleen were very large. Since he began the weekly infusions his general health is better and his liver and spleen are no longer swollen. He has a lot more energy. “The treatment won’t reverse the damage done but we’ve been told that it should prevent further damage.”
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'Cool Maths': The sum of all fears
Schoolchildren will never learn to love abstract subjects like maths if teachers are afraid to challenge them
One of the central themes in modern education debates is how to motivate pupils. How do we make learning maths, science, history or English an interesting, enjoyable, and rewarding experience for pupils? It is widely believed that if we fail to convince pupils that studying a particular subject is both relevant to their personal experience and enjoyable they will never learn it properly. This point was emphasised by Charles Clarke three years and two education secretaries ago: `Enjoyment is the birthright of every child. Children learn better when they are excited and engaged ... When there is joy in what they are doing, they learn to love learning.'
One of the subjects that most worries educationalists and policy makers is mathematics. Being the most abstract subject in the curriculum, maths is almost universally considered a hard subject, which is difficult to make relevant to pupils' lives. Minister for Higher Education Bill Rammell notes that `mathematics is too often seen as difficult or boring' and `we have a curriculum that all too often fails to excite and motivate learners'. Educationalist Adrian Smith, author in 2004 of a major inquiry into the state of post-14 mathematics, Making Mathematics Count, states in his report that there has long `been considerable concern about many young people's perception of mathematics as being "boring and irrelevant" and "too difficult", compared with other subjects'.
For the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), maths is worse than boring. It must be truly terrifying, as `the best teachers' build confidence by `enabling [students] to talk through misconceptions in a non-threatening way'. Ofsted cites as an example of a good lesson one where `the teacher valued and used all answers from students, whether correct or not'. As a result, the students were `highly motivated'. Ofsted wants to see lessons with pace, like stand-up comedy, in order to ensure the full attention of the audience. Yet in 2005 it criticised maths teachers for not slowing down the pace of the lesson when necessary: `In many of the less effective lessons, the teaching moves on before pupils have understood the concept; the pressure to cover new content as quickly as possible results in shallow coverage and lack of depth in learning.' Ofsted also implies that there must be a trade off between serious learning and entertainment: `A stimulating session with hairdressing students struck just the right balance between engaging the learners and keeping their mathematics moving forward.' But why should we strike a balance between engaging the learners and learning maths? It seems that we can only sell learning in an underhand way, as something else.
In June 2006, various newspapers reported as `cool maths' a 4 million pound initiative by the secretary of state for education Alan Johnson aimed at `giving teachers new and innovative ways to engage with pupils at Key Stage 3'. Johnson explained that the programme `will make learning engaging and fascinating [as] the problems will be based around things which appeal to pupils, such as fashion, football, or the Olympics'. But Johnson gave away his real views on serious learning when he stated that `the questions will be open, so that the answers will be found through discussion, activity and ingenuity, rather than sitting in a dark room with a wet towel around the head'. Like a self-conscious teenager, Mr Johnson seems so desperate to look cool that he doesn't hesitate to declare his disgust for swots.
However, the prize for coolest educators must go to the chemistry lecturers at Leicester University, who dressed up as Harry Potter characters to motivate primary school children to study their academic discipline. According to the BBC, `Dr Jonny Woodward is putting on a "Gryffindor gown" to become Harry while Dr Paul Jenkins dresses up as the headmaster, Professor Albus Dumbledore, and Mrs Tracy McGhie is transfigured into Professor Minerva McGonagall'.
We should be more honest and tell children what they already know: that maths has very little to do with fashion, football and the Olympics; that chemistry has nothing to do with Harry Potter. Middle-aged educators who try to jump on to every fashionable bandwagon like a bunch of groupies don't even look cool, never mind motivate pupils to study.
The real problem, then, is not that modern pupils are in any way different from previous generations. The problem is the era these children have been born into. Adults no longer believe that education is a worthwhile thing in its own right. It must always be made `relevant'. They have so little faith in pupils that they believe that children are now incapable of grasping abstract concepts, never mind developing a love of books. Learning necessarily involves hard work and individual effort. Teachers are unlikely to convince children that learning a school subject is worth the effort if we believe so little in our discipline and in our pupils' intelligence.
Source
Brits are abandoning public transport
Despite the efforts of their very "Green" government
Thousands of daily bus services will be scrapped and fares will rise by 20 per cent during the next decade in a continuing exodus from public transport to the car, a report has found. The Government is falling well short of its official target of increasing bus use in every region. Passenger numbers are declining in every large city apart from London, the only area where services remain under public control.
The report, commissioned by the Passenger Transport Executive Group (PTEG), which represents local authorities in Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield, Newcastle upon Tyne and Birmingham, found that bus companies were exploiting local monopolies to make excessive profits. Fares have increased by 86 per cent above inflation since 1986 and passengers have fallen by half in those cities. By contrast, the cost of motoring has remained stable and the total distance travelled by car in Britain since 1986 has increased by 50 per cent.
John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, said in 1997: "I will have failed if in five years' time there are not many more people using public transport and far fewer journeys by car. It's a tall order but I urge you to hold me to it." Rail travel has increased by a quarter since Mr Prescott made his pledge but the decline in bus services means the proportion of journeys made by bus, tram or train has fallen from 15 per cent to 12 per cent.
The Government's official target is to increase bus and tram journeys by 12 per cent in England by 2012 and to deliver growth in each region. Last year bus and tram journeys rose by 1.9 per cent in London but fell by 1.2 per cent in the rest of England. The report found that bus services had declined by 41 per cent in Tyne and Wear, 31 per cent in South Yorkshire and 20 per cent in the West Midlands since 1995. Services in Manchester, West Yorkshire and on Merseyside fell by 10 per cent to 12 per cent.
The report concludes: "Projecting these numbers forward gives an estimate that over the ten years from 2004-05 to 2014-15, bus patronage will fall by 20 per cent, fares will rise by about 20 per cent and service levels will fall by about 20 per cent. "Bus services are not providing a high-quality alternative to the private car and so motorists do not have incentives to switch to the only public transport mode that may be available to them."
In London, where the average fare is the same in real terms as a decade ago, bus passenger numbers have risen by 50 per cent since 2000. The services are controlled by Ken Livingstone, the mayor, who sets fare levels and determines the frequency and quality of the service under tightly drawn contracts with bus companies.
In the rest of England, private operators control all aspects of the service and can withdraw from routes with 56 days' notice. PTEG wants its members to be given similar powers to the London mayor. It believes that this will allow cities to offer a better service by cross-subsidising lightly used routes with the profits made from the busiest ones. It claims that private operators are contributing to decline by cherry-picking the most profitable routes, leaving others with an infrequent service that results in increasing numbers of people switching to cars.
The Government has begun a review of the way buses are regulated outside London and is drawing up proposals that would allow local authorities and bus companies to co-operate more closely on service levels. But ministers have balked at the idea of giving authorities the power to set fares, routes and frequencies. The report found one company dominating bus services in each of the biggest six English regional cities. National Express runs 81 per cent of buses in Birmingham and makes an estimated 21 to 35 per cent return on investment. The other companies also make "excess profits" despite presiding over declining services, and often failing to fulfil commitments to invest in newer, more reliable vehicles.
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Racist Revving??
From Scotland we read:
Liver cure: "British scientists have discovered a drug that could cure liver disease, even in alcoholics who continue drinking. The medicine, found by a team of doctors and scientists at Newcastle University, could become a potential alternative to liver transplants. Until now cirrhosis of the liver, caused by alcohol, obesity or the hepatitis C virus, was considered incurable in all but the rarest of cases. The only option for patients in the final stages of liver disease was to wait for a liver transplant. However, because of organ shortages many die while on the waiting list. Clinical trials of the drug Sulphasalazine are expected to begin in Britain next year. If these prove successful, the drug could be used to treat heavy drinkers, whose plight was recently illustrated by George Best, the former Manchester United footballer who died from liver disease last year. Sulphasalazine, which already has a licence to treat arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease, acts by preventing scarring from developing on the liver."
They regularly ignore complaints about "Yobs", and Muslims can do as they please but a cat with one flea is a serious matter
Pet owner Robert Emberson was stunned as two cops swooped on his home - to seize his KITTEN. The bobbies went round after pet charity workers were tipped off that the moggy missed a routine appointment. Robert had adopted the rescue kitten named Plume.
But Cat Protection workers swooped to demand it back - and called in a police escort in case there was trouble. Horticultural student Robert, 18, accused the charity of being heavy-handed. He said: "They were so rude - barging in without warning. I was horrified." It followed an earlier visit by a Cat Protection worker who claimed to have seen a SINGLE FLEA on the cat. Robert, of Canvey Island, Essex, agreed to treat Plume. But he was waiting for his pay from his part-time job.
He said: "The flea treatment cost me a day's wages, but I paid for Plume to be vaccinated and everything. "I missed just one treatment, but they said they might take Plume away." The charity - criticised for refusing to let a man with an artificial leg adopt a cat - refused to comment. Robert was eventually allowed to keep the cat.
An Essex Police spokeswoman said: "We are frequently asked by other agencies to support them when there could be public order issues." [Fierce cat?]
Source
NHS SEMI-PRIVATIZATION WORKING -- BUT NOT WHOLLY AS INTENDED
They are helping BritGov's battle with its public servants, but at a cost
Private health centres are being paid tens of millions of pounds by the NHS for operations that are not happening. Hardly any of the independent centres set up under generous contracts are meeting their targets, an investigation by Health Service Journal has found. But they still get paid, unlike NHS hospitals, which are paid on the basis of how many operations they do.
The 20 centres were open by March. Information gathered by the journal from public documents, freedom of information requests and parliamentary answers indicates that so far they are doing only 59 per cent of the operations for which they are contracted. The Will Adams Treatment Centre in Gillingham, Kent, is performing at the rate of 945 procedures a year, compared with the 3,954 needed to meet its targets. It carries out hernia operations and day-surgery orthopaedic, gastroenterology and urology procedures.
The Department of Health denies that there is a problem. The centres were set up with five-year contracts and a spokesman said that it was completely misleading to say that activity below 100 per cent represented a waste of money. That could be determined only at the end of the contracts, when it would be clear how many operations the centres had done.
Its own figures put a different gloss on the situation by including other short-term programmes launched to shift the backlog. When those are included, it says that the programme is working at 84 per cent of capacity. Independent sector treatment centres (ISTCs) are controversial because NHS traditionalists say that they take money away from health service hospitals, disrupting their finances. The first ISTCs were set up under contracts that guaranteed an income based on the number of patients they undertook to treat, regardless of whether that many were treated.
Overall, HSJ calculated that the 20 centres should be treating patients at the rate of 78,242 a year, assuming that the target numbers are averaged over the whole of the five-year contract. But in the period to March their treatment rate was 46,073 patients a year, 59 per cent of the target.
In defence of the centres, many have not been open long, and the numbers they treat have not had time to build up. The main cause of the shortfall appears to be a reluctance by doctors to refer patients to them. Attempts have been made to persuade GPs to increase referral rates, but one obstacle is that ISTCs are staffed largely by doctors from abroad who are not known personally to GPs. This may affect judgments and make it less likely that patients will choose to go there.
The centres are costing primary care trusts a lot of money. Local reports suggest, for example, that the underperformance of the Will Adams ISTC is costing Medway PCT 100,000 pounds a month. The trust’s deficit in 2005-06 was £2.4 million.
A survey by HSJ of 42 NHS chief executives found considerable disquiet. More than three quarters felt that their own finances had been damaged by the centres — including 7 per cent who called the effect disastrous. Almost 60 per cent doubted that the centres had added to NHS capacity, and question marks were raised about whether the NHS needed any extra capacity anyway.
The health department, and 10 Downing Street, are unlikely to be unduly alarmed by the findings. The hidden agenda behind the ISTCs was an attempt to break the power of surgeons in NHS hospitals to control waiting lists, and that seems to be succeeding. The policy to allow patients a choice as to where they are treated has had such a dramatic effect on waiting times that top advisers regret that it was not introduced much sooner.
Source
NHS fails as an insurer once again
A new drug that could transform the lives of children with a rare genetic condition might be judged too expensive for the NHS. Hunter Syndrome was in the headlines last year when Andrew Wragg, 40, a former SAS soldier, was driven to despair by the decline of his son Jacob, 10, and smothered him with a pillow. The father, from Worthing, was cleared of murder and given a suspended sentence for manslaughter with diminished responsibility.
The fatal syndrome, suffered almost exclusively by boys, is caused by a defective enzyme that is unable to break down complex sugars produced as waste products in the body. These compounds, called mucopolysaccharides, accumulate in the tissues and organs and cause worsening physical and mental health problems.
The new drug, Elaprase, developed by Shire Pharmaceuticals, has been approved in the US and is expected to be licensed in Europe by the end of the year. Given by infusion, it improves breathing and movement. Parents of some Hunter children say it has transformed them. But it will cost at least 100,000 pounds per child per year, and as much as 300,000 for older, heavier patients who need bigger doses. Although the number of Hunter children in the UK is small — no more than about 100 — the cost of providing it for all of them could well be prohibitive.
A patients’ group has been lobbying ministers to confirm that the drug will be funded under a special scheme for children with rare diseases. Christine Lavery, chief executive of The Society for Mucopolysaccharide Diseases (SMD), said: “Funding for treatments for rare diseases similar to Hunter Syndrome is due to end at Christmas. We expect that to be extended. But there has been no promise that the DoH will fund the new drug for Hunter Syndrome. “All our questions and requests for clarification of the position have met with a lack of response, which leads us to fear the worst.”
Although not a cure the drug, which replaces the missing enzyme, may allow affected children to lead near-normal lives if the condition is picked up early. Dr Ed Wraith, a consultant at the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, said: “With this disease, there is damage to the heart, liver, brain and other organs which invariably leads to death well before the age of 20. The treatment is a major breakthrough and it would be a tragedy if the Department of Health didn’t provide the money.”
The Department of Health said: “No decision has yet been made on whether this expensive drug will be funded.” The same is likely to be the case north of the Border, where the Scottish Medicines Consortium has refused a related drug for a girl with a similar condition.
Bob Wragg, 64, grandfather of Jacob, said: “Thank God they have found a treatment at last.” His wife, Anne, a nurse, said: “A lot of people just don’t understand the torment that Andrew went through caring for Jacob and seeing him get worse and worse.” An adult sufferer of the syndrome, Colin Arrowsmith, 26, from Newcastle, has been receiving Elaprase weekly as part of a trial since February 2004. He had already defied doctors’ predictions that he would be dead by his early teens and until five years ago was able to live independently. He worked in the mailroom of an electricity company but was forced to give it up because his hips began to crumble. This forced him into a wheelchair and made him more reliant on his parents.
His mother, Barbara, said: “He was picking up lots of infections and his liver and spleen were very large. Since he began the weekly infusions his general health is better and his liver and spleen are no longer swollen. He has a lot more energy. “The treatment won’t reverse the damage done but we’ve been told that it should prevent further damage.”
Source
'Cool Maths': The sum of all fears
Schoolchildren will never learn to love abstract subjects like maths if teachers are afraid to challenge them
One of the central themes in modern education debates is how to motivate pupils. How do we make learning maths, science, history or English an interesting, enjoyable, and rewarding experience for pupils? It is widely believed that if we fail to convince pupils that studying a particular subject is both relevant to their personal experience and enjoyable they will never learn it properly. This point was emphasised by Charles Clarke three years and two education secretaries ago: `Enjoyment is the birthright of every child. Children learn better when they are excited and engaged ... When there is joy in what they are doing, they learn to love learning.'
One of the subjects that most worries educationalists and policy makers is mathematics. Being the most abstract subject in the curriculum, maths is almost universally considered a hard subject, which is difficult to make relevant to pupils' lives. Minister for Higher Education Bill Rammell notes that `mathematics is too often seen as difficult or boring' and `we have a curriculum that all too often fails to excite and motivate learners'. Educationalist Adrian Smith, author in 2004 of a major inquiry into the state of post-14 mathematics, Making Mathematics Count, states in his report that there has long `been considerable concern about many young people's perception of mathematics as being "boring and irrelevant" and "too difficult", compared with other subjects'.
For the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), maths is worse than boring. It must be truly terrifying, as `the best teachers' build confidence by `enabling [students] to talk through misconceptions in a non-threatening way'. Ofsted cites as an example of a good lesson one where `the teacher valued and used all answers from students, whether correct or not'. As a result, the students were `highly motivated'. Ofsted wants to see lessons with pace, like stand-up comedy, in order to ensure the full attention of the audience. Yet in 2005 it criticised maths teachers for not slowing down the pace of the lesson when necessary: `In many of the less effective lessons, the teaching moves on before pupils have understood the concept; the pressure to cover new content as quickly as possible results in shallow coverage and lack of depth in learning.' Ofsted also implies that there must be a trade off between serious learning and entertainment: `A stimulating session with hairdressing students struck just the right balance between engaging the learners and keeping their mathematics moving forward.' But why should we strike a balance between engaging the learners and learning maths? It seems that we can only sell learning in an underhand way, as something else.
In June 2006, various newspapers reported as `cool maths' a 4 million pound initiative by the secretary of state for education Alan Johnson aimed at `giving teachers new and innovative ways to engage with pupils at Key Stage 3'. Johnson explained that the programme `will make learning engaging and fascinating [as] the problems will be based around things which appeal to pupils, such as fashion, football, or the Olympics'. But Johnson gave away his real views on serious learning when he stated that `the questions will be open, so that the answers will be found through discussion, activity and ingenuity, rather than sitting in a dark room with a wet towel around the head'. Like a self-conscious teenager, Mr Johnson seems so desperate to look cool that he doesn't hesitate to declare his disgust for swots.
However, the prize for coolest educators must go to the chemistry lecturers at Leicester University, who dressed up as Harry Potter characters to motivate primary school children to study their academic discipline. According to the BBC, `Dr Jonny Woodward is putting on a "Gryffindor gown" to become Harry while Dr Paul Jenkins dresses up as the headmaster, Professor Albus Dumbledore, and Mrs Tracy McGhie is transfigured into Professor Minerva McGonagall'.
We should be more honest and tell children what they already know: that maths has very little to do with fashion, football and the Olympics; that chemistry has nothing to do with Harry Potter. Middle-aged educators who try to jump on to every fashionable bandwagon like a bunch of groupies don't even look cool, never mind motivate pupils to study.
The real problem, then, is not that modern pupils are in any way different from previous generations. The problem is the era these children have been born into. Adults no longer believe that education is a worthwhile thing in its own right. It must always be made `relevant'. They have so little faith in pupils that they believe that children are now incapable of grasping abstract concepts, never mind developing a love of books. Learning necessarily involves hard work and individual effort. Teachers are unlikely to convince children that learning a school subject is worth the effort if we believe so little in our discipline and in our pupils' intelligence.
Source
Brits are abandoning public transport
Despite the efforts of their very "Green" government
Thousands of daily bus services will be scrapped and fares will rise by 20 per cent during the next decade in a continuing exodus from public transport to the car, a report has found. The Government is falling well short of its official target of increasing bus use in every region. Passenger numbers are declining in every large city apart from London, the only area where services remain under public control.
The report, commissioned by the Passenger Transport Executive Group (PTEG), which represents local authorities in Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield, Newcastle upon Tyne and Birmingham, found that bus companies were exploiting local monopolies to make excessive profits. Fares have increased by 86 per cent above inflation since 1986 and passengers have fallen by half in those cities. By contrast, the cost of motoring has remained stable and the total distance travelled by car in Britain since 1986 has increased by 50 per cent.
John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, said in 1997: "I will have failed if in five years' time there are not many more people using public transport and far fewer journeys by car. It's a tall order but I urge you to hold me to it." Rail travel has increased by a quarter since Mr Prescott made his pledge but the decline in bus services means the proportion of journeys made by bus, tram or train has fallen from 15 per cent to 12 per cent.
The Government's official target is to increase bus and tram journeys by 12 per cent in England by 2012 and to deliver growth in each region. Last year bus and tram journeys rose by 1.9 per cent in London but fell by 1.2 per cent in the rest of England. The report found that bus services had declined by 41 per cent in Tyne and Wear, 31 per cent in South Yorkshire and 20 per cent in the West Midlands since 1995. Services in Manchester, West Yorkshire and on Merseyside fell by 10 per cent to 12 per cent.
The report concludes: "Projecting these numbers forward gives an estimate that over the ten years from 2004-05 to 2014-15, bus patronage will fall by 20 per cent, fares will rise by about 20 per cent and service levels will fall by about 20 per cent. "Bus services are not providing a high-quality alternative to the private car and so motorists do not have incentives to switch to the only public transport mode that may be available to them."
In London, where the average fare is the same in real terms as a decade ago, bus passenger numbers have risen by 50 per cent since 2000. The services are controlled by Ken Livingstone, the mayor, who sets fare levels and determines the frequency and quality of the service under tightly drawn contracts with bus companies.
In the rest of England, private operators control all aspects of the service and can withdraw from routes with 56 days' notice. PTEG wants its members to be given similar powers to the London mayor. It believes that this will allow cities to offer a better service by cross-subsidising lightly used routes with the profits made from the busiest ones. It claims that private operators are contributing to decline by cherry-picking the most profitable routes, leaving others with an infrequent service that results in increasing numbers of people switching to cars.
The Government has begun a review of the way buses are regulated outside London and is drawing up proposals that would allow local authorities and bus companies to co-operate more closely on service levels. But ministers have balked at the idea of giving authorities the power to set fares, routes and frequencies. The report found one company dominating bus services in each of the biggest six English regional cities. National Express runs 81 per cent of buses in Birmingham and makes an estimated 21 to 35 per cent return on investment. The other companies also make "excess profits" despite presiding over declining services, and often failing to fulfil commitments to invest in newer, more reliable vehicles.
Source
Racist Revving??
From Scotland we read:
"A driver spent two nights in jail after being accused of "revving his car in a racist manner".
Mechanic Ronnie Hutton, 49, yesterday described his court ordeal which finally ended when prosecutors dropped the allegation of racism.
But he was still convicted of a breach of the peace for revving the engine of his 25,000 pound Lotus.
Witnesses claimed he had been trying to intimidate a Libyan couple on the pavement. Ronnie, of Stirling, claims he was only revving the powerful V8 engine to avoid another 15,000 pound repair bill....
Source
Liver cure: "British scientists have discovered a drug that could cure liver disease, even in alcoholics who continue drinking. The medicine, found by a team of doctors and scientists at Newcastle University, could become a potential alternative to liver transplants. Until now cirrhosis of the liver, caused by alcohol, obesity or the hepatitis C virus, was considered incurable in all but the rarest of cases. The only option for patients in the final stages of liver disease was to wait for a liver transplant. However, because of organ shortages many die while on the waiting list. Clinical trials of the drug Sulphasalazine are expected to begin in Britain next year. If these prove successful, the drug could be used to treat heavy drinkers, whose plight was recently illustrated by George Best, the former Manchester United footballer who died from liver disease last year. Sulphasalazine, which already has a licence to treat arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease, acts by preventing scarring from developing on the liver."
Monday, September 25, 2006
SHOULD BRITAIN APOLOGIZE FOR SLAVERY?
My family lived near Bristol when that city would have been living high on the hog from the profit of slave trafficking. Yet if we got our hands on any of that cash you have my solemn oath that none of it has trickled down the generations. So I was rather annoyed to learn last week that the government is planning to apologise on the nation's behalf for the slave trade.
A committee headed by John Prescott is considering something called "a statement of regret" to be issued solemnly on March 25 next year, the date that marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. This is not technically an apology, but is something that parents will recognise as the next best thing. It is the government looking at its feet and mumbling a few words because it knows that otherwise it will be spending the next half an hour on the naughty step.
I don't know who will be making this apology, but I would be very grateful if they would make it clear that they have no authority to speak on behalf of the White family, late of Westbury-on-Trym in Gloucestershire. Because, like many other families throughout the land, we do not appear to have actually done anything. Not only did we play no part in slavery, but when we had a moment off from ploughing fields and building dry stone walls and sucking up to the Saxe-Coburgs we might even have been swept along in our modest way by the moral outrage that gripped the country in the late 18th century.
Far from being apologetic about slavery this country has much to be proud of. The abolition campaign had government support from an early stage. It was William Pitt, the dominant figure in the politics of the day, who urged his friend William Wilberforce to push the measure through the House of Commons.
Of course, we know that any apology is not really about slavery. It is about a much more modern issue: the uneasy relationship between black people and white people that can partly be blamed on the legacy of slavery in the West Indies and America. But slavery is not entirely what would be referred to these days as a white-on-black crime.
Years ago I watched a documentary about a group of black Americans who were on holiday in Africa, touring the slave sites. Many were in tears, having just discovered what went on at this end of the operation. They had just learnt the awful truth that the main suppliers of African slaves were themselves African. It was common practice for many years for the victors in battle to enslave their opponents. Suddenly, these victors discovered that they could also make a bit of money.
Jolly good business it was, too. King Tegbesu, who ruled what is now Benin, apparently made 250,000 pounds a year from selling slaves in 1750. According to my own rough calculations, this is the modern equivalent of 25 million pounds a year. And he is not the only African who grew fat on the profits of slave trading. The word "slave" is derived from the Slavs who were shipped from central Europe across the Mediterranean to Africa. From a book called The Slave Trade by Hugh Thomas, I also learn that 30,000 Christian slaves were sent to Damascus when the Moors conquered Spain in the 8th century. According to the Domesday Book there were 25,000 slaves in England in the 11th century.
So let's all enjoy a good knees-up in March. Let's have street parties and debates on Start The Week and we might even sit quietly while Prescott makes a speech about Wilberforce and Hull. But let's not pretend that the British were wholly responsible for the plight of African slaves. Slavery was a long established and widespread evil: the difference is that the British were one of the first to recognise it as evil and to do something about it.
Source
Rebel mothers interviewed
Julie Critchlow, housewife turned Antichrist, is standing outside Chubby's sandwich bar drawing angrily on a cigarette and glaring at the secondary school opposite. Her children - Rachel, 15, and Steven, 11 - are coming home for lunch so she is buying crisps and pop. Although Chubby's is less than 200 yards from her front door, Critchlow has brought the car. Still, it's an improvement of sorts. This time last week she was in the graveyard over the road, with fellow "sinner ladies" Sam Walker and Marie Hamshaw, posting burgers and chips through the school fence to a throng of mutinous sugar-deprived schoolchildren. Pictures of the scene - which looked like some grotesque Little Britain sketch - were splashed across the newspapers and Critchlow was called "the worst mum in Britain".
The trouble began at the start of term when Rawmarsh community school in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, banned pupils from leaving the premises during their lunch break. Even more incendiary, the school then started peddling a Jamie Oliver-inspired school dinner menu of "healthy" fare, such as ratatouille pancakes and salad. Unlike the grateful urchins who feature on Jamie's School Dinners (Oliver's fiercely popular television crusade for better food in schools), the Rawmarsh children came home complaining of overpriced baked potatoes, yucky tomatoes and not enough chips. Some of the mothers began delivering them fast food in the lunch hour, first to their own children, then to 60 or more of their friends. The school freaked out and tried to ban the mums. The mums screamed bloody murder. The police were called and, last Monday, a very uneasy peace was reached.
To an outsider, Rawmarsh sounds like hell; a place where fat stupid mothers fight for the right to raise fat stupid children. Did these women care nothing for St Jamie, terrifying obesity rates or early onset diabetes? Did they not read the daily horror statistics? Only last week it was revealed that children who eat a packet of crisps a day end up drinking more than five litres of cooking oil a year. A first glance at the town suggests that the answer to all that is "nope". Rawmarsh is Jamie's worst nightmare; shop shelves lined with cherry colas, toddlers eating Monster Munch in the street and the locals either bandy-legged twigs or, more often, fat - really, really fat in some cases. Some aren't even ashamed of it: one fat man has taken his shirt off to eat a battered sausage in the afternoon sun.
Surprisingly, Critchlow, 43, having refused all other interview requests, invites me to join Walker, 39, and Hamshaw, 44, in her front room. As the place fills with fag smoke and cackling laughter, it seems impossible to imagine three women more at odds with the current trend for health obsessed parenting. Critchlow's favourite adjective is disgusting. This is how she describes the food that the school is now serving and "totally disgusting" is what she calls John Lambert, the headmaster. "None of this would have happened if he hadn't locked these kids up," she says. "I don't have a problem with the school not selling them fatty food. My problem is that some of these kids are 16 and they're not allowed to choose what they eat for lunch." "Next they'll be going through our cupboards telling us what we can feed them at home," says Hamshaw, who has two children, aged 13 and 16, at the school. "But we know how to give our children a proper meal better than any school."
Er, weren't you taking them chips every day for lunch? "That is such a lie," says Critchlow. "We were taking all sorts - baked potatoes, salads, tuna sandwiches. You try getting teenage girls to eat a hamburger every day. Most of them won't touch the things." "There were a few chips," admits Walker, mother of an 11-year-old and 16-year-old, "but any nutritionist will say that a little bit of fat now and then isn't the end of the world." "But Lambert labelled us junk food pushers," says Hamshaw, "We're not stupid, though. I saw Supersize Me. No one in their right mind would feed their children fast food every day."
In fact, they say, the school's food laws are promoting bad habits. "All kids are fussy eaters," continues Hamshaw. "If they don't like something they won't eat it, so lots of the kids take one look at what's on offer at lunch and then eat crisps. "Every mother knows that it's an art to get your kids to eat good food, like I know my Gary won't eat greens but will eat carrots. This `we know best', one-size-fits-all attitude they've got at the school definitely means he ends up eating more rubbish. "But Jamie Oliver has come in his shiny armour and people think everything he says is right," says Walker, "like calling parents names if they let their kids have a can of Coke. Life isn't that simple though, Jamie. It's always a compromise." "You have to be clever," says Critchlow. "Kids have got their own minds and sometimes all you can do is try and persuade them to do the right thing."
Who could have expected such wisdom? While the mums don't have an A-level between them, when it comes to child rearing they've got more than 60 years' experience. "I don't want to sound hysterical," says Hamshaw, "but Adolf Hitler tried putting kids into summer camps to create perfect children and he faced the same problem this government is going to face - there is no such thing as a perfect child. You can't make carbon-copy kids who all love tomatoes. Schools should stick to educating children, not trying to raise them."
The school is not backing down, saying that for the children's safety they must stay in at lunch (unless collected by parents). The headmaster, uncharacteristically taciturn, declined to speak to me but released a statement to say he has now met the mums and progress was being made.
Sonia Sharp, of Rotherham council, insisted that the food at the school is very nice and cheaper than anything else on offer, and pointed out that uptake of school meals has risen from 350 to 600. She conceded that this might have something to do with the fact that the school has now got a captive audience.
More than food, what grates upon the Rawmarsh mums is the feeling that their choices as parents are being undermined by their government. "This country is turning into big brother," sighs Hamshaw, "and it's not like we need a nanny state. We nanny our kids quite enough on our own." The women nod gravely and light more cigarettes. "This battle," says Critchlow, "has only just begun."
Source
Another regulatory failure seen in British drug trial disaster
A "reckless" mistake apparently overlooked by government regulators lay behind the drug trial disaster that saw six young volunteers badly injured by an experimental medicine. Confidential documents obtained by The Sunday Times and Channel 4's Dispatches programme reveal the drug was administered on average 15 times more quickly to the volunteers than to monkeys in earlier safety studies. The possibility that such a crude error led to the disaster is likely to raise questions over whether the government's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) scrutinises trials adequately and protects the public from the risks of new medicines.
After the "Elephant Man" trials at Northwick Park hospital, London, in March, which left two men fighting for their lives and all six in intensive care, the agency said the reactions resulted from an "unexpected biological effect". However, experts say the drug, TGN1412 - one of a new generation of "magic bullet" treatments targeting the immune system - was infused so quickly into the volunteers that the potential for life-threatening problems was foreseeable. "When you give an antibody . . . the quicker you put it in, the more likely you are to get an infusion reaction," said Professor Terry Hamblin of Southampton University, a leading authority on monoclonal antibodies, the family of drugs to which the trial medicine belonged.
The volunteers were given TGN1412 in only three to six minutes. "To quickly infuse it over three to six minutes in six individuals I think is . . . reckless," said Hamblin. Ryan Wilson, 20, a former apprentice plumber, who suffered total organ failure, was the most seriously injured. He was given the drug in just four minutes. The monkeys, by contrast, received the antibody by a one-hour "slow infusion".
Hamblin's judgment is backed by other experts, including Dr David Glover, formerly chief medical officer of Cambridge Antibody Technology. He concludes: "The drug was given too quickly."
The speed at which the monkeys received TGN1412 was set out in the application to the MHRA for permission to carry out the trial. This was submitted by Parexel International, a contract research company, on behalf of TeGenero, a tiny German drug developer. But the paperwork did not explicitly detail how quickly the volunteers would be given the drug, although this could be calculated from the information given.
Professor Kent Woods, the agency's chief executive, said this weekend the results of the monkey trial had reassured his staff that the human project should be allowed to go ahead. "They did not show toxicity and the dose was 500 times higher on a weight-for-weight basis than that first used at Northwick Park," said Woods. "That is the key issue."
There was another apparent oversight in the agency's scrutiny. Parexel's paperwork did not include data on test-tube experiments designed to show the drug's effect on human cells. One specialist said she was "pretty astonished" this was left out, although it is unlikely the data could have predicted the disaster. This omission was only revealed after an appeal by The Sunday Times and Dispatches under the Freedom of Information Act for the reinstatement of paragraphs cut from documents released by the MHRA.
While the agency suggests in its assessment of the trial that the problems could not have been foreseen, experts say the reactions to TGN1412 - pain, vomiting and organ failure - have long been linked to first doses of monoclonal antibodies, and in previous incidents infusion time has been a critical factor.
Parexel declined to comment, and in Thursday's Dispatches the company's chairman, Josef von Rickenbach, takes refuge in a hotel lavatory.
Wilson has severe injuries. He has had his toes and sections of his feet amputated. Parts of his fingers have dropped off; others have died and are hard as wood to the touch where the blood supply was cut off as his body reacted to the drug. He is the worst afflicted of the victims from the tests on March 13, but all suffered life-threatening injuries. For development of new medicines, it was the worst calamity since the 1960s Thalidomide disaster.
Source
SMART STUDENTS DISADVANTAGED IN BRITAIN
Bright pupils are being marked down in their A-level exams for giving "too sophisticated" answers, jeopardising their chances of winning places at their chosen universities. Schools complain that candidates who display originality are being let down by inflexible marking schemes and poorly qualified examiners. In one case a state grammar school was so angry when one of its pupils was given a D grade that it asked Cambridge, where he had an offer of a place, to re-mark the paper. The university judged that it should have been at least two grades higher and awarded him a place.
In another case a teacher at an independent school and a former examiner complained when a pupil was marked down to a D after presenting a carefully argued case that the Vietnam war could be partly explained by decolonisation. The exam board claimed the pupil, who was holding an offer from Oxford that he lost as a result, gave "too much context". When he answered a similar question in a similar way in a re-take, he got an A grade.
The cases underline a growing dissatisfaction among schools that "tick-box" marking schemes are failing to give credit to exceptional work. The number of A-level papers where schools have sought re-marks has risen by 20% in two years. In 2003, schools requested re-marks on 36,000 A-level papers because they judged the grades "unfairly low". By 2005 it had risen to 43,500, with 5,273 resulting in higher grades. At GCSE, re-marks have increased by more than half to 55,400, of which 10,848 were upgraded. Eton College returned 500 A-level papers last year. Exam boards gave higher marks to 299, 113 of them enough to raise grades.
John Bald, an education consultant, said: "Boards are trying to get a grip on the expansion in numbers of pupils getting top grades by using rigid mark systems that do not take account of exceptional intellectual ability."
Adam Bracey, then a pupil at Maidstone grammar in Kent, was awarded a D in one paper, dropping him from an overall A to B in history. He needed three As to take up his offer from Cambridge. "I was devastated," said Bracey, "some of my friends had got into university without the grades they had been asked for, but Cambridge was insistent." The Edexcel board refused to accept the D grade had been mismarked. Neil Turrell, his headmaster, sent the script to Cambridge after two staff concluded the grade was too low. Bracey, 20, got the place after a history don at Homerton College, where he is studying, agreed it was worth a higher grade. Garth Collard, a former history teacher who had been part of the team inspecting Maidstone grammar for Ofsted, also read Bracey's returned script. "I was shocked at the quality of the marking," he said. "The mark scheme was very mechanistic . . . there was no recognition this was a high calibre answer."
Other schools are concerned boards are not employing enough high-quality markers. This year Portsmouth grammar had a number of AS-level papers in English upgraded, including one from D to A. It comes as more than 100 independent schools are planning to ditch A-levels in favour a tougher qualification that places less emphasis on "mechanistic" course work and unlimited resits of exams.
Sophie Garrett, 18, who took A-levels this summer at Tormead, an independent girls' school in Guildford, Surrey, had her music coursework regraded from unclassified to B. Her mother Valerie said: "The original mark meant she failed to get an A. It didn't matter for her place at Surrey University, but she had put hours and hours into it."
Exam boards said their marking schemes did not hold back brighter students. Edexcel said: "Candidates will always receive a fair mark for their work. All examiners must meet certain criteria. Markers are trained and tested to ensure they understand and follow the mark scheme."
Source
My family lived near Bristol when that city would have been living high on the hog from the profit of slave trafficking. Yet if we got our hands on any of that cash you have my solemn oath that none of it has trickled down the generations. So I was rather annoyed to learn last week that the government is planning to apologise on the nation's behalf for the slave trade.
A committee headed by John Prescott is considering something called "a statement of regret" to be issued solemnly on March 25 next year, the date that marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. This is not technically an apology, but is something that parents will recognise as the next best thing. It is the government looking at its feet and mumbling a few words because it knows that otherwise it will be spending the next half an hour on the naughty step.
I don't know who will be making this apology, but I would be very grateful if they would make it clear that they have no authority to speak on behalf of the White family, late of Westbury-on-Trym in Gloucestershire. Because, like many other families throughout the land, we do not appear to have actually done anything. Not only did we play no part in slavery, but when we had a moment off from ploughing fields and building dry stone walls and sucking up to the Saxe-Coburgs we might even have been swept along in our modest way by the moral outrage that gripped the country in the late 18th century.
Far from being apologetic about slavery this country has much to be proud of. The abolition campaign had government support from an early stage. It was William Pitt, the dominant figure in the politics of the day, who urged his friend William Wilberforce to push the measure through the House of Commons.
Of course, we know that any apology is not really about slavery. It is about a much more modern issue: the uneasy relationship between black people and white people that can partly be blamed on the legacy of slavery in the West Indies and America. But slavery is not entirely what would be referred to these days as a white-on-black crime.
Years ago I watched a documentary about a group of black Americans who were on holiday in Africa, touring the slave sites. Many were in tears, having just discovered what went on at this end of the operation. They had just learnt the awful truth that the main suppliers of African slaves were themselves African. It was common practice for many years for the victors in battle to enslave their opponents. Suddenly, these victors discovered that they could also make a bit of money.
Jolly good business it was, too. King Tegbesu, who ruled what is now Benin, apparently made 250,000 pounds a year from selling slaves in 1750. According to my own rough calculations, this is the modern equivalent of 25 million pounds a year. And he is not the only African who grew fat on the profits of slave trading. The word "slave" is derived from the Slavs who were shipped from central Europe across the Mediterranean to Africa. From a book called The Slave Trade by Hugh Thomas, I also learn that 30,000 Christian slaves were sent to Damascus when the Moors conquered Spain in the 8th century. According to the Domesday Book there were 25,000 slaves in England in the 11th century.
So let's all enjoy a good knees-up in March. Let's have street parties and debates on Start The Week and we might even sit quietly while Prescott makes a speech about Wilberforce and Hull. But let's not pretend that the British were wholly responsible for the plight of African slaves. Slavery was a long established and widespread evil: the difference is that the British were one of the first to recognise it as evil and to do something about it.
Source
Rebel mothers interviewed
Julie Critchlow, housewife turned Antichrist, is standing outside Chubby's sandwich bar drawing angrily on a cigarette and glaring at the secondary school opposite. Her children - Rachel, 15, and Steven, 11 - are coming home for lunch so she is buying crisps and pop. Although Chubby's is less than 200 yards from her front door, Critchlow has brought the car. Still, it's an improvement of sorts. This time last week she was in the graveyard over the road, with fellow "sinner ladies" Sam Walker and Marie Hamshaw, posting burgers and chips through the school fence to a throng of mutinous sugar-deprived schoolchildren. Pictures of the scene - which looked like some grotesque Little Britain sketch - were splashed across the newspapers and Critchlow was called "the worst mum in Britain".
The trouble began at the start of term when Rawmarsh community school in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, banned pupils from leaving the premises during their lunch break. Even more incendiary, the school then started peddling a Jamie Oliver-inspired school dinner menu of "healthy" fare, such as ratatouille pancakes and salad. Unlike the grateful urchins who feature on Jamie's School Dinners (Oliver's fiercely popular television crusade for better food in schools), the Rawmarsh children came home complaining of overpriced baked potatoes, yucky tomatoes and not enough chips. Some of the mothers began delivering them fast food in the lunch hour, first to their own children, then to 60 or more of their friends. The school freaked out and tried to ban the mums. The mums screamed bloody murder. The police were called and, last Monday, a very uneasy peace was reached.
To an outsider, Rawmarsh sounds like hell; a place where fat stupid mothers fight for the right to raise fat stupid children. Did these women care nothing for St Jamie, terrifying obesity rates or early onset diabetes? Did they not read the daily horror statistics? Only last week it was revealed that children who eat a packet of crisps a day end up drinking more than five litres of cooking oil a year. A first glance at the town suggests that the answer to all that is "nope". Rawmarsh is Jamie's worst nightmare; shop shelves lined with cherry colas, toddlers eating Monster Munch in the street and the locals either bandy-legged twigs or, more often, fat - really, really fat in some cases. Some aren't even ashamed of it: one fat man has taken his shirt off to eat a battered sausage in the afternoon sun.
Surprisingly, Critchlow, 43, having refused all other interview requests, invites me to join Walker, 39, and Hamshaw, 44, in her front room. As the place fills with fag smoke and cackling laughter, it seems impossible to imagine three women more at odds with the current trend for health obsessed parenting. Critchlow's favourite adjective is disgusting. This is how she describes the food that the school is now serving and "totally disgusting" is what she calls John Lambert, the headmaster. "None of this would have happened if he hadn't locked these kids up," she says. "I don't have a problem with the school not selling them fatty food. My problem is that some of these kids are 16 and they're not allowed to choose what they eat for lunch." "Next they'll be going through our cupboards telling us what we can feed them at home," says Hamshaw, who has two children, aged 13 and 16, at the school. "But we know how to give our children a proper meal better than any school."
Er, weren't you taking them chips every day for lunch? "That is such a lie," says Critchlow. "We were taking all sorts - baked potatoes, salads, tuna sandwiches. You try getting teenage girls to eat a hamburger every day. Most of them won't touch the things." "There were a few chips," admits Walker, mother of an 11-year-old and 16-year-old, "but any nutritionist will say that a little bit of fat now and then isn't the end of the world." "But Lambert labelled us junk food pushers," says Hamshaw, "We're not stupid, though. I saw Supersize Me. No one in their right mind would feed their children fast food every day."
In fact, they say, the school's food laws are promoting bad habits. "All kids are fussy eaters," continues Hamshaw. "If they don't like something they won't eat it, so lots of the kids take one look at what's on offer at lunch and then eat crisps. "Every mother knows that it's an art to get your kids to eat good food, like I know my Gary won't eat greens but will eat carrots. This `we know best', one-size-fits-all attitude they've got at the school definitely means he ends up eating more rubbish. "But Jamie Oliver has come in his shiny armour and people think everything he says is right," says Walker, "like calling parents names if they let their kids have a can of Coke. Life isn't that simple though, Jamie. It's always a compromise." "You have to be clever," says Critchlow. "Kids have got their own minds and sometimes all you can do is try and persuade them to do the right thing."
Who could have expected such wisdom? While the mums don't have an A-level between them, when it comes to child rearing they've got more than 60 years' experience. "I don't want to sound hysterical," says Hamshaw, "but Adolf Hitler tried putting kids into summer camps to create perfect children and he faced the same problem this government is going to face - there is no such thing as a perfect child. You can't make carbon-copy kids who all love tomatoes. Schools should stick to educating children, not trying to raise them."
The school is not backing down, saying that for the children's safety they must stay in at lunch (unless collected by parents). The headmaster, uncharacteristically taciturn, declined to speak to me but released a statement to say he has now met the mums and progress was being made.
Sonia Sharp, of Rotherham council, insisted that the food at the school is very nice and cheaper than anything else on offer, and pointed out that uptake of school meals has risen from 350 to 600. She conceded that this might have something to do with the fact that the school has now got a captive audience.
More than food, what grates upon the Rawmarsh mums is the feeling that their choices as parents are being undermined by their government. "This country is turning into big brother," sighs Hamshaw, "and it's not like we need a nanny state. We nanny our kids quite enough on our own." The women nod gravely and light more cigarettes. "This battle," says Critchlow, "has only just begun."
Source
Another regulatory failure seen in British drug trial disaster
A "reckless" mistake apparently overlooked by government regulators lay behind the drug trial disaster that saw six young volunteers badly injured by an experimental medicine. Confidential documents obtained by The Sunday Times and Channel 4's Dispatches programme reveal the drug was administered on average 15 times more quickly to the volunteers than to monkeys in earlier safety studies. The possibility that such a crude error led to the disaster is likely to raise questions over whether the government's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) scrutinises trials adequately and protects the public from the risks of new medicines.
After the "Elephant Man" trials at Northwick Park hospital, London, in March, which left two men fighting for their lives and all six in intensive care, the agency said the reactions resulted from an "unexpected biological effect". However, experts say the drug, TGN1412 - one of a new generation of "magic bullet" treatments targeting the immune system - was infused so quickly into the volunteers that the potential for life-threatening problems was foreseeable. "When you give an antibody . . . the quicker you put it in, the more likely you are to get an infusion reaction," said Professor Terry Hamblin of Southampton University, a leading authority on monoclonal antibodies, the family of drugs to which the trial medicine belonged.
The volunteers were given TGN1412 in only three to six minutes. "To quickly infuse it over three to six minutes in six individuals I think is . . . reckless," said Hamblin. Ryan Wilson, 20, a former apprentice plumber, who suffered total organ failure, was the most seriously injured. He was given the drug in just four minutes. The monkeys, by contrast, received the antibody by a one-hour "slow infusion".
Hamblin's judgment is backed by other experts, including Dr David Glover, formerly chief medical officer of Cambridge Antibody Technology. He concludes: "The drug was given too quickly."
The speed at which the monkeys received TGN1412 was set out in the application to the MHRA for permission to carry out the trial. This was submitted by Parexel International, a contract research company, on behalf of TeGenero, a tiny German drug developer. But the paperwork did not explicitly detail how quickly the volunteers would be given the drug, although this could be calculated from the information given.
Professor Kent Woods, the agency's chief executive, said this weekend the results of the monkey trial had reassured his staff that the human project should be allowed to go ahead. "They did not show toxicity and the dose was 500 times higher on a weight-for-weight basis than that first used at Northwick Park," said Woods. "That is the key issue."
There was another apparent oversight in the agency's scrutiny. Parexel's paperwork did not include data on test-tube experiments designed to show the drug's effect on human cells. One specialist said she was "pretty astonished" this was left out, although it is unlikely the data could have predicted the disaster. This omission was only revealed after an appeal by The Sunday Times and Dispatches under the Freedom of Information Act for the reinstatement of paragraphs cut from documents released by the MHRA.
While the agency suggests in its assessment of the trial that the problems could not have been foreseen, experts say the reactions to TGN1412 - pain, vomiting and organ failure - have long been linked to first doses of monoclonal antibodies, and in previous incidents infusion time has been a critical factor.
Parexel declined to comment, and in Thursday's Dispatches the company's chairman, Josef von Rickenbach, takes refuge in a hotel lavatory.
Wilson has severe injuries. He has had his toes and sections of his feet amputated. Parts of his fingers have dropped off; others have died and are hard as wood to the touch where the blood supply was cut off as his body reacted to the drug. He is the worst afflicted of the victims from the tests on March 13, but all suffered life-threatening injuries. For development of new medicines, it was the worst calamity since the 1960s Thalidomide disaster.
Source
SMART STUDENTS DISADVANTAGED IN BRITAIN
Bright pupils are being marked down in their A-level exams for giving "too sophisticated" answers, jeopardising their chances of winning places at their chosen universities. Schools complain that candidates who display originality are being let down by inflexible marking schemes and poorly qualified examiners. In one case a state grammar school was so angry when one of its pupils was given a D grade that it asked Cambridge, where he had an offer of a place, to re-mark the paper. The university judged that it should have been at least two grades higher and awarded him a place.
In another case a teacher at an independent school and a former examiner complained when a pupil was marked down to a D after presenting a carefully argued case that the Vietnam war could be partly explained by decolonisation. The exam board claimed the pupil, who was holding an offer from Oxford that he lost as a result, gave "too much context". When he answered a similar question in a similar way in a re-take, he got an A grade.
The cases underline a growing dissatisfaction among schools that "tick-box" marking schemes are failing to give credit to exceptional work. The number of A-level papers where schools have sought re-marks has risen by 20% in two years. In 2003, schools requested re-marks on 36,000 A-level papers because they judged the grades "unfairly low". By 2005 it had risen to 43,500, with 5,273 resulting in higher grades. At GCSE, re-marks have increased by more than half to 55,400, of which 10,848 were upgraded. Eton College returned 500 A-level papers last year. Exam boards gave higher marks to 299, 113 of them enough to raise grades.
John Bald, an education consultant, said: "Boards are trying to get a grip on the expansion in numbers of pupils getting top grades by using rigid mark systems that do not take account of exceptional intellectual ability."
Adam Bracey, then a pupil at Maidstone grammar in Kent, was awarded a D in one paper, dropping him from an overall A to B in history. He needed three As to take up his offer from Cambridge. "I was devastated," said Bracey, "some of my friends had got into university without the grades they had been asked for, but Cambridge was insistent." The Edexcel board refused to accept the D grade had been mismarked. Neil Turrell, his headmaster, sent the script to Cambridge after two staff concluded the grade was too low. Bracey, 20, got the place after a history don at Homerton College, where he is studying, agreed it was worth a higher grade. Garth Collard, a former history teacher who had been part of the team inspecting Maidstone grammar for Ofsted, also read Bracey's returned script. "I was shocked at the quality of the marking," he said. "The mark scheme was very mechanistic . . . there was no recognition this was a high calibre answer."
Other schools are concerned boards are not employing enough high-quality markers. This year Portsmouth grammar had a number of AS-level papers in English upgraded, including one from D to A. It comes as more than 100 independent schools are planning to ditch A-levels in favour a tougher qualification that places less emphasis on "mechanistic" course work and unlimited resits of exams.
Sophie Garrett, 18, who took A-levels this summer at Tormead, an independent girls' school in Guildford, Surrey, had her music coursework regraded from unclassified to B. Her mother Valerie said: "The original mark meant she failed to get an A. It didn't matter for her place at Surrey University, but she had put hours and hours into it."
Exam boards said their marking schemes did not hold back brighter students. Edexcel said: "Candidates will always receive a fair mark for their work. All examiners must meet certain criteria. Markers are trained and tested to ensure they understand and follow the mark scheme."
Source
Sunday, September 24, 2006
SCRUTON ON IMMIGRATION
In the excerpt below, "indigenous" means "English"
Decisions can still be taken, but only in the hope of limiting the damage. And even now, when opinion across Europe is unanimous that immigration must be controlled, and that Muslims must be integrated into the secular culture, liberal politicians are refusing to admit to a problem or to confess that they are the cause of it. They still preach "multiculturalism" as the sign of our "vibrant" future; they still condemn "racism and xenophobia" as the enemy; they still try to state and solve the problem by the promiscuous multiplication of "human rights." Their Enlightenment creed makes it all but impossible for them to acknowledge the fundamental truth, which is that indigenous communities have legitimate expectations which take precedence over the demands of strangers. True, indigenous communities may also have duties of charity towards those strangers-or towards some of them. But charity is a gift, and there is no right to receive it, still less to force it from those reluctant to give.
The destructive effects of liberalism are not usually felt by the liberals themselves-not immediately, at least. The first victim of liberal immigration policies is the indigenous working class. When the welfare state was first conceived, it was in order to provide insurance for poorer members of the indigenous community, by taxing their income in exchange for the benefits which they may one day need. The rights involved were quasi-contractual: a right of the state to levy contributions in exchange for a right of the citizen to receive support. The very term used to describe the deal in Britain-"national insurance"-expresses the old understanding, that the welfare system is part of being together as a nation, of belonging with one's neighbors, as mutual beneficiaries of an ancestral right.
The liberal view of rights, as universal possessions which make no reference to history, community, or obedience, has changed all that. Indigenous people can claim no precedence, not even in this matter in which they have sacrificed a lifetime of income for the sake of their own future security. Immigrants are given welfare benefits as of right, and on the basis of their need, whether or not they have paid or ever will pay taxes. And since their need is invariably great-why else have they come here?-they take precedence over existing residents in the grant of housing and income support. Those with a handful of wives are even more fortunate, since only one of their marriages is recognized in European systems of law: the remaining wives are "single mothers," with all the fiscal advantages which attach to that label. All this has entailed that the stock of "social housing" once reserved for the indigenous poor is now almost entirely occupied by people whose language, customs, and culture mark them out as foreigners.
It is not "racist" to draw attention to this kind of fact. Nor is it racist to argue that indigenous people must take precedence over newcomers, who have to earn their right of residence and cannot be allowed to appropriate the savings of their hosts. But it is easier for me to write about these matters in an American intellectual journal than in an English newspaper, and if I tried to write about these things in a Belgian newspaper, I could be in serious trouble with the courts. The iron curtain of censorship that came down in the wake of Powell's speech has not lifted everywhere; on the contrary, if the EU has its way, it will be enshrined in the criminal code, with "racism and xenophobia"-defined as vaguely as is required to silence unwanted opinion-made into an extraditable offense throughout the Union.
The problem with censorship, as John Stuart Mill pointed out a century and half ago, is that it makes it impossible for those who impose it to discover that they are wrong. The error persists, preventing the discussion that might produce a remedy, and ensuring that the problem will grow. Yet when truth cannot make itself known in words, it will make itself known in deeds. The truth about Hitler burst on the world in 1939, notwithstanding all the pious words of the appeasers. And the truth about immigration is beginning to show itself in Europe, notwithstanding all the liberal efforts to conceal it. It is not an agreeable truth; nor can we, in the face of it, take refuge in the noble lies of Enoch Powell. The fact is that the people of Europe are losing their homelands, and therefore losing their place in the world. I don't envisage the Tiber one day foaming with much blood, nor do I see it blushing as the voice of the muezzin sounds from the former cathedral of St. Peter. But the city through which the Tiber flows will one day cease to be Italian, and all the expectations of its former residents, whether political, social, cultural, or personal, will suffer a violent upheaval, with results every bit as interesting as those that Powell prophesied.
More here
COSMETIC EDUCATION CHANGES DON'T WORK
Not even if you spend millions on them
Ten years after the Ridings gained national infamy as "the school from hell", it is once more in serious trouble. The West Yorkshire secondary hit the headlines in 1996 - a year after it was formed by merging two schools - when staff threatened to strike unless 60 pupils were disciplined or expelled. A supply teacher had allegedly been groped and a brick was said to have been thrown at the new head teacher, who resigned.
By 1997, the school was the pet project of the Labour Government. Anna White was appointed head teacher in 1997. The school received o6 million, became the target of various initiatives, had 14 visits from inspectors in two years and a succession of ministers praised its remarkable turnaround.
By October 1998, the Ridings, where 42 per cent of pupils are eligible for free school meals and 45 per cent have special educational needs, was taken off the list of failing schools. Ofsted praised its "remarkable transformation". Mrs White was appointed a CBE in 2000. Tony Blair visited the next year during the general election campaign. By 2003, 25 per cent of pupils gained five or more A*-C GCSE grades, up from 3 per cent in 1998. But within a year, the GCSE pass rate had fallen to 14 per cent. Mrs White left last year to become an educational consultant.
Ofsted paid a sudden visit last autumn, shortly after a new head teacher had been appointed. The report was damning. The Ridings was given a "notice to improve" and warned that special measures could follow. The school had only recently ended its participation in yet another Labour initiative, the three-year Octet programme under which eight schools joined a research project "to find new and innovative ways to raise standards" in "exceptionally challenging circumstances".
Source
IS FREE SPEECH UNDER THREAT FROM SCIENTISTS?
From BBC Today Programme, 21 September 2006 (8:20)
Is it the job of Britain's foremost scientific academy, The Royal Society, to hector private companies about how they spend their money? There has been criticism of the Royal Society for asking the oil company Exxon Mobile to stop giving money to groups it argues misrepresent the science of climate change.
Dr David Whitehouse is a scientist and an author. Bob Ward is from the Royal Society. He wrote the letter to Exxon Mobile. Both join me now.
Dr Whitehouse. Why do you object to the Royal Society, to Bob Ward writing to Exxon Mobile?
David Whitehouse: My problem is not with the science, my problem is not with human-induced global warming. My problem is with the nature of science and the scientific debate, about different views. Different views, contrary positions, are essential to the progress of science. They are what keep arguments strong, the defence of arguments is what keeps them robust and healthy. And if somebody comes out with bad science, somebody comes out with misrepresentation, you tackle bad science with good science. It does not matter, it is irrelevant, whether these people are right or wrong, whether it's god science or bad science. What troubles me is that the Royal Society is demanding another organisation to stop funding groups that have views different from the scientific consensus. Their views, the value of their views, will be determined by argument and not by doing a tussle around their funding, to get their money turned off because you disagree with what they're saying.
BBC: Bob Ward. Can you respond to that.
Bob Ward: I can. Let me first correct the impression that being given. I did not demand that Exxon stops funding these groups. I made an observation in a meeting I had in July that they were making statements that misrepresented the science and that they were funding groups that were similarly misrepresenting the science. They then offered themselves to stop funding these groups. But let me make a distinction here.
BBC: Can we just follow this through. You then wrote to them saying...
Bob Ward: What happened is, after I'd explained why the Royal Society felt that the statements Exxon Mobile had made in a report in February, when I explained to them that they were wrong in our opinion, they then send me a report in the summer, a new report, which repeated all of the statements which I complained about in the first place.
BBC: And the letter which the Guardian got hold of yesterday was you saying to them: 'I would be grateful if you could let me know when Exxon Mobile plans to carry out this pledge.' Which is why I used the word 'hectoring,' it's a form of hectoring.
Bob Ward: Well, I like the idea that the Royal Society should be accused of bullying the world's largest multinational oil company. All we're doing is saying to them: it is very clear what the scientific community says about climate change. Anybody can find out by going to the website of the IPCC (www.ippc.ch) . And they can see what the scientific community thinks about climate change. And then they can compare for themselves the stsatements that are being made by Exxon Mobile and by these lobby groups - who are not groups of scientists. These are lobby groups, they are not scientists. Exxon Mobile are not offering scientific evidence.
BBC: Let me bring in Dr Whitehouse. Isn't that what the Royal Society should be doing, ensuring that the right information is out there?
David Whitehouse: The Royal Society should be arguing about science, it shouldn't be delving in such politics. It is clear from this letter that the Royal Society did have concerns about the support that Exxon was giving to groups which they disagree with. They can have concerns about that but their argument should not be with the funding, or the background. It's a question of free speech. Scientists in America won the right to criticise the Bush Government when they did not agree with them about global warming. The contrary should apply here.
BBC: Bob Ward. Have you stepped over a line here?
Bob Ward: We haven't. Let me be clear. We're not trying to shut scientists up. What we're trying to do is say to the lobby groups and to the companies that they should present properly what the scientific community is saying. Now, let me just tell you. One of the organisations that is getting funding from Exxon Mobile is the so-called Centre for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change. This is a statement on their website: "There is no compelling reason to believe that the rise in temperature was caused by the rise in carbon dioxide." Now, can David Whitehouse tell me which peer-reviewed scientific papers that statement is based on?
David Whitehouse: My point is not an argument about the science. The science is irrelevant in this context. You can go to your own website and read scientists talk about the uncertainties of global warming. The question is not whether these people are right or wrong. It's a question about their right to speak. When scientists and scientific organisations like yourself want to serve the cause of public policy, they do so best by following the ethics of science and not public relations and spin.
BBC: Let me just come in here. Dr Whitehouse. Isn't it the case that on this argument people would say the price is too high. And you don't have a level playing field if you have millions being pumped into bad science.
David Whitehouse: First of all. Does is matter that it is bad science? The science, whether it is bad or god, comes out in scientific argument. My problem is with distorting the playing field. Science is about free speech, science is about the exchange of information and argument. It's not about trying to find out who get money paid to somebody else because you disagree with him. We tell young scientists, the most important thing, we tell them, is to question authority. Why should I believe this because you say so?
BBC: We have very little time left. I want a final thought from you, Bob Ward. Is the Royal Society going to continue that sort of approach to prevent funding of organisations that they don't like what they're saying?
Bob Ward: The Royal Society's motto is "Nullis in Verba" - which means "where is your evidence?" (sic) If organisations make statements that are clearly at odds with what the scientific community says the evidence shows, yes, then we will challenge it. Because it does not serve the public for them to be mislead about what the scientific evidence says.
Benny Peiser comments: "Well, I'm not a classicist. But to my knowledge the Royal Society's motto is generally translated as "on the words of no one," meaning: take no theory in trust ... which is in essence the ethics of scientific scrutiny and debate David Whitehouse has been arguing for". (David Whitehouse was until recently the online science editor for the BBC)
In the excerpt below, "indigenous" means "English"
Decisions can still be taken, but only in the hope of limiting the damage. And even now, when opinion across Europe is unanimous that immigration must be controlled, and that Muslims must be integrated into the secular culture, liberal politicians are refusing to admit to a problem or to confess that they are the cause of it. They still preach "multiculturalism" as the sign of our "vibrant" future; they still condemn "racism and xenophobia" as the enemy; they still try to state and solve the problem by the promiscuous multiplication of "human rights." Their Enlightenment creed makes it all but impossible for them to acknowledge the fundamental truth, which is that indigenous communities have legitimate expectations which take precedence over the demands of strangers. True, indigenous communities may also have duties of charity towards those strangers-or towards some of them. But charity is a gift, and there is no right to receive it, still less to force it from those reluctant to give.
The destructive effects of liberalism are not usually felt by the liberals themselves-not immediately, at least. The first victim of liberal immigration policies is the indigenous working class. When the welfare state was first conceived, it was in order to provide insurance for poorer members of the indigenous community, by taxing their income in exchange for the benefits which they may one day need. The rights involved were quasi-contractual: a right of the state to levy contributions in exchange for a right of the citizen to receive support. The very term used to describe the deal in Britain-"national insurance"-expresses the old understanding, that the welfare system is part of being together as a nation, of belonging with one's neighbors, as mutual beneficiaries of an ancestral right.
The liberal view of rights, as universal possessions which make no reference to history, community, or obedience, has changed all that. Indigenous people can claim no precedence, not even in this matter in which they have sacrificed a lifetime of income for the sake of their own future security. Immigrants are given welfare benefits as of right, and on the basis of their need, whether or not they have paid or ever will pay taxes. And since their need is invariably great-why else have they come here?-they take precedence over existing residents in the grant of housing and income support. Those with a handful of wives are even more fortunate, since only one of their marriages is recognized in European systems of law: the remaining wives are "single mothers," with all the fiscal advantages which attach to that label. All this has entailed that the stock of "social housing" once reserved for the indigenous poor is now almost entirely occupied by people whose language, customs, and culture mark them out as foreigners.
It is not "racist" to draw attention to this kind of fact. Nor is it racist to argue that indigenous people must take precedence over newcomers, who have to earn their right of residence and cannot be allowed to appropriate the savings of their hosts. But it is easier for me to write about these matters in an American intellectual journal than in an English newspaper, and if I tried to write about these things in a Belgian newspaper, I could be in serious trouble with the courts. The iron curtain of censorship that came down in the wake of Powell's speech has not lifted everywhere; on the contrary, if the EU has its way, it will be enshrined in the criminal code, with "racism and xenophobia"-defined as vaguely as is required to silence unwanted opinion-made into an extraditable offense throughout the Union.
The problem with censorship, as John Stuart Mill pointed out a century and half ago, is that it makes it impossible for those who impose it to discover that they are wrong. The error persists, preventing the discussion that might produce a remedy, and ensuring that the problem will grow. Yet when truth cannot make itself known in words, it will make itself known in deeds. The truth about Hitler burst on the world in 1939, notwithstanding all the pious words of the appeasers. And the truth about immigration is beginning to show itself in Europe, notwithstanding all the liberal efforts to conceal it. It is not an agreeable truth; nor can we, in the face of it, take refuge in the noble lies of Enoch Powell. The fact is that the people of Europe are losing their homelands, and therefore losing their place in the world. I don't envisage the Tiber one day foaming with much blood, nor do I see it blushing as the voice of the muezzin sounds from the former cathedral of St. Peter. But the city through which the Tiber flows will one day cease to be Italian, and all the expectations of its former residents, whether political, social, cultural, or personal, will suffer a violent upheaval, with results every bit as interesting as those that Powell prophesied.
More here
COSMETIC EDUCATION CHANGES DON'T WORK
Not even if you spend millions on them
Ten years after the Ridings gained national infamy as "the school from hell", it is once more in serious trouble. The West Yorkshire secondary hit the headlines in 1996 - a year after it was formed by merging two schools - when staff threatened to strike unless 60 pupils were disciplined or expelled. A supply teacher had allegedly been groped and a brick was said to have been thrown at the new head teacher, who resigned.
By 1997, the school was the pet project of the Labour Government. Anna White was appointed head teacher in 1997. The school received o6 million, became the target of various initiatives, had 14 visits from inspectors in two years and a succession of ministers praised its remarkable turnaround.
By October 1998, the Ridings, where 42 per cent of pupils are eligible for free school meals and 45 per cent have special educational needs, was taken off the list of failing schools. Ofsted praised its "remarkable transformation". Mrs White was appointed a CBE in 2000. Tony Blair visited the next year during the general election campaign. By 2003, 25 per cent of pupils gained five or more A*-C GCSE grades, up from 3 per cent in 1998. But within a year, the GCSE pass rate had fallen to 14 per cent. Mrs White left last year to become an educational consultant.
Ofsted paid a sudden visit last autumn, shortly after a new head teacher had been appointed. The report was damning. The Ridings was given a "notice to improve" and warned that special measures could follow. The school had only recently ended its participation in yet another Labour initiative, the three-year Octet programme under which eight schools joined a research project "to find new and innovative ways to raise standards" in "exceptionally challenging circumstances".
Source
IS FREE SPEECH UNDER THREAT FROM SCIENTISTS?
From BBC Today Programme, 21 September 2006 (8:20)
Is it the job of Britain's foremost scientific academy, The Royal Society, to hector private companies about how they spend their money? There has been criticism of the Royal Society for asking the oil company Exxon Mobile to stop giving money to groups it argues misrepresent the science of climate change.
Dr David Whitehouse is a scientist and an author. Bob Ward is from the Royal Society. He wrote the letter to Exxon Mobile. Both join me now.
Dr Whitehouse. Why do you object to the Royal Society, to Bob Ward writing to Exxon Mobile?
David Whitehouse: My problem is not with the science, my problem is not with human-induced global warming. My problem is with the nature of science and the scientific debate, about different views. Different views, contrary positions, are essential to the progress of science. They are what keep arguments strong, the defence of arguments is what keeps them robust and healthy. And if somebody comes out with bad science, somebody comes out with misrepresentation, you tackle bad science with good science. It does not matter, it is irrelevant, whether these people are right or wrong, whether it's god science or bad science. What troubles me is that the Royal Society is demanding another organisation to stop funding groups that have views different from the scientific consensus. Their views, the value of their views, will be determined by argument and not by doing a tussle around their funding, to get their money turned off because you disagree with what they're saying.
BBC: Bob Ward. Can you respond to that.
Bob Ward: I can. Let me first correct the impression that being given. I did not demand that Exxon stops funding these groups. I made an observation in a meeting I had in July that they were making statements that misrepresented the science and that they were funding groups that were similarly misrepresenting the science. They then offered themselves to stop funding these groups. But let me make a distinction here.
BBC: Can we just follow this through. You then wrote to them saying...
Bob Ward: What happened is, after I'd explained why the Royal Society felt that the statements Exxon Mobile had made in a report in February, when I explained to them that they were wrong in our opinion, they then send me a report in the summer, a new report, which repeated all of the statements which I complained about in the first place.
BBC: And the letter which the Guardian got hold of yesterday was you saying to them: 'I would be grateful if you could let me know when Exxon Mobile plans to carry out this pledge.' Which is why I used the word 'hectoring,' it's a form of hectoring.
Bob Ward: Well, I like the idea that the Royal Society should be accused of bullying the world's largest multinational oil company. All we're doing is saying to them: it is very clear what the scientific community says about climate change. Anybody can find out by going to the website of the IPCC (www.ippc.ch) . And they can see what the scientific community thinks about climate change. And then they can compare for themselves the stsatements that are being made by Exxon Mobile and by these lobby groups - who are not groups of scientists. These are lobby groups, they are not scientists. Exxon Mobile are not offering scientific evidence.
BBC: Let me bring in Dr Whitehouse. Isn't that what the Royal Society should be doing, ensuring that the right information is out there?
David Whitehouse: The Royal Society should be arguing about science, it shouldn't be delving in such politics. It is clear from this letter that the Royal Society did have concerns about the support that Exxon was giving to groups which they disagree with. They can have concerns about that but their argument should not be with the funding, or the background. It's a question of free speech. Scientists in America won the right to criticise the Bush Government when they did not agree with them about global warming. The contrary should apply here.
BBC: Bob Ward. Have you stepped over a line here?
Bob Ward: We haven't. Let me be clear. We're not trying to shut scientists up. What we're trying to do is say to the lobby groups and to the companies that they should present properly what the scientific community is saying. Now, let me just tell you. One of the organisations that is getting funding from Exxon Mobile is the so-called Centre for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change. This is a statement on their website: "There is no compelling reason to believe that the rise in temperature was caused by the rise in carbon dioxide." Now, can David Whitehouse tell me which peer-reviewed scientific papers that statement is based on?
David Whitehouse: My point is not an argument about the science. The science is irrelevant in this context. You can go to your own website and read scientists talk about the uncertainties of global warming. The question is not whether these people are right or wrong. It's a question about their right to speak. When scientists and scientific organisations like yourself want to serve the cause of public policy, they do so best by following the ethics of science and not public relations and spin.
BBC: Let me just come in here. Dr Whitehouse. Isn't it the case that on this argument people would say the price is too high. And you don't have a level playing field if you have millions being pumped into bad science.
David Whitehouse: First of all. Does is matter that it is bad science? The science, whether it is bad or god, comes out in scientific argument. My problem is with distorting the playing field. Science is about free speech, science is about the exchange of information and argument. It's not about trying to find out who get money paid to somebody else because you disagree with him. We tell young scientists, the most important thing, we tell them, is to question authority. Why should I believe this because you say so?
BBC: We have very little time left. I want a final thought from you, Bob Ward. Is the Royal Society going to continue that sort of approach to prevent funding of organisations that they don't like what they're saying?
Bob Ward: The Royal Society's motto is "Nullis in Verba" - which means "where is your evidence?" (sic) If organisations make statements that are clearly at odds with what the scientific community says the evidence shows, yes, then we will challenge it. Because it does not serve the public for them to be mislead about what the scientific evidence says.
Benny Peiser comments: "Well, I'm not a classicist. But to my knowledge the Royal Society's motto is generally translated as "on the words of no one," meaning: take no theory in trust ... which is in essence the ethics of scientific scrutiny and debate David Whitehouse has been arguing for". (David Whitehouse was until recently the online science editor for the BBC)
Saturday, September 23, 2006
BRITISH TRUANCY PROBLEM
Parents of truanting children at 1,000 primary schools face “fast-track” legal action and fines of £50 after figures indicated that a rise in absences among children under 12 had helped to push truancy figures to a record high. Statistics published yesterday show that, despite government spending of £900 million since 1998 to reduce the number of unauthorised absences from school, 30,000 children still skip classes regularly. These regular absences account for a third of all truancies at secondary school. The truancy rate in primary schools, measured as a percentage of half-days missed per pupil, rose by 7 per cent last year to 0.46 per cent, while in secondary schools truancy rates fell by less than 1 per cent to 1.22 per cent. Overall, the rate rose from 0.78 to 0.79 per cent in the state sector, while private schools also experienced a rise of 0.14 per cent.
The figures for primary schools will be of particular concern for ministers, just a month after primary test results fell well below government targets. Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, said that although the majority of truanting still occurred in secondary schools more effort was needed at primary level to prevent children and parents developing bad habits. Under a new scheme, 1,000 primary schools with poor attendance records will be asked to draw up a list of persistent truants. Their parents will be given 12 weeks to improve their children’s attendance or face automatic prosecution and a 50 pound fine. If this is not paid within 28 days, the fine will rise to 100 pounds.
So far the fast-track scheme has been implemented in only 200 secondary schools, where it has resulted in a 27 per cent fall in persistent truants in a year, with 3,500 of the 13,000 worst offenders returning to class. Mr Knight said that there was no single reason to explain the rise in truancy, although a contributory factor may be the high number of parents taking their children on holiday during the school term to take advantage of off-peak prices. “We have asked schools to be much tougher about authorising holidays during term time,” he said. “There are cultural things going on with truancy. The rate has increased across the board, in independent schools as well as state schools. We have to shift the culture to break the truancy habit, particularly among younger children.” To reach this age range, the Government has set up a £40 million pilot scheme of parent support advisers to help the families of truants aged 8 to 13.
Chris Keates, the general secretary of the NASUWT, a union representing teachers and head teachers, said that parents who allowed their children to play truant were denying them access to an education and a decent future. “More work has to be done to discourage those parents who condone truancy by taking their children out of school for holidays, shopping trips or telling them to stay in and wait for the gas man,” she said. Mick Brookes, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said that punitive initiatives such as the fast-track scheme could put a strain on the relationship between head teachers and parents. A better solution could be for holiday companies to work with schools to use newsletters to promote affordable holidays.
Nick Gibb, the Conservative schools spokesman, said: “We need to focus on the causes of truancy and disaffection — mixed-ability teaching, poor discipline and low levels of reading ability. That is why the Conservative Party is committed to setting children by ability.”
Source
BRITISH HOUSING DISASTER
Housing prices forced up by shortage
When the American radical economist Doug Henwood met London Times editor Robert Thomson in 2003 he wanted to know what it was that kept the UK economy so buoyant in the face of its industrial downsizing. He was bemused by Thomson's answer: the housing market. To any independent observer it seemed obvious that the housing sector was in very bad shape. After all, house completions are at an historic low - 169,000 in 2002, compared with as much as 400,000 in the boom years of the 1960s. Yet on the narrow definition, the boom was a success: rising house prices meant an improvement in assets for homeowners.
How could so sluggish a sector produce such extraordinary growth? The answer is simple. The housing boom is not a housing boom at all; at least it is not a boom in new house production. Rather it is a boom in house prices. And the boom is taking place almost entirely in the second-hand housing market. As Shaun Spiers of the Council for the Protection of Rural England rightly says, the housing market is 'dominated by transactions involving existing, not new homes'. In the inverted world of housing, most houses are bought second-hand. It is as though Sotheby's shifted more units than Ikea.
The simple explanation for the rise in house prices is that it is caused by the shortfall in house completions. The supply of new homes is not enough to meet the demand, so the prices of the smaller pool of homes rise, dampening demand. But increased prices do not seem to have dampened the demand, and the market continues to boom. And worse still, developers have not responded to the higher prices by increasing house building, all of which seems to add up to a bubble in house prices.
In fact, house prices rose year on year from 1997 right through to 2003, by five, 10, 15 and even 20 per cent, only seeming to stop in August 2004, responding, perhaps, to the interest rate rises made by the Bank of England. The causes of the boom are debatable. On the most optimistic reading it is just the effect of rising incomes - a reading that is not without justification. Between 1985 and 2001 the UK workforce grew by a fifth, from 24 to 28 million. Each of these new incomes potentially represents an ambition to own. Economics commentator Heather Stewart argues: 'The number of households in Britain is rising; since the financial liberalisation of the "greed is good" 1980s, everyone wants to own their own home - and not enough houses are being built to accommodate them all.'
It is important to put the housing shortage in perspective - at least in its impact upon house prices. Houses are in short supply relative to the increasing number of incomes chasing them. And as Stewart says, the shortfall is in relation to growing expectations of home ownership that were fuelled in the 1980s. Homelessness, which was a re-occurring problem in the 1980s, has not become more widespread, as some expected it would. The Centre for Housing Research at York University found that there were around 44,000 rough sleepers in England between the ages of 16 and 24. Difficult as these circumstances are, they are not characteristic of the greater part of the population's experience of housing, 14 million of whom own their own homes outright (up by four million on 1991), and a further 27 million of whom have a mortgage, making more than two thirds of the country owner-occupiers.
The shortcoming of the explanation for the boom from incomes alone is straightforward enough: while average earnings are growing at around four per cent a year, house prices are growing at 20 per cent, pricing many out of the market altogether, as we can see from the rise in the rented sector. One might expect some lag between the rise in prices and producers reacting to increase supply, but in fact the lag has turned into a straight refusal. Now the difficulty is to understand why the sector has proved so unresponsive to the price signals that orthodox economics say ought to engender more output.
Embarrassed at the growing problem, the government has tended to blame the developers, accusing them of sitting on land-banks, speculating on future profits instead of meeting demand today. But the developers in turn have a more straightforward explanation for the non-appearance of new homes. They point the finger at the regulatory framework that holds back new growth: the planning laws, the green belt, the onus on greenfield developments, and so on. Alan Evans sets out the economics of the green belt and other controls on development in his Economics and Land Use Planning: 'The supply restriction means that prices rise will rise faster than they otherwise would.'
It is not just that the Town and Country Planning Act makes it difficult to begin building, though that is problem enough. When investors decide where to put their money, the prospect of a delay of years is good reason to put it elsewhere. In tying up capital, those delays increase costs, often prohibitively. But on top of that, the planning regime imposes additional costs. Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act allows local authorities to trade off planning permission against agreements on the part of the developers to make improvements to the site that might normally have been their responsibility. These can include road improvements, the provision of parks, capital improvements to local schools, and hospital or recreational facilities. Section-106 agreements turn planning permission into a tradeable commodity, with which local authorities can wring resources, 'planning gain', from developers over and above their commitments to local and national tax.
As Evans says, authorities 'came to realise they had something of value, which others wanted, and the result was, as an economist might expect, that local authorities tried to appropriate some of the profits for themselves'. Champions of civic responsibility will no doubt applaud the attempts to make the developers pay for the upkeep of the social fabric - but they ought to consider how this windfall tax can act as a disincentive to build. London's mayor Ken Livingstone has been aggressive in the use of Section 106 to achieve goals like the provision of social housing from developers, and most recently, from supermarkets. According to economic writer David Smith, the building industry 'argues that the government has loaded so many extra costs on to builders, including the requirement in many cases to provide social housing in new developments, that this has become a serious constraint'.
There should be no doubt that the restrictive regime of planning has limited development, and that this is a major cause of the housing price boom. However, we cannot be confident that even if the Town and Country Planning Act were abolished tomorrow that developers would meet the new demand. Smith acknowledges the developers are tied down by the obligations arising out of planning constraints, but insists that 'the problem is that private developers haven't filled the gap left by the public sector'. When annual house completions numbered 400,000 in the late 1960s, according to Smith, half were completed by local councils. 'That's not a plea for a return to large-scale council housing', he says, but it does raise the question of whether the private sector is in the right frame of mind to meet the shortfall.
Economic journalist Benjamin Hunt examined in detail the 'risk aversion' that he found endemic among corporate bosses, in his book The Timid Corporation. He identified shareholder activism and its demands to unlock value as one of the main constraints on longer-term investments, and argued that, against expectations, corporations were greatly influenced by the anti-growth mood promoted by environmentalists. 'Greed is good' meets 'the good life' in a mutual antipathy to long-term investments in development.
Certainly in 2001 the Department of Trade and Industry's investigation into competitiveness found that 'evidence does not suggest that the UK is over-investing'; in fact 'the UK remains relatively risk averse' and 'the UK's relatively more risk-averse approach contributes to lower levels of entrepreneurial activity'. In the construction industry, the problem of risk aversion is evident in the low level of building. After all, they make as much, if not more money selling a few over-priced homes as they do selling lots of realistically priced ones. No doubt they are pleased that the planning regulations make it possible for them to make money without having to take any risks or put in any effort.
In some quarters, developers are under fire for hanging on to land without building. Suspicions of gentlemen's agreements to moderate competition might seem like paranoia, but developers have agreed not to compete for labour - as was revealed when Laing O'Rourke outraged rivals by offering extra pay to recruit labourers to build terminal five at Heathrow. The government might find that it is not enough to lift the restraints on development, but will also need to direct investment, with subsidies, to persuade timid investors that their risks are worthwhile. In other words, there will have to be a revolution in attitudes to development on both sides.
Even after identifying the income-driven growth in demand, the regulatory limits on supply and the problem of risk-averse investors, we have not wholly explained the reasons for the house price boom. Economist Sabina Kalyan of the consultants Capital Economics Ltd argues that 'although the number of housebuilding completions has stagnated in the 1990s, the situation has not worsened dramatically - at least not enough to explain the current soaring house price inflation'.
Indeed. At least a part of the boom in house prices is part of a pattern that is nothing to do with houses. Instead of buying houses to live in, many people are now buying houses as a way to invest their spare cash. Of course, most of us generally talk about our homes as 'an investment', enjoying their climb in value, despairing if they fall. But that is not the same thing as the growth of the housing investment market. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister notes the growth in 'the influx of new landlords due to the introduction of buy-to-let mortgages' and that the number of second homes owned principally as an investment more than doubled between 1994 and 2001. The Guardian's perspicacious economics editor Larry Elliott writes: 'Sadly the trend over many decades means that Britain's economy is now much better suited to buying and selling houses than making things.'
Elliott is right to put the housing boom into the wider context of speculative investments. For the past 15 years or so there has been a free-floating speculative bubble, which is largely indifferent to the sectors that it inhabits, taking a hold of them, not for the purpose of creating new products, but for realising profits on alienation, buying cheap to sell dear. The speculative bubble has wandered the globe searching for high returns, stoking boom and bust as far afield as Moscow's banks and Hong Kong's real estate. It has passed through East European and Thai economies - without apparently adding any positive improvements in the 'real' economy of material production. In time, the East Asian asset prices reached unsustainable levels, and investors withdrew their capital - just in time for the dot.com boom. As economist Phil Mullan explains: 'Surplus capital attaches itself to certain phenomena at different times, such as shares, bonds, commercial property, mortgages, or gold.'
Housing investments cushion a lot of people against insecurity, but the booming housing market - perversely - is not leading to the building of new houses. To achieve that we need to take the restraints off development, but also use government incentives to create new homes.
Source
Police force admits it illegally discriminated against white men
Great when the cops break the law!
A police force that rejected 108 potential recruits because they were white men has admitted positive discrimination and agreed to pay compensation. Gloucestershire Constabulary said that it had been trying to increase diversity with its policy of selecting women and candidates from ethnic minorities. But at an employment tribunal in Bristol yesterday, the force admitted that its actions were unlawful and agreed to pay compensation to one potential recruit. Further claims from the other 107 men, who were told by the force that they had been "randomly deselected", could now follow.
Clive Tomer, chairman of the tribunal, said yesterday that Gloucestershire Constabulary had been "at the very least disingenuous and at worst misleading". He ordered that the claimant, Matt Powell, should be given 2,500 pounds for injury to feelings. The tribunal was told that Mr Powell, 30, had applied to join the force in October last year after seeing a job advertisement in a local paper. A month later, after being told that he had progressed to the second stage of the recruitment process, he left his job as an IT team leader at Filton College to concentrate on his application.
But in January he received a letter saying that he had been "randomly deselected". Despite repeated calls to the force's human resources department, he was never given an explanation for his rejection. In April the Commission for Racial Equality and the Equal Opportunities Commission started an investigation. They reported that the force had unlawfully discriminated on the grounds of race and sex. The tribunal was told that two thirds of white men who applied to join the force in last year's recruitment drive had been turned down. Every ethnic minority candidate who applied had been invited to an assessment centre.
Speaking at the tribunal, Mr Powell said: "I didn't come here for the money. I just want to be heard. I firmly believe a wrong has been done here. I was, I still am, desperate to be a police officer and they have unfairly discriminated against me." Nigel Tillott, his lawyer, said: "It is now clear how far public authorities can go in positive discrimination. What they cannot do is discriminate against white males."
Gordon Ramsey, the head of human resources, apologised yesterday and said: "We were trying to advance diversity in the force and we thought at the time that this was lawful, positive action. When we found out after an independent investigation by the Commission for Racial Equality that it wasn't lawful, we accepted that."
Source
ANIMAL NUT JAILED
A British cancer research specialist has been jailed for three years for waging a campaign of sabotage and vandalism against companies linked to an animal testing laboratory. To his colleagues, Joseph Harris, 26, was an outstanding doctor who had a glittering career ahead of him in his specialist field of molecular biology. But in private he became ever more tormented by the fact that his research work on pancreatic cancer was leading to drugs being tested on animals. Faced with an increasing moral dilemma and the estrangement of his girlfriend, who despised animal testing, he turned to violent activism to help ease his conscience and at the same time please her.
Between last December and January he attacked three companies contracted to Huntingdon Life Sciences in Cambridgeshire, causing damage valued at more than 25,000 pounds ($62,000). None was directly linked to animal testing. He glued locks, slashed tyres and put hoses through letter boxes, flooding offices. Harris is the first person to be convicted under legislation designed to tackle harassment and threats from animal rights campaigners directly linked to economic sabotage. Judge Ian Alexander said the conviction would also damage the people he had been trying to help.
"I am sorry that your conviction and the sentence I impose will seriously damage what was a very promising career," he said. "It may well be that your future inability to continue your research into gastro-intestinal cancer will be a great loss to those who suffer that disease." The judge added: "It causes me great discomfort in seeing you before the court, having thrown so much away."
The court heard that Harris found details of his victims on the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty website. All three companies have since ceased trading with Huntingdon Life Sciences. Rebecca Trowler, defending, told the court: "In that field, of course, there are experiments on animals. Inevitably, over time as his career progressed, he was coming under pressure to participate in these experiments." Harris had split up with his girlfriend, who could not accept his work and its tests on animals. Ms Trowler said: "The girlfriend had ended their relationship because of his continued work in the field of medical research because she disapproved of this activity. This put him in an increasing moral dilemma. Essentially he came to a crisis point and he took a very, very stupid decision."
Source
Parents of truanting children at 1,000 primary schools face “fast-track” legal action and fines of £50 after figures indicated that a rise in absences among children under 12 had helped to push truancy figures to a record high. Statistics published yesterday show that, despite government spending of £900 million since 1998 to reduce the number of unauthorised absences from school, 30,000 children still skip classes regularly. These regular absences account for a third of all truancies at secondary school. The truancy rate in primary schools, measured as a percentage of half-days missed per pupil, rose by 7 per cent last year to 0.46 per cent, while in secondary schools truancy rates fell by less than 1 per cent to 1.22 per cent. Overall, the rate rose from 0.78 to 0.79 per cent in the state sector, while private schools also experienced a rise of 0.14 per cent.
The figures for primary schools will be of particular concern for ministers, just a month after primary test results fell well below government targets. Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, said that although the majority of truanting still occurred in secondary schools more effort was needed at primary level to prevent children and parents developing bad habits. Under a new scheme, 1,000 primary schools with poor attendance records will be asked to draw up a list of persistent truants. Their parents will be given 12 weeks to improve their children’s attendance or face automatic prosecution and a 50 pound fine. If this is not paid within 28 days, the fine will rise to 100 pounds.
So far the fast-track scheme has been implemented in only 200 secondary schools, where it has resulted in a 27 per cent fall in persistent truants in a year, with 3,500 of the 13,000 worst offenders returning to class. Mr Knight said that there was no single reason to explain the rise in truancy, although a contributory factor may be the high number of parents taking their children on holiday during the school term to take advantage of off-peak prices. “We have asked schools to be much tougher about authorising holidays during term time,” he said. “There are cultural things going on with truancy. The rate has increased across the board, in independent schools as well as state schools. We have to shift the culture to break the truancy habit, particularly among younger children.” To reach this age range, the Government has set up a £40 million pilot scheme of parent support advisers to help the families of truants aged 8 to 13.
Chris Keates, the general secretary of the NASUWT, a union representing teachers and head teachers, said that parents who allowed their children to play truant were denying them access to an education and a decent future. “More work has to be done to discourage those parents who condone truancy by taking their children out of school for holidays, shopping trips or telling them to stay in and wait for the gas man,” she said. Mick Brookes, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said that punitive initiatives such as the fast-track scheme could put a strain on the relationship between head teachers and parents. A better solution could be for holiday companies to work with schools to use newsletters to promote affordable holidays.
Nick Gibb, the Conservative schools spokesman, said: “We need to focus on the causes of truancy and disaffection — mixed-ability teaching, poor discipline and low levels of reading ability. That is why the Conservative Party is committed to setting children by ability.”
Source
BRITISH HOUSING DISASTER
Housing prices forced up by shortage
When the American radical economist Doug Henwood met London Times editor Robert Thomson in 2003 he wanted to know what it was that kept the UK economy so buoyant in the face of its industrial downsizing. He was bemused by Thomson's answer: the housing market. To any independent observer it seemed obvious that the housing sector was in very bad shape. After all, house completions are at an historic low - 169,000 in 2002, compared with as much as 400,000 in the boom years of the 1960s. Yet on the narrow definition, the boom was a success: rising house prices meant an improvement in assets for homeowners.
How could so sluggish a sector produce such extraordinary growth? The answer is simple. The housing boom is not a housing boom at all; at least it is not a boom in new house production. Rather it is a boom in house prices. And the boom is taking place almost entirely in the second-hand housing market. As Shaun Spiers of the Council for the Protection of Rural England rightly says, the housing market is 'dominated by transactions involving existing, not new homes'. In the inverted world of housing, most houses are bought second-hand. It is as though Sotheby's shifted more units than Ikea.
The simple explanation for the rise in house prices is that it is caused by the shortfall in house completions. The supply of new homes is not enough to meet the demand, so the prices of the smaller pool of homes rise, dampening demand. But increased prices do not seem to have dampened the demand, and the market continues to boom. And worse still, developers have not responded to the higher prices by increasing house building, all of which seems to add up to a bubble in house prices.
In fact, house prices rose year on year from 1997 right through to 2003, by five, 10, 15 and even 20 per cent, only seeming to stop in August 2004, responding, perhaps, to the interest rate rises made by the Bank of England. The causes of the boom are debatable. On the most optimistic reading it is just the effect of rising incomes - a reading that is not without justification. Between 1985 and 2001 the UK workforce grew by a fifth, from 24 to 28 million. Each of these new incomes potentially represents an ambition to own. Economics commentator Heather Stewart argues: 'The number of households in Britain is rising; since the financial liberalisation of the "greed is good" 1980s, everyone wants to own their own home - and not enough houses are being built to accommodate them all.'
It is important to put the housing shortage in perspective - at least in its impact upon house prices. Houses are in short supply relative to the increasing number of incomes chasing them. And as Stewart says, the shortfall is in relation to growing expectations of home ownership that were fuelled in the 1980s. Homelessness, which was a re-occurring problem in the 1980s, has not become more widespread, as some expected it would. The Centre for Housing Research at York University found that there were around 44,000 rough sleepers in England between the ages of 16 and 24. Difficult as these circumstances are, they are not characteristic of the greater part of the population's experience of housing, 14 million of whom own their own homes outright (up by four million on 1991), and a further 27 million of whom have a mortgage, making more than two thirds of the country owner-occupiers.
The shortcoming of the explanation for the boom from incomes alone is straightforward enough: while average earnings are growing at around four per cent a year, house prices are growing at 20 per cent, pricing many out of the market altogether, as we can see from the rise in the rented sector. One might expect some lag between the rise in prices and producers reacting to increase supply, but in fact the lag has turned into a straight refusal. Now the difficulty is to understand why the sector has proved so unresponsive to the price signals that orthodox economics say ought to engender more output.
Embarrassed at the growing problem, the government has tended to blame the developers, accusing them of sitting on land-banks, speculating on future profits instead of meeting demand today. But the developers in turn have a more straightforward explanation for the non-appearance of new homes. They point the finger at the regulatory framework that holds back new growth: the planning laws, the green belt, the onus on greenfield developments, and so on. Alan Evans sets out the economics of the green belt and other controls on development in his Economics and Land Use Planning: 'The supply restriction means that prices rise will rise faster than they otherwise would.'
It is not just that the Town and Country Planning Act makes it difficult to begin building, though that is problem enough. When investors decide where to put their money, the prospect of a delay of years is good reason to put it elsewhere. In tying up capital, those delays increase costs, often prohibitively. But on top of that, the planning regime imposes additional costs. Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act allows local authorities to trade off planning permission against agreements on the part of the developers to make improvements to the site that might normally have been their responsibility. These can include road improvements, the provision of parks, capital improvements to local schools, and hospital or recreational facilities. Section-106 agreements turn planning permission into a tradeable commodity, with which local authorities can wring resources, 'planning gain', from developers over and above their commitments to local and national tax.
As Evans says, authorities 'came to realise they had something of value, which others wanted, and the result was, as an economist might expect, that local authorities tried to appropriate some of the profits for themselves'. Champions of civic responsibility will no doubt applaud the attempts to make the developers pay for the upkeep of the social fabric - but they ought to consider how this windfall tax can act as a disincentive to build. London's mayor Ken Livingstone has been aggressive in the use of Section 106 to achieve goals like the provision of social housing from developers, and most recently, from supermarkets. According to economic writer David Smith, the building industry 'argues that the government has loaded so many extra costs on to builders, including the requirement in many cases to provide social housing in new developments, that this has become a serious constraint'.
There should be no doubt that the restrictive regime of planning has limited development, and that this is a major cause of the housing price boom. However, we cannot be confident that even if the Town and Country Planning Act were abolished tomorrow that developers would meet the new demand. Smith acknowledges the developers are tied down by the obligations arising out of planning constraints, but insists that 'the problem is that private developers haven't filled the gap left by the public sector'. When annual house completions numbered 400,000 in the late 1960s, according to Smith, half were completed by local councils. 'That's not a plea for a return to large-scale council housing', he says, but it does raise the question of whether the private sector is in the right frame of mind to meet the shortfall.
Economic journalist Benjamin Hunt examined in detail the 'risk aversion' that he found endemic among corporate bosses, in his book The Timid Corporation. He identified shareholder activism and its demands to unlock value as one of the main constraints on longer-term investments, and argued that, against expectations, corporations were greatly influenced by the anti-growth mood promoted by environmentalists. 'Greed is good' meets 'the good life' in a mutual antipathy to long-term investments in development.
Certainly in 2001 the Department of Trade and Industry's investigation into competitiveness found that 'evidence does not suggest that the UK is over-investing'; in fact 'the UK remains relatively risk averse' and 'the UK's relatively more risk-averse approach contributes to lower levels of entrepreneurial activity'. In the construction industry, the problem of risk aversion is evident in the low level of building. After all, they make as much, if not more money selling a few over-priced homes as they do selling lots of realistically priced ones. No doubt they are pleased that the planning regulations make it possible for them to make money without having to take any risks or put in any effort.
In some quarters, developers are under fire for hanging on to land without building. Suspicions of gentlemen's agreements to moderate competition might seem like paranoia, but developers have agreed not to compete for labour - as was revealed when Laing O'Rourke outraged rivals by offering extra pay to recruit labourers to build terminal five at Heathrow. The government might find that it is not enough to lift the restraints on development, but will also need to direct investment, with subsidies, to persuade timid investors that their risks are worthwhile. In other words, there will have to be a revolution in attitudes to development on both sides.
Even after identifying the income-driven growth in demand, the regulatory limits on supply and the problem of risk-averse investors, we have not wholly explained the reasons for the house price boom. Economist Sabina Kalyan of the consultants Capital Economics Ltd argues that 'although the number of housebuilding completions has stagnated in the 1990s, the situation has not worsened dramatically - at least not enough to explain the current soaring house price inflation'.
Indeed. At least a part of the boom in house prices is part of a pattern that is nothing to do with houses. Instead of buying houses to live in, many people are now buying houses as a way to invest their spare cash. Of course, most of us generally talk about our homes as 'an investment', enjoying their climb in value, despairing if they fall. But that is not the same thing as the growth of the housing investment market. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister notes the growth in 'the influx of new landlords due to the introduction of buy-to-let mortgages' and that the number of second homes owned principally as an investment more than doubled between 1994 and 2001. The Guardian's perspicacious economics editor Larry Elliott writes: 'Sadly the trend over many decades means that Britain's economy is now much better suited to buying and selling houses than making things.'
Elliott is right to put the housing boom into the wider context of speculative investments. For the past 15 years or so there has been a free-floating speculative bubble, which is largely indifferent to the sectors that it inhabits, taking a hold of them, not for the purpose of creating new products, but for realising profits on alienation, buying cheap to sell dear. The speculative bubble has wandered the globe searching for high returns, stoking boom and bust as far afield as Moscow's banks and Hong Kong's real estate. It has passed through East European and Thai economies - without apparently adding any positive improvements in the 'real' economy of material production. In time, the East Asian asset prices reached unsustainable levels, and investors withdrew their capital - just in time for the dot.com boom. As economist Phil Mullan explains: 'Surplus capital attaches itself to certain phenomena at different times, such as shares, bonds, commercial property, mortgages, or gold.'
Housing investments cushion a lot of people against insecurity, but the booming housing market - perversely - is not leading to the building of new houses. To achieve that we need to take the restraints off development, but also use government incentives to create new homes.
Source
Police force admits it illegally discriminated against white men
Great when the cops break the law!
A police force that rejected 108 potential recruits because they were white men has admitted positive discrimination and agreed to pay compensation. Gloucestershire Constabulary said that it had been trying to increase diversity with its policy of selecting women and candidates from ethnic minorities. But at an employment tribunal in Bristol yesterday, the force admitted that its actions were unlawful and agreed to pay compensation to one potential recruit. Further claims from the other 107 men, who were told by the force that they had been "randomly deselected", could now follow.
Clive Tomer, chairman of the tribunal, said yesterday that Gloucestershire Constabulary had been "at the very least disingenuous and at worst misleading". He ordered that the claimant, Matt Powell, should be given 2,500 pounds for injury to feelings. The tribunal was told that Mr Powell, 30, had applied to join the force in October last year after seeing a job advertisement in a local paper. A month later, after being told that he had progressed to the second stage of the recruitment process, he left his job as an IT team leader at Filton College to concentrate on his application.
But in January he received a letter saying that he had been "randomly deselected". Despite repeated calls to the force's human resources department, he was never given an explanation for his rejection. In April the Commission for Racial Equality and the Equal Opportunities Commission started an investigation. They reported that the force had unlawfully discriminated on the grounds of race and sex. The tribunal was told that two thirds of white men who applied to join the force in last year's recruitment drive had been turned down. Every ethnic minority candidate who applied had been invited to an assessment centre.
Speaking at the tribunal, Mr Powell said: "I didn't come here for the money. I just want to be heard. I firmly believe a wrong has been done here. I was, I still am, desperate to be a police officer and they have unfairly discriminated against me." Nigel Tillott, his lawyer, said: "It is now clear how far public authorities can go in positive discrimination. What they cannot do is discriminate against white males."
Gordon Ramsey, the head of human resources, apologised yesterday and said: "We were trying to advance diversity in the force and we thought at the time that this was lawful, positive action. When we found out after an independent investigation by the Commission for Racial Equality that it wasn't lawful, we accepted that."
Source
ANIMAL NUT JAILED
A British cancer research specialist has been jailed for three years for waging a campaign of sabotage and vandalism against companies linked to an animal testing laboratory. To his colleagues, Joseph Harris, 26, was an outstanding doctor who had a glittering career ahead of him in his specialist field of molecular biology. But in private he became ever more tormented by the fact that his research work on pancreatic cancer was leading to drugs being tested on animals. Faced with an increasing moral dilemma and the estrangement of his girlfriend, who despised animal testing, he turned to violent activism to help ease his conscience and at the same time please her.
Between last December and January he attacked three companies contracted to Huntingdon Life Sciences in Cambridgeshire, causing damage valued at more than 25,000 pounds ($62,000). None was directly linked to animal testing. He glued locks, slashed tyres and put hoses through letter boxes, flooding offices. Harris is the first person to be convicted under legislation designed to tackle harassment and threats from animal rights campaigners directly linked to economic sabotage. Judge Ian Alexander said the conviction would also damage the people he had been trying to help.
"I am sorry that your conviction and the sentence I impose will seriously damage what was a very promising career," he said. "It may well be that your future inability to continue your research into gastro-intestinal cancer will be a great loss to those who suffer that disease." The judge added: "It causes me great discomfort in seeing you before the court, having thrown so much away."
The court heard that Harris found details of his victims on the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty website. All three companies have since ceased trading with Huntingdon Life Sciences. Rebecca Trowler, defending, told the court: "In that field, of course, there are experiments on animals. Inevitably, over time as his career progressed, he was coming under pressure to participate in these experiments." Harris had split up with his girlfriend, who could not accept his work and its tests on animals. Ms Trowler said: "The girlfriend had ended their relationship because of his continued work in the field of medical research because she disapproved of this activity. This put him in an increasing moral dilemma. Essentially he came to a crisis point and he took a very, very stupid decision."
Source
Friday, September 22, 2006
SCHOOLS THAT THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT CANNOT MAKE WORK
Instead of solving the problems that their failed educational theories have created, they are just running away and hoping someone else can solve them
The worst-performing secondary schools in the country face being taken over by the best or shut down completely, The Times has learnt. Head teachers of schools with trust status, an initiative designed to give them greater independence from local authorities, will be able to act as chief executives overseeing the progress of less successful institutions. The plans come amid concerns that Labour's record investment has failed to improve standards at the bottom of school league tables, with more than one in six secondaries now providing a second-rate education.
A confidential government hitlist has identified 512 secondary schools, from a total of 3,385, that are officially classified as "underperforming" because only 25 per cent or less of pupils attain five good GCSEs. An estimated 400,000 children attend these schools, with many leaving at 16 without the skills to get a job. They include Montgomery School in Canterbury, where just 1 per cent of pupils achieved five A* to C GCSEs, including maths and English, in 2005, against a national average of 44.3 per cent. Also on the list is Ridings School in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, which achieved notoriety in 1996 after pupil behaviour and staff action plunged it into chaos. Despite the help of troubleshooting head teachers, just 5 per cent of pupils managed five A* to C GCSEs, including maths and English, last year.
Under the new plans, such schools would be taken over by high-achieving schools, linked together by a single independent trust. The trusts, set up under the new education Bill, would be run by a chief executive, usually the existing head of the lead school in the partnership. The chief executive would appoint new heads for each of the partner schools and would have the freedom to take whatever other actions were necessary to raise standards, including the removal of up to 20 per cent of staff. Sir Cyril Taylor, head of the Government's specialist schools programme and the architect of the reforms, said that a large number of heads in high- performing schools had already expressed an interest in taking over underperforming schools nearby.
The key in turning round an underperforming school was good leadership and a strong vision. "I believe that the strong should help the weak. Best practice can be replicated with good leadership in even the most challenging schools," he said. Sir Cyril said that the reforms would help to nurture new leaders and address the leadership crisis in schools. At present 1,500 English primary and secondary schools lack a permanent head. "If we are short of 1,500 head teachers, it will clearly be difficult to find sufficient outstanding head teachers for every underperforming school, and this is where collaboration and co-operation between schools can be crucial in raising performance," Sir Cyril added.
High-performing schools can already take over failing schools by forming a federation under existing legislation, but such arrangements cannot be permanent and have limited powers. Under the new education Bill, expected to receive Royal Assent this year, a new breed of independent school trust, free from local authority control, will be possible. In a speech today at the Federations and School Leadership conference in London, Sir Cyril will say that trust status will be key to making school partnerships work. Those underperforming schools that were not taken over by others should either be closed down completely, if their pupil numbers were falling, and their pupils sent to nearby schools, or they should seek private sponsorship to become academy schools, he said.
Teaching unions are generally in favour of the move towards more partnerships between schools, provided that heads and teachers from failing schools who lose their jobs are properly compensated. John Dunford, of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: "The principle of a successful school supporting a less successful one in partnership is an excellent one." However, he questioned the idea of classifying as "failing" all schools with 25 per cent or less of pupils attaining five good GCSEs. "It will depend on the ability of the children when they join a school," he said.
Examples of successful take-overs include the Ninestiles Federation in Birmingham. In 2001 the highly successful Ninestiles School took responsibility for the Waverley School, then on the brink of special measures. The partnership finished in 2005, by which time the proportion of Waverley students gaining five good GCSEs had risen from 16 to 75 per cent.
Source
MUSLIM HATE OK IN BRITAIN
Judging by deeds, not words
After the July 7 attacks Tony Blair and Charles Clarke, then the Home Secretary, promised to remove extremist clerics from Britain. But more than a year later, many "preachers of hate" remain in the country with no apparent action taken against them. They include:
ANJEM CHOUDARY is the leader of al-Ghurabaa, which was formed from the remnants of al-Muhajiroun and banned along with the Saved Sect. Mr Choudary, 39, organised the protests outside the Danish Embassy against the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. He was arrested during the march and, in July, fined 500 pounds for failing to give police the required six days notice of the demonstration. He is being investigated in connection with last Sunday's protests outside Westminster Cathedral over the Pope's comments about Islam.
ABU UZAIR is a British-born civil engineering graduate and co-founder of the Saved Sect. He has repeatedly praised the September 11 hijackers as "brave warriors". After the July 7 bombings in London he said: "The banner has been risen for jihad in the UK which means it is allowed for [suicide bombers] to attack."
AZZAM TAMIMI, a Palestinian-born academic based in Britain, advocated martyrdom when addressing an Islamic convention in Manchester. He told the 8,000-strong audience that dying for one's beliefs was just, adding: "Martyrs are those who stand up in defiance of George Bush and Tony Blair." He has said that he would be prepared to be a suicide bomber in Israel.
ABU MUWAHHID is said to be a disciple of Omar Bakri Mohammad. He praised Osama bin Laden and called for all sinners to be killed in video broadcasts in July: "Capture them and besiege them and prepare an ambush from every angle." He mocked the victims of 9/11 and called for a Muslim state in Britain with a "black flag" over Downing Street.
Source
HAVING LOST THE POLITICAL GAME, ROYAL SOCIETY PLAYS THE "CONSENSUS" CARD
Once a stuffy scientific body, Britain's Royal Society is now searching for relevance by becoming a very political lobby group. Report below from "The Guardian"
Britain's leading scientists have challenged the US oil company ExxonMobil to stop funding groups that attempt to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change. In an unprecedented step, the Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific academy, has written to the oil giant to demand that the company withdraws support for dozens of groups that have "misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence". The scientists also strongly criticise the company's public statements on global warming, which they describe as "inaccurate and misleading".
In a letter earlier this month to Esso, the UK arm of ExxonMobil, the Royal Society cites its own survey which found that ExxonMobil last year distributed $2.9m to 39 groups that the society says misrepresent the science of climate change. These include the International Policy Network, a thinktank with its HQ in London, and the George C Marshall Institute, which is based in Washington DC. In 2004, the institute jointly published a report with the UK group the Scientific Alliance which claimed that global temperature rises were not related to rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. "There is not a robust scientific basis for drawing definitive and objective conclusions about the effect of human influence on future climate," it said.
In the letter, Bob Ward of the Royal Society writes: "At our meeting in July ... you indicated that ExxonMobil would not be providing any further funding to these organisations. I would be grateful if you could let me know when ExxonMobil plans to carry out this pledge." The letter, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, adds: "I would be grateful if you could let me know which organisations in the UK and other European countries have been receiving funding so that I can work out which of these have been similarly providing inaccurate and misleading information to the public."
This is the first time the society has written to a company to challenge its activities. The move reflects mounting concern about the activities of lobby groups that try to undermine the overwhelming scientific evidence that emissions are linked to climate change. The groups, such as the US Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), whose senior figures have described global warming as a myth, are expected to launch a renewed campaign ahead of a major new climate change report. The CEI responded to the recent release of Al Gore's climate change film, An Inconvenient Truth, with adverts that welcomed increased carbon dioxide pollution.
The latest report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), due to be published in February, is expected to say that climate change could drive the Earth's temperatures higher than previously predicted. Mr Ward said: "It is now more crucial than ever that we have a debate which is properly informed by the science. For people to be still producing information that misleads people about climate change is unhelpful. The next IPCC report should give people the final push that they need to take action and we can't have people trying to undermine it."
The Royal Society letter also takes issue with ExxonMobil's own presentation of climate science. It strongly criticises the company's "corporate citizenship reports", which claim that "gaps in the scientific basis" make it very difficult to blame climate change on human activity. The letter says: "These statements are not consistent with the scientific literature. It is very difficult to reconcile the misrepresentations of climate change science in these documents with ExxonMobil's claim to be an industry leader." Environmentalists regard ExxonMobil as one of the least progressive oil companies because, unlike competitors such as BP and Shell, it has not invested heavily in alternative energy sources.
ExxonMobil said: "We can confirm that recently we received a letter from the Royal Society on the topic of climate change. Amongst other topics our Tomorrow's Energy and Corporate Citizenship reports explain our views openly and honestly on climate change. We would refute any suggestion that our reports are inaccurate or misleading." A spokesman added that ExxonMobil stopped funding the Competitive Enterprise Institute this year.
Recent research has made scientists more confident that recent warming is man-made, a finding endorsed by scientific academies across the world, including in the US, China and Brazil. The Royal Society's move emerged as Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey, warned that the polar ice caps were breaking up at a faster rate than glaciologists thought possible, with profound consequences for global sea levels. Professor Rapley said the change was almost certainly down to global warming. "It's like opening a window and seeing what's going on and the message is that it's worse than we thought," he said.
The Guardian, 20 September 2006
Oil companies greatly dislike the way they are constantly demonized (you would too) so Exxon may well cave in
A REMINDER: HOW THE ROYAL SOCIETY TURNED THOUGHT POLICE
(From The Daily Telegraph of 16 May 2005)
I've had a letter from Sir David Wallace, CBE, FRS. In his capacity as treasurer and vice-president of the Royal Society, he writes: "We are appealing to all parts of the UK media to be vigilant against attempts to present a distorted view of the scientific evidence about climate change and its potential effects on people and their environments around the world. I hope that we can count on your support."
Gosh! The V-P of the Royal Society! How could anyone not support such an eminent body, especially as Sir David warns: "There are some individuals on the fringes, sometimes with financial support from the oil industry, who have been attempting to cast doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change." I say! A conspiracy as well. Definitely time to rally round, chaps, and repel fringe individuals. To help us do so, there's a "guide to facts and fictions about climate change written in a non-technical style" that even non-members of the Royal Society can grasp.
There's no doubt that this is a difficult subject that arouses strong emotions and which, if the more pessimistic projections turn out to be anywhere near the truth, will cause mankind some serious problems in the coming decades. Yet I fear I am going to be a great disappointment to Sir David.
However vigilant we may be against attempts to present a distorted view of the scientific evidence, he cannot count on my support, and it's not merely because of my instinctive leaning towards individuals on the fringe. In his helpful, non-technical guide, he refers to a survey of 928 papers (count 'em) on climate change published between 1993 and 2003, which found that three quarters of them accepted the view that man's activities (anthropogenic, in the jargon) have had a major impact on the climate. Amazingly, not a single one rejected it. Never mind that this is probably a greater consensus than can be found for the theory of evolution, the lack of a single dissenting voice smacks of the sort of result Nicolae Ceausescu used to get in his Romanian elections. So just what was this survey?
It is by one Naomi Oreskes, and was published in Nature last December, and it has surprised those whom Sir David might describe as fringe individuals. Among them are eminent researchers who have discovered periods in history when the Earth was hotter, even with lower levels of carbon dioxide than in today's atmosphere, and other scientists who believe that solar activity is the biggest cause of recent climate change. These people are not nutcases, nor are they in thrall to the oil companies (even if they were, does anyone seriously believe that Big Oil wants to destroy the planet?). They are just as capable of doing serious science as those who take it as an article of faith that global warming is all our fault.
Six such individuals have just published a paper* arguing that cosmic ray intensity and variations in solar activity have been driving recent climate change. They even provide a testable hypothesis, predicting some modest cooling over the next couple of years, as cosmic ray activity increases cloud cover. Since the conventional - sorry, consensus - wisdom says we are on a rising temperature curve to disaster, a couple of cool years would deal a serious blow to the anthropogenists.
There is much more in Sir David's briefing paper that other experts could challenge. One of the more terrifying aspects of global warming is the threat of rising sea levels as the polar ice melts, and the oceans expand through rising temperatures, threatening the millions of people who live in places only a few feet above sea level. Dramatic pictures of receding ice shelves in Antarctica seem to back this up, but a report in February to the Earth Observation summit in Brussels found that the ice masses there seem to be growing. Sea level does not appear to be rising; satellites can't detect any change, and low-lying islands such as Tuvalu are refusing to disappear beneath the waves.
As I said, this is a difficult subject, and it would be foolish to assume that everything will turn out fine, whatever we do. But that hardly justifies Draconian measures that will make us poorer, unless the scientific evidence is overwhelming. This was what the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change was set up to do, and its findings form the basis for the Kyoto treaty. Yet a closer examination of the scientific case shows that what are now considered by the doomsayers to be firm forecasts of temperature rises are actually "scenarios" of what might happen on different assumptions.
There is a huge margin for error here, certainly enough to justify America's refusal to sign up to the treaty. It's fashionable to claim that George W. Bush has rejected Kyoto because he's too stupid to see the problem (and, of course, he's in thrall to Big Oil), but he can just as plausibly argue that the treaty is based on bad science. Climate change is an important, perhaps vital, debate, but it remains just that. Warning of disaster has become a global industry, and the livelihoods of thousands of scientists depend on our being sufficiently spooked to keep funding the research. The worry is that many of these researchers have stopped being scientists and become campaigners instead. I do hope that the vice-president of the Royal Society is not one of them.
THOUGHT POLICE AND THE SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS
An email from Dr. David Whitehouse (dr_d_whitehouse@msn.com)
I wonder if I am not alone in finding something rather ugly and unscientific about the letter the Royal Society has sent to EssoUK (part of Exxon). It is reproduced in today's Guardian newspaper.
It demands EssoUK stop giving money to groups and organisations who do not believe that human activities are totally responsible for global warming. It also asks EssoUK to provide details of all the groups it funds so that the Royal Society can track them down and vet them, "so that I can work out which of these have been similarly providing inaccurate and misleading information to the public," the letter says.
My disquiet about this is nothing to do with the status of the debate about anthropogenic global warming but about the nature of the debate and the role of the Royal Society in it and the sending of such a hectoring and bullying letter demanding adherence to the scientific consensus.
Theories come and go. Some become fact, others do not. As scientists our ultimate loyalty is not to theory but to reason and to open enquiry even when some think it ill judged. We should value that above all and I am surprised the Royal Society is acting this way. Einstein once said, "Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth." However the Royal Society sees its role in debates about science, is it appropriate that it should be using its authority to judge and censor in this way?
Instead of solving the problems that their failed educational theories have created, they are just running away and hoping someone else can solve them
The worst-performing secondary schools in the country face being taken over by the best or shut down completely, The Times has learnt. Head teachers of schools with trust status, an initiative designed to give them greater independence from local authorities, will be able to act as chief executives overseeing the progress of less successful institutions. The plans come amid concerns that Labour's record investment has failed to improve standards at the bottom of school league tables, with more than one in six secondaries now providing a second-rate education.
A confidential government hitlist has identified 512 secondary schools, from a total of 3,385, that are officially classified as "underperforming" because only 25 per cent or less of pupils attain five good GCSEs. An estimated 400,000 children attend these schools, with many leaving at 16 without the skills to get a job. They include Montgomery School in Canterbury, where just 1 per cent of pupils achieved five A* to C GCSEs, including maths and English, in 2005, against a national average of 44.3 per cent. Also on the list is Ridings School in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, which achieved notoriety in 1996 after pupil behaviour and staff action plunged it into chaos. Despite the help of troubleshooting head teachers, just 5 per cent of pupils managed five A* to C GCSEs, including maths and English, last year.
Under the new plans, such schools would be taken over by high-achieving schools, linked together by a single independent trust. The trusts, set up under the new education Bill, would be run by a chief executive, usually the existing head of the lead school in the partnership. The chief executive would appoint new heads for each of the partner schools and would have the freedom to take whatever other actions were necessary to raise standards, including the removal of up to 20 per cent of staff. Sir Cyril Taylor, head of the Government's specialist schools programme and the architect of the reforms, said that a large number of heads in high- performing schools had already expressed an interest in taking over underperforming schools nearby.
The key in turning round an underperforming school was good leadership and a strong vision. "I believe that the strong should help the weak. Best practice can be replicated with good leadership in even the most challenging schools," he said. Sir Cyril said that the reforms would help to nurture new leaders and address the leadership crisis in schools. At present 1,500 English primary and secondary schools lack a permanent head. "If we are short of 1,500 head teachers, it will clearly be difficult to find sufficient outstanding head teachers for every underperforming school, and this is where collaboration and co-operation between schools can be crucial in raising performance," Sir Cyril added.
High-performing schools can already take over failing schools by forming a federation under existing legislation, but such arrangements cannot be permanent and have limited powers. Under the new education Bill, expected to receive Royal Assent this year, a new breed of independent school trust, free from local authority control, will be possible. In a speech today at the Federations and School Leadership conference in London, Sir Cyril will say that trust status will be key to making school partnerships work. Those underperforming schools that were not taken over by others should either be closed down completely, if their pupil numbers were falling, and their pupils sent to nearby schools, or they should seek private sponsorship to become academy schools, he said.
Teaching unions are generally in favour of the move towards more partnerships between schools, provided that heads and teachers from failing schools who lose their jobs are properly compensated. John Dunford, of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: "The principle of a successful school supporting a less successful one in partnership is an excellent one." However, he questioned the idea of classifying as "failing" all schools with 25 per cent or less of pupils attaining five good GCSEs. "It will depend on the ability of the children when they join a school," he said.
Examples of successful take-overs include the Ninestiles Federation in Birmingham. In 2001 the highly successful Ninestiles School took responsibility for the Waverley School, then on the brink of special measures. The partnership finished in 2005, by which time the proportion of Waverley students gaining five good GCSEs had risen from 16 to 75 per cent.
Source
MUSLIM HATE OK IN BRITAIN
Judging by deeds, not words
After the July 7 attacks Tony Blair and Charles Clarke, then the Home Secretary, promised to remove extremist clerics from Britain. But more than a year later, many "preachers of hate" remain in the country with no apparent action taken against them. They include:
ANJEM CHOUDARY is the leader of al-Ghurabaa, which was formed from the remnants of al-Muhajiroun and banned along with the Saved Sect. Mr Choudary, 39, organised the protests outside the Danish Embassy against the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. He was arrested during the march and, in July, fined 500 pounds for failing to give police the required six days notice of the demonstration. He is being investigated in connection with last Sunday's protests outside Westminster Cathedral over the Pope's comments about Islam.
ABU UZAIR is a British-born civil engineering graduate and co-founder of the Saved Sect. He has repeatedly praised the September 11 hijackers as "brave warriors". After the July 7 bombings in London he said: "The banner has been risen for jihad in the UK which means it is allowed for [suicide bombers] to attack."
AZZAM TAMIMI, a Palestinian-born academic based in Britain, advocated martyrdom when addressing an Islamic convention in Manchester. He told the 8,000-strong audience that dying for one's beliefs was just, adding: "Martyrs are those who stand up in defiance of George Bush and Tony Blair." He has said that he would be prepared to be a suicide bomber in Israel.
ABU MUWAHHID is said to be a disciple of Omar Bakri Mohammad. He praised Osama bin Laden and called for all sinners to be killed in video broadcasts in July: "Capture them and besiege them and prepare an ambush from every angle." He mocked the victims of 9/11 and called for a Muslim state in Britain with a "black flag" over Downing Street.
Source
HAVING LOST THE POLITICAL GAME, ROYAL SOCIETY PLAYS THE "CONSENSUS" CARD
Once a stuffy scientific body, Britain's Royal Society is now searching for relevance by becoming a very political lobby group. Report below from "The Guardian"
Britain's leading scientists have challenged the US oil company ExxonMobil to stop funding groups that attempt to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change. In an unprecedented step, the Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific academy, has written to the oil giant to demand that the company withdraws support for dozens of groups that have "misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence". The scientists also strongly criticise the company's public statements on global warming, which they describe as "inaccurate and misleading".
In a letter earlier this month to Esso, the UK arm of ExxonMobil, the Royal Society cites its own survey which found that ExxonMobil last year distributed $2.9m to 39 groups that the society says misrepresent the science of climate change. These include the International Policy Network, a thinktank with its HQ in London, and the George C Marshall Institute, which is based in Washington DC. In 2004, the institute jointly published a report with the UK group the Scientific Alliance which claimed that global temperature rises were not related to rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. "There is not a robust scientific basis for drawing definitive and objective conclusions about the effect of human influence on future climate," it said.
In the letter, Bob Ward of the Royal Society writes: "At our meeting in July ... you indicated that ExxonMobil would not be providing any further funding to these organisations. I would be grateful if you could let me know when ExxonMobil plans to carry out this pledge." The letter, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, adds: "I would be grateful if you could let me know which organisations in the UK and other European countries have been receiving funding so that I can work out which of these have been similarly providing inaccurate and misleading information to the public."
This is the first time the society has written to a company to challenge its activities. The move reflects mounting concern about the activities of lobby groups that try to undermine the overwhelming scientific evidence that emissions are linked to climate change. The groups, such as the US Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), whose senior figures have described global warming as a myth, are expected to launch a renewed campaign ahead of a major new climate change report. The CEI responded to the recent release of Al Gore's climate change film, An Inconvenient Truth, with adverts that welcomed increased carbon dioxide pollution.
The latest report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), due to be published in February, is expected to say that climate change could drive the Earth's temperatures higher than previously predicted. Mr Ward said: "It is now more crucial than ever that we have a debate which is properly informed by the science. For people to be still producing information that misleads people about climate change is unhelpful. The next IPCC report should give people the final push that they need to take action and we can't have people trying to undermine it."
The Royal Society letter also takes issue with ExxonMobil's own presentation of climate science. It strongly criticises the company's "corporate citizenship reports", which claim that "gaps in the scientific basis" make it very difficult to blame climate change on human activity. The letter says: "These statements are not consistent with the scientific literature. It is very difficult to reconcile the misrepresentations of climate change science in these documents with ExxonMobil's claim to be an industry leader." Environmentalists regard ExxonMobil as one of the least progressive oil companies because, unlike competitors such as BP and Shell, it has not invested heavily in alternative energy sources.
ExxonMobil said: "We can confirm that recently we received a letter from the Royal Society on the topic of climate change. Amongst other topics our Tomorrow's Energy and Corporate Citizenship reports explain our views openly and honestly on climate change. We would refute any suggestion that our reports are inaccurate or misleading." A spokesman added that ExxonMobil stopped funding the Competitive Enterprise Institute this year.
Recent research has made scientists more confident that recent warming is man-made, a finding endorsed by scientific academies across the world, including in the US, China and Brazil. The Royal Society's move emerged as Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey, warned that the polar ice caps were breaking up at a faster rate than glaciologists thought possible, with profound consequences for global sea levels. Professor Rapley said the change was almost certainly down to global warming. "It's like opening a window and seeing what's going on and the message is that it's worse than we thought," he said.
The Guardian, 20 September 2006
Oil companies greatly dislike the way they are constantly demonized (you would too) so Exxon may well cave in
A REMINDER: HOW THE ROYAL SOCIETY TURNED THOUGHT POLICE
(From The Daily Telegraph of 16 May 2005)
I've had a letter from Sir David Wallace, CBE, FRS. In his capacity as treasurer and vice-president of the Royal Society, he writes: "We are appealing to all parts of the UK media to be vigilant against attempts to present a distorted view of the scientific evidence about climate change and its potential effects on people and their environments around the world. I hope that we can count on your support."
Gosh! The V-P of the Royal Society! How could anyone not support such an eminent body, especially as Sir David warns: "There are some individuals on the fringes, sometimes with financial support from the oil industry, who have been attempting to cast doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change." I say! A conspiracy as well. Definitely time to rally round, chaps, and repel fringe individuals. To help us do so, there's a "guide to facts and fictions about climate change written in a non-technical style" that even non-members of the Royal Society can grasp.
There's no doubt that this is a difficult subject that arouses strong emotions and which, if the more pessimistic projections turn out to be anywhere near the truth, will cause mankind some serious problems in the coming decades. Yet I fear I am going to be a great disappointment to Sir David.
However vigilant we may be against attempts to present a distorted view of the scientific evidence, he cannot count on my support, and it's not merely because of my instinctive leaning towards individuals on the fringe. In his helpful, non-technical guide, he refers to a survey of 928 papers (count 'em) on climate change published between 1993 and 2003, which found that three quarters of them accepted the view that man's activities (anthropogenic, in the jargon) have had a major impact on the climate. Amazingly, not a single one rejected it. Never mind that this is probably a greater consensus than can be found for the theory of evolution, the lack of a single dissenting voice smacks of the sort of result Nicolae Ceausescu used to get in his Romanian elections. So just what was this survey?
It is by one Naomi Oreskes, and was published in Nature last December, and it has surprised those whom Sir David might describe as fringe individuals. Among them are eminent researchers who have discovered periods in history when the Earth was hotter, even with lower levels of carbon dioxide than in today's atmosphere, and other scientists who believe that solar activity is the biggest cause of recent climate change. These people are not nutcases, nor are they in thrall to the oil companies (even if they were, does anyone seriously believe that Big Oil wants to destroy the planet?). They are just as capable of doing serious science as those who take it as an article of faith that global warming is all our fault.
Six such individuals have just published a paper* arguing that cosmic ray intensity and variations in solar activity have been driving recent climate change. They even provide a testable hypothesis, predicting some modest cooling over the next couple of years, as cosmic ray activity increases cloud cover. Since the conventional - sorry, consensus - wisdom says we are on a rising temperature curve to disaster, a couple of cool years would deal a serious blow to the anthropogenists.
There is much more in Sir David's briefing paper that other experts could challenge. One of the more terrifying aspects of global warming is the threat of rising sea levels as the polar ice melts, and the oceans expand through rising temperatures, threatening the millions of people who live in places only a few feet above sea level. Dramatic pictures of receding ice shelves in Antarctica seem to back this up, but a report in February to the Earth Observation summit in Brussels found that the ice masses there seem to be growing. Sea level does not appear to be rising; satellites can't detect any change, and low-lying islands such as Tuvalu are refusing to disappear beneath the waves.
As I said, this is a difficult subject, and it would be foolish to assume that everything will turn out fine, whatever we do. But that hardly justifies Draconian measures that will make us poorer, unless the scientific evidence is overwhelming. This was what the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change was set up to do, and its findings form the basis for the Kyoto treaty. Yet a closer examination of the scientific case shows that what are now considered by the doomsayers to be firm forecasts of temperature rises are actually "scenarios" of what might happen on different assumptions.
There is a huge margin for error here, certainly enough to justify America's refusal to sign up to the treaty. It's fashionable to claim that George W. Bush has rejected Kyoto because he's too stupid to see the problem (and, of course, he's in thrall to Big Oil), but he can just as plausibly argue that the treaty is based on bad science. Climate change is an important, perhaps vital, debate, but it remains just that. Warning of disaster has become a global industry, and the livelihoods of thousands of scientists depend on our being sufficiently spooked to keep funding the research. The worry is that many of these researchers have stopped being scientists and become campaigners instead. I do hope that the vice-president of the Royal Society is not one of them.
THOUGHT POLICE AND THE SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS
An email from Dr. David Whitehouse (dr_d_whitehouse@msn.com)
I wonder if I am not alone in finding something rather ugly and unscientific about the letter the Royal Society has sent to EssoUK (part of Exxon). It is reproduced in today's Guardian newspaper.
It demands EssoUK stop giving money to groups and organisations who do not believe that human activities are totally responsible for global warming. It also asks EssoUK to provide details of all the groups it funds so that the Royal Society can track them down and vet them, "so that I can work out which of these have been similarly providing inaccurate and misleading information to the public," the letter says.
My disquiet about this is nothing to do with the status of the debate about anthropogenic global warming but about the nature of the debate and the role of the Royal Society in it and the sending of such a hectoring and bullying letter demanding adherence to the scientific consensus.
Theories come and go. Some become fact, others do not. As scientists our ultimate loyalty is not to theory but to reason and to open enquiry even when some think it ill judged. We should value that above all and I am surprised the Royal Society is acting this way. Einstein once said, "Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth." However the Royal Society sees its role in debates about science, is it appropriate that it should be using its authority to judge and censor in this way?
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Omega 3, probiotic and vitamin myths
Ever since Cleopatra bathed in milk to keep her skin radiant, people have sought short cuts to health and beauty. Alchemists chased the elixir of immortality, snake-oil salesmen touted dubious concoctions claimed to cure, as one brand had it, "all painful complaints and weaknesses". (It turned out to be 20% pure alcohol.). Government regulation of medicines and food stopped the more outlandish claims, but now a new phenomenon has emerged: the collision of science and nutrition.
Consumers have grown more health-conscious just as researchers are discovering more about how nutrients work. It has enabled the makers of smart foods, health supplements and other "nutraceuticals" to promote claims based on what, to consumers, may appear to be sound scientific grounds. Take fish oils. Scientists agree that omega-3 fatty acids known as DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) and EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) are important constituents of our brains. The body cannot make the substances, so they are absorbed from food such as fish, nuts, seeds and to a lesser extent certain vegetables. Food manufacturers have latched onto this and started adding omega-3 to their products, as well as selling supplements. St Ivel, a large manufacturer, promotes milk with added omega-3 as "Clever Milk"...
But for the average child with a varied diet does extra omega-3 have any benefit? Last week an expert at a British Nutrition Foundation (BNF) conference in London said the science did not justify such hype. Professor Peter Rogers of Bristol University presented a review of studies into fish oils and behaviour. He concluded that there is no firm evidence that omega-3 improves cognitive function or mood. "A few years ago I was enthusiastic about this area because I thought it was very plausible that fatty acids could improve mood and cognitive function," he said. "But we haven't found striking effects in studies. Some research has shown benefits, but other studies have failed to find those effects. "We have to look at the totality, not cherry-pick - and more research needs to be done."
The Food Standards Agency agrees. "There is no clear evidence that increased intakes of omega-3 fatty acids improve cognition for the majority of children or adults," it says.
Other scientists believe that such fatty acids will eventually be shown to be beneficial in many ways, for the elderly as well as the young. A trial is now under way, for example, to study the effect of fish oils on Alzheimer's disease. But even these optimists have warnings about supplements. "The labelling is rubbish," said Dr Ann Walker, an expert in human nutrition at Reading University, who regards fish oils as potentially very beneficial - at the right dosage. "Many say `one a day', or something like that. But there's a huge difference between a capsule and a spoonful. You have to look at the actual quantities of EPA and DHA and do your own calculations." Two portions of oily fish a week - as the government recommends - equates to about 500mg of omega-3 a day.
Nor are all fatty acids free from risk. Oily fish can be contaminated with pollutants such as heavy metals. Omega-6, found in sunflower oil, is also an essential fatty acid, yet in large quantities it can cause inflammation.
What about probiotics? Supermarket shelves are now infested with yoghurts, drinks and other concoctions that claim to provide bacteria that promote good health. They are supposed to counter harmful bacteria, especially in the gut. But Professor Glenn Gibson, another expert at Reading University's renowned Food Biosciences department, recently reported that many probiotic products were useless. "They've got the wrong bacteria or the wrong numbers," he said. To be effective, he said, products had to have lactobacilli or bifidobacteria in minimum quantities of 10m per bottle.
Laboratory studies have also shown that the bacteria in some probiotic products are destroyed by the digestive system before they reach the part of the gut where they can take effect. Again, there's no clear benefit, let alone a panacea. Claire Williamson, a scientist at the BNF, said: "Not all products are effective, though my understanding is that in some the bacteria do survive the digestive system - and there are thought to be some health benefits. But that's not to say you're going to be dancing in the street or living another 20 years." ...
What about vitamins? Surely vitamin supplements are a no-brainer? But it's not that simple, said Williamson. Not all vitamins are well absorbed if taken as supplements. Nor may they be the ingredients that make fruit and vegetables so healthy for us. Trials with vitamin supplements have failed to show the same positive health effects as studies of fruit and vegetable consumption. This is probably because other compounds in foods, known as phytochemicals, play an important part in promoting good health. "It shows that it's hard to replace the benefits from food with supplements," said Williamson.
Phytochemicals include substances called polyphenols which are found in green tea and red wine. They may account for the reputation green tea and red wine (in moderation) now enjoy for preventing certain diseases. But these are no miracle elixirs either: polyphenols are also found, albeit at lower quantities, in ordinary English breakfast tea...
It's also difficult and time-consuming to follow all the twists and turns of health claims. Judith Wills, author of The Food Bible and other books on nutrition, said: "People must go barmy when they try to understand what is going on. They see all these claims but don't realise all the ins and outs. They see a big headline, but it's based on just one small study - and the next week there will be another study saying something completely different."
Consumers also have to contend with the law of unintended consequences. A recommendation for healthy action in one direction may turn out to be bad in another, unexpected way. "There's now a big debate on vitamin D, which is important against cancer," said Walker. "One group are saying you mustn't go in the sun because of the risk of skin cancer; but another is saying you need sunlight to make vitamin D to prevent other cancers. "We could be doing more harm than good by avoiding the sun."
Where does this leave parents and other consumers? Wills recommends a diet of healthy scepticism about fads and panaceas. Vitamins may be worth it if your food is dominated by processed junk; and the very young or elderly may benefit from fish oils, though there's no guarantee. But the best option, say most experts, is a good, varied, natural diet. And a cup of tea, green or otherwise, while you ponder reports of the next miracle cure.
More here
NEW BRITISH COMPRESSED DEGREES POPULAR
The new nine-to-five degree, which spells the end to three-month summer vacations, is proving a hit with lawyers, hoteliers and professionals keen to get ahead in the job market. As the first full-time fast-track students embarked on their courses yesterday, universities piloting the revolutionary programmes were already turning away candidates, having filled their quotas. The new degree compresses three years' work into two, as students toil through both summer vacations. They cost 3,000 pounds less than a traditional honours course and ministers hope that this will encourage more people who are put off by top-up fees and student debts to apply.
This year the proportion of state school pupils and those from low-income families at university dropped to its lowest level in three years, despite government pressure to increase numbers. Julie Smith, senior lecturer in law at Staffordshire University, said that the department had been "pleasantly surprised" by the numbers applying. With school-leavers, career-changers, European, African and Canadian students, she says that the degree has a healthy mix. "There will always be more than one tutor for every module, so they will have back-up," she said. "If any student finds it too much, they can slow down along the way and even do the three-year degree." Staffordshire is one of five universities, with Derby, Leeds Metropolitan, Northampton and the Medway partnership, offering fast-track degrees. The Higher Education Funding Council for England is pouring 3 million into the flexible learning programmes and expects about 600 students to enrol in the first year.
Andrew Haldane, who leads the fast-track learning projects in Derby, said that tutors expected to accept a full quota on each of their courses in the joint honours tourism and hospitality sector as well as in business studies. More tutors will be recruited in January. However, he said that he expected few universities to follow suit until they were properly paid for the extra tuition. "We get slightly more than two years' worth (of tuition fees), but it's a good deal less than three," he said. "So if demand is shown for these programmes, the council would need to address that."
Last week Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, suggested that universities could replace three-year residential honours degrees with flexible credit-based systems, part-time courses and programmes delivered over the internet. Cliff Allen, deputy chief executive of the Higher Education Academy, said there was a market for accelerated degrees, but added that, without extra resources, they could be seen as "cut-price". The future, he said, would probably lie in the more flexible vocational degrees centred on workplace learning.
Source
BRITISH "ANIMAL ACTIVISTS" KILL THOUSANDS OF FISH
Police have warned fish farmers to increase their security after 15,000 halibut were released from their cages in an attack believed to have been carried out by animal rights activists. Thousands of dead fish are being washed up along the west coast of Scotland after the raid at Kames Marine Fish Farm, near Oban. The perpetrators are thought to have attacked last week. Detectives believe that the attack could be linked to a spate of other farm attacks throughout the country. The letters ALF (Animal Liberation Front) were spray-painted near by.
The loss is estimated to have cost the fish farm at least 500,000 pounds as boats, cranes and offices were also vandalised. The halibut died from starvation or getting caught in seaweed. They were also being eaten by herring gulls and otters.
The fish farmer, who did not wish to be identified, said: "They claim they liberated them into the sea but sadly, as we all know, farmed animals, whether they are fish or any animals, don't survive unless they are looked after. The fish farmer added: "We farm them in a sustainable way. The welfare of the fish is at the forefront of our minds. Isn't it better to have farmed fish than to be pillaging the seas where stocks are declining dramatically?" Fish farms in Scotland, Kent and the South West have been attacked in the past year.
Source
NHS FLOUNDERING
Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, admitted yesterday that the NHS “no longer knows where it is going”. “Where will we be in five years, ten years, fifteen years’ time?” she asked. She gave no answer, other than it lay in the hands of local NHS organisations — and the Government’s reforms were designed to empower them to discover it.
In a speech peppered with such admissions, Ms Hewitt said that it was hard for anyone to understand that after years of unprecedented investment, the service was dealing with financial problems. “After years of more staff, there are now job losses,” she acknowledged — a fact she has hithero denied by arguing that posts, and not jobs, were being lost. But she went insisted that reforms were the way to sustain the values of the NHS and that the Government would not undermine those values. “The changes and reforms we are making are not only compatible with our traditional values: they are essential if we are to protect those values in a fast-changing world,” she told an audience in London.
Speaking to the Institute for Public Policy Research, Ms Hewitt said that the NHS was “a 1940s system operating in a 21st century world”, and where patient care was improving it was despite the system, not because of it. Calling for an end to the old “top-down” system, Ms Hewitt emphasised the need for strong local commissioning of services, underpinned by national standards and targets. On the issue of private service providers, she said: “If independent providers can help the NHS provide even better care and value for patients, we should use them.”
Source
Archbishop speaks out: "The former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey of Clifton has issued his own challenge to "violent" Islam in a lecture in which he defends the Pope's "extraordinarily effective and lucid" speech. Lord Carey said that Muslims must address "with great urgency" their religion's association with violence. He made it clear that he believed the "clash of civilisations" endangering the world was not between Islamist extremists and the West, but with Islam as a whole. "We are living in dangerous and potentially cataclysmic times," he said. "There will be no significant material and economic progress [in Muslim communities] until the Muslim mind is allowed to challenge the status quo of Muslim conventions and even their most cherished shibboleths."
Ever since Cleopatra bathed in milk to keep her skin radiant, people have sought short cuts to health and beauty. Alchemists chased the elixir of immortality, snake-oil salesmen touted dubious concoctions claimed to cure, as one brand had it, "all painful complaints and weaknesses". (It turned out to be 20% pure alcohol.). Government regulation of medicines and food stopped the more outlandish claims, but now a new phenomenon has emerged: the collision of science and nutrition.
Consumers have grown more health-conscious just as researchers are discovering more about how nutrients work. It has enabled the makers of smart foods, health supplements and other "nutraceuticals" to promote claims based on what, to consumers, may appear to be sound scientific grounds. Take fish oils. Scientists agree that omega-3 fatty acids known as DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) and EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) are important constituents of our brains. The body cannot make the substances, so they are absorbed from food such as fish, nuts, seeds and to a lesser extent certain vegetables. Food manufacturers have latched onto this and started adding omega-3 to their products, as well as selling supplements. St Ivel, a large manufacturer, promotes milk with added omega-3 as "Clever Milk"...
But for the average child with a varied diet does extra omega-3 have any benefit? Last week an expert at a British Nutrition Foundation (BNF) conference in London said the science did not justify such hype. Professor Peter Rogers of Bristol University presented a review of studies into fish oils and behaviour. He concluded that there is no firm evidence that omega-3 improves cognitive function or mood. "A few years ago I was enthusiastic about this area because I thought it was very plausible that fatty acids could improve mood and cognitive function," he said. "But we haven't found striking effects in studies. Some research has shown benefits, but other studies have failed to find those effects. "We have to look at the totality, not cherry-pick - and more research needs to be done."
The Food Standards Agency agrees. "There is no clear evidence that increased intakes of omega-3 fatty acids improve cognition for the majority of children or adults," it says.
Other scientists believe that such fatty acids will eventually be shown to be beneficial in many ways, for the elderly as well as the young. A trial is now under way, for example, to study the effect of fish oils on Alzheimer's disease. But even these optimists have warnings about supplements. "The labelling is rubbish," said Dr Ann Walker, an expert in human nutrition at Reading University, who regards fish oils as potentially very beneficial - at the right dosage. "Many say `one a day', or something like that. But there's a huge difference between a capsule and a spoonful. You have to look at the actual quantities of EPA and DHA and do your own calculations." Two portions of oily fish a week - as the government recommends - equates to about 500mg of omega-3 a day.
Nor are all fatty acids free from risk. Oily fish can be contaminated with pollutants such as heavy metals. Omega-6, found in sunflower oil, is also an essential fatty acid, yet in large quantities it can cause inflammation.
What about probiotics? Supermarket shelves are now infested with yoghurts, drinks and other concoctions that claim to provide bacteria that promote good health. They are supposed to counter harmful bacteria, especially in the gut. But Professor Glenn Gibson, another expert at Reading University's renowned Food Biosciences department, recently reported that many probiotic products were useless. "They've got the wrong bacteria or the wrong numbers," he said. To be effective, he said, products had to have lactobacilli or bifidobacteria in minimum quantities of 10m per bottle.
Laboratory studies have also shown that the bacteria in some probiotic products are destroyed by the digestive system before they reach the part of the gut where they can take effect. Again, there's no clear benefit, let alone a panacea. Claire Williamson, a scientist at the BNF, said: "Not all products are effective, though my understanding is that in some the bacteria do survive the digestive system - and there are thought to be some health benefits. But that's not to say you're going to be dancing in the street or living another 20 years." ...
What about vitamins? Surely vitamin supplements are a no-brainer? But it's not that simple, said Williamson. Not all vitamins are well absorbed if taken as supplements. Nor may they be the ingredients that make fruit and vegetables so healthy for us. Trials with vitamin supplements have failed to show the same positive health effects as studies of fruit and vegetable consumption. This is probably because other compounds in foods, known as phytochemicals, play an important part in promoting good health. "It shows that it's hard to replace the benefits from food with supplements," said Williamson.
Phytochemicals include substances called polyphenols which are found in green tea and red wine. They may account for the reputation green tea and red wine (in moderation) now enjoy for preventing certain diseases. But these are no miracle elixirs either: polyphenols are also found, albeit at lower quantities, in ordinary English breakfast tea...
It's also difficult and time-consuming to follow all the twists and turns of health claims. Judith Wills, author of The Food Bible and other books on nutrition, said: "People must go barmy when they try to understand what is going on. They see all these claims but don't realise all the ins and outs. They see a big headline, but it's based on just one small study - and the next week there will be another study saying something completely different."
Consumers also have to contend with the law of unintended consequences. A recommendation for healthy action in one direction may turn out to be bad in another, unexpected way. "There's now a big debate on vitamin D, which is important against cancer," said Walker. "One group are saying you mustn't go in the sun because of the risk of skin cancer; but another is saying you need sunlight to make vitamin D to prevent other cancers. "We could be doing more harm than good by avoiding the sun."
Where does this leave parents and other consumers? Wills recommends a diet of healthy scepticism about fads and panaceas. Vitamins may be worth it if your food is dominated by processed junk; and the very young or elderly may benefit from fish oils, though there's no guarantee. But the best option, say most experts, is a good, varied, natural diet. And a cup of tea, green or otherwise, while you ponder reports of the next miracle cure.
More here
NEW BRITISH COMPRESSED DEGREES POPULAR
The new nine-to-five degree, which spells the end to three-month summer vacations, is proving a hit with lawyers, hoteliers and professionals keen to get ahead in the job market. As the first full-time fast-track students embarked on their courses yesterday, universities piloting the revolutionary programmes were already turning away candidates, having filled their quotas. The new degree compresses three years' work into two, as students toil through both summer vacations. They cost 3,000 pounds less than a traditional honours course and ministers hope that this will encourage more people who are put off by top-up fees and student debts to apply.
This year the proportion of state school pupils and those from low-income families at university dropped to its lowest level in three years, despite government pressure to increase numbers. Julie Smith, senior lecturer in law at Staffordshire University, said that the department had been "pleasantly surprised" by the numbers applying. With school-leavers, career-changers, European, African and Canadian students, she says that the degree has a healthy mix. "There will always be more than one tutor for every module, so they will have back-up," she said. "If any student finds it too much, they can slow down along the way and even do the three-year degree." Staffordshire is one of five universities, with Derby, Leeds Metropolitan, Northampton and the Medway partnership, offering fast-track degrees. The Higher Education Funding Council for England is pouring 3 million into the flexible learning programmes and expects about 600 students to enrol in the first year.
Andrew Haldane, who leads the fast-track learning projects in Derby, said that tutors expected to accept a full quota on each of their courses in the joint honours tourism and hospitality sector as well as in business studies. More tutors will be recruited in January. However, he said that he expected few universities to follow suit until they were properly paid for the extra tuition. "We get slightly more than two years' worth (of tuition fees), but it's a good deal less than three," he said. "So if demand is shown for these programmes, the council would need to address that."
Last week Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, suggested that universities could replace three-year residential honours degrees with flexible credit-based systems, part-time courses and programmes delivered over the internet. Cliff Allen, deputy chief executive of the Higher Education Academy, said there was a market for accelerated degrees, but added that, without extra resources, they could be seen as "cut-price". The future, he said, would probably lie in the more flexible vocational degrees centred on workplace learning.
Source
BRITISH "ANIMAL ACTIVISTS" KILL THOUSANDS OF FISH
Police have warned fish farmers to increase their security after 15,000 halibut were released from their cages in an attack believed to have been carried out by animal rights activists. Thousands of dead fish are being washed up along the west coast of Scotland after the raid at Kames Marine Fish Farm, near Oban. The perpetrators are thought to have attacked last week. Detectives believe that the attack could be linked to a spate of other farm attacks throughout the country. The letters ALF (Animal Liberation Front) were spray-painted near by.
The loss is estimated to have cost the fish farm at least 500,000 pounds as boats, cranes and offices were also vandalised. The halibut died from starvation or getting caught in seaweed. They were also being eaten by herring gulls and otters.
The fish farmer, who did not wish to be identified, said: "They claim they liberated them into the sea but sadly, as we all know, farmed animals, whether they are fish or any animals, don't survive unless they are looked after. The fish farmer added: "We farm them in a sustainable way. The welfare of the fish is at the forefront of our minds. Isn't it better to have farmed fish than to be pillaging the seas where stocks are declining dramatically?" Fish farms in Scotland, Kent and the South West have been attacked in the past year.
Source
NHS FLOUNDERING
Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, admitted yesterday that the NHS “no longer knows where it is going”. “Where will we be in five years, ten years, fifteen years’ time?” she asked. She gave no answer, other than it lay in the hands of local NHS organisations — and the Government’s reforms were designed to empower them to discover it.
In a speech peppered with such admissions, Ms Hewitt said that it was hard for anyone to understand that after years of unprecedented investment, the service was dealing with financial problems. “After years of more staff, there are now job losses,” she acknowledged — a fact she has hithero denied by arguing that posts, and not jobs, were being lost. But she went insisted that reforms were the way to sustain the values of the NHS and that the Government would not undermine those values. “The changes and reforms we are making are not only compatible with our traditional values: they are essential if we are to protect those values in a fast-changing world,” she told an audience in London.
Speaking to the Institute for Public Policy Research, Ms Hewitt said that the NHS was “a 1940s system operating in a 21st century world”, and where patient care was improving it was despite the system, not because of it. Calling for an end to the old “top-down” system, Ms Hewitt emphasised the need for strong local commissioning of services, underpinned by national standards and targets. On the issue of private service providers, she said: “If independent providers can help the NHS provide even better care and value for patients, we should use them.”
Source
Archbishop speaks out: "The former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey of Clifton has issued his own challenge to "violent" Islam in a lecture in which he defends the Pope's "extraordinarily effective and lucid" speech. Lord Carey said that Muslims must address "with great urgency" their religion's association with violence. He made it clear that he believed the "clash of civilisations" endangering the world was not between Islamist extremists and the West, but with Islam as a whole. "We are living in dangerous and potentially cataclysmic times," he said. "There will be no significant material and economic progress [in Muslim communities] until the Muslim mind is allowed to challenge the status quo of Muslim conventions and even their most cherished shibboleths."
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
"REBEL" BRITISH MOTHERS FORBIDDEN TO FEED THEIR KIDS
A headmaster said yesterday that there could be "no compromise" with the rebel mothers who have been making daily deliveries of junk food to his pupils. Rawmarsh School, in South Yorkshire, has become a reluctant focal point for the national debate on healthy eating since it emerged that two mothers were passing chips, burgers and fizzy drinks to children through the school railings.
For the past two weeks, Julie Critchlow and Sam Walker have been taking orders for up to 60 meals in defiance of the school's decision to ban pupils from leaving the premises during the lunch break. A temporary truce was called yesterday after the mothers visited the school, near Rotherham, spoke briefly to senior staff and agreed to return for a meeting to discuss their concerns later in the week. On each side, the battle lines are firmly drawn. Mrs Critchlow and Mrs Walker have cast themselves as standard-bearers for freedom of choice in an age of food fascism. Their bˆte noire is Jamie Oliver, whose high-profile television campaign to improve the quality of food served in school canteens has resulted, they claim, in their children being forced to eat "disgusting, over-priced, low-fat rubbish".
John Lambert, the school's headmaster, yesterday issued a strong defence of its healthy-eating policy and insisted that there would be no going back on a strategy designed "to improve the wellbeing of our young people". The controversy has aroused strong emotions in the community. Petitions have been circulating and Neil Beaumont, the owner of Chubby's, a local sandwich shop that has been supplying the rebel mums, disclosed yesterday that one of his staff had been verbally abused. Mr Beaumont, 34, charges 1.10 pounds for a bacon sandwich and has no regrets about his decision to take orders from Mrs Critchlow and Mrs Walker. "If they don't want their children to eat school dinners, that's up to them," he said, before claiming that one supermarket had lost up to œ1,000 a week since the school barred pupils from eating outside.
Mr Beaumont said he could accept that some local residents were unimpressed by the mothers' decision to stand each day in the grounds of the cemetery which adjoins the school to take and deliver orders for pupils. But he added that this did not justify the actions of one woman who pulled her car alongside a female member of his staff before accusing her of "taking blood money" and "demanding to know how she could sleep at night". He said: "It's all got out of hand. There's people dying on the front line in Iraq, yet people are going crazy because of two ladies passing sandwiches through the school railings."
Mr Lambert, whose 1,100-strong school has specialist status as a sports college, chose his words carefully yesterday when he was asked for his views on the mothers' determination to continue their junk food service. "I think the parents have stated a case, although I would have preferred it if they had stated it in a different way. There is no room for compromise here. The stance they have taken is not one the school can accept," he said. "We know from evidence nationally that eating proper food at lunchtime makes a difference to learning and success. It is my belief that, whatever their intentions, they are potentially undermining the success of their own children and also undermining the success of other parents' children."
At 12.50pm yesterday, the school canteen, its carpet and walls decorated in pastel shades of green and lilac, was packed with hungry 11-year-olds who seemed to have no problem with the fare on offer. For 1.70 pounds, children were able to choose from a range of "meal deal" items, including ratatouille pancakes, jacket potatoes, pizza slices with salad and wholemeal sandwiches. Enticing posters promoted different food sections. There was "classic cuisine", "chef's choice" and "4NRG". Drinks ranged from fruit juice and milk to bottled water and among the puddings were fresh fruit salad, melon and yoghurt. Health-obsessed to the point of puritanism it was not. One option was a mixed grill - bacon, sausage, burger, poached egg and baked beans - which would not have looked out of place on the menu at Chubby's.
Carl Mason, 11, was sitting with three friends at one of the tables. The quartet said that they ate in the canteen every day - packed lunches are the official alternative - and declared the food was "very nice". "It keeps you healthy and helps your brain," explained one of the boys, before Carl gave his verdict on the mothers' school railings deliveries. "I think it's silly. The lunches here are perfectly fine. If they don't like them, the pupils can always just bring in a sandwich. They're just making a big fuss."
Source
BRITS TO MAKE GOVERNMENT EVEN MORE DOMINANT IN CHILDCARE
Teachers and campaigners clashed yesterday over government plans for schools to offer "wraparound" childcare that would have pupils spending 50 hours a week in school. All schools will have to open from 8am to 6pm within the next four years in an attempt to give state school pupils the same opportunities as those in the private sector. Beverley Hughes, the Children's Minister, told The Times yesterday that the initiative was so popular that 2,500 schools had signed up ahead of target.
But as the Archbishop of Canterbury expressed concern about the growing pressures on children at school, head teachers, staff, unions and campaigners questioned whether it was good for children to spend so long in school. Dr Rowan Williams said that children faced too much "pressure to achieve" and had to take too many tests. Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education,said: "This will destroy childhood and deprive children of the chance to enjoy other people or things outside the school environment." The longer school day is designed to help working parents and to give children access to activities that they might not otherwise have.
But on the day that the Church launched an inquiry into the state of childhood, education campaigners claimed that sending pupils to school for so long would deprive them of the chance to learn from other situations, and deny them the space to think about and absorb the lessons of the day. "In many ways it is an abuse of children to stick them for that many hours of the day in school. Children need to get out and see the world," Mr Seaton said.
The Children's Society inquiry has been set up because of concerns about the rising levels of depression among children, and Dr Williams said that early research had suggested that pressure in school was a factor. He highlighted "relentless testing" as well as advertisements aimed at children and "family-unfriendly" incentives for working mothers. "Allowing families to work more flexibly ought to work for the good of a family. The trouble is that very often it is presented or understood primarily just in terms of getting women back to the workplace."
The Government's Extended Schools programme is designed to offer children a range of extracurricular activities out of normal school hours, It is intended to enable youngsters to develop new skills and talents and discover activities at which children shine. "Independent schools have always done this," Ms Hughes said. "They have given children opportunities to excel by offering them a wide range of activities. "In the long run it helps build children's confidence and self-esteem. Their academic results improve as a result."
Ms Hughes's remarks coincide with the publication of a new report today, led by Alan Dyson, of the University of Manchester, which has found that extending school hours by offering breakfast clubs and after-school activities can help boost academic performance, attendance and behaviour.
But Richard Thornhill, head teacher of Loughborough Primary School in Brixton, South London, one of the government's flagship Extended Schools, gave warning that it would not be good for children to spend 50 hours a week at school. "We strongly encourage parents not to leave any child full-time five days a week," he said. "It removes the opportunity for parents to get really involved with their own children. We cannot replace parents at school. We cannot replace the love and care and nurture they should get from their parents. Giving a child the freedom to have down time does not work very well at school because we have to have rules and regulations."
David Willetts, the Shadow Education Secretary, agreed that children might suffer from being kept at school for so long. "It's bad for children who are unhappy at school to keep them there," he said. Others welcomed the move. Frank Gulley, headteacher of Temple Sutton Primary School in Southend-on-Sea, which provides ten hours of services each day for children aged as young as six weeks, said: "It would be great if all children went home and had a smashing experience and sat down for a meal with their parents, but they don't. Many of them just go to a childminder or are sat down in from of the television. "If we were providing all lessons and no play it would be bad for them. But we provide many opportunities for play, do sport or learn an instrument."
Source
NHS patients left waiting on operating tables by computer failures
Hospital operations and consultations are being delayed across England because the new NHS computer system suffers almost one “major incident” failure every day. Patients have been left waiting on operating tables and others have had appointments cancelled because of problems with the £12.4 billion system. The scale of the failures has prompted calls for the Government to rethink the future of the world’s largest non-military computer system amid fears about the impact on patient safety.
A headmaster said yesterday that there could be "no compromise" with the rebel mothers who have been making daily deliveries of junk food to his pupils. Rawmarsh School, in South Yorkshire, has become a reluctant focal point for the national debate on healthy eating since it emerged that two mothers were passing chips, burgers and fizzy drinks to children through the school railings.
For the past two weeks, Julie Critchlow and Sam Walker have been taking orders for up to 60 meals in defiance of the school's decision to ban pupils from leaving the premises during the lunch break. A temporary truce was called yesterday after the mothers visited the school, near Rotherham, spoke briefly to senior staff and agreed to return for a meeting to discuss their concerns later in the week. On each side, the battle lines are firmly drawn. Mrs Critchlow and Mrs Walker have cast themselves as standard-bearers for freedom of choice in an age of food fascism. Their bˆte noire is Jamie Oliver, whose high-profile television campaign to improve the quality of food served in school canteens has resulted, they claim, in their children being forced to eat "disgusting, over-priced, low-fat rubbish".
John Lambert, the school's headmaster, yesterday issued a strong defence of its healthy-eating policy and insisted that there would be no going back on a strategy designed "to improve the wellbeing of our young people". The controversy has aroused strong emotions in the community. Petitions have been circulating and Neil Beaumont, the owner of Chubby's, a local sandwich shop that has been supplying the rebel mums, disclosed yesterday that one of his staff had been verbally abused. Mr Beaumont, 34, charges 1.10 pounds for a bacon sandwich and has no regrets about his decision to take orders from Mrs Critchlow and Mrs Walker. "If they don't want their children to eat school dinners, that's up to them," he said, before claiming that one supermarket had lost up to œ1,000 a week since the school barred pupils from eating outside.
Mr Beaumont said he could accept that some local residents were unimpressed by the mothers' decision to stand each day in the grounds of the cemetery which adjoins the school to take and deliver orders for pupils. But he added that this did not justify the actions of one woman who pulled her car alongside a female member of his staff before accusing her of "taking blood money" and "demanding to know how she could sleep at night". He said: "It's all got out of hand. There's people dying on the front line in Iraq, yet people are going crazy because of two ladies passing sandwiches through the school railings."
Mr Lambert, whose 1,100-strong school has specialist status as a sports college, chose his words carefully yesterday when he was asked for his views on the mothers' determination to continue their junk food service. "I think the parents have stated a case, although I would have preferred it if they had stated it in a different way. There is no room for compromise here. The stance they have taken is not one the school can accept," he said. "We know from evidence nationally that eating proper food at lunchtime makes a difference to learning and success. It is my belief that, whatever their intentions, they are potentially undermining the success of their own children and also undermining the success of other parents' children."
At 12.50pm yesterday, the school canteen, its carpet and walls decorated in pastel shades of green and lilac, was packed with hungry 11-year-olds who seemed to have no problem with the fare on offer. For 1.70 pounds, children were able to choose from a range of "meal deal" items, including ratatouille pancakes, jacket potatoes, pizza slices with salad and wholemeal sandwiches. Enticing posters promoted different food sections. There was "classic cuisine", "chef's choice" and "4NRG". Drinks ranged from fruit juice and milk to bottled water and among the puddings were fresh fruit salad, melon and yoghurt. Health-obsessed to the point of puritanism it was not. One option was a mixed grill - bacon, sausage, burger, poached egg and baked beans - which would not have looked out of place on the menu at Chubby's.
Carl Mason, 11, was sitting with three friends at one of the tables. The quartet said that they ate in the canteen every day - packed lunches are the official alternative - and declared the food was "very nice". "It keeps you healthy and helps your brain," explained one of the boys, before Carl gave his verdict on the mothers' school railings deliveries. "I think it's silly. The lunches here are perfectly fine. If they don't like them, the pupils can always just bring in a sandwich. They're just making a big fuss."
Source
BRITS TO MAKE GOVERNMENT EVEN MORE DOMINANT IN CHILDCARE
Teachers and campaigners clashed yesterday over government plans for schools to offer "wraparound" childcare that would have pupils spending 50 hours a week in school. All schools will have to open from 8am to 6pm within the next four years in an attempt to give state school pupils the same opportunities as those in the private sector. Beverley Hughes, the Children's Minister, told The Times yesterday that the initiative was so popular that 2,500 schools had signed up ahead of target.
But as the Archbishop of Canterbury expressed concern about the growing pressures on children at school, head teachers, staff, unions and campaigners questioned whether it was good for children to spend so long in school. Dr Rowan Williams said that children faced too much "pressure to achieve" and had to take too many tests. Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education,said: "This will destroy childhood and deprive children of the chance to enjoy other people or things outside the school environment." The longer school day is designed to help working parents and to give children access to activities that they might not otherwise have.
But on the day that the Church launched an inquiry into the state of childhood, education campaigners claimed that sending pupils to school for so long would deprive them of the chance to learn from other situations, and deny them the space to think about and absorb the lessons of the day. "In many ways it is an abuse of children to stick them for that many hours of the day in school. Children need to get out and see the world," Mr Seaton said.
The Children's Society inquiry has been set up because of concerns about the rising levels of depression among children, and Dr Williams said that early research had suggested that pressure in school was a factor. He highlighted "relentless testing" as well as advertisements aimed at children and "family-unfriendly" incentives for working mothers. "Allowing families to work more flexibly ought to work for the good of a family. The trouble is that very often it is presented or understood primarily just in terms of getting women back to the workplace."
The Government's Extended Schools programme is designed to offer children a range of extracurricular activities out of normal school hours, It is intended to enable youngsters to develop new skills and talents and discover activities at which children shine. "Independent schools have always done this," Ms Hughes said. "They have given children opportunities to excel by offering them a wide range of activities. "In the long run it helps build children's confidence and self-esteem. Their academic results improve as a result."
Ms Hughes's remarks coincide with the publication of a new report today, led by Alan Dyson, of the University of Manchester, which has found that extending school hours by offering breakfast clubs and after-school activities can help boost academic performance, attendance and behaviour.
But Richard Thornhill, head teacher of Loughborough Primary School in Brixton, South London, one of the government's flagship Extended Schools, gave warning that it would not be good for children to spend 50 hours a week at school. "We strongly encourage parents not to leave any child full-time five days a week," he said. "It removes the opportunity for parents to get really involved with their own children. We cannot replace parents at school. We cannot replace the love and care and nurture they should get from their parents. Giving a child the freedom to have down time does not work very well at school because we have to have rules and regulations."
David Willetts, the Shadow Education Secretary, agreed that children might suffer from being kept at school for so long. "It's bad for children who are unhappy at school to keep them there," he said. Others welcomed the move. Frank Gulley, headteacher of Temple Sutton Primary School in Southend-on-Sea, which provides ten hours of services each day for children aged as young as six weeks, said: "It would be great if all children went home and had a smashing experience and sat down for a meal with their parents, but they don't. Many of them just go to a childminder or are sat down in from of the television. "If we were providing all lessons and no play it would be bad for them. But we provide many opportunities for play, do sport or learn an instrument."
Source
NHS patients left waiting on operating tables by computer failures
Hospital operations and consultations are being delayed across England because the new NHS computer system suffers almost one “major incident” failure every day. Patients have been left waiting on operating tables and others have had appointments cancelled because of problems with the £12.4 billion system. The scale of the failures has prompted calls for the Government to rethink the future of the world’s largest non-military computer system amid fears about the impact on patient safety.
More than 110 major incidents have been reported by hospitals and GPs over the past four months, Computer Weekly magazine reports today. The scale of the problems at such an early stage will come as a blow to the National Programme for IT, which is at the heart of Tony Blair’s efforts to modernise the NHS. Over the next ten years the system is due to link more than 30,000 GPs in England to almost 300 hospitals. Connecting for Health, the body that oversees the programme, said, however, that the new computer system was much more reliable than those that it is replacing.
Reported problems include failures of the system used by surgeons to see X-ray pictures on a computer screen in wards and operating theatres. On some occasions the system has crashed during an operation, forcing the surgeon to suspend the procedure while a hard copy of the X-ray is found. Hospitals have also lost access to their patient administration systems, which hold records on appointments and planned treatments, so that they do not know who is due to have consultations or treatments.
Experts are concerned at the level of failures so early in the use of the system. Patients will be at even greater risk if the failures continue when the system is expanded across the country to prescribe drugs, order test results and store 50 million medical records. More than 20 of the major incidents reported over the past four months have affected multiple NHS sites. In July a data centre in Maidstone, Kent, crashed, causing the loss of central services and systems to 80 NHS trusts.
The Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre NHS Trust in Oxford said this year that it had identified “major issues of patient safety” when patients were lost in the system after being dropped from waiting lists or were not being called for important treatment.
Richard Bacon, a Tory member of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, said that the Government needed to reconsider the scheme. “This is the latest evidence that there are serious and growing problems with the whole National Programme for IT in the health service,” he said. “In many respects the NHS IT programme is making things worse, not better, while sowing distrust and disillusionment across the health service.”
Richard Vautrey, a member of the GPs’ joint IT committee of the British Medial Association and the Royal College of General Practitioners, said: “Any system in healthcare has to be available to clinicians and any downtime, however short, can have significant implications. If it is not possible to access the information during the consultation that can make the consultation particularly difficult.”
A Connecting for Health spokesman said that what constituted a major incident was open to interpretation and often problems were reported when systems were simply running slowly. “Connecting for Health is operating systems 24 hours a day, seven days a week in hundreds of locations across England,” he said. “In that context, what is being quoted represents a very small service interruption and we expect performance to compare favourably with any large-scale organisation that uses IT, especially in the first year of operations.”
Source
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
MORE CRAZY BRITISH LAWS
And an even crazier police force that ignores real crime but is always ready to investigate complaints of political incorrectness
The architect of laws protecting child sports stars yesterday criticised abuse zealots after police investigated Cherie Blair's playful slap of a cheeky teenager. Celia Brackenridge, an international athlete turned academic, said that children's sporting chances were being spoiled because some were now being over-protected. "Having been one of the major advocates for a long, long time, we have got to the point where I am saying `whoah, slow down a bit' because it has got out of hand in some areas," Professor Brackenridge said. She fears that Britain's Olympic chances could be harmed by volunteers being driven from youth sport over fears of being accused of attacking or molesting children.
She spoke after six detectives were called in to investigate an incident where Mrs Blair aimed a friendly slap towards the arm of a 17-year-old boy who made rabbit ears behind her head. Professor Brackenridge's pioneering study of sexual exploitation of young athletes led to the creation in 2001 of the Child Protection in Sport Unit, run by the NSPCC with Sports Councils. The unit provided welfare services at the UK School Games in Glasgow, visited by the Prime Minister's wife earlier this month.
Miles Gandolfi, captain of the England under-17 epee fencing team, put his fingers behind Mrs Blair's head while a photograph was taken. Film shows her aiming a harmless slap at his arm and calling him a "cheeky boy" before the pair descended into giggles. After organisers consulted the unit, Strathclyde Police were asked to investigate. Miles was escorted to a side room and spent half an hour giving a statement to detectives. The police have now said no incident had taken place and the matter was closed.
Sport's burgeoning child-protection culture was already under fire from veterans such as Roy Case, chairman of the English golf union's boys' selection committee. He has said volunteers were being discouraged by guidelines saying that winning competitors should not be hugged, nor should children be driven home alone by adults.
Professor Brackenridge, the former Great Britain lacrosse captain based at Brunel University, told The Times: "People say, `We are not going to run our junior club' or `Nobody will drive the bus'. Some people given a child-protection role have become a bit officious."
Esther Rantzen, founder of Childline, sympathised with Mrs Blair but recalled: "There certainly have been well-documented cases where sporting coaches have been discovered to have been abusing children." Steve Boocock, the director of the Child Protection in Sport Unit, said: "Parents are generally very supportive." Miles, from Chelsfield, Kent, said yesterday. "I had no idea why the police wanted to speak to me. I thought it was a joke."
Source
TWINS FORBIDDEN
Authoritarian medicine in Britain
Women may be prevented from having twins through IVF treatment because so many are being born that they are swamping intensive-care units. Would-be mothers will be allowed to have only one embryo implanted at a time, under proposals drawn up by a group of leading doctors. The change could reduce women's chances of having a successful pregnancy but the group says the move is needed to halt the sharp rise in IVF twins, who are blocking neonatal intensive-care beds.
At present women are allowed to have two embryos implanted to increase their chances of success, but this has contributed to a near doubling in twin births to 9,500 a year since the late 1970s. Mothers of twins are six times more likely to suffer from pre-eclampsia - high blood pressure during pregnancy - and three times more likely to die in childbirth. Twins are four times more likely to die within 28 days of birth and five times more likely to have cerebral palsy than single babies.
Professor Peter Braude, who chairs the expert group for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), said twins were "a complication, not a bonus. "The public does not realise that twins are a health risk. The need to tackle the problem is unequivocal. Neonatal units are stretched to the extent that you cannot always get your baby into one. "If you deliver your baby in London, you find the baby is being shipped off to Northampton. We need to separate mother and baby or one twin from another. If we could lower the multiple pregnancy rate, we would have more cots available. It is stopping other babies getting into neonatal units."
His group is expected to recommend that only one embryo is implanted at a time in women under 35, while remaining embryos are to be frozen for transplanting if the first attempt at pregnancy fails. Those having IVF privately would also be affected because the HFEA licenses all clinics, not just those on the National Health Service. About 30,000 couples have IVF each year. The group is expected to say that, for NHS patients, the state should fund the implantation of another frozen embryo if the first attempt fails.
Source
And an even crazier police force that ignores real crime but is always ready to investigate complaints of political incorrectness
The architect of laws protecting child sports stars yesterday criticised abuse zealots after police investigated Cherie Blair's playful slap of a cheeky teenager. Celia Brackenridge, an international athlete turned academic, said that children's sporting chances were being spoiled because some were now being over-protected. "Having been one of the major advocates for a long, long time, we have got to the point where I am saying `whoah, slow down a bit' because it has got out of hand in some areas," Professor Brackenridge said. She fears that Britain's Olympic chances could be harmed by volunteers being driven from youth sport over fears of being accused of attacking or molesting children.
She spoke after six detectives were called in to investigate an incident where Mrs Blair aimed a friendly slap towards the arm of a 17-year-old boy who made rabbit ears behind her head. Professor Brackenridge's pioneering study of sexual exploitation of young athletes led to the creation in 2001 of the Child Protection in Sport Unit, run by the NSPCC with Sports Councils. The unit provided welfare services at the UK School Games in Glasgow, visited by the Prime Minister's wife earlier this month.
Miles Gandolfi, captain of the England under-17 epee fencing team, put his fingers behind Mrs Blair's head while a photograph was taken. Film shows her aiming a harmless slap at his arm and calling him a "cheeky boy" before the pair descended into giggles. After organisers consulted the unit, Strathclyde Police were asked to investigate. Miles was escorted to a side room and spent half an hour giving a statement to detectives. The police have now said no incident had taken place and the matter was closed.
Sport's burgeoning child-protection culture was already under fire from veterans such as Roy Case, chairman of the English golf union's boys' selection committee. He has said volunteers were being discouraged by guidelines saying that winning competitors should not be hugged, nor should children be driven home alone by adults.
Professor Brackenridge, the former Great Britain lacrosse captain based at Brunel University, told The Times: "People say, `We are not going to run our junior club' or `Nobody will drive the bus'. Some people given a child-protection role have become a bit officious."
Esther Rantzen, founder of Childline, sympathised with Mrs Blair but recalled: "There certainly have been well-documented cases where sporting coaches have been discovered to have been abusing children." Steve Boocock, the director of the Child Protection in Sport Unit, said: "Parents are generally very supportive." Miles, from Chelsfield, Kent, said yesterday. "I had no idea why the police wanted to speak to me. I thought it was a joke."
Source
TWINS FORBIDDEN
Authoritarian medicine in Britain
Women may be prevented from having twins through IVF treatment because so many are being born that they are swamping intensive-care units. Would-be mothers will be allowed to have only one embryo implanted at a time, under proposals drawn up by a group of leading doctors. The change could reduce women's chances of having a successful pregnancy but the group says the move is needed to halt the sharp rise in IVF twins, who are blocking neonatal intensive-care beds.
At present women are allowed to have two embryos implanted to increase their chances of success, but this has contributed to a near doubling in twin births to 9,500 a year since the late 1970s. Mothers of twins are six times more likely to suffer from pre-eclampsia - high blood pressure during pregnancy - and three times more likely to die in childbirth. Twins are four times more likely to die within 28 days of birth and five times more likely to have cerebral palsy than single babies.
Professor Peter Braude, who chairs the expert group for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), said twins were "a complication, not a bonus. "The public does not realise that twins are a health risk. The need to tackle the problem is unequivocal. Neonatal units are stretched to the extent that you cannot always get your baby into one. "If you deliver your baby in London, you find the baby is being shipped off to Northampton. We need to separate mother and baby or one twin from another. If we could lower the multiple pregnancy rate, we would have more cots available. It is stopping other babies getting into neonatal units."
His group is expected to recommend that only one embryo is implanted at a time in women under 35, while remaining embryos are to be frozen for transplanting if the first attempt at pregnancy fails. Those having IVF privately would also be affected because the HFEA licenses all clinics, not just those on the National Health Service. About 30,000 couples have IVF each year. The group is expected to say that, for NHS patients, the state should fund the implantation of another frozen embryo if the first attempt fails.
Source
Monday, September 18, 2006
Down with the fertility police
Proposals that women who are too fat, too thin or over 40 should be denied IVF are draconian attempts to define what is a `good parent'
Fat people, apparently, don't deserve to have children. Nor do people who are too old or too young, too thin, or, by default, too poor. Such are the recommendations of the British Fertility Society (BFS), a group of IVF specialists, which this week has set out to try to clarify guidelines on who should receive fertility treatment on the NHS. It's a good job most people can get pregnant naturally, or the fertility rate really would be in trouble.
The headlines went along the lines of `Call for fertility ban for obese', and focused on the proposal to refuse treatment to women with a body mass index (BMI) above 29 (about 12 stone for a woman of average height) until they initiated a `weight reduction programme', and to refuse free treatment point blank to women with a BMI over 36. But fat women were not the only ones in the firing line: underweight women (about eight stone) would be made to gain weight, and women over 40 would be barred automatically from treatment.
In fairness to the BFS, its intention is to reduce current `unequal access' to NHS-funded IVF treatment, which arises from Primary Care Trusts' arbitrary use of `social criteria' to determine who should be allowed free IVF. For example, some PCTs refuse to fund couples who already have children, some refuse to treat smokers, and many set different obesity limits, resulting in a bewildering array of restrictions. And some of the BFS's recommendations are progressive - for example, that single women and same-sex couples should be treated the same way as heterosexual couples, and that couples with children from a previous relationship should not be excluded from access to NHS treatment.
But any use of `social criteria' to bar people from IVF treatment is a problem, because it draws a moral distinction between those who are worthy of being given the chance to be a parent, and those who are not. By these criteria, fat women and older women are being labelled undeserving of a treatment offered to everybody else - being told that they don't deserve to have a baby, because they've left it too late or eaten too many pies.
Medics will argue that there are medical reasons for these restrictions - that IVF treatment is less likely to work for women who are old or fat, and that if it does work, the pregnancy will carry greater risks for mother and child. Well, if that's the case, tell your patients of the risks, and let the decision about whether to proceed be made by the doctor and the patient, not by a list of standard regulations.
While young women in the peak of health are doubtless the fertility specialist's preferred patients, presumably they are the least likely to need assistance. Pregnancy, for any woman, is reasonably risky: and if fat women can choose to take that risk when conceiving naturally, why not when they are having fertility treatment? IVF, like most medical procedures, is not something that people generally do for the hell of it; they turn to assisted fertility when nature, or other circumstances, let them down. It's unpleasant, unreliable and can be bad for your health - yet still people do it, because their desire for a child outweighs those other concerns.
Fertility treatment gives society the ability to overcome one of the unfairnesses caused by nature. Why should we want to compromise that by adding some socially-constructed unfairnesses of our own?
As things currently stand, the BFS's recommendations probably won't have a practical impact upon that many people - largely because provision of IVF treatment on the NHS is so limited. PCTs have been instructed by the government to offer women at least one free cycle, which is arguably neither use nor ornament - the need for speed (often precisely because women seeking treatment are older) and for more than one treatment cycle means that many people go private anyway. As ever, it is those who can't afford the thousands of pounds that fertility treatment requires who end up suffering the consequences of these restrictions most directly.
But the moral impact of these recommendations is widespread, reaching beyond IVF patients to everybody who wants a child. Once again, we are presented with an official viewpoint on what it means to be an acceptable parent - a non-drinking, non-smoking, mature-but-not-old, slim-but-not-too-thin caricature straight out of the New Labour Book of Boring. Fertility treatment is supposed to offer people more choices; instead it has become another stick with which to beat us into conformity.
Source
NHS RELUCTANT TO ADOPT EVEN THE MOST BENEFICIAL NEW TECHNOLOGY
The National Health Service could save at least 500 million pounds a year by adopting techniques that could halve the recovery time of patients after surgery. A new trial at the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle upon Tyne has shown that bowel surgery patients were ready to be discharged in just 7 days, rather than 14. The surgeons told a conference in Lisbon yesterday that better preparation and education of patients, greater use of keyhole surgery and a technique for improving fluid balance and blood circulation during and after surgery could greatly reduce the recovery period. The trial was the latest evidence of the effectiveness of CardioQ, a blood monitoring device developed by a British company, Deltex Medical.
If repeated across the country, the savings to the health service would exceed last year’s NHS deficit of 500 million pounds. However, the device was used in fewer than 5 per cent of possible NHS procedures, reflecting the difficulty of getting new devices used by the service. Alan Horgan, consultant colorectal surgeon at the Freeman Hospital and leader of the study, said: “These results are remarkable. Everyone involved in surgery and NHS management should read this study. “Fluid-balance during and after surgery is incredibly important to patient wellbeing. Our surgical recovery programme means the Freeman Hospital is already a leader in recovery times, but the CardioQ has allowed us to get even better. We have proven that it is possible to save the NHS both time and money, while also enhancing patient care.”
CardioQ works by monitoring how much blood the heart is pumping. Blood lost during operations is “topped up” by using a colloidal solution that mimics the behaviour of blood. Getting the volume exactly right is critical to ensuring that sufficient oxygen is delivered to the organs. Too little can lead to organ failure and even death. But too much can cause heart failure, so doctors have had to tread a fine line between the two. CardioQ monitors blood volume using an ultrasound probe inserted down the throat. The probe measures blood flow by bouncing ultrasound waves off blood cells flowing through the aorta, the main blood vessel.
The trial covered 108 patients. Half were given fluid at the discretion of the anaesthetist, while the other half had their fluid levels monitored by CardioQ. The national average recovery time for bowel surgery is 14 days, but at the Freeman, discharge took an average of only 7 days. The largest part of the improvement was the result of the recovery programme, which included the use of keyhole surgery. But CardioQ also contributed another two days, and patients treated with it also had far fewer post-operative complications — 2 per cent rather than 15 per cent. None needed an unplanned admission to the critical care unit, compared with 11 per cent of patients not treated using CardioQ.
Every day in a general or surgical ward costs 400 pounds per patient. The CardioQ monitor costs 7,000 pounds and the probes used in the trial 55 pounds each, meaning that the monitor could pay for itself in days. It could be used for a range of operations, not just those on the bowel. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence described CardioQ as “standard clinical practice”. Yet such is the reluctance of the NHS to adopt new approaches that it is used in fewer than one in twenty operations in which it could provide benefits. Ewan Phillips, managing director of Deltex Medical, said: “Embracing this technology should be a no-brainer.”
Source
BRITISH JAILS TOO SOFT
A prisoner has publicly condemned fellow inmates for their "constant bleating" about human rights. Stephen Hardy, who confesses to having spent extended periods of time at Her Majesty's pleasure, won 25 pounds for "star letter of the month" in a prisoners' newspaper with his withering attack on the petty complaints made by his fellow convicts. The letters page of Inside Time, produced by the offenders' charity, New Bridge, is a popular forum for prisoners to air their grievances, many of which hinge on human rights issues. But Hardy reminisces about the "good old days" in prisons when "you had no rights apart from a surname and a number". He points out that prison is a means of punishment and insists that prisoners should pay the price for their crimes.
He writes: "Whenever I've gone out and robbed somebody I didn't read my victims the human rights charter. It was entirely my choice and I've got to pay the price. In case prisoners are scratching their heads wondering where I'm coming from, the operative word is `responsibility'. "So far as human rights are concerned, stick 'em."
Another letter in this month's edition relates to the way in which an inmate tried to use human rights laws to stop prison officers opening letters from his lawyers. But Hardy continues: "Every prison I've been in (and it's a fair few), all I ever seem to hear is this constant bleating about `my human rights', be it due to the food being either too hot or too cold, an officer didn't refer to me as `Mr' or whatever other petty complaints yet another mundane day of incarceration can throw up. "This is now becoming far more commonplace than the other weary old chestnut, `I didn't do it'. Prisoners tend to conveniently forget why they are locked up and forget too the rights of the victims they created."
The writer, who is serving his sentence at the medium-security Albany prison in the Isle of Wight, adds: "In the `good old days' in prison you had no rights apart from a surname and a number. If the food was bad (and trust me it was) or there was some other problem about which we had no rights, then we had a riot - no paperwork, no request/complaints - just a good, old-fashioned punch-up followed on frequent occasions by a good kicking."
John Bowers, the commissioning editor at Inside Time, said: "You can't get a more contentious view than this from a prisoner. It is really the last thing you would expect coming from a prisoner. It will lead to a debate, that's for sure. "This letter will be read, it will be hotly disputed and I expect several irate letters from other prisoners saying, `What the hell is this Stephen Hardy on about?' Every prisoner who reads it will either think it's a load of old rubbish or may even think he's got a point."
Mark Leech, editor of The Prisons Handbook, said: "I find it ironic that Mr Hardy is pooh-poohing human rights by writing a letter to a newspaper - something inmates can only do because they have used human rights arguments to win that right. There was a time when inmates were banned from writing about their prison conditions. "I wonder if he'll send his 25 pound prize to Victim Support?"
Hardy ends his letter by insisting: "I'll do my bird (again) and if I return to prison in the next decade perhaps we'll have plasma screen TVs, access to the internet and all manner of privileges; after all, we wouldn't want our human rights infringed by denying us access to everything we desire in order to be `treated like human beings' would we?" The newspaper also includes an article by Jonathan King, the pop impresario who served three years of a seven year sentence for sex offences, bemoaning the fact that when he arrived at Belmarsh in 2001, there was no in-cell television or electricity.
Source
NJ: Guns N Rollers airport terror t-shirt alert: "Keen security personnel at Birmingham International Airport ordered a man to turn his t-shirt inside out because it bore a drawing of two crossed guns. Staffordshire design engineer Dave Osbourne was wearing a Guns N Rollers t-shirt. Guns N Rollers are a team in 'an all-female roller derby league located in Portland Oregon,' according to their website. Their logo is a tribute to that of hard rocking, hard drinking, legendarily fractious LA band Guns N Roses. ... As he waited to board the flight to Newark, New Jersey, guards told Osbourne the graphic represented a security risk, and could upset other passengers. ... The 21-year-old said: 'I am all for extra security, but this was just plain stupid.' Bosses at the airport apologised, admitting guards over-reacted."
Proposals that women who are too fat, too thin or over 40 should be denied IVF are draconian attempts to define what is a `good parent'
Fat people, apparently, don't deserve to have children. Nor do people who are too old or too young, too thin, or, by default, too poor. Such are the recommendations of the British Fertility Society (BFS), a group of IVF specialists, which this week has set out to try to clarify guidelines on who should receive fertility treatment on the NHS. It's a good job most people can get pregnant naturally, or the fertility rate really would be in trouble.
The headlines went along the lines of `Call for fertility ban for obese', and focused on the proposal to refuse treatment to women with a body mass index (BMI) above 29 (about 12 stone for a woman of average height) until they initiated a `weight reduction programme', and to refuse free treatment point blank to women with a BMI over 36. But fat women were not the only ones in the firing line: underweight women (about eight stone) would be made to gain weight, and women over 40 would be barred automatically from treatment.
In fairness to the BFS, its intention is to reduce current `unequal access' to NHS-funded IVF treatment, which arises from Primary Care Trusts' arbitrary use of `social criteria' to determine who should be allowed free IVF. For example, some PCTs refuse to fund couples who already have children, some refuse to treat smokers, and many set different obesity limits, resulting in a bewildering array of restrictions. And some of the BFS's recommendations are progressive - for example, that single women and same-sex couples should be treated the same way as heterosexual couples, and that couples with children from a previous relationship should not be excluded from access to NHS treatment.
But any use of `social criteria' to bar people from IVF treatment is a problem, because it draws a moral distinction between those who are worthy of being given the chance to be a parent, and those who are not. By these criteria, fat women and older women are being labelled undeserving of a treatment offered to everybody else - being told that they don't deserve to have a baby, because they've left it too late or eaten too many pies.
Medics will argue that there are medical reasons for these restrictions - that IVF treatment is less likely to work for women who are old or fat, and that if it does work, the pregnancy will carry greater risks for mother and child. Well, if that's the case, tell your patients of the risks, and let the decision about whether to proceed be made by the doctor and the patient, not by a list of standard regulations.
While young women in the peak of health are doubtless the fertility specialist's preferred patients, presumably they are the least likely to need assistance. Pregnancy, for any woman, is reasonably risky: and if fat women can choose to take that risk when conceiving naturally, why not when they are having fertility treatment? IVF, like most medical procedures, is not something that people generally do for the hell of it; they turn to assisted fertility when nature, or other circumstances, let them down. It's unpleasant, unreliable and can be bad for your health - yet still people do it, because their desire for a child outweighs those other concerns.
Fertility treatment gives society the ability to overcome one of the unfairnesses caused by nature. Why should we want to compromise that by adding some socially-constructed unfairnesses of our own?
As things currently stand, the BFS's recommendations probably won't have a practical impact upon that many people - largely because provision of IVF treatment on the NHS is so limited. PCTs have been instructed by the government to offer women at least one free cycle, which is arguably neither use nor ornament - the need for speed (often precisely because women seeking treatment are older) and for more than one treatment cycle means that many people go private anyway. As ever, it is those who can't afford the thousands of pounds that fertility treatment requires who end up suffering the consequences of these restrictions most directly.
But the moral impact of these recommendations is widespread, reaching beyond IVF patients to everybody who wants a child. Once again, we are presented with an official viewpoint on what it means to be an acceptable parent - a non-drinking, non-smoking, mature-but-not-old, slim-but-not-too-thin caricature straight out of the New Labour Book of Boring. Fertility treatment is supposed to offer people more choices; instead it has become another stick with which to beat us into conformity.
Source
NHS RELUCTANT TO ADOPT EVEN THE MOST BENEFICIAL NEW TECHNOLOGY
The National Health Service could save at least 500 million pounds a year by adopting techniques that could halve the recovery time of patients after surgery. A new trial at the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle upon Tyne has shown that bowel surgery patients were ready to be discharged in just 7 days, rather than 14. The surgeons told a conference in Lisbon yesterday that better preparation and education of patients, greater use of keyhole surgery and a technique for improving fluid balance and blood circulation during and after surgery could greatly reduce the recovery period. The trial was the latest evidence of the effectiveness of CardioQ, a blood monitoring device developed by a British company, Deltex Medical.
If repeated across the country, the savings to the health service would exceed last year’s NHS deficit of 500 million pounds. However, the device was used in fewer than 5 per cent of possible NHS procedures, reflecting the difficulty of getting new devices used by the service. Alan Horgan, consultant colorectal surgeon at the Freeman Hospital and leader of the study, said: “These results are remarkable. Everyone involved in surgery and NHS management should read this study. “Fluid-balance during and after surgery is incredibly important to patient wellbeing. Our surgical recovery programme means the Freeman Hospital is already a leader in recovery times, but the CardioQ has allowed us to get even better. We have proven that it is possible to save the NHS both time and money, while also enhancing patient care.”
CardioQ works by monitoring how much blood the heart is pumping. Blood lost during operations is “topped up” by using a colloidal solution that mimics the behaviour of blood. Getting the volume exactly right is critical to ensuring that sufficient oxygen is delivered to the organs. Too little can lead to organ failure and even death. But too much can cause heart failure, so doctors have had to tread a fine line between the two. CardioQ monitors blood volume using an ultrasound probe inserted down the throat. The probe measures blood flow by bouncing ultrasound waves off blood cells flowing through the aorta, the main blood vessel.
The trial covered 108 patients. Half were given fluid at the discretion of the anaesthetist, while the other half had their fluid levels monitored by CardioQ. The national average recovery time for bowel surgery is 14 days, but at the Freeman, discharge took an average of only 7 days. The largest part of the improvement was the result of the recovery programme, which included the use of keyhole surgery. But CardioQ also contributed another two days, and patients treated with it also had far fewer post-operative complications — 2 per cent rather than 15 per cent. None needed an unplanned admission to the critical care unit, compared with 11 per cent of patients not treated using CardioQ.
Every day in a general or surgical ward costs 400 pounds per patient. The CardioQ monitor costs 7,000 pounds and the probes used in the trial 55 pounds each, meaning that the monitor could pay for itself in days. It could be used for a range of operations, not just those on the bowel. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence described CardioQ as “standard clinical practice”. Yet such is the reluctance of the NHS to adopt new approaches that it is used in fewer than one in twenty operations in which it could provide benefits. Ewan Phillips, managing director of Deltex Medical, said: “Embracing this technology should be a no-brainer.”
Source
BRITISH JAILS TOO SOFT
A prisoner has publicly condemned fellow inmates for their "constant bleating" about human rights. Stephen Hardy, who confesses to having spent extended periods of time at Her Majesty's pleasure, won 25 pounds for "star letter of the month" in a prisoners' newspaper with his withering attack on the petty complaints made by his fellow convicts. The letters page of Inside Time, produced by the offenders' charity, New Bridge, is a popular forum for prisoners to air their grievances, many of which hinge on human rights issues. But Hardy reminisces about the "good old days" in prisons when "you had no rights apart from a surname and a number". He points out that prison is a means of punishment and insists that prisoners should pay the price for their crimes.
He writes: "Whenever I've gone out and robbed somebody I didn't read my victims the human rights charter. It was entirely my choice and I've got to pay the price. In case prisoners are scratching their heads wondering where I'm coming from, the operative word is `responsibility'. "So far as human rights are concerned, stick 'em."
Another letter in this month's edition relates to the way in which an inmate tried to use human rights laws to stop prison officers opening letters from his lawyers. But Hardy continues: "Every prison I've been in (and it's a fair few), all I ever seem to hear is this constant bleating about `my human rights', be it due to the food being either too hot or too cold, an officer didn't refer to me as `Mr' or whatever other petty complaints yet another mundane day of incarceration can throw up. "This is now becoming far more commonplace than the other weary old chestnut, `I didn't do it'. Prisoners tend to conveniently forget why they are locked up and forget too the rights of the victims they created."
The writer, who is serving his sentence at the medium-security Albany prison in the Isle of Wight, adds: "In the `good old days' in prison you had no rights apart from a surname and a number. If the food was bad (and trust me it was) or there was some other problem about which we had no rights, then we had a riot - no paperwork, no request/complaints - just a good, old-fashioned punch-up followed on frequent occasions by a good kicking."
John Bowers, the commissioning editor at Inside Time, said: "You can't get a more contentious view than this from a prisoner. It is really the last thing you would expect coming from a prisoner. It will lead to a debate, that's for sure. "This letter will be read, it will be hotly disputed and I expect several irate letters from other prisoners saying, `What the hell is this Stephen Hardy on about?' Every prisoner who reads it will either think it's a load of old rubbish or may even think he's got a point."
Mark Leech, editor of The Prisons Handbook, said: "I find it ironic that Mr Hardy is pooh-poohing human rights by writing a letter to a newspaper - something inmates can only do because they have used human rights arguments to win that right. There was a time when inmates were banned from writing about their prison conditions. "I wonder if he'll send his 25 pound prize to Victim Support?"
Hardy ends his letter by insisting: "I'll do my bird (again) and if I return to prison in the next decade perhaps we'll have plasma screen TVs, access to the internet and all manner of privileges; after all, we wouldn't want our human rights infringed by denying us access to everything we desire in order to be `treated like human beings' would we?" The newspaper also includes an article by Jonathan King, the pop impresario who served three years of a seven year sentence for sex offences, bemoaning the fact that when he arrived at Belmarsh in 2001, there was no in-cell television or electricity.
Source
NJ: Guns N Rollers airport terror t-shirt alert: "Keen security personnel at Birmingham International Airport ordered a man to turn his t-shirt inside out because it bore a drawing of two crossed guns. Staffordshire design engineer Dave Osbourne was wearing a Guns N Rollers t-shirt. Guns N Rollers are a team in 'an all-female roller derby league located in Portland Oregon,' according to their website. Their logo is a tribute to that of hard rocking, hard drinking, legendarily fractious LA band Guns N Roses. ... As he waited to board the flight to Newark, New Jersey, guards told Osbourne the graphic represented a security risk, and could upset other passengers. ... The 21-year-old said: 'I am all for extra security, but this was just plain stupid.' Bosses at the airport apologised, admitting guards over-reacted."
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Modern technology gives a different education
I nodded gravely at the radio on Tuesday when Michael Morpurgo, the sainted author of children's books,spoke passionately about children needing time to dream. But I was baffled by Baroness Greenfield burbling about "icons replacing ideas". She kept calling for "conceptual frameworks" to offset the evils of technology.
We cannot turn the clock back to the days when the world stopped to Listen With Mother at 1.45. We cannot wish technology back into its Xbox. The internet has brought alive everything from nature to molecules to engineering. It has enabled pupils in some classrooms to learn at their own pace, not feeling they are a drag on the rest or waiting for everyone else to catch up. That is a liberation.
But are other bits of technology - TV shows, videos, computer games - bad for the brain? Michael Shayer, Professor of Applied Psychology at King's College London, claims that 11 and 12-year-olds are now two to three years behind where they were 15 years go in terms of cognitive and conceptual development. In his volume and heaviness test, children are asked to hold a brass block and a Plasticine block of identical size, one in each hand. In 1976, 57 per cent of boys and 27 per cent of girls realised that the Plasticine block would displace the same amount of water, if immersed, as the brass block.
Thirty years later only 17 per cent of either sex get it right. That is a staggering change. But Professor Shayer is reluctant to speculate on the causes. He thinks a decline in hands-on play, more TV and less outside play space may be factors. But he is not sure.
If the screen is a problem, why can't adults just switch it off? You don't need a "conceptual framework" to find the off button. What comes through every discussion on this subject is the extraordinary weakness of parents, who simply can't face the hassle of saying no. And when they try, they face increasingly strong resistance. For the real, hidden danger of many TV channels and video games is that they are designed to feed an anti-authority culture.
Sue Palmer's book Toxic Childhood quotes the psychologist Mark Crispin-Miller: "It's part of the official advertising world view that your parents are creeps, teachers are weirdos and idiots, authority figures laughable and nobody can really understand children except the corporate sponsor." This may sound overblown, unless you've watched Nickelodeon. The Rugrats are pulling the rug from under parents who weren't too sure of their footing anyway. Guess which TV character a recent BBC poll of 5,000 parents found was the "role model" who most influenced their children? Gulp. Bart Simpson.
On CBeebies, the BBC's channel for children, I recently watched two dim, nasty elves mocking a wise old owl who was trying to teach them. It was Elves 1 Owl 0, every time. I switched it off. I don't intend to make my particular perch any more precarious.
Few of us want to admit that we use TV as an anaesthetic, so we gratefully guzzle the line that it is educational. Yet most programming is surely far too hyperactive, rushing from one segment to the next, to be anything of the kind. Blue's Clues, the American series, is the only one I have found that is designed to help children to concentrate rather than lure them with perpetual distraction. Each episode is supposed to be watched on five consecutive days before moving on to the next - so by the end of the week children know the songs and stories and are able to recap with the presenter what they have learnt. Unusually for such series, it has no subplot for parents. Children adore it. Parents are bored stiff. But perhaps that is the point.
I have always believed that boredom is a great stimulator. Not fearful boredom, not the waiting in an empty house for the key to turn in the lock, but the kind of boredom that inspires children to read books, build boats in cupboards, and sail to a make-believe island. Boredom is cheap to create: just switch off the gadgets and limit the plastic toys. Imaginations soar. But parents must be prepared to be bored themselves, to be told what role to play, not to control the game, to endure repetition after repetition after repetition. And many of us, obsessed with using time "productively", are not.
Dreaming is probably easiest when you feel secure. Yet just as they are now assailed by a host of characters on screen, many children also face a constantly shifting cast of characters in real life. I am not talking just about family breakdown. The turnover of staff in schools, at playgroups and crŠches is momentous. Even top-class nannies often move on after a few years. One told me of a four-year-old who said every Monday morning: "See you on Friday, Mummy." We working parents are always nipping in, nipping out. How does that feel from the perspective of the one who stays put?
Children are adaptable. I would imagine that most feel far less threatened by changes in technology than adults. But more so by changes in people they have become attached to. There is no point in getting hysterical about the pace of change. We parents cannot stop it. But we can do more to make children's lives more stable and predictable.
Source
I nodded gravely at the radio on Tuesday when Michael Morpurgo, the sainted author of children's books,spoke passionately about children needing time to dream. But I was baffled by Baroness Greenfield burbling about "icons replacing ideas". She kept calling for "conceptual frameworks" to offset the evils of technology.
We cannot turn the clock back to the days when the world stopped to Listen With Mother at 1.45. We cannot wish technology back into its Xbox. The internet has brought alive everything from nature to molecules to engineering. It has enabled pupils in some classrooms to learn at their own pace, not feeling they are a drag on the rest or waiting for everyone else to catch up. That is a liberation.
But are other bits of technology - TV shows, videos, computer games - bad for the brain? Michael Shayer, Professor of Applied Psychology at King's College London, claims that 11 and 12-year-olds are now two to three years behind where they were 15 years go in terms of cognitive and conceptual development. In his volume and heaviness test, children are asked to hold a brass block and a Plasticine block of identical size, one in each hand. In 1976, 57 per cent of boys and 27 per cent of girls realised that the Plasticine block would displace the same amount of water, if immersed, as the brass block.
Thirty years later only 17 per cent of either sex get it right. That is a staggering change. But Professor Shayer is reluctant to speculate on the causes. He thinks a decline in hands-on play, more TV and less outside play space may be factors. But he is not sure.
If the screen is a problem, why can't adults just switch it off? You don't need a "conceptual framework" to find the off button. What comes through every discussion on this subject is the extraordinary weakness of parents, who simply can't face the hassle of saying no. And when they try, they face increasingly strong resistance. For the real, hidden danger of many TV channels and video games is that they are designed to feed an anti-authority culture.
Sue Palmer's book Toxic Childhood quotes the psychologist Mark Crispin-Miller: "It's part of the official advertising world view that your parents are creeps, teachers are weirdos and idiots, authority figures laughable and nobody can really understand children except the corporate sponsor." This may sound overblown, unless you've watched Nickelodeon. The Rugrats are pulling the rug from under parents who weren't too sure of their footing anyway. Guess which TV character a recent BBC poll of 5,000 parents found was the "role model" who most influenced their children? Gulp. Bart Simpson.
On CBeebies, the BBC's channel for children, I recently watched two dim, nasty elves mocking a wise old owl who was trying to teach them. It was Elves 1 Owl 0, every time. I switched it off. I don't intend to make my particular perch any more precarious.
Few of us want to admit that we use TV as an anaesthetic, so we gratefully guzzle the line that it is educational. Yet most programming is surely far too hyperactive, rushing from one segment to the next, to be anything of the kind. Blue's Clues, the American series, is the only one I have found that is designed to help children to concentrate rather than lure them with perpetual distraction. Each episode is supposed to be watched on five consecutive days before moving on to the next - so by the end of the week children know the songs and stories and are able to recap with the presenter what they have learnt. Unusually for such series, it has no subplot for parents. Children adore it. Parents are bored stiff. But perhaps that is the point.
I have always believed that boredom is a great stimulator. Not fearful boredom, not the waiting in an empty house for the key to turn in the lock, but the kind of boredom that inspires children to read books, build boats in cupboards, and sail to a make-believe island. Boredom is cheap to create: just switch off the gadgets and limit the plastic toys. Imaginations soar. But parents must be prepared to be bored themselves, to be told what role to play, not to control the game, to endure repetition after repetition after repetition. And many of us, obsessed with using time "productively", are not.
Dreaming is probably easiest when you feel secure. Yet just as they are now assailed by a host of characters on screen, many children also face a constantly shifting cast of characters in real life. I am not talking just about family breakdown. The turnover of staff in schools, at playgroups and crŠches is momentous. Even top-class nannies often move on after a few years. One told me of a four-year-old who said every Monday morning: "See you on Friday, Mummy." We working parents are always nipping in, nipping out. How does that feel from the perspective of the one who stays put?
Children are adaptable. I would imagine that most feel far less threatened by changes in technology than adults. But more so by changes in people they have become attached to. There is no point in getting hysterical about the pace of change. We parents cannot stop it. But we can do more to make children's lives more stable and predictable.
Source
Stupid new UK government rules on sperm donors have the predicted effect
Hundreds of infertile couples could miss the chance to have a baby because of a nationwide shortage of sperm donors. More than two thirds of British fertility clinics have been unable to recruit donors or have had “great difficulty” in buying supplies, since the Government lifted donors’ lifelong anonymity last year, research shows.
BBC News found that 50 of the 74 clinics and sperm banks that responded to its survey are not recruiting new donors. There are 84 licensed centres for sperm donation in Britain. Those that can find men to donate have only 169 approved donors on their books and 90 per cent of these serve just ten clinics. There is only one registered donor in Scotland, and none in Northern Ireland.
This compares with a peak of 459 in the 1990s, when men could donate sperm knowing that any offspring would not have the right to trace them. This provision was removed in April last year, despite warnings from fertility doctors that it would lead to a collapse in supply. The Government argued that children conceived from donated sperm or eggs had a right to know the identity of their biological parents. Allan Pacey, head of andrology at Sheffield University and Secretary of the British Fertility Society, said: “If there aren’t enough men who are willing to donate and be identified to the donor-conceived offspring later in life, and if we don’t have the ability to import sperm from other countries because the regulations are too tough, then we are not going to be able to treat patients that require donor sperm treatments. “Sadly some will go without. I think we are certainly in a crisis at the moment. Most of the clinics are finding it very difficult to get enough sperm to treat their patients.”
He said that many patients who needed donated sperm to conceive were considering travelling abroad. “It leaves patients in a desperate situation. If they are unable to get treatment in their local clinic, then they are looking to other sources. Some are getting flights to other European countries. Others may turn to internet sites that provide sperm for home insemination. These are signs of desperation and I thoroughly understand them.”
Zoe and Colin Veal, whose only possibility of conceiving is by using donated sperm or an IVF technique called ICSI (intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection), were told by their Bristol clinic that there was no sperm available. Mrs Veal said: “I think it was a huge shock as for the first time we realised that we weren’t going to be able to access treatment. You then have to start thinking about where you go from here and then you have to start thinking about risks that you might have to take, such as buying fresh sperm over the internet or whether you just move on and become a childless couple permanently. Without sperm you can’t have a baby, and so that is the end of the line.”
Mark Hamilton, chairman of the British Fertility Society, said: “The British Fertility Society is well aware of the difficulties many patients throughout the country are experiencing in accessing gamete donation services, in particular donor insemination treatment. “Provision of such services requires significant resources to attract, recruit, screen, and counsel prospective donors. The survey reinforces our own findings that many clinics are now finding it impossible to provide these services
Source
Hundreds of infertile couples could miss the chance to have a baby because of a nationwide shortage of sperm donors. More than two thirds of British fertility clinics have been unable to recruit donors or have had “great difficulty” in buying supplies, since the Government lifted donors’ lifelong anonymity last year, research shows.
BBC News found that 50 of the 74 clinics and sperm banks that responded to its survey are not recruiting new donors. There are 84 licensed centres for sperm donation in Britain. Those that can find men to donate have only 169 approved donors on their books and 90 per cent of these serve just ten clinics. There is only one registered donor in Scotland, and none in Northern Ireland.
This compares with a peak of 459 in the 1990s, when men could donate sperm knowing that any offspring would not have the right to trace them. This provision was removed in April last year, despite warnings from fertility doctors that it would lead to a collapse in supply. The Government argued that children conceived from donated sperm or eggs had a right to know the identity of their biological parents. Allan Pacey, head of andrology at Sheffield University and Secretary of the British Fertility Society, said: “If there aren’t enough men who are willing to donate and be identified to the donor-conceived offspring later in life, and if we don’t have the ability to import sperm from other countries because the regulations are too tough, then we are not going to be able to treat patients that require donor sperm treatments. “Sadly some will go without. I think we are certainly in a crisis at the moment. Most of the clinics are finding it very difficult to get enough sperm to treat their patients.”
He said that many patients who needed donated sperm to conceive were considering travelling abroad. “It leaves patients in a desperate situation. If they are unable to get treatment in their local clinic, then they are looking to other sources. Some are getting flights to other European countries. Others may turn to internet sites that provide sperm for home insemination. These are signs of desperation and I thoroughly understand them.”
Zoe and Colin Veal, whose only possibility of conceiving is by using donated sperm or an IVF technique called ICSI (intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection), were told by their Bristol clinic that there was no sperm available. Mrs Veal said: “I think it was a huge shock as for the first time we realised that we weren’t going to be able to access treatment. You then have to start thinking about where you go from here and then you have to start thinking about risks that you might have to take, such as buying fresh sperm over the internet or whether you just move on and become a childless couple permanently. Without sperm you can’t have a baby, and so that is the end of the line.”
Mark Hamilton, chairman of the British Fertility Society, said: “The British Fertility Society is well aware of the difficulties many patients throughout the country are experiencing in accessing gamete donation services, in particular donor insemination treatment. “Provision of such services requires significant resources to attract, recruit, screen, and counsel prospective donors. The survey reinforces our own findings that many clinics are now finding it impossible to provide these services
Source
Saturday, September 16, 2006
UK Head teachers predict suits on obesity targets
Headteachers yesterday warned that litigious parents could soon sue schools for failing to prevent their children from drinking, smoking or taking drugs. They fear that government plans to set targets for improving young people's health and welfare in England could unleash attacks on their ability to control wider health and social trends.
Families are already taking legal action over schools' alleged failure to tackle bullying and heads say they could soon be held responsible for obesity, pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, drug taking and drinking.
John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: "We are not clear at all yet who is going to be held to account. You cannot be set targets for things you cannot control: alcohol consumption, for example, among young people." The government is expected to propose a wide range of targets and indicators for local authority children's services. Mr Dunford said: "We really think it is going to be very dangerous and difficult if schools are held to account for all these things."
Some measures and targets which ministers are thought likely to introduce will have a direct educational impact, but others, say heads, could divert attention from the core job of teaching and learning. They argue that litigation could follow if schools became too involved in other areas. The Department for Education and Skills said schools had a role to play in the new programme "but we don't expect them to do it alone".
Source
Teenage boys failing in England
Fewer 14-year-olds reached the expected standard for their age in English this year, national test results revealed yesterday.
Whereas results for maths and science improved, in English the proportion reaching Level 5 in their Key Stage 3 tests dropped by 2 percentage points to 72 per cent and boys in particular were failing to make the grade in the 3Rs. In reading, 59 per cent of 14-year-old boys reached the standards expected in the tests known as Sats, compared with 74 per cent of girls.
In writing, 83 per cent of girls reached Level 5, whereas only 69 per cent of boys matched them.
In maths, 77 per cent of girls achieved the expected level, one percentage point ahead of boys. Overall, maths results rose by three percentage points from 2005 and in science, 72 per cent of pupils reached the expected level for their age - a rise of two percentage points on last year. The tests were taken by 600,000 pupils in England.
Government officials said they hoped that freeing up the curriculum, investing œ1 billion in personalised learning and reintroducing synthetic phonics would reverse the trend. However, the Government highlighted the successes of pupils attending privately run academies.
Passes for teenagers rose 8.8 percentage points in English, more than 10.6 percentage points in maths and 12.9 percentage points in science.
Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, said: "The results indicate that academies ... are improving at about three times the national rate in maths and about six times the national rate in science. They are also seeing a big improvement in English."
Nick Gibb, the Tory schools spokesman, said that it was unacceptable that one in three children at 14 are not reaching their expected reading level. Sarah Teather, the Liberal Democrat education spokeswoman, said it was unacceptable that so many boys had such poor language skills.
Source
Headteachers yesterday warned that litigious parents could soon sue schools for failing to prevent their children from drinking, smoking or taking drugs. They fear that government plans to set targets for improving young people's health and welfare in England could unleash attacks on their ability to control wider health and social trends.
Families are already taking legal action over schools' alleged failure to tackle bullying and heads say they could soon be held responsible for obesity, pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, drug taking and drinking.
John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: "We are not clear at all yet who is going to be held to account. You cannot be set targets for things you cannot control: alcohol consumption, for example, among young people." The government is expected to propose a wide range of targets and indicators for local authority children's services. Mr Dunford said: "We really think it is going to be very dangerous and difficult if schools are held to account for all these things."
Some measures and targets which ministers are thought likely to introduce will have a direct educational impact, but others, say heads, could divert attention from the core job of teaching and learning. They argue that litigation could follow if schools became too involved in other areas. The Department for Education and Skills said schools had a role to play in the new programme "but we don't expect them to do it alone".
Source
Teenage boys failing in England
Fewer 14-year-olds reached the expected standard for their age in English this year, national test results revealed yesterday.
Whereas results for maths and science improved, in English the proportion reaching Level 5 in their Key Stage 3 tests dropped by 2 percentage points to 72 per cent and boys in particular were failing to make the grade in the 3Rs. In reading, 59 per cent of 14-year-old boys reached the standards expected in the tests known as Sats, compared with 74 per cent of girls.
In writing, 83 per cent of girls reached Level 5, whereas only 69 per cent of boys matched them.
In maths, 77 per cent of girls achieved the expected level, one percentage point ahead of boys. Overall, maths results rose by three percentage points from 2005 and in science, 72 per cent of pupils reached the expected level for their age - a rise of two percentage points on last year. The tests were taken by 600,000 pupils in England.
Government officials said they hoped that freeing up the curriculum, investing œ1 billion in personalised learning and reintroducing synthetic phonics would reverse the trend. However, the Government highlighted the successes of pupils attending privately run academies.
Passes for teenagers rose 8.8 percentage points in English, more than 10.6 percentage points in maths and 12.9 percentage points in science.
Jim Knight, the Schools Minister, said: "The results indicate that academies ... are improving at about three times the national rate in maths and about six times the national rate in science. They are also seeing a big improvement in English."
Nick Gibb, the Tory schools spokesman, said that it was unacceptable that one in three children at 14 are not reaching their expected reading level. Sarah Teather, the Liberal Democrat education spokeswoman, said it was unacceptable that so many boys had such poor language skills.
Source
BRITISH PUBLIC HOSPITALS ARE POLITICAL FOOTBALLS
A secret meeting has been held by ministers and Labour Party officials to work out ways of closing hospitals without jeopardising key marginal seats, The Times can reveal. Concerns about the political impact of planned hospital closures and other cuts to the NHS, which had a deficit last year of more than 500 million pounds, prompted ministers to organise the closed-door discussion. Details of the meeting, revealed in e-mails passed to The Times, show that it included Hazel Blears, the Labour chairman, political advisers from No 10 and even — at the request of Ms Blears — a Labour Party representative.
Opposition politicians said yesterday it was “deeply inappropriate” that party officials should have had an influence over plans drawn up by civil servants for changes in services on medical grounds. They also expressed concerns that hospitals in Tory constituencies were more vulnerable.
The e-mails show that Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, called for those at the meeting to be provided with “heat maps”, showing marginal Labour seats where closures or reconfigurations of health services could cost votes. She also asked for lists showing hospitals where the European Working Time Directive is likely to hit hardest, making 24-hour rotas hard to sustain. Ministers have always insisted that the directive will not affect hospitals, but the e-mails suggest otherwise. Ms Hewitt may have been seeking to blunt the impact of the loss of 24-hour care by reconfiguring services to conceal it.
David Nicholson, the new NHS Chief Executive, gave warning this week that closures and reconfigurations were imminent. He expected there would be about 60 such changes, affecting every strategic health authority (SHA) and focusing particularly on maternity and accident and emergency services. The leaked e-mails make it plain that such changes have been considered since at least May. The first, from Alison Smith, a Department of Health official, refers to a May 12 submission about “supply-side reconfiguration”. The second, from Ms Hewitt’s private secretary, says that the Health Secretary asked for a political meeting to discuss the submission. She wants the health ministers Lord Warner and Andy Burnham to attend with their advisers, Ms Blears and her two advisers, and John McTernan and Paul Corrigan from No 10. A further e-mail from Ms Hewitt’s diary secretary says that Ms Blears has asked for a party representative to be included. The meeting took place on July 3 at the Department of Health.
Andrew Lansley, the Tory health spokesman, said: “There is a secret political debate going on to try to minimise damage to the Labour Party.” A spokesman for Ms Blears confirmed that the meeting had taken place but said that because it was political there was no record of who was present. “It wouldn’t be unusual for Labour Party press officers to attend meetings with ministers,” he said. “And as Minister without Portfolio, Ms Blears has the responsibility of providing policy advice to the Prime Minister across all departments, so she had a second reason for being there.”
Ministers are worried that the changes planned by Mr Nicholson may have the same effect as the removal of an A&E unit from Kidderminster Hospital in 2001, which led to the Independent candidate Richard Taylor ousting the Labour MP. After Mr Nicholson’s interview appeared, the Department of Health said his remarks did not mean “wholesale closures of hospitals” but rather that the NHS needed to work with local communities to decide how best to organise services.
One of the first strategic health authorities to make a move is the East of England SHA, whose board met yesterday to discuss a review of acute services. There are 19 district general hospitals in the region and reports suggest that as many as nine will be downgraded. Mr Lansley said it was no coincidence that the hospital top of the list for changes, and the only one specifically targeted in the board papers, for yesterday’s meeting, was Hinchingbrooke — “which happens to be in one of the two safest Conservative seats in the country”.
Source
A secret meeting has been held by ministers and Labour Party officials to work out ways of closing hospitals without jeopardising key marginal seats, The Times can reveal. Concerns about the political impact of planned hospital closures and other cuts to the NHS, which had a deficit last year of more than 500 million pounds, prompted ministers to organise the closed-door discussion. Details of the meeting, revealed in e-mails passed to The Times, show that it included Hazel Blears, the Labour chairman, political advisers from No 10 and even — at the request of Ms Blears — a Labour Party representative.
Opposition politicians said yesterday it was “deeply inappropriate” that party officials should have had an influence over plans drawn up by civil servants for changes in services on medical grounds. They also expressed concerns that hospitals in Tory constituencies were more vulnerable.
The e-mails show that Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, called for those at the meeting to be provided with “heat maps”, showing marginal Labour seats where closures or reconfigurations of health services could cost votes. She also asked for lists showing hospitals where the European Working Time Directive is likely to hit hardest, making 24-hour rotas hard to sustain. Ministers have always insisted that the directive will not affect hospitals, but the e-mails suggest otherwise. Ms Hewitt may have been seeking to blunt the impact of the loss of 24-hour care by reconfiguring services to conceal it.
David Nicholson, the new NHS Chief Executive, gave warning this week that closures and reconfigurations were imminent. He expected there would be about 60 such changes, affecting every strategic health authority (SHA) and focusing particularly on maternity and accident and emergency services. The leaked e-mails make it plain that such changes have been considered since at least May. The first, from Alison Smith, a Department of Health official, refers to a May 12 submission about “supply-side reconfiguration”. The second, from Ms Hewitt’s private secretary, says that the Health Secretary asked for a political meeting to discuss the submission. She wants the health ministers Lord Warner and Andy Burnham to attend with their advisers, Ms Blears and her two advisers, and John McTernan and Paul Corrigan from No 10. A further e-mail from Ms Hewitt’s diary secretary says that Ms Blears has asked for a party representative to be included. The meeting took place on July 3 at the Department of Health.
Andrew Lansley, the Tory health spokesman, said: “There is a secret political debate going on to try to minimise damage to the Labour Party.” A spokesman for Ms Blears confirmed that the meeting had taken place but said that because it was political there was no record of who was present. “It wouldn’t be unusual for Labour Party press officers to attend meetings with ministers,” he said. “And as Minister without Portfolio, Ms Blears has the responsibility of providing policy advice to the Prime Minister across all departments, so she had a second reason for being there.”
Ministers are worried that the changes planned by Mr Nicholson may have the same effect as the removal of an A&E unit from Kidderminster Hospital in 2001, which led to the Independent candidate Richard Taylor ousting the Labour MP. After Mr Nicholson’s interview appeared, the Department of Health said his remarks did not mean “wholesale closures of hospitals” but rather that the NHS needed to work with local communities to decide how best to organise services.
One of the first strategic health authorities to make a move is the East of England SHA, whose board met yesterday to discuss a review of acute services. There are 19 district general hospitals in the region and reports suggest that as many as nine will be downgraded. Mr Lansley said it was no coincidence that the hospital top of the list for changes, and the only one specifically targeted in the board papers, for yesterday’s meeting, was Hinchingbrooke — “which happens to be in one of the two safest Conservative seats in the country”.
Source
Could the panic about obesity be making things worse?
Panic: Scare stories about obesity have been coming thick and fast over the last few days. On Friday 25 August, we were told that England would have 13million obese people by 2010 - one million of them children. The government appointed health minister Caroline Flint to co-ordinate action on increasing our activity levels as a result. This week, the British Fertility Society recommended that women with a body mass index (BMI) above 36 should be denied free fertility treatment on the grounds that they were less likely to conceive - although they were only suggesting a national strategy to replace the current hotch-potch of local restrictions that are often even more severe. Thursday saw the release of an `obesity map' of England, with the slimmest areas all being London boroughs, while the areas with the greatest risk of obesity are mostly in the north.
Don't panic: While the grim reports of early death and chronic disease associated with obesity are used to scare us into staying thin, the truth is that while we're getting fatter, we're also living longer. In fact, the government seems to be promoting two contradictory panics at the same time: that life expectancies may fall due to obesity, while the country will be bankrupted by pensioners living too long.
The relationship between obesity and ill-health is much more complicated than the simplistic fat=unhealthy story we are typically given. In fact, being `overweight' is associated with lower mortality than `ideal' weight - and being `overweight' is certainly healthier than being underweight. BMIs above 30 are not necessarily unhealthy either. The key seems to be activity - fat but active people have similar or better health prospects than thin but sedentary people. In any event, obesity is only relatively important as a health risk in younger people. Since young adults don't get sick very often, this relative increase in risk still represents a low absolute risk. As people get older, the effect of age far outweighs the effect of weight.
Not only is the concern about obesity overstated, the anxiety about our weight has all sorts of negative consequences: it screws up our relationship with food; it creates a nation of hyperchondriacs fretting every time they step on a scale; it promotes misery about our appearance. Worse, by encouraging dieting, which in turn leads to most people yo-yoing in weight, it may actually increase the risk of ill-health: people who lose weight and regain it have a greater risk of mortality than those who never tried to lose weight.
Incredibly, because two-thirds of us are categorised as overweight or obese, the panic about obesity manages to demonise the majority of the population. We have created a carnival of self-loathing that surely outweighs any possible benefit from being thinner. As the American commentator Paul Campos shrewdly notes about the `war on fat': `In the end nothing could be easier than to win this war: all we need to do is stop fighting it.'
Source
Panic: Scare stories about obesity have been coming thick and fast over the last few days. On Friday 25 August, we were told that England would have 13million obese people by 2010 - one million of them children. The government appointed health minister Caroline Flint to co-ordinate action on increasing our activity levels as a result. This week, the British Fertility Society recommended that women with a body mass index (BMI) above 36 should be denied free fertility treatment on the grounds that they were less likely to conceive - although they were only suggesting a national strategy to replace the current hotch-potch of local restrictions that are often even more severe. Thursday saw the release of an `obesity map' of England, with the slimmest areas all being London boroughs, while the areas with the greatest risk of obesity are mostly in the north.
Don't panic: While the grim reports of early death and chronic disease associated with obesity are used to scare us into staying thin, the truth is that while we're getting fatter, we're also living longer. In fact, the government seems to be promoting two contradictory panics at the same time: that life expectancies may fall due to obesity, while the country will be bankrupted by pensioners living too long.
The relationship between obesity and ill-health is much more complicated than the simplistic fat=unhealthy story we are typically given. In fact, being `overweight' is associated with lower mortality than `ideal' weight - and being `overweight' is certainly healthier than being underweight. BMIs above 30 are not necessarily unhealthy either. The key seems to be activity - fat but active people have similar or better health prospects than thin but sedentary people. In any event, obesity is only relatively important as a health risk in younger people. Since young adults don't get sick very often, this relative increase in risk still represents a low absolute risk. As people get older, the effect of age far outweighs the effect of weight.
Not only is the concern about obesity overstated, the anxiety about our weight has all sorts of negative consequences: it screws up our relationship with food; it creates a nation of hyperchondriacs fretting every time they step on a scale; it promotes misery about our appearance. Worse, by encouraging dieting, which in turn leads to most people yo-yoing in weight, it may actually increase the risk of ill-health: people who lose weight and regain it have a greater risk of mortality than those who never tried to lose weight.
Incredibly, because two-thirds of us are categorised as overweight or obese, the panic about obesity manages to demonise the majority of the population. We have created a carnival of self-loathing that surely outweighs any possible benefit from being thinner. As the American commentator Paul Campos shrewdly notes about the `war on fat': `In the end nothing could be easier than to win this war: all we need to do is stop fighting it.'
Source
ARROGANT BRITISH TV COOK CHIDED BY ADVERTISER WHO PAYS HIM
Jamie Oliver, the public face of Sainsbury's, has been slapped down by the supermarket's boss for his attack on the standards of packed lunches offered by parents. The chef and food guru, who has achieved huge success in improving school meals, is angry his work is being undone by parents who provide "junk" packed lunches. He let rip last week, saying those adults who put crisps, chocolate and sugary fizzy drinks into packed lunches are "idiots", coupled with a host of colourful expletives....
However, the food industry claims there is no such thing as bad food and that it is wrong to demonise products high in fat, sugar and salt. Mr King said: "While I agree with Jamie's drive to get children eating healthily, his attack is neither correct nor the best way to achieve a change. "I ate crisps when I was young and drank fizzy drinks. My children do the same and they should be allowed to enjoy them. "There is no such thing as bad food - just bad diets." He added: "Dictating to people - on unleashing an expletive-filled tirade - is not the way to get engagement."
The comments, in a piece written by Mr King in the Guardian, represent a very public dressing down. They suggest that the relationship is strained and put a question mark over whether the annual contract with Oliver will be renewed. Last year, Mr King ordered a full review of Sainsbury's advertising. This included the possibility of dropping Mr Oliver.
Source
Jamie Oliver, the public face of Sainsbury's, has been slapped down by the supermarket's boss for his attack on the standards of packed lunches offered by parents. The chef and food guru, who has achieved huge success in improving school meals, is angry his work is being undone by parents who provide "junk" packed lunches. He let rip last week, saying those adults who put crisps, chocolate and sugary fizzy drinks into packed lunches are "idiots", coupled with a host of colourful expletives....
However, the food industry claims there is no such thing as bad food and that it is wrong to demonise products high in fat, sugar and salt. Mr King said: "While I agree with Jamie's drive to get children eating healthily, his attack is neither correct nor the best way to achieve a change. "I ate crisps when I was young and drank fizzy drinks. My children do the same and they should be allowed to enjoy them. "There is no such thing as bad food - just bad diets." He added: "Dictating to people - on unleashing an expletive-filled tirade - is not the way to get engagement."
The comments, in a piece written by Mr King in the Guardian, represent a very public dressing down. They suggest that the relationship is strained and put a question mark over whether the annual contract with Oliver will be renewed. Last year, Mr King ordered a full review of Sainsbury's advertising. This included the possibility of dropping Mr Oliver.
Source
INCORRECT HATS
The British Army was last night condemned for fuelling a fur trade which leaves baby bears orphaned. Animal rights groups criticised officials for buying the left over skin of black bears from tourist-hunters in Canada. In recent years thousands of American hunters have crossed the border to shoot bears for pleasure. The Army has then been buying the fur to use in making the famous bearskin hats.
Animal welfare groups criticised the army for demanding that the fur for Buckingham Palace guardsmen is culled in springtime when it is at its thickest. This is also the time for breeding and thousands of baby bears are left orphaned after their mother's are shot by tourist hunters. What the hunters leave behind is sold on to the British Army. A spokeswoman for Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) said: "It is inexcusable. Tradition has never been a means of justifying cruelty. "The Ministry of Defence has been dragging its feet for years and this organisation which has so much money at its disposal, and can launch a missile even, can't find a replacement material for fur. These hats are not bullet-proof. They are purely ornamental."
She added: "Fur farming has been banned in the UK because people do not like it. Yet tax payers money is being used to buy these hats even though the public doesn't agree with them. "There is no kind way of skinning an animal whether it is a fox or bear. The British Army could save hundreds of bears every year." A spokesman for Tony's Cub Rescue Centre which tries to save baby bears left orphaned in British Columbia said many of the bears whose pelts are sold on die slow deaths after being inexpertly shot by tourists. He said: "We only save a very small percentage." It was also revealed that bears are enticed with meat, doughnuts and even honey in order to make them easier for paying hunters to shoot. The spokesman added: "It is like shooting fish in a barrel."
The British Army has spent 321,000 pounds in the last five years on 431 bearskin "caps" at the cost of the tax payer. Last night a spokesman for the MoD said the bear fur trade was a matter for the Canadian government. The MoD has been researching the use of fake fur for bearskin hats for nearly 20 years but has not as yet found one it considers suitable.
The standard bearskin of the British Foot Guards is 18 inches tall, weighs one and a half pounds and is made from the fur of the Canadian black bear. Some which are still in use are over 100 years old. The fur of an adult black bear is used to make one complete cap.
Source
BRITISH LEFTISTS WINK AT THIRD-WORLD CORRUPTION
Even though corruption is undoubtedly the biggest single factor in keeping the third world poor
Beitain last night threw down a direct challenge to Paul Wolfowitz’s leadership of the World Bank as the Government announced that it was withholding a 50 million pound payment in protest at the conditions attached to aid for poorer countries. The decision by Hilary Benn, the International Development Secretary, reflects growing concern over Mr Wolfowitz’s aggressive anti-corruption campaign, which has led to the suspension of mutlimillion- dollar loans and contracts to countries such as Chad, India, Argentina, Congo, Kenya, Ethiopia and Bangladesh.
The unexpectedly robust public attack by Mr Benn, who is close to Gordon Brown, will sound alarm bells within the US Administration about relations with Britain when Tony Blair departs No. 10.
Mr Wolfowitz, who took over as President at the World Bank 15 months ago, is best known as one of the chief architects of the Iraq war during his four years as the deputy US Defence Secretary. Critics, who include a clutch of European governments and many senior members of the bank’s staff, claim that the anti-corruption campaign threatens to undermine the bank’s primary purpose of eliminating global poverty by being too ideological, arbitrary and high-handed. “In the same way that the neocons tried to impose democracy on Iraq,” said a source at the bank. “They are trying to impose their own economic and political model on Africa — without recognising the reality of the situation on the ground.”
Mr Benn said that by continuing to foist unwanted policies on developing economies, Mr Wolfowitz had reneged on his commitments to reform the conditions attached to aid programmes. Mr Benn criticised the pressure the World Bank put on poorer countries to pursue privatisations and trade liberalisation. Although he said there was nothing wrong with setting some conditions, “when it comes to economic policy choices I don’t think it’s right that we should be telling other countries what to do”. Mr Benn renewed his attack on Mr Wolfowitz last night, claiming that the World Bank had an excessively narrow focus on fighting corruption. “Our job, and the job of [the bank], is to help eliminate poverty. This means that we should not walk away from our responsibilities to poor people.”
Mr Wolfowitz, who now faces an uncomfortable press conference when he arrives for the bank’s annual meeting in Singapore today, has said that lending has risen slightly under his leadership to $23 billion. He has also said that he does not want to see an estimated 10 to 25 per cent of the money being lost to corruption. Mr Wolfowitz’s allies claim he is being unfairly caricatured by liberals at the bank, who greeted his arrival with satirical claims that he brought along an old “map of Iraq (with hundreds of red x’s denoting ‘WMDs,’ hundreds of black x’s denoting ‘Oil Well$,’ and one blue x denoting ‘decent sushi restaurant’”.
Danny Leipziger, the World Bank’s vice-president for poverty reduction and economic management, said yesterday that Mr Benn’s comments were the first he had heard of Britain’s protest. However, the Government last year registered strong objections against the World Bank’s suspension of $800 million in loans for maternal and children’s health in India because of corruption concerns. The decision, complained Britain, had been taken without proper consultation. Britain and other European countries pressed Mr Wolfowitz in April to put greater emphasis on fighting corruption by building institutions in the developing world rather than simply suspending loans.
Although Mr Brown has worked well with Mr Wolfowitz in the past, some at World Bank suspect he is behind Mr Benn’s assault. They claim that the attack helps put some distance between Mr Brown and the White House, and that it chimes with his ideological bent. “We have seen in the debate about UK public services,” a source close to Mr Wolfowitz said, “that Brown is a ‘spend first, reform later, sort of guy’.” Britain’s suspended 50million pound payment is for a special bank fund and will not affect aid programmes for which Britain is still expected to contribute 500 million next year.
More here
The British Army was last night condemned for fuelling a fur trade which leaves baby bears orphaned. Animal rights groups criticised officials for buying the left over skin of black bears from tourist-hunters in Canada. In recent years thousands of American hunters have crossed the border to shoot bears for pleasure. The Army has then been buying the fur to use in making the famous bearskin hats.
Animal welfare groups criticised the army for demanding that the fur for Buckingham Palace guardsmen is culled in springtime when it is at its thickest. This is also the time for breeding and thousands of baby bears are left orphaned after their mother's are shot by tourist hunters. What the hunters leave behind is sold on to the British Army. A spokeswoman for Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) said: "It is inexcusable. Tradition has never been a means of justifying cruelty. "The Ministry of Defence has been dragging its feet for years and this organisation which has so much money at its disposal, and can launch a missile even, can't find a replacement material for fur. These hats are not bullet-proof. They are purely ornamental."
She added: "Fur farming has been banned in the UK because people do not like it. Yet tax payers money is being used to buy these hats even though the public doesn't agree with them. "There is no kind way of skinning an animal whether it is a fox or bear. The British Army could save hundreds of bears every year." A spokesman for Tony's Cub Rescue Centre which tries to save baby bears left orphaned in British Columbia said many of the bears whose pelts are sold on die slow deaths after being inexpertly shot by tourists. He said: "We only save a very small percentage." It was also revealed that bears are enticed with meat, doughnuts and even honey in order to make them easier for paying hunters to shoot. The spokesman added: "It is like shooting fish in a barrel."
The British Army has spent 321,000 pounds in the last five years on 431 bearskin "caps" at the cost of the tax payer. Last night a spokesman for the MoD said the bear fur trade was a matter for the Canadian government. The MoD has been researching the use of fake fur for bearskin hats for nearly 20 years but has not as yet found one it considers suitable.
The standard bearskin of the British Foot Guards is 18 inches tall, weighs one and a half pounds and is made from the fur of the Canadian black bear. Some which are still in use are over 100 years old. The fur of an adult black bear is used to make one complete cap.
Source
BRITISH LEFTISTS WINK AT THIRD-WORLD CORRUPTION
Even though corruption is undoubtedly the biggest single factor in keeping the third world poor
Beitain last night threw down a direct challenge to Paul Wolfowitz’s leadership of the World Bank as the Government announced that it was withholding a 50 million pound payment in protest at the conditions attached to aid for poorer countries. The decision by Hilary Benn, the International Development Secretary, reflects growing concern over Mr Wolfowitz’s aggressive anti-corruption campaign, which has led to the suspension of mutlimillion- dollar loans and contracts to countries such as Chad, India, Argentina, Congo, Kenya, Ethiopia and Bangladesh.
The unexpectedly robust public attack by Mr Benn, who is close to Gordon Brown, will sound alarm bells within the US Administration about relations with Britain when Tony Blair departs No. 10.
Mr Wolfowitz, who took over as President at the World Bank 15 months ago, is best known as one of the chief architects of the Iraq war during his four years as the deputy US Defence Secretary. Critics, who include a clutch of European governments and many senior members of the bank’s staff, claim that the anti-corruption campaign threatens to undermine the bank’s primary purpose of eliminating global poverty by being too ideological, arbitrary and high-handed. “In the same way that the neocons tried to impose democracy on Iraq,” said a source at the bank. “They are trying to impose their own economic and political model on Africa — without recognising the reality of the situation on the ground.”
Mr Benn said that by continuing to foist unwanted policies on developing economies, Mr Wolfowitz had reneged on his commitments to reform the conditions attached to aid programmes. Mr Benn criticised the pressure the World Bank put on poorer countries to pursue privatisations and trade liberalisation. Although he said there was nothing wrong with setting some conditions, “when it comes to economic policy choices I don’t think it’s right that we should be telling other countries what to do”. Mr Benn renewed his attack on Mr Wolfowitz last night, claiming that the World Bank had an excessively narrow focus on fighting corruption. “Our job, and the job of [the bank], is to help eliminate poverty. This means that we should not walk away from our responsibilities to poor people.”
Mr Wolfowitz, who now faces an uncomfortable press conference when he arrives for the bank’s annual meeting in Singapore today, has said that lending has risen slightly under his leadership to $23 billion. He has also said that he does not want to see an estimated 10 to 25 per cent of the money being lost to corruption. Mr Wolfowitz’s allies claim he is being unfairly caricatured by liberals at the bank, who greeted his arrival with satirical claims that he brought along an old “map of Iraq (with hundreds of red x’s denoting ‘WMDs,’ hundreds of black x’s denoting ‘Oil Well$,’ and one blue x denoting ‘decent sushi restaurant’”.
Danny Leipziger, the World Bank’s vice-president for poverty reduction and economic management, said yesterday that Mr Benn’s comments were the first he had heard of Britain’s protest. However, the Government last year registered strong objections against the World Bank’s suspension of $800 million in loans for maternal and children’s health in India because of corruption concerns. The decision, complained Britain, had been taken without proper consultation. Britain and other European countries pressed Mr Wolfowitz in April to put greater emphasis on fighting corruption by building institutions in the developing world rather than simply suspending loans.
Although Mr Brown has worked well with Mr Wolfowitz in the past, some at World Bank suspect he is behind Mr Benn’s assault. They claim that the attack helps put some distance between Mr Brown and the White House, and that it chimes with his ideological bent. “We have seen in the debate about UK public services,” a source close to Mr Wolfowitz said, “that Brown is a ‘spend first, reform later, sort of guy’.” Britain’s suspended 50million pound payment is for a special bank fund and will not affect aid programmes for which Britain is still expected to contribute 500 million next year.
More here
The scribble above is the new logo of the British Conservative party. How pathetic can you get? Background here. That the British Tories are now "green" seems to be the only message in it.
Rare wisdom from a centre-Left government: "The [British] Government has pledged to use legislation to block the imposition of heavy-handed Wall Street-style regulation on the City if the London Stock Exchange is taken over by a foreign buyer. Users of the London market welcomed the promise, by Ed Balls, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, that the Financial Services Authority would be given the statutory right to veto rule changes proposed by recognised exchanges, including the LSE, if these were "disproportionate" in their impact on London. Mr Balls said in Hong Kong: "The Government's interest in this area is specific and clear: to safeguard the light touch and proportionate regulatory regime that has made London a magnet for international business." By contrast, the imposition on Wall Street of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act in response to accounting scandals such as Enron is seen as making it more difficult for New York to attract new issues. Nasdaq, the New York market, has 25.3 per cent of the LSE"
Friday, September 15, 2006
ANOTHER BRITISH BACKDOWN
Education Secretary Alan Johnson has signalled an embarrassing U-turn over the downgrading of language learning in secondary schools. He admitted the Government was reconsidering its decision to allow teenagers to opt out of studying foreign languages from the age of 14. The revelation follows a dramatic decline in the numbers choosing to take French and German after ministers made languages optional at GCSE two years ago. Entrants for GCSE French have slumped 26 per cent from 318,095 in 2004 while German has also plummeted 26 per cent, with entries falling below the 100,000 mark this summer.
Youngsters have instead flocked to subjects considered in some quarters to be less academically rigorous such as media studies and physical education. Head teachers' leaders said modern foreign languages were now in "freefall" and warned that British teenagers would be disadvantaged on the job market. The National Union of Teachers described the declining popularity of languages as a "complete disaster".
Mr Johnson has already expressed "disappointment" at the decline in exam entries for languages, although he claimed it was not "wholly unexpected". But yesterday, in an unscripted question-and-answer session after a keynote speech to the Social Market Foundation, he admitted the decision to allow 14-year-olds to drop languages was under review. Mr Johnson said: "We are wondering whether we should have done that now. We are having another rethink about that." He went on to point out that the Government has placed on obligation on primary schools to allow all children aged seven and above to learn a language by 2010. However he admitted the initiative will not translate into increased GCSE entries for many years to come.
Late year ministers took desperate damage limitation measures following an outcry over the decision to make languages non-compulsory for 14-year-olds. They said that schools from this term would be expected to ensure at least half of pupils study a language until they are 16. But now Mr Johnson is signalling a full-scale reversal of the decision to downgrade language study, and has paved the way for the study of at least one foreign language to be compulsory up to GCSEs. It is a remarkable turnaround, for as recently as last month he said he believed 14-year-olds should not be "forced" to learn languages.
Tory schools spokesman Nick Gibb said: "It was a mistake to end the compulsion to study a modern foreign language to the age of 16 in the state sector. "In this globalised world, the ability to communicate with emerging economies such as China and India will be increasingly important, which is why the ability to learn a modern foreign language is a vitally important skill that we need to be teaching in our schools."
In a wide-ranging speech on the theme of tackling poverty, Mr Johnson also admitted a flagship 1 billion pound scheme to raise standards in inner-city schools was failing to help many of the neediest pupils. He said Department for Education research suggested nearly half of youngsters on free school meals due to low family income were "missed out" of the Excellence in Cities scheme. The poorest children also continued to "progress more slowly."
He also attacked independent schools which "breed elitism" and repeated calls for them to share facilities and teaching expertise with state schools and help set up new trust schools and academies. In an echo of Chancellor Gordon Brown's controversial attack six years ago on the "old school tie", he added: "As we know, the 'old boys network' still infiltrates some of Britain's oldest institutions." [Including the Labour government]
Source
Education Secretary Alan Johnson has signalled an embarrassing U-turn over the downgrading of language learning in secondary schools. He admitted the Government was reconsidering its decision to allow teenagers to opt out of studying foreign languages from the age of 14. The revelation follows a dramatic decline in the numbers choosing to take French and German after ministers made languages optional at GCSE two years ago. Entrants for GCSE French have slumped 26 per cent from 318,095 in 2004 while German has also plummeted 26 per cent, with entries falling below the 100,000 mark this summer.
Youngsters have instead flocked to subjects considered in some quarters to be less academically rigorous such as media studies and physical education. Head teachers' leaders said modern foreign languages were now in "freefall" and warned that British teenagers would be disadvantaged on the job market. The National Union of Teachers described the declining popularity of languages as a "complete disaster".
Mr Johnson has already expressed "disappointment" at the decline in exam entries for languages, although he claimed it was not "wholly unexpected". But yesterday, in an unscripted question-and-answer session after a keynote speech to the Social Market Foundation, he admitted the decision to allow 14-year-olds to drop languages was under review. Mr Johnson said: "We are wondering whether we should have done that now. We are having another rethink about that." He went on to point out that the Government has placed on obligation on primary schools to allow all children aged seven and above to learn a language by 2010. However he admitted the initiative will not translate into increased GCSE entries for many years to come.
Late year ministers took desperate damage limitation measures following an outcry over the decision to make languages non-compulsory for 14-year-olds. They said that schools from this term would be expected to ensure at least half of pupils study a language until they are 16. But now Mr Johnson is signalling a full-scale reversal of the decision to downgrade language study, and has paved the way for the study of at least one foreign language to be compulsory up to GCSEs. It is a remarkable turnaround, for as recently as last month he said he believed 14-year-olds should not be "forced" to learn languages.
Tory schools spokesman Nick Gibb said: "It was a mistake to end the compulsion to study a modern foreign language to the age of 16 in the state sector. "In this globalised world, the ability to communicate with emerging economies such as China and India will be increasingly important, which is why the ability to learn a modern foreign language is a vitally important skill that we need to be teaching in our schools."
In a wide-ranging speech on the theme of tackling poverty, Mr Johnson also admitted a flagship 1 billion pound scheme to raise standards in inner-city schools was failing to help many of the neediest pupils. He said Department for Education research suggested nearly half of youngsters on free school meals due to low family income were "missed out" of the Excellence in Cities scheme. The poorest children also continued to "progress more slowly."
He also attacked independent schools which "breed elitism" and repeated calls for them to share facilities and teaching expertise with state schools and help set up new trust schools and academies. In an echo of Chancellor Gordon Brown's controversial attack six years ago on the "old school tie", he added: "As we know, the 'old boys network' still infiltrates some of Britain's oldest institutions." [Including the Labour government]
Source
NATIONAL HEALTH GP SURGERIES SUBSTANDARD TOO
One in seven GP surgeries is "not fit for purpose", a survey has suggested. The problem is getting worse and putting key policies such as moving care into the community in jeopardy, the GP magazine, Pulse, said. Some 1,092 premises out of more than 7,000 across the UK were below minimum standards, its survey found.
The government said premises were getting better as 1 billion pounds was being invested in upgrading GP surgeries and health centres. Three out of five of the 175 primary care organisations which oversee GP practices said at least one of their GP premises was inadequate.
London was by far the worst affected area in the UK, with 522 premises deemed unfit by the capital's 31 primary care trusts. In some areas, such as Bromley, Lewisham and Havering, almost all premises were not fit for purpose. In England, Birmingham, Bristol and Bradford were also badly affected and in Scotland, Grampian and Ayrshire and Arran were the worst hit.
The results are nearly double official figures which show 600 premises are unfit. Pulse said if its figures were extrapolated to all primary care organisations in the UK, the real total would be nearer 1,500 of 10,300 GP premises. The magazine said doctors had said they could raise the capital required to build new premises, but NHS bodies could not afford the rent on them.
Jo Haynes, editor of Pulse, said: "GPs want to take on more work from hospitals and to provide more services for patients from their surgeries. "But they are being prevented from doing so because the government refuses to invest the comparatively small amount of money to enable primary care organisations to fund new premises."
Dr Peter Holden, of the British Medical Association's GPs' committee, said the results were further evidence that the Department of Health was "spending peanuts on premises". "This means GPs cannot take on the broader role that is possible in primary care, delivering services at a fraction of the cost of secondary care. "It's complete short-termism, as usual."
Health Minister Lord Warner said premises were getting better as 1 billion pounds was being invested in GP surgeries and health centres under the Lift programme, a public-private partnership. He also said the government was helping the NHS open 125 new health centres - a rate of expansion that "rivals Tesco". He added: "We will go on investing in better premises for primary care and community services, but in ways that benefit patients."
Source
One in seven GP surgeries is "not fit for purpose", a survey has suggested. The problem is getting worse and putting key policies such as moving care into the community in jeopardy, the GP magazine, Pulse, said. Some 1,092 premises out of more than 7,000 across the UK were below minimum standards, its survey found.
The government said premises were getting better as 1 billion pounds was being invested in upgrading GP surgeries and health centres. Three out of five of the 175 primary care organisations which oversee GP practices said at least one of their GP premises was inadequate.
London was by far the worst affected area in the UK, with 522 premises deemed unfit by the capital's 31 primary care trusts. In some areas, such as Bromley, Lewisham and Havering, almost all premises were not fit for purpose. In England, Birmingham, Bristol and Bradford were also badly affected and in Scotland, Grampian and Ayrshire and Arran were the worst hit.
The results are nearly double official figures which show 600 premises are unfit. Pulse said if its figures were extrapolated to all primary care organisations in the UK, the real total would be nearer 1,500 of 10,300 GP premises. The magazine said doctors had said they could raise the capital required to build new premises, but NHS bodies could not afford the rent on them.
Jo Haynes, editor of Pulse, said: "GPs want to take on more work from hospitals and to provide more services for patients from their surgeries. "But they are being prevented from doing so because the government refuses to invest the comparatively small amount of money to enable primary care organisations to fund new premises."
Dr Peter Holden, of the British Medical Association's GPs' committee, said the results were further evidence that the Department of Health was "spending peanuts on premises". "This means GPs cannot take on the broader role that is possible in primary care, delivering services at a fraction of the cost of secondary care. "It's complete short-termism, as usual."
Health Minister Lord Warner said premises were getting better as 1 billion pounds was being invested in GP surgeries and health centres under the Lift programme, a public-private partnership. He also said the government was helping the NHS open 125 new health centres - a rate of expansion that "rivals Tesco". He added: "We will go on investing in better premises for primary care and community services, but in ways that benefit patients."
Source
Work is good for your health: "Working 'makes us happy', an expert has claimed. He found being unemployed could be as dangerous as smoking 400 cigarettes a day. Unemployed young adult males are 40 times more likely to commit suicide than their working counterparts and are also more likely to suffer depression, illness or even die, it was claimed. Statistically, the health risks of being out of work for six months or more are equivalent to smoking 20 packet of cigarettes a day, said a professor at Cardiff University. Prof Mansel Aylward advised us to wander to work with a spring in our step and a smile on our face, happy to avoid the depression of unemployment. He said doctors should be concerned about getting people back to work rather than writing sicknotes because being out of work could be more risky that working on an oil platform or as a safari guide. His analysis of figures from the Office of National Statistics show the depressed unemployed risk serious illness and even death, with young unemployed men 40 times more likely to commit suicide than their working peers. But Professor Aylward, Director of Cardiff University's Centre for Psychosocial and Disability research, also said work can only make us so happy because we each have a threshold that limits how happy we can be."
INCORRECT DOG ADVERTISEMENT
Breakfast food company Kellogg's has come under fire from animal lovers furious about a television advert showing a man riding a dog like a horse. Nearly 100 complaints have been made against the new Crunchy Nut Cornflakes advert, which shows a very small man finishing work and riding home on the back of an Irish Wolfhound. Dog lovers say the behaviour in the scene is cruel and could be copied by children.
However, no action is to be taken by the Advertising Standards Authority, which has dismissed the complaints. It says viewers would be able to spot that the scenes were computer-generated.
In the advert, the man is seen riding the dog home from work. Text at the bottom of the screen reads: "Don't try this with your dog at home." After the man arrives home, milk is poured on to a bowl of the cereal by what appears to be the dog's paw. The man is then seen sitting at his kitchen table eating it.
A spokesman for Kellogg's said the idea of their advertising campaign was to depict methods of transport that are so unfeasible they defied reality. Kellogg's said a vet was present at the shoot to ensure the well-being of the animal. It added that no one actually rode the dog.
The Advertising Standards Authority cleared the advert, providing it was shown away from programmes that children could watch.
Source
Breakfast food company Kellogg's has come under fire from animal lovers furious about a television advert showing a man riding a dog like a horse. Nearly 100 complaints have been made against the new Crunchy Nut Cornflakes advert, which shows a very small man finishing work and riding home on the back of an Irish Wolfhound. Dog lovers say the behaviour in the scene is cruel and could be copied by children.
However, no action is to be taken by the Advertising Standards Authority, which has dismissed the complaints. It says viewers would be able to spot that the scenes were computer-generated.
In the advert, the man is seen riding the dog home from work. Text at the bottom of the screen reads: "Don't try this with your dog at home." After the man arrives home, milk is poured on to a bowl of the cereal by what appears to be the dog's paw. The man is then seen sitting at his kitchen table eating it.
A spokesman for Kellogg's said the idea of their advertising campaign was to depict methods of transport that are so unfeasible they defied reality. Kellogg's said a vet was present at the shoot to ensure the well-being of the animal. It added that no one actually rode the dog.
The Advertising Standards Authority cleared the advert, providing it was shown away from programmes that children could watch.
Source
Thursday, September 14, 2006
BRITISH UNIONS ATTACK LIMITED NHS PRIVATIZATION
Hospitals and GPs' surgeries could be hit by widespread disruption in the first national strike in the NHS for 18 years after workers who buy and distribute vital supplies voted to walk out. The proposed strike by workers in NHS Logistics could delay operations and treatment if hospitals run out of key supplies such as syringes, hand-cleansing gel, latex gloves, disposable bedpans and hand towels, according to Unison, the public service union. NHS Logistics handles 51,000 products, including vaccines, but not general drugs, and delivers supplies to hospitals.
The action will hit hospitals and GPs' surgeries across England in the first national action since midwives went on strike. The strike - which was backed by three to one in the ballot - is in protest at the Government's plans to outsource the logistics work to DHL, the parcels group, in one of the biggest privatisations of health service work. NHS Logistics, which has 1,400 employees, serves 600 hospitals in England and nearly 9,000 GPs' surgeries. Dave Prentis, the general secretary of Unison, said: "These are not troublemakers, not hardliners, but workers who care deeply about the NHS. "NHS Logistics is an award-winning service and it makes no sense to sell it off."
Unison will decide on Friday whether it will mount one lengthy strike or a series of one-day strikes. Its action could come before the Labour Party conference in two weeks' time. Nigel Edwards, the director of policy at the NHS Confederation, which represents more than 90 per cent of NHS organisations, said: "Many hospitals do not hold large volumes of the medical supplies provided by NHS Logistics. Therefore those trusts that use NHS Logistics - which is not all of them - will now be looking at contingency arrangements to ensure they have adequate medical supplies. "We hope that NHS Logistics will be working with individual trusts to make sure that contingency arrangements can be put in place so that patient care is not adversely affected. We would also hope that strike action does not place patient care in jeopardy."
Unison is taking the Government to court to seek a judicial review of the way the contract was awarded after its value was suddenly changed from 700 million pounds to 1.6 billion. A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "The NHS uses about 500,000 different products such as catering supplies, office equipment and medical supplies, but only around 51,000 of these products are provided by NHS Logistics. The majority of hospitals have their own local supply and delivery arrangements."
The announcement of the strike ballot came as health unions and medical associations began a joint campaign to fight the Government's reforms and further involvement of the private sector in the NHS. Stephen Campion, the general secretary of the Association of Hospital Consultants and Specialists, told a meeting of campaign leaders that the Government's relationships with the health unions was "one of the most divisive and fragmented relationships since those bad old days of the 1980s". Mr Prentis told the TUC's annual conference that despite Labour's large investment in the NHS since it came to power, this year it was "in crisis, threatened as never before".
More here
Hospitals and GPs' surgeries could be hit by widespread disruption in the first national strike in the NHS for 18 years after workers who buy and distribute vital supplies voted to walk out. The proposed strike by workers in NHS Logistics could delay operations and treatment if hospitals run out of key supplies such as syringes, hand-cleansing gel, latex gloves, disposable bedpans and hand towels, according to Unison, the public service union. NHS Logistics handles 51,000 products, including vaccines, but not general drugs, and delivers supplies to hospitals.
The action will hit hospitals and GPs' surgeries across England in the first national action since midwives went on strike. The strike - which was backed by three to one in the ballot - is in protest at the Government's plans to outsource the logistics work to DHL, the parcels group, in one of the biggest privatisations of health service work. NHS Logistics, which has 1,400 employees, serves 600 hospitals in England and nearly 9,000 GPs' surgeries. Dave Prentis, the general secretary of Unison, said: "These are not troublemakers, not hardliners, but workers who care deeply about the NHS. "NHS Logistics is an award-winning service and it makes no sense to sell it off."
Unison will decide on Friday whether it will mount one lengthy strike or a series of one-day strikes. Its action could come before the Labour Party conference in two weeks' time. Nigel Edwards, the director of policy at the NHS Confederation, which represents more than 90 per cent of NHS organisations, said: "Many hospitals do not hold large volumes of the medical supplies provided by NHS Logistics. Therefore those trusts that use NHS Logistics - which is not all of them - will now be looking at contingency arrangements to ensure they have adequate medical supplies. "We hope that NHS Logistics will be working with individual trusts to make sure that contingency arrangements can be put in place so that patient care is not adversely affected. We would also hope that strike action does not place patient care in jeopardy."
Unison is taking the Government to court to seek a judicial review of the way the contract was awarded after its value was suddenly changed from 700 million pounds to 1.6 billion. A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "The NHS uses about 500,000 different products such as catering supplies, office equipment and medical supplies, but only around 51,000 of these products are provided by NHS Logistics. The majority of hospitals have their own local supply and delivery arrangements."
The announcement of the strike ballot came as health unions and medical associations began a joint campaign to fight the Government's reforms and further involvement of the private sector in the NHS. Stephen Campion, the general secretary of the Association of Hospital Consultants and Specialists, told a meeting of campaign leaders that the Government's relationships with the health unions was "one of the most divisive and fragmented relationships since those bad old days of the 1980s". Mr Prentis told the TUC's annual conference that despite Labour's large investment in the NHS since it came to power, this year it was "in crisis, threatened as never before".
More here
Greenpeace goofs over SUVs
You would expect subscribers to a website called TreeHugger.com to be sympathetic to, even fully supportive of, Greenpeace, wouldn't you? Yet recently some of the site's contributors have expressed anger with Greenpeace over its new anti-4x4 advert. `What a terrible ad. Cruelty gets you nowhere', said Nathan. Someone called Dug added: `That childish ad made me regret donating money to Greenpeace.' What so upset Nathan, Dug and others about Greenpeace's latest media intervention?
The `gas guzzler' ad was launched to coincide with last month's International Motor Show in London. It is set in an office in London's city centre. A seemingly affable bloke enters the office building, but straight away we know that something is amiss. The receptionists sneer at him. His workmates seem reluctant to enter into friendly banter. Most strikingly, a colleague spits into his coffee (seriously - a long horrible spit, at that) and then slams the mug on his table. He sits alone at lunch, shunned by those around him, who prefer to squeeze on to already overcrowded tables rather than sit with this guy. And as he walks into the lift to leave work, we see that someone has stuck a note on his back saying `PRICK'.
What could he have done to deserve such treatment? As he enters the bowels of the car park, you expect some terrible horror to be revealed: perhaps he operates a secret sweatshop of children in the basement of the building, or underground meetings of the BNP. In fact, his only sin - and the reason he is treated as a pariah by his workmates - is that he drives a 4x4.
See the ad for yourself here. Have you ever seen such a petty-minded, dimwitted, teenage-angsty little film? This is bitching dressed up as a serious debate. It is also dripping, you will note, with a kind of loathing for the `wrong' sort of aspirational lifestyle. A Greenpeace press release to accompany the ad says: `The advert satirises the aspirational images and glossy marketing used by motor manufacturers to encourage car drivers to purchase an urban 4x4. In the film, a city employee encounters disdain from his fellow employees, but only at the end of the film does the viewer learn why - he owns a city gas guzzler. The ad ends with the line "What does your car say about you.?"' (Yet for all its anti-big-advertising prejudices, Greenpeace is not above learning a few tricks from aspirational lifestyle marketing. As the press release says: `Greenpeace took advice from advertising industry insiders before producing the film.' So the ad is somewhat hypocritical, as well as childish.)
Greenpeace has been campaigning against 4x4s for years, using a combination of tacky media stunts and `direct action' to demonise people who dare to drive such vehicles. Last year Greenpeace activists stormed the Range Rover assembly line in Solihull, forcing it to shut down for a day. Its volunteers also put cardboard clamps on the wheels of parked 4x4s, and stick fake tax discs on their windscreens calling for extra road tax for `gas-guzzling vehicles'. One car targeted by Greenpeace belonged to British actress Thandie Newton, star, ironically, of the Hollywood blockbuster film Crash. Now Newton has reportedly seen the error of her ways: she sold her BMW 4x4 and has replaced it with a hybrid car.
The `spit on the city boy' ad is the latest stage in Greenpeace's anti-4x4 campaigning. This can be seen as a new kind of `moralvert': adverts that communicate a deeply moralistic message but which don't even have the decency to label themselves `public information broadcasts' or `party political messages'. So there are more and more adverts in public loos telling us we're probably suffering from some STD, ads on TV warning women not to get unlicensed cabs in case they get raped, adverts about how much fruit and salt we should eat (a lot of fruit, not very much salt).
Greenpeace and others slate big advertisers for trying to manipulate consumers. Yet its and others' moralverts are even worse. They don't want to seduce us or make us laugh or have some fun with us; they just want to wag their fingers at our bad behaviour and our poor misguided vulnerability. They are far more morally manipulative than anything BMW or Rover could come up with.
It seems that Greenpeace is somewhat red-faced about the bad reaction to its ad - which might explain why you probably haven't yet seen it on TV or in a cinema. For all the money spent on making the ad, there is now little mention of it on the main Greenpeace website, and on other green-leaning websites, and the video-sharing site YouTube.com, there is much vocal criticism of Greenpeace. On YouTube, one user says: `They hate a man for the car he drives? That shows how loving they are as fellow humans.' Greenpeace, it seems, has been hoist with its own green petard. I should think so, too.
Source
You would expect subscribers to a website called TreeHugger.com to be sympathetic to, even fully supportive of, Greenpeace, wouldn't you? Yet recently some of the site's contributors have expressed anger with Greenpeace over its new anti-4x4 advert. `What a terrible ad. Cruelty gets you nowhere', said Nathan. Someone called Dug added: `That childish ad made me regret donating money to Greenpeace.' What so upset Nathan, Dug and others about Greenpeace's latest media intervention?
The `gas guzzler' ad was launched to coincide with last month's International Motor Show in London. It is set in an office in London's city centre. A seemingly affable bloke enters the office building, but straight away we know that something is amiss. The receptionists sneer at him. His workmates seem reluctant to enter into friendly banter. Most strikingly, a colleague spits into his coffee (seriously - a long horrible spit, at that) and then slams the mug on his table. He sits alone at lunch, shunned by those around him, who prefer to squeeze on to already overcrowded tables rather than sit with this guy. And as he walks into the lift to leave work, we see that someone has stuck a note on his back saying `PRICK'.
What could he have done to deserve such treatment? As he enters the bowels of the car park, you expect some terrible horror to be revealed: perhaps he operates a secret sweatshop of children in the basement of the building, or underground meetings of the BNP. In fact, his only sin - and the reason he is treated as a pariah by his workmates - is that he drives a 4x4.
See the ad for yourself here. Have you ever seen such a petty-minded, dimwitted, teenage-angsty little film? This is bitching dressed up as a serious debate. It is also dripping, you will note, with a kind of loathing for the `wrong' sort of aspirational lifestyle. A Greenpeace press release to accompany the ad says: `The advert satirises the aspirational images and glossy marketing used by motor manufacturers to encourage car drivers to purchase an urban 4x4. In the film, a city employee encounters disdain from his fellow employees, but only at the end of the film does the viewer learn why - he owns a city gas guzzler. The ad ends with the line "What does your car say about you.?"' (Yet for all its anti-big-advertising prejudices, Greenpeace is not above learning a few tricks from aspirational lifestyle marketing. As the press release says: `Greenpeace took advice from advertising industry insiders before producing the film.' So the ad is somewhat hypocritical, as well as childish.)
Greenpeace has been campaigning against 4x4s for years, using a combination of tacky media stunts and `direct action' to demonise people who dare to drive such vehicles. Last year Greenpeace activists stormed the Range Rover assembly line in Solihull, forcing it to shut down for a day. Its volunteers also put cardboard clamps on the wheels of parked 4x4s, and stick fake tax discs on their windscreens calling for extra road tax for `gas-guzzling vehicles'. One car targeted by Greenpeace belonged to British actress Thandie Newton, star, ironically, of the Hollywood blockbuster film Crash. Now Newton has reportedly seen the error of her ways: she sold her BMW 4x4 and has replaced it with a hybrid car.
The `spit on the city boy' ad is the latest stage in Greenpeace's anti-4x4 campaigning. This can be seen as a new kind of `moralvert': adverts that communicate a deeply moralistic message but which don't even have the decency to label themselves `public information broadcasts' or `party political messages'. So there are more and more adverts in public loos telling us we're probably suffering from some STD, ads on TV warning women not to get unlicensed cabs in case they get raped, adverts about how much fruit and salt we should eat (a lot of fruit, not very much salt).
Greenpeace and others slate big advertisers for trying to manipulate consumers. Yet its and others' moralverts are even worse. They don't want to seduce us or make us laugh or have some fun with us; they just want to wag their fingers at our bad behaviour and our poor misguided vulnerability. They are far more morally manipulative than anything BMW or Rover could come up with.
It seems that Greenpeace is somewhat red-faced about the bad reaction to its ad - which might explain why you probably haven't yet seen it on TV or in a cinema. For all the money spent on making the ad, there is now little mention of it on the main Greenpeace website, and on other green-leaning websites, and the video-sharing site YouTube.com, there is much vocal criticism of Greenpeace. On YouTube, one user says: `They hate a man for the car he drives? That shows how loving they are as fellow humans.' Greenpeace, it seems, has been hoist with its own green petard. I should think so, too.
Source
The Wicked BBC
Many readers may by now have heard of a private video produced by BBC staff that has attracted a lot of flak:
I think it is rather refreshing to see that not all BBC staff members accept the BBC's usual pro-Muslim stance.
You can watch the actual video via the link given above.
Many readers may by now have heard of a private video produced by BBC staff that has attracted a lot of flak:
"The BBC has come under fire for allowing its senior journalists to make a spoof video which makes fun of war in the Middle East...
it features BBC staff singing and dancing in front of images of missiles being fired and tanks rolling across the Arabian desert.
It also contains crass Arab stereotypes and makes joking reference to Osama Bin Laden, the Palestinian conflict.
The video has been condemned by an Arab rights group as 'insenstive and puerile', as well as being potentially offensive to Muslims.
Source
I think it is rather refreshing to see that not all BBC staff members accept the BBC's usual pro-Muslim stance.
You can watch the actual video via the link given above.
THE CRIME-LOVING BRITISH POLICE AGAIN
The victim is always wrong: Young thugs terrorised this woman for two years, trampling her garden and kicking footballs against her house. She shouted at them to leave her alone. And who do you think the police charged? Her.. for swearing
A mother of two has been fined for swearing at yobs who made her life a misery. For more than two years a group of about 15 teenage thugs have hounded Donna Appleyard, 32, subjecting her to relentless abuse, threats and vandalism. But when she finally snapped over the constant intimidation and swore at one of the bullies, she was arrested and fined. And if she doesn't pay up, Donna could face a spell in prison.
She said yesterday: "I am absolutely furious that I have been made out to be the criminal when all I have ever wanted to do is live in peace and quiet." Almost every day since 2004 Donna and her neighbours in Knottingley, West Yorks, have had to endure the gang jumping fences, trampling gardens, shouting, swearing, kicking footballs against windows and hanging around their street into the night. The three-bed semi she shares with partner Colin Lamb, 34, and her kids James, 14, and Holly, 12, was such a relentless target that on March 30 she lost her temper and swore at one tormentor.
And two weeks later police called at her home saying a 13-year-old had made a complaint. She was handed an 80 pound fixed penalty notice but refused to pay and was taken to court last month - only for magistrates to up the sum to 120 pounds which Donna must now pay or face a jail term. She said: "I was at the end of my tether and admit I swore at one of them. But that's nothing compared to what my neighbours and I have suffered."
Donna claims she made countless complaints to police about the gang but nothing was done. She said: "Officers told me I'd scared children. Well, what do they think has been happening to us for the past year? I am livid. "These kids have made me, my family and my neighbours feel like prisoners in our own homes. "They are intimidating and aggressive and make our lives hell. All I did was swear at them and I am in trouble with the law. "What about everything they have done to us? I can't believe the police have arrested me and left them to run wild."
Incensed neighbours Shirley and George Wardle have offered to contribute half to Donna's fine. Shirley, 69, said: "It's deplorable. Whoever charged her wants to come and live here a while."
But Donna is so enraged by how she has been treated that she is still refusing to pay the penalty. She said: "I don't see why I should lose money when all I have done is stick up for my family. "I've been told that if I don't settle I could go to prison. But I won't pay because, in my eyes, I haven't done anything wrong."
Sgt Neil Haley, of the local neighbourhood policing team said: "We appreciate that anti-social behaviour can be frustrating. "But people should not take the law into their own hands."
Source
The victim is always wrong: Young thugs terrorised this woman for two years, trampling her garden and kicking footballs against her house. She shouted at them to leave her alone. And who do you think the police charged? Her.. for swearing
A mother of two has been fined for swearing at yobs who made her life a misery. For more than two years a group of about 15 teenage thugs have hounded Donna Appleyard, 32, subjecting her to relentless abuse, threats and vandalism. But when she finally snapped over the constant intimidation and swore at one of the bullies, she was arrested and fined. And if she doesn't pay up, Donna could face a spell in prison.
She said yesterday: "I am absolutely furious that I have been made out to be the criminal when all I have ever wanted to do is live in peace and quiet." Almost every day since 2004 Donna and her neighbours in Knottingley, West Yorks, have had to endure the gang jumping fences, trampling gardens, shouting, swearing, kicking footballs against windows and hanging around their street into the night. The three-bed semi she shares with partner Colin Lamb, 34, and her kids James, 14, and Holly, 12, was such a relentless target that on March 30 she lost her temper and swore at one tormentor.
And two weeks later police called at her home saying a 13-year-old had made a complaint. She was handed an 80 pound fixed penalty notice but refused to pay and was taken to court last month - only for magistrates to up the sum to 120 pounds which Donna must now pay or face a jail term. She said: "I was at the end of my tether and admit I swore at one of them. But that's nothing compared to what my neighbours and I have suffered."
Donna claims she made countless complaints to police about the gang but nothing was done. She said: "Officers told me I'd scared children. Well, what do they think has been happening to us for the past year? I am livid. "These kids have made me, my family and my neighbours feel like prisoners in our own homes. "They are intimidating and aggressive and make our lives hell. All I did was swear at them and I am in trouble with the law. "What about everything they have done to us? I can't believe the police have arrested me and left them to run wild."
Incensed neighbours Shirley and George Wardle have offered to contribute half to Donna's fine. Shirley, 69, said: "It's deplorable. Whoever charged her wants to come and live here a while."
But Donna is so enraged by how she has been treated that she is still refusing to pay the penalty. She said: "I don't see why I should lose money when all I have done is stick up for my family. "I've been told that if I don't settle I could go to prison. But I won't pay because, in my eyes, I haven't done anything wrong."
Sgt Neil Haley, of the local neighbourhood policing team said: "We appreciate that anti-social behaviour can be frustrating. "But people should not take the law into their own hands."
Source
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
CHINESE LIKE BRITISH PRIVATE SCHOOLS
British independent schools are attracting record numbers of Chinese pupils as China's new elite seek the prestige of a traditional English education. More than a thousand Chinese pupils have entered Britain's leading boarding schools this term, double the number five years ago. Many are the offspring of China's new wealthy entrepreneurial classes, who can comfortably afford 20,000 pounds-a-year boarding fees, but there are some from more modest backgrounds. These children cover the fees with pooled donations from their extended families, who regard the expense as a sound investment in the future of the whole clan.
Most of the pupils arrive to do A levels, with the aim of gaining entry to one of Britain's leading universities where they hope to gain professional qualifications, mainly in the sciences, accountancy, business studies and economics. The Independent Schools Council said that there were about 2,500 pupils from mainland China in British independent schools. "The numbers have risen sharply over the past ten years, from a base of zero," the council said. "The Chinese regard British independent schools as the best in the world and the schools, for their part, are actively recruiting in China, just like the universities do. It is a great British export success story."
In Harrogate Ladies' College, which was one of the first schools to recruit from China, half the 120-strong sixth form are Chinese. At Roedean, in Brighton, 80 per cent of the sixth form are Chinese. [Amazing!] David Andrews, the deputy head at Harrogate, said that the North Yorkshire school visited educational fairs in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai once a year to attract pupils. "The girls come here for two years and tend to study non-English-language subjects, such as maths, further maths, science and business studies. Their work ethic is amazing," Mr Andrews said.
Neil Hawkins, principal of Concord College, in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, which has 45 Chinese pupils, said that there was now competition for potential pupils. "In the early days, Chinese parents were interested in their children getting an English education, full stop. Now the market has developed and they are becoming more discerning and are relying on personal recommendations for particular schools," he said.
However, Heathfield St Mary's School, in Ascot, Berkshire, is keeping its Chinese intake down. "It's a small school and if you start to over-fill it with a particular type of pupil, it can be too much," Frances King, the headmistress, said. "In China, there is a notion that the teacher is always right, and this can make the girls reluctant to ask questions for fear of exposing the teacher as ignorant. Our emphasis on encouraging the girls to engage in challenging discussion can sometimes take them by surprise."
For Weishi Kong, 18, from Beijing, an A-level student at Harrogate Ladies' College, studying in England has opened up a whole new world - and a whole new way of thinking. "At school in China, there can be up to 60 students in a class. We don't have the chance, or the time, to ask questions. The tradition there is: let the teacher teach. Here we are encouraged to ask questions. I like it," she said. "I get opportunities here to do things, like amateur radio, that I might not do in China." She was able to speak English before arriving in Britain and is studying biology, chemistry and maths at A level.
Angel Sin, 19, a Hong Kong Chinese pupil at the school, is taking A levels in the sciences and further maths and hopes to go on to study at the University of Manchester or the University of Liverpool. "Back home everyone is always in a hurry. Here you are given more time just to be yourself and try your hardest," she said. Although she was initially homesick she has now settled in to the English way of life. "One thing I really like about England is fish and chips. And ketchup. I love ketchup," she added. [An amusing response from someone brought up on one of the world's great cuisines! I share her liking for fish & chips, however]
Source
British independent schools are attracting record numbers of Chinese pupils as China's new elite seek the prestige of a traditional English education. More than a thousand Chinese pupils have entered Britain's leading boarding schools this term, double the number five years ago. Many are the offspring of China's new wealthy entrepreneurial classes, who can comfortably afford 20,000 pounds-a-year boarding fees, but there are some from more modest backgrounds. These children cover the fees with pooled donations from their extended families, who regard the expense as a sound investment in the future of the whole clan.
Most of the pupils arrive to do A levels, with the aim of gaining entry to one of Britain's leading universities where they hope to gain professional qualifications, mainly in the sciences, accountancy, business studies and economics. The Independent Schools Council said that there were about 2,500 pupils from mainland China in British independent schools. "The numbers have risen sharply over the past ten years, from a base of zero," the council said. "The Chinese regard British independent schools as the best in the world and the schools, for their part, are actively recruiting in China, just like the universities do. It is a great British export success story."
In Harrogate Ladies' College, which was one of the first schools to recruit from China, half the 120-strong sixth form are Chinese. At Roedean, in Brighton, 80 per cent of the sixth form are Chinese. [Amazing!] David Andrews, the deputy head at Harrogate, said that the North Yorkshire school visited educational fairs in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai once a year to attract pupils. "The girls come here for two years and tend to study non-English-language subjects, such as maths, further maths, science and business studies. Their work ethic is amazing," Mr Andrews said.
Neil Hawkins, principal of Concord College, in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, which has 45 Chinese pupils, said that there was now competition for potential pupils. "In the early days, Chinese parents were interested in their children getting an English education, full stop. Now the market has developed and they are becoming more discerning and are relying on personal recommendations for particular schools," he said.
However, Heathfield St Mary's School, in Ascot, Berkshire, is keeping its Chinese intake down. "It's a small school and if you start to over-fill it with a particular type of pupil, it can be too much," Frances King, the headmistress, said. "In China, there is a notion that the teacher is always right, and this can make the girls reluctant to ask questions for fear of exposing the teacher as ignorant. Our emphasis on encouraging the girls to engage in challenging discussion can sometimes take them by surprise."
For Weishi Kong, 18, from Beijing, an A-level student at Harrogate Ladies' College, studying in England has opened up a whole new world - and a whole new way of thinking. "At school in China, there can be up to 60 students in a class. We don't have the chance, or the time, to ask questions. The tradition there is: let the teacher teach. Here we are encouraged to ask questions. I like it," she said. "I get opportunities here to do things, like amateur radio, that I might not do in China." She was able to speak English before arriving in Britain and is studying biology, chemistry and maths at A level.
Angel Sin, 19, a Hong Kong Chinese pupil at the school, is taking A levels in the sciences and further maths and hopes to go on to study at the University of Manchester or the University of Liverpool. "Back home everyone is always in a hurry. Here you are given more time just to be yourself and try your hardest," she said. Although she was initially homesick she has now settled in to the English way of life. "One thing I really like about England is fish and chips. And ketchup. I love ketchup," she added. [An amusing response from someone brought up on one of the world's great cuisines! I share her liking for fish & chips, however]
Source
Save the planet, don't see the world?
Comment on the British Greenie hatred of air travel
'Help yourself to chocolate biscuits.' Welcoming me into his plush boardroom on the seventh floor of a business building in Baker Street - with a spectacular view of a sunny London skyline out of the window - David Soskin doesn't come across as an evil man. He doesn't look like the kind of person who works in a field so wicked that it makes `genocide and ethnic cleansing look like sideshows at the circus of human suffering'. And yet he is CEO of CheapFlights.co.uk, the UK's leading travel price comparison website, which facilitates more than its fair share of cheap and cheerful holidays abroad. And according to some of the more shrill critics of the aviation industry - who seriously claim that the pollution caused by flying is giving rise to a `genocide' - that puts him well and truly on the side of the devils. What does he have to say for himself? He takes a sip of tea.
`These people, these critics of flying and cheap flying, are so ignorant', he says, sounding surprisingly posh - and surprisingly unapologetic - for someone who runs a company called CheapFlights. And he has no doubts as to who `these people' are. `Those who slam no-frills airlines are usually newspaper columnists or green spokespeople. They are reasonably affluent, well-educated and tend to live in places like Islington. They are the kind of people used to taking their holidays in the Dordogne and Tuscany and they don't like the fact that that sort of holiday is now affordable for millions of people whom they find it difficult to relate to. One of the proponents of "eco-taxes" on flights is Zac Goldsmith, a scion of one of the richest families in Britain. They are so out of touch with the way ordinary people live. They are snobs.'
It's certainly true that sections of the media set and environmentalist activists have declared war on flying in recent years - especially `no-frills flying', the kind offered by easyJet, Ryanair and the rest, which allows all sorts of people to jet off to sunny and distant destinations for as little as 25 pounds. It was Guardian columnist George Monbiot who claimed that aeroplanes, because they emit a lot of CO2s, are creating a `killing field' that will make earlier genocides look like a mere `sideshow'. He concluded that flying across the Atlantic is now `as unacceptable as child abuse'. A front cover of the left-leaning weekly the New Statesman recently featured a photo of a jet taking off, a stream of grey smoke flowing from its engines, next to the headline: `The growth in flying will propel us into a future of melting ice caps, spreading deserts, rising sea levels and collapsing ecosystems.' Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London, argues that flying is a `symptom of sin' (whatever that might mean)
And don't get them started on cheap flying. `There is this feeling amongst environmentalists that it is the package-holidaymakers who rush off in no-frills aeroplanes to Spain and Greece who cause global pollution', says Soskin. `Those travellers are clearly in their sights more than those who engage in supposedly "responsible tourism". There is this idea that people who fly cheaply are themselves pollutants.' In an environmentalist action plan published in the Observer last year, titled `10 things we must do to make a difference' (note the word `must'), point no.2 said: `Put an end to cheap flights.' It called for government action to `curb passenger enthusiasm' for all this no-frills flying. One commentator argues that Brits must `give up cheap flights', those `easyJet quickies', before we end up `scattered like the environmental refugees of New Orleans'. No wonder bishops are sticking their noses into the discussion: this all sounds a lot like the old sermonic claim that living to excess and enjoying yourself is bad for you. Only flying won't just make you go blind - apparently it will cause droughts and disasters, kill the planet, and finish off future generations.
So is it true that people who fly, and especially people who fly lo-price, are effectively wringing the planet's, and by association their own and everyone else's necks? `The facts don't bear that out', says Soskin. `Aviation contributes about three per cent to global man-made carbon emissions - three per cent! That means 97 per cent is caused by other things. And yet flying is often discussed as the "main contributor" of emissions. Just the other day I heard the young George Osborne [Tory shadow chancellor] saying on the Today programme, "As everyone knows, aviation is a major contributor to pollution." No it isn't. Often people don't get their basic facts straight.'
Soskin's figures come from a pretty exhaustive study by The Economist in June this year, which found that aviation's contribution `to total man-made emissions worldwide is around 3%'. In its study of greenhouse gas emissions in America - said to be the most polluting (ie, most developed) country in the world - The Economist found that all forms of transportation contributed 27.4 per cent of emissions; flying on its own causes 3.2 per cent. So even within the world of transportation, flight is overshadowed by cars, ships and trains when it comes to coughing up the bad stuff. And where flight causes 3.2 per cent of America's greenhouse-gas emissions, electricity generation causes 33.9 per cent, industry causes 18.8 per cent, agriculture causes 7.6 per cent, residential properties cause 7.6 per cent and commercial properties cause 4.7 per cent. So actually flying seems to come pretty low down on the Wicked List.
Ah, but aviation is the fastest-growing transport sector, the critics of flying will respond, and thus it promises to become the greatest polluter unless we keep it in check now. Soskin takes something of an old-fashioned capitalist line on this issue. To those greens, journalists, Tory ministers and even government ministers pressuring the New Labour government and the EU to support slapping fatter taxes on flying, Soskin says: `Since when has it been good government policy to discourage growth in one of our successful industries?' He also points out that there is great demand for flying. `More and more people want to fly. They love it. CheapFlights.co.uk has about three million unique users a month to our UK website. That is three million people looking for cheap flights. They are going to be pretty nonplussed if those flights suddenly have an eco-tax.'
If flying is not the No.1 polluter many people presume it is, then cheap flying is even less so. The irony of all the media and greenish handwringing over no-frills flights that allow the young, the less well-off and just about anyone who earns a half-decent wage to visit far-flung corners of the globe is that cheap flights tend to be more green than old-fashioned, more expensive flights. `The no-frills airlines are a fine example of rather efficient use of aircraft, because they fill their aircraft up and always tend to travel full; they don't have aircraft hanging around chugging out pollutants; they use secondary airports quite a lot of the time, so their planes don't endlessly circle the skies waiting for an opportunity to land, like a BA flight over somewhere as busy as Heathrow', says Soskin. `And they invest in new stock. One of the reasons why easyJet and Ryanair have been so successful is because they tend to operate new aircraft, which are fast and fuel-efficient. So the environmentalist lobby and its supporters have, yet again, got it completely wrong. The no-frills airlines are probably more environmentally-friendly than the airlines they take to Mongolia.'
Another irony of today's focus on flying as a terrible polluter is that aircraft pollute less today than they did in the past. As The Economist put it, `Even though today's aircraft are about 70 per cent more efficient than those of 40 years ago, concerns over emissions have grown.' And aircraft are becoming more environmentally-friendly all the time. They are being made with lighter materials which means they need less fuel to keep them airborne; and something like the new Airbus A380 - the double-decker jet that will be able to carry 555 passengers - will lessen aviation's carbon impact on the environment by flying more people at once, which could lead to fewer take-offs from airports (a lot of emissions are expended during take-off) and less plane congestion on airport tarmacs. It's like cars, says Soskin. `When I was growing up in the Fifties and Sixties, cars really were gas-guzzlers. They were the most filthy, disgusting polluting things imaginable. But a lot of money went into investment to make them less polluting. It is not beyond the wit of man to do the same with planes.'
So if flying isn't so bad, and millions of people actually think it is quite bloody good, why does it remain the spectre of today's green debates? Soskin thinks it might be because it's an easier target than industry or big business. `But just because it is an easy target doesn't mean it should be the main target.' He says `there is definitely a snobbish element', too, where people who jet off on cheap holidays once or twice a year are seen as being `selfish and uncaring'. I expect it's also because flying fits perfectly with the environmentalist focus on guilt-tripping individuals about their personal behaviour. By describing aviation - somewhat inaccurately - as the causer of `melting ice caps and collapsing ecosystems', green-minded activists and writers can hold individual holidaymakers responsible for pollution and effectively emotionally blackmail them into holidaying less or holidaying more `responsibly'. The focus on flying exposes the deep moralistic strain that runs through today's politics of environmentalism.
Soskin says the campaign against cheap flying will impact most on the less well-off - not just holidaymakers, but also those who work in or benefit from the tourism industry. `Tourism is absolutely key to the economy and wellbeing of some of the poorest countries of the world. Environmentalists don't seem to understand that if you cut off the mass tourism to these countries - in other words, the jumbo jet-loads of people who now holiday in places like Bali, Sri Lanka and Thailand, which have all become mass tourist destinations - then you are very, very significantly damaging those local economies. And that is unforgivable. For these people to sit in their comfortable terraced houses in Islington and opine about where people should go and should not go, in blissful ignorance of how these countries actually depend on tourist money, is reprehensible.'
Strong words, and a good point. It wouldn't be the first time that green-minded politicians and campaigners called for some aspect of everyday life or business to be reined in without thinking through the impact on workers and others. Yet I can't help feeling that it is somewhat disingenuous of Soskin to present cheap flying as something akin to the saviour of the world's poor. That is similar to the argument used by the green lobby. They claim to be protesting against aviation in order to save the Third World poor from future hurricanes and floods, overlooking the fact that it is poverty that means the Third World remains at the mercy of such natural phenomena; while Soskin seems to believe that one reason we should keep holidaying abroad is to keep poor economies afloat, which also leaves more profound questions about the causes of poverty unaddressed and presents flying as a moral good, rather than simply a mode of transport.
No matter. It is a relief in our uncritical times to hear someone stand up for cheap flights and the millions of people who use them. `I think it should be a cause of national celebration that people of all income brackets can now go away on a regular basis, taste foreign food, meet people of different nationalities, embrace people of different cultures, in a way they couldn't 10 or 20 years ago. That should be a cause of unadulterated national rejoicing. Cheap flights are very good things and they should be encouraged.' Now, that's not a line you hear every day.
Source
Comment on the British Greenie hatred of air travel
'Help yourself to chocolate biscuits.' Welcoming me into his plush boardroom on the seventh floor of a business building in Baker Street - with a spectacular view of a sunny London skyline out of the window - David Soskin doesn't come across as an evil man. He doesn't look like the kind of person who works in a field so wicked that it makes `genocide and ethnic cleansing look like sideshows at the circus of human suffering'. And yet he is CEO of CheapFlights.co.uk, the UK's leading travel price comparison website, which facilitates more than its fair share of cheap and cheerful holidays abroad. And according to some of the more shrill critics of the aviation industry - who seriously claim that the pollution caused by flying is giving rise to a `genocide' - that puts him well and truly on the side of the devils. What does he have to say for himself? He takes a sip of tea.
`These people, these critics of flying and cheap flying, are so ignorant', he says, sounding surprisingly posh - and surprisingly unapologetic - for someone who runs a company called CheapFlights. And he has no doubts as to who `these people' are. `Those who slam no-frills airlines are usually newspaper columnists or green spokespeople. They are reasonably affluent, well-educated and tend to live in places like Islington. They are the kind of people used to taking their holidays in the Dordogne and Tuscany and they don't like the fact that that sort of holiday is now affordable for millions of people whom they find it difficult to relate to. One of the proponents of "eco-taxes" on flights is Zac Goldsmith, a scion of one of the richest families in Britain. They are so out of touch with the way ordinary people live. They are snobs.'
It's certainly true that sections of the media set and environmentalist activists have declared war on flying in recent years - especially `no-frills flying', the kind offered by easyJet, Ryanair and the rest, which allows all sorts of people to jet off to sunny and distant destinations for as little as 25 pounds. It was Guardian columnist George Monbiot who claimed that aeroplanes, because they emit a lot of CO2s, are creating a `killing field' that will make earlier genocides look like a mere `sideshow'. He concluded that flying across the Atlantic is now `as unacceptable as child abuse'. A front cover of the left-leaning weekly the New Statesman recently featured a photo of a jet taking off, a stream of grey smoke flowing from its engines, next to the headline: `The growth in flying will propel us into a future of melting ice caps, spreading deserts, rising sea levels and collapsing ecosystems.' Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London, argues that flying is a `symptom of sin' (whatever that might mean)
And don't get them started on cheap flying. `There is this feeling amongst environmentalists that it is the package-holidaymakers who rush off in no-frills aeroplanes to Spain and Greece who cause global pollution', says Soskin. `Those travellers are clearly in their sights more than those who engage in supposedly "responsible tourism". There is this idea that people who fly cheaply are themselves pollutants.' In an environmentalist action plan published in the Observer last year, titled `10 things we must do to make a difference' (note the word `must'), point no.2 said: `Put an end to cheap flights.' It called for government action to `curb passenger enthusiasm' for all this no-frills flying. One commentator argues that Brits must `give up cheap flights', those `easyJet quickies', before we end up `scattered like the environmental refugees of New Orleans'. No wonder bishops are sticking their noses into the discussion: this all sounds a lot like the old sermonic claim that living to excess and enjoying yourself is bad for you. Only flying won't just make you go blind - apparently it will cause droughts and disasters, kill the planet, and finish off future generations.
So is it true that people who fly, and especially people who fly lo-price, are effectively wringing the planet's, and by association their own and everyone else's necks? `The facts don't bear that out', says Soskin. `Aviation contributes about three per cent to global man-made carbon emissions - three per cent! That means 97 per cent is caused by other things. And yet flying is often discussed as the "main contributor" of emissions. Just the other day I heard the young George Osborne [Tory shadow chancellor] saying on the Today programme, "As everyone knows, aviation is a major contributor to pollution." No it isn't. Often people don't get their basic facts straight.'
Soskin's figures come from a pretty exhaustive study by The Economist in June this year, which found that aviation's contribution `to total man-made emissions worldwide is around 3%'. In its study of greenhouse gas emissions in America - said to be the most polluting (ie, most developed) country in the world - The Economist found that all forms of transportation contributed 27.4 per cent of emissions; flying on its own causes 3.2 per cent. So even within the world of transportation, flight is overshadowed by cars, ships and trains when it comes to coughing up the bad stuff. And where flight causes 3.2 per cent of America's greenhouse-gas emissions, electricity generation causes 33.9 per cent, industry causes 18.8 per cent, agriculture causes 7.6 per cent, residential properties cause 7.6 per cent and commercial properties cause 4.7 per cent. So actually flying seems to come pretty low down on the Wicked List.
Ah, but aviation is the fastest-growing transport sector, the critics of flying will respond, and thus it promises to become the greatest polluter unless we keep it in check now. Soskin takes something of an old-fashioned capitalist line on this issue. To those greens, journalists, Tory ministers and even government ministers pressuring the New Labour government and the EU to support slapping fatter taxes on flying, Soskin says: `Since when has it been good government policy to discourage growth in one of our successful industries?' He also points out that there is great demand for flying. `More and more people want to fly. They love it. CheapFlights.co.uk has about three million unique users a month to our UK website. That is three million people looking for cheap flights. They are going to be pretty nonplussed if those flights suddenly have an eco-tax.'
If flying is not the No.1 polluter many people presume it is, then cheap flying is even less so. The irony of all the media and greenish handwringing over no-frills flights that allow the young, the less well-off and just about anyone who earns a half-decent wage to visit far-flung corners of the globe is that cheap flights tend to be more green than old-fashioned, more expensive flights. `The no-frills airlines are a fine example of rather efficient use of aircraft, because they fill their aircraft up and always tend to travel full; they don't have aircraft hanging around chugging out pollutants; they use secondary airports quite a lot of the time, so their planes don't endlessly circle the skies waiting for an opportunity to land, like a BA flight over somewhere as busy as Heathrow', says Soskin. `And they invest in new stock. One of the reasons why easyJet and Ryanair have been so successful is because they tend to operate new aircraft, which are fast and fuel-efficient. So the environmentalist lobby and its supporters have, yet again, got it completely wrong. The no-frills airlines are probably more environmentally-friendly than the airlines they take to Mongolia.'
Another irony of today's focus on flying as a terrible polluter is that aircraft pollute less today than they did in the past. As The Economist put it, `Even though today's aircraft are about 70 per cent more efficient than those of 40 years ago, concerns over emissions have grown.' And aircraft are becoming more environmentally-friendly all the time. They are being made with lighter materials which means they need less fuel to keep them airborne; and something like the new Airbus A380 - the double-decker jet that will be able to carry 555 passengers - will lessen aviation's carbon impact on the environment by flying more people at once, which could lead to fewer take-offs from airports (a lot of emissions are expended during take-off) and less plane congestion on airport tarmacs. It's like cars, says Soskin. `When I was growing up in the Fifties and Sixties, cars really were gas-guzzlers. They were the most filthy, disgusting polluting things imaginable. But a lot of money went into investment to make them less polluting. It is not beyond the wit of man to do the same with planes.'
So if flying isn't so bad, and millions of people actually think it is quite bloody good, why does it remain the spectre of today's green debates? Soskin thinks it might be because it's an easier target than industry or big business. `But just because it is an easy target doesn't mean it should be the main target.' He says `there is definitely a snobbish element', too, where people who jet off on cheap holidays once or twice a year are seen as being `selfish and uncaring'. I expect it's also because flying fits perfectly with the environmentalist focus on guilt-tripping individuals about their personal behaviour. By describing aviation - somewhat inaccurately - as the causer of `melting ice caps and collapsing ecosystems', green-minded activists and writers can hold individual holidaymakers responsible for pollution and effectively emotionally blackmail them into holidaying less or holidaying more `responsibly'. The focus on flying exposes the deep moralistic strain that runs through today's politics of environmentalism.
Soskin says the campaign against cheap flying will impact most on the less well-off - not just holidaymakers, but also those who work in or benefit from the tourism industry. `Tourism is absolutely key to the economy and wellbeing of some of the poorest countries of the world. Environmentalists don't seem to understand that if you cut off the mass tourism to these countries - in other words, the jumbo jet-loads of people who now holiday in places like Bali, Sri Lanka and Thailand, which have all become mass tourist destinations - then you are very, very significantly damaging those local economies. And that is unforgivable. For these people to sit in their comfortable terraced houses in Islington and opine about where people should go and should not go, in blissful ignorance of how these countries actually depend on tourist money, is reprehensible.'
Strong words, and a good point. It wouldn't be the first time that green-minded politicians and campaigners called for some aspect of everyday life or business to be reined in without thinking through the impact on workers and others. Yet I can't help feeling that it is somewhat disingenuous of Soskin to present cheap flying as something akin to the saviour of the world's poor. That is similar to the argument used by the green lobby. They claim to be protesting against aviation in order to save the Third World poor from future hurricanes and floods, overlooking the fact that it is poverty that means the Third World remains at the mercy of such natural phenomena; while Soskin seems to believe that one reason we should keep holidaying abroad is to keep poor economies afloat, which also leaves more profound questions about the causes of poverty unaddressed and presents flying as a moral good, rather than simply a mode of transport.
No matter. It is a relief in our uncritical times to hear someone stand up for cheap flights and the millions of people who use them. `I think it should be a cause of national celebration that people of all income brackets can now go away on a regular basis, taste foreign food, meet people of different nationalities, embrace people of different cultures, in a way they couldn't 10 or 20 years ago. That should be a cause of unadulterated national rejoicing. Cheap flights are very good things and they should be encouraged.' Now, that's not a line you hear every day.
Source
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
BACK TO THE CAVES!
Comment on the Green demonstrations outside the Drax coal-fired power station in North Yorkshire
Today's environmental campaigners, motivated by suspicion of modern technology, want to turn the lights off permanently. Listening to a TV interview with one of the self-appointed guardians of the planet, I was stunned by his response when asked what his alterative would be to the loss of seven per cent of the UK's generating capacity if Drax was closed down. He said it was something `we would all have to live with'. I was reminded of a religious sermon with a vicar chastising the congregation for sinning before God. In this case it was the sin of releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that offended our moral guardians....
But there is something risky about this, even from the point of view of the environmental movement. Targeting electricity generation is not the same as taking on vivisection, nuclear power or genetically modified crops. By taking on coal-fired power stations environmentalists are now questioning the actual existing fabric of our energy infrastructure without which modern society cannot function. It is not so much fears of new technology that are driving the protests, but doubts about whether already-existing technology is a good thing.
Electricity is an underrated marvel of the modern age. Our capacity to generate vast quantities of electrical energy has only really existed for a century or so. Electrification was the big advance of the early twentieth century in the modern economies of the world. We can easily forget how our lives are dominated by the easy availability of electricity. When there's a power cut our lives pretty much grind to a standstill as people go in search of musty candles and hidden boxes of matches.
It is therefore unthinkable that we should turn the clock back to a time before the national grid. Yet this is what some eco-warriors are seriously considering. Of course, it would be unfair to say they have advocated the abandonment of electricity generation per se; they want us to turn to alternative sources of electrical energy. The government, too, wants to go down the alternative route. The decline of natural gas supplies has driven the government to consider new rounds of nuclear power stations - which no serious green would agree to - and an expansion of alternatives including wind farms and tidal power.
But there is something unconvincing about being told to use wind, solar or tidal power as an alternative to fossil fuels and nuclear power. With every statement advocating alternative sources of energy there is the proviso that, even with massive investment in alternatives, there just won't be enough capacity to match current consumption of energy.
We are really being offered another alternative - actually to reduce our demand for energy. During previous energy crises, when fossil fuel supplies looked in jeopardy, we were told to share baths, turn off the lights, cut back and economise. But that isn't quite what today's campaigners have in mind. They don't just want minor reductions in waste and increases in efficiency. They actually want us to reduce our energy use considerably and adjust to a new world of less.
In the past, this was called austerity. Governments that try to impose austerity on society need a pretty pressing reason to do so, as it usually isn't very long before it results in political conflict and either a reversal in policy or the removal of the government. However, today we are told to accept austerity in the name of saving the planet, and it is supposedly radical greens - taking their cue from government dithering about energy production - who are at the forefront of pushing the New Austerity. It is a strange inversion of history that today's young radicals are telling us to give up on modernity and look forward to a future which is not so bright - literally.
Source
Comment on the Green demonstrations outside the Drax coal-fired power station in North Yorkshire
Today's environmental campaigners, motivated by suspicion of modern technology, want to turn the lights off permanently. Listening to a TV interview with one of the self-appointed guardians of the planet, I was stunned by his response when asked what his alterative would be to the loss of seven per cent of the UK's generating capacity if Drax was closed down. He said it was something `we would all have to live with'. I was reminded of a religious sermon with a vicar chastising the congregation for sinning before God. In this case it was the sin of releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that offended our moral guardians....
But there is something risky about this, even from the point of view of the environmental movement. Targeting electricity generation is not the same as taking on vivisection, nuclear power or genetically modified crops. By taking on coal-fired power stations environmentalists are now questioning the actual existing fabric of our energy infrastructure without which modern society cannot function. It is not so much fears of new technology that are driving the protests, but doubts about whether already-existing technology is a good thing.
Electricity is an underrated marvel of the modern age. Our capacity to generate vast quantities of electrical energy has only really existed for a century or so. Electrification was the big advance of the early twentieth century in the modern economies of the world. We can easily forget how our lives are dominated by the easy availability of electricity. When there's a power cut our lives pretty much grind to a standstill as people go in search of musty candles and hidden boxes of matches.
It is therefore unthinkable that we should turn the clock back to a time before the national grid. Yet this is what some eco-warriors are seriously considering. Of course, it would be unfair to say they have advocated the abandonment of electricity generation per se; they want us to turn to alternative sources of electrical energy. The government, too, wants to go down the alternative route. The decline of natural gas supplies has driven the government to consider new rounds of nuclear power stations - which no serious green would agree to - and an expansion of alternatives including wind farms and tidal power.
But there is something unconvincing about being told to use wind, solar or tidal power as an alternative to fossil fuels and nuclear power. With every statement advocating alternative sources of energy there is the proviso that, even with massive investment in alternatives, there just won't be enough capacity to match current consumption of energy.
We are really being offered another alternative - actually to reduce our demand for energy. During previous energy crises, when fossil fuel supplies looked in jeopardy, we were told to share baths, turn off the lights, cut back and economise. But that isn't quite what today's campaigners have in mind. They don't just want minor reductions in waste and increases in efficiency. They actually want us to reduce our energy use considerably and adjust to a new world of less.
In the past, this was called austerity. Governments that try to impose austerity on society need a pretty pressing reason to do so, as it usually isn't very long before it results in political conflict and either a reversal in policy or the removal of the government. However, today we are told to accept austerity in the name of saving the planet, and it is supposedly radical greens - taking their cue from government dithering about energy production - who are at the forefront of pushing the New Austerity. It is a strange inversion of history that today's young radicals are telling us to give up on modernity and look forward to a future which is not so bright - literally.
Source
PC BRITISH POLICE COULDN'T STAND THE GLARE OF PUBLICITY
British flag "lewd and offensive"!
A gulf war hero was banned from joining the police because he has a Union Jack and the words "British Army" tattooed on his arm. Proud Sgt Ivan Ivanovic was told the two-inch design could be seen as RACIST.
Ivan was stunned - as he has served Britain for 22 years, seeing action in the first Gulf War and playing peacekeeping roles in Iraq and Kosovo. The dad of two wanted to become a police community support officer when he quits the Army. But Cumbria Constabulary refused to consider him due to the tattoos. Ivan, 40, who serves with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers at Catterick, North Yorks, said: "I can't see why anyone would think that the flag of the country might be seen as racist. "It's crazy. The tattoo is a few inches long and below my left shoulder - so no one would see it. "They asked about any distinguishing marks and would not send an application form because of the tattoo. It's ludicrous." Ivan fell foul of Home Office rules governing "lewd, offensive" tattoos.
But last night police BACKED DOWN and invited Ivan to reapply - after The Sun stepped in. Divorcee Ivan - half Yugoslav and half English - said: "It is fantastic news. I'm proud of my time in the forces." Police said: "We thank The Sun for bringing this to our attention."
Source
British flag "lewd and offensive"!
A gulf war hero was banned from joining the police because he has a Union Jack and the words "British Army" tattooed on his arm. Proud Sgt Ivan Ivanovic was told the two-inch design could be seen as RACIST.
Ivan was stunned - as he has served Britain for 22 years, seeing action in the first Gulf War and playing peacekeeping roles in Iraq and Kosovo. The dad of two wanted to become a police community support officer when he quits the Army. But Cumbria Constabulary refused to consider him due to the tattoos. Ivan, 40, who serves with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers at Catterick, North Yorks, said: "I can't see why anyone would think that the flag of the country might be seen as racist. "It's crazy. The tattoo is a few inches long and below my left shoulder - so no one would see it. "They asked about any distinguishing marks and would not send an application form because of the tattoo. It's ludicrous." Ivan fell foul of Home Office rules governing "lewd, offensive" tattoos.
But last night police BACKED DOWN and invited Ivan to reapply - after The Sun stepped in. Divorcee Ivan - half Yugoslav and half English - said: "It is fantastic news. I'm proud of my time in the forces." Police said: "We thank The Sun for bringing this to our attention."
Source
British Conservative leader attacks anti-Americanism: "David Cameron will criticise, in a speech today, a soundbite approach to foreign policy that sees only lightness and darkness in the world. In remarks that are certain to be seen as an attack on the conduct of foreign policy by the Bush Administration, supported by Tony Blair, the Tory leader will say that humility and patience have been absent from the making of foreign policy in recent years. In a reference to elements of the US Administration, Mr Cameron, speaking on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on America, will say pointedly that he is a liberal conservative, not a neoconservative. In his most substantial address on security policy, Mr Cameron will make a fierce attack on anti-Americanism, which he will say is an "intellectual and moral surrender". Sources close to the Tory leader said that his words did not mark any weakening in his support for the Iraq war, but they are nevertheless controversial after recent efforts to build bridges with the Republicans".
Monday, September 11, 2006
U.K. School sports not quite dead yet
Post lifted from Majority Rights
By and large, there are few more certain ways to make your MP’s eyes glaze over (yes, yes, I know it’s usually the other way round) than to ask him a question in some way connected to school sports. It just isn’t done in polite society, and besides the MP will most probably be under specific instructions not to say a thing about both the Government’s and the Opposition parties’ papable contempt for all physical endeavour. The few old fashioned Tories who once cared about such things are dead, either literally or politically, and if not are either kept on a leash or treated as amusing relics of a distant past.
The result of such neglect has been disastrous. If you read Private Eye (sadly mostly unavailable online), you will know about the sheer number of state school sports fields sold off. Those few that do keep theirs nonetheless keep them simply as mementos of a dying era, all actual exercise having been abandoned in order to prevent anyone’s feelings getting hurt or to engage in whatever latest nonsense has been dreamt up by the Labour meddlers, such as ‘cooperative’ Sports Days. In essence, sport and political correctness (and the therapy culture) simply don’t mix, and as the latter are the modern day religion of our leaders sport just has to go.
In such a climate, even the slightest turn-around is encouraging, and so with that in mind this should be considered:
Granted, this is still just bread and circuses, something to make sure that London’s 2012 Olympics do not end in the embarrassment that we, quite frankly, deserve. There is also every chance that this’ll turn into yet another showcase for how much Africans contribute to the UK. I’ll be convinced otherwise if and when I hear a govenrment employee make full clear why sport is to be encouraged.
First of all, and this shouldn’t be beyond even one of our hollow NuLabour/NuTory types, it should be made clear that a healthy lifestyle must inevitably involve exercise, and that such a lifestyle reduces the burden on the NHS, reduces working days lost to illness, etc, etc, etc. Going further, we might also add that a healthy population is less likely to fall prey to various potentially dangerous fads and enthusiasms. That a healthy mind requires a healthy body was medical orthodoxy until Hitler’s advocacy of this idea discredited it in the minds of certain people (who probably don’t get enough exercise).
Indeed, it is simply obvious why sport is beneficial. Only an organisation utterly incapable of looking beyond the next few years would not encourage its members to participate in it. Step forward egalitarian democracy, the God that Failed.
The question of sport in schools may seem trivial by comparison to others facing us, but it is controlled by the same dynamics which control our heedless immigration, social and economic policies. As such, it is fairly obvious why the impeccably populist Messiah that Failed, Tone Blair, should wish to ignore entirely its long term benefits. He’s still a Keynesian at heart, at least in the sense of believing that ‘in the long run, we’re all dead’, and until that pernicious doctrine is shown up for the destructive agent that it is, no long term future of any sort can be secured for us.
DISCOUNT FOR PREPAID UNIVERSITY FEES ROUTINE IN AUSTRALIA BUT RARE AND CONTROVERSIAL IN BRITAIN
The Government's pledge that top-up fees would not disadvantage those from low-income families was under threat last night after one university announced that it would offer a discount to students who could pay for their entire degree in advance. Students at the University of Gloucestershire will be entitled to a 20 per cent discount on their fees if they can pay the entire 9,000 pounds for their three-year degree when they start.
The offer will not be available to those who need state help. The university said that there were other "generous, means-tested" bursaries on offer to families as part of its "innovative pricing policy". In addition students who did not pay up-front but instructed the Student Loan Company to pay the university o3,000 per year would be entitled to a 10 per cent rebate as they completed each year of study. The university said it had had "a couple of inquiries" about the scheme.
Gemma Tumelty, president of the National Union of Students, said: "It seems ridiculous that somebody who is rich enough will end up paying less for their education."
Source
Post lifted from Majority Rights
By and large, there are few more certain ways to make your MP’s eyes glaze over (yes, yes, I know it’s usually the other way round) than to ask him a question in some way connected to school sports. It just isn’t done in polite society, and besides the MP will most probably be under specific instructions not to say a thing about both the Government’s and the Opposition parties’ papable contempt for all physical endeavour. The few old fashioned Tories who once cared about such things are dead, either literally or politically, and if not are either kept on a leash or treated as amusing relics of a distant past.
The result of such neglect has been disastrous. If you read Private Eye (sadly mostly unavailable online), you will know about the sheer number of state school sports fields sold off. Those few that do keep theirs nonetheless keep them simply as mementos of a dying era, all actual exercise having been abandoned in order to prevent anyone’s feelings getting hurt or to engage in whatever latest nonsense has been dreamt up by the Labour meddlers, such as ‘cooperative’ Sports Days. In essence, sport and political correctness (and the therapy culture) simply don’t mix, and as the latter are the modern day religion of our leaders sport just has to go.
In such a climate, even the slightest turn-around is encouraging, and so with that in mind this should be considered:
Children across the UK are to be given the chance to compete in their own version of the Olympics.
The government hopes the UK School Games will help unearth British talent for the London Olympics in 2012.
Granted, this is still just bread and circuses, something to make sure that London’s 2012 Olympics do not end in the embarrassment that we, quite frankly, deserve. There is also every chance that this’ll turn into yet another showcase for how much Africans contribute to the UK. I’ll be convinced otherwise if and when I hear a govenrment employee make full clear why sport is to be encouraged.
First of all, and this shouldn’t be beyond even one of our hollow NuLabour/NuTory types, it should be made clear that a healthy lifestyle must inevitably involve exercise, and that such a lifestyle reduces the burden on the NHS, reduces working days lost to illness, etc, etc, etc. Going further, we might also add that a healthy population is less likely to fall prey to various potentially dangerous fads and enthusiasms. That a healthy mind requires a healthy body was medical orthodoxy until Hitler’s advocacy of this idea discredited it in the minds of certain people (who probably don’t get enough exercise).
Indeed, it is simply obvious why sport is beneficial. Only an organisation utterly incapable of looking beyond the next few years would not encourage its members to participate in it. Step forward egalitarian democracy, the God that Failed.
The question of sport in schools may seem trivial by comparison to others facing us, but it is controlled by the same dynamics which control our heedless immigration, social and economic policies. As such, it is fairly obvious why the impeccably populist Messiah that Failed, Tone Blair, should wish to ignore entirely its long term benefits. He’s still a Keynesian at heart, at least in the sense of believing that ‘in the long run, we’re all dead’, and until that pernicious doctrine is shown up for the destructive agent that it is, no long term future of any sort can be secured for us.
DISCOUNT FOR PREPAID UNIVERSITY FEES ROUTINE IN AUSTRALIA BUT RARE AND CONTROVERSIAL IN BRITAIN
The Government's pledge that top-up fees would not disadvantage those from low-income families was under threat last night after one university announced that it would offer a discount to students who could pay for their entire degree in advance. Students at the University of Gloucestershire will be entitled to a 20 per cent discount on their fees if they can pay the entire 9,000 pounds for their three-year degree when they start.
The offer will not be available to those who need state help. The university said that there were other "generous, means-tested" bursaries on offer to families as part of its "innovative pricing policy". In addition students who did not pay up-front but instructed the Student Loan Company to pay the university o3,000 per year would be entitled to a 10 per cent rebate as they completed each year of study. The university said it had had "a couple of inquiries" about the scheme.
Gemma Tumelty, president of the National Union of Students, said: "It seems ridiculous that somebody who is rich enough will end up paying less for their education."
Source
EMERGENCY ROOM BLUNDERING IN THE NHS
Patients admitted to accident and emergency departments with serious injuries are treated routinely with untested therapies that may kill them, one of Britain's leading public health experts said yesterday. Hardly any treatments used in emergency trauma care have been subjected to proper clinical trials, according to Ian Roberts, Professor of Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Professor Roberts led the first important study in the specialty, which has shown that drugs commonly used for 30 years to treat head injuries actually increase the chances of death and disability. An "evidential black hole" means that doctors have no way of knowing whether other therapies are similarly dangerous.
Though injury is among the biggest causes of death, it receives a fraction of the research funding given to other killers, such as cancer and heart disease. This is because pharmaceutical companies have no interest in evaluating the effectiveness of widely used but untested drugs, and because injury disproportionately affects the poor, Professor Roberts said. "It is a worrying fact that injury is a major cause of death worldwide, but most of the treatments used in its management are untested," he told the festival conference in Norwich. In the UK, injuries account for 6.6 per cent of the burden of disease, but less than 1 per cent of research spending. This compares with 27 per cent for cancer, 16 per cent for neurology, 12 per cent for infectious disease and 9 per cent for cardiovascular disease.
The biggest random controlled trial of a trauma treatment - the Crash study into corticosteroids for head injury - was stopped early in 2004 after finding that the drugs raised the risk of death by 3 per cent. The Lancet, the medical journal, estimated that at least 10,000 patients had died from the untested drugs. "I very much hope these treatments do more good than harm, but we don't know and I think we should," Professor Roberts said.
Soldiers also suffer from the lack of research, he said, and the Ministry of Defence should devote more funding to trials for treating trauma. "You would have thought the MoD has a duty of care towards soldiers," he said. "Not at all. I think they should show a little interest in evaluating treatment of trauma."
More here
Patients admitted to accident and emergency departments with serious injuries are treated routinely with untested therapies that may kill them, one of Britain's leading public health experts said yesterday. Hardly any treatments used in emergency trauma care have been subjected to proper clinical trials, according to Ian Roberts, Professor of Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Professor Roberts led the first important study in the specialty, which has shown that drugs commonly used for 30 years to treat head injuries actually increase the chances of death and disability. An "evidential black hole" means that doctors have no way of knowing whether other therapies are similarly dangerous.
Though injury is among the biggest causes of death, it receives a fraction of the research funding given to other killers, such as cancer and heart disease. This is because pharmaceutical companies have no interest in evaluating the effectiveness of widely used but untested drugs, and because injury disproportionately affects the poor, Professor Roberts said. "It is a worrying fact that injury is a major cause of death worldwide, but most of the treatments used in its management are untested," he told the festival conference in Norwich. In the UK, injuries account for 6.6 per cent of the burden of disease, but less than 1 per cent of research spending. This compares with 27 per cent for cancer, 16 per cent for neurology, 12 per cent for infectious disease and 9 per cent for cardiovascular disease.
The biggest random controlled trial of a trauma treatment - the Crash study into corticosteroids for head injury - was stopped early in 2004 after finding that the drugs raised the risk of death by 3 per cent. The Lancet, the medical journal, estimated that at least 10,000 patients had died from the untested drugs. "I very much hope these treatments do more good than harm, but we don't know and I think we should," Professor Roberts said.
Soldiers also suffer from the lack of research, he said, and the Ministry of Defence should devote more funding to trials for treating trauma. "You would have thought the MoD has a duty of care towards soldiers," he said. "Not at all. I think they should show a little interest in evaluating treatment of trauma."
More here
FAST FOODS STILL WINNING IN BRITAIN
Fast-food chains are having it their way again, and loving it. Despite the best efforts of healthy-eating campaigners it seems that they are losing the battle against junk food. The burger is back - and restaurants are throwing away thousands of salads a day. A Times survey in six British cities this week confirmed that the industry's brief flirtation with healthy eating is over.
During a day of observation in branches of McDonald's, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken only two customers in Manchester and one in London ordered a salad. No one in Newcastle, Bristol, Birmingham or Maidstone was tempted. Sales of other healthy options such as "grapple bags" of apple slices, carrot sticks and fruit juice were only slightly better, and in several restaurants there were no fresh salad options in stock at all. Hassan Ahmed, the manager of the Burger King on Martineau Way in Birmingham, said that his customers were not interested in using the restaurant to pursue the "healthy, balanced diet" endorsed on the company's website. "We buy in three cases of salad each week. I only order them in because I have to. But we bin most of them at the end of the week because they don't sell. "It's the same with the bags of fruit, we waste more than we sell. Last week we sold 28 salads and it's usually about half that."
The picture is the same in fast-food restaurants across the country. Damian Wills, the manager of a McDonald's in Filton, Bristol, said that his customers had stopped ordering salads as soon as the novelty wore off. "As with most promotions, when they were introduced they were `the flavour of the month' - and about a month later people had moved on. People will always go for chips over lettuce." A Burger King spokesman said that salads were a "very small part of our sales".
Salads and sandwiches make up less than 10 per cent of McDonald's sales. As Steve Easterbrook, the president of McDonald's UK, announced this year: "We are a burger business. Our traditional menu - hamburger, cheeseburger, Big Mac, quarterpounder, chicken sandwich - is front and centre of our plans." He probably would not have said that a year ago at the height of Jamie Oliver's school dinners campaign and amid the success of Morgan Spurlock's stomach-churning documentary Super Size Me, which raised awareness of the health risks posed by fast food.
This came after a period of sustained pressure on the fast-food industry, during which McDonald's reported its first loss in almost 50 years and restaurant chains were forced into concessions to healthy-eating campaigners, including providing more varied menus and publishing extensive nutritional and sourcing information about their products.
Now it appears that the industry has weathered the storm. A ban on junk food advertising for children is no nearer despite Britain having the highest level of obesity and the highest rate of "on-the-go" eating in Europe. Oliver is reduced to swearing at parents for continuing to feed their children fatty foods and sugary fizzy drinks despite all the warnings.
Predictably, the counter-attack against healthy eating is fiercest in the United States. A new generation of "indulgent offerings" for the hungrier American has culminated in the Burger King Stacker Quad: four beef patties, four slices of cheese, four strips of bacon and no vegetables in a bun. It contains 1,000 calories and as much saturated fats as one person should consume in a day and a half, according to US government recomendations. Fast-food companies say that they are merely providing what their customers want. "We listened to consumers who said they wanted to eat fresh fruit," a spokesman for Wendy's, an American burger chain, said. "Apparently they lied."
Source
Fast-food chains are having it their way again, and loving it. Despite the best efforts of healthy-eating campaigners it seems that they are losing the battle against junk food. The burger is back - and restaurants are throwing away thousands of salads a day. A Times survey in six British cities this week confirmed that the industry's brief flirtation with healthy eating is over.
During a day of observation in branches of McDonald's, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken only two customers in Manchester and one in London ordered a salad. No one in Newcastle, Bristol, Birmingham or Maidstone was tempted. Sales of other healthy options such as "grapple bags" of apple slices, carrot sticks and fruit juice were only slightly better, and in several restaurants there were no fresh salad options in stock at all. Hassan Ahmed, the manager of the Burger King on Martineau Way in Birmingham, said that his customers were not interested in using the restaurant to pursue the "healthy, balanced diet" endorsed on the company's website. "We buy in three cases of salad each week. I only order them in because I have to. But we bin most of them at the end of the week because they don't sell. "It's the same with the bags of fruit, we waste more than we sell. Last week we sold 28 salads and it's usually about half that."
The picture is the same in fast-food restaurants across the country. Damian Wills, the manager of a McDonald's in Filton, Bristol, said that his customers had stopped ordering salads as soon as the novelty wore off. "As with most promotions, when they were introduced they were `the flavour of the month' - and about a month later people had moved on. People will always go for chips over lettuce." A Burger King spokesman said that salads were a "very small part of our sales".
Salads and sandwiches make up less than 10 per cent of McDonald's sales. As Steve Easterbrook, the president of McDonald's UK, announced this year: "We are a burger business. Our traditional menu - hamburger, cheeseburger, Big Mac, quarterpounder, chicken sandwich - is front and centre of our plans." He probably would not have said that a year ago at the height of Jamie Oliver's school dinners campaign and amid the success of Morgan Spurlock's stomach-churning documentary Super Size Me, which raised awareness of the health risks posed by fast food.
This came after a period of sustained pressure on the fast-food industry, during which McDonald's reported its first loss in almost 50 years and restaurant chains were forced into concessions to healthy-eating campaigners, including providing more varied menus and publishing extensive nutritional and sourcing information about their products.
Now it appears that the industry has weathered the storm. A ban on junk food advertising for children is no nearer despite Britain having the highest level of obesity and the highest rate of "on-the-go" eating in Europe. Oliver is reduced to swearing at parents for continuing to feed their children fatty foods and sugary fizzy drinks despite all the warnings.
Predictably, the counter-attack against healthy eating is fiercest in the United States. A new generation of "indulgent offerings" for the hungrier American has culminated in the Burger King Stacker Quad: four beef patties, four slices of cheese, four strips of bacon and no vegetables in a bun. It contains 1,000 calories and as much saturated fats as one person should consume in a day and a half, according to US government recomendations. Fast-food companies say that they are merely providing what their customers want. "We listened to consumers who said they wanted to eat fresh fruit," a spokesman for Wendy's, an American burger chain, said. "Apparently they lied."
Source
Sunday, September 10, 2006
How the Church of England preaches the gospel of Christ: "A priest with the Church of England who converted to Hinduism has been allowed to continue to officiate as a cleric. The Rev David Hart's diocese renewed his licence this summer even though he had moved to India, changed his name to Ananda and daily blesses a congregation of Hindus with fire previously offered up to Nagar, the snake god. He also "recites Gayatri Mantram with the same devotion with which he celebrates the Eucharist", according to The Hindu, India's national newspaper. The Hindu this week pictures him offering prayers to an idol of the elephant god Ganesh in front of his house. However, he still believes he is fit to celebrate as an Anglican priest and plans to do so when he returns to Britain.... "My philosophical position is that all religions are cultural constructs," he said"
Death to cleanskins! "Shaving less than once a day could increase a man's risk of having a stroke by around 70%, researchers have found. The link between needing to shave infrequently and stroke risk emerged from a 20-year study of over 2,000 men aged 45-59 in Caerphilly, south Wales. At the time the study began, in the late 70s, the prevailing trend was to be clean-shaven, so infrequent grooming is unlikely to be due to a desire for designer stubble. Researchers from the University of Bristol say it is more likely to be because a man needed to shave infrequently, due to having less testosterone in their bodies."
CHRISTIAN EVANGELISM NOW A HATE CRIME IN BRITAIN
How long will it be before Christianity becomes illegal in Britain? This is no longer the utterly absurd and offensive question that on first blush it would appear to be. An evangelical Christian campaigner, Stephen Green was arrested and charged last weekend with using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour. So what was this behaviour? Merely trying peacefully to hand out leaflets at a gay rally in Cardiff. So what was printed on those leaflets that was so threatening, abusive or insulting that it attracted the full force of the law? Why, none other than the majestic words of the 1611 King James Bible.
The problem was that they were those bits of the Bible which forbid homosexuality. The leaflets also urged homosexuals to "turn from your sins and you will be saved". But to the secular priests of the human rights culture, the only sin is to say that homosexuality is a sin.
Admittedly, Mr Green is not everyone's cup of tea; other Christians regard him as extreme. But our society is now so upside-down that, by doing nothing more than upholding a fundamental tenet of Christianity, he was treated like a criminal. And yet at the same time, the police are still studiously refusing to act against Islamic zealots abusing British freedom to preach hatred and incitement against the West.
Prejudice:
The Bible is the moral code that underpins our civilisation. Yet the logic of the police action against Mr Green surely leads ultimately to the inescapable conclusion that the Bible itself is "hate speech" and must be banned. This bizarre state of affairs has arisen thanks to our human rights culture which automatically champions minorities against the majority. As a result, no one can say anything disobliging about a minority without being accused of prejudice or discrimination.
The problem for Christianity is that it holds that homosexuality is wrong. This, however, it is no longer allowed to say because it treats a minority practice as sinful. So it can no longer uphold a central tenet of its own faith without being accused of prejudice. This dilemma is currently tearing apart the Church of England itself. But it is also turning our whole notion of justice on its head. Author Lynette Burrows received a warning from the Metropolitan Police merely for suggesting that gay people did not make ideal adoptive parents. The former leader of the Muslim Council of Britain, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, also had his collar felt by police after he said that homosexuality was harmful.
Notably, in his case the matter was swiftly dropped. If there's one thing that terrifies our PC police even more than being called homophobic, it's being called Islamophobic - even though Islamic fundamentalism poses a real threat to the human rights of gay people.
If this wasn't all so frightening, it would be hilarious. Christians, by contrast, get very different treatment. An elderly evangelical preacher, Harry Hammond, was convicted of a public order offence after he held up a poster calling for an end to homosexuality, lesbianism and immorality. Although he had been the victim of a physical attack when a crowd poured soil and water over him, he alone was prosecuted.
And Lancashire pensioners Joe and Helen Roberts were interrogated by police for 80 minutes about their 'homophobic' views after they had merely asked their local council to display Christian literature alongside gay rights leaflets in civic buildings.
Bullying:
Christianity is fast becoming the creed that dare not speak its name. It is being written out of the national script by ideologues seeking to hasten its disappearance. Yesterday, the Mayor of London Ken Livingstone said in a radio interview that Britain was "no longer a Christian country" because people no longer went to church. Local authorities and government bodies are systematically bullying Christianity out of existence by refusing to fund Christian voluntary groups on the grounds that to be Christian means that they are not committed to 'diversity'. Thus local and central government refused to replicate the vocational training provided by the Highfields Happy Hens Centre in Derbyshire for young offenders and pupils excluded from school despite its impressive record of success, simply because it was run with a clear Christian ethos.
Norfolk council objected to the inclusion of the word 'Christian' in the constitution of Barnabas House in King's Lynn, Norfolk, which houses homeless young men. And the Housing Corporation, the major funder of Romford YMCA in Essex which looks after hundreds of needy young people, objected to the fact that only Christians were board members - which meant, it said, that the YMCA was not capable of 'diversity', even though it was open to all faiths and none. The 'diversity' agenda, in other words, is a fig-leaf for an attack on Christianity.
And to cap it all, we can no longer rely on our future monarch to hold the line, since Prince Charles has said that when he becomes King he will no longer be Defender of the Faith but "defender of faith". But Christianity is still the official religion of this country. All its institutions, its history and its culture are suffused with it; Britain would lose its identity, its values and its cohesion without it. But minority rights are now being wielded against it like a wrecking ball.
What started as a commendable desire to ban hatred of the gay minority has morphed into a hatred of the Christian majority. Behaviour which was previously considered to transgress the moral norms of the Bible has now instead become the norm - and it is biblical values that are treated as beyond the pale of acceptable behaviour. This is no accident. The sacred doctrine of human rights - which explicitly sets itself up as the religion for a godless age - is the means by which secularism is steadily attacking the Christian roots of our civilisation, on the basis that religion is inherently unenlightened, prejudiced and divisive.
Christianity has been dethroned as this country's governing creed on the basis that equality demands equal status for minority faiths and secularism. As a result, it is being marginalised as no more than a quaint cultural curiosity.
Offensive:
It is a process before which the Church of England has long been on its knees, going with the flow of moral and cultural collapse in accordance with the doctrine of multiculturalism - and then wondering why its churches are so empty, while those of uncompromising evangelicals such as Stephen Green are packed to the rafters. As a result, Christianity is being steadily removed from the public sphere.
Various councils have banned Christmas on the grounds that it is "too Christian" and therefore "offensive" to people of other faiths, and are replacing it with meaningless "winter festivals". This attack on Christianity is not merely something that seems straight out of Alice In Wonderland. It is not merely a threat to freedom of speech and religious expression. It is a fundamental onslaught on the national identity and bedrock values of this country - and as such will destroy those freedoms which Christianity itself first created.
Source
How long will it be before Christianity becomes illegal in Britain? This is no longer the utterly absurd and offensive question that on first blush it would appear to be. An evangelical Christian campaigner, Stephen Green was arrested and charged last weekend with using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour. So what was this behaviour? Merely trying peacefully to hand out leaflets at a gay rally in Cardiff. So what was printed on those leaflets that was so threatening, abusive or insulting that it attracted the full force of the law? Why, none other than the majestic words of the 1611 King James Bible.
The problem was that they were those bits of the Bible which forbid homosexuality. The leaflets also urged homosexuals to "turn from your sins and you will be saved". But to the secular priests of the human rights culture, the only sin is to say that homosexuality is a sin.
Admittedly, Mr Green is not everyone's cup of tea; other Christians regard him as extreme. But our society is now so upside-down that, by doing nothing more than upholding a fundamental tenet of Christianity, he was treated like a criminal. And yet at the same time, the police are still studiously refusing to act against Islamic zealots abusing British freedom to preach hatred and incitement against the West.
Prejudice:
The Bible is the moral code that underpins our civilisation. Yet the logic of the police action against Mr Green surely leads ultimately to the inescapable conclusion that the Bible itself is "hate speech" and must be banned. This bizarre state of affairs has arisen thanks to our human rights culture which automatically champions minorities against the majority. As a result, no one can say anything disobliging about a minority without being accused of prejudice or discrimination.
The problem for Christianity is that it holds that homosexuality is wrong. This, however, it is no longer allowed to say because it treats a minority practice as sinful. So it can no longer uphold a central tenet of its own faith without being accused of prejudice. This dilemma is currently tearing apart the Church of England itself. But it is also turning our whole notion of justice on its head. Author Lynette Burrows received a warning from the Metropolitan Police merely for suggesting that gay people did not make ideal adoptive parents. The former leader of the Muslim Council of Britain, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, also had his collar felt by police after he said that homosexuality was harmful.
Notably, in his case the matter was swiftly dropped. If there's one thing that terrifies our PC police even more than being called homophobic, it's being called Islamophobic - even though Islamic fundamentalism poses a real threat to the human rights of gay people.
If this wasn't all so frightening, it would be hilarious. Christians, by contrast, get very different treatment. An elderly evangelical preacher, Harry Hammond, was convicted of a public order offence after he held up a poster calling for an end to homosexuality, lesbianism and immorality. Although he had been the victim of a physical attack when a crowd poured soil and water over him, he alone was prosecuted.
And Lancashire pensioners Joe and Helen Roberts were interrogated by police for 80 minutes about their 'homophobic' views after they had merely asked their local council to display Christian literature alongside gay rights leaflets in civic buildings.
Bullying:
Christianity is fast becoming the creed that dare not speak its name. It is being written out of the national script by ideologues seeking to hasten its disappearance. Yesterday, the Mayor of London Ken Livingstone said in a radio interview that Britain was "no longer a Christian country" because people no longer went to church. Local authorities and government bodies are systematically bullying Christianity out of existence by refusing to fund Christian voluntary groups on the grounds that to be Christian means that they are not committed to 'diversity'. Thus local and central government refused to replicate the vocational training provided by the Highfields Happy Hens Centre in Derbyshire for young offenders and pupils excluded from school despite its impressive record of success, simply because it was run with a clear Christian ethos.
Norfolk council objected to the inclusion of the word 'Christian' in the constitution of Barnabas House in King's Lynn, Norfolk, which houses homeless young men. And the Housing Corporation, the major funder of Romford YMCA in Essex which looks after hundreds of needy young people, objected to the fact that only Christians were board members - which meant, it said, that the YMCA was not capable of 'diversity', even though it was open to all faiths and none. The 'diversity' agenda, in other words, is a fig-leaf for an attack on Christianity.
And to cap it all, we can no longer rely on our future monarch to hold the line, since Prince Charles has said that when he becomes King he will no longer be Defender of the Faith but "defender of faith". But Christianity is still the official religion of this country. All its institutions, its history and its culture are suffused with it; Britain would lose its identity, its values and its cohesion without it. But minority rights are now being wielded against it like a wrecking ball.
What started as a commendable desire to ban hatred of the gay minority has morphed into a hatred of the Christian majority. Behaviour which was previously considered to transgress the moral norms of the Bible has now instead become the norm - and it is biblical values that are treated as beyond the pale of acceptable behaviour. This is no accident. The sacred doctrine of human rights - which explicitly sets itself up as the religion for a godless age - is the means by which secularism is steadily attacking the Christian roots of our civilisation, on the basis that religion is inherently unenlightened, prejudiced and divisive.
Christianity has been dethroned as this country's governing creed on the basis that equality demands equal status for minority faiths and secularism. As a result, it is being marginalised as no more than a quaint cultural curiosity.
Offensive:
It is a process before which the Church of England has long been on its knees, going with the flow of moral and cultural collapse in accordance with the doctrine of multiculturalism - and then wondering why its churches are so empty, while those of uncompromising evangelicals such as Stephen Green are packed to the rafters. As a result, Christianity is being steadily removed from the public sphere.
Various councils have banned Christmas on the grounds that it is "too Christian" and therefore "offensive" to people of other faiths, and are replacing it with meaningless "winter festivals". This attack on Christianity is not merely something that seems straight out of Alice In Wonderland. It is not merely a threat to freedom of speech and religious expression. It is a fundamental onslaught on the national identity and bedrock values of this country - and as such will destroy those freedoms which Christianity itself first created.
Source
Saturday, September 09, 2006
BACK TO BASICS IN ENGLISH GRADE SCHOOLS
Children in England will have to master their times tables by the age of 8, a year earlier than at present, under reforms of the way children are taught "the three Rs" in primary school. Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, said that teachers would also be expected to return to a back-to-basics method of teaching children to read, known as phonics.
The measures, which aim to speed pupils' progress in maths and English, also feature more teaching of mental arithmetic, tighter restrictions on pupils' use of calculators and a new focus on maths as a tool for solving problems encountered in everyday life. There will also be renewed emphasis on improving children's listening and speaking skills. The measures have been produced in response to ministerial concerns that primary pupils' attainment in maths and English, having increased steadily since the introduction of the literacy hour in 1998 and a numeracy framework in 1999, have hit a plateau.
Since 1998 the proportion of children reaching the expected standard, Level 4, has risen from 63 to 79 per cent in English and from 62 to 76 per cent in maths. However, this still leaves more than 20 per cent of children trailing. And figures published two weeks ago showed that the Government had missed its key targets for maths and English results in primary schools. "More needs to be done to address the one in five 11-year-olds still not reaching the standard required of their age in literacy," Mr Johnson said.
There is also a strong feeling among ministers that, in maths, targets are not exacting enough and should be brought forward by a year, to enable children to tackle more complex calculations by the age of 8 rather than 10.
The decision to focus the teaching of reading on synthetic phonics, which involves teaching children individual letter sounds before blending the sounds to form whole words, comes after recommendations early this year from Jim Rose, the former director of inspection at Ofsted. The emphasis now will be on ensuring that children gain basic word-recognition skills by the age of 7, before focusing more fully on comprehension. Children should be able to write their name by the age of 5, compose simple sentences using capital letters and full stops by 6, and write compound sentences and use question marks and commas to separate items on a list by 7. By 8 they should be able to use adjectives, verbs and nouns for precision and impact, and use exclamation and speech marks. At 9 they should be able to use commas to mark clauses and use the possessive apostrophe.
In maths, the emphasis will be on the quick recall of times tables to enable children to move on to more complex mental arithmetic with confidence.
The measures, which will be distributed to schools next month, will be accompanied by an investment of 230 million pounds of professional support for primary head teachers and subject heads in schools. Nick Gibb, the Conservative schools spokesman, welcomed putting synthetic phonics at the heart of teaching reading in the early years of primary school. But Sarah Teather, for the Liberal Democrats, called the reforms too prescriptive.
Source
Children in England will have to master their times tables by the age of 8, a year earlier than at present, under reforms of the way children are taught "the three Rs" in primary school. Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, said that teachers would also be expected to return to a back-to-basics method of teaching children to read, known as phonics.
The measures, which aim to speed pupils' progress in maths and English, also feature more teaching of mental arithmetic, tighter restrictions on pupils' use of calculators and a new focus on maths as a tool for solving problems encountered in everyday life. There will also be renewed emphasis on improving children's listening and speaking skills. The measures have been produced in response to ministerial concerns that primary pupils' attainment in maths and English, having increased steadily since the introduction of the literacy hour in 1998 and a numeracy framework in 1999, have hit a plateau.
Since 1998 the proportion of children reaching the expected standard, Level 4, has risen from 63 to 79 per cent in English and from 62 to 76 per cent in maths. However, this still leaves more than 20 per cent of children trailing. And figures published two weeks ago showed that the Government had missed its key targets for maths and English results in primary schools. "More needs to be done to address the one in five 11-year-olds still not reaching the standard required of their age in literacy," Mr Johnson said.
There is also a strong feeling among ministers that, in maths, targets are not exacting enough and should be brought forward by a year, to enable children to tackle more complex calculations by the age of 8 rather than 10.
The decision to focus the teaching of reading on synthetic phonics, which involves teaching children individual letter sounds before blending the sounds to form whole words, comes after recommendations early this year from Jim Rose, the former director of inspection at Ofsted. The emphasis now will be on ensuring that children gain basic word-recognition skills by the age of 7, before focusing more fully on comprehension. Children should be able to write their name by the age of 5, compose simple sentences using capital letters and full stops by 6, and write compound sentences and use question marks and commas to separate items on a list by 7. By 8 they should be able to use adjectives, verbs and nouns for precision and impact, and use exclamation and speech marks. At 9 they should be able to use commas to mark clauses and use the possessive apostrophe.
In maths, the emphasis will be on the quick recall of times tables to enable children to move on to more complex mental arithmetic with confidence.
The measures, which will be distributed to schools next month, will be accompanied by an investment of 230 million pounds of professional support for primary head teachers and subject heads in schools. Nick Gibb, the Conservative schools spokesman, welcomed putting synthetic phonics at the heart of teaching reading in the early years of primary school. But Sarah Teather, for the Liberal Democrats, called the reforms too prescriptive.
Source
BRITISH BUSINESS CATERS TO GREENIE FADS
Shoppers will soon be able to compost ready-meal packs and fruit and vegetable wrappers alongside grass clippings and food waste as shops try to woo green-minded customers. Sainsbury's fired the latest salvo in the war to be the most environment-friendly supermarket today when it made available 500 of its ready-meal brands and organic fruit and vegetables in compostable packing. The change - highly likely to be followed by the other retailers - will remove the millions of plastic bags and trays that are currently dumped in landfill sites and cut thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, which contribute to global warming.
The offensive is also part of the supermarkets' drive to boost their green credentials. Where once these companies attracted customers by slashing prices on staple goods and petrol, they are now determined to attract the growing number of ethical shoppers. Asda has already moved its food distribution from road to rail to cut down emissions and Tesco, which is following suit, has a scheme that awards customers loyalty points for recycling or using fewer carrier bags.
Supermarket bosses are also keen to woo the estimated one in three of households interested in home composting. A bottle-green logo of an arrow piercing an apple is to appear on all Sainsbury compostable packs, and this could be taken up by companies to highlight the green message. The packs will be made from maize, sugar cane or starch packaging, which breaks down into carbon dioxide and water. This provides organic material that is excellent for bringing out moisture in the soil. If the compostable packs are placed in compost pile in a sunny position in the garden, they may break down in a fortnight. Generally the bigger the heap, the faster the process. Gardeners have been particularly keen on composting this summer because of the drought and the hosepipe bans.
The initiative may force the Government to review its waste strategy. Today, councils have an incentive to collect green waste rather than to promote home composting. They have been told to recycle the highest possible tonnages, which has resulted in green waste collection becoming the fastest growing form of recycling, growing to 400,000 tonnes last year from 20,000 tonnes in 1997. Experts have estimated that the green wheelie bins have generated an extra 300lb of green waste per household a year when most of it could easily be used on a garden. The Waste Resources Action Programme, which advises ministers on waste, believes it should promote home composting.
Almost half of all organic fruit and vegetables will be sold in compostable packs at Sainsbury's from this week, rising to 80 per cent by next January. All ready meal packs will be compostable within a year. Justin King, Sainsbury's chief executive, called on rival supermarkets to follow suit and for the Government to give every home a free compost bin. He said: "Our customers tell us that food packaging is extremely important to them. We're confident that putting 500 types of our food in compostable packaging will significantly help to reduce the packaging that most threatens the environment."
Jane Gilbert, of the Composting Association, said that she hoped every household would now be given information on how to compost at home. She said that there were no health problems with compost piles of food or compostable packaging but that if compost piles were too small it could take six months for waste to break down into organic matter. A good average size for a household compost bin was about a metre squared, she said.
Source
Shoppers will soon be able to compost ready-meal packs and fruit and vegetable wrappers alongside grass clippings and food waste as shops try to woo green-minded customers. Sainsbury's fired the latest salvo in the war to be the most environment-friendly supermarket today when it made available 500 of its ready-meal brands and organic fruit and vegetables in compostable packing. The change - highly likely to be followed by the other retailers - will remove the millions of plastic bags and trays that are currently dumped in landfill sites and cut thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, which contribute to global warming.
The offensive is also part of the supermarkets' drive to boost their green credentials. Where once these companies attracted customers by slashing prices on staple goods and petrol, they are now determined to attract the growing number of ethical shoppers. Asda has already moved its food distribution from road to rail to cut down emissions and Tesco, which is following suit, has a scheme that awards customers loyalty points for recycling or using fewer carrier bags.
Supermarket bosses are also keen to woo the estimated one in three of households interested in home composting. A bottle-green logo of an arrow piercing an apple is to appear on all Sainsbury compostable packs, and this could be taken up by companies to highlight the green message. The packs will be made from maize, sugar cane or starch packaging, which breaks down into carbon dioxide and water. This provides organic material that is excellent for bringing out moisture in the soil. If the compostable packs are placed in compost pile in a sunny position in the garden, they may break down in a fortnight. Generally the bigger the heap, the faster the process. Gardeners have been particularly keen on composting this summer because of the drought and the hosepipe bans.
The initiative may force the Government to review its waste strategy. Today, councils have an incentive to collect green waste rather than to promote home composting. They have been told to recycle the highest possible tonnages, which has resulted in green waste collection becoming the fastest growing form of recycling, growing to 400,000 tonnes last year from 20,000 tonnes in 1997. Experts have estimated that the green wheelie bins have generated an extra 300lb of green waste per household a year when most of it could easily be used on a garden. The Waste Resources Action Programme, which advises ministers on waste, believes it should promote home composting.
Almost half of all organic fruit and vegetables will be sold in compostable packs at Sainsbury's from this week, rising to 80 per cent by next January. All ready meal packs will be compostable within a year. Justin King, Sainsbury's chief executive, called on rival supermarkets to follow suit and for the Government to give every home a free compost bin. He said: "Our customers tell us that food packaging is extremely important to them. We're confident that putting 500 types of our food in compostable packaging will significantly help to reduce the packaging that most threatens the environment."
Jane Gilbert, of the Composting Association, said that she hoped every household would now be given information on how to compost at home. She said that there were no health problems with compost piles of food or compostable packaging but that if compost piles were too small it could take six months for waste to break down into organic matter. A good average size for a household compost bin was about a metre squared, she said.
Source
Know-all British chef fails to convince the kids: "Eighteen months after successfully campaigning for healthier school meals, the celebrity chef finds in his new programme that the national take-up of school dinners has fallen by 2 per cent. Instead, children are eating more packed lunches - most bursting with crisps, biscuits and fizzy drinks. The answer, says Oliver, is clear. Parents must stop sending their children to school with junk food. Although many parents work, he also urges them to cook a Sunday roast or breakfast once a week. "I've spent two years being PC about parents, but now is the time to say, `If you're giving your young children fizzy drinks you're an a*******, you are a t*****. If you give them bags of crisps you're an idiot,' " he tells viewers. Oliver says he would like there to be a ban on all packed lunches but does not expect to see that happen. While they exist, however, he says parents could make them healthier. "I have seen kids of the ages of 4 or 5, the same age as mine, open their lunchbox and inside is a cold, half-eaten Mc- Donald's, multiple packets of crisps and a can of Red Bull. We laugh and then want to cry," he said after the screening. He said that if a teacher told parents that their child was very tired at the end of the day, it was wrong for parents to think the solution was a can of Red Bull because "it gives you wings". "You might as well give them a line of coke," he argued. By the end of the documentary, Oliver has extracted a further 240 million pounds until 2011 from Tony Blair, a voluntary ban on junk food advertising for children, which he denounces as "a bit wet", and a commitment for a kitchen- rebuilding fund."
How the Church of England preaches the gospel of Christ: "A priest with the Church of England who converted to Hinduism has been allowed to continue to officiate as a cleric. The Rev David Hart's diocese renewed his licence this summer even though he had moved to India, changed his name to Ananda and daily blesses a congregation of Hindus with fire previously offered up to Nagar, the snake god. He also "recites Gayatri Mantram with the same devotion with which he celebrates the Eucharist", according to The Hindu, India's national newspaper. The Hindu this week pictures him offering prayers to an idol of the elephant god Ganesh in front of his house. However, he still believes he is fit to celebrate as an Anglican priest and plans to do so when he returns to Britain.... "My philosophical position is that all religions are cultural constructs," he said"
Friday, September 08, 2006
Growing antisemitism in Britain now recognized: "A sinister alliance has developed between far-Right groups and Islamist extremists who are united in their hatred of Jews, Israel and Zionism and are contributing to increasing anti-Semitism in Britain. A report criticises police forces for failing adequately to monitor anti-Jewish incidents. It calls on the Crown Prosecution Service to investigate why fewer than one in ten reported incidents leads to a prosecution. The report was published after The Times revealed that conflict in the Middle East had led to a surge in anti-Semitism. It says that Britain's 300,000 Jews are "more anxious and more vulnerable to abuse and attack than at any other time for a generation or longer". It refers to "anti-Semitic discourse", defined as a "widespread change in mood and tone when Jews are discussed, whether in print or broadcast, at universities, or in public or social settings". But it expresses particular concern about a new, "symbiotic" relationship between the traditional perpetrators of anti-Semitism - the far Right and some Islamist extremists - who are united in their hatred of all things Jewish... Of particular concern to the inquiry was anti-Semitism on campuses, with literature being distributed that called for the killing of Jews and the destruction of Israel."
RAIL COMEBACK IN BRITAIN
It is being justified in terms of the Global Warming religion in order to make the British government bow down but the effect of reducing road congestion should be desirable to all. Mind you, turning the railway tracks into dedicated roadfreight highways would be infinitely more beneficial but that would require a government willing to REALLY upset the status quo
An unprecedented increase in freight trains will rid the motorway of 12,000 lorries a day but risks causing a decade of disruption for rail passengers. Network Rail, the rail infrastructure company, said yesterday that it will remove bottlenecks from its network to allow mile-long goods trains to operate between ports, power stations and distribution centres. It will also create room for an extra 120 freight trains a day by 2015, with bulk goods, such as imported coal, fuel and building materials, expected to fill much of the extra space. Each train will be able to carry 2,000 tonnes, the equivalent of 100 lorry loads. The boom in freight will reduce congestion on the roads but rail passengers may face delays from engineering works and are also more likely to find themselves stuck behind slow-moving freight trains.
Announcing Network Rail's frieght strategy for the next ten years, John Armitt, its chief executive, said: "We must maximise what rail can offer because otherwise we will end up with a lot more trucks on the road." He said that the increase in rail freight capacity would cost up to 500 million pounds, which would have to be funded by the Government. Ministers are committed to expanding rail freight but have said that decisions on the future level of rail spending would be made next summer.
In addition to laying extra lines on routes that have only a single track, Network Rail said that it would widen dozens of bridges and tunnels to allow trains to carry the standard international size of freight container. It also promised to lengthen passing loops - the parallel stretches of track where freight trains wait while being overtaken by faster passenger services - on the East and West Coast Main Lines to accommodate longer trains.
Supermarkets have begun the switch back to rail, to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions caused by distribution and to improve their public image. Last month Tesco started moving non-perishable goods by train from the Midlands to its main Scottish distribution centre as part of a plan to save 4.5 million road miles a year and to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 6,000 tonnes. It joins Asda, which moves its goods from southern ports to northern depots by rail. Other companies, including Sainsbury, Toyota and Nissan, have also announced plans to carry their less time-sensitive goods by rail, and even mail trains, which were all but dead in January 2004, have made a comeback.
EWS, Britain's largest rail freight company, said that trains produced a tenth of the harmful emissions of trucks per tonne carried. Network Rail proposes to increase the total weight of goods carried by train by 30 per cent by 2016. The growth will be higher when the long distance travelled by rail freight is taken into account. EWS predicts that the number of tonne-kilometres - the industry's preferred measurement, which multiplies the number of tonnes by the number of kilometres travelled - will be 50 per cent up on current levels by 2015. That would restore rail freight to the level last achieved in the 1950s, when steam trains still dominated the network Graham Smith, EWS's planning director, said that the growth would be achieved only if the Government addressed the unfair advantage enjoyed by road hauliers. "We welcome Network Rail's vision for growth, but it will not happen unless the costs of using the rail infrastructure are made more affordable," he said. "We are being undercut by road hauliers coming from Europe, where they buy cheaper fuel and pay lower wages to Eastern European drivers."
EWS is lobbying against the Rail Regulator's proposal to double track access charges paid by freight operators. It said that it may have to cancel all goods trains through the Channel Tunnel from November 30, when the public subsidy for cross-Channel rail freight ceases. EWS is facing additional costs of 8,000 pounds a train for using the tunnel, but says that it can afford only 500 pounds a train.
Mr Armitt said that Network Rail's predictions assumed Britain's continued reliance on imported coal for power generation in the next ten years. "Even if we see a new nuclear programme, that will take time to deliver and may only deliver 20 to 25 per cent of generating capacity, so there will still be big demand for coal," he said.
Source
It is being justified in terms of the Global Warming religion in order to make the British government bow down but the effect of reducing road congestion should be desirable to all. Mind you, turning the railway tracks into dedicated roadfreight highways would be infinitely more beneficial but that would require a government willing to REALLY upset the status quo
An unprecedented increase in freight trains will rid the motorway of 12,000 lorries a day but risks causing a decade of disruption for rail passengers. Network Rail, the rail infrastructure company, said yesterday that it will remove bottlenecks from its network to allow mile-long goods trains to operate between ports, power stations and distribution centres. It will also create room for an extra 120 freight trains a day by 2015, with bulk goods, such as imported coal, fuel and building materials, expected to fill much of the extra space. Each train will be able to carry 2,000 tonnes, the equivalent of 100 lorry loads. The boom in freight will reduce congestion on the roads but rail passengers may face delays from engineering works and are also more likely to find themselves stuck behind slow-moving freight trains.
Announcing Network Rail's frieght strategy for the next ten years, John Armitt, its chief executive, said: "We must maximise what rail can offer because otherwise we will end up with a lot more trucks on the road." He said that the increase in rail freight capacity would cost up to 500 million pounds, which would have to be funded by the Government. Ministers are committed to expanding rail freight but have said that decisions on the future level of rail spending would be made next summer.
In addition to laying extra lines on routes that have only a single track, Network Rail said that it would widen dozens of bridges and tunnels to allow trains to carry the standard international size of freight container. It also promised to lengthen passing loops - the parallel stretches of track where freight trains wait while being overtaken by faster passenger services - on the East and West Coast Main Lines to accommodate longer trains.
Supermarkets have begun the switch back to rail, to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions caused by distribution and to improve their public image. Last month Tesco started moving non-perishable goods by train from the Midlands to its main Scottish distribution centre as part of a plan to save 4.5 million road miles a year and to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 6,000 tonnes. It joins Asda, which moves its goods from southern ports to northern depots by rail. Other companies, including Sainsbury, Toyota and Nissan, have also announced plans to carry their less time-sensitive goods by rail, and even mail trains, which were all but dead in January 2004, have made a comeback.
EWS, Britain's largest rail freight company, said that trains produced a tenth of the harmful emissions of trucks per tonne carried. Network Rail proposes to increase the total weight of goods carried by train by 30 per cent by 2016. The growth will be higher when the long distance travelled by rail freight is taken into account. EWS predicts that the number of tonne-kilometres - the industry's preferred measurement, which multiplies the number of tonnes by the number of kilometres travelled - will be 50 per cent up on current levels by 2015. That would restore rail freight to the level last achieved in the 1950s, when steam trains still dominated the network Graham Smith, EWS's planning director, said that the growth would be achieved only if the Government addressed the unfair advantage enjoyed by road hauliers. "We welcome Network Rail's vision for growth, but it will not happen unless the costs of using the rail infrastructure are made more affordable," he said. "We are being undercut by road hauliers coming from Europe, where they buy cheaper fuel and pay lower wages to Eastern European drivers."
EWS is lobbying against the Rail Regulator's proposal to double track access charges paid by freight operators. It said that it may have to cancel all goods trains through the Channel Tunnel from November 30, when the public subsidy for cross-Channel rail freight ceases. EWS is facing additional costs of 8,000 pounds a train for using the tunnel, but says that it can afford only 500 pounds a train.
Mr Armitt said that Network Rail's predictions assumed Britain's continued reliance on imported coal for power generation in the next ten years. "Even if we see a new nuclear programme, that will take time to deliver and may only deliver 20 to 25 per cent of generating capacity, so there will still be big demand for coal," he said.
Source
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Dire prognosis for Britain's health software revamp
Lorenzo, the long-promised patient record system at the heart of Britain's 10 billion pound ($25 billion) National Health Service IT upgrade, has been exposed as foilware, with iSoft having "no believable plan" for completing development. The Lorenzo system was initially scheduled for release in March 2004, but there has been a series of delays and no British hospital trust is yet using the new software. ISoft Australia is supplying the same products for state health projects, including Victoria's $323 million HealthSmart.
The latest delivery date is 2008, but a review in February by CSC and Accenture - iSoft's partners in three NHS regional rollouts - found the date to be far too optimistic. Further, a scathing report, seen by The Australian, warns that Lorenzo may not achieve the performance necessary to support a system used by about 600,000 NHS healthcare staff and 30 million patients. "No evidence was seen for the development or testing of technical procedures that would be required for operation and maintenance of the live system," the report says. "This is the main risk to the successful delivery of a fit-for-purpose system based on the Lorenzo framework and products to the local service providers. "Technical requirements and development processes have only been considered from the bottom up," the report says. "There has been no holistic view of the behaviour of a complete system built upon Lorenzo."
The report says it's likely that large amounts of development already completed will need to be reworked during testing, "and it's anticipated other significant performance and operating issues will be encountered".
ISoft's share price has been in freefall since the start of the year, when the NHS began applying pressure over delays, and reports of accounting irregularities emerged. The meltdown wiped 90 per cent off the company's value, and was only arrested when its bankers agreed to a brief reprieve. ISoft announced a shock loss of almost 400 million, and now faces investigation by financial regulators. Last week, Accenture was reportedly trying to negotiate an exit from the NHS's Connecting for Health program, while CSC has agreed to take over management of Lorenzo, with an option to take direct control "in the event iSoft is unable to meet its obligations".
While iSoft has been spruiking Lorenzo's capabilities for years, its latest annual report reveals that product rollout is currently limited to early adopter sites in Germany and Singapore. "We expect to see the start of Lorenzo user functionality in Britain from late 2007 onwards," iSoft says. "Our activities in Britain remain dominated by the provision of services around a strong installed base of existing clients. "Work under the NHS is building up, with the initial delivery of existing products such as iPatient Manager (iPM) and iClinical Manager (iCM) into many NHS health trusts. Isoft says existing systems are being packaged with core elements of Lorenzo technology, enabling those systems to communicate with the new national network. "Existing applications will be upgraded to Lorenzo functionality from late 2007. This will provide customers with a phased, low-risk migration of their systems," iSoft says.
British Conservative MP Richard Bacon says iSoft's system is way behind schedule, has major flaws and there are serious doubts that it can be made to work before the program is due to be completed in 2010. Bacon describes iPM and iCM as antiquated, and says recent installations by hospital trusts "in the expectation that a working Lorenzo system will be delivered" may be a massive waste of money and effort. "Why are iPM and iCM being installed instead of the Lorenzo system promised and demonstrated three years ago," Bacon says. "They seem very unstable, and there is a new horror story every week. "We could end up with very poor systems installed and no upgrade path."
Similar questions are also being asked here. Victorian Health Minister Bronwyn Pike recently told the public accounts and estimates committee that Victoria was contracted for the iPM product only, although the contract "requires iSoft to make new developments and product releases available for no additional cost". "This will include the new Lorenzo product it is currently developing, within the bounds of the patient and client management functionality," she says. Department secretary Patricia Faulkner told the committee: "we have obviously been aware that iSoft is struggling with its partners in Britain to deliver its products". "They are beyond the range of what we have contracted for".
Shadow health minister Helen Shardey says the problems with iSoft's capacity to deliver were known when the contract was awarded. David More, an independent consultant and e-health blogger (aushealthit.blogspot.com), says iSoft's failure appears inevitable. "In November last year I had the opportunity to review, in detail, the hospital information system being offered to an international client for a 300-bed tertiary hospital," More says on his blog. "It was clear at the time that the Lorenzo suite was little more than foilware. The system was a concocted blend of old and new components, was obviously unintegrated and lacked any common utility in its user interface. "Needless to say, I recommended no further engagement be had with iSoft and that alternative providers should be considered."
More says NSW Health should not rely on its escrow arrangements with iSoft to protect the rollout of patient administration systems in three area health services this year. "There is no point holding obsolete software code in escrow," he says. "All that does is provide a false sense of security that something can be done when iSoft fails. "Well, maybe it can be used to fix the occasional critical bug while buying time to identify new software to replace the doomed system."
More says organisations in NSW and Victoria that purchased iSoft on the basis of future promises "have clearly let their respective health systems down very badly". ISoft Australia shrugs off the problems engulfing its parent company. Local communications chief Laurie Giles says the local position is "fundamentally unchanged". A three-day iSoft Healthcare Forum will take place as planned at Sanctuary Cove, Queensland, later this month.
Meanwhile, an industry insider says the real risk for Australia lies in the efforts and focus iSoft will have to invest in the NHS project. "So they will be less focused on projects in Australia, which represent only 10 per cent of their total revenues," he says. "They are also under a lot of pressure to cut costs, and it's hard to develop new products when you're cutting costs."
Source
Lorenzo, the long-promised patient record system at the heart of Britain's 10 billion pound ($25 billion) National Health Service IT upgrade, has been exposed as foilware, with iSoft having "no believable plan" for completing development. The Lorenzo system was initially scheduled for release in March 2004, but there has been a series of delays and no British hospital trust is yet using the new software. ISoft Australia is supplying the same products for state health projects, including Victoria's $323 million HealthSmart.
The latest delivery date is 2008, but a review in February by CSC and Accenture - iSoft's partners in three NHS regional rollouts - found the date to be far too optimistic. Further, a scathing report, seen by The Australian, warns that Lorenzo may not achieve the performance necessary to support a system used by about 600,000 NHS healthcare staff and 30 million patients. "No evidence was seen for the development or testing of technical procedures that would be required for operation and maintenance of the live system," the report says. "This is the main risk to the successful delivery of a fit-for-purpose system based on the Lorenzo framework and products to the local service providers. "Technical requirements and development processes have only been considered from the bottom up," the report says. "There has been no holistic view of the behaviour of a complete system built upon Lorenzo."
The report says it's likely that large amounts of development already completed will need to be reworked during testing, "and it's anticipated other significant performance and operating issues will be encountered".
ISoft's share price has been in freefall since the start of the year, when the NHS began applying pressure over delays, and reports of accounting irregularities emerged. The meltdown wiped 90 per cent off the company's value, and was only arrested when its bankers agreed to a brief reprieve. ISoft announced a shock loss of almost 400 million, and now faces investigation by financial regulators. Last week, Accenture was reportedly trying to negotiate an exit from the NHS's Connecting for Health program, while CSC has agreed to take over management of Lorenzo, with an option to take direct control "in the event iSoft is unable to meet its obligations".
While iSoft has been spruiking Lorenzo's capabilities for years, its latest annual report reveals that product rollout is currently limited to early adopter sites in Germany and Singapore. "We expect to see the start of Lorenzo user functionality in Britain from late 2007 onwards," iSoft says. "Our activities in Britain remain dominated by the provision of services around a strong installed base of existing clients. "Work under the NHS is building up, with the initial delivery of existing products such as iPatient Manager (iPM) and iClinical Manager (iCM) into many NHS health trusts. Isoft says existing systems are being packaged with core elements of Lorenzo technology, enabling those systems to communicate with the new national network. "Existing applications will be upgraded to Lorenzo functionality from late 2007. This will provide customers with a phased, low-risk migration of their systems," iSoft says.
British Conservative MP Richard Bacon says iSoft's system is way behind schedule, has major flaws and there are serious doubts that it can be made to work before the program is due to be completed in 2010. Bacon describes iPM and iCM as antiquated, and says recent installations by hospital trusts "in the expectation that a working Lorenzo system will be delivered" may be a massive waste of money and effort. "Why are iPM and iCM being installed instead of the Lorenzo system promised and demonstrated three years ago," Bacon says. "They seem very unstable, and there is a new horror story every week. "We could end up with very poor systems installed and no upgrade path."
Similar questions are also being asked here. Victorian Health Minister Bronwyn Pike recently told the public accounts and estimates committee that Victoria was contracted for the iPM product only, although the contract "requires iSoft to make new developments and product releases available for no additional cost". "This will include the new Lorenzo product it is currently developing, within the bounds of the patient and client management functionality," she says. Department secretary Patricia Faulkner told the committee: "we have obviously been aware that iSoft is struggling with its partners in Britain to deliver its products". "They are beyond the range of what we have contracted for".
Shadow health minister Helen Shardey says the problems with iSoft's capacity to deliver were known when the contract was awarded. David More, an independent consultant and e-health blogger (aushealthit.blogspot.com), says iSoft's failure appears inevitable. "In November last year I had the opportunity to review, in detail, the hospital information system being offered to an international client for a 300-bed tertiary hospital," More says on his blog. "It was clear at the time that the Lorenzo suite was little more than foilware. The system was a concocted blend of old and new components, was obviously unintegrated and lacked any common utility in its user interface. "Needless to say, I recommended no further engagement be had with iSoft and that alternative providers should be considered."
More says NSW Health should not rely on its escrow arrangements with iSoft to protect the rollout of patient administration systems in three area health services this year. "There is no point holding obsolete software code in escrow," he says. "All that does is provide a false sense of security that something can be done when iSoft fails. "Well, maybe it can be used to fix the occasional critical bug while buying time to identify new software to replace the doomed system."
More says organisations in NSW and Victoria that purchased iSoft on the basis of future promises "have clearly let their respective health systems down very badly". ISoft Australia shrugs off the problems engulfing its parent company. Local communications chief Laurie Giles says the local position is "fundamentally unchanged". A three-day iSoft Healthcare Forum will take place as planned at Sanctuary Cove, Queensland, later this month.
Meanwhile, an industry insider says the real risk for Australia lies in the efforts and focus iSoft will have to invest in the NHS project. "So they will be less focused on projects in Australia, which represent only 10 per cent of their total revenues," he says. "They are also under a lot of pressure to cut costs, and it's hard to develop new products when you're cutting costs."
Source
Kyoto not the way to cool the world
The Kyoto agreement to cut greenhouse emissions is ineffectual and the world must be more realistic about the chances of preventing climate change and prepare for the inevitability of global warming, according to the head of one of Britain's foremost scientific societies. Frances Cairncross, president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and chairwoman of the Economic and Social Research Council, was addressing the Festival of Science in Norwich, east England. She told Britain's biggest general science meeting that while measures to cut the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming were essential, they had been emphasised ahead of the equally vital need to develop ways of coping with climate change. Ms Cairncross said the Kyoto Treaty would not stop temperatures rising, as the US and large developing nations such as China and India were not involved. She said even if a global agreement to limit carbon dioxide emissions was reached, a significant degree of warming was still likely.
London's Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that Ms Cairncross said developing drought-tolerant crops, constructing flood defences, improving building insulation or banning building close to sea level were as important as cutting emissions. She said the world needed to be more realistic about the chances of preventing climate change. "We need more sheltered public spaces. It is going to be either sunnier or rainier," Ms Cairncross said. Plants, insects and animals that needed to migrate north away from hotter climates should be provided with species corridors, among many other measures, she said. "Adaptation policies have had far less attention than mitigation and that is a mistake," Ms Cairncross told the meeting. "We need to think now about policies that prepare for a hotter, drier world."
Ms Cairncross said the Kyoto agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions was having little impact. India and China - representing a third of the world's population - had not signed up and the US "does not take any notice". Developing a successful global deal would mean "persuading this generation to accept sacrifices on behalf of posterity; and persuading countries that will gain from climate change, or lose little, to take action not on behalf of their own grandchildren but of the descendants of people in other nations". "We cannot relocate the Amazon or insulate coral reefs, so we need mitigation too," she said. "But the Government could and should put in place an adaptation strategy right away."
Despite the arguments about the mix between renewables, nuclear and fossil fuels, the bottom line was that, "with present technologies, no combination of existing energy sources can conceivably bring about the reductions in energy use that we need, or at least, not without a disruption that is politically unimaginable".
Ms Cairncross's message will be controversial as many environmental groups have discouraged talk of adapting to global warming as an inevitability for fear that it will hand politicians an excuse for failing to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Extreme rainfall has become more frequent and intense over the past 40 years in parts of Britain, particularly in Scotland and the north of England. Scientists from Newcastle University - who analysed British weather records from 1961 to 2000 - say the findings provide further evidence of climate change. They also suggest that the five million people who live near rivers - 10 per cent of the British population - can expect to be flooded with increasing regularity in the future, which has implications for the management of flooding and water resources.
Source
The Kyoto agreement to cut greenhouse emissions is ineffectual and the world must be more realistic about the chances of preventing climate change and prepare for the inevitability of global warming, according to the head of one of Britain's foremost scientific societies. Frances Cairncross, president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and chairwoman of the Economic and Social Research Council, was addressing the Festival of Science in Norwich, east England. She told Britain's biggest general science meeting that while measures to cut the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming were essential, they had been emphasised ahead of the equally vital need to develop ways of coping with climate change. Ms Cairncross said the Kyoto Treaty would not stop temperatures rising, as the US and large developing nations such as China and India were not involved. She said even if a global agreement to limit carbon dioxide emissions was reached, a significant degree of warming was still likely.
London's Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that Ms Cairncross said developing drought-tolerant crops, constructing flood defences, improving building insulation or banning building close to sea level were as important as cutting emissions. She said the world needed to be more realistic about the chances of preventing climate change. "We need more sheltered public spaces. It is going to be either sunnier or rainier," Ms Cairncross said. Plants, insects and animals that needed to migrate north away from hotter climates should be provided with species corridors, among many other measures, she said. "Adaptation policies have had far less attention than mitigation and that is a mistake," Ms Cairncross told the meeting. "We need to think now about policies that prepare for a hotter, drier world."
Ms Cairncross said the Kyoto agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions was having little impact. India and China - representing a third of the world's population - had not signed up and the US "does not take any notice". Developing a successful global deal would mean "persuading this generation to accept sacrifices on behalf of posterity; and persuading countries that will gain from climate change, or lose little, to take action not on behalf of their own grandchildren but of the descendants of people in other nations". "We cannot relocate the Amazon or insulate coral reefs, so we need mitigation too," she said. "But the Government could and should put in place an adaptation strategy right away."
Despite the arguments about the mix between renewables, nuclear and fossil fuels, the bottom line was that, "with present technologies, no combination of existing energy sources can conceivably bring about the reductions in energy use that we need, or at least, not without a disruption that is politically unimaginable".
Ms Cairncross's message will be controversial as many environmental groups have discouraged talk of adapting to global warming as an inevitability for fear that it will hand politicians an excuse for failing to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Extreme rainfall has become more frequent and intense over the past 40 years in parts of Britain, particularly in Scotland and the north of England. Scientists from Newcastle University - who analysed British weather records from 1961 to 2000 - say the findings provide further evidence of climate change. They also suggest that the five million people who live near rivers - 10 per cent of the British population - can expect to be flooded with increasing regularity in the future, which has implications for the management of flooding and water resources.
Source
OLDER men are far more likely to father autistic children
Since autism seems to be linked to high intelligence, these results may mean that smart older guys tend to have more children than dumb older guys
A study involving more than 100,000 children found that those born to fathers aged 40 and over were nearly six times more likely to suffer from autism and related disorders than those with a father under 30. Scientists from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College, London and Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, said that their research supported the theory that men also have a "biological clock" when it comes to producing healthy babies.
They described the findings as "the first convincing evidence that advanced paternal age is a risk factor for autism spectrum disorder". However the authors could not find a link between a mother's advancing age and autism.
The exact causes of autism remain unknown, but cases of it and related conditions such as Asperger's syndrome - known collectively as autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) - have increased tenfold in the past two decades. They now affect the lives of more than half a million families in Britain. A recent study suggested that the rate could be as high as 116 ASD cases per 10,000 children...
The latest study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, analysed 132,271 Jewish children born during the 1980s in Israel. The researchers found that, if the father was aged 15 to 29 when the child was born, the risk of autism was 6 in every 10,000 children. If the father was 30 to 39, then 9 in 10,000 children suffered autism (1.6 times higher), going up to 32 in 10,000 (5.75 times higher) for fathers aged 40 to 49. The risk was even higher for older fathers.
"This research adds to our knowledge that men also have a biological clock when it comes to reproducing," Dr Reichenberg said. "The sample size for the over-50s was small, so we added it to the results for fathers aged over 40, but our research suggests that very old fathers have around nine times the risk. "The research shows a linear effect - with every ten years, the risk doubles."
The researchers emphasised that the results related to autism and could not necessarily be generalised to apply to related disorders such as Asperger's syndrome. But they added: "This data suggests a significant association between advancing paternal age and risk of ASD."
They said that there were several genetic factors which could be at play, including spontaneous mutations in sperm-producing cells, or discrepancies in how genes are expressed.
Although the fact that all the children were Jewish was a limitation of the study, Dr Reichenberg did not believe it affected the results. More research was needed to see if the findings were replicated across other racial and ethnic backgrounds.
More here
Since autism seems to be linked to high intelligence, these results may mean that smart older guys tend to have more children than dumb older guys
A study involving more than 100,000 children found that those born to fathers aged 40 and over were nearly six times more likely to suffer from autism and related disorders than those with a father under 30. Scientists from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College, London and Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, said that their research supported the theory that men also have a "biological clock" when it comes to producing healthy babies.
They described the findings as "the first convincing evidence that advanced paternal age is a risk factor for autism spectrum disorder". However the authors could not find a link between a mother's advancing age and autism.
The exact causes of autism remain unknown, but cases of it and related conditions such as Asperger's syndrome - known collectively as autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) - have increased tenfold in the past two decades. They now affect the lives of more than half a million families in Britain. A recent study suggested that the rate could be as high as 116 ASD cases per 10,000 children...
The latest study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, analysed 132,271 Jewish children born during the 1980s in Israel. The researchers found that, if the father was aged 15 to 29 when the child was born, the risk of autism was 6 in every 10,000 children. If the father was 30 to 39, then 9 in 10,000 children suffered autism (1.6 times higher), going up to 32 in 10,000 (5.75 times higher) for fathers aged 40 to 49. The risk was even higher for older fathers.
"This research adds to our knowledge that men also have a biological clock when it comes to reproducing," Dr Reichenberg said. "The sample size for the over-50s was small, so we added it to the results for fathers aged over 40, but our research suggests that very old fathers have around nine times the risk. "The research shows a linear effect - with every ten years, the risk doubles."
The researchers emphasised that the results related to autism and could not necessarily be generalised to apply to related disorders such as Asperger's syndrome. But they added: "This data suggests a significant association between advancing paternal age and risk of ASD."
They said that there were several genetic factors which could be at play, including spontaneous mutations in sperm-producing cells, or discrepancies in how genes are expressed.
Although the fact that all the children were Jewish was a limitation of the study, Dr Reichenberg did not believe it affected the results. More research was needed to see if the findings were replicated across other racial and ethnic backgrounds.
More here
HYPOCRITICAL BRITISH FAR-LEFTIST
By Nirpal Dhaliwal
Two of the founding grandes dames of British multiculturalism got into a cat fight this week. Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, has been "pandering to the right", spat Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London. Phillips's crime was to state that last weekend's Notting Hill carnival "can hardly be said to represent the everyday culture of most of London's communities". A pretty obvious statement to make as most people in London are not black. But Livingstone had a hissy fit and accused Phillips of selling out black people. "He'd had a brief sort of black power fling," said Livingstone, "dissing" Phillips's past activism, "and ever since then he's gone so far over to the other side that I expect soon he'll be joining the BNP."
It seems that Trevor ain't been "keeping it real" enough for Ken (or K Diddy as we call him on the street), so he's calling new Labour's No 1 homeboy a coconut. Maybe Trevor should get some gold teeth and grab his crotch more often. Like in America, Britain's debate on multiculturalism is becoming an empty-headed bun-fight in which race is a convenient bat to beat your opponents with. The United States has always been fraught with individuals tapping ethnic anxieties to further themselves. The Rev Al Sharpton and his jerry-curled hair became famous throughout the country as he jumped on the flimsiest bandwagons to make hysterical overstatements about race.
Britain's irony is that the person profiting most from exploiting racial tensions is not a glamorous funky demagogue but a white middle-aged nerd. But K Diddy is savvy to the way race is skilfully employed in America and has imported those techniques here. It's easy to disregard Livingstone as just another cheesy lily-white leftie associating himself with ethnic groups to prove his hipness and moral perfection. But there's a sinister consistency in his approach to minority issues. Two years ago he welcomed Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the fundamentalist Islamist, to Britain, praising him as a "powerfully progressive force for change". He canoodled with him for the cameras and compared him with the Pope, although the sheikh endorses suicide bombings, despises gay people and thinks it is acceptable for men to beat their wives. But Livingstone knows what potential there is in cultivating ethnic and religious support.
As so few people bother to vote in local and regional elections, Livingstone would love to garner the support of the hardcore element of London's Muslim community. The value of the lumpen ethnic block vote was obvious in George Galloway's victory at the last general election. The podgy ex-pugilist knew nothing about the people of Bethnal Green & Bow but ousted Oona King, a hardworking, wholly committed MP.
Galloway has rarely voted in parliament since his election and has achieved little of practical value for his constituents. But he exploited the anger over Iraq to get himself elected, although he was never going to remotely alter government policy. Similarly, Livingstone smartly antagonises the Jewish community. He argues that he's not an anti-semite, but anti-semites will warm to his snide remarks - particularly those who are hardline Islamists. He knew exactly what he was doing when he attacked David and Simon Reuben, the Jewish businessmen, saying they should "go back (to their own country) and see if they can do better". He would never dare tell black people to go back to Africa and try their luck.
In Livingstone's calculated hierarchy of bigotries, anti-semitism is a low priority: it won't lose him votes and might even gain him some. The same applies to homophobia. K Diddy would never welcome a gay rights campaigner who publicly denounced Islam as an "abominable practice" in the manner that Qaradawi condemns homosexuals.
Phillips annoyed Livingstone when he challenged his declaration that the carnival had been a "triumph of multiculturalism". As great as the event is, Phillips argued that combining diverse peoples into a cohesive society is a painstaking process that requires more than a day out in the sun shaking your booty. He touched a raw nerve when he undermined Livingstone's attempt at congratulating himself for his cool exotic tastes, saying: "We wouldn't, frankly, think of participation in a day's morris dancing or caber tossing as a valuable exercise in building a modern multicultural society." Let's face it: the carnival is as outdated and irrelevant to a lot of black people as cheese and pineapple on sticks are to most whites. Hats off to Phillips for having the guts to say it.
Livingstone clings to the myth that he is Britain's Mr Multicultural. In his view even black people can't be less than euphoric about the carnival. He makes glib associations between Phillips and the far right, while snuggling up to dark-skinned fascists himself. The mayor pats himself on the back for an occasional street party while sneakily exploiting ethnic divisions. I hope London voters will forget their differences at the next mayoral election and join forces to show this clown the door. Now that would be a real "triumph of multiculturalism".
Source
By Nirpal Dhaliwal
Two of the founding grandes dames of British multiculturalism got into a cat fight this week. Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, has been "pandering to the right", spat Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London. Phillips's crime was to state that last weekend's Notting Hill carnival "can hardly be said to represent the everyday culture of most of London's communities". A pretty obvious statement to make as most people in London are not black. But Livingstone had a hissy fit and accused Phillips of selling out black people. "He'd had a brief sort of black power fling," said Livingstone, "dissing" Phillips's past activism, "and ever since then he's gone so far over to the other side that I expect soon he'll be joining the BNP."
It seems that Trevor ain't been "keeping it real" enough for Ken (or K Diddy as we call him on the street), so he's calling new Labour's No 1 homeboy a coconut. Maybe Trevor should get some gold teeth and grab his crotch more often. Like in America, Britain's debate on multiculturalism is becoming an empty-headed bun-fight in which race is a convenient bat to beat your opponents with. The United States has always been fraught with individuals tapping ethnic anxieties to further themselves. The Rev Al Sharpton and his jerry-curled hair became famous throughout the country as he jumped on the flimsiest bandwagons to make hysterical overstatements about race.
Britain's irony is that the person profiting most from exploiting racial tensions is not a glamorous funky demagogue but a white middle-aged nerd. But K Diddy is savvy to the way race is skilfully employed in America and has imported those techniques here. It's easy to disregard Livingstone as just another cheesy lily-white leftie associating himself with ethnic groups to prove his hipness and moral perfection. But there's a sinister consistency in his approach to minority issues. Two years ago he welcomed Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the fundamentalist Islamist, to Britain, praising him as a "powerfully progressive force for change". He canoodled with him for the cameras and compared him with the Pope, although the sheikh endorses suicide bombings, despises gay people and thinks it is acceptable for men to beat their wives. But Livingstone knows what potential there is in cultivating ethnic and religious support.
As so few people bother to vote in local and regional elections, Livingstone would love to garner the support of the hardcore element of London's Muslim community. The value of the lumpen ethnic block vote was obvious in George Galloway's victory at the last general election. The podgy ex-pugilist knew nothing about the people of Bethnal Green & Bow but ousted Oona King, a hardworking, wholly committed MP.
Galloway has rarely voted in parliament since his election and has achieved little of practical value for his constituents. But he exploited the anger over Iraq to get himself elected, although he was never going to remotely alter government policy. Similarly, Livingstone smartly antagonises the Jewish community. He argues that he's not an anti-semite, but anti-semites will warm to his snide remarks - particularly those who are hardline Islamists. He knew exactly what he was doing when he attacked David and Simon Reuben, the Jewish businessmen, saying they should "go back (to their own country) and see if they can do better". He would never dare tell black people to go back to Africa and try their luck.
In Livingstone's calculated hierarchy of bigotries, anti-semitism is a low priority: it won't lose him votes and might even gain him some. The same applies to homophobia. K Diddy would never welcome a gay rights campaigner who publicly denounced Islam as an "abominable practice" in the manner that Qaradawi condemns homosexuals.
Phillips annoyed Livingstone when he challenged his declaration that the carnival had been a "triumph of multiculturalism". As great as the event is, Phillips argued that combining diverse peoples into a cohesive society is a painstaking process that requires more than a day out in the sun shaking your booty. He touched a raw nerve when he undermined Livingstone's attempt at congratulating himself for his cool exotic tastes, saying: "We wouldn't, frankly, think of participation in a day's morris dancing or caber tossing as a valuable exercise in building a modern multicultural society." Let's face it: the carnival is as outdated and irrelevant to a lot of black people as cheese and pineapple on sticks are to most whites. Hats off to Phillips for having the guts to say it.
Livingstone clings to the myth that he is Britain's Mr Multicultural. In his view even black people can't be less than euphoric about the carnival. He makes glib associations between Phillips and the far right, while snuggling up to dark-skinned fascists himself. The mayor pats himself on the back for an occasional street party while sneakily exploiting ethnic divisions. I hope London voters will forget their differences at the next mayoral election and join forces to show this clown the door. Now that would be a real "triumph of multiculturalism".
Source
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
EYE DRUG DENIED TO NHS PATIENTS
They don't care if you go blind!
In an ideal world the drug industry identifies a disease, develops a cure through research and markets it to a ripple of applause. In the real world things are often a lot messier. But seldom are they quite as confused as they are in age-related macular degeneration, the most common cause of blindness in the UK. A new treatment exists that is eminently affordable, apparently safe and backed by a growing body of evidence that it works. But the drug company that owns the rights in the UK cannot even talk about it, and - for commercial reasons - the US company that originally developed it will not be promoting it. Nor is it being taken up by the NHS. As a result, thousands of people who develop the "wet" form of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) are being denied access to a promising treatment. Yet nobody, really, is behaving improperly. There are no villains in this story, just a lot of patients who may feel that the system is short-changing them.
The problem is real and urgent. Half a million people in the UK suffer from the condition, according to the Macular Disease Society. For most - those with the "dry" form of the disease - there are no treatments and no prospect of any. But for the 10 to 15 per cent who suffer from the "wet" form, which progresses more quickly and damages sight more profoundly, there are hopes.
AMD is caused by damage to the macula, the part of the retina responsible for precise vision. In the wet form, abnormal blood vessels grow behind the macula, leaking fluid and blood and causing rapid damage. Wet AMD is responsible for only 15 per cent of cases but it causes 90 per cent of the blindness. There is one treatment for wet AMD; Visudyne, licensed and approved for use in the NHS by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice). It is not hugely effective and certainly not a cure, but it can help to slow the disease.
Typically for a new medicine in the NHS, Visudyne was slow to reach any patients at all. And although there are now 50 specialist centres set up to provide the treatment, by last November a survey found that only half of the new patients were getting to the clinics in time to save their sight. Visudyne is marketed by Novartis, which has also bought the UK rights to what appears to be a better treatment, Lucentis, developed in the US by Genentech. Lucentis works in the same way as some of the latest cancer drugs, by preventing the growth of the new blood vessels that cause the problem in wet AMD. Lucentis is not yet licensed in the UK, but even when it is it will be expensive, and Nice approval will be needed before the NHS will agree to pay for it. The same applies to another new treatment, Macugen, which does have a UK licence. On past history, the price of both is likely to prove a major obstacle: Lucentis is expected to cost more than o1,000 a treatment and Macugen 4,000 pounds a year per patient.
So far, so familiar; but there is another dimension to the story. Genentech is also responsible for a colon cancer drug, Avastin, which uses the same mechanism as Lucentis but is far cheaper. A few eye surgeons, first in the US and now here, have been using it to treat wet AMD. The results, they say, are excellent. Shirley Davis, a retired NHS radiographer from Huddersfield, is one of the patients treated with Avastin in the UK. Wet AMD developed in her left eye five years ago and she was told then that nothing could be done. Recently her right eye began to deteriorate, too, and she faced the prospect of going blind. She is being treated privately at the Yorkshire Eye Hospital in Apperley Bridge, West Yorkshire. So far she has had one treatment from a surgeon, Shafiq Rehman, who was delighted with the results.
"I was very impressed," he says. "Ordinarily, after AMD treatment you don't see any effects when you look into the eye. But I am seeing real changes, less swelling and bleeding, the normal signs of wet AMD. I've treated only a handful of patients but 30 to 40 per cent have shown vision improvements. And so far, based on US experience, Avastin is safe. That's important, and it works very well.Maybe Lucentis will turn out to be the gold standard but my guess is that Avastin is not far behind."
Shirley Davis is unsure whether her sight has improved and is less excited than Mr Rehman. "He was jumping up and down," she says. "It cheered me up. Maybe I was expecting too much, I was hoping for a miracle." But she is encouraged enough to go back for further treatments and her main complaint is that after a lifetime of work for the NHS, she is having to pay for it privately. "I worked for the NHS and now they won't treat me," she says. "That makes me cross."
Several other eye surgeons are using Avastin, all privately. Michael Lavin, consultant ophthalmologist at Manchester Royal Eye Hospital, calculates that the savings are huge. Avastin, he says, is 150 times cheaper than Lucentis: "Avastin is as effective as Lucentis and at least as safe, with safety data on almost 8,000 Avastin injections into the eye compared with Lucentis data on less than 800. It is highly effective, prevents blindness and is much cheaper and more effective than existing NHS treatment." Richard Gregson, consultant ophthalmologist at Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham, agrees that it is just as good as Lucentis. "But it is never going to be licensed for use in the eye, because that would need expensive clinical trials. It wouldn't be in Genentech's interest to conduct such trials and nobody else will do it," he says.
"The NHS used to conduct trials but it's impossible now. The NHS has almost abolished clinical research of this kind by bureaucratic obstacles and lack of funding. It has always been backward-looking, having to be dragged kicking and screaming to introduce new treatments. There's a culture of `don't do it'."
Source
They don't care if you go blind!
In an ideal world the drug industry identifies a disease, develops a cure through research and markets it to a ripple of applause. In the real world things are often a lot messier. But seldom are they quite as confused as they are in age-related macular degeneration, the most common cause of blindness in the UK. A new treatment exists that is eminently affordable, apparently safe and backed by a growing body of evidence that it works. But the drug company that owns the rights in the UK cannot even talk about it, and - for commercial reasons - the US company that originally developed it will not be promoting it. Nor is it being taken up by the NHS. As a result, thousands of people who develop the "wet" form of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) are being denied access to a promising treatment. Yet nobody, really, is behaving improperly. There are no villains in this story, just a lot of patients who may feel that the system is short-changing them.
The problem is real and urgent. Half a million people in the UK suffer from the condition, according to the Macular Disease Society. For most - those with the "dry" form of the disease - there are no treatments and no prospect of any. But for the 10 to 15 per cent who suffer from the "wet" form, which progresses more quickly and damages sight more profoundly, there are hopes.
AMD is caused by damage to the macula, the part of the retina responsible for precise vision. In the wet form, abnormal blood vessels grow behind the macula, leaking fluid and blood and causing rapid damage. Wet AMD is responsible for only 15 per cent of cases but it causes 90 per cent of the blindness. There is one treatment for wet AMD; Visudyne, licensed and approved for use in the NHS by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice). It is not hugely effective and certainly not a cure, but it can help to slow the disease.
Typically for a new medicine in the NHS, Visudyne was slow to reach any patients at all. And although there are now 50 specialist centres set up to provide the treatment, by last November a survey found that only half of the new patients were getting to the clinics in time to save their sight. Visudyne is marketed by Novartis, which has also bought the UK rights to what appears to be a better treatment, Lucentis, developed in the US by Genentech. Lucentis works in the same way as some of the latest cancer drugs, by preventing the growth of the new blood vessels that cause the problem in wet AMD. Lucentis is not yet licensed in the UK, but even when it is it will be expensive, and Nice approval will be needed before the NHS will agree to pay for it. The same applies to another new treatment, Macugen, which does have a UK licence. On past history, the price of both is likely to prove a major obstacle: Lucentis is expected to cost more than o1,000 a treatment and Macugen 4,000 pounds a year per patient.
So far, so familiar; but there is another dimension to the story. Genentech is also responsible for a colon cancer drug, Avastin, which uses the same mechanism as Lucentis but is far cheaper. A few eye surgeons, first in the US and now here, have been using it to treat wet AMD. The results, they say, are excellent. Shirley Davis, a retired NHS radiographer from Huddersfield, is one of the patients treated with Avastin in the UK. Wet AMD developed in her left eye five years ago and she was told then that nothing could be done. Recently her right eye began to deteriorate, too, and she faced the prospect of going blind. She is being treated privately at the Yorkshire Eye Hospital in Apperley Bridge, West Yorkshire. So far she has had one treatment from a surgeon, Shafiq Rehman, who was delighted with the results.
"I was very impressed," he says. "Ordinarily, after AMD treatment you don't see any effects when you look into the eye. But I am seeing real changes, less swelling and bleeding, the normal signs of wet AMD. I've treated only a handful of patients but 30 to 40 per cent have shown vision improvements. And so far, based on US experience, Avastin is safe. That's important, and it works very well.Maybe Lucentis will turn out to be the gold standard but my guess is that Avastin is not far behind."
Shirley Davis is unsure whether her sight has improved and is less excited than Mr Rehman. "He was jumping up and down," she says. "It cheered me up. Maybe I was expecting too much, I was hoping for a miracle." But she is encouraged enough to go back for further treatments and her main complaint is that after a lifetime of work for the NHS, she is having to pay for it privately. "I worked for the NHS and now they won't treat me," she says. "That makes me cross."
Several other eye surgeons are using Avastin, all privately. Michael Lavin, consultant ophthalmologist at Manchester Royal Eye Hospital, calculates that the savings are huge. Avastin, he says, is 150 times cheaper than Lucentis: "Avastin is as effective as Lucentis and at least as safe, with safety data on almost 8,000 Avastin injections into the eye compared with Lucentis data on less than 800. It is highly effective, prevents blindness and is much cheaper and more effective than existing NHS treatment." Richard Gregson, consultant ophthalmologist at Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham, agrees that it is just as good as Lucentis. "But it is never going to be licensed for use in the eye, because that would need expensive clinical trials. It wouldn't be in Genentech's interest to conduct such trials and nobody else will do it," he says.
"The NHS used to conduct trials but it's impossible now. The NHS has almost abolished clinical research of this kind by bureaucratic obstacles and lack of funding. It has always been backward-looking, having to be dragged kicking and screaming to introduce new treatments. There's a culture of `don't do it'."
Source
Britain: The war on hot air
In the 1980s it was the bomb, in the 1990s globalisation. Now CO2 is the enemy du jour. Jonathan Leake on why green is the new black
It looked like any other demo. Hundreds of young protesters swarmed around the police on Thursday waving banners and shouting slogans; a few were arrested — and then the rest went home. Each week in London and other major cities such protests are routinely ignored by the public and the national media. However, in the candlelit tents pitched in a field close to Yorkshire’s mighty Drax power station, a hard core of protesters have spent the past few nights celebrating one of the green movement’s greatest publicity coups in years.
In the 1980s it was the bomb, in the 1990s globalisation. Now CO2 is the enemy du jour. Jonathan Leake on why green is the new black
It looked like any other demo. Hundreds of young protesters swarmed around the police on Thursday waving banners and shouting slogans; a few were arrested — and then the rest went home. Each week in London and other major cities such protests are routinely ignored by the public and the national media. However, in the candlelit tents pitched in a field close to Yorkshire’s mighty Drax power station, a hard core of protesters have spent the past few nights celebrating one of the green movement’s greatest publicity coups in years.
“We had 600 people, hardly enough to fill Trafalgar Square,” gloated one protester, “but at Drax we got top billing on every news programme and coverage in every newspaper. It shows that climate change is an issue whose time has come.”
Such good organisation. Such clever media management. Could it be that these demonstrators had a bit more to them than it seemed? Indeed they did. Around half of those attending the Drax climate camp were veterans of diverse direct action groups including road protesters, anti-globalisation demonstrators and anti-GM groups.
“Drax was like a reunion,” said Mark Lynas, an environmental activist and author. “There were dozens of familiar faces, many of whom I hadn’t seen for years. It was hugs and kisses all round.”
This alliance has alighted upon a common goal that they hope to make the cause celebre of the decade: a war on carbon dioxide.
Never mind that Drax is a highly efficient energy provider or that Britain cannot function without its electricity: the multi-chimneyed behemoth produces 7% of British CO2 pollution. Therefore, it is a target for protest. The Drax protesters are planning further demonstrations and disruption at power stations, factories, airports and motorways around Britain. “Anything that produces CO2 in large quantities is now a target,” said one activist.
Their campaign against CO2 is a vehicle for a much more radical political agenda, however. “Our movement is based on questioning the whole basis of economic growth,” said Robbie Madden of Rising Tide, one of the organising groups. “The road protesters provided the inspiration for the Drax camp. We have an honourable tradition of breaking the law for a higher aim which is to change the way people live and think. Climate change is an issue that can help us do that.”
How intriguing then that David Cameron, the Conservative leader, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California, are also riding this environmental bandwagon. On Friday, Cameron announced that the Conservatives would join Friends of the Earth’s call for new environmental taxes and legislation to cut Britain’s CO2 emissions. Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger was putting the finishing touches to a landmark agreement to slash California’s CO2 emissions by 25% by 2020. Schwarzenegger has made it clear that he thinks his new environmental taxes will get him re-elected. Similarly, the Conservatives’ own polls have shown that Cameron’s green policies are playing a major role in giving him his recent lead over Tony Blair.
If the war on CO2 emissions has become such fruitful ground for tacticians of both the left and the right, there is obviously something afoot. Could it be that this congruence of radical chic and mainstream politics marks the point at which the anxious public begins to accept real changes in lifestyle to halt global warming?
Scientists have been warning about the dangers of global warming for more than a decade now. Only last week, John Holdren, new president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, suggested that global sea levels could rise 13ft by the end of this century — much higher than previous forecasts. “We are experiencing dangerous human disruption of the global climate and we’re going to experience more,” Holdren said. Like Sir David King, Tony Blair’s chief scientific adviser, Holdren believes that the world has just a couple of decades to take the action needed to limit the global temperature rise to no more than 2C. Above this level, he warns, the world would face catastrophe from runaway warming that could melt ice caps and glaciers and force hundreds of millions from their homes.
Such warnings have been largely ignored by the general public in the past. No longer. In June, supermarkets were shocked to find themselves the target of a demonstration by the Women’s Institute (WI). Mothers were mobilising against them for using too much packaging — a prime source of CO2.
WI members all over the country demanded to see supermarket managers and then remonstrated with them on the shop floor. Soon afterwards, Tesco announced it would be cutting down on plastic bags and packaging. It also launched a multi-million pound celebrity advertising campaign in which consumers are urged to stop using plastic bags. “We all know we are using too many carrier bags. That’s why from now on, we’ll give you a green Clubcard point every time you re-use a bag,” says the Tesco website.
The backlash against gas-guzzling vehicles, especially 4x4s, has also spread rapidly. The Alliance Against Urban 4x4s now operates in cities across the country. “We want to make people realise that driving a big 4x4 in town is as socially unacceptable as drink-driving,” said one activist last week.
There are clear signs that people are beginning to alter their lifestyles to become green. Recycling, once the preserve of the few, has become almost the norm. Travelling by air is no longer the automatic option. Energy providers promote their green credentials. Octavius Black, 38, managing director of Mind Gym consultancy, flies regularly for business but has cut out holiday flights. “Since I watched Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, about climate I have now given up taking flights to go on short holiday breaks and I am cutting down on business flights whenever I can,” he said. “I also changed my electricity supplier to one that uses renewables.”
It is hard to judge how far such behaviour extends. Flight bookings are surging, and the number of cars on the road is also increasing. But Climatecare.org, a website-based service that calculates carbon emissions and invests in projects to offset them, has seen business surge recently with a 10-fold increase in sales. Similarly, the number of holidays from Britain sold as “responsible” or “sustainable” has now risen to 450,000 a year. This is still a small percentage of the total but, according to the consumer research firm Mintel, by 2010 the annual “ethical” holiday market from the UK will have swollen to 2.5m trips a year — not all of them climate-related but apparently indicative of an electorate increasingly willing to make sacrifices to safeguard its future.
While the new Tories capitalise on this sea-change, Labour still seems to be floundering. “So far Cameron has stolen all the green limelight,” said a government advisor in Defra, the environment ministry. “He doesn’t have any policies but he does look good and we have been left behind.”
The government’s efforts to deal with climate change have long been crippled by the fear that any meaningful measures would involve taxation. It remembers the fuel tax protests of 2000 when lorry drivers threatened to bring the country to a standstill over the rising cost of fuel. The green movement has been planning to reverse that setback ever since. Two years ago the chief executives of Britain’s biggest environmental groups — ranging from Friends of the Earth (FoE) and Greenpeace to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) — began regular private meetings in London.
The outcome of those discussions is the Stop Climate Chaos campaign, a coalition of around 30 organisations which, says Tony Juniper, director of FoE, aims to take climate change out of the ghetto. “We want to make it a truly populist issue with a mass movement that will force it up the political agenda.” Stop Climate Chaos will hold its first big demonstration in London on November 4. With its emphasis on saving mankind from self-destruction, it hopes to equal the pulling power of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), which at its peak in the 1980s had more than 1m members.
What may concern ministers most is not that the Drax militants are expected to turn up on November 4 but that middle England is likely to come along, with delegations expected from the RSPB, the WI, Oxfam and many more highly respectable groups. Cameron’s green Conservatives are also expected.
For the RSPB, traditionally one of the least militant of organisations, it will be the biggest demonstration it has been involved with. “The government is not making enough progress on climate change and we want to generate political pressure to change that,” said Mark Avery, the RSPB’s director of conservation. “We have more than a million members — that’s more than all three main political parties put together. They would do well to remember that.”
(From The Times)
Food allergy fears are nuts
Unnecessary panic is being spread by warnings over dangerous food allergies in children, says a leading doctor. Professor Allan Colver from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, said the risks were being 'overstated'. Many children are being prescribed adrenaline injection kits for use in emergencies triggered by conditions such as nut allergies but they are more likely to fuel anxiety rather than save lives, he said.
Prof Colver, in an analysis published today in the British Medical Journal, said the public had an exaggerated perception of the dangers of food allergies. This was leading to unnecessary alarm for many families and schools and also to medical advice and management that may be disproportionate to the risk, he argued. In particular, food allergies were often thought to be more dangerous and frightening than conditions like pneumonia, asthma, or diabetes. But the public was wrong in believing severe reactions and deaths - in a small number of cases - were always preventable.
In reality, the risk of dying is very small, with just eight children under 16 dying from food allergy between 1990 and 2000 in the UK, equal to one death per 16 million children each year. Of these, milk caused four of the deaths and no child younger than 13 died from eating peanuts, he said. 'Two of the children died despite receiving adrenaline before admission to hospital, and a further child with a mild food reaction, died from an overdose of adrenaline' he added.
Prof Colver said 229 children were admitted to hospital with a food allergy between 1998 and 2000, with 58 suffering a severe reaction. Just six of the 58 children might have benefited from autoinjectors (adrenaline pens) because the others already had an autoinjector, did not need adrenaline, received adrenaline within 10 minutes from ambulance workers or primary care staff, or were having their first attack, he said. Research showed half of all children testing allergic to peanuts could actually eat them without ill effect. Children may go on to outgrow a nut allergy and most outgrew allergies to milk and eggs, he said. Only a third of families who had an autoinjector for their child could use it properly.
Doctors must recognise that 'liberal prescription' of autoinjectors can cause anxiety and may not prevent death, he added. Prof Colver said 'Even if autoinjectors could prevent all deaths, the cost of giving injectors - which have a shelf life of 15 months - to all UK children with food allergy, for both home and school, is estimated at 20 million pounds per life saved. 'This is in addition to the psychosocial cost of the anxiety.'
However, Professor Jonathan Hourihane from University College Cork in Ireland, took the opposite viewpoint in the same journal article. He said food allergies are at least as prevalent as epilepsy and the most common cause of anaphylaxis - a life-threatening acute reaction - outside hospital. At least two per cent of adults and up to six per cent of pre-school children have had allergic reactions to food. He argued it was wrong to say injector kits were not needed and called for better training for doctors. He said 'Although there are worries that the provision of autoinjectors may increase anxiety I know of no evidence to support this notion. 'My experience is precisely the opposite. Anxiety can be minimised by expert review and support. 'We just don't have enough experts' he added.
Source
Unnecessary panic is being spread by warnings over dangerous food allergies in children, says a leading doctor. Professor Allan Colver from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, said the risks were being 'overstated'. Many children are being prescribed adrenaline injection kits for use in emergencies triggered by conditions such as nut allergies but they are more likely to fuel anxiety rather than save lives, he said.
Prof Colver, in an analysis published today in the British Medical Journal, said the public had an exaggerated perception of the dangers of food allergies. This was leading to unnecessary alarm for many families and schools and also to medical advice and management that may be disproportionate to the risk, he argued. In particular, food allergies were often thought to be more dangerous and frightening than conditions like pneumonia, asthma, or diabetes. But the public was wrong in believing severe reactions and deaths - in a small number of cases - were always preventable.
In reality, the risk of dying is very small, with just eight children under 16 dying from food allergy between 1990 and 2000 in the UK, equal to one death per 16 million children each year. Of these, milk caused four of the deaths and no child younger than 13 died from eating peanuts, he said. 'Two of the children died despite receiving adrenaline before admission to hospital, and a further child with a mild food reaction, died from an overdose of adrenaline' he added.
Prof Colver said 229 children were admitted to hospital with a food allergy between 1998 and 2000, with 58 suffering a severe reaction. Just six of the 58 children might have benefited from autoinjectors (adrenaline pens) because the others already had an autoinjector, did not need adrenaline, received adrenaline within 10 minutes from ambulance workers or primary care staff, or were having their first attack, he said. Research showed half of all children testing allergic to peanuts could actually eat them without ill effect. Children may go on to outgrow a nut allergy and most outgrew allergies to milk and eggs, he said. Only a third of families who had an autoinjector for their child could use it properly.
Doctors must recognise that 'liberal prescription' of autoinjectors can cause anxiety and may not prevent death, he added. Prof Colver said 'Even if autoinjectors could prevent all deaths, the cost of giving injectors - which have a shelf life of 15 months - to all UK children with food allergy, for both home and school, is estimated at 20 million pounds per life saved. 'This is in addition to the psychosocial cost of the anxiety.'
However, Professor Jonathan Hourihane from University College Cork in Ireland, took the opposite viewpoint in the same journal article. He said food allergies are at least as prevalent as epilepsy and the most common cause of anaphylaxis - a life-threatening acute reaction - outside hospital. At least two per cent of adults and up to six per cent of pre-school children have had allergic reactions to food. He argued it was wrong to say injector kits were not needed and called for better training for doctors. He said 'Although there are worries that the provision of autoinjectors may increase anxiety I know of no evidence to support this notion. 'My experience is precisely the opposite. Anxiety can be minimised by expert review and support. 'We just don't have enough experts' he added.
Source
DOES THE BRITISH STATE OWN BRITISH CHILDREN?
A rather Orwellian proposal to give ever more power to the constantly bungling child-welfare social workers
Tough new plans to target babies and young children in problem families were unveiled by Tony Blair yesterday. He said social workers should intervene much earlier to prevent children in "dysfunctional" families turning into problem teenagers. His initiative could mean that families who refuse to co-operate would lose state benefits or have their children taken into local authority care more swiftly.
The Prime Minister said it was possible to predict problem children "prebirth" in some cases. He suggested that single mothers might be forced to accept state help before their children were born under the plans to tackle a hard core of more than one million "socially excluded" people. In his first interview since returning from his summer break, he told the BBC: "If we are not prepared to predict and intervene far more early then there are children that are going to grow up in families that we know perfectly well are completely dysfunctional, and the kids a few years down the line are going to be a menace to society and actually a threat to themselves."
Mr Blair added: "You either steer clear and say that's not for government to get into, in which case you don't deal with the problem. Or, I think we need to deal with these particular issues and we actually do intervene and we intervene at a very early stage." Denying the plan smacked of a "Big Brother" state, he admitted many people might be uneasy with the idea of intervening in family life but said there was no point "pussy-footing".
Mr Blair was confident that the work would outlast his time in Number 10. "For us as a party and a government, this is something we are passionate about, that we have developed for a number of years and will continue long after I've gone," he said.
Social exclusion has emerged as Mr Blair's "big idea" for this autumn as he tries to show his administration has not run out of steam. He will make a big speech on the issue next week and Hilary Armstrong, the Cabinet Office minister, will unveil a new government strategy the following week.
The Tories accused Mr Blair of creating a nanny state, while others stressed that the same early intervention proposals had been unveiled four years ago by David Blunkett, the then Home Secretary. Oliver Letwin, the Tories' policy chief, said: "The answer is... to encourage social enterprise, the voluntary sector, community groups and to help people without trying to run their lives for them."
Source
A rather Orwellian proposal to give ever more power to the constantly bungling child-welfare social workers
Tough new plans to target babies and young children in problem families were unveiled by Tony Blair yesterday. He said social workers should intervene much earlier to prevent children in "dysfunctional" families turning into problem teenagers. His initiative could mean that families who refuse to co-operate would lose state benefits or have their children taken into local authority care more swiftly.
The Prime Minister said it was possible to predict problem children "prebirth" in some cases. He suggested that single mothers might be forced to accept state help before their children were born under the plans to tackle a hard core of more than one million "socially excluded" people. In his first interview since returning from his summer break, he told the BBC: "If we are not prepared to predict and intervene far more early then there are children that are going to grow up in families that we know perfectly well are completely dysfunctional, and the kids a few years down the line are going to be a menace to society and actually a threat to themselves."
Mr Blair added: "You either steer clear and say that's not for government to get into, in which case you don't deal with the problem. Or, I think we need to deal with these particular issues and we actually do intervene and we intervene at a very early stage." Denying the plan smacked of a "Big Brother" state, he admitted many people might be uneasy with the idea of intervening in family life but said there was no point "pussy-footing".
Mr Blair was confident that the work would outlast his time in Number 10. "For us as a party and a government, this is something we are passionate about, that we have developed for a number of years and will continue long after I've gone," he said.
Social exclusion has emerged as Mr Blair's "big idea" for this autumn as he tries to show his administration has not run out of steam. He will make a big speech on the issue next week and Hilary Armstrong, the Cabinet Office minister, will unveil a new government strategy the following week.
The Tories accused Mr Blair of creating a nanny state, while others stressed that the same early intervention proposals had been unveiled four years ago by David Blunkett, the then Home Secretary. Oliver Letwin, the Tories' policy chief, said: "The answer is... to encourage social enterprise, the voluntary sector, community groups and to help people without trying to run their lives for them."
Source
Monday, September 04, 2006
ARROGANT NHS DOCTORS FAILING TO LEARN
The fact that there is no effective penalty for mistakes in the NHS is background you need to understand fully the article below
Arrogance and complacency among doctors could lead to another medical disaster on the scale of the Bristol babies scandal, the Royal College of Surgeons has warned. Five years on, patients are dying on operating tables because some doctors are still failing to act on the lessons of the scandal that led to the deaths of 30 babies, the college says.
This weekend leading surgeons compared the operational failings causing surgical blunders in NHS theatres to the institutional deficiencies that contributed to Nasa's 1986 Challenger and 2003 Columbia space shuttle disasters. Tony Giddings, a member of the college's council and a former consultant surgeon, says the NHS has not changed its practices significantly since poor operating techniques led to the scandal at Bristol. "Do we need to have a second Bristol before we can actually make the cultural changes that are needed?" said Giddings. "We have continued to have avoidable deaths in surgery because the lessons that were so clearly set out in Sir Ian Kennedy's report [into the scandal] have not been acted upon."
Last weekend The Sunday Times disclosed that more than 300 babies a year were being left with brain damage because of oxygen starvation caused by lack of proper care at birth. A government watchdog also warned that more than 2,000 people died last year because of blunders by NHS staff.
Giddings says although most surgeons are now aware of their own limitations, some are still putting patients' lives at risk because they believe they are infallible. "There are some surgeons who have a seriously flawed opinion of their own capabilities," he said. "If you are a surgeon and doing dangerous work you need to have a degree of self-assurance and confidence but it can turn into arrogance. "Surgeons can become too familiar with the dangers of the operating theatre and lose that capacity to be properly respectful of those dangers. "After the first shuttle disaster, although the astronauts changed a few practices, their attitudes and beliefs did not really change and they still thought they were masters of their situation. Nasa had a second disaster and then they really had to change."
The college wants the government to make it mandatory for all surgeons to be trained in skills such as communication and teamwork. In 2001 Sir Ian Kennedy, the chairman of the Bristol inquiry, recommended national procedures whereby surgical teams - including the consultant, anaesthetist, and theatre nurses - should meet routinely to review their performance. This has not happened, according to the college, and, until it does, avoidable deaths will continue.
The college insists that the actual number of avoidable deaths are up to 10 times higher than the 2,159 patient deaths recorded by the National Patient Safety Agency, since only a fraction are reported. Research published in 2004 put the annual number of patient deaths due to medical error at 40,000.
In one notable case, Marc de Leval, a professor of paediatric surgery at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, admitted that mistakes he made in surgery resulted in babies' deaths. He volunteered to retrain in the early 1990s after seven babies he performed heart surgery on died. Another surgeon, a consultant urologist from southwest London, admitted this weekend that one of his patients died after he removed the wrong kidney. The patient later died of complications. The surgeon, who did not wish to be named, said it was essential that junior staff were free to speak up if they suspected a mistake. "There are surgeons who are fairly intimidating and people would feel it is difficult to challenge their views," he said.
Source
The fact that there is no effective penalty for mistakes in the NHS is background you need to understand fully the article below
Arrogance and complacency among doctors could lead to another medical disaster on the scale of the Bristol babies scandal, the Royal College of Surgeons has warned. Five years on, patients are dying on operating tables because some doctors are still failing to act on the lessons of the scandal that led to the deaths of 30 babies, the college says.
This weekend leading surgeons compared the operational failings causing surgical blunders in NHS theatres to the institutional deficiencies that contributed to Nasa's 1986 Challenger and 2003 Columbia space shuttle disasters. Tony Giddings, a member of the college's council and a former consultant surgeon, says the NHS has not changed its practices significantly since poor operating techniques led to the scandal at Bristol. "Do we need to have a second Bristol before we can actually make the cultural changes that are needed?" said Giddings. "We have continued to have avoidable deaths in surgery because the lessons that were so clearly set out in Sir Ian Kennedy's report [into the scandal] have not been acted upon."
Last weekend The Sunday Times disclosed that more than 300 babies a year were being left with brain damage because of oxygen starvation caused by lack of proper care at birth. A government watchdog also warned that more than 2,000 people died last year because of blunders by NHS staff.
Giddings says although most surgeons are now aware of their own limitations, some are still putting patients' lives at risk because they believe they are infallible. "There are some surgeons who have a seriously flawed opinion of their own capabilities," he said. "If you are a surgeon and doing dangerous work you need to have a degree of self-assurance and confidence but it can turn into arrogance. "Surgeons can become too familiar with the dangers of the operating theatre and lose that capacity to be properly respectful of those dangers. "After the first shuttle disaster, although the astronauts changed a few practices, their attitudes and beliefs did not really change and they still thought they were masters of their situation. Nasa had a second disaster and then they really had to change."
The college wants the government to make it mandatory for all surgeons to be trained in skills such as communication and teamwork. In 2001 Sir Ian Kennedy, the chairman of the Bristol inquiry, recommended national procedures whereby surgical teams - including the consultant, anaesthetist, and theatre nurses - should meet routinely to review their performance. This has not happened, according to the college, and, until it does, avoidable deaths will continue.
The college insists that the actual number of avoidable deaths are up to 10 times higher than the 2,159 patient deaths recorded by the National Patient Safety Agency, since only a fraction are reported. Research published in 2004 put the annual number of patient deaths due to medical error at 40,000.
In one notable case, Marc de Leval, a professor of paediatric surgery at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, admitted that mistakes he made in surgery resulted in babies' deaths. He volunteered to retrain in the early 1990s after seven babies he performed heart surgery on died. Another surgeon, a consultant urologist from southwest London, admitted this weekend that one of his patients died after he removed the wrong kidney. The patient later died of complications. The surgeon, who did not wish to be named, said it was essential that junior staff were free to speak up if they suspected a mistake. "There are surgeons who are fairly intimidating and people would feel it is difficult to challenge their views," he said.
Source
The poor are the fattest in Britain too: "Old mining and steel towns top the league for overweight people on an obesity map of England. The London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea has the lowest levels. Research by the analysts Experian and Dr Foster Intelligence point to a clear North-South divide. Poorer former industrial towns dominate the ten fattest areas, while the well-to-do people from more affluent areas in London and the Home Counties dominate the ten slimmest. The data can be broken down so that it is possible, for example, to name Oak Road in Easington, Co Durham, as the street where residents are at highest risk of obesity, and St Mary's Gate, Kensington and Chelsea, as the lowest risk. Researchers used a combination of health survey analysis and social profiling to identify hotspots for obesity risk. First they drew data from two national surveys - the Health Survey for England and the British Research Market Bureau's Target Group Index - to extract information on height, weight and "lifestyle choices" of 33,000 people across the country."
YOU CAN'T WIN!
A [British] woman prison officer was yesterday awarded nearly 150,000 pounds after being made to carry out intimate "rubdown" searches of male inmates. Carol Saunders, 42, had claimed it was "degrading, distasteful and dehumanising" that she had been made to perform physical searches on male prisoners. She said they subjected her to taunts such as "Higher, miss, higher" during leg searches and "Take as long as you like," leaving her angry and embarrassed.
Yesterday, after she won a landmark claim of sexual discrimination against the Prison Service, Mrs Saunders was awarded an out-of-court settlement of 145,000 pounds.
It is the latest in a line of vast sums awarded to people who claim to have been victimised at work. Last month, former City high-flier Helen Green won a mammoth 800,000 pounds damages award from the bank where she worked after a campaign of "schoolyard" bullying by female colleagues.
Prison officers were not permitted to perform the intimate "rubdown" searches - involving touching the crotch and buttocks - on inmates of the other sex when Mrs Saunders joined the service in 1987. But five years later, after pressure from women warders who said their career prospects were being hampered, the rules were changed so female officers could search inmates of either sex.
Mrs Saunders told an employment tribunal that performing the searches where she worked at Long Lartin high security jail, near Evesham in Worcestershire, made her feel physically sick and angry. Taunts included inmates joking: "It'll be a long time before I get another woman running her hands all over my body." She added that the queue of prisoners waiting to be searched by a female officer was usually longer than that by her male colleagues.
Mrs Saunders, of Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, told the hearing: "A male officer is not put through this. To have to carry out this task would not only be degrading and distasteful, it would be dehumanising."
At the start of 2004 she went on sick leave from her 25,000 pounds-a-year job claiming stress, and later that year the tribunal ruled she had suffered sexual discrimination.
The Prison Service lodged an unsuccessful appeal, and yesterday it announced an out-of-court settlement with Mrs Saunders in which she will receive 145,000 pounds.
Mrs Saunders, who has since returned to work after being transferred to Brockhill women's prison in Redditch, was not available for comment yesterday. A Prison Office spokeswoman said the rules on rubdown searches had now been changed. "Since the tribunal judgement, female prison officers are no longer compelled to carry out rubdown searches on male prisoners if they do not wish to," she said. Male prison officers have never been permitted to search female inmates in this way
Source
A [British] woman prison officer was yesterday awarded nearly 150,000 pounds after being made to carry out intimate "rubdown" searches of male inmates. Carol Saunders, 42, had claimed it was "degrading, distasteful and dehumanising" that she had been made to perform physical searches on male prisoners. She said they subjected her to taunts such as "Higher, miss, higher" during leg searches and "Take as long as you like," leaving her angry and embarrassed.
Yesterday, after she won a landmark claim of sexual discrimination against the Prison Service, Mrs Saunders was awarded an out-of-court settlement of 145,000 pounds.
It is the latest in a line of vast sums awarded to people who claim to have been victimised at work. Last month, former City high-flier Helen Green won a mammoth 800,000 pounds damages award from the bank where she worked after a campaign of "schoolyard" bullying by female colleagues.
Prison officers were not permitted to perform the intimate "rubdown" searches - involving touching the crotch and buttocks - on inmates of the other sex when Mrs Saunders joined the service in 1987. But five years later, after pressure from women warders who said their career prospects were being hampered, the rules were changed so female officers could search inmates of either sex.
Mrs Saunders told an employment tribunal that performing the searches where she worked at Long Lartin high security jail, near Evesham in Worcestershire, made her feel physically sick and angry. Taunts included inmates joking: "It'll be a long time before I get another woman running her hands all over my body." She added that the queue of prisoners waiting to be searched by a female officer was usually longer than that by her male colleagues.
Mrs Saunders, of Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, told the hearing: "A male officer is not put through this. To have to carry out this task would not only be degrading and distasteful, it would be dehumanising."
At the start of 2004 she went on sick leave from her 25,000 pounds-a-year job claiming stress, and later that year the tribunal ruled she had suffered sexual discrimination.
The Prison Service lodged an unsuccessful appeal, and yesterday it announced an out-of-court settlement with Mrs Saunders in which she will receive 145,000 pounds.
Mrs Saunders, who has since returned to work after being transferred to Brockhill women's prison in Redditch, was not available for comment yesterday. A Prison Office spokeswoman said the rules on rubdown searches had now been changed. "Since the tribunal judgement, female prison officers are no longer compelled to carry out rubdown searches on male prisoners if they do not wish to," she said. Male prison officers have never been permitted to search female inmates in this way
Source
Saturday, September 02, 2006
More As in maths as courses dumbed down
The sharp rise in students getting the top grade in maths A-level was welcomed last night in spite of concern among some teachers that the subject had been dumbed down. Yesterday's A-level results revealed that 43.5% of candidates got an A grade - up almost 3% on last year. The subject, traditionally seen as the preserve of the brightest students, also witnessed an increase in the number sitting the exam - up almost 6% for maths and 23% for further maths, although there were still fewer candidates than in 2000.
Ellie Johnson Searle, the director of the Joint Council for Qualifications, welcomed the results, which follow a series of curriculum reforms designed to make the subject "more accessible". "The turnaround in mathematics - both in overall numbers and in achievement - is encouraging in the first year of the new specifications," she said.
However, a report from the government's exam watchdog this year found that the changes had left some teachers "shocked and appalled" at the "unacceptable dumbing down" of the course. Alan Smithers, professor of education at the University of Buckingham, said it was a mistake to try to attract more students to maths A-level "by making it more accessible, in other words, easier".
Schools minister Jim Knight said the reforms had not diluted the exam, adding that the changes were made in consultation with teachers and maths experts. Ken Boston, the chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, welcomed the jump in the number of students taking maths after a slump at the start of the decade. "It was necessary to make changes to A-level maths to encourage greater participation and progression on to higher education and employment, and we hope that trend will continue," he said. "The changes came about after we listened to the views of the mathematics profession by giving students and teachers a more flexible and manageable A-level course." Tony Gardiner, an academic specialising in maths education at Birmingham University, said the rise in A grades was evidence that the exam was now easier than ever.
But Roger Porkess, the chief executive of Mathematics in Education and Industry, rejected the claim that the exam had been dumbed down. "These results are excellent news and a step towards being able to run a competitive economy."
Yesterday's results also revealed that the number of students taking physics dropped by 2.7% this year and around 17% over the past decade. Daniel Sandford Smith, the education manager at the Institute of Physics, said the trend was worrying and would have an impact on a wide range of degree subjects and careers.
Martin Rees, the president of the Royal Society, said that physics "remains on the critical list" with no sign of improvement. He was more optimistic about the other sciences. "Chemistry is showing some signs of recovery with the highest number of entries since 2000. This is 3.1% higher than last year, but 9.8% lower than in 1991. Biology looks healthy with 1.7% more students taking the subject than last year and 17.8% higher than in 1991."
There was a slight rise in the numbers taking A-level French, and a bigger increase in those taking German and Spanish. However, the number of students taking French and German has dropped by 47% and 42% respectively over the past decade, according to figures published by the University of Buckingham. The number of students taking modern community languages such as Russian, Portuguese, Punjabi and Chinese continued to rise, this by year by around 9%. The number of students taking media, film and television studies increased by 10%.
Steve Sinnott, the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said last night that the "bottoming out" of entries in traditional modern languages was a serious problem. He called on ministers to make them compulsory in secondary schools as part of the education bill going through parliament.
Source
The sharp rise in students getting the top grade in maths A-level was welcomed last night in spite of concern among some teachers that the subject had been dumbed down. Yesterday's A-level results revealed that 43.5% of candidates got an A grade - up almost 3% on last year. The subject, traditionally seen as the preserve of the brightest students, also witnessed an increase in the number sitting the exam - up almost 6% for maths and 23% for further maths, although there were still fewer candidates than in 2000.
Ellie Johnson Searle, the director of the Joint Council for Qualifications, welcomed the results, which follow a series of curriculum reforms designed to make the subject "more accessible". "The turnaround in mathematics - both in overall numbers and in achievement - is encouraging in the first year of the new specifications," she said.
However, a report from the government's exam watchdog this year found that the changes had left some teachers "shocked and appalled" at the "unacceptable dumbing down" of the course. Alan Smithers, professor of education at the University of Buckingham, said it was a mistake to try to attract more students to maths A-level "by making it more accessible, in other words, easier".
Schools minister Jim Knight said the reforms had not diluted the exam, adding that the changes were made in consultation with teachers and maths experts. Ken Boston, the chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, welcomed the jump in the number of students taking maths after a slump at the start of the decade. "It was necessary to make changes to A-level maths to encourage greater participation and progression on to higher education and employment, and we hope that trend will continue," he said. "The changes came about after we listened to the views of the mathematics profession by giving students and teachers a more flexible and manageable A-level course." Tony Gardiner, an academic specialising in maths education at Birmingham University, said the rise in A grades was evidence that the exam was now easier than ever.
But Roger Porkess, the chief executive of Mathematics in Education and Industry, rejected the claim that the exam had been dumbed down. "These results are excellent news and a step towards being able to run a competitive economy."
Yesterday's results also revealed that the number of students taking physics dropped by 2.7% this year and around 17% over the past decade. Daniel Sandford Smith, the education manager at the Institute of Physics, said the trend was worrying and would have an impact on a wide range of degree subjects and careers.
Martin Rees, the president of the Royal Society, said that physics "remains on the critical list" with no sign of improvement. He was more optimistic about the other sciences. "Chemistry is showing some signs of recovery with the highest number of entries since 2000. This is 3.1% higher than last year, but 9.8% lower than in 1991. Biology looks healthy with 1.7% more students taking the subject than last year and 17.8% higher than in 1991."
There was a slight rise in the numbers taking A-level French, and a bigger increase in those taking German and Spanish. However, the number of students taking French and German has dropped by 47% and 42% respectively over the past decade, according to figures published by the University of Buckingham. The number of students taking modern community languages such as Russian, Portuguese, Punjabi and Chinese continued to rise, this by year by around 9%. The number of students taking media, film and television studies increased by 10%.
Steve Sinnott, the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said last night that the "bottoming out" of entries in traditional modern languages was a serious problem. He called on ministers to make them compulsory in secondary schools as part of the education bill going through parliament.
Source
LYING COVERUP OF NHS NEGLIGENCE
Their "count-out" was so casual that nobody even bothered to fill out the form. But again no penalty whatever for killing a patient
A man aged 79 slowly starved to death after hospital staff accidentally left an 18in cotton pad in his intestine at the end of an operation. In the ten following months, the forgotten swab - used to soak up blood and other fluids - blocked the natural absorption of nutrients, an inquest was told.
The swab should have been ticked off a list of items to be removed from Robert Twycross at the end of the procedure at Royal Hampshire County Hospital, Winchester. But Chaudhary Usmani, the surgical registrar, admitted that the check sheet that was normally used had not been filled in by the nurses, although he claimed the check had been carried out. "The check was done, it had not been ticked but it was done," he said. "I would never, ever close an abdomen without checking. Never ever. "Accidents can happen but swabs have to be checked. I have been in surgery for long enough, I've never done an operation when the swab check was not done."
Christian Wakefield, a consultant general surgeon who performed the operation jointly, said that the hundreds of swabs, along with other surgical instrument, were counted immediately before the operation, when they were used, and again when removed from the patient. Yet despite three checks by the two surgeons and two nurses present, the swab had been left inside the pensioner's digestive system.
Human error was to blame for the mistake, Mr Wakefield acknowledged. "The most likely cause for the oversight was that a nurse had miscounted the swabs when they were taken out after the operation," he said. "This could have happened by two swabs getting stuck together, because they can shrink in size when full of blood. "It was a case of miscounting and human error is the likely explanation."
The inquest, at Winchester, was told that Mr Twycross, of Acre Court, Hampshire, was readmitted to the hospital suffering from abdominal pains, diarrhoea, malnutrition and dehydration on February 28 last year, ten months after the surgery in April 2004. He underwent further emergency surgery, performed again by Mr Wakefield, which revealed the infected swab. Numerous check-ups after the first operation had failed to detect the swab, despite a visible lump under Mr Twycross's skin.
The pensioner was subsequently moved to a nursing home and made frequent trips to the hospital until his death on October 4 last year. The pathologist's report described the death as "unnatural" and concluded that the error had contributed to, but was not the sole cause of, his death.
In his verdict, given on Wednesday, Grahame Short, the Central Hampshire Coroner, said: "I've found that the retention of a swab was accidental. It was not the sole cause of death. Robert Twycross died as a result of malnutrition due to a retained surgical pack. He also suffered from ischaemic heart disease and jejunal diverticulosis."
Mr Wakefield agreed, conceding: "I believe he could have healed, although it would have been a very long process and if the swab had been found earlier it would have improved his recovery." An internal investigation was carried out at the hospital but no disciplinary action was taken. The hospital has implemented an extra count of swabs and instruments after surgery to ensure that nothing is left behind.
Source
Their "count-out" was so casual that nobody even bothered to fill out the form. But again no penalty whatever for killing a patient
A man aged 79 slowly starved to death after hospital staff accidentally left an 18in cotton pad in his intestine at the end of an operation. In the ten following months, the forgotten swab - used to soak up blood and other fluids - blocked the natural absorption of nutrients, an inquest was told.
The swab should have been ticked off a list of items to be removed from Robert Twycross at the end of the procedure at Royal Hampshire County Hospital, Winchester. But Chaudhary Usmani, the surgical registrar, admitted that the check sheet that was normally used had not been filled in by the nurses, although he claimed the check had been carried out. "The check was done, it had not been ticked but it was done," he said. "I would never, ever close an abdomen without checking. Never ever. "Accidents can happen but swabs have to be checked. I have been in surgery for long enough, I've never done an operation when the swab check was not done."
Christian Wakefield, a consultant general surgeon who performed the operation jointly, said that the hundreds of swabs, along with other surgical instrument, were counted immediately before the operation, when they were used, and again when removed from the patient. Yet despite three checks by the two surgeons and two nurses present, the swab had been left inside the pensioner's digestive system.
Human error was to blame for the mistake, Mr Wakefield acknowledged. "The most likely cause for the oversight was that a nurse had miscounted the swabs when they were taken out after the operation," he said. "This could have happened by two swabs getting stuck together, because they can shrink in size when full of blood. "It was a case of miscounting and human error is the likely explanation."
The inquest, at Winchester, was told that Mr Twycross, of Acre Court, Hampshire, was readmitted to the hospital suffering from abdominal pains, diarrhoea, malnutrition and dehydration on February 28 last year, ten months after the surgery in April 2004. He underwent further emergency surgery, performed again by Mr Wakefield, which revealed the infected swab. Numerous check-ups after the first operation had failed to detect the swab, despite a visible lump under Mr Twycross's skin.
The pensioner was subsequently moved to a nursing home and made frequent trips to the hospital until his death on October 4 last year. The pathologist's report described the death as "unnatural" and concluded that the error had contributed to, but was not the sole cause of, his death.
In his verdict, given on Wednesday, Grahame Short, the Central Hampshire Coroner, said: "I've found that the retention of a swab was accidental. It was not the sole cause of death. Robert Twycross died as a result of malnutrition due to a retained surgical pack. He also suffered from ischaemic heart disease and jejunal diverticulosis."
Mr Wakefield agreed, conceding: "I believe he could have healed, although it would have been a very long process and if the swab had been found earlier it would have improved his recovery." An internal investigation was carried out at the hospital but no disciplinary action was taken. The hospital has implemented an extra count of swabs and instruments after surgery to ensure that nothing is left behind.
Source
BRITISH CONSERVATIVES GO POPULIST
Popular fads are hard for politicians to resist when the harm of them is not immediately apparent
Taxes on motoring, flying and other polluting activities would rise under a Conservative government, according to George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor. He said that the Tories would raise more money from green taxes and less from taxes on employment, investment and savings. The policy is aimed at giving the Conservative Party a green image, but risks alienating both motorists and right-wingers, who want more emphasis on tax cuts. He made one of his clearest statements yet on tax on a trip to Japan, where he is studying ways of reducing pollution, including the use of super-fast trains to curb demand for internal flights. Today he will take a ride on a magnetic train capable of travelling at 360mph, which he said could virtually eliminate domestic flights if brought to Britain.
Mr Osborne and David Cameron, the Conservative leader, are touring Asia as part of their strategy to portray the party as a government in waiting, being taken seriously by foreign leaders and with a coherent range of policies. Mr Cameron will next week visit India, where he will meet business and political leaders. Speaking in Tokyo, Mr Osborne said: "I believe we in Britain should move some of the burden of taxation away from income and capital and towards taxes on environmentally-damaging behaviour. Instead of a tax system that penalises hard work and enterprise, I want to move towards more effective and fair taxes on pollution. I want the proportion of tax revenue raised by green taxes to rise." He refused to be drawn on any details of tax changes, but said they were considering fuel tax and vehicle excise duty, as well as tax on aviation, and a new carbon tax to help to tackle global warming.
Steve Norris, who leads a Conservative working group on transport, said that he was sure the party would reintroduce the fuel duty escalator, whereby the tax on petrol and diesel is automatically increased every year. The fuel duty escalator was abolished by Gordon Brown after protests by lorry drivers and farmers.
Ed Balls, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, hit back: "I think the question George Osborne failed to answer is: is he really saying that he thinks taxes on motorists should be going up now at a time when petrol prices are so high? If you are going to be a serious Opposition you need to come along and say what are your proposals, how would you pay for them. Until then people won't take you seriously."
The Shadow Chancellor also insisted that Britain should compete with the rest of the world by developing a series of high-speed rail links with magnetically levitated trains, connecting major cities. Such "maglev" trains already operate in Japan and China, and are being tried out in Germany. "If Japan is developing this technology, if China has already introduced this kind of train, if Germany is looking at this technology, why are we not doing so in Britain?"
Mr Osborne's claims that such travel would tackle global warming by reducing demand for flights was rebuffed by Cliff Perry, of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, who said that maglev trains produced more pollution than slower trains and were the "railway equivalent of Concorde". An aide to Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, said that the maglev network would cost tens of billions of pounds. "No party will ever be taken seriously when they throw around commitments on tax and spending like this. David Cameron and George Osborne are proving that they simply do not have the maturity and experience to address the serious issues facing Britain's future," he said.
Source
Popular fads are hard for politicians to resist when the harm of them is not immediately apparent
Taxes on motoring, flying and other polluting activities would rise under a Conservative government, according to George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor. He said that the Tories would raise more money from green taxes and less from taxes on employment, investment and savings. The policy is aimed at giving the Conservative Party a green image, but risks alienating both motorists and right-wingers, who want more emphasis on tax cuts. He made one of his clearest statements yet on tax on a trip to Japan, where he is studying ways of reducing pollution, including the use of super-fast trains to curb demand for internal flights. Today he will take a ride on a magnetic train capable of travelling at 360mph, which he said could virtually eliminate domestic flights if brought to Britain.
Mr Osborne and David Cameron, the Conservative leader, are touring Asia as part of their strategy to portray the party as a government in waiting, being taken seriously by foreign leaders and with a coherent range of policies. Mr Cameron will next week visit India, where he will meet business and political leaders. Speaking in Tokyo, Mr Osborne said: "I believe we in Britain should move some of the burden of taxation away from income and capital and towards taxes on environmentally-damaging behaviour. Instead of a tax system that penalises hard work and enterprise, I want to move towards more effective and fair taxes on pollution. I want the proportion of tax revenue raised by green taxes to rise." He refused to be drawn on any details of tax changes, but said they were considering fuel tax and vehicle excise duty, as well as tax on aviation, and a new carbon tax to help to tackle global warming.
Steve Norris, who leads a Conservative working group on transport, said that he was sure the party would reintroduce the fuel duty escalator, whereby the tax on petrol and diesel is automatically increased every year. The fuel duty escalator was abolished by Gordon Brown after protests by lorry drivers and farmers.
Ed Balls, the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, hit back: "I think the question George Osborne failed to answer is: is he really saying that he thinks taxes on motorists should be going up now at a time when petrol prices are so high? If you are going to be a serious Opposition you need to come along and say what are your proposals, how would you pay for them. Until then people won't take you seriously."
The Shadow Chancellor also insisted that Britain should compete with the rest of the world by developing a series of high-speed rail links with magnetically levitated trains, connecting major cities. Such "maglev" trains already operate in Japan and China, and are being tried out in Germany. "If Japan is developing this technology, if China has already introduced this kind of train, if Germany is looking at this technology, why are we not doing so in Britain?"
Mr Osborne's claims that such travel would tackle global warming by reducing demand for flights was rebuffed by Cliff Perry, of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, who said that maglev trains produced more pollution than slower trains and were the "railway equivalent of Concorde". An aide to Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, said that the maglev network would cost tens of billions of pounds. "No party will ever be taken seriously when they throw around commitments on tax and spending like this. David Cameron and George Osborne are proving that they simply do not have the maturity and experience to address the serious issues facing Britain's future," he said.
Source
A win against cancer: "A postmaster dying of the most dangerous form of skin cancer is one of two men to have been saved after their white blood cells were genetically engineered to fight their tumours. The trial in the US provides the first direct evidence that normal immune system cells can be altered genetically to become tumour-hunters, raising the prospect of a new generation of treatments for cancer. While the therapy has been tried on only the most virulent form of skin cancer, malignant melanoma, which accounts for about 3 per cent of cancers in Britain, scientists are convinced that it should work eventually for other tumours, such as those of the breast or lung. The team at the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) have already tailored human white blood cells to recognise and destroy other cancers in the laboratory and are planning to test these on patients soon... Of 17 melanoma patients who were given cells tailored to fight their tumours, only two responded. Even so, these two cases offer proof of the principle that the adapted cells can survive, then shrink tumours"
Muslims feel like victims. The West feels guilty. Is the world going mad?
"Times" columnist Gerard Baker says it takes courage for leaders to expose flaws in their society. But some are willing to do it
If all the big terrorist attacks of the past 35 years — from the Munich massacre to the July 7 London bombings last year — had been carried out by groups of white, English, middle-aged newspaper columnists, I suspect my life might have become quite intolerable in recent years. I would have had to get used to looks of fearful suspicion every time I got on a train or a bus. Whenever I checked in for a flight or sought entrance to a government building I would doubtless have been taken away for questioning.
It would, no doubt, have become very frustrating. I’d have probably taken to the streets with other white, English, middle-aged newspaper columnists (it would have been quite a big demonstration), with placards that declared “We are not all terrorists!”. Or, being prolix by profession, more likely: “Extrapolation from isolated instances of criminality to sweeping ethnic and professional characterisations is immoral!” But in the end, I’d have to accept that the suspicion was justified. That it was an inescapable fact that my ethnicity, age and profession had become associated, over a very long period, with a predilection for terrorist activities.
"Times" columnist Gerard Baker says it takes courage for leaders to expose flaws in their society. But some are willing to do it
If all the big terrorist attacks of the past 35 years — from the Munich massacre to the July 7 London bombings last year — had been carried out by groups of white, English, middle-aged newspaper columnists, I suspect my life might have become quite intolerable in recent years. I would have had to get used to looks of fearful suspicion every time I got on a train or a bus. Whenever I checked in for a flight or sought entrance to a government building I would doubtless have been taken away for questioning.
It would, no doubt, have become very frustrating. I’d have probably taken to the streets with other white, English, middle-aged newspaper columnists (it would have been quite a big demonstration), with placards that declared “We are not all terrorists!”. Or, being prolix by profession, more likely: “Extrapolation from isolated instances of criminality to sweeping ethnic and professional characterisations is immoral!” But in the end, I’d have to accept that the suspicion was justified. That it was an inescapable fact that my ethnicity, age and profession had become associated, over a very long period, with a predilection for terrorist activities.
Racial profiling is an ugly business. Carried to extremes it can produce outrageously discriminatory outcomes, based on the false logic that all terrorists are Muslims, therefore all Muslims are potential terrorists. A reasonable person can only sympathise with those poor chaps who were thrown off a plane from Manchester last month.
We should be careful to ensure that “flying while Muslim” does not become a new offence in the criminal code. As critics have said, not only is it wrong, it is almost guaranteed to increase sympathy for the real terrorists. But those singled out for increased scrutiny must also accept that profiling is going to save us lives. In a world of limited resources and clearly identifiable threats it is entirely legitimate, indeed necessary, to subject certain individuals to greater attention than others.
To complain about unnecessary intrusions seems reasonable; to insist that profiling be carried out properly and indeed respectfully, entirely proper. But to argue, as is now common, that it is another example of harassment of and discrimination against Muslims by an increasingly aggressive and hostile State and society, is not only a bit rich. It sounds disturbing like another example of what is becoming a dangerous pathology among many Muslims — to wallow in a self-imposed and eagerly embraced status of victimhood.
This condition places the blame for every ill in their lives, in their communities, in the West and in the countries of the Middle East, on the imperialist oppression of the white man, the American and, of course, the Jew, never once stopping to consider even the possibility that their plight might be, in part at least, their own making.
Though the West is surely not blameless, either through history or today, in its treatment of Muslims, the idea that responsibility for the woes of the Islamic world these past few hundred years can be laid at somebody else’s door is escapist fantasy.
The nasty regimes of countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Egypt conveniently emphasise this victim status to divert attention from their own repression and inequality and to blame Israel. The failure of Palestinians to create an orderly and successful society is blamed on “the occupation”.
The failure of many Muslims in Europe, especially in Britain, to integrate effectively is laid at the feet of a white racist society that excludes them. The real injustices suffered by these communities become a convenient smokescreen to hide their own flaws.
This victim mentality reaches its apotheosis in the minds of a few in the hideous distortion of martyrdom. The image of the suicide bomber captures the ultimate catharsis of victimhood and at the same time the ultimate escape and liberation from it — the violent immolation of the victim on the altar of a sacred ideology. Of course this is a perversion of the very idea of sacrifice. Martyrdom is a willingness to die for one’s faith, not a willingness to take hundreds of innocents with you in the process.
Pierre Rehov, an Algerian-born French filmmaker, who produced a documentary, Suicide Killers, was asked in a TV interview this year how the world could end the madness of suicide bombings and terrorism. “Stop being politically correct and stop believing that this culture is a victim of ours,” he said.
Of course, this celebration of victimhood plays to the West’s deep sense of guilt, producing a fearful complementarity that makes today’s crisis so potent — a civilisation all too willing to accept the blame for the woes of a people all too willing to blame them.
We can stop enabling the victim mentality by overcoming our guilt complex. But then it is up to Muslims themselves to defeat it. Polls repeatedly show vast majorities of Muslims in the West, and smaller majorities in the Middle East, believe that terrorism is a perversion of Islam. But those same polls also show many Muslims agreeing with the proposition that the root cause of that terrorism is “oppression”.
It takes courage for leaders to expose the weaknesses in their own society. But there are some willing to do it. Last week their ranks were augmented from an unlikely source. No less a figure than Ghazi Hamad, the spokesman for the terrorist-supporting Hamas Government in the Palestinian Authority, wrote in an Arabic newspaper about the real causes of the mayhem in Gaza since the Israeli occupation ended last year.
“We’re always afraid to talk about our mistakes,” he said. “We’re used to blaming our mistakes on others. What is the relationship between the chaos, anarchy, lawlessness, indiscriminate murders, theft of land, family rivalries, transgression on public lands and unorganised traffic and the occupation? We are still trapped by the mentality of conspiracy theories, one that has limited our capability to think.”
Albion's wayward children: "There is, to be sure, a very 'special relationship' that exists between England and America. Usually undefined, this relationship is essentially characterized by warm and collaborative ties between the two countries -- in the diplomatic, military, economic and political spheres. But there is also a deep cultural affinity between the two countries -- one that is, too often, left unexamined. Many people only see the linguistic expression of America's cultural bond with Britain -- the fact that we speak the same language. But there are 'fundamental customs and values that form the core of English-speaking cultures' according to a website inspired by The Anglosphere Challenge by James C. Bennett."
Friday, September 01, 2006
"PROGRESSIVE" SCHOOL FINDS IT NEEDS TO FINGERPRINT KIDS
Wotta laugh!
A pioneering comprehensive known for progressive, liberal policies has upset parents by seeking to fingerprint every one of its 1,500 pupils when they return from their summer holidays next week. Holland Park school wants to build a database so that children turning up late can be identified and their time of arrival recorded in a "live register" by pressing a finger on an electronic pad. The school has spent 4,500 pounds on technology to build the database of pupils' prints.
Parents and local councillors, however, have complained that the system to control truancy may breach the pupils' human rights because the information could be passed to the police. Voluntary fingerprinting has become widespread in schools, especially for taking out library books. Eton college introduced a fingerprint system last year to identify pupils old enough to drink in its Tap bar. Pupils aged 17 can drink one pint of beer if they buy food but they have to register with a fingerprint.
Holland Park school, which opened in 1958, was one of the first comprehensives in Britain and was once dubbed the "Eton of comprehensives". Many of its pupils come from rough council estates, while others are drawn from the liberal elite in the expensive streets of Holland Park and Notting Hill, for whom the school became a magnet in the 1960s. Hilary Benn, the international development secretary, was sent there by his father Tony. Other celebrity parents have included Lady Antonia Fraser, the historian, and the late film director John Huston.
However, the school's latest move is seen as far from progressive. It is believed to be one of the first schools to seek to fingerprint every pupil in an effort to monitor their whereabouts. If late arrivals fail to press a pad at the gates or in a classroom, they will be recorded as absent.
Marianne Alapini, a local Labour councillor, said she had spoken to 15 worried parents. "We cannot understand the rationale behind this," she said. "It raises all sorts of questions about human rights, data protection and child protection." Mohammed Abdul-Saaka, vice-chairman of the borough's police consultative group, who has raised the issue with Liberty, the civil rights organisation, said: "This has been done without any consultation and has opened a Pandora's box of complications."
Renate Stewart, 16, a pupil leaving the school after taking her GCSEs, said: "I think that the school does so many things to try to improve its image but they should be spending this money on things which inspire the students. That might make the students feel better about being at school. "It does make you feel as if you are some kind of criminal."
Conservative-led Kensington and Chelsea council, which runs the school, said pupils would have one finger scanned and this information would be converted into a code number that would be recorded and registered when a pupil placed a finger on the reader. A council spokesman said: "This is not fingerprinting of the type associated with the police. The ability to record student attendance enhances the school's efforts to ensure a safe and secure environment for all students and staff." He said no records would be kept of the scan and the data would not be shared. However, if the police asked if a pupil was in school on a particular day, the school would tell them.
Source
Wotta laugh!
A pioneering comprehensive known for progressive, liberal policies has upset parents by seeking to fingerprint every one of its 1,500 pupils when they return from their summer holidays next week. Holland Park school wants to build a database so that children turning up late can be identified and their time of arrival recorded in a "live register" by pressing a finger on an electronic pad. The school has spent 4,500 pounds on technology to build the database of pupils' prints.
Parents and local councillors, however, have complained that the system to control truancy may breach the pupils' human rights because the information could be passed to the police. Voluntary fingerprinting has become widespread in schools, especially for taking out library books. Eton college introduced a fingerprint system last year to identify pupils old enough to drink in its Tap bar. Pupils aged 17 can drink one pint of beer if they buy food but they have to register with a fingerprint.
Holland Park school, which opened in 1958, was one of the first comprehensives in Britain and was once dubbed the "Eton of comprehensives". Many of its pupils come from rough council estates, while others are drawn from the liberal elite in the expensive streets of Holland Park and Notting Hill, for whom the school became a magnet in the 1960s. Hilary Benn, the international development secretary, was sent there by his father Tony. Other celebrity parents have included Lady Antonia Fraser, the historian, and the late film director John Huston.
However, the school's latest move is seen as far from progressive. It is believed to be one of the first schools to seek to fingerprint every pupil in an effort to monitor their whereabouts. If late arrivals fail to press a pad at the gates or in a classroom, they will be recorded as absent.
Marianne Alapini, a local Labour councillor, said she had spoken to 15 worried parents. "We cannot understand the rationale behind this," she said. "It raises all sorts of questions about human rights, data protection and child protection." Mohammed Abdul-Saaka, vice-chairman of the borough's police consultative group, who has raised the issue with Liberty, the civil rights organisation, said: "This has been done without any consultation and has opened a Pandora's box of complications."
Renate Stewart, 16, a pupil leaving the school after taking her GCSEs, said: "I think that the school does so many things to try to improve its image but they should be spending this money on things which inspire the students. That might make the students feel better about being at school. "It does make you feel as if you are some kind of criminal."
Conservative-led Kensington and Chelsea council, which runs the school, said pupils would have one finger scanned and this information would be converted into a code number that would be recorded and registered when a pupil placed a finger on the reader. A council spokesman said: "This is not fingerprinting of the type associated with the police. The ability to record student attendance enhances the school's efforts to ensure a safe and secure environment for all students and staff." He said no records would be kept of the scan and the data would not be shared. However, if the police asked if a pupil was in school on a particular day, the school would tell them.
Source
MORE PRIVATIZATION OF THE NHS
A 200 million pound government deal that will mean a big expansion of private sector involvement in the health service could provoke a confrontation with the unions and the Labour Left, The Times has learnt. The contracts with 14 independent companies, concluded last week by the Department of Health without any fanfare, will provide for an additional 150,000 elective procedures a year to be carried out for the health service by private firms.
The 14 companies will be added to the Department of Health's "extended choice" network, which at present consists of foundation trusts and some independent treatment centres. Under the policy, patients awaiting elective care can choose from the list where they will be treated. Details of the deal are revealed in this week's Health Service Journal.
Seven of the biggest private healthcare companies have won a large proportion of the work, with BMI Healthcare the big victor having 44 contracts across the country. Other winners include BUPA, Nuffield, Capio, Centres for Clinical Excellence, Mercury Health and Nations Healthcare. Each contract will run for five years and the private companies will provide NHS patients with a range of elective care services including general surgery, endoscopy, ophthalmology, plastic surgery and neurology. The health department has opted for centralised bulk buying to give the NHS more advantageous terms.
The contracts were not announced last week by the Health Department, prompting suspicions among health service professionals that the Government did not wish to highlight the move before the TUC and Labour conferences, where private sector provision remains controversial. But the department suggested yesterday that there was nothing unusual about an announcement not having been made. A spokesman said: "This is not a new procurement but part of the second wave of procurement from the independent sector which was launched in May last year."
Source
A 200 million pound government deal that will mean a big expansion of private sector involvement in the health service could provoke a confrontation with the unions and the Labour Left, The Times has learnt. The contracts with 14 independent companies, concluded last week by the Department of Health without any fanfare, will provide for an additional 150,000 elective procedures a year to be carried out for the health service by private firms.
The 14 companies will be added to the Department of Health's "extended choice" network, which at present consists of foundation trusts and some independent treatment centres. Under the policy, patients awaiting elective care can choose from the list where they will be treated. Details of the deal are revealed in this week's Health Service Journal.
Seven of the biggest private healthcare companies have won a large proportion of the work, with BMI Healthcare the big victor having 44 contracts across the country. Other winners include BUPA, Nuffield, Capio, Centres for Clinical Excellence, Mercury Health and Nations Healthcare. Each contract will run for five years and the private companies will provide NHS patients with a range of elective care services including general surgery, endoscopy, ophthalmology, plastic surgery and neurology. The health department has opted for centralised bulk buying to give the NHS more advantageous terms.
The contracts were not announced last week by the Health Department, prompting suspicions among health service professionals that the Government did not wish to highlight the move before the TUC and Labour conferences, where private sector provision remains controversial. But the department suggested yesterday that there was nothing unusual about an announcement not having been made. A spokesman said: "This is not a new procurement but part of the second wave of procurement from the independent sector which was launched in May last year."
Source
