Eye on Britain
Sunday, August 31, 2008
"Doing something" in Britain
What a crock! Enforcement as theater! A huge raid to grab a couple of hard-working, harmless Chinese kitchenhands -- when Britain already has thousands of illegals who have been ordered out of the country but who just stay on -- usually getting welfare as well! The Chinese were an easy grab for lazy bureaucrats, that's all it was about. Totally useless camouflage for chaotic immigration control
Two people were led away by police and immigration officers following a raid on a Chinese restaurant in the city centre last night. Police officers were joined by about 12 immigration officials from across the south-east in the "intelligence-led" operation at the Gourmet Plaza, in Cowgate. The raid was organised and carried out by the Border and Immigration Agency's Enforcement Unit, based in St Ives.
Five unmarked people carriers swooped on the restaurant just after 6pm yesterday as diners were preparing to enter the premises for an early meal.
The "closed" sign remained up at the Gourmet Plaza as prospective customers were turned away by police and asked to come back at a later time.
Seconded Cambridge police Inspector Trevor Tendall said: "We are acting on information received by a source. "This is a joint operation involving police and immigration officers from across the county." As prospective diners and onlookers watched, officers led out two men of Chinese origin in handcuffs, just before 7pm. The pair were put into separate people carriers and driven away from the scene. [LOL! A people-carrier each!] After the raid, an immigration officer, who did not want to be named, said: "We have acted and carried out the plan, and we are satisfied with the results today."
As the last of the officers left, five members of staff rushed out of the restaurant and across Cowgate to confront an officer in what was believed to be a dispute about a warrant. When another member of staff found the piece of paper they were seeking, the staff filed back into the eaterie.
Customers, who had been told to go and have a drink in the nearby Drapers Arms, waited patiently on the street to see if the popular restaurant, with its all-you-can-eat $13 supper deal, would open its doors. It re-opened at about 7.30pm.
Source
Black doll sparks outrage
We read:
Jokes are becoming very risky in sourpuss socialist Britain. Previous uproar in Britain about golliwog dolls covered here. I had a golliwog myself when I was a little kid. They are a stylized representation of a black man but kids loved them. Is that bad? I would have thought that teaching kids to have warm feelings towards blacks would be acclaimed by the do-gooders. Silly old me!
The undead
Trapped inside their bodies, apparently switched off to the world, but still alive: they are the undead. Or so we thought. Forty per cent of patients in a `vegetative state' are misdiagnosed. Now British scientists are leading the field in trying to put that right
Kate Bainbridge is a lively 37-year-old former schoolteacher. We are communicating in the conservatory of her parents' home in south Cambridge. She has expressive eyes and a broad and ready smile, but she can utter only occasional single words with difficulty. She sits in a wheelchair "speaking" with the aid of a letter-board, using her left forefinger to spell out words individually.
Ten years ago, Kate went into a deep coma and was on a ventilator for several weeks. She had suffered severe brain inflammation after contracting a viral infection. When she came out of the coma, she opened her eyes and could breathe naturally, but she was unresponsive to speech and visual stimuli, and appeared to lack all conscious awareness. She was still in this condition four months after falling ill, and was later diagnosed to be in a persistent vegetative state, or PVS: in other words, persistently unaware. But the diagnosis was wrong.
Although Kate could not speak, or hear properly, or make any kind of signal, or take in sustenance except through a tube into the stomach, she was sometimes aware of herself and her surroundings. She had a raging thirst that was not alleviated by the ward staff. She was racked with pain. Sometimes she'd cry out, but the ward staff thought it was just a reflex action. Kate suffered so much pain and despair that she tried to take her own life by holding her breath.
Then a Cambridge neuroscientist called Dr Adrian Owen put her in a special kind of scanner and performed an unprecedented experiment. It revealed evidence of fluctuating levels of brain activation when she was presented with pictures of her parents. From that point, she started her long journey back into the world. This is a story about brain-impaired patients who come gradually out of coma into "minimal awareness" after being misdiagnosed as being in PVS: breathing, appearing to be wakeful, yet deemed to be dead to themselves and the world. It is also about the disastrous consequences of such misdiagnoses, estimated in the UK and other countries to be running at two in five cases. And, crucially, it is about a neuroscientific research programme that is set to transform the prospects of diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation of brain-injured people the world over.
Only an estimated 20% of patients return, like the Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond after his car crash in September, to fully functioning normality after serious brain injury. The range of disability following brain damage is hugely varied in type and severity. It is not known how many PVS and minimally conscious patients there are in this country, since no central registry exists. It is likely, according to a canvass of many neurology professionals, to be in the tens of thousands. More certain is the grim reality of hospital wards and long-term care homes where the persistently vegetative and the minimally conscious languish, sometimes for decades.
To write this article I have had the sobering experience of witnessing the plight of patients with severely impaired consciousness - the intubations, the double incontinence, the stricken semicircle of wheelchairs parked before the unwatched day-room TV. And I have met the anguished families of those who are denied final grieving and closure for a loved one condemned to what appears a living death. All too often I have spoken to a wife or husband, or mother or father, who will travel anything up to two hours each way by taxi, every day, to spend time with an unresponsive child or spouse.
But here's at least one mordantly amusing and true story told to me by a psychologist at Putney's Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability. "Young man with motorbike head injury in a coma. His mum, a keen evangelical, comes every day with friends to sing Onward, Christian Soldiers by his bedside. She's hoping to stimulate his brain into action. It works: he comes round, but he can't speak. So they fit him up with one of those Stephen Hawking-type laptops, and the first words he speaks are: "For God's sake, Mum, shut it!" That's about as funny as it gets on a brain-injury ward, but there's a serious take-home message. Even minimally aware patients can retain emotions, personality, a capacity to suffer - and, as the young biker showed, attitude.
The biggest, most tragic clinical myth about brain injury today is that PVS can be reliably diagnosed by bedside observation alone. It has in fact been known for at least a decade, ever since a key survey of brain-injured patients, that misdiagnosis of the condition runs at more than 40%, a statistic originally calculated by Professor Keith Andrews, former head of the Putney hospital, and confirmed by recent surveys in Europe and North America. This means that valuable rehabilitation strategies are routinely neglected, and misdiagnosed patients end up on unsuitable wards or in care homes where their needs are neither understood nor met.
Up to 12,000 people under 40 in this country suffer traumatic brain injury every year, and there are serious deficiencies in their rehabilitation, according to Professor John Pickard, head of neurosurgery at Addenbrooke's hospital, Cambridge: "The tendency for patients to be left to languish on general medical, surgical and orthopaedic wards continues to their detriment." The shocking term being used by campaigning neurologists and neurosurgeons is that unknown numbers of patients are being just "warehoused".
Christine Simpson, a mother of two in her mid-fifties, and her husband, Colin, encountered the PVS misdiagnosis phenomenon two years ago. After suffering a brainstem stroke, Christine was first admitted to the intensive-care unit at the Princess Alexandra hospital, Harlow, then transferred to a general respiratory ward, where she remained for about a month.
"I was told that she would probably get a chest infection and not survive more than a few weeks," says Colin. "Even on the respiratory ward I was told she was still in coma, though she was communicating with me at times through her eye movements. Only because myself and our two grown-up sons were constantly at her bedside did she get proper attention. "On one occasion I found her lying flat with a deflated tracheotomy cuff. She was blue in the face and having difficulty breathing."
Other instances of poor care, Colin claims, involved a catheter bag infrequently changed, and a gastric tube not replaced routinely according to clinical guidelines. He also contends that Christine was prematurely discharged from intensive care as a result of the PVS misdiagnosis. His formal petition that the hospital has not done enough to resolve his complaints was upheld by the Healthcare Commission on November 9.
Much more here
A conservative approach to poverty
Last week, George Osborne made a speech about fairness in which he castigated the Government for its failure to deal with poverty. A Tory Shadow Chancellor attacking Labour's record on poverty: that really is a raid into enemy territory. In the long run, however, it could leave the Tories open to a counter-attack.
In the short run, Mr Osborne did not rely on rhetoric. His arguments were reinforced by statistics that gave them added bite. Although the Shadow Chancellor was happy to concede that many Labour MPs were sincere in their abhorrence of poverty, any Labour supporter who reads the speech will wince at the dissection of Labour's inability to realise its ideals.
But Mr Osborne was not merely trying to add to Labour's miseries: hardly necessary these days. His speech had a serious purpose. He was outlining a new Tory theory of poverty and the state. He insisted that this Government was not failing because it did not care enough and had not spent enough. It was failing because its strategy was fundamentally misguided.
The author of that strategy was Gordon Brown. His insistence that "only the state can guarantee fairness" has both underpinned and undermined Labour's approach to social policy. By stifling initiative and imposing central direction, not least through the target culture, it had ensured that much of the extra money devoted to health and education was wasted.
This helps to explain why only 176 pupils who received free school meals gained three As at A level this year and why half of all children in care leave school without a single GCSE. There is a direct relationship between that last statistic and social misery. Many of those uneducated victims of care will be busy acquiring diplomas in mugging, burglary, prostitution and drug-taking.
Instead of Gordon Brown's great clunking state, the Tories want to empower churches, charities and social action co-operatives to help the needy. They also propose a radical change in the supply of education, ending the Government's monopoly over state schooling. To improve opportunity for the poorest, argues Mr Osborne, society and the state must work together.
A dramatic programme for social reform, this is the basis of David Cameron's approach to government. Shortly after he became Tory leader, he met Nicolas Sarkozy, who told him how much he admired the Tories' economic reforms of the 1980s. Mr Cameron hopes that in the 2030s, a French president will be telling a Tory leader how much he admires the social reforms of the 2010s.
The Tory party always has two great tasks: to defend the integrity of the nation and to solve the pressing questions of the day. Apart from the economy, two intractable and related problems have now forced themselves onto the agenda: how to redeem the underclass and how to ensure that the public services serve the public. Mr Cameron will not duck either challenge.
Well and good, but enthusiasm will not be enough. Contemporary British poverty is not just an economic phenomenon. It arises from cultural demoralisation. In the EU, Britain has the highest proportion of children living in households where no adult works. Though many hereditary peers have been banished from the House of Lords, hereditary unemployment is flourishing in the inner cities.
London is one of the mightiest engines of wealth creation in the whole of history. There is no reason why any able-bodied youngster who looks willing and trustworthy should not find a job. Yet a short Tube journey from the Bank of England, there are housing estates where no one thinks in terms of finding work.
David Cameron is determined that this will change. Yet even if he succeeds, it will take years, and the middle classes will not be idle. As the economy recovers, opportunities will increase. The middle classes will take them. Economic innovation will create new, well paid jobs. Middle-class children will rush to fill them.
That should not dismay sensible Tories. As the middle classes grow richer, they create the wealth to fund social programmes. In order to clear up Gordon Brown's toxic economic legacy, the Cameron government will depend on the efforts and tax contributions of the middle classes, and those efforts will be forthcoming only if they are adequately rewarded.
Source
COAL MAY PLAY MAJOR ROLE AGAIN IN BRITAIN'S ENERGY MIX
UK Coal is seeking to cash in on rising energy prices through higher production and the end of long-term, low-priced legacy contracts. The company is already investing œ55m each in its collieries at Thoresby in Nottinghamshire and Kellingley in West Yorkshire to open up new reserves and is expected to decide within the next six months whether to reopen the Harworth mine near Doncaster, which has been mothballed for more than two years.
Chief executive Jon Lloyd said he believed it was accepted that in the face of higher energy prices, and despite the impact of the large combustion plants directive, which limits power station emissions, coal would play a "significant and perhaps major part in the UK's energy mix over the next two decades".
"There will be environmental challenges but frankly it's a political must to keep the lights on," Lloyd said. He said the company would decide on Harworth either late this year or in the first quarter of 2009. If it was reopened, at a cost of up to œ175m, it would eventually provide another 2.2 m to 2.3 m tonnes of coal a year. The key factors would be the geology, which would determine the cost of accessing the reserves, and their size - thought to be 25m to 40m tonnes.
More here
Top doctors slam NHS drug rationing
Britain's top cancer consultants have accused the government's drugs rationing body of ignoring the plight of patients forced to sell their cars and remortgage their houses to pay for cancer treatments freely available in Europe. Twenty-six professors blame the severe restrictions imposed by the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) on its failure to "get its sums right".
Nice refuses, on grounds of cost, to recommend some drugs for patients with advanced kidney cancer. The consultants, who include the directors of oncology at Britain's two biggest cancer hospitals, the Royal Marsden in London and Christie hospital in Manchester, claim there is enough money in the NHS to pay for the drugs.
Their letter to The Sunday Times states: "We now spend similar amounts to Europe on health generally and cancer care in particular, but less than two thirds of the European average on cancer drugs. It just can't be that everybody else around the world is wrong about access to innovative cancer care and the NHS right in rationing it so severely." They say: "The time has come for a radical change in how the NHS makes rationing decisions for cancer."
This weekend Andrew Dillon, the chief executive of Nice, and Sir Michael Rawlins, the chairman, challenged the cancer experts to explain which acutely ill patients should be sacrificed to free resources for cancer sufferers. They said: "There is a finite pot of money for the NHS, which is determined annually by parliament. If one group of patients is provided with cost-ineffective care, other groups - lacking powerful lobbyists - will be denied cost-effective care for miserable conditions like schizophrenia, Crohn's disease or cystic fibrosis."
This week patients from the Kidney Cancer Support Network will demonstrate outside the Nice offices in London against the refusal to fund the kidney cancer drugs Avastin, Sutent, Nexavar and Torisel.
Source
No good economic news in socialist-run Britain: "Britain's Treasury chief has told a newspaper that the country is suffering its worst economic crisis for 60 years, and more pain is yet to come. The Guardian newspaper has quoted Alistair Darling as saying the slump is ``going to be more profound and long-lasting than people thought''. In an interview for the paper's weekend edition, Darling said the economic conditions faced by Britain and the world ``are arguably the worst they have been in 60 years''. Darling also acknowledged that voters were angry with the governing Labour Party, which has been in power for 11 years."
What a crock! Enforcement as theater! A huge raid to grab a couple of hard-working, harmless Chinese kitchenhands -- when Britain already has thousands of illegals who have been ordered out of the country but who just stay on -- usually getting welfare as well! The Chinese were an easy grab for lazy bureaucrats, that's all it was about. Totally useless camouflage for chaotic immigration control
Two people were led away by police and immigration officers following a raid on a Chinese restaurant in the city centre last night. Police officers were joined by about 12 immigration officials from across the south-east in the "intelligence-led" operation at the Gourmet Plaza, in Cowgate. The raid was organised and carried out by the Border and Immigration Agency's Enforcement Unit, based in St Ives.
Five unmarked people carriers swooped on the restaurant just after 6pm yesterday as diners were preparing to enter the premises for an early meal.
The "closed" sign remained up at the Gourmet Plaza as prospective customers were turned away by police and asked to come back at a later time.
Seconded Cambridge police Inspector Trevor Tendall said: "We are acting on information received by a source. "This is a joint operation involving police and immigration officers from across the county." As prospective diners and onlookers watched, officers led out two men of Chinese origin in handcuffs, just before 7pm. The pair were put into separate people carriers and driven away from the scene. [LOL! A people-carrier each!] After the raid, an immigration officer, who did not want to be named, said: "We have acted and carried out the plan, and we are satisfied with the results today."
As the last of the officers left, five members of staff rushed out of the restaurant and across Cowgate to confront an officer in what was believed to be a dispute about a warrant. When another member of staff found the piece of paper they were seeking, the staff filed back into the eaterie.
Customers, who had been told to go and have a drink in the nearby Drapers Arms, waited patiently on the street to see if the popular restaurant, with its all-you-can-eat $13 supper deal, would open its doors. It re-opened at about 7.30pm.
Source
Black doll sparks outrage
We read:
"Binmen who drove round with a large golliwog mascot strapped to the front of their truck have outraged residents. But passersby in the town, which has residents of many different racial origins, were horrified by the prank - one said the council workers were smiling and laughing at the reactions the lorry invited.
The refuse truck was owned by Woodend Municipal Services - but leased to Reading Borough Council, whose staff used it to collect rubbish from the streets of the Berkshire town.
Local resident Tim Rhodes said that he was shocked when he saw the bin lorry driving towards him in the town centre's Milford Road. 'My reaction was one of complete shock and disbelief. It is the sort of thing you would see in the 1960s but I thought we had all grown up a bit now,' said 40-year-old Mr Rhodes.
A spokesman for Reading Borough Council apologised for the golliwog incident and said action was being taken against the binmen involved. 'The council has investigated this matter and spoken to the lorry driver,' he said. 'The employee has been informed of the serious nature of this complaint and his management colleagues are giving further consideration to how the matter will proceed. 'In its role as an employer and a provider of public services in Reading, the council has a responsibility to directly and consistently tackle exclusion, disadvantage and discrimination.
Source
Jokes are becoming very risky in sourpuss socialist Britain. Previous uproar in Britain about golliwog dolls covered here. I had a golliwog myself when I was a little kid. They are a stylized representation of a black man but kids loved them. Is that bad? I would have thought that teaching kids to have warm feelings towards blacks would be acclaimed by the do-gooders. Silly old me!
The undead
Trapped inside their bodies, apparently switched off to the world, but still alive: they are the undead. Or so we thought. Forty per cent of patients in a `vegetative state' are misdiagnosed. Now British scientists are leading the field in trying to put that right
Kate Bainbridge is a lively 37-year-old former schoolteacher. We are communicating in the conservatory of her parents' home in south Cambridge. She has expressive eyes and a broad and ready smile, but she can utter only occasional single words with difficulty. She sits in a wheelchair "speaking" with the aid of a letter-board, using her left forefinger to spell out words individually.
Ten years ago, Kate went into a deep coma and was on a ventilator for several weeks. She had suffered severe brain inflammation after contracting a viral infection. When she came out of the coma, she opened her eyes and could breathe naturally, but she was unresponsive to speech and visual stimuli, and appeared to lack all conscious awareness. She was still in this condition four months after falling ill, and was later diagnosed to be in a persistent vegetative state, or PVS: in other words, persistently unaware. But the diagnosis was wrong.
Although Kate could not speak, or hear properly, or make any kind of signal, or take in sustenance except through a tube into the stomach, she was sometimes aware of herself and her surroundings. She had a raging thirst that was not alleviated by the ward staff. She was racked with pain. Sometimes she'd cry out, but the ward staff thought it was just a reflex action. Kate suffered so much pain and despair that she tried to take her own life by holding her breath.
Then a Cambridge neuroscientist called Dr Adrian Owen put her in a special kind of scanner and performed an unprecedented experiment. It revealed evidence of fluctuating levels of brain activation when she was presented with pictures of her parents. From that point, she started her long journey back into the world. This is a story about brain-impaired patients who come gradually out of coma into "minimal awareness" after being misdiagnosed as being in PVS: breathing, appearing to be wakeful, yet deemed to be dead to themselves and the world. It is also about the disastrous consequences of such misdiagnoses, estimated in the UK and other countries to be running at two in five cases. And, crucially, it is about a neuroscientific research programme that is set to transform the prospects of diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation of brain-injured people the world over.
Only an estimated 20% of patients return, like the Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond after his car crash in September, to fully functioning normality after serious brain injury. The range of disability following brain damage is hugely varied in type and severity. It is not known how many PVS and minimally conscious patients there are in this country, since no central registry exists. It is likely, according to a canvass of many neurology professionals, to be in the tens of thousands. More certain is the grim reality of hospital wards and long-term care homes where the persistently vegetative and the minimally conscious languish, sometimes for decades.
To write this article I have had the sobering experience of witnessing the plight of patients with severely impaired consciousness - the intubations, the double incontinence, the stricken semicircle of wheelchairs parked before the unwatched day-room TV. And I have met the anguished families of those who are denied final grieving and closure for a loved one condemned to what appears a living death. All too often I have spoken to a wife or husband, or mother or father, who will travel anything up to two hours each way by taxi, every day, to spend time with an unresponsive child or spouse.
But here's at least one mordantly amusing and true story told to me by a psychologist at Putney's Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability. "Young man with motorbike head injury in a coma. His mum, a keen evangelical, comes every day with friends to sing Onward, Christian Soldiers by his bedside. She's hoping to stimulate his brain into action. It works: he comes round, but he can't speak. So they fit him up with one of those Stephen Hawking-type laptops, and the first words he speaks are: "For God's sake, Mum, shut it!" That's about as funny as it gets on a brain-injury ward, but there's a serious take-home message. Even minimally aware patients can retain emotions, personality, a capacity to suffer - and, as the young biker showed, attitude.
The biggest, most tragic clinical myth about brain injury today is that PVS can be reliably diagnosed by bedside observation alone. It has in fact been known for at least a decade, ever since a key survey of brain-injured patients, that misdiagnosis of the condition runs at more than 40%, a statistic originally calculated by Professor Keith Andrews, former head of the Putney hospital, and confirmed by recent surveys in Europe and North America. This means that valuable rehabilitation strategies are routinely neglected, and misdiagnosed patients end up on unsuitable wards or in care homes where their needs are neither understood nor met.
Up to 12,000 people under 40 in this country suffer traumatic brain injury every year, and there are serious deficiencies in their rehabilitation, according to Professor John Pickard, head of neurosurgery at Addenbrooke's hospital, Cambridge: "The tendency for patients to be left to languish on general medical, surgical and orthopaedic wards continues to their detriment." The shocking term being used by campaigning neurologists and neurosurgeons is that unknown numbers of patients are being just "warehoused".
Christine Simpson, a mother of two in her mid-fifties, and her husband, Colin, encountered the PVS misdiagnosis phenomenon two years ago. After suffering a brainstem stroke, Christine was first admitted to the intensive-care unit at the Princess Alexandra hospital, Harlow, then transferred to a general respiratory ward, where she remained for about a month.
"I was told that she would probably get a chest infection and not survive more than a few weeks," says Colin. "Even on the respiratory ward I was told she was still in coma, though she was communicating with me at times through her eye movements. Only because myself and our two grown-up sons were constantly at her bedside did she get proper attention. "On one occasion I found her lying flat with a deflated tracheotomy cuff. She was blue in the face and having difficulty breathing."
Other instances of poor care, Colin claims, involved a catheter bag infrequently changed, and a gastric tube not replaced routinely according to clinical guidelines. He also contends that Christine was prematurely discharged from intensive care as a result of the PVS misdiagnosis. His formal petition that the hospital has not done enough to resolve his complaints was upheld by the Healthcare Commission on November 9.
Much more here
A conservative approach to poverty
Last week, George Osborne made a speech about fairness in which he castigated the Government for its failure to deal with poverty. A Tory Shadow Chancellor attacking Labour's record on poverty: that really is a raid into enemy territory. In the long run, however, it could leave the Tories open to a counter-attack.
In the short run, Mr Osborne did not rely on rhetoric. His arguments were reinforced by statistics that gave them added bite. Although the Shadow Chancellor was happy to concede that many Labour MPs were sincere in their abhorrence of poverty, any Labour supporter who reads the speech will wince at the dissection of Labour's inability to realise its ideals.
But Mr Osborne was not merely trying to add to Labour's miseries: hardly necessary these days. His speech had a serious purpose. He was outlining a new Tory theory of poverty and the state. He insisted that this Government was not failing because it did not care enough and had not spent enough. It was failing because its strategy was fundamentally misguided.
The author of that strategy was Gordon Brown. His insistence that "only the state can guarantee fairness" has both underpinned and undermined Labour's approach to social policy. By stifling initiative and imposing central direction, not least through the target culture, it had ensured that much of the extra money devoted to health and education was wasted.
This helps to explain why only 176 pupils who received free school meals gained three As at A level this year and why half of all children in care leave school without a single GCSE. There is a direct relationship between that last statistic and social misery. Many of those uneducated victims of care will be busy acquiring diplomas in mugging, burglary, prostitution and drug-taking.
Instead of Gordon Brown's great clunking state, the Tories want to empower churches, charities and social action co-operatives to help the needy. They also propose a radical change in the supply of education, ending the Government's monopoly over state schooling. To improve opportunity for the poorest, argues Mr Osborne, society and the state must work together.
A dramatic programme for social reform, this is the basis of David Cameron's approach to government. Shortly after he became Tory leader, he met Nicolas Sarkozy, who told him how much he admired the Tories' economic reforms of the 1980s. Mr Cameron hopes that in the 2030s, a French president will be telling a Tory leader how much he admires the social reforms of the 2010s.
The Tory party always has two great tasks: to defend the integrity of the nation and to solve the pressing questions of the day. Apart from the economy, two intractable and related problems have now forced themselves onto the agenda: how to redeem the underclass and how to ensure that the public services serve the public. Mr Cameron will not duck either challenge.
Well and good, but enthusiasm will not be enough. Contemporary British poverty is not just an economic phenomenon. It arises from cultural demoralisation. In the EU, Britain has the highest proportion of children living in households where no adult works. Though many hereditary peers have been banished from the House of Lords, hereditary unemployment is flourishing in the inner cities.
London is one of the mightiest engines of wealth creation in the whole of history. There is no reason why any able-bodied youngster who looks willing and trustworthy should not find a job. Yet a short Tube journey from the Bank of England, there are housing estates where no one thinks in terms of finding work.
David Cameron is determined that this will change. Yet even if he succeeds, it will take years, and the middle classes will not be idle. As the economy recovers, opportunities will increase. The middle classes will take them. Economic innovation will create new, well paid jobs. Middle-class children will rush to fill them.
That should not dismay sensible Tories. As the middle classes grow richer, they create the wealth to fund social programmes. In order to clear up Gordon Brown's toxic economic legacy, the Cameron government will depend on the efforts and tax contributions of the middle classes, and those efforts will be forthcoming only if they are adequately rewarded.
Source
COAL MAY PLAY MAJOR ROLE AGAIN IN BRITAIN'S ENERGY MIX
UK Coal is seeking to cash in on rising energy prices through higher production and the end of long-term, low-priced legacy contracts. The company is already investing œ55m each in its collieries at Thoresby in Nottinghamshire and Kellingley in West Yorkshire to open up new reserves and is expected to decide within the next six months whether to reopen the Harworth mine near Doncaster, which has been mothballed for more than two years.
Chief executive Jon Lloyd said he believed it was accepted that in the face of higher energy prices, and despite the impact of the large combustion plants directive, which limits power station emissions, coal would play a "significant and perhaps major part in the UK's energy mix over the next two decades".
"There will be environmental challenges but frankly it's a political must to keep the lights on," Lloyd said. He said the company would decide on Harworth either late this year or in the first quarter of 2009. If it was reopened, at a cost of up to œ175m, it would eventually provide another 2.2 m to 2.3 m tonnes of coal a year. The key factors would be the geology, which would determine the cost of accessing the reserves, and their size - thought to be 25m to 40m tonnes.
More here
Top doctors slam NHS drug rationing
Britain's top cancer consultants have accused the government's drugs rationing body of ignoring the plight of patients forced to sell their cars and remortgage their houses to pay for cancer treatments freely available in Europe. Twenty-six professors blame the severe restrictions imposed by the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) on its failure to "get its sums right".
Nice refuses, on grounds of cost, to recommend some drugs for patients with advanced kidney cancer. The consultants, who include the directors of oncology at Britain's two biggest cancer hospitals, the Royal Marsden in London and Christie hospital in Manchester, claim there is enough money in the NHS to pay for the drugs.
Their letter to The Sunday Times states: "We now spend similar amounts to Europe on health generally and cancer care in particular, but less than two thirds of the European average on cancer drugs. It just can't be that everybody else around the world is wrong about access to innovative cancer care and the NHS right in rationing it so severely." They say: "The time has come for a radical change in how the NHS makes rationing decisions for cancer."
This weekend Andrew Dillon, the chief executive of Nice, and Sir Michael Rawlins, the chairman, challenged the cancer experts to explain which acutely ill patients should be sacrificed to free resources for cancer sufferers. They said: "There is a finite pot of money for the NHS, which is determined annually by parliament. If one group of patients is provided with cost-ineffective care, other groups - lacking powerful lobbyists - will be denied cost-effective care for miserable conditions like schizophrenia, Crohn's disease or cystic fibrosis."
This week patients from the Kidney Cancer Support Network will demonstrate outside the Nice offices in London against the refusal to fund the kidney cancer drugs Avastin, Sutent, Nexavar and Torisel.
Source
No good economic news in socialist-run Britain: "Britain's Treasury chief has told a newspaper that the country is suffering its worst economic crisis for 60 years, and more pain is yet to come. The Guardian newspaper has quoted Alistair Darling as saying the slump is ``going to be more profound and long-lasting than people thought''. In an interview for the paper's weekend edition, Darling said the economic conditions faced by Britain and the world ``are arguably the worst they have been in 60 years''. Darling also acknowledged that voters were angry with the governing Labour Party, which has been in power for 11 years."
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Regulating quack medicine makes me feel sick
If alternative remedies are either untested or ineffective, why are we promoting them?
It is fashionable to think things are true for no better reason than you wish it were so. The latest sign of this trend is a report to the Department of Health from Professor Michael Pittilo, Vice-Chancellor of the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. His May report - on acupuncture, herbal medicine, traditional Chinese medicine and the like - recommends that these therapies should have statutory regulation run by the Health Professions Council, and that entry for practitioners should "normally be through a bachelor degree with honours". Consultation is supposed to begin around now.
Both of the ideas in the report are disastrous. The first thing you wanted to know about any sort of medical treatment is: "Does it work?" One of the criteria that must be met by groups aspiring to regulation by the HPC is that they "practise based on evidence of efficacy". That evidence does not exist for herbal and Chinese medicine, which remain largely untested. For acupuncture the evidence does exist and it shows very clearly that acupuncture is no more than a theatrical placebo.
Placebos can, it is true, make you feel better; and if there is no better treatment, why not use them? That's fine, but it raises huge ethical questions about how much you can lie to patients, and how much you can lie to students who are training to use the placebos.
New Labour has often said that its policies are guided by the best scientific evidence, but the problem is that the answer you get depends on whom you ask. Pittilo's committee consisted of five acupuncturists, five herbalists and five representatives of traditional Chinese medicine (plus eleven observers). There was not a single scientist or statistician to help in the assessment of evidence. And it shows: the assessment of the evidence in the report was execrable.
Take one example, the use of a herbal preparation, Gingko biloba, for the treatment of dementia. On page 25 of the report we read: "There have been numerous in vitro and in vivo trials on herbal medicine... which have established the benefits of single ingredients such as gingko...for vascular dementia". That is totally out of date. The most prestigious source of reliable summaries of evidence, the Cochrane Collaboration, says: "There is no convincing evidence that Ginkgo biloba is efficacious for dementia and cognitive impairment". The NHS Complementary and Alternative Medicine Specialist Library (compiled by alternative medicine people) says: "The evidence that ginkgo has predictable and clinically significant benefit for people with dementia or cognitive impairment is inconsistent and unconvincing." Since then another large trial, funded by the Alzheimer's Society, concludes: "We found no evidence that a standard dose of high purity Ginkgo biloba confers benefit in mild-moderate dementia over six months."
The Government's answer to the problem is, as always, to set up more expensive quangos to regulate alternative medicine. That might work if the regulation was effective, but experience has shown it isn't. It makes no sense to regulate placebos, especially if you don't admit that is what they are. The Government should be warned by the case of chiropractors about the dangers of granting official recognition before the evidence is available. The General Chiropractic Council already has a status similar to that of the General Medical Council, despite it being based on the quasi-religious idea of "subluxations" that nobody can see or define. Recent research has shown it to be no more effective, and less safe, than conventional treatments that are much cheaper.
The problems that Professor Pittilo's recommendations pose for universities are even worse. You cannot have universities teaching, as science, early 19th-century vitalism, and how sticking needles into (imaginary) meridians rebalances the Qi so the body systems work harmoniously. To advocate that degrades the whole of science.
The vice-chancellors of the 16 or so universities who run such courses presumably do not themselves believe that vitalism is science, or subscribe to the view that "amethysts emit high yin energy", so it is hard to see why they accept taxpayers' money to teach such things. Thankfully, the University of Central Lancashire abandoned its first-year homoeopathy course this week because of low numbers.
Fortunately there is a much simpler, and probably much cheaper, solution than Pittilo's: enforce the laws that already exist. It is already illegal to sell contaminated and poisonous goods to the public. It is already illegal to sell goods that are not as described on the label. And, since May 2008, new European laws make it explicitly illegal to make claims for any sort of treatment when there is no reason to believe the claims are true. At the moment these laws are regularly and openly flouted on every hand. Enforce them and the problem is solved.
Source
Britain: Deaths linked to hospital infection Clostridium difficile double in two years
The number of deaths linked to the hospital infection Clostridium difficile has more than doubled in the last two years, official figures show. Last year in England and Wales 8,324 people died either from C. diff or were infected with it when they died from other causes - this is a rise of 28 per cent in just one year. The infection which particularly affects elderly people has increased four times over since 2001 when 1,804 deaths were linked to the superbug, data from the Office of National Statistics shows.
Deaths linked to MRSA rose steadily between 2003 and 2005 but have levelled off. In the last year there has been a slight drop of 3.6 per cent in deaths either directly from MRSA or linked to it to reach 1,593.
Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, said the 'vast majority' of these deaths could have been avoided with better prescribing of antibiotics and proper isolation of infected patients. Critics say Labour's waiting list targets have encouraged hospitals to rush through patients leaving wards overcrowded with time for cleaning patient areas between cases.
The data is collected from death certificates where doctors note down one underlying cause of death and can mention any number of other factors that may have contributed. In recent years doctors have been encouraged by Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, to mention hospital infections on death certificates where patients have them even if it was not the underlying cause of death. The figures show of the 8,324 death certificates that mentioned C.diff, around half noted it as the underlying cause of death.
C.diff is mainly a disease that affects the elderly who have been in hospital for other reasons and who have received broad spectrum antibiotics. These drugs cut the natural flora in the stomach allowing C.diff to multiply and produce a toxin which causes diarrhoea. The ONS figures there was one death per million people aged under 45 but 2,000 deaths per million people aged 85 and over. The number of actual cases of reported cases of C difficile in the over-65s - the main age group affected - fell by nine per cent from 55,635 in 2006 to 50,392 in 2007.
The Clostridium difficile bacteria is a major cause of antibiotic-associated diarrhoea and the intenstinal infection colitis. In most cases the infection is mild and a full recovery is made. Although elderly and vulnerable patients may become seriously ill through dehydration caused by severe diarrhoea. The more serious symptoms include ulceration and intenstinal bleeding and it can be life-threatening.
Source
The tragedies that prompted `our massive wake-up call'
Bacteria will be present in hospitals as long as people are, but vital lessons in infection control have been learnt since outbreaks of Clostridium difficile caused the death of at least 90 patients at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust in Kent.
Sara Mumford, formerly of the Health Protection Agency, the watchdog for infectious diseases, helped to bring attention to how much bad hygiene and poor staffing had contributed to hundreds of infections during the outbreaks of 2005 and 2006, which were later the subject of a high-profile investigation by the Healthcare Commission.
Now the director of infection control at the trust, Dr Mumford has an array of tools and procedures to keep superbugs at bay, she told The Times yesterday. "Unlike MRSA, there is no way of screening for C. difficile, so the most important thing to get right is cleanliness," she said. "Patients, staff and visitors can carry the bacteria into a hospital without knowing it, or become infected in the community. That's why handwashing is so important."
After an infection had been identified, soap and water were not enough, she said. "We use chlorine-based cleaners and have antimicrobial disposable curtains that we remove after an infected patient has been in a ward. During the `deep clean' we evacuated every ward and subjected everything to ultra-sonic baths or other cleaning. "It was so thorough that afterwards the wheels on the beds seized up - they would not run properly because they'd been cleaned of oil. "The most important thing when you suspect an infection is to isolate the patient quickly - even before you get the test results back from the lab," she said.
The isolation facility at Maidstone - introduced only after the notorious outbreaks - is a dedicated 12-bed ward. Dr Mumford said it helped recovery if patients with the same condition could talk to each other. Patients with a C. difficile infection required specialist nursing and treatment, she said, because other factors could also cause avoidable illness. "Antibiotic use in particular is really, really important," Dr Mumford said. "If you give patients broad-spectrum antibiotics designed to kill all bacteria, they get rid of even the types that help keep C. difficile at bay."
The three hospitals run by Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells Trust are now reporting rates of C. difficile that are below the national average. "Maidstone has had a tragic wake-up call and had to undertake a crash-course in infection control, but some trusts still have work to do - it's something that they ignore at their peril," Dr Mumford said.
Source
Britain's Polish experience
SUPERMARKET aisles offer amateur ethnographers rich opportunities for fieldwork. American pockets in London can be identified by the Thanksgiving displays in November; sour cherry juice suggests that Turks are close at hand. Now great rows of tinned borscht announce a newer arrival. Recent immigration from eastern Europe has been on a truly grand scale: Tesco, Britain's biggest retailer, now runs a groceries website in Polish.
Just over a million people have so far come to Britain from the eight central and east European countries that joined the European Union in 2004. John Salt, a geographer at University College London, reckons it is the biggest influx in British history, at least in gross terms (immigration by French Huguenots in the 17th century may have been bigger relative to the population at the time). Poles, who have made up about two-thirds of the newcomers, are now the largest group of foreign nationals in Britain, up from 13th place five years ago.
They might not be for much longer. The insatiable job market that sucked them in is beginning to tire. Work in hospitality and construction is becoming scarcer in Britain, while Poland's economy is growing by over 5% a year. And earnings do not translate as well as they did: the pound, which bought seven zlotys at the beginning of 2004, now fetches four (see article).
Last quarter saw the lowest number of east Europeans registering for work since 2004 (see chart), even though summer months tend to be the busiest. And as arrivals fall, departures seem to be increasing. There is no reliable official count of the numbers leaving Britain, but in April a think-tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), carried out its own "poll of Poles" and found that about half of the newcomers had already gone home. It predicts that departures will start to outweigh arrivals within a year.
This is bad news for borscht lovers, as well as for the Catholic church, which reckons its numbers have been swelled by some 10% in the past two years, in large part by Poles. But east European migration will leave lasting marks, however brief an episode it turns out to be.
Most noticeably, it has gone some way to decoupling the issue of immigration from that of race. Since the 1950s large-scale immigration to Britain has mainly been from Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia, meaning that arguments about immigration have been racially charged (indeed, plenty of politicians have deliberately conflated the issues). Now, with the arrival of a million white, mainly poor, foreigners, immigration is being analysed in more purely economic terms.
There is a sensible argument to be had about immigration and population (see article), and whether this wave of low-paid workers has put pressure on wages. David Cameron, the Tory leader, has shaken off his brief reluctance to discuss the subject and now casts it in terms of demography. Labour has toughened up too: last year Gordon Brown, the prime minister, called for more "British jobs for British workers," a rallying cry that once only the far right used. Some critics still touch on the old ugly themes: this month the Daily Mail agreed to remove some negative articles from its website following a complaint from the Federation of Poles in Great Britain. But even when the east Europeans have departed, debating the merits of immigration will no longer be off-limits in polite society.
The brevity of the east Europeans' spell in Britain-if such it proves to be-is the second distinctive thing about it. Past waves of immigrants have nearly always stayed put, or at least aimed to. Unencumbered by visas because their countries belong to the EU, east Europeans do not have to stick around once they are in. Cheap airlines enable some even to split their time between Britain and their home country. This flexibility should give Britain a softer landing if the economy slows further, since migrants can head home rather than swell the unemployment figures. But it has also changed the way that Britons think about immigrants. Once seen as a charge on the state (especially when asylum applications were high, at the start of the decade) they are now more likely to be considered a threat to jobs. Laura Chappell of IPPR has spotted that people tend to describe east Europeans as "migrants", whereas non-European settlers are called "immigrants".
Finally, east Europeans have fanned out across the country far more than earlier arrivals, manning Lake District retirement homes, East Anglian farms, Scottish fish-processing plants and Channel Island guest houses. In all, 21% live in London, compared with 41% of other foreign nationals resident in Britain. Their arrival in areas that had little prior experience of migration-Boston, Northampton, Peterborough and others-has exposed problems with how money is disbursed by the central government, and is prompting reform. Funding for public services such as health, police and fire services relies on population estimates, which undercount short-term visitors and those who live at business addresses, such as hotel staff. The government is setting up a (mainly symbolic) pot of about œ15m ($28m) a year, funded by a levy on visas, to bail out councils that fall short, and it has promised to improve its counting. More tweaks may follow.
As the Poles pack their bags, those who came to rely on them to paint their walls or fix their computers are feeling the loss. Reinforcements could be on the way: Romanians and Bulgarians will be able to work freely in Britain from 2013 and could come earlier if the economy picks up. But Ms Chappell points out that those countries have strong links with Italy and Spain, and other western European countries have more open labour markets than they did in 2004. Britain may not look as attractive a destination a second time around.
Source
Stupid do-gooder learns about reality the hard way: "A British woman has been raped by a gang of asylum seekers in Calais, it has been alleged. The journalism student wanted to highlight the plight of migrants who sleep rough in a squalid camp at the French port before trying to sneak into Britain. She was subjected to a horrific attack by six Afghan men she intended to write about, it was claimed. French riot police rounded up 200 migrants for questioning. Ten remained in custody tonight and police said it was possible all had been involved in the rape, which detectives described as 'extremely brutal'. Police said the 31-year-old victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was a London student who had travelled to France 'to highlight problems surrounding clandestine immigration'... The victim remains in Calais, with police hoping she will be able to identify her attackers. Tonight she was described as 'utterly traumatised and receiving counselling'."
If alternative remedies are either untested or ineffective, why are we promoting them?
It is fashionable to think things are true for no better reason than you wish it were so. The latest sign of this trend is a report to the Department of Health from Professor Michael Pittilo, Vice-Chancellor of the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. His May report - on acupuncture, herbal medicine, traditional Chinese medicine and the like - recommends that these therapies should have statutory regulation run by the Health Professions Council, and that entry for practitioners should "normally be through a bachelor degree with honours". Consultation is supposed to begin around now.
Both of the ideas in the report are disastrous. The first thing you wanted to know about any sort of medical treatment is: "Does it work?" One of the criteria that must be met by groups aspiring to regulation by the HPC is that they "practise based on evidence of efficacy". That evidence does not exist for herbal and Chinese medicine, which remain largely untested. For acupuncture the evidence does exist and it shows very clearly that acupuncture is no more than a theatrical placebo.
Placebos can, it is true, make you feel better; and if there is no better treatment, why not use them? That's fine, but it raises huge ethical questions about how much you can lie to patients, and how much you can lie to students who are training to use the placebos.
New Labour has often said that its policies are guided by the best scientific evidence, but the problem is that the answer you get depends on whom you ask. Pittilo's committee consisted of five acupuncturists, five herbalists and five representatives of traditional Chinese medicine (plus eleven observers). There was not a single scientist or statistician to help in the assessment of evidence. And it shows: the assessment of the evidence in the report was execrable.
Take one example, the use of a herbal preparation, Gingko biloba, for the treatment of dementia. On page 25 of the report we read: "There have been numerous in vitro and in vivo trials on herbal medicine... which have established the benefits of single ingredients such as gingko...for vascular dementia". That is totally out of date. The most prestigious source of reliable summaries of evidence, the Cochrane Collaboration, says: "There is no convincing evidence that Ginkgo biloba is efficacious for dementia and cognitive impairment". The NHS Complementary and Alternative Medicine Specialist Library (compiled by alternative medicine people) says: "The evidence that ginkgo has predictable and clinically significant benefit for people with dementia or cognitive impairment is inconsistent and unconvincing." Since then another large trial, funded by the Alzheimer's Society, concludes: "We found no evidence that a standard dose of high purity Ginkgo biloba confers benefit in mild-moderate dementia over six months."
The Government's answer to the problem is, as always, to set up more expensive quangos to regulate alternative medicine. That might work if the regulation was effective, but experience has shown it isn't. It makes no sense to regulate placebos, especially if you don't admit that is what they are. The Government should be warned by the case of chiropractors about the dangers of granting official recognition before the evidence is available. The General Chiropractic Council already has a status similar to that of the General Medical Council, despite it being based on the quasi-religious idea of "subluxations" that nobody can see or define. Recent research has shown it to be no more effective, and less safe, than conventional treatments that are much cheaper.
The problems that Professor Pittilo's recommendations pose for universities are even worse. You cannot have universities teaching, as science, early 19th-century vitalism, and how sticking needles into (imaginary) meridians rebalances the Qi so the body systems work harmoniously. To advocate that degrades the whole of science.
The vice-chancellors of the 16 or so universities who run such courses presumably do not themselves believe that vitalism is science, or subscribe to the view that "amethysts emit high yin energy", so it is hard to see why they accept taxpayers' money to teach such things. Thankfully, the University of Central Lancashire abandoned its first-year homoeopathy course this week because of low numbers.
Fortunately there is a much simpler, and probably much cheaper, solution than Pittilo's: enforce the laws that already exist. It is already illegal to sell contaminated and poisonous goods to the public. It is already illegal to sell goods that are not as described on the label. And, since May 2008, new European laws make it explicitly illegal to make claims for any sort of treatment when there is no reason to believe the claims are true. At the moment these laws are regularly and openly flouted on every hand. Enforce them and the problem is solved.
Source
Britain: Deaths linked to hospital infection Clostridium difficile double in two years
The number of deaths linked to the hospital infection Clostridium difficile has more than doubled in the last two years, official figures show. Last year in England and Wales 8,324 people died either from C. diff or were infected with it when they died from other causes - this is a rise of 28 per cent in just one year. The infection which particularly affects elderly people has increased four times over since 2001 when 1,804 deaths were linked to the superbug, data from the Office of National Statistics shows.
Deaths linked to MRSA rose steadily between 2003 and 2005 but have levelled off. In the last year there has been a slight drop of 3.6 per cent in deaths either directly from MRSA or linked to it to reach 1,593.
Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, said the 'vast majority' of these deaths could have been avoided with better prescribing of antibiotics and proper isolation of infected patients. Critics say Labour's waiting list targets have encouraged hospitals to rush through patients leaving wards overcrowded with time for cleaning patient areas between cases.
The data is collected from death certificates where doctors note down one underlying cause of death and can mention any number of other factors that may have contributed. In recent years doctors have been encouraged by Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer, to mention hospital infections on death certificates where patients have them even if it was not the underlying cause of death. The figures show of the 8,324 death certificates that mentioned C.diff, around half noted it as the underlying cause of death.
C.diff is mainly a disease that affects the elderly who have been in hospital for other reasons and who have received broad spectrum antibiotics. These drugs cut the natural flora in the stomach allowing C.diff to multiply and produce a toxin which causes diarrhoea. The ONS figures there was one death per million people aged under 45 but 2,000 deaths per million people aged 85 and over. The number of actual cases of reported cases of C difficile in the over-65s - the main age group affected - fell by nine per cent from 55,635 in 2006 to 50,392 in 2007.
The Clostridium difficile bacteria is a major cause of antibiotic-associated diarrhoea and the intenstinal infection colitis. In most cases the infection is mild and a full recovery is made. Although elderly and vulnerable patients may become seriously ill through dehydration caused by severe diarrhoea. The more serious symptoms include ulceration and intenstinal bleeding and it can be life-threatening.
Source
The tragedies that prompted `our massive wake-up call'
Bacteria will be present in hospitals as long as people are, but vital lessons in infection control have been learnt since outbreaks of Clostridium difficile caused the death of at least 90 patients at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust in Kent.
Sara Mumford, formerly of the Health Protection Agency, the watchdog for infectious diseases, helped to bring attention to how much bad hygiene and poor staffing had contributed to hundreds of infections during the outbreaks of 2005 and 2006, which were later the subject of a high-profile investigation by the Healthcare Commission.
Now the director of infection control at the trust, Dr Mumford has an array of tools and procedures to keep superbugs at bay, she told The Times yesterday. "Unlike MRSA, there is no way of screening for C. difficile, so the most important thing to get right is cleanliness," she said. "Patients, staff and visitors can carry the bacteria into a hospital without knowing it, or become infected in the community. That's why handwashing is so important."
After an infection had been identified, soap and water were not enough, she said. "We use chlorine-based cleaners and have antimicrobial disposable curtains that we remove after an infected patient has been in a ward. During the `deep clean' we evacuated every ward and subjected everything to ultra-sonic baths or other cleaning. "It was so thorough that afterwards the wheels on the beds seized up - they would not run properly because they'd been cleaned of oil. "The most important thing when you suspect an infection is to isolate the patient quickly - even before you get the test results back from the lab," she said.
The isolation facility at Maidstone - introduced only after the notorious outbreaks - is a dedicated 12-bed ward. Dr Mumford said it helped recovery if patients with the same condition could talk to each other. Patients with a C. difficile infection required specialist nursing and treatment, she said, because other factors could also cause avoidable illness. "Antibiotic use in particular is really, really important," Dr Mumford said. "If you give patients broad-spectrum antibiotics designed to kill all bacteria, they get rid of even the types that help keep C. difficile at bay."
The three hospitals run by Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells Trust are now reporting rates of C. difficile that are below the national average. "Maidstone has had a tragic wake-up call and had to undertake a crash-course in infection control, but some trusts still have work to do - it's something that they ignore at their peril," Dr Mumford said.
Source
Britain's Polish experience
SUPERMARKET aisles offer amateur ethnographers rich opportunities for fieldwork. American pockets in London can be identified by the Thanksgiving displays in November; sour cherry juice suggests that Turks are close at hand. Now great rows of tinned borscht announce a newer arrival. Recent immigration from eastern Europe has been on a truly grand scale: Tesco, Britain's biggest retailer, now runs a groceries website in Polish.
Just over a million people have so far come to Britain from the eight central and east European countries that joined the European Union in 2004. John Salt, a geographer at University College London, reckons it is the biggest influx in British history, at least in gross terms (immigration by French Huguenots in the 17th century may have been bigger relative to the population at the time). Poles, who have made up about two-thirds of the newcomers, are now the largest group of foreign nationals in Britain, up from 13th place five years ago.
They might not be for much longer. The insatiable job market that sucked them in is beginning to tire. Work in hospitality and construction is becoming scarcer in Britain, while Poland's economy is growing by over 5% a year. And earnings do not translate as well as they did: the pound, which bought seven zlotys at the beginning of 2004, now fetches four (see article).
Last quarter saw the lowest number of east Europeans registering for work since 2004 (see chart), even though summer months tend to be the busiest. And as arrivals fall, departures seem to be increasing. There is no reliable official count of the numbers leaving Britain, but in April a think-tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), carried out its own "poll of Poles" and found that about half of the newcomers had already gone home. It predicts that departures will start to outweigh arrivals within a year.
This is bad news for borscht lovers, as well as for the Catholic church, which reckons its numbers have been swelled by some 10% in the past two years, in large part by Poles. But east European migration will leave lasting marks, however brief an episode it turns out to be.
Most noticeably, it has gone some way to decoupling the issue of immigration from that of race. Since the 1950s large-scale immigration to Britain has mainly been from Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia, meaning that arguments about immigration have been racially charged (indeed, plenty of politicians have deliberately conflated the issues). Now, with the arrival of a million white, mainly poor, foreigners, immigration is being analysed in more purely economic terms.
There is a sensible argument to be had about immigration and population (see article), and whether this wave of low-paid workers has put pressure on wages. David Cameron, the Tory leader, has shaken off his brief reluctance to discuss the subject and now casts it in terms of demography. Labour has toughened up too: last year Gordon Brown, the prime minister, called for more "British jobs for British workers," a rallying cry that once only the far right used. Some critics still touch on the old ugly themes: this month the Daily Mail agreed to remove some negative articles from its website following a complaint from the Federation of Poles in Great Britain. But even when the east Europeans have departed, debating the merits of immigration will no longer be off-limits in polite society.
The brevity of the east Europeans' spell in Britain-if such it proves to be-is the second distinctive thing about it. Past waves of immigrants have nearly always stayed put, or at least aimed to. Unencumbered by visas because their countries belong to the EU, east Europeans do not have to stick around once they are in. Cheap airlines enable some even to split their time between Britain and their home country. This flexibility should give Britain a softer landing if the economy slows further, since migrants can head home rather than swell the unemployment figures. But it has also changed the way that Britons think about immigrants. Once seen as a charge on the state (especially when asylum applications were high, at the start of the decade) they are now more likely to be considered a threat to jobs. Laura Chappell of IPPR has spotted that people tend to describe east Europeans as "migrants", whereas non-European settlers are called "immigrants".
Finally, east Europeans have fanned out across the country far more than earlier arrivals, manning Lake District retirement homes, East Anglian farms, Scottish fish-processing plants and Channel Island guest houses. In all, 21% live in London, compared with 41% of other foreign nationals resident in Britain. Their arrival in areas that had little prior experience of migration-Boston, Northampton, Peterborough and others-has exposed problems with how money is disbursed by the central government, and is prompting reform. Funding for public services such as health, police and fire services relies on population estimates, which undercount short-term visitors and those who live at business addresses, such as hotel staff. The government is setting up a (mainly symbolic) pot of about œ15m ($28m) a year, funded by a levy on visas, to bail out councils that fall short, and it has promised to improve its counting. More tweaks may follow.
As the Poles pack their bags, those who came to rely on them to paint their walls or fix their computers are feeling the loss. Reinforcements could be on the way: Romanians and Bulgarians will be able to work freely in Britain from 2013 and could come earlier if the economy picks up. But Ms Chappell points out that those countries have strong links with Italy and Spain, and other western European countries have more open labour markets than they did in 2004. Britain may not look as attractive a destination a second time around.
Source
Stupid do-gooder learns about reality the hard way: "A British woman has been raped by a gang of asylum seekers in Calais, it has been alleged. The journalism student wanted to highlight the plight of migrants who sleep rough in a squalid camp at the French port before trying to sneak into Britain. She was subjected to a horrific attack by six Afghan men she intended to write about, it was claimed. French riot police rounded up 200 migrants for questioning. Ten remained in custody tonight and police said it was possible all had been involved in the rape, which detectives described as 'extremely brutal'. Police said the 31-year-old victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was a London student who had travelled to France 'to highlight problems surrounding clandestine immigration'... The victim remains in Calais, with police hoping she will be able to identify her attackers. Tonight she was described as 'utterly traumatised and receiving counselling'."
Friday, August 29, 2008
Europe of the future: Germany shrinks, France grows, but UK population booms
Britain to be biggest country in EU by 2060. Population falls predicted in many other countries. Quantity is not quality, however. The British population includes a a large sub-group of African ultimate origin who have a high rate of crime, insanity and welfare dependancy -- and they account for a disproportionate number of the births. Any assumption that that sub-group will be net economic contributors in the year 2060 would be incautious
Britain will overtake Germany and France to become the biggest country in the EU in 50 years' time, according to population projections unveiled yesterday. A survey of demographic trends finds Britain's positive birth rate contrasting strongly with most other large countries in Europe.
The impact of population shrinkage, coupled with the ageing of key European societies, spells big problems for pensions, health and welfare systems across much of the union, says the report, published by Eurostat, the statistical service of the European commission. But Britain, it says, is likely to suffer less because of its strong population growth and the younger average age of British society.
Immigration is singled out as the sole mitigating factor, seen as crucial to maintaining population growth. But the report says this probably will not be enough to reverse the trend of population decline in many countries. The survey predicts that Britain's population by 2060 will increase by 25% from the current figure of just over 61 million to almost 77 million.
Germany is the biggest country in the EU, with more than 82 million people, but it is likely to shed almost 12 million by 2060, says the report. The widely praised family policies and support of working women in France means that the French population will rise to almost 72 million by 2060.
With the British birth rate now at its highest in a generation - 1.91 children per woman according to the Office for National Statistics last week - the UK has less to fear about any "generation wars" brought on by the "demographic timebomb" of ageing and shrinking populations where those in work cannot support the pension needs of retired citizens. "With climate change and globalisation the ageing of the population is one of the major challenges Europe must face," said Amelia Torres, a commission spokeswoman.
Of the biggest six EU countries (Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Spain and Poland) Britain has by far the greatest birth rates. Only Luxembourg, Cyprus, and Ireland are growing faster than the UK.
The average age of Europeans is now just over 40; this will be 48 by 2060. The average age for Britons is 39 and will be 42 in 2060 - the lowest age in Europe with the exception of Luxembourg. The EU's population now stands at 495 million and is projected to rise to more than 520 million by 2035, before falling to 505 million by 2060. "From 2015 onwards deaths would outnumber births, and population growth due to natural increase, would cease," says the survey, assuming a net migration inflow to the EU of almost 60 million over the next 50 years. "Positive net migration would be the only population growth factor. However, from 2035 this positive net migration would no longer counterbalance the negative natural change."
Across the EU's 27 countries there are now four people of working age for every person over 65, but by 2060 that ratio will be 2:1, causing stress on welfare and pension systems. Torres said pension and health systems had to be reformed.
Fourteen of the 27 countries are projected to have smaller populations in 50 years' time. The survey reveals striking contrasts, between eastern and western Europe and between the north and south, with Scandinavia and Britain comparing positively with Mediterranean Europe, while central and eastern Europe see chronic population depression.
The number of people aged 65 or more broadly doubles across the EU, with Britons of retirement age being almost 19 million. While the number of Germans of working age is predicted to decline from 54 million now to 39 million by 2060, in Britain the figure rises by more than 4 million.
Across the EU, the number of children under 14 will drop from 77 million to 71 million, but in the UK the number rises by 2 million. In Britain the proportion of over-80s will double to 9% while across the EU it will triple to 12%.
The UK population is increasing at a rate of around 1,000 people a day according to figures released by the National Statistics agency earlier this month. Children aged under 16 represent around one in five of the total population, around the same proportion as those of retirement age. UK fertility rates dropped steadily during the 1980s and 1990s but began to increase again from 2003.
The strongly Roman Catholic countries of Europe are having fewer babies. The Italian population will stay the same over the next 50 years, while Poland's and Lithuania's will shrink considerably. Spain's population is forecast to increase by 6 million. Life expectancy is also rising. In Ireland, women will live to 89 and men to 85. Almost one in three Europeans will be of pensionable age if 65 remains the threshold
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"Dangerous" board game seized by moronic British police
A War On Terror board game designed in Cambridge has been seized by police who claim the balaclava in the set could be used in a criminal act. The satirical board game was confiscated along with knives, chisels and bolt cutters, from climate protesters during a series of raids near Kingsnorth power station, in Kent, last week.
The game's creators, Andrew Sheerin and Andy Tompkins, web designers from Cambridge, have expressed total shock at the inclusion of their toy among "criminal" items. Andrew, 32, said: "I saw pictures of the board game in papers and was absolutely baffled. "Surely no member of the public is going to believe that a board game could be used as a weapon?"
War on Terror, similar to games like Risk, revolves around creating empires that compete and wage war. But there is a twist - players can poke fun at the rhetoric of world leaders like George Bush and Tony Blair. The game was born from the frustration of its creators as they sat watching the news in the run up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Each player starts as an empire filled with good intentions and a determination to liberate the world from terrorists and from each other.
Then the reality of world politics kicks and terrorist states emerge. Andrew said: "The terrorists can win and quite often do and it's global anarchy. It sums up the randomness of geo-politics pretty well."
In their cardboard version of realpolitik George Bush's "Axis of Evil" is reduced to a spinner in the middle of the board, which determines which player is designated a terrorist state. That person then has to wear a balaclava (included in the box set) with the word "Evil" stitched on to it.
Kent police said they had confiscated the game because the balaclava "could be used to conceal someone's identity or could be used in the course of a criminal act".
Andrew fumed: "It's absurd. A beard can conceal someone's identity. Are the police going to start banning beards?"
All High Street retailers declined to stock the controversial game. But more than 12,000 copies have been sold online or through independent stockists.
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England's surveillance state at work
Dreary old England is suffering mightily under the weight of the authoritarian government of the Labour Party. Labour has been working assiduously to impose a total surveillance state trampling on traditional British freedoms. First, here is a video of the local police randomly stopping people and demanding to search them. As they make clear, if you do not "consent" to being searched you will be arrested. Of course, once they arrest you they can search you. In other words, in England, the police may search anyone they wish, anytime they wish without any probable cause.
One British "subject" has filmed this sort of police state mentality. It is hard to understand some aspects of the video as the sound is not totally up to par. Please note that these these officers are not only searching the man's belongings but frisking him, going through his pockets, looking in his wallet, and flipping through the books he reads. Notice the lie they tell. They argue that they are looking for anything that can be used by terrorists. But they start going through his credit cards and looking through his wallet. And then, when they find nothing wrong, they send in his details to check up on the man.
Basically the cops end up arguing that anything a "terrorists" could use can be inspected by them at any time they wish. Of course the terrorists can use anything. Also watch as people walk by and look over at this poor man being searched. You know that many of them are wondering what this man did that was illegal to be apprehended by the police.
The last time I was in the UK I saw a thug harassing an older woman inside the local McDonalds. I complained to the staff who did nothing. I went outside and told the police. The thug walked out and I pointed him out. The police REFUSED to do anything saying they didn't want to "embarrass" him in "front of his mates". Apparently guilty people shouldn't be embarrassed but innocent people deserve to be frisked, searched and checked out on some central data base. Sieg heil! The one thing I will say is that, as disgusting as this is, in the U.S. merely asking the police the questions this man asked would have gotten him beaten, perhaps tasered and possibly shot.
Meanwhile the Telegraph reports that the local councils are using the antiterrorism surveillance systems to spy on "couples' sleeping arrangements." Taxes are based, not only on the value of property, but also on the number of people living there. So councils "undertake `surveillance' of cars registered to addresses `to substantiate the allegation of living together.'" Documents from one council show they are checking to see if couples are living "as husband and wife."
In Thurrock single residents are required to sign a document giving blanket permission to local bureaucrats "to enter their home as part of an inspection" to determine if they really are single or in a couple. If they have a partner their tax rate increases by one-third. A spokesman for the Conservative Party said:
Bureaucrats with the Local Government Association have a unique stand on the matter. They say "Pretending to live alone to defraud the taxpayer is not a victimless crime." This goes on the assumption that your wealth belongs to the government and they let you keep some of it. If you keep more of your own income then the government has to take more of other people's income. So it is your fault that they are confiscating more wealth from other people. Thus keeping your own money is a crime against others.
Already it has been shown that government powers initially created to "stop terrorism" have been used by councils to arrest people whose dog took a shit in the wrong place or who dumped trash in the wrong location.
But one government official, with the title of Interception of Communications Commissioner, Paul Kennedy, complained that the local councils were not using their spying powers enough. He suggested that more councils spy on people to fight crimes "such as skipping work and filing fraudulent overtime claims." The Telegraph reports: "Councils across the country were criticised last month as it emerged that they used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act up to 10,000 times a year to investigate such petty offences as dog fouling and under-age smoking."
And while the Conservative Party is, this now, whining about the surveillance state, only days ago they were demanding that police powers be expanded to do more surveillance. Then another Tory spokesman said: "It is not right that we charge our police with combating crime and disorder and then tie their hands behind their backs.... the police should be given both the resources and the freedom to use those resources to do their job." In that incident the Tories said that restraints to protect citizens from spying were "red tape" and promised to make it easier to spy, including putting in wire taps, without any court permission required.
Source
Kindly old NHS decides not to let people go blind after all
Thousands have gone blind while the authorities spent over two years dithering, though
For the first time a drugs company will pay to top up patients' treatment where the level of care paid for by the Health Service is not enough. In a decision that marks a climbdown for the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), the first 14 injections of the sight-saving drug Lucentis will be paid for by the NHS. If the patient still needs further treatment then Novartis, the manufacturer, will pay for any additional doses.
The ruling overturns previous draft guidance that patients would have to go blind in one eye before receiving treatment with Lucentis, which costs more than $20,000 per eye, on the second. It also paves the way for other new drugs for which top-up doses may be required to be funded in the same way in future.
Richard Barker, director general of the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry suggested other medicines the NHS cannot afford to pay for in full could be provided through cost sharing schemes between the NHS and the drugs industry. A similar approach has been suggested for kidney cancer drug Sutent, which costs $48,000 a year, and three other drugs after Nice issued draft guidance saying that they were not "cost effective" despite extending life by two months.
NICE has been severely criticised in recent months by health campaigners, who have accused them of condemning patients to "an early grave" by denying them the drugs. It has also been at the centre of a previous controversy over its decision to deny the $5-a-day drug Aricept to victims of Alzheimer's in the early stages of the disease.
Lucentis can stop the deterioration in sight caused by the condition wet age related macular degeneration (AMD), which affects about 250,000 people in the UK including 26,000 new cases each year. It can cause blindness within three months. Up until now around 40 per cent of primary care trusts have refused to fund the drug while others have approved its use only in 'exceptional cases' although the drug was approved in Scotland last year.
Nice has taken over two and a half years to issue its final guidance on the drug in which time many thousands of people have already gone blind as a result of the condition. The drug has no effect on the condition once the patient has gone blind.
Andrew Dillon, NICE Chief Executive, said the decision would be justified by both the improved quality of life for patients and cost savings in the long run. "Lucentis is an expensive drug, costing more than $20,000 for each eye treated," he said. "But that cost needs to be balanced against the likely cost savings. AMD results in reduced quality of life and increased risks of illness, particularly in relation to accidents - especially falls - and psychological ill-health. "Studies have also demonstrated that patients with visual impairment tend to have longer hospitalisations, make greater use of health and community care services and are more likely to be admitted to nursing homes.
"It has been estimated that the costs related to sight impairment for patients treated with Lucentis are around $16,000 cheaper than for patients who receive best supportive care over a 10 year period. Our guidance means that patients who are suitable for this treatment will have the same access to it, irrespective of where they live."
Steve Winyard, Head of Campaigns at Royal National Institute for the Blind, said: "We've been waiting for this for over two years. It is a victory for thousands, bringing overwhelming relief to desperate people across the country. Finally the torment faced by elderly people forced to either spend their life savings on private treatment or go blind, is over. "NICE's guidance will finally bring an end to a cruel postcode lottery." Primary care trusts in England and Wales now have three months to fund the treatment for all eligible patients....
The ABPI's Mr Barker said drug companies were being flexible and suggesting cost sharing schemes but Nice had to be flexible also.
The decision comes after Health Secretary Alan Johnson ordered an investigation into the policy of denying NHS services to patients in England who top up their care with private treatment. Currently, anyone who pays for any private care can be barred from receiving the normal package of NHS care but the review will look at whether such co-payments should be allowed in future.
In July, RNIB also backed three pensioners in landmark High Court action against Warwickshire PCT for denying them treatment. Tom Bremridge, chief executive of The Macular Disease Society said: "Those responsible for NICE should be aware that during the cumbersome two year review process 152 PCTs have individually had the power to decide whether to let patients go blind or to save their sight. The resulting stress and suffering has been cruel and unnecessary. "Many hundreds of vulnerable patients have been subjected to an appalling emotional rollercoaster ride for the past two years - during which many of them have lost their remaining sight."
He called for Nice to speed up drug appraisals in order to avoid primary care trusts around the country making different decisions on funding drugs that have not yet been through Nice....
Dr Rafiq Hasan, Director of Market Access and Ophthalmics at Novartis said the new agreement was "an innovative approach which shows how pharmaceutical companies can work together with Nice and the Department of Health to ensure patients do get access to treatments on the NHS." He said: "Wet AMD is a debilitating eye condition that can result in a rapid loss of sight if left untreated. Lucentis is a treatment for a key unmet medical need and it has the potential to save many peoples' sight. "Rapid implementation of the guidance is now needed to ensure that patients receive the treatment they need as soon as possible."
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Some interesting history
It is well known that the American Founding Fathers were profoundly influenced by England's "Glorious Revolution" of 1688, which had overthrown a reactionary British monarch in the name of Enlightenment principles, religious liberty and representative institutions. Yet were those truly the ideals of the 1688 Revolution? If not, "the spirit of 1776" was based on a false premise.
Lisa Jardine, a professor at the University of London, pursues this theme in "Going Dutch," a thoroughly researched and provocative revisionist study. She argues that the Glorious Revolution was far from glorious and less a revolution than a blatant invasion. Nor was it a great blow for liberty: 1688, she contends, was a naked power grab by the Statholder of Holland, William of Orange, who sought to oust his father-in-law, King James II, for the sake of his own interests and those of the Dutch Republic; all the talk of liberty and high ideals was just Dutch propaganda.
If Ms. Jardine is right, men like Jefferson, Franklin and Adams were duped, for, as Michael Barone recounted last year in "Our First Revolution," 1776 was a conscious re-run of 1688. Was the U.S. created at least partly out of piety toward a slick Dutch con job?
Ms. Jardine presents a close analysis of the plotting going on in William's court before his fleet of 500 ships and 30,000 men set sail for England on Nov. 1, 1688; months of preparation, she shows, went into creating the right political conditions for the invasion. She persuades us that, in part, a fear that France would invade Holland led William to attempt the attack on James II, hoping to use London to foil Louis XIV's designs. In part, she argues, William sought to exploit England's maritime power on behalf of Holland, or at least to negate British hostility to Dutch global expansionism, especially in the East Indies....
Once William had landed on the south coast of England on Nov. 5, 1688, and found himself cheered in the streets, he marched swiftly on to London, while James II fled, dropping the Great Seal of England into the Thames and burning parliamentary writs, vainly hoping that such efforts might stymie William's legislative legitimacy. English regiments such as the Coldstream Guards were deftly negotiated out of London, and only Dutch troops were allowed to keep order in the capital.
It is a beguiling thesis, but flawed, for the simple reason that William was invited to invade by the English Whig aristocracy and that his "Declaration," far from being "spin," was the only basis on which he was allowed to set foot in England. If the domestic Protestant governing classes had not effectively chosen William over James, the Dutch invasion fleet would have met the fate of the Spanish Armada.
The 1688 revolution was indeed glorious, and also a revolution, because it replaced -- without bloodshed, until James sought to reverse the outcome two years later -- an obscurantist would-be dictator of alien religious views with William III, the savior of English liberties, commercial practices, religious beliefs and world-outlook. That he was Dutch was immaterial ... William of Orange's "Declaration," then, was an honest document, as his benevolent rule -- and that of his wife, Mary -- would prove. Together they passed a Toleration Act and a Bill of Rights, furthering religious and political liberty. They founded the Bank of England, greatly increased trade and stayed out of war with France until Louis XIV rashly recognized James Stuart, James II's son, as England's rightful king. The reign of William and Mary, in short, was a golden age in British history. The Founding Fathers were right to draw inspiration from it.
More here
Britain's education rat-race
Are you a pushy parent? Am I a pushy parent? Once upon a time we all knew what the term stood for. It was Violet Elizabeth Bott's father in a Roller demanding his spoilt darling got the best of everything. [Violet Elizabeth Bott is a character in the "Just William" stories]. In classic children's literature you can tell a good parent by their desire, above all else, that their offspring should not become "big-headed". It was all so deliciously unambiguous back then.
Cut to 2008 and being pushy is an arch crime in some quarters and a supreme virtue in others. Earlier this year, aggressively ambitious parents were blamed for the cancelling of Hickstead's junior show-jumping events. But few accusations come as loaded with bile as the suspected crime of shoving your angel to the top of the educational pile. Middle-class parents who "play the system" are so frequently blamed for the failings of the state system you'd think teachers and the Government played no part at all.
In 1996, a Labour politico called Andrew Adonis protested that, "securing places in popular church schools is an art form for the professional classes". What a difference a decade makes. On Sunday Lord Adonis, schools minister, said: "I want every parent to be a pushy parent. It is a jolly good thing." Is it, by Jove? Even if few things make you reach for an axe quicker than an acquaintance citing their child's IQ or violin grade?
My little boy starts school next month and I'm already daunted by the middle-class angst that surrounds all educational decisions. Most trips to the playground now involve a lengthy discussion - or justification - about our choice.
Some parents seem mystified that we chose our local state primary (good to average Ofsted report), others tell me with pinched expressions that our son is in the "better" reception class, with smarter parents "where fewer languages" are spoken. (How on earth do they know? Term hasn't even started.)
Lord Adonis now believes that parents who abandon deficient schools and fight to get their children into the best establishments boost the whole system. Yet this is nearly as fatuous an argument as the old one that blamed pushy parents for dismal state schooling. What has happened under this Government is that when ambitious parents have bolted for enclaves of academic excellence, children from less motivated backgrounds have been left ever further behind.
And for all the vote-winning exhortations to parents to enjoy a guilt-free sprint for the golden prizes, nobody's found a convincing rescue package for the illiterate stragglers in our educational ghettoes.
A good old-fashioned race is now, of course, an approved activity. Gordon Brown used the Olympics to admit that old Labour got things badly wrong when it waged a war on competitive school sports. With luck this means an end to the sports day cited by a friend that consisted of children in circles chucking beanbags through hoops. But Brown's new-found enthusiasm for hearty sporting competition raises a bigger question.
Will he admit that the loony Left did an even greater disservice when it tried to smother academic competition? Boys in particular have failed to thrive in an educational arena that stifles naturally combative tendencies. Of course, where there are winners there will also be losers; but can't we return to the days when dunces found compensation in sporting glory and weeds found consolation in A-grade Algebra?
As term starts, parents face an additional hurdle - how to keep children nit-free. Head-lice have become resistant to most chemicals, which at least means your children can evade the night-time ritual of a head coated in vile Prioderm. My cousin's wife, a mother of five, offers a top tip - she swears by Clairol hair dye. Choose the shade closest to your child's natural tone and this coats the hair shafts, which deters lice and prevents eggs sticking. Stylish, cool, and they won't stink of nit shampoo.
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'Man on the street' is offensive to women
Or so says a document put out by Chichester District Council, West Sussex, in England:
Britain to be biggest country in EU by 2060. Population falls predicted in many other countries. Quantity is not quality, however. The British population includes a a large sub-group of African ultimate origin who have a high rate of crime, insanity and welfare dependancy -- and they account for a disproportionate number of the births. Any assumption that that sub-group will be net economic contributors in the year 2060 would be incautious
Britain will overtake Germany and France to become the biggest country in the EU in 50 years' time, according to population projections unveiled yesterday. A survey of demographic trends finds Britain's positive birth rate contrasting strongly with most other large countries in Europe.
The impact of population shrinkage, coupled with the ageing of key European societies, spells big problems for pensions, health and welfare systems across much of the union, says the report, published by Eurostat, the statistical service of the European commission. But Britain, it says, is likely to suffer less because of its strong population growth and the younger average age of British society.
Immigration is singled out as the sole mitigating factor, seen as crucial to maintaining population growth. But the report says this probably will not be enough to reverse the trend of population decline in many countries. The survey predicts that Britain's population by 2060 will increase by 25% from the current figure of just over 61 million to almost 77 million.
Germany is the biggest country in the EU, with more than 82 million people, but it is likely to shed almost 12 million by 2060, says the report. The widely praised family policies and support of working women in France means that the French population will rise to almost 72 million by 2060.
With the British birth rate now at its highest in a generation - 1.91 children per woman according to the Office for National Statistics last week - the UK has less to fear about any "generation wars" brought on by the "demographic timebomb" of ageing and shrinking populations where those in work cannot support the pension needs of retired citizens. "With climate change and globalisation the ageing of the population is one of the major challenges Europe must face," said Amelia Torres, a commission spokeswoman.
Of the biggest six EU countries (Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Spain and Poland) Britain has by far the greatest birth rates. Only Luxembourg, Cyprus, and Ireland are growing faster than the UK.
The average age of Europeans is now just over 40; this will be 48 by 2060. The average age for Britons is 39 and will be 42 in 2060 - the lowest age in Europe with the exception of Luxembourg. The EU's population now stands at 495 million and is projected to rise to more than 520 million by 2035, before falling to 505 million by 2060. "From 2015 onwards deaths would outnumber births, and population growth due to natural increase, would cease," says the survey, assuming a net migration inflow to the EU of almost 60 million over the next 50 years. "Positive net migration would be the only population growth factor. However, from 2035 this positive net migration would no longer counterbalance the negative natural change."
Across the EU's 27 countries there are now four people of working age for every person over 65, but by 2060 that ratio will be 2:1, causing stress on welfare and pension systems. Torres said pension and health systems had to be reformed.
Fourteen of the 27 countries are projected to have smaller populations in 50 years' time. The survey reveals striking contrasts, between eastern and western Europe and between the north and south, with Scandinavia and Britain comparing positively with Mediterranean Europe, while central and eastern Europe see chronic population depression.
The number of people aged 65 or more broadly doubles across the EU, with Britons of retirement age being almost 19 million. While the number of Germans of working age is predicted to decline from 54 million now to 39 million by 2060, in Britain the figure rises by more than 4 million.
Across the EU, the number of children under 14 will drop from 77 million to 71 million, but in the UK the number rises by 2 million. In Britain the proportion of over-80s will double to 9% while across the EU it will triple to 12%.
The UK population is increasing at a rate of around 1,000 people a day according to figures released by the National Statistics agency earlier this month. Children aged under 16 represent around one in five of the total population, around the same proportion as those of retirement age. UK fertility rates dropped steadily during the 1980s and 1990s but began to increase again from 2003.
The strongly Roman Catholic countries of Europe are having fewer babies. The Italian population will stay the same over the next 50 years, while Poland's and Lithuania's will shrink considerably. Spain's population is forecast to increase by 6 million. Life expectancy is also rising. In Ireland, women will live to 89 and men to 85. Almost one in three Europeans will be of pensionable age if 65 remains the threshold
Source
"Dangerous" board game seized by moronic British police
A War On Terror board game designed in Cambridge has been seized by police who claim the balaclava in the set could be used in a criminal act. The satirical board game was confiscated along with knives, chisels and bolt cutters, from climate protesters during a series of raids near Kingsnorth power station, in Kent, last week.
The game's creators, Andrew Sheerin and Andy Tompkins, web designers from Cambridge, have expressed total shock at the inclusion of their toy among "criminal" items. Andrew, 32, said: "I saw pictures of the board game in papers and was absolutely baffled. "Surely no member of the public is going to believe that a board game could be used as a weapon?"
War on Terror, similar to games like Risk, revolves around creating empires that compete and wage war. But there is a twist - players can poke fun at the rhetoric of world leaders like George Bush and Tony Blair. The game was born from the frustration of its creators as they sat watching the news in the run up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Each player starts as an empire filled with good intentions and a determination to liberate the world from terrorists and from each other.
Then the reality of world politics kicks and terrorist states emerge. Andrew said: "The terrorists can win and quite often do and it's global anarchy. It sums up the randomness of geo-politics pretty well."
In their cardboard version of realpolitik George Bush's "Axis of Evil" is reduced to a spinner in the middle of the board, which determines which player is designated a terrorist state. That person then has to wear a balaclava (included in the box set) with the word "Evil" stitched on to it.
Kent police said they had confiscated the game because the balaclava "could be used to conceal someone's identity or could be used in the course of a criminal act".
Andrew fumed: "It's absurd. A beard can conceal someone's identity. Are the police going to start banning beards?"
All High Street retailers declined to stock the controversial game. But more than 12,000 copies have been sold online or through independent stockists.
Source
England's surveillance state at work
Dreary old England is suffering mightily under the weight of the authoritarian government of the Labour Party. Labour has been working assiduously to impose a total surveillance state trampling on traditional British freedoms. First, here is a video of the local police randomly stopping people and demanding to search them. As they make clear, if you do not "consent" to being searched you will be arrested. Of course, once they arrest you they can search you. In other words, in England, the police may search anyone they wish, anytime they wish without any probable cause.
One British "subject" has filmed this sort of police state mentality. It is hard to understand some aspects of the video as the sound is not totally up to par. Please note that these these officers are not only searching the man's belongings but frisking him, going through his pockets, looking in his wallet, and flipping through the books he reads. Notice the lie they tell. They argue that they are looking for anything that can be used by terrorists. But they start going through his credit cards and looking through his wallet. And then, when they find nothing wrong, they send in his details to check up on the man.
Basically the cops end up arguing that anything a "terrorists" could use can be inspected by them at any time they wish. Of course the terrorists can use anything. Also watch as people walk by and look over at this poor man being searched. You know that many of them are wondering what this man did that was illegal to be apprehended by the police.
The last time I was in the UK I saw a thug harassing an older woman inside the local McDonalds. I complained to the staff who did nothing. I went outside and told the police. The thug walked out and I pointed him out. The police REFUSED to do anything saying they didn't want to "embarrass" him in "front of his mates". Apparently guilty people shouldn't be embarrassed but innocent people deserve to be frisked, searched and checked out on some central data base. Sieg heil! The one thing I will say is that, as disgusting as this is, in the U.S. merely asking the police the questions this man asked would have gotten him beaten, perhaps tasered and possibly shot.
Meanwhile the Telegraph reports that the local councils are using the antiterrorism surveillance systems to spy on "couples' sleeping arrangements." Taxes are based, not only on the value of property, but also on the number of people living there. So councils "undertake `surveillance' of cars registered to addresses `to substantiate the allegation of living together.'" Documents from one council show they are checking to see if couples are living "as husband and wife."
In Thurrock single residents are required to sign a document giving blanket permission to local bureaucrats "to enter their home as part of an inspection" to determine if they really are single or in a couple. If they have a partner their tax rate increases by one-third. A spokesman for the Conservative Party said:
Day by day under Labour, the country is sleepwalking into a surveillance state, where spying on citizens has become the norm. Laws which were originally intended to tackle the most serious crimes and safeguard the public are now being deployed routinely and without hesitation.
Councils will naturally wish to ensure that council tax discounts and benefits are not wrongly claimed. But I am concerned that innocent citizens will be spied on through heavy-handed and disproportionate use by town hall snoopers. There are far less intrusive and more cost-effective ways of vetting council tax, such as through data matching, rather than paying town hall officials to camp out overnight outside people's homes.
The fact such snooping is already over-used by local authorities bodes ill for the planned powers for town halls to access communications data. There are insufficient checks and balances to prevent people's sex lives being habitually monitored by state bureaucrats, purely because they claim a council tax discount for living alone.
Bureaucrats with the Local Government Association have a unique stand on the matter. They say "Pretending to live alone to defraud the taxpayer is not a victimless crime." This goes on the assumption that your wealth belongs to the government and they let you keep some of it. If you keep more of your own income then the government has to take more of other people's income. So it is your fault that they are confiscating more wealth from other people. Thus keeping your own money is a crime against others.
Already it has been shown that government powers initially created to "stop terrorism" have been used by councils to arrest people whose dog took a shit in the wrong place or who dumped trash in the wrong location.
But one government official, with the title of Interception of Communications Commissioner, Paul Kennedy, complained that the local councils were not using their spying powers enough. He suggested that more councils spy on people to fight crimes "such as skipping work and filing fraudulent overtime claims." The Telegraph reports: "Councils across the country were criticised last month as it emerged that they used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act up to 10,000 times a year to investigate such petty offences as dog fouling and under-age smoking."
And while the Conservative Party is, this now, whining about the surveillance state, only days ago they were demanding that police powers be expanded to do more surveillance. Then another Tory spokesman said: "It is not right that we charge our police with combating crime and disorder and then tie their hands behind their backs.... the police should be given both the resources and the freedom to use those resources to do their job." In that incident the Tories said that restraints to protect citizens from spying were "red tape" and promised to make it easier to spy, including putting in wire taps, without any court permission required.
Source
Kindly old NHS decides not to let people go blind after all
Thousands have gone blind while the authorities spent over two years dithering, though
For the first time a drugs company will pay to top up patients' treatment where the level of care paid for by the Health Service is not enough. In a decision that marks a climbdown for the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), the first 14 injections of the sight-saving drug Lucentis will be paid for by the NHS. If the patient still needs further treatment then Novartis, the manufacturer, will pay for any additional doses.
The ruling overturns previous draft guidance that patients would have to go blind in one eye before receiving treatment with Lucentis, which costs more than $20,000 per eye, on the second. It also paves the way for other new drugs for which top-up doses may be required to be funded in the same way in future.
Richard Barker, director general of the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry suggested other medicines the NHS cannot afford to pay for in full could be provided through cost sharing schemes between the NHS and the drugs industry. A similar approach has been suggested for kidney cancer drug Sutent, which costs $48,000 a year, and three other drugs after Nice issued draft guidance saying that they were not "cost effective" despite extending life by two months.
NICE has been severely criticised in recent months by health campaigners, who have accused them of condemning patients to "an early grave" by denying them the drugs. It has also been at the centre of a previous controversy over its decision to deny the $5-a-day drug Aricept to victims of Alzheimer's in the early stages of the disease.
Lucentis can stop the deterioration in sight caused by the condition wet age related macular degeneration (AMD), which affects about 250,000 people in the UK including 26,000 new cases each year. It can cause blindness within three months. Up until now around 40 per cent of primary care trusts have refused to fund the drug while others have approved its use only in 'exceptional cases' although the drug was approved in Scotland last year.
Nice has taken over two and a half years to issue its final guidance on the drug in which time many thousands of people have already gone blind as a result of the condition. The drug has no effect on the condition once the patient has gone blind.
Andrew Dillon, NICE Chief Executive, said the decision would be justified by both the improved quality of life for patients and cost savings in the long run. "Lucentis is an expensive drug, costing more than $20,000 for each eye treated," he said. "But that cost needs to be balanced against the likely cost savings. AMD results in reduced quality of life and increased risks of illness, particularly in relation to accidents - especially falls - and psychological ill-health. "Studies have also demonstrated that patients with visual impairment tend to have longer hospitalisations, make greater use of health and community care services and are more likely to be admitted to nursing homes.
"It has been estimated that the costs related to sight impairment for patients treated with Lucentis are around $16,000 cheaper than for patients who receive best supportive care over a 10 year period. Our guidance means that patients who are suitable for this treatment will have the same access to it, irrespective of where they live."
Steve Winyard, Head of Campaigns at Royal National Institute for the Blind, said: "We've been waiting for this for over two years. It is a victory for thousands, bringing overwhelming relief to desperate people across the country. Finally the torment faced by elderly people forced to either spend their life savings on private treatment or go blind, is over. "NICE's guidance will finally bring an end to a cruel postcode lottery." Primary care trusts in England and Wales now have three months to fund the treatment for all eligible patients....
The ABPI's Mr Barker said drug companies were being flexible and suggesting cost sharing schemes but Nice had to be flexible also.
The decision comes after Health Secretary Alan Johnson ordered an investigation into the policy of denying NHS services to patients in England who top up their care with private treatment. Currently, anyone who pays for any private care can be barred from receiving the normal package of NHS care but the review will look at whether such co-payments should be allowed in future.
In July, RNIB also backed three pensioners in landmark High Court action against Warwickshire PCT for denying them treatment. Tom Bremridge, chief executive of The Macular Disease Society said: "Those responsible for NICE should be aware that during the cumbersome two year review process 152 PCTs have individually had the power to decide whether to let patients go blind or to save their sight. The resulting stress and suffering has been cruel and unnecessary. "Many hundreds of vulnerable patients have been subjected to an appalling emotional rollercoaster ride for the past two years - during which many of them have lost their remaining sight."
He called for Nice to speed up drug appraisals in order to avoid primary care trusts around the country making different decisions on funding drugs that have not yet been through Nice....
Dr Rafiq Hasan, Director of Market Access and Ophthalmics at Novartis said the new agreement was "an innovative approach which shows how pharmaceutical companies can work together with Nice and the Department of Health to ensure patients do get access to treatments on the NHS." He said: "Wet AMD is a debilitating eye condition that can result in a rapid loss of sight if left untreated. Lucentis is a treatment for a key unmet medical need and it has the potential to save many peoples' sight. "Rapid implementation of the guidance is now needed to ensure that patients receive the treatment they need as soon as possible."
Source
Some interesting history
It is well known that the American Founding Fathers were profoundly influenced by England's "Glorious Revolution" of 1688, which had overthrown a reactionary British monarch in the name of Enlightenment principles, religious liberty and representative institutions. Yet were those truly the ideals of the 1688 Revolution? If not, "the spirit of 1776" was based on a false premise.
Lisa Jardine, a professor at the University of London, pursues this theme in "Going Dutch," a thoroughly researched and provocative revisionist study. She argues that the Glorious Revolution was far from glorious and less a revolution than a blatant invasion. Nor was it a great blow for liberty: 1688, she contends, was a naked power grab by the Statholder of Holland, William of Orange, who sought to oust his father-in-law, King James II, for the sake of his own interests and those of the Dutch Republic; all the talk of liberty and high ideals was just Dutch propaganda.
If Ms. Jardine is right, men like Jefferson, Franklin and Adams were duped, for, as Michael Barone recounted last year in "Our First Revolution," 1776 was a conscious re-run of 1688. Was the U.S. created at least partly out of piety toward a slick Dutch con job?
Ms. Jardine presents a close analysis of the plotting going on in William's court before his fleet of 500 ships and 30,000 men set sail for England on Nov. 1, 1688; months of preparation, she shows, went into creating the right political conditions for the invasion. She persuades us that, in part, a fear that France would invade Holland led William to attempt the attack on James II, hoping to use London to foil Louis XIV's designs. In part, she argues, William sought to exploit England's maritime power on behalf of Holland, or at least to negate British hostility to Dutch global expansionism, especially in the East Indies....
Once William had landed on the south coast of England on Nov. 5, 1688, and found himself cheered in the streets, he marched swiftly on to London, while James II fled, dropping the Great Seal of England into the Thames and burning parliamentary writs, vainly hoping that such efforts might stymie William's legislative legitimacy. English regiments such as the Coldstream Guards were deftly negotiated out of London, and only Dutch troops were allowed to keep order in the capital.
It is a beguiling thesis, but flawed, for the simple reason that William was invited to invade by the English Whig aristocracy and that his "Declaration," far from being "spin," was the only basis on which he was allowed to set foot in England. If the domestic Protestant governing classes had not effectively chosen William over James, the Dutch invasion fleet would have met the fate of the Spanish Armada.
The 1688 revolution was indeed glorious, and also a revolution, because it replaced -- without bloodshed, until James sought to reverse the outcome two years later -- an obscurantist would-be dictator of alien religious views with William III, the savior of English liberties, commercial practices, religious beliefs and world-outlook. That he was Dutch was immaterial ... William of Orange's "Declaration," then, was an honest document, as his benevolent rule -- and that of his wife, Mary -- would prove. Together they passed a Toleration Act and a Bill of Rights, furthering religious and political liberty. They founded the Bank of England, greatly increased trade and stayed out of war with France until Louis XIV rashly recognized James Stuart, James II's son, as England's rightful king. The reign of William and Mary, in short, was a golden age in British history. The Founding Fathers were right to draw inspiration from it.
More here
Britain's education rat-race
Are you a pushy parent? Am I a pushy parent? Once upon a time we all knew what the term stood for. It was Violet Elizabeth Bott's father in a Roller demanding his spoilt darling got the best of everything. [Violet Elizabeth Bott is a character in the "Just William" stories]. In classic children's literature you can tell a good parent by their desire, above all else, that their offspring should not become "big-headed". It was all so deliciously unambiguous back then.
Cut to 2008 and being pushy is an arch crime in some quarters and a supreme virtue in others. Earlier this year, aggressively ambitious parents were blamed for the cancelling of Hickstead's junior show-jumping events. But few accusations come as loaded with bile as the suspected crime of shoving your angel to the top of the educational pile. Middle-class parents who "play the system" are so frequently blamed for the failings of the state system you'd think teachers and the Government played no part at all.
In 1996, a Labour politico called Andrew Adonis protested that, "securing places in popular church schools is an art form for the professional classes". What a difference a decade makes. On Sunday Lord Adonis, schools minister, said: "I want every parent to be a pushy parent. It is a jolly good thing." Is it, by Jove? Even if few things make you reach for an axe quicker than an acquaintance citing their child's IQ or violin grade?
My little boy starts school next month and I'm already daunted by the middle-class angst that surrounds all educational decisions. Most trips to the playground now involve a lengthy discussion - or justification - about our choice.
Some parents seem mystified that we chose our local state primary (good to average Ofsted report), others tell me with pinched expressions that our son is in the "better" reception class, with smarter parents "where fewer languages" are spoken. (How on earth do they know? Term hasn't even started.)
Lord Adonis now believes that parents who abandon deficient schools and fight to get their children into the best establishments boost the whole system. Yet this is nearly as fatuous an argument as the old one that blamed pushy parents for dismal state schooling. What has happened under this Government is that when ambitious parents have bolted for enclaves of academic excellence, children from less motivated backgrounds have been left ever further behind.
And for all the vote-winning exhortations to parents to enjoy a guilt-free sprint for the golden prizes, nobody's found a convincing rescue package for the illiterate stragglers in our educational ghettoes.
A good old-fashioned race is now, of course, an approved activity. Gordon Brown used the Olympics to admit that old Labour got things badly wrong when it waged a war on competitive school sports. With luck this means an end to the sports day cited by a friend that consisted of children in circles chucking beanbags through hoops. But Brown's new-found enthusiasm for hearty sporting competition raises a bigger question.
Will he admit that the loony Left did an even greater disservice when it tried to smother academic competition? Boys in particular have failed to thrive in an educational arena that stifles naturally combative tendencies. Of course, where there are winners there will also be losers; but can't we return to the days when dunces found compensation in sporting glory and weeds found consolation in A-grade Algebra?
As term starts, parents face an additional hurdle - how to keep children nit-free. Head-lice have become resistant to most chemicals, which at least means your children can evade the night-time ritual of a head coated in vile Prioderm. My cousin's wife, a mother of five, offers a top tip - she swears by Clairol hair dye. Choose the shade closest to your child's natural tone and this coats the hair shafts, which deters lice and prevents eggs sticking. Stylish, cool, and they won't stink of nit shampoo.
Source
'Man on the street' is offensive to women
Or so says a document put out by Chichester District Council, West Sussex, in England:
"The document claims the popular saying is based on the assumption that the world is male and makes the views or work of women invisible. It suggests that town hall officers should use "general public" a positive and less offensive alternative. The guide also kills off the phrase "manning the switchboard" and suggests "staffing" or "running the switchboard" instead
The council said that the document, which is distributed to all staff and council members, is not a rulebook but a guide to help staff and members find the correct words. A spokesman said: "We introduced the guide because as community leaders we must be aware of what modern society requires of the public sector. This includes the sensitivity of various individuals and groups, and current thinking in society in general.
Source
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Binge-drinking mother jailed after crying rape against devout Muslim taxi driver
A binge-drinking mother has been jailed after falsely accusing an innocent taxi driver of raping her. Joanne Rye, who kept up the lie for 20 months, was told by a judge her behaviour was despicable and was handed an eight-month prison sentence. [The bitch should have got what he would have got]
The mother-of-one caused great shame and disgrace to devout Muslim Sherekhan Kali and his family after claiming that he dragged her down an alleyway and assaulted her. Maidstone Crown Court heard Rye, then 18, was known as a troublemaker and had been banned from using the All Night Car Hire in Dartford, Kent where Mr Kali worked. The court also heard the week before she made the rape allegation, she had used racially insulting language to Mr Kali.
Valeria Swift, prosecuting, said Rye was very drunk and was taken to hospital claiming she had suffered an asthma attack on the night of October 21, 2006. Ms Rye became aggressive and police were called and it was then she made the rape claim, giving a detailed account of the attack. She claimed she was waiting for taxi in Dartford when she was grabbed and a pellet gun was fired into her kneecap. She said her attacker then dragged her into an alley and raped her. But she said there would not be any DNA because he had used a condom. She also told how she had recognised Mr Kali because he had taken her in his taxi a week before.
The part-time cabbie was arrested at his home and taken to the police station where intimate samples, DNA and fingerprints were taken. His boss Nicholas Morris confirmed that Ms Rye had been banned from using the firm's cabs because of racist abuse to drivers. Miss Swift revealed a check of the satellite navigation system in Mr Kali's cab showed he had been nowhere near the area where Rye said she was attacked. CCTV footage of her drunken behaviour on the night she said she had been raped also proved it could not have happened in the way described. The prosecutor said the only motivation for the false allegation was the incident a week earlier when the fare was disputed.
Rye continued to maintain she had been raped up to the first day of her trial in June, accused of perverting the course of justice. Miss Swift said of Mr Kali: 'This case has had a very profound effect on him indeed.' Sarah Morris, defending, said Rye, now 20, would go out and get drunk, smoke cannabis and behave in an anti-social manner. But she had since settled down with a boyfriend and had a child, now aged five months. 'The prospect of a custodial sentence is frightening for her,' said Miss Morris. 'She has put herself in the position where her child will be without the mother. 'Of course, many people would say well, tough, that is your doing. You have brought this on yourself and must face the consequences. 'What she did was thoroughly reprehensible. But it has not been every case where a woman who has cried rape has gone into custody.'
Miss Morris said Rye, who worked in catering for the elderly, knew her boyfriend was not equipped to deal with a young baby. Her mother would have to give up her job to care for the child. But jailing Rye for a 'modest' eight months, Judge Crawford Lindsay, QC, said he had no doubt the matter was so serious there had to be an immediate prison sentence. 'I consider this to be a despicable offence,' he said. 'You made an allegation that this entirely innocent taxi driver had raped you. 'It was fully investigated with the consequences that police time and doctors' time was wasted in the investigation.'
It was not until the first day of her trial in June this year that she 'faced the inevitable' and owned up. 'This is a case where the victim is a strict Muslim, who regularly attends to his beliefs and prays regularly,' said Judge Lindsay. 'At the police station, intimate samples were taken. Having another female touch a part of his body is forbidden. It would bring shame on his family. As a consequence, he left this country for a period.' When he returned to work, Mr Kali was frightened of having women in his cab and would go home. 'So we have a man of blameless character who is subjected to your dishonesty and trumped up allegation,' said the judge.
'It is clear when you are in drink, you are loud-mouthed. You have a young child but that is a matter which does not in my judgment prevent a penalty for an allegation that is easily made and had a serious effect on the victim. 'He suffered the suggestion there is no smoke without fire.'
Source
Senior British doctor accuses Government of destroying NHS
One of Britain's most senior doctors has criticised the Government for leading the NHS into "catastrophic meltdown". Professor Paul Goddard, a former president of the Royal Society of Medicine, said Labour's obsession with bureaucracy and political correctness had resulted in dire care for patients. The radiology specialist also hit out at the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, NICE, claiming the organisation put finances first.
Prof Goddard, 58, said: "If they think a patient will gain an extra year of life, but it will cost more than $40,000 they think it is not cost-effective. Yet if the patient wants to pay for it themselves they are denied NHS treatment. It's an outrage."
The senior doctor, who has quit the NHS, claimed the Government had lost sight of the basic principles of a national health service. "The NHS was built on the foundation of caring for the community. It was designed to help those who needed help, care for those who needed care and treat those who needed treatment. "Those basic principles have been lost as the Government takes us down a dangerous path that can only be a catastrophic meltdown of the system."
But a spokesman for the NHS said record levels of investment had led to dramatic improvements in areas like waiting times. "Ten years ago waits of 18 months were not uncommon, but by the end of this year no-one should wait longer than 18 weeks. None of this would have been possible without the hard work and dedication of everyone working into he NHS."
It comes after a group of 26 professors wrote to a Sunday newspaper claiming NICE had "poorly" assessed a decision to deny patients four kidney cancer drugs. Earlier this month Nice issued guidance rejecting the drugs Sutent, Avastin, Nexavar and Torisel even though trials found the treatments could prolong life in kidney cancer patients by up to two years. Nice said the drugs were too expensive and would mean the health service was less able to afford more cost-effective drugs for other illnesses.
But the professors, who include directors of oncology at Britain's two biggest cancer hospitals, said the latest guidance would force patients to re mortgage their homes, give up pensions and sell cars to fund their own treatment
Source
Education in life skills missing
Two years ago I was driving home from work when I swerved to avoid a low-flying pigeon, veered into a hedge and punctured a tyre. Having pulled over, I jumped out and opened the boot with purpose, all the time trying to ignore the fact that I hadn't a clue how to change a car tyre. There I stood, jack pointlessly in hand, sporting a half-ironed shirt, poorly tied tie and shaving rash. To cap things off, a burly man in a four-wheel drive drove past and shook his head. My manliness wasn't just dented; it was battered with a sledgehammer.
I had no alternative but to call Dad, who came out and rescued me. I was a 24-year-old male damsel in distress. "You're useless," said Dad as he effortlessly manoeuvred my spare tyre into place, and I had to agree.
The experience got me thinking. I realised that it wasn't only practical, traditionally manly things like how to change a tyre (or tie a tie properly, iron my shirt and shave like a pro) that I didn't know how to do. I was clueless about pretty much every skill I perceived to be key to coming of age as a modern man. Sophisticated stuff, such as how to hold a baby, give a speech, speed-date successfully, end a relationship without being a git, or grapple with the idea of regular visits to the sexually-transmitted-diseases clinic.
While girls share magazines with dog-eared problem pages, men are offered the choice of perusing breasts or salivating over gadgetry even NASA doesn't need. Don't get me wrong, I love girls and gadgets, but such magazines don't show you how to put up shelves, let alone help you through a divorce. There's no manual, no instruction leaflet to modern manhood. I wasn't even sure what being a 21st-century man meant. So I decided to make my own manual, in the form of a website called 21st Century Boy.
But before I could start, I needed to find out what state 21st-century man was in. So I questioned my male friends and sent out emails asking people to send me lists of things they'd felt expected to know how to do, but had never been taught.
Times have changed a lot since my dad's generation was in its prime - but quite how much was something I'd never really considered. Dad's role was charted out for him: "Be the main breadwinner and leave the wife to look after the kids. Be strong and silent, with biceps the size of your girlfriend's beehive." Clear-cut. Simple. Then things got confusing. Men started growing their hair long and singing about flowers and San Francisco. Then we had "new men" reasserting their masculinity with phallic-shaped car-phones; ladettes chasing lads; and metrosexuals who moisturised more than their missus. Forty years on from my dad's youth, manhood is more confusing than ever. Despite his dismay at my tyre-changing ineptitude, my dad acknowledged that life was a maze for my generation.
My research began to highlight just some of the advanced life skills that today's young man is expected, but frequently ill-equipped, to navigate. A friend of mine trying to impress a new girl, for example, was doing his best to be neither patronising nor sexist by taking his date to see the horror film Hostel - and was surprised when it failed to work as an aphrodisiac.
Then there was the emailer keen to learn some massage skills for the bedroom, but clueless as to where or how to start. A university friend asked my mum how to fry an egg.
Along the way I discovered we're also meant to know how to hold our baby nephews when our sisters nip to the loo; be our mothers' iTunes, eBay and email advisers; sort out our dads' diets and training regimes because we're scared that if we don't, his ticker won't tick for much longer; be agony uncles to our female friends when their boyfriends dump them; book a restaurant but split the bill whenever we take our girlfriends out, not to mention cook them a gourmet meal every Saturday night; and last but not least, pop into the pub and down a pint in less than 30 seconds.
To help my fellow man via my website, I then had to get the inside track on how to do all this stuff. So I asked all the men in my family to share their old-fashioned man skills, I talked to my mum for the first time about girlfriends, talked to ex-girlfriends about how I could have been a better boyfriend, Googled late into the night and braved a clinic to find out what a sexual health check-up involved.
My uncle told me that shaving with cold water cured razor rash. After studying tie fan sites - yes, tie fan sites - I mastered the vicious "V" of the perfectly tied Windsor knot. I endured speed-dating, swiftly followed by internet dating, swiftly followed by a mini-breakdown after I went on a date with a woman old enough to be my mum.
My brother-in-law taught me that the secret of sturdy shelves is to use the right Rawlplugs.
I've succeeded in making testicular cancer a non-taboo topic, and now know how to control aggression in a relationship (tell your girlfriend when she's hurt you rather than bottling it up), as well as mastering mundane tasks such as ironing a shirt in a hurry (start while it's damp and hang it up while still warm) and cleaning a bathroom properly (it's all about the right tools). Along the way I learnt that, while it's not easy dealing with the things you don't necessarily want to deal with, you become more of a man by doing so.
And I'm pleased to say others have followed in my wake. The response to my two-month-old website has been brilliant. It has more than 70 tried-and-tested life skill tips posted so far. The "how to check for testicular cancer" video has resulted in at least two men finding a lump, and the forum has answered delicate questions on penis size and chat-up lines.
When I started this journey I set out to prove to myself that I could get to grips with a world that was passing me by. I took control of my life and I hope my website will encourage other young men to do the same - or at least change a tyre or two. www.21st-century-boy.co.uk
Source
Noted British weatherman dismisses global warming
John Kettley is one of the UK's iconic weathermen - he has even featured in a UK pop song which reached number 21 in the UK Singles Chart. Kettley used to work for the Met Office, but he is now famous as BBC Radio 5 Live's "intrepid weatherman", appearing mainly on `Breakfast' between 6 and 9 am. He is also an intrepid Yorkshireman, having been born in Todmorden in West Yorkshire, and, like all Yorkshiremen, he likes to tell it as it is, which is precisely what he has done today with respect to Britain's lousy summer weather [`Awful August has delayed this year's harvest but global warming is not to blame', Daily Mail, August 24]:
"Atrocious weather has seriously delayed the harvest this year ... But this is not a symptom of so-called `global warming'."
And: "These conditions are not unique and are more like the poor August weather Britain saw during the Twenties and Sixties. It is more likely a stark reminder that the warming trend we recorded in the last part of the 20th Century has now stalled."
Finally: "We are not suddenly about to be catapulted towards a Mediterranean climate [idiotic BBC 2 gardening programmes, please note]. We are surrounded by water, with the vast Atlantic Ocean to our west, while the jet stream and gulf stream will forever influence our daily weather and long-term climate."
Common sense at last. Thank goodness for down-to-earth forecasters like John. And thank goodness, too, for the parts of the BBC beyond BBC 1/2 and Radio 4. Like a Yorkshireman, these bits of the Beeb tend to tell it as it is, not as the bien pensant would have it be.
There is thus no cognitive dissonance [see: `Cognitive Dissonance' (August 19) and `More On Cognitive Dissonance' (August 20)] for John Kettley. This summer's dreadful weather, cold and wet, cannot be conveniently forced into the `global warming' cognition simply to ease the dissonance of our more PC media. It's time to call a spade a spade - or even a bloody shovel. It's time to call cooling - er - cooling.
And today? More chill rain in the morning.... It's just like my soggy visits to Torquay as a child. This scene is perfectly recaptured by Eleanor Mills [`The wind, the rain, the child-hating waiters...', The Sunday Times, August 24], as she describes her family's `summer' holiday this year in Dorset and on the British Riviera: "Last week I came back from my two-week summer holiday spent under growling grey skies, sheltering behind a windbreak, where my garment of choice wasn't my new swimming costume but a trusty North Face waterproof. Sunglasses? Pah. A sundress? Are you joking? I wore my thermals." Her five-year old neatly renamed Dorset, `Pour-set'.
Source
A binge-drinking mother has been jailed after falsely accusing an innocent taxi driver of raping her. Joanne Rye, who kept up the lie for 20 months, was told by a judge her behaviour was despicable and was handed an eight-month prison sentence. [The bitch should have got what he would have got]
The mother-of-one caused great shame and disgrace to devout Muslim Sherekhan Kali and his family after claiming that he dragged her down an alleyway and assaulted her. Maidstone Crown Court heard Rye, then 18, was known as a troublemaker and had been banned from using the All Night Car Hire in Dartford, Kent where Mr Kali worked. The court also heard the week before she made the rape allegation, she had used racially insulting language to Mr Kali.
Valeria Swift, prosecuting, said Rye was very drunk and was taken to hospital claiming she had suffered an asthma attack on the night of October 21, 2006. Ms Rye became aggressive and police were called and it was then she made the rape claim, giving a detailed account of the attack. She claimed she was waiting for taxi in Dartford when she was grabbed and a pellet gun was fired into her kneecap. She said her attacker then dragged her into an alley and raped her. But she said there would not be any DNA because he had used a condom. She also told how she had recognised Mr Kali because he had taken her in his taxi a week before.
The part-time cabbie was arrested at his home and taken to the police station where intimate samples, DNA and fingerprints were taken. His boss Nicholas Morris confirmed that Ms Rye had been banned from using the firm's cabs because of racist abuse to drivers. Miss Swift revealed a check of the satellite navigation system in Mr Kali's cab showed he had been nowhere near the area where Rye said she was attacked. CCTV footage of her drunken behaviour on the night she said she had been raped also proved it could not have happened in the way described. The prosecutor said the only motivation for the false allegation was the incident a week earlier when the fare was disputed.
Rye continued to maintain she had been raped up to the first day of her trial in June, accused of perverting the course of justice. Miss Swift said of Mr Kali: 'This case has had a very profound effect on him indeed.' Sarah Morris, defending, said Rye, now 20, would go out and get drunk, smoke cannabis and behave in an anti-social manner. But she had since settled down with a boyfriend and had a child, now aged five months. 'The prospect of a custodial sentence is frightening for her,' said Miss Morris. 'She has put herself in the position where her child will be without the mother. 'Of course, many people would say well, tough, that is your doing. You have brought this on yourself and must face the consequences. 'What she did was thoroughly reprehensible. But it has not been every case where a woman who has cried rape has gone into custody.'
Miss Morris said Rye, who worked in catering for the elderly, knew her boyfriend was not equipped to deal with a young baby. Her mother would have to give up her job to care for the child. But jailing Rye for a 'modest' eight months, Judge Crawford Lindsay, QC, said he had no doubt the matter was so serious there had to be an immediate prison sentence. 'I consider this to be a despicable offence,' he said. 'You made an allegation that this entirely innocent taxi driver had raped you. 'It was fully investigated with the consequences that police time and doctors' time was wasted in the investigation.'
It was not until the first day of her trial in June this year that she 'faced the inevitable' and owned up. 'This is a case where the victim is a strict Muslim, who regularly attends to his beliefs and prays regularly,' said Judge Lindsay. 'At the police station, intimate samples were taken. Having another female touch a part of his body is forbidden. It would bring shame on his family. As a consequence, he left this country for a period.' When he returned to work, Mr Kali was frightened of having women in his cab and would go home. 'So we have a man of blameless character who is subjected to your dishonesty and trumped up allegation,' said the judge.
'It is clear when you are in drink, you are loud-mouthed. You have a young child but that is a matter which does not in my judgment prevent a penalty for an allegation that is easily made and had a serious effect on the victim. 'He suffered the suggestion there is no smoke without fire.'
Source
Senior British doctor accuses Government of destroying NHS
One of Britain's most senior doctors has criticised the Government for leading the NHS into "catastrophic meltdown". Professor Paul Goddard, a former president of the Royal Society of Medicine, said Labour's obsession with bureaucracy and political correctness had resulted in dire care for patients. The radiology specialist also hit out at the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, NICE, claiming the organisation put finances first.
Prof Goddard, 58, said: "If they think a patient will gain an extra year of life, but it will cost more than $40,000 they think it is not cost-effective. Yet if the patient wants to pay for it themselves they are denied NHS treatment. It's an outrage."
The senior doctor, who has quit the NHS, claimed the Government had lost sight of the basic principles of a national health service. "The NHS was built on the foundation of caring for the community. It was designed to help those who needed help, care for those who needed care and treat those who needed treatment. "Those basic principles have been lost as the Government takes us down a dangerous path that can only be a catastrophic meltdown of the system."
But a spokesman for the NHS said record levels of investment had led to dramatic improvements in areas like waiting times. "Ten years ago waits of 18 months were not uncommon, but by the end of this year no-one should wait longer than 18 weeks. None of this would have been possible without the hard work and dedication of everyone working into he NHS."
It comes after a group of 26 professors wrote to a Sunday newspaper claiming NICE had "poorly" assessed a decision to deny patients four kidney cancer drugs. Earlier this month Nice issued guidance rejecting the drugs Sutent, Avastin, Nexavar and Torisel even though trials found the treatments could prolong life in kidney cancer patients by up to two years. Nice said the drugs were too expensive and would mean the health service was less able to afford more cost-effective drugs for other illnesses.
But the professors, who include directors of oncology at Britain's two biggest cancer hospitals, said the latest guidance would force patients to re mortgage their homes, give up pensions and sell cars to fund their own treatment
Source
Education in life skills missing
Two years ago I was driving home from work when I swerved to avoid a low-flying pigeon, veered into a hedge and punctured a tyre. Having pulled over, I jumped out and opened the boot with purpose, all the time trying to ignore the fact that I hadn't a clue how to change a car tyre. There I stood, jack pointlessly in hand, sporting a half-ironed shirt, poorly tied tie and shaving rash. To cap things off, a burly man in a four-wheel drive drove past and shook his head. My manliness wasn't just dented; it was battered with a sledgehammer.
I had no alternative but to call Dad, who came out and rescued me. I was a 24-year-old male damsel in distress. "You're useless," said Dad as he effortlessly manoeuvred my spare tyre into place, and I had to agree.
The experience got me thinking. I realised that it wasn't only practical, traditionally manly things like how to change a tyre (or tie a tie properly, iron my shirt and shave like a pro) that I didn't know how to do. I was clueless about pretty much every skill I perceived to be key to coming of age as a modern man. Sophisticated stuff, such as how to hold a baby, give a speech, speed-date successfully, end a relationship without being a git, or grapple with the idea of regular visits to the sexually-transmitted-diseases clinic.
While girls share magazines with dog-eared problem pages, men are offered the choice of perusing breasts or salivating over gadgetry even NASA doesn't need. Don't get me wrong, I love girls and gadgets, but such magazines don't show you how to put up shelves, let alone help you through a divorce. There's no manual, no instruction leaflet to modern manhood. I wasn't even sure what being a 21st-century man meant. So I decided to make my own manual, in the form of a website called 21st Century Boy.
But before I could start, I needed to find out what state 21st-century man was in. So I questioned my male friends and sent out emails asking people to send me lists of things they'd felt expected to know how to do, but had never been taught.
Times have changed a lot since my dad's generation was in its prime - but quite how much was something I'd never really considered. Dad's role was charted out for him: "Be the main breadwinner and leave the wife to look after the kids. Be strong and silent, with biceps the size of your girlfriend's beehive." Clear-cut. Simple. Then things got confusing. Men started growing their hair long and singing about flowers and San Francisco. Then we had "new men" reasserting their masculinity with phallic-shaped car-phones; ladettes chasing lads; and metrosexuals who moisturised more than their missus. Forty years on from my dad's youth, manhood is more confusing than ever. Despite his dismay at my tyre-changing ineptitude, my dad acknowledged that life was a maze for my generation.
My research began to highlight just some of the advanced life skills that today's young man is expected, but frequently ill-equipped, to navigate. A friend of mine trying to impress a new girl, for example, was doing his best to be neither patronising nor sexist by taking his date to see the horror film Hostel - and was surprised when it failed to work as an aphrodisiac.
Then there was the emailer keen to learn some massage skills for the bedroom, but clueless as to where or how to start. A university friend asked my mum how to fry an egg.
Along the way I discovered we're also meant to know how to hold our baby nephews when our sisters nip to the loo; be our mothers' iTunes, eBay and email advisers; sort out our dads' diets and training regimes because we're scared that if we don't, his ticker won't tick for much longer; be agony uncles to our female friends when their boyfriends dump them; book a restaurant but split the bill whenever we take our girlfriends out, not to mention cook them a gourmet meal every Saturday night; and last but not least, pop into the pub and down a pint in less than 30 seconds.
To help my fellow man via my website, I then had to get the inside track on how to do all this stuff. So I asked all the men in my family to share their old-fashioned man skills, I talked to my mum for the first time about girlfriends, talked to ex-girlfriends about how I could have been a better boyfriend, Googled late into the night and braved a clinic to find out what a sexual health check-up involved.
My uncle told me that shaving with cold water cured razor rash. After studying tie fan sites - yes, tie fan sites - I mastered the vicious "V" of the perfectly tied Windsor knot. I endured speed-dating, swiftly followed by internet dating, swiftly followed by a mini-breakdown after I went on a date with a woman old enough to be my mum.
My brother-in-law taught me that the secret of sturdy shelves is to use the right Rawlplugs.
I've succeeded in making testicular cancer a non-taboo topic, and now know how to control aggression in a relationship (tell your girlfriend when she's hurt you rather than bottling it up), as well as mastering mundane tasks such as ironing a shirt in a hurry (start while it's damp and hang it up while still warm) and cleaning a bathroom properly (it's all about the right tools). Along the way I learnt that, while it's not easy dealing with the things you don't necessarily want to deal with, you become more of a man by doing so.
And I'm pleased to say others have followed in my wake. The response to my two-month-old website has been brilliant. It has more than 70 tried-and-tested life skill tips posted so far. The "how to check for testicular cancer" video has resulted in at least two men finding a lump, and the forum has answered delicate questions on penis size and chat-up lines.
When I started this journey I set out to prove to myself that I could get to grips with a world that was passing me by. I took control of my life and I hope my website will encourage other young men to do the same - or at least change a tyre or two. www.21st-century-boy.co.uk
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Noted British weatherman dismisses global warming
John Kettley is one of the UK's iconic weathermen - he has even featured in a UK pop song which reached number 21 in the UK Singles Chart. Kettley used to work for the Met Office, but he is now famous as BBC Radio 5 Live's "intrepid weatherman", appearing mainly on `Breakfast' between 6 and 9 am. He is also an intrepid Yorkshireman, having been born in Todmorden in West Yorkshire, and, like all Yorkshiremen, he likes to tell it as it is, which is precisely what he has done today with respect to Britain's lousy summer weather [`Awful August has delayed this year's harvest but global warming is not to blame', Daily Mail, August 24]:
"Atrocious weather has seriously delayed the harvest this year ... But this is not a symptom of so-called `global warming'."
And: "These conditions are not unique and are more like the poor August weather Britain saw during the Twenties and Sixties. It is more likely a stark reminder that the warming trend we recorded in the last part of the 20th Century has now stalled."
Finally: "We are not suddenly about to be catapulted towards a Mediterranean climate [idiotic BBC 2 gardening programmes, please note]. We are surrounded by water, with the vast Atlantic Ocean to our west, while the jet stream and gulf stream will forever influence our daily weather and long-term climate."
Common sense at last. Thank goodness for down-to-earth forecasters like John. And thank goodness, too, for the parts of the BBC beyond BBC 1/2 and Radio 4. Like a Yorkshireman, these bits of the Beeb tend to tell it as it is, not as the bien pensant would have it be.
There is thus no cognitive dissonance [see: `Cognitive Dissonance' (August 19) and `More On Cognitive Dissonance' (August 20)] for John Kettley. This summer's dreadful weather, cold and wet, cannot be conveniently forced into the `global warming' cognition simply to ease the dissonance of our more PC media. It's time to call a spade a spade - or even a bloody shovel. It's time to call cooling - er - cooling.
And today? More chill rain in the morning.... It's just like my soggy visits to Torquay as a child. This scene is perfectly recaptured by Eleanor Mills [`The wind, the rain, the child-hating waiters...', The Sunday Times, August 24], as she describes her family's `summer' holiday this year in Dorset and on the British Riviera: "Last week I came back from my two-week summer holiday spent under growling grey skies, sheltering behind a windbreak, where my garment of choice wasn't my new swimming costume but a trusty North Face waterproof. Sunglasses? Pah. A sundress? Are you joking? I wore my thermals." Her five-year old neatly renamed Dorset, `Pour-set'.
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Wednesday, August 27, 2008
British cancer patients kept in dark about `too expensive' drugs
Doctors are deciding against telling cancer patients about expensive new treatments to avoid causing distress when they find out that the NHS is unwilling to pay for them. A quarter of specialists questioned in a survey admitted to hiding the facts about new drugs for bone marrow cancer that may be difficult to obtain on the NHS. According to the poll, nearly all the doctors who chose not to mention such expensive drugs said that they did so because it might "distress, upset or confuse" their patients.
Three quarters said that cost issues were a consideration, 40 per cent cited "lack of evidence" and 29 per cent argued that there was "no point" discussing treatments that their patients were unlikely to receive.
It is believed that thousands of patients with various types of cancer could gain extra months or years of life from the latest, most effective drugs. In many cases they are being denied the treatments on the NHS because of a lack of approval by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which assesses the cost-effectiveness of new medicines in England and Wales.
The poll, by the charity Myeloma UK, comes after patients with advanced kidney cancer were denied four treatments on the NHS under guidelines issued by NICE. These and other new drugs for cancers of the lung, pancreas, colon and breast, and for multiple myeloma, are available widely throughout Western Europe, and in some cases in Scotland, but campaigners say that patients in England are being "left to die" if they cannot persuade their local trusts to fund treatment.
A total of 103 myeloma specialists in England, Wales and Scotland took part in the survey, with a quarter admitting that they avoided telling patients about licensed drugs that were still awaiting approval by NICE, which local health authorities were reluctant to pay for. Myeloma affects about 3,800 people each year in Britain and, of these, 2,600 are likely to die from it. NICE is reviewing treatments for the disease, including the drug Revlimid, which in clinical trials was found to be able to extend the life of some patients by up to three years.
The drug obtained its UK licence in June last year and is available across Europe, but NICE is not expected to make a final decision on whether it should receive NHS funding in England and Wales until early next year. The drug, which costs $72,000 for one year of treatment, has been rejected as not cost-effective by the Scottish Medicines Consortium, NICE's counterpart north of the Border.
NHS trusts have a legal obligation to provide treatments that are approved by NICE. In the absence of such approval, if a doctor thinks someone would benefit from a new medication, the patient can appeal to a committee at the local trust. Those who are refused must settle for less effective treatments or pay for the drugs.
In a statement, the Department of Health said that it had "issued guidance to the NHS which makes it clear that funding for a treatment should not be withheld simply because NICE guidance does not exist".
Source
Treatment blocked despite years of pain: Case study
Colin Ross, 55, of Horsham, West Sussex, found that he had multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood cells, in May 2004, and has been told that unless he is given the drug Revlimid he will not survive beyond the autumn. Mr Ross, a former engineer in the oil and gas industry, has suffered years of pain and disability because of the disease, which has been slowly eating away at his vertebrae and other bones, making them brittle.
Despite the exhortations of doctors treating him at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, Britain's leading cancer hospital, Mr Ross's local NHS primary care trust in West Sussex has refused repeatedly to fund the treatment, even though patients in East Sussex and elsewhere have access to the drug on the NHS. "I've broken bones several times, feeling very weak and tired all the time. It's got to the point where my bone structure can't support my own weight, it takes ten minutes just to get out of bed and I can't stand unsupported in front of the mirror to clean my teeth," he told The Times yesterday. "I was told from the start that it was incurable, that treatment could only hold it at bay, but it now seems that Revlimid is my last resort."
Although the drug is readily available to patients across Europe and in the United States, it has not yet been granted approval for use throughout the NHS in England and so is being provided only by some NHS trusts in "exceptional circumstances".
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Another "artistic" attempt to offend decent people
Childish attention-seeking behaviour
London Olympic organisers are at the centre of an extraordinary row after an image of Myra Hindley, the Moors Murderer, was included in a montage of images of British achievements designed to promote the upcoming Games.
The clip, a portrait of Hindley made out of children's hand prints by the artist Marcus Harvey, was screened as the Prime Minister and Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, welcomed British medal winners at a party to celebrate the capital taking over from Beijing as the official Olympic host city. It was immediately condemned by the Mayor and Gordon Brown.
While the two men each delivered a short speech to around 500 guests, a video screen behind them showed a series of quintessentially British images. Party-goers at the event at London House, a trendy outdoor temporary nightclub in down town Beijing used during the Games by athletes and officials to unwind, were stunned when the portrait of Hindley appeared on the screen.
A spokesman for Mr Johnson said that the montage had been compiled by Visit London, an agency responsible for attracting tourists to the capital which had been commissioned by the Mayor's office to carry out the work, and was meant as a showcase of all things British. He added: "The Mayor knew nothing about this. He is appalled."
Visit London said that the portrait was among a number of images of British art used in the short promotional film, which had been used before and received no complaints. A spokesman added that the inclusion of the controversial work showed that there was no "censorship" in the UK but promised to withdraw it immediately. "This is a general three minute video of London in which an artwork by Marcus Harvey at the Tate very fleetingly appears," said the spokesman. "The video is not for general public use and has been used many times over the last few years to show to the tourism trade. There has never been a complaint made about the video up until this point. However, if any offence has been caused, we will withdraw it from use with immediate effect."
The series of clips ran through the day at London House, and the image is said to have appeared on the screen as Mr Brown was making his speech, to the fury of watching Downing Street aides.
Downing Street said the image was "in extremely poor taste" and should not have been used to promote London. A No 10 source added: "It is a total disgrace that this proud night for Britain has been sullied by this grotesque prank. "Whoever was responsible must be found and fired immediately."
Many officials and athletes' relatives had gathered at London House from late afternoon to watch the closing ceremony on the large screens, but apparently did not notice the image of Hindley in the series of clips, which were allowed to run into the evening as they were joined by those who had participated in the ceremony. As well as gold medal winners including Chris Hoy, the party was attended by previous British Olympic athletes such as Jonathan Edwards, the triple jumper, along with David Beckham, the former England football captain, and the singer Leona Lewis, who had both featured in the Olympic closing ceremony. Guests were treated to a barbecue and free champagne bar, with dancing until late into the night.
Myra Hindley died of cancer in prison in 2002, while Ian Brady, her partner in the deaths of at least four children, remains in jail.
The portrait of Hindley caused uproar when it was first shown to the public at the Sensation exhibition, a showcase of Young British Artists held at the Royal Academy of Art between September and December in 1997. The 11ft by 9ft painting of the Moors Murderer, based on her infamous police mugshot, was particularly chilling because the artist, Marcus Harvey, created it using hundreds of stencil outlines of children's hands.
Winnie Johnson, the mother of one of Hindley's victims, asked for the 1995 portrait to be excluded from the exhibition to protect her feelings. She picketed the first day of the show along with supporters to protest against the work, which was part of a collection owned by Charles Saatchi. Even Hindley sent a letter from jail suggesting her portrait be removed from the exhibition because it had "a sole disregard not only for the emotional pain and trauma that would inevitably be experienced by the families of the Moors victims but also the families of any child victim." But despite the protests the painting remained in place, prompting more drastic action. Windows at Burlington House, the Academy's home, were smashed and two demonstrators hurled ink and eggs at it
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British Submission
Foot baths for Muslim students at Michigan universities? Muslim cabbies in the Twin Cities who refuse to carry seeing-eye dogs? The FBI and other government agencies taking sensitivity training from radical Muslim organizations? You think we’ve lost the plot over here? Take a look at British submission to Islamofascist demands and threats, as that once great nation succumbs to creeping dhimmitude.
It has reached the point that in mid-April, the British Foreign Office instructed the Royal Navy not to return pirates to jurisdictions sporting sharia law (such as Somalia) for fear that their human rights will be violated. They have even been discouraged from capturing pirates, because the freebooters might ask to be granted asylum in Britain, a request with which the UK might have to comply under international and European Union human rights law.
This for a Navy that almost singlehandedly defeated piracy in the early 19th century, and a nation that retained the death penalty for this scourge of the high seas until the late 20th century. Welcome to Britain today.
Another recent outrage involves special handling of a traffic violation. Seems that a Muslim driver was stopped by police while speeding between two homes in the north of England. When he appeared in court, he explained his high speed – over twice the speed limit – was necessary to accommodate his two wives. His explanation was accepted, and he was allowed to keep his license.
That comes fast – very fast – on the heels of a decision by the British government to grant full spousal benefits to multiple wives. It won’t affect more than an estimated 1,000 individuals. And it mercifully won’t affect the indigenous Christian, Hindu or Jewish population, as traditional bigamy laws apply. Britons may rest easy, as it will only cover multiple wives married in a jurisdiction that practices Sharia law, such as Pakistan or Saudi Arabia.
These are not isolated instances; there are a myriad more: Swimming periods at pools restricted to Muslims only; the establishment of a BBC Arabic language station staffed by Arab broadcasters and managers with track records of being anti-American, anti-Israel and anti-Western; the refusal of female Muslim medical students to wash their arms as that practice might reveal the forbidden flesh between wrist and elbow; an attempt by a national union of university lecturers to call for a boycott of Israeli academics; and, a local Council ban on pig-themed toys, porcelain figures and calendars on workers’ desks because it might offend Muslims.
No comment from the Home Office or No. 10 Downing Street. No comment from the government, because it has been their policy to appease Britain’s large Muslim population in response to menacing behavior up to and including the bomb outrages of July 7, 2005.
It’s no coincidence that Muslims constitute a substantial portion of the Labour Party’s electoral support in London and in much of its heartland in northern England. In the expected close election for Parliament that will be held by mid-2010, an increasing Muslim population may be the difference between victory and defeat for the Labourites.
But Labour’s bien pensant hardly needs convincing. Like most on the left today, they fancy themselves champions of the underdog and the oppressed, and sympathy for Islam, and Arab and Muslim causes fits neatly into their intellectual program. Along with America and Israel-bashing, it goes to the very heart of how liberals view themselves and, more important, how they wish to be viewed by others. It supplies them with the appearance of a self-abnegation that is supposed to relieve their Western, middle-class guilt with a cleansing humility but is nothing but moral exhibitionism; and, as always, involves other people’s money, other people’s freedom, and other people’s comfort – never or very rarely their own.
A classic of political correctness run amok, wonderful as a burlesque if it weren’t slowly undermining Britain’s way of life and its will to oppose extreme Islamism.
Worse is that acceding to this nonsense gives Islamofascists confidence that they are on the winning side of history. That if they just shout a little louder and push a little harder, they may expect more of the same that becomes increasingly normative until it convinces the longer-settled among the UK’s population that they have no power to stop, let alone reverse, the process.
One might have become inured to the gutless behavior of France or Italy, but many in the U.S. are still under the impression that, like other countries in the Anglosphere, the British remain clear-eyed, realistic and most importantly resolute about the threats with which the West is confronted. But they aren’t; and while these cultural changes are in the realm of the comical right now, they are beginning to affect British public policy, domestic as well as foreign.
Why is this important to us? Because the ZaNuLabour Party’s tendency to pacifism and appeasement, and its devotion to political correctness, victim ideology, cultural relativism and liberal guilt is shared by our own Democrats. Look for more of it in Britain, and don’t be surprised when it arrives full force here in America.
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Blaming affluence for crime? That's a bit rich
David Lammy's `explanation' for the teenage stabbings in London is a pointed attack on aspiration and prosperity.
The stabbing of Nilanthan Murddi in Croydon last weekend brought the number of teenagers who have met a violent death in London this year to 23. This spate of attacks seems to bring out the pop sociologist in MPs and newspaper columnists. Rather than interpreting such grim incidents as rare, isolated crimes, there's a tendency to imagine an all-encompassing social influence on which to hang a catch-all explanation.
David Lammy, described by some as the nearest British equivalent to Barack Obama, and by everyone else as a New Labour hack, has put forward his own theory - and it's a pretty trite one. Writing in the current issue of British political weekly the New Statesman, Lammy, the parliamentary under-secretary for innovation, universities and skills, believes he has identified the root `causes' of teen-on-teen male violence: the influence of consumerism and affluence, and the lack of identifiable `role models' for young men.
Now, whenever I hear the phrase `lack of role models', I'm tempted to reach for an illegal firearm myself. It's one of those banal, daytime TV platitudes that suggests young people are simply passive automatons waiting for the correct `on-message' individual to point them in the right direction. In education circles, this sort of thinking is everywhere. There's a genuine belief that, say, if black boys were taught by black, male teachers (the much-fabled `role models'), they would make better progress at school. Lammy expands on this simplistic and wrong-headed notion to suggest that if only there were more male teachers in primary schools, then boys would grow up to `identify' with more `acceptable' ideas of masculinity. And apparently, this would lead to less anti-social behaviour on the streets of London. Fantastic!
But teenage boys aren't likely to behave or perform better if their teacher wears trousers or has the same skin colour. Teenagers of all stripes will seek to be oppositional to any teacher in order to undermine them and attempt to exert control in the classroom. This is partly because teenagers crave autonomy and independence and will thus instinctively see how far they can push against `the line'. What a teacher looks like isn't remotely a determining factor on pupil behaviour or academic performance.
Of course, it's essential that adults do play a role in socialising teenagers into adulthood. But that process isn't based on ticking gender or ethnic group boxes, but on the ideas and knowledge of adults and how they articulate them. If there's an identifiable problem today, it is that society lacks a confident set of ideas and a recognisable adult framework through which teenagers can be socialised. Lammy is on to something when he says some teens are prone to outbursts of emotionalism and infantilism today, but he is less forthcoming in identifying his own political party's role in contributing to the current culture of blubbering emotionalism as well as infantilising teenagers.
Incredibly, even though she was UK prime minister before many of today's teenagers were born, Lammy insists that Margaret Thatcher is somehow to blame for anti-social behaviour. What he implies is that Thatcher's supposed blueprint for a 'consumer society' has turned today's generation into selfish, amoral monsters. Traditionally, the left always cited grinding poverty as a contributing influence on anti-social behaviour; now the likes of Lammy are insisting that affluence and materialism are leading youngsters astray.
Lammy quotes an allegedly popular saying amongst today's youth - `get rich or die trying' (itself the title of the debut album of American rapper 50 Cent) as proof that they are morally bankrupt. But since when was it advisable to take youthful bravado at face value? And is simply saying such a thing really the same as being an underworld crime lord? It is conveniently forgotten how most young rap fans see through the absurdity of hip-hop's pantomime excesses. At a further education college in Hackney where I once taught, the `rapper' most of the kids were obsessed with wasn't Tupac Shakur, but Fur Q - Chris Morris' spoof gangsta rapper in satirical TV comedy The Day Today.
Rather disgracefully, it seems Lammy is using the bogus cover of bling-bling rap to demonise consumption and the everyday, normal desire for prosperity. In this way, Lammy is following psychologist Oliver James' cranky idea that material aspiration is a pathological problem in need of therapeutic correction. And to this end, Lammy is proposing tighter regulation on the types of advertisements, films and videos that young people might watch and be influenced by. He also implies that the state should be barging its way even further into the family home and supervising how parents raise their children.
To pathologise healthy consumption is one thing, but Lammy wants to go one step further and criminalise it as well. His crass implication is that affluent societies such as Britain, and our attendant `culture of consumerism', lead inexorably to violent attacks and even murder by our young. Thus, endless consumption somehow creates selfish and feckless individuals who don't appreciate the value of human life. This is tantamount to blackmailing poorer sections in society to keep their heads down and `make do' with hardship, lest material aspiration sends their errant offspring on a random killing spree.
Sociologists such as Stanley Cohen also made the connections between the cultural influence of `the American dream' and how some people in US society achieved that goal through organised crime. But for Cohen and others, that was not a justification for slamming material aspiration, but rather showed how `conventional' routes to success are closed off to certain sections in society.
Lammy's argument also doesn't add up on closer inspection of the murders involving teenagers in London. On the whole, the incidents reported did not feature street robberies that have gone horrifically wrong. More often than not, they involved petty arguments amongst groups of youths that spilled over into fights and fatal stabbings. As dreadful and shocking as these incidents are, street fights and casual violence amongst young people are hardly a new phenomenon. As Mick Hume has argued, the amplification of street crime into a generalised threat means that more teenagers are more likely to carry knives than before - and with sometimes tragic consequences (see Knife crime panic reaches crisis point).
The logic of Lammy's anti-consumption, anti-prosperity argument doesn't add up in another way, too: if rich societies automatically raise feckless and amoral thugs, then how come the number of murdered teenagers is far higher in poorer countries like Brazil or Mexico? Surely the lack of affluence and consumption in those country's shanty towns should mean they are harmonious and trouble-free places, at least in Lammy's worldview? The fact that the teen murder rate in those areas runs into the thousands, rather than double figures, suggests that it is still miserable poverty that has a destructive impact on young people's lives. This doesn't simply translate as poverty forcing people to rob others; but it shows how poverty fuels listless boredom as well as generating a fatalistic and even nihilistic outlook on life in general.
Far from materialism leading to a breakdown in morals, as Lammy disingenuously argues, material prosperity enables people to develop morally as well as intellectually. It provides the very basis through which individuals can begin to live like humans and not act like animals. Instead, Lammy attempts to turn reality on its head and blackmails the poor into accepting their miserable lot in the process. To put this forward as a proposal for combating random and rare violent crime, well, Lammy's a bit rich for even trying.
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Against all booze bans
There have always been different social rules for drinking in public: sometimes it's okay, at other times it is definitely not. In some places, sipping beer in the street is considered acceptable and sociable; in other places, it marks you out as a disrespectful low-life.
Over the past few years, though, cracking open a can in the street became not just rude, but illegal. For the first time in Britain, police gained powers to confiscate your bottle of lager or wine, or to ask you to tip it down the drain, and to arrest you if you refused to comply. The state became the arbiter on a question of social etiquette that had previously been decided by individuals and communities themselves.
The new London mayor Boris Johnson's ban on Tube drinking is an infamous case, but the illiberal regulation of public drinking now stretches the world over. Booze bans have cast a shadow over both the Fourth of July celebrations on San Diego beach and the Christmas celebrations on Australia's Bondi beach - these traditionally jolly festive occasions now continue only under the cloud of prohibition.
The land of Hogmanay has fared no better. Drink was banned from many Scottish town centres and beaches this summer, after the Scottish Executive pressured councils to pass booze-banning bylaws covering particular areas. These draconian laws are now pasted on lampposts throughout Scotland: one bans people from carrying around an empty drinks carton, while another prohibits carrying a drinks container `when it could be reasonably assumed they would want to drink it in a "designated public place"' (1).
Areas of towns and cities in the Czech Republic are designated no-drinking; New Zealand has gone so far as to ban driving through `no-drink zones' if you have booze in the boot of your car (police officers say they have the right to stop and search, though if you are caught red-handed you have the option of tipping it down the drain, which is very generous of them) (2).
It was in opposition to this trend that the Manifesto Club - the organisation I head - launched the Campaign Against the Booze Bans. We set up a campaign Facebook group, where more than a thousand people from all over the world have registered their objection to booze bans. In a week's time, on Bank Holiday Monday, we will launch a report on the rise of booze bans at our Provocation Picnic in Hyde Park, London.
The right to drink in public may not be considered a classic civil liberties issue, such as the right to free speech or the right to protest - but it is just as important now. In many ways, the regulation of public drinking is a litmus test for the state of public freedoms. With the erosion of the right to drink, we see how public space is being organised more around the whims of police officers, and less around the desires and morals of free citizens.
In the UK over the past few years, there has been a creeping growth of drinking-control legislation. Where communities once set the rules on when and where one could crack open a can, police officers and councillors now write those rules from scratch.
Booze bans first started in the late 1980s, when some councils - such as Coventry - passed bylaws against public drinking. But these laws were sporadically enforced, and police officers had no powers of arrest. In 1997, the Confiscation of Alcohol (Young Persons) Act gave police powers to confiscate alcohol and containers from under-18s. This law was extended from minors to adults in 2001: the Criminal Justice and Police Act introduced Designated Public Place Orders (DPPOs), which allowed officers to confiscate drink from adults, and gave powers of arrest if the person refused to surrender their can or bottle.
At first, DPPOs grew only gradually, but from 2004 they started to take off rapidly with a rush of applications from councils and police forces for the right to confiscate booze from local residents. There are now 613 Designated Public Place Orders in England and Wales, covering parks, stations and beaches the length and breadth of the country (3). Every new drinking control zone seems to create more, as councils emulate each other's regulations, and zones are extended bit by bit throughout towns and cities.
Meanwhile, government legislation has tightened. The 2003 Licensing Act allowed `sealed' as well as open alcohol containers to be confiscated; it also allowed for an emergency blanket ban on alcohol (police recently showed off this power when they threatened to shut down all pubs and off licenses in Torbay in July 2008, after the idea of a beach party was floated on Facebook) (4).
These new regulations don't reflect a switch in public morals, but a switch in the ideology of the state. The control of public drinking is really the result of officials' concerns about social order, their fear of uninhibited groups of people. They look at unregulated groups relaxing and drinking in public and imagine a threat to law, civilisation, and much else besides.
We start to see the return of a very nineteenth-century idea: that crime is the result of unruly and uninhibited crowds. Police have implicated public boozing in crimes ranging from murder to domestic violence to robbery. Inspector Colin Mowat from Aberdeenshire said that bans on public drinking could help stop `under-age drinking, drink-driving, domestic abuse and street disorder' (5); after the 2007 murder of Cheshire man Gary Newlove by a gang of drunk youths, the leading police officer called for a blanket ban on public drinking (6). The role of the police is exposed for all to see: not just to identify and prosecute for criminal offences, but also to control and manage groups of people.
Booze control laws are produced entirely from above, and as such they are erratically enforced. There are few guidelines for how the police should use their drinking-confiscation powers, so they tend to use them as they please. During the Merseyside Police's Operation Beach Safe, officers decided to confiscate booze at the beach entrance in June 2008. Richard Clarke, acting sergeant of Operation Beach Safe, welcomed visitors with the words `If you're coming to the beach to drink don't bother, go and drink in your gardens or somewhere else', and his officers posed for trophy photos with their confiscated cans of Fosters (7).
Police also take alcohol away from people they think of as troublesome types - younger people, football supporters, or alcoholics - and, unlike with an arrest for a crime, they have no obligation to justify their actions. If you contest an officer's request to tip your Carling down a drain, you are committing an offence and could be arrested and fined up to $1,000. There is no luxury of a defence lawyer.
One post on our Facebook wall discusses the uneven-handed way in which drinking controls are applied in Brighton: `Here. the booze ban, extends to basically the homeless. Community Support Officers [CSOs] do not take drink off you on the beach and ignore you basically if you look well-to-do. One homeless man I met the other day says he had his unopened can of cider in his pocket taken from him by CSOs because they "thought" he was "about to" or had "reason to believe" he would drink it in a public place. He was on his way to drink it at his hostel!' (8)
This shows how the police are playing fast and loose with these powers. At the Manifesto Club, we call for these drinking laws to be challenged and rolled back, and for police powers to be kept on a very tight leash. This is not so much a campaign for public drinking, as a campaign for the public to set the rules for acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. Basically, for Community Support Officers to butt out of communities.
If you are free on Bank Holiday in London, join us for a drink and picnic in the park. It may not always be the done thing to crack open a can in public, but it should never be illegal.
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The private sector could save British schools
I wouldn't want to frighten the horses this early in the day, or cause you to choke on your All-Bran, but I have to admit to always having had a sneaking regard for Lord Adonis, the education minister. This is partly based on my belief that he is not stupid, and is genuinely motivated to improve our schools system. Also, I have had surprisingly good reports of him from several headmasters at our leading public schools.
How my heart sank, therefore, when, in trying to divert attention from the fact that a large proportion of our youth leaves school without anything approaching a qualification in either maths or English, he came up with the traditional, and very unclever, PR line: that any criticism of the GCSE results was an insult to those students who had worked so hard to get "good grades". This mantra was designed some years ago - I first heard it when our would-be prime minister David Miliband was a schools minister - to stop people like me from being rude about these increasingly devalued qualifications. Sadly, we won't be stopped.
If a grade A at A-level these days is the same as a grade C 20 years ago, then heaven knows what a GCSE pass represents in terms of the old O-level. The ability to turn up and write your name without too many mistakes in it seems nearly enough in several subjects: this year's pass rate is an otherwise improbable 98.4 per cent.
I do not insult children who have just piled up GCSE passes, for they are the victims of the system. But it is important that they and their parents realise that having a clutch of A* results does not make the holder the next Einstein. And having a pile of less exalted passes means that, in the days when their parents were taking O levels, they probably wouldn't have passed any.
As I mentioned last week when writing about A-levels, the reasons for this - and for Lord Adonis's embarrassment - are clear. The pass rate is set so low because in many cases the teaching these children get, and the schools in which they attempt to learn, are awful. This is the Government's fault. It has devalued teaching systematically over the years with the result that only the most saintly and vocational of high-quality people now wish to enter it. Many that do find the experience of teaching in one of our comprehensive schools so demoralising that they soon clear off and do something else. Teachers are routinely assaulted and abused by pupils and by their parents.
Not only is there barely any discipline, there are not the means to enforce discipline. The children, meanwhile are left to the attentions of a series of supply teachers, with whom they can never form the relationship needed for successful learning, or to the products of our Marxist-inspired teacher training colleges. God help them, for no one else will.
When the whining starts about the "inequality" between private and state schools, it is not said often enough that it is hardly about money. It is about the quality of teachers in the private sector, many of whom have not been soiled by the state teacher training system, and who are given the means to do their jobs properly. It is also about supportive parents - supportive both of the child and of the teacher. Above all, it is about an attitude towards learning that seems not to exist in much of the public sector, where teachers are forced to be a combination of child minders and social workers.
If Lord Adonis wants to put this right, the route appears simple. He should ask the private schools to use their expertise to set up schools to replace those that are failing. He should pay them to run them and give them carte blanche to manage them.
More here
Don't blame parents for `cotton-wool kids'
Comment from Britain
Today is Playday, a celebration of children's `right to play' - and an ideal time to have a kickabout with the culture of fear that imprisons our kids
An ICM survey commissioned by Play England for Playday - the annual celebration of children's right to play, which takes place today, 6 August - reportedly shows that over-cautious parents are `spoiling' children's playtime. `Children are being denied adventurous play because their parents are nervous about exposing them to risk', warns BBC News (1).
The Playday poll shows that half of children aged 7 to 12 years (51 per cent) are not allowed to climb a tree without adult supervision, and 42 per cent are not allowed to play in their local park without an adult present.
`Constantly wrapping children in cotton wool can leave them ill-equipped to deal with stressful or challenging situations they might encounter later in life', said Adrian Voce, director of Play England, a charity that promotes `free play opportunities'. `Adventurous play both challenges and excites children and helps instil critical life skills,' he said.
According to Play England, this year's Playday theme - `Give us a go!' - highlights children's need to `experience risky and challenging play' in order to ensure they are able to `manage risk in their daily lives' (2). Playday is supported by Persil, the washing powder manufacturer, whose website says the aim is `to shake off the "cotton wool" culture that can limit children's play' (3).
These are commendable aims. There is a real danger that by cocooning, over-protecting and over-supervising children, society might be denying the next generation the opportunity to grow up and become capable, confident adults. This is one of the reasons I decided to write Reclaiming Childhood: Freedom and Play in an Age of Fear, which will be published early next year in the UK and the US (4). I feel strongly that children are losing out on many childhood experiences that my generation took for granted.
Children need space away from adults' watchful eyes - in order to play, experiment, take risks (within a sensible framework provided by adults), test boundaries, have arguments, fight, and learn how to resolve conflicts. Today, they are increasingly denied these opportunities.
But I also feel that in pinning the blame on individual parents and their `over-cautious' anxieties, as Play England is doing today, those who decry the decline of outdoor play are being unfair - and naive. The cause of the cotton-wool kids phenomenon is a broader cultural obsession with risk, which has had a major impact upon policymakers, public institutions and media debate, as well as upon teachers and parents. And in challenging this culture, it is important to be clear about where the real problem lies, and to resist pat explanations for its cause.
In his book Paranoid Parenting, spiked writer and sociologist Professor Frank Furedi described the culture of fear that has led parents to restrict their children's freedom to roam. He showed that parental fears must be understood in the context of a generalised sense of anxiety and risk-aversion, which is particularly strong when it comes to the lives and futures of children.
The fact is that parents are continually told to be `better safe than sorry', and it is far from easy for parents to go against the grain and give their children more freedom than society currently deems acceptable. In April 2008, the New York Sun columnist Lenore Skenazy wrote an article entitled `Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride The Subway Alone'. She gave her son a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20 bill, and several quarters, `just in case he had to make a call', waved him goodbye, and told him she'd see him at home.
She wrote: `I trusted him to figure out that he should take the Lexington Avenue subway, and the 34th Street crosstown bus home. If he couldn't do that, I trusted him to ask a stranger. And then I even trusted that stranger not to think, "Gee, I was about to catch my train home, but now I think I'll abduct this adorable child instead."' (5)
Skenazy later described how she suddenly became `a lightning rod in the parenting wars': `Mention my story and millions of people not only know about it, they have a very strong opinion about it, and me, and my parenting skills - or utter, shameful lack thereof.' In an interview with spiked in April, she described how she became branded `America's worst mom' simply for allowing her child to do what most people her age had done routinely when they were young.
But there were also many parents who applauded her decision to let her son travel alone. In her spiked interview, Skenazy stressed that many people reacted positively to her column. She has now set up a blog - Free Range Kids - which is filled with stories from parents who give their children the freedom to do things on their own, and with the concerns of parents who would like to give their kids more freedom, but don't (see `I've been labelled the world's worst mom', by Nancy McDermott).
The root of the problem is not parental fears but the fact that parents are continually discouraged from entrusting their children to other adults. In the UK, it is a crime to work with children without first being vetted by the authorities. The Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act, which was passed into law in England and Wales in 2006, requires that millions of adults whose work involves coming into contact with children must undergo Criminal Records Bureau checks. The message this gives to parents and children is to be suspicious of any adult who comes into contact with young people.
Also, it is almost impossible in Britain today to take photos of one's children, grandchildren, nieces or nephews in public places if they are surrounded by other children. The rules governing the use of cameras and camera-phones in swimming pools, parks, at children's parties, pantomimes, school sports days and any other place where children might be present are ubiquitous, and strictly enforced. The kind of photos that have traditionally appeared in many a family album are now treated as being akin to potential child pornography.
In this climate of institutionalised fear and suspicion, it is little wonder that parents do not feel confident about letting their children play unsupervised in the streets or in local parks - especially when it is assumed by many that any parent who does let their child run around is a Bad Parent, and possibly the `worst mom in the world'.
Ultimately parents will only give children the independence they need if they have sufficient trust in other adults - trust in them not to harm their children, but to look out for them. When we grew up our parents assumed that if we got into trouble, other adults - often strangers - would help out. Today that trust does not exist - or, at least, it has been seriously damaged by government policy, media debate and a rising culture of suspicion towards adults' motives.
Only by challenging the safety-obsessed culture that depicts every adult as a potential threat can we start to build a better future - and present - for our children and ourselves. Today's Playday should involve a lot of fun and freedom for children, which is great; let us now build on it by standing up to the paralysing climate of fear and make every day a Playday for youngsters.
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Doctors are deciding against telling cancer patients about expensive new treatments to avoid causing distress when they find out that the NHS is unwilling to pay for them. A quarter of specialists questioned in a survey admitted to hiding the facts about new drugs for bone marrow cancer that may be difficult to obtain on the NHS. According to the poll, nearly all the doctors who chose not to mention such expensive drugs said that they did so because it might "distress, upset or confuse" their patients.
Three quarters said that cost issues were a consideration, 40 per cent cited "lack of evidence" and 29 per cent argued that there was "no point" discussing treatments that their patients were unlikely to receive.
It is believed that thousands of patients with various types of cancer could gain extra months or years of life from the latest, most effective drugs. In many cases they are being denied the treatments on the NHS because of a lack of approval by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which assesses the cost-effectiveness of new medicines in England and Wales.
The poll, by the charity Myeloma UK, comes after patients with advanced kidney cancer were denied four treatments on the NHS under guidelines issued by NICE. These and other new drugs for cancers of the lung, pancreas, colon and breast, and for multiple myeloma, are available widely throughout Western Europe, and in some cases in Scotland, but campaigners say that patients in England are being "left to die" if they cannot persuade their local trusts to fund treatment.
A total of 103 myeloma specialists in England, Wales and Scotland took part in the survey, with a quarter admitting that they avoided telling patients about licensed drugs that were still awaiting approval by NICE, which local health authorities were reluctant to pay for. Myeloma affects about 3,800 people each year in Britain and, of these, 2,600 are likely to die from it. NICE is reviewing treatments for the disease, including the drug Revlimid, which in clinical trials was found to be able to extend the life of some patients by up to three years.
The drug obtained its UK licence in June last year and is available across Europe, but NICE is not expected to make a final decision on whether it should receive NHS funding in England and Wales until early next year. The drug, which costs $72,000 for one year of treatment, has been rejected as not cost-effective by the Scottish Medicines Consortium, NICE's counterpart north of the Border.
NHS trusts have a legal obligation to provide treatments that are approved by NICE. In the absence of such approval, if a doctor thinks someone would benefit from a new medication, the patient can appeal to a committee at the local trust. Those who are refused must settle for less effective treatments or pay for the drugs.
In a statement, the Department of Health said that it had "issued guidance to the NHS which makes it clear that funding for a treatment should not be withheld simply because NICE guidance does not exist".
Source
Treatment blocked despite years of pain: Case study
Colin Ross, 55, of Horsham, West Sussex, found that he had multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood cells, in May 2004, and has been told that unless he is given the drug Revlimid he will not survive beyond the autumn. Mr Ross, a former engineer in the oil and gas industry, has suffered years of pain and disability because of the disease, which has been slowly eating away at his vertebrae and other bones, making them brittle.
Despite the exhortations of doctors treating him at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, Britain's leading cancer hospital, Mr Ross's local NHS primary care trust in West Sussex has refused repeatedly to fund the treatment, even though patients in East Sussex and elsewhere have access to the drug on the NHS. "I've broken bones several times, feeling very weak and tired all the time. It's got to the point where my bone structure can't support my own weight, it takes ten minutes just to get out of bed and I can't stand unsupported in front of the mirror to clean my teeth," he told The Times yesterday. "I was told from the start that it was incurable, that treatment could only hold it at bay, but it now seems that Revlimid is my last resort."
Although the drug is readily available to patients across Europe and in the United States, it has not yet been granted approval for use throughout the NHS in England and so is being provided only by some NHS trusts in "exceptional circumstances".
Source
Another "artistic" attempt to offend decent people
Childish attention-seeking behaviour
London Olympic organisers are at the centre of an extraordinary row after an image of Myra Hindley, the Moors Murderer, was included in a montage of images of British achievements designed to promote the upcoming Games.
The clip, a portrait of Hindley made out of children's hand prints by the artist Marcus Harvey, was screened as the Prime Minister and Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, welcomed British medal winners at a party to celebrate the capital taking over from Beijing as the official Olympic host city. It was immediately condemned by the Mayor and Gordon Brown.
While the two men each delivered a short speech to around 500 guests, a video screen behind them showed a series of quintessentially British images. Party-goers at the event at London House, a trendy outdoor temporary nightclub in down town Beijing used during the Games by athletes and officials to unwind, were stunned when the portrait of Hindley appeared on the screen.
A spokesman for Mr Johnson said that the montage had been compiled by Visit London, an agency responsible for attracting tourists to the capital which had been commissioned by the Mayor's office to carry out the work, and was meant as a showcase of all things British. He added: "The Mayor knew nothing about this. He is appalled."
Visit London said that the portrait was among a number of images of British art used in the short promotional film, which had been used before and received no complaints. A spokesman added that the inclusion of the controversial work showed that there was no "censorship" in the UK but promised to withdraw it immediately. "This is a general three minute video of London in which an artwork by Marcus Harvey at the Tate very fleetingly appears," said the spokesman. "The video is not for general public use and has been used many times over the last few years to show to the tourism trade. There has never been a complaint made about the video up until this point. However, if any offence has been caused, we will withdraw it from use with immediate effect."
The series of clips ran through the day at London House, and the image is said to have appeared on the screen as Mr Brown was making his speech, to the fury of watching Downing Street aides.
Downing Street said the image was "in extremely poor taste" and should not have been used to promote London. A No 10 source added: "It is a total disgrace that this proud night for Britain has been sullied by this grotesque prank. "Whoever was responsible must be found and fired immediately."
Many officials and athletes' relatives had gathered at London House from late afternoon to watch the closing ceremony on the large screens, but apparently did not notice the image of Hindley in the series of clips, which were allowed to run into the evening as they were joined by those who had participated in the ceremony. As well as gold medal winners including Chris Hoy, the party was attended by previous British Olympic athletes such as Jonathan Edwards, the triple jumper, along with David Beckham, the former England football captain, and the singer Leona Lewis, who had both featured in the Olympic closing ceremony. Guests were treated to a barbecue and free champagne bar, with dancing until late into the night.
Myra Hindley died of cancer in prison in 2002, while Ian Brady, her partner in the deaths of at least four children, remains in jail.
The portrait of Hindley caused uproar when it was first shown to the public at the Sensation exhibition, a showcase of Young British Artists held at the Royal Academy of Art between September and December in 1997. The 11ft by 9ft painting of the Moors Murderer, based on her infamous police mugshot, was particularly chilling because the artist, Marcus Harvey, created it using hundreds of stencil outlines of children's hands.
Winnie Johnson, the mother of one of Hindley's victims, asked for the 1995 portrait to be excluded from the exhibition to protect her feelings. She picketed the first day of the show along with supporters to protest against the work, which was part of a collection owned by Charles Saatchi. Even Hindley sent a letter from jail suggesting her portrait be removed from the exhibition because it had "a sole disregard not only for the emotional pain and trauma that would inevitably be experienced by the families of the Moors victims but also the families of any child victim." But despite the protests the painting remained in place, prompting more drastic action. Windows at Burlington House, the Academy's home, were smashed and two demonstrators hurled ink and eggs at it
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British Submission
Foot baths for Muslim students at Michigan universities? Muslim cabbies in the Twin Cities who refuse to carry seeing-eye dogs? The FBI and other government agencies taking sensitivity training from radical Muslim organizations? You think we’ve lost the plot over here? Take a look at British submission to Islamofascist demands and threats, as that once great nation succumbs to creeping dhimmitude.
It has reached the point that in mid-April, the British Foreign Office instructed the Royal Navy not to return pirates to jurisdictions sporting sharia law (such as Somalia) for fear that their human rights will be violated. They have even been discouraged from capturing pirates, because the freebooters might ask to be granted asylum in Britain, a request with which the UK might have to comply under international and European Union human rights law.
This for a Navy that almost singlehandedly defeated piracy in the early 19th century, and a nation that retained the death penalty for this scourge of the high seas until the late 20th century. Welcome to Britain today.
Another recent outrage involves special handling of a traffic violation. Seems that a Muslim driver was stopped by police while speeding between two homes in the north of England. When he appeared in court, he explained his high speed – over twice the speed limit – was necessary to accommodate his two wives. His explanation was accepted, and he was allowed to keep his license.
That comes fast – very fast – on the heels of a decision by the British government to grant full spousal benefits to multiple wives. It won’t affect more than an estimated 1,000 individuals. And it mercifully won’t affect the indigenous Christian, Hindu or Jewish population, as traditional bigamy laws apply. Britons may rest easy, as it will only cover multiple wives married in a jurisdiction that practices Sharia law, such as Pakistan or Saudi Arabia.
These are not isolated instances; there are a myriad more: Swimming periods at pools restricted to Muslims only; the establishment of a BBC Arabic language station staffed by Arab broadcasters and managers with track records of being anti-American, anti-Israel and anti-Western; the refusal of female Muslim medical students to wash their arms as that practice might reveal the forbidden flesh between wrist and elbow; an attempt by a national union of university lecturers to call for a boycott of Israeli academics; and, a local Council ban on pig-themed toys, porcelain figures and calendars on workers’ desks because it might offend Muslims.
No comment from the Home Office or No. 10 Downing Street. No comment from the government, because it has been their policy to appease Britain’s large Muslim population in response to menacing behavior up to and including the bomb outrages of July 7, 2005.
It’s no coincidence that Muslims constitute a substantial portion of the Labour Party’s electoral support in London and in much of its heartland in northern England. In the expected close election for Parliament that will be held by mid-2010, an increasing Muslim population may be the difference between victory and defeat for the Labourites.
But Labour’s bien pensant hardly needs convincing. Like most on the left today, they fancy themselves champions of the underdog and the oppressed, and sympathy for Islam, and Arab and Muslim causes fits neatly into their intellectual program. Along with America and Israel-bashing, it goes to the very heart of how liberals view themselves and, more important, how they wish to be viewed by others. It supplies them with the appearance of a self-abnegation that is supposed to relieve their Western, middle-class guilt with a cleansing humility but is nothing but moral exhibitionism; and, as always, involves other people’s money, other people’s freedom, and other people’s comfort – never or very rarely their own.
A classic of political correctness run amok, wonderful as a burlesque if it weren’t slowly undermining Britain’s way of life and its will to oppose extreme Islamism.
Worse is that acceding to this nonsense gives Islamofascists confidence that they are on the winning side of history. That if they just shout a little louder and push a little harder, they may expect more of the same that becomes increasingly normative until it convinces the longer-settled among the UK’s population that they have no power to stop, let alone reverse, the process.
One might have become inured to the gutless behavior of France or Italy, but many in the U.S. are still under the impression that, like other countries in the Anglosphere, the British remain clear-eyed, realistic and most importantly resolute about the threats with which the West is confronted. But they aren’t; and while these cultural changes are in the realm of the comical right now, they are beginning to affect British public policy, domestic as well as foreign.
Why is this important to us? Because the ZaNuLabour Party’s tendency to pacifism and appeasement, and its devotion to political correctness, victim ideology, cultural relativism and liberal guilt is shared by our own Democrats. Look for more of it in Britain, and don’t be surprised when it arrives full force here in America.
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Blaming affluence for crime? That's a bit rich
David Lammy's `explanation' for the teenage stabbings in London is a pointed attack on aspiration and prosperity.
The stabbing of Nilanthan Murddi in Croydon last weekend brought the number of teenagers who have met a violent death in London this year to 23. This spate of attacks seems to bring out the pop sociologist in MPs and newspaper columnists. Rather than interpreting such grim incidents as rare, isolated crimes, there's a tendency to imagine an all-encompassing social influence on which to hang a catch-all explanation.
David Lammy, described by some as the nearest British equivalent to Barack Obama, and by everyone else as a New Labour hack, has put forward his own theory - and it's a pretty trite one. Writing in the current issue of British political weekly the New Statesman, Lammy, the parliamentary under-secretary for innovation, universities and skills, believes he has identified the root `causes' of teen-on-teen male violence: the influence of consumerism and affluence, and the lack of identifiable `role models' for young men.
Now, whenever I hear the phrase `lack of role models', I'm tempted to reach for an illegal firearm myself. It's one of those banal, daytime TV platitudes that suggests young people are simply passive automatons waiting for the correct `on-message' individual to point them in the right direction. In education circles, this sort of thinking is everywhere. There's a genuine belief that, say, if black boys were taught by black, male teachers (the much-fabled `role models'), they would make better progress at school. Lammy expands on this simplistic and wrong-headed notion to suggest that if only there were more male teachers in primary schools, then boys would grow up to `identify' with more `acceptable' ideas of masculinity. And apparently, this would lead to less anti-social behaviour on the streets of London. Fantastic!
But teenage boys aren't likely to behave or perform better if their teacher wears trousers or has the same skin colour. Teenagers of all stripes will seek to be oppositional to any teacher in order to undermine them and attempt to exert control in the classroom. This is partly because teenagers crave autonomy and independence and will thus instinctively see how far they can push against `the line'. What a teacher looks like isn't remotely a determining factor on pupil behaviour or academic performance.
Of course, it's essential that adults do play a role in socialising teenagers into adulthood. But that process isn't based on ticking gender or ethnic group boxes, but on the ideas and knowledge of adults and how they articulate them. If there's an identifiable problem today, it is that society lacks a confident set of ideas and a recognisable adult framework through which teenagers can be socialised. Lammy is on to something when he says some teens are prone to outbursts of emotionalism and infantilism today, but he is less forthcoming in identifying his own political party's role in contributing to the current culture of blubbering emotionalism as well as infantilising teenagers.
Incredibly, even though she was UK prime minister before many of today's teenagers were born, Lammy insists that Margaret Thatcher is somehow to blame for anti-social behaviour. What he implies is that Thatcher's supposed blueprint for a 'consumer society' has turned today's generation into selfish, amoral monsters. Traditionally, the left always cited grinding poverty as a contributing influence on anti-social behaviour; now the likes of Lammy are insisting that affluence and materialism are leading youngsters astray.
Lammy quotes an allegedly popular saying amongst today's youth - `get rich or die trying' (itself the title of the debut album of American rapper 50 Cent) as proof that they are morally bankrupt. But since when was it advisable to take youthful bravado at face value? And is simply saying such a thing really the same as being an underworld crime lord? It is conveniently forgotten how most young rap fans see through the absurdity of hip-hop's pantomime excesses. At a further education college in Hackney where I once taught, the `rapper' most of the kids were obsessed with wasn't Tupac Shakur, but Fur Q - Chris Morris' spoof gangsta rapper in satirical TV comedy The Day Today.
Rather disgracefully, it seems Lammy is using the bogus cover of bling-bling rap to demonise consumption and the everyday, normal desire for prosperity. In this way, Lammy is following psychologist Oliver James' cranky idea that material aspiration is a pathological problem in need of therapeutic correction. And to this end, Lammy is proposing tighter regulation on the types of advertisements, films and videos that young people might watch and be influenced by. He also implies that the state should be barging its way even further into the family home and supervising how parents raise their children.
To pathologise healthy consumption is one thing, but Lammy wants to go one step further and criminalise it as well. His crass implication is that affluent societies such as Britain, and our attendant `culture of consumerism', lead inexorably to violent attacks and even murder by our young. Thus, endless consumption somehow creates selfish and feckless individuals who don't appreciate the value of human life. This is tantamount to blackmailing poorer sections in society to keep their heads down and `make do' with hardship, lest material aspiration sends their errant offspring on a random killing spree.
Sociologists such as Stanley Cohen also made the connections between the cultural influence of `the American dream' and how some people in US society achieved that goal through organised crime. But for Cohen and others, that was not a justification for slamming material aspiration, but rather showed how `conventional' routes to success are closed off to certain sections in society.
Lammy's argument also doesn't add up on closer inspection of the murders involving teenagers in London. On the whole, the incidents reported did not feature street robberies that have gone horrifically wrong. More often than not, they involved petty arguments amongst groups of youths that spilled over into fights and fatal stabbings. As dreadful and shocking as these incidents are, street fights and casual violence amongst young people are hardly a new phenomenon. As Mick Hume has argued, the amplification of street crime into a generalised threat means that more teenagers are more likely to carry knives than before - and with sometimes tragic consequences (see Knife crime panic reaches crisis point).
The logic of Lammy's anti-consumption, anti-prosperity argument doesn't add up in another way, too: if rich societies automatically raise feckless and amoral thugs, then how come the number of murdered teenagers is far higher in poorer countries like Brazil or Mexico? Surely the lack of affluence and consumption in those country's shanty towns should mean they are harmonious and trouble-free places, at least in Lammy's worldview? The fact that the teen murder rate in those areas runs into the thousands, rather than double figures, suggests that it is still miserable poverty that has a destructive impact on young people's lives. This doesn't simply translate as poverty forcing people to rob others; but it shows how poverty fuels listless boredom as well as generating a fatalistic and even nihilistic outlook on life in general.
Far from materialism leading to a breakdown in morals, as Lammy disingenuously argues, material prosperity enables people to develop morally as well as intellectually. It provides the very basis through which individuals can begin to live like humans and not act like animals. Instead, Lammy attempts to turn reality on its head and blackmails the poor into accepting their miserable lot in the process. To put this forward as a proposal for combating random and rare violent crime, well, Lammy's a bit rich for even trying.
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Against all booze bans
There have always been different social rules for drinking in public: sometimes it's okay, at other times it is definitely not. In some places, sipping beer in the street is considered acceptable and sociable; in other places, it marks you out as a disrespectful low-life.
Over the past few years, though, cracking open a can in the street became not just rude, but illegal. For the first time in Britain, police gained powers to confiscate your bottle of lager or wine, or to ask you to tip it down the drain, and to arrest you if you refused to comply. The state became the arbiter on a question of social etiquette that had previously been decided by individuals and communities themselves.
The new London mayor Boris Johnson's ban on Tube drinking is an infamous case, but the illiberal regulation of public drinking now stretches the world over. Booze bans have cast a shadow over both the Fourth of July celebrations on San Diego beach and the Christmas celebrations on Australia's Bondi beach - these traditionally jolly festive occasions now continue only under the cloud of prohibition.
The land of Hogmanay has fared no better. Drink was banned from many Scottish town centres and beaches this summer, after the Scottish Executive pressured councils to pass booze-banning bylaws covering particular areas. These draconian laws are now pasted on lampposts throughout Scotland: one bans people from carrying around an empty drinks carton, while another prohibits carrying a drinks container `when it could be reasonably assumed they would want to drink it in a "designated public place"' (1).
Areas of towns and cities in the Czech Republic are designated no-drinking; New Zealand has gone so far as to ban driving through `no-drink zones' if you have booze in the boot of your car (police officers say they have the right to stop and search, though if you are caught red-handed you have the option of tipping it down the drain, which is very generous of them) (2).
It was in opposition to this trend that the Manifesto Club - the organisation I head - launched the Campaign Against the Booze Bans. We set up a campaign Facebook group, where more than a thousand people from all over the world have registered their objection to booze bans. In a week's time, on Bank Holiday Monday, we will launch a report on the rise of booze bans at our Provocation Picnic in Hyde Park, London.
The right to drink in public may not be considered a classic civil liberties issue, such as the right to free speech or the right to protest - but it is just as important now. In many ways, the regulation of public drinking is a litmus test for the state of public freedoms. With the erosion of the right to drink, we see how public space is being organised more around the whims of police officers, and less around the desires and morals of free citizens.
In the UK over the past few years, there has been a creeping growth of drinking-control legislation. Where communities once set the rules on when and where one could crack open a can, police officers and councillors now write those rules from scratch.
Booze bans first started in the late 1980s, when some councils - such as Coventry - passed bylaws against public drinking. But these laws were sporadically enforced, and police officers had no powers of arrest. In 1997, the Confiscation of Alcohol (Young Persons) Act gave police powers to confiscate alcohol and containers from under-18s. This law was extended from minors to adults in 2001: the Criminal Justice and Police Act introduced Designated Public Place Orders (DPPOs), which allowed officers to confiscate drink from adults, and gave powers of arrest if the person refused to surrender their can or bottle.
At first, DPPOs grew only gradually, but from 2004 they started to take off rapidly with a rush of applications from councils and police forces for the right to confiscate booze from local residents. There are now 613 Designated Public Place Orders in England and Wales, covering parks, stations and beaches the length and breadth of the country (3). Every new drinking control zone seems to create more, as councils emulate each other's regulations, and zones are extended bit by bit throughout towns and cities.
Meanwhile, government legislation has tightened. The 2003 Licensing Act allowed `sealed' as well as open alcohol containers to be confiscated; it also allowed for an emergency blanket ban on alcohol (police recently showed off this power when they threatened to shut down all pubs and off licenses in Torbay in July 2008, after the idea of a beach party was floated on Facebook) (4).
These new regulations don't reflect a switch in public morals, but a switch in the ideology of the state. The control of public drinking is really the result of officials' concerns about social order, their fear of uninhibited groups of people. They look at unregulated groups relaxing and drinking in public and imagine a threat to law, civilisation, and much else besides.
We start to see the return of a very nineteenth-century idea: that crime is the result of unruly and uninhibited crowds. Police have implicated public boozing in crimes ranging from murder to domestic violence to robbery. Inspector Colin Mowat from Aberdeenshire said that bans on public drinking could help stop `under-age drinking, drink-driving, domestic abuse and street disorder' (5); after the 2007 murder of Cheshire man Gary Newlove by a gang of drunk youths, the leading police officer called for a blanket ban on public drinking (6). The role of the police is exposed for all to see: not just to identify and prosecute for criminal offences, but also to control and manage groups of people.
Booze control laws are produced entirely from above, and as such they are erratically enforced. There are few guidelines for how the police should use their drinking-confiscation powers, so they tend to use them as they please. During the Merseyside Police's Operation Beach Safe, officers decided to confiscate booze at the beach entrance in June 2008. Richard Clarke, acting sergeant of Operation Beach Safe, welcomed visitors with the words `If you're coming to the beach to drink don't bother, go and drink in your gardens or somewhere else', and his officers posed for trophy photos with their confiscated cans of Fosters (7).
Police also take alcohol away from people they think of as troublesome types - younger people, football supporters, or alcoholics - and, unlike with an arrest for a crime, they have no obligation to justify their actions. If you contest an officer's request to tip your Carling down a drain, you are committing an offence and could be arrested and fined up to $1,000. There is no luxury of a defence lawyer.
One post on our Facebook wall discusses the uneven-handed way in which drinking controls are applied in Brighton: `Here. the booze ban, extends to basically the homeless. Community Support Officers [CSOs] do not take drink off you on the beach and ignore you basically if you look well-to-do. One homeless man I met the other day says he had his unopened can of cider in his pocket taken from him by CSOs because they "thought" he was "about to" or had "reason to believe" he would drink it in a public place. He was on his way to drink it at his hostel!' (8)
This shows how the police are playing fast and loose with these powers. At the Manifesto Club, we call for these drinking laws to be challenged and rolled back, and for police powers to be kept on a very tight leash. This is not so much a campaign for public drinking, as a campaign for the public to set the rules for acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. Basically, for Community Support Officers to butt out of communities.
If you are free on Bank Holiday in London, join us for a drink and picnic in the park. It may not always be the done thing to crack open a can in public, but it should never be illegal.
Source
The private sector could save British schools
I wouldn't want to frighten the horses this early in the day, or cause you to choke on your All-Bran, but I have to admit to always having had a sneaking regard for Lord Adonis, the education minister. This is partly based on my belief that he is not stupid, and is genuinely motivated to improve our schools system. Also, I have had surprisingly good reports of him from several headmasters at our leading public schools.
How my heart sank, therefore, when, in trying to divert attention from the fact that a large proportion of our youth leaves school without anything approaching a qualification in either maths or English, he came up with the traditional, and very unclever, PR line: that any criticism of the GCSE results was an insult to those students who had worked so hard to get "good grades". This mantra was designed some years ago - I first heard it when our would-be prime minister David Miliband was a schools minister - to stop people like me from being rude about these increasingly devalued qualifications. Sadly, we won't be stopped.
If a grade A at A-level these days is the same as a grade C 20 years ago, then heaven knows what a GCSE pass represents in terms of the old O-level. The ability to turn up and write your name without too many mistakes in it seems nearly enough in several subjects: this year's pass rate is an otherwise improbable 98.4 per cent.
I do not insult children who have just piled up GCSE passes, for they are the victims of the system. But it is important that they and their parents realise that having a clutch of A* results does not make the holder the next Einstein. And having a pile of less exalted passes means that, in the days when their parents were taking O levels, they probably wouldn't have passed any.
As I mentioned last week when writing about A-levels, the reasons for this - and for Lord Adonis's embarrassment - are clear. The pass rate is set so low because in many cases the teaching these children get, and the schools in which they attempt to learn, are awful. This is the Government's fault. It has devalued teaching systematically over the years with the result that only the most saintly and vocational of high-quality people now wish to enter it. Many that do find the experience of teaching in one of our comprehensive schools so demoralising that they soon clear off and do something else. Teachers are routinely assaulted and abused by pupils and by their parents.
Not only is there barely any discipline, there are not the means to enforce discipline. The children, meanwhile are left to the attentions of a series of supply teachers, with whom they can never form the relationship needed for successful learning, or to the products of our Marxist-inspired teacher training colleges. God help them, for no one else will.
When the whining starts about the "inequality" between private and state schools, it is not said often enough that it is hardly about money. It is about the quality of teachers in the private sector, many of whom have not been soiled by the state teacher training system, and who are given the means to do their jobs properly. It is also about supportive parents - supportive both of the child and of the teacher. Above all, it is about an attitude towards learning that seems not to exist in much of the public sector, where teachers are forced to be a combination of child minders and social workers.
If Lord Adonis wants to put this right, the route appears simple. He should ask the private schools to use their expertise to set up schools to replace those that are failing. He should pay them to run them and give them carte blanche to manage them.
More here
Don't blame parents for `cotton-wool kids'
Comment from Britain
Today is Playday, a celebration of children's `right to play' - and an ideal time to have a kickabout with the culture of fear that imprisons our kids
An ICM survey commissioned by Play England for Playday - the annual celebration of children's right to play, which takes place today, 6 August - reportedly shows that over-cautious parents are `spoiling' children's playtime. `Children are being denied adventurous play because their parents are nervous about exposing them to risk', warns BBC News (1).
The Playday poll shows that half of children aged 7 to 12 years (51 per cent) are not allowed to climb a tree without adult supervision, and 42 per cent are not allowed to play in their local park without an adult present.
`Constantly wrapping children in cotton wool can leave them ill-equipped to deal with stressful or challenging situations they might encounter later in life', said Adrian Voce, director of Play England, a charity that promotes `free play opportunities'. `Adventurous play both challenges and excites children and helps instil critical life skills,' he said.
According to Play England, this year's Playday theme - `Give us a go!' - highlights children's need to `experience risky and challenging play' in order to ensure they are able to `manage risk in their daily lives' (2). Playday is supported by Persil, the washing powder manufacturer, whose website says the aim is `to shake off the "cotton wool" culture that can limit children's play' (3).
These are commendable aims. There is a real danger that by cocooning, over-protecting and over-supervising children, society might be denying the next generation the opportunity to grow up and become capable, confident adults. This is one of the reasons I decided to write Reclaiming Childhood: Freedom and Play in an Age of Fear, which will be published early next year in the UK and the US (4). I feel strongly that children are losing out on many childhood experiences that my generation took for granted.
Children need space away from adults' watchful eyes - in order to play, experiment, take risks (within a sensible framework provided by adults), test boundaries, have arguments, fight, and learn how to resolve conflicts. Today, they are increasingly denied these opportunities.
But I also feel that in pinning the blame on individual parents and their `over-cautious' anxieties, as Play England is doing today, those who decry the decline of outdoor play are being unfair - and naive. The cause of the cotton-wool kids phenomenon is a broader cultural obsession with risk, which has had a major impact upon policymakers, public institutions and media debate, as well as upon teachers and parents. And in challenging this culture, it is important to be clear about where the real problem lies, and to resist pat explanations for its cause.
In his book Paranoid Parenting, spiked writer and sociologist Professor Frank Furedi described the culture of fear that has led parents to restrict their children's freedom to roam. He showed that parental fears must be understood in the context of a generalised sense of anxiety and risk-aversion, which is particularly strong when it comes to the lives and futures of children.
The fact is that parents are continually told to be `better safe than sorry', and it is far from easy for parents to go against the grain and give their children more freedom than society currently deems acceptable. In April 2008, the New York Sun columnist Lenore Skenazy wrote an article entitled `Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride The Subway Alone'. She gave her son a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20 bill, and several quarters, `just in case he had to make a call', waved him goodbye, and told him she'd see him at home.
She wrote: `I trusted him to figure out that he should take the Lexington Avenue subway, and the 34th Street crosstown bus home. If he couldn't do that, I trusted him to ask a stranger. And then I even trusted that stranger not to think, "Gee, I was about to catch my train home, but now I think I'll abduct this adorable child instead."' (5)
Skenazy later described how she suddenly became `a lightning rod in the parenting wars': `Mention my story and millions of people not only know about it, they have a very strong opinion about it, and me, and my parenting skills - or utter, shameful lack thereof.' In an interview with spiked in April, she described how she became branded `America's worst mom' simply for allowing her child to do what most people her age had done routinely when they were young.
But there were also many parents who applauded her decision to let her son travel alone. In her spiked interview, Skenazy stressed that many people reacted positively to her column. She has now set up a blog - Free Range Kids - which is filled with stories from parents who give their children the freedom to do things on their own, and with the concerns of parents who would like to give their kids more freedom, but don't (see `I've been labelled the world's worst mom', by Nancy McDermott).
The root of the problem is not parental fears but the fact that parents are continually discouraged from entrusting their children to other adults. In the UK, it is a crime to work with children without first being vetted by the authorities. The Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act, which was passed into law in England and Wales in 2006, requires that millions of adults whose work involves coming into contact with children must undergo Criminal Records Bureau checks. The message this gives to parents and children is to be suspicious of any adult who comes into contact with young people.
Also, it is almost impossible in Britain today to take photos of one's children, grandchildren, nieces or nephews in public places if they are surrounded by other children. The rules governing the use of cameras and camera-phones in swimming pools, parks, at children's parties, pantomimes, school sports days and any other place where children might be present are ubiquitous, and strictly enforced. The kind of photos that have traditionally appeared in many a family album are now treated as being akin to potential child pornography.
In this climate of institutionalised fear and suspicion, it is little wonder that parents do not feel confident about letting their children play unsupervised in the streets or in local parks - especially when it is assumed by many that any parent who does let their child run around is a Bad Parent, and possibly the `worst mom in the world'.
Ultimately parents will only give children the independence they need if they have sufficient trust in other adults - trust in them not to harm their children, but to look out for them. When we grew up our parents assumed that if we got into trouble, other adults - often strangers - would help out. Today that trust does not exist - or, at least, it has been seriously damaged by government policy, media debate and a rising culture of suspicion towards adults' motives.
Only by challenging the safety-obsessed culture that depicts every adult as a potential threat can we start to build a better future - and present - for our children and ourselves. Today's Playday should involve a lot of fun and freedom for children, which is great; let us now build on it by standing up to the paralysing climate of fear and make every day a Playday for youngsters.
Source
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
The British government is too embarrassed to admit its own absurd preschool rules
Ministers are producing misleading "propaganda" which skirts around new targets for the under-5s in an attempt to head off a revolt by parents of nursery children, campaigners claim today. Under the new Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework which comes into force next week, all preschool children in private, voluntary or state childcare in England will be expected to meet 69 literacy, numeracy and problem-solving targets based on, and even using, computers and other technology.
But a booklet for parents on the framework contains no mention of any of the statutory literacy or numeracy targets, emphasising only that children will be expected to "learn through play" and "develop at their own pace".
Two of the most contentious targets are that children should "write their own names . . . and begin to form simple sentences, sometimes using punctuation" and "use phonic knowledge to write simple regular words and make phonetically plausible attempts at more complex words". The booklet states: "It's not about introducing a curriculum for young children. Or making them read or write before they're ready. Quite the reverse." This is despite the guidance for nurseries and childcarers referring to the targets as "learning and development requirements that all early years providers must by law deliver".
The guidance also refers to "the early learning goals which young children should have acquired by the end of the academic year in which they reach five" and "the matters, skills and processes which are required to be taught to young children".
Kim Simpson of the Open Eye campaign which has been set up with the backing of child-development experts, parents and leading children's authors to campaign for improvement to the EYFS, claims that the booklet is misleading. "It makes a point of mentioning the welfare requirements but the statutory learning requirements, which have caused so much disagreement and dissent, are noticeable by their absence," she told The Times. Ms Simpson, who has run a Montessori centre for preschool children in Richmond, West London, for more than 30 years, added that the booklet would confuse parents.
In July the Government bowed to pressure from critics and said that nurseries would be able to opt out of the two most contentious literacy targets if parents agreed to it. Ms Simpson said that anyone reading the booklet would not see anything in it that would justify a nursery seeking an exemption. "There is plenty in the statutory framework that both parents and practitioners have taken strong and principled issue with because of its developmental inappropriateness," she said. "But, in stark contrast, there is pretty much nothing that any parent or practitioner would take issue with in this parents' booklet. "[The booklet] seems to amount to little more than a propaganda exercise specially launched by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, and designed to head off any `parents' revolt' about the EYFS," she said.
Leading authors and child development experts have criticised some of the statutory targets in the EYFS, claiming that they are unrealistic and risk harming preschool children by setting back their development. They also accuse Beverley Hughes, the Children's Minister, of ignoring her advisers and shelving research commissioned by her department that found that tutoring children to read using basic phonics and simple sentences does not improve their success once they start school.
Source
Polygamists live longer
The usual stupid causal inferences. That you might have to start out more robust in various ways to acquire and keep plural wives seems not to be considered. And the data have to be suspect anyway. All the really long-lived nations (Such as Australia, Japan and Finland) practice monogamy
Men with more than one wife live longer, a new study of longevity has found. Research published in New Scientist magazine found that polygamy may be the key to a long life, with men from polygamous cultures living 12 per cent longer those from monogamous ones.
A team from the University of Sheffield in the UK came to the conclusion after studying older men from 140 countries that practise polygamy to varying degrees and those from 49 mostly monogamous nations. The lead researcher, ecologist Virpi Lummaa, said the explanation could be both social and genetic. Men who continued fathering kids into their 60s and 70s could take better care of their bodies because they had mouths to feed, Dr Lummaa said.
But evolutionary forces acting over thousands of years could also account for longer-lived men in polygamous cultures, a conference in New York was told.
Source
British bank embroiled in row over Sumo advert
Must not pretend to be Japanese?
Society's challenge: to build character
The first headmaster of Stowe school, J F Roxburgh, declared his goal to be turning out young men who would be "acceptable at a dance and invaluable in a shipwreck".
A mixture of courtesy and courage used to be essential to the idea of a British citizen's character. Brits were the sort of people who knew both how to survive a blitz and queue politely. Similarly, Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scout movement, aimed to induce in his young charges "some of the spirit of self-negation, self-discipline, sense of humour, responsibility, helpfulness to others, loyalty and patriotism which go to make `character' ". He described his movement as nothing less than a "character factory".
But in the postwar shift towards a less constrained and judgmental society - "character talk", in Stefan Collini's phrase - dropped out of public discourse, except when considering someone's suitability for high office. The idea of good character came to sound old-fashioned and patronising. "The reason we find the concept of character difficult is because of class conflict in British society," says Matthew Taylor, former head of strategy for Tony Blair. "There was a sense that good character was handed down from a patrician class to the great unwashed." Thinkers and politicians across the political spectrum are trying to revive "character talk".
Taylor is pushing the idea of "pro-social behaviour" recognising, he says, that changes in personal behaviour are essential to successful policy in everything from climate change to obesity. David Cameron last month called for politicians to tackle issues of "public morality". Against the backdrop of the impoverished east end of Glasgow, he insisted politicians had to drop "moral neutrality". He criticised the political classes for "a refusal to make judgments about what is good and bad behaviour, right and wrong". Some people on the left are also starting to argue that character might matter as much as resources in improving life chances. Bestselling books such as Lynne Truss's Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of Everyday Life speak to a generalised anxiety about the breakdown of positive social norms of behaviour.
But it is important to keep this in perspective. Most of the time, most people are perfectly pleasant. British society as a whole is not "broken" in any meaningful sense. Of course, it is notoriously hard for politicians to get traction in the area of behaviour. They often fall into the trap described by the philosopher Jon Elster of "willing what cannot be willed". And Cameron is certainly taking some risks with his incursions into morality.
By insisting that individuals should take a share of responsibility for their obesity or poverty, he is thinking his way towards an integration of his ideas on responsibility, morality and "broken Britain" that may lead him towards a consideration of character formation. Conservatism and character seem natural political bedfellows, given traditional right-wing concerns with social order and reducing state dependency. What is more surprising is the number of people on the centre-left who can also see the point of a new focus on character.
For them, the concern is less with general social interaction - although they worry about that, too - than with the character of a small, influen-tial and expensive group that Blair once labelled the "deeply excluded". Since character is an unfashionable concept, it is important to be clear what it means in this public policy context.
The three key ingredients of a good character are: a sense of personal agency or self-direction; an acceptance of personal responsibility; and effective regulation of one's own emotions, in particular the ability to resist temptation or at least defer gratification. Progressives are realising that, thus defined, character is intimately linked to The specific concerns of progressives can be divided into three themes: the link between character attributes and life chances; the life chances "penalty" being paid by the children who do not develop a good character; and the growing demand for good character in the labour market.
Recent claims about social mobility in Britain grinding to a halt are exaggerated, but it does seem that the likelihood of a person being upwardly mobile is increasingly influenced by personal qualities such as confidence and self-control. Julia Margo, associate director of the Institute for Public Policy Research, has assembled an impressive body of evidence linking character to life chances. Her work, which draws on that by Leon Feinstein at the Institute of Education, shows that measured levels of "application" - defined as dedication and a capacity for concentration - at the age of 10 have a bigger impact on earnings by the age of 30 than ability in maths.
Avner Offer, professor of economic history at Oxford, likewise describes how "commitment devices" can help individuals to manage their own desires. In his book The Challenge of Affluence: Self-Control and Well-Being in the United States and Britain Since 1950, Offer provides a vignette of a familiar self-control challenge. "A young student ponders whether to spend the evening revising at her desk or to go out with friends.
How much to sacrifice tonight for a remote future? When to stop having fun, but also when to stop being serious? Conventions, expectations and institutions have built up gradually over decades and centuries to form a stock of equipment available to deal with her problem . . . sources and strategies of self-control, both cognitive and social, take time to develop." Offer argues that "personal capacity for commitment" is inculcated in institutions such as the family along what Margo calls "paths to socialisation".
Character is made, not born. Offer argues that consumer capitalism, by providing a constant flow of novelty, undermines these sources and strategies. It is harder for us to stick to our commitments in a society bombarded with advertising temptations and saturated with the idea of individual consumer choice. This seems implausible: after all, as Margo's work shows, plenty of people do end up with good character traits - and, if anything, it is the more affluent who do so. Nonetheless, Offer is surely right to argue that the "stock of equipment" that makes up character is of vital importance in the construction of a successful life. The second concern is that children who fail to develop positive character traits are less likely to succeed - and these children come overwhelmingly from low-income homes.
The political right used to argue that poverty is caused by weakness of character; the left is now realising it may be the other way around. "Over time, poverty has become more associated with differences in character development," Margo told me. "So while in the past a poor deprived child would have about the same chance of developing a good character as a more affluent one, our research suggests that children who were born into deprivation in the 1970s as opposed to the late 1950s were much less likely to develop good character than more affluent groups." The family is the main "character factory" - and Margo's work shows that some families are much more effective manufacturers than others.
We need a better understanding of what is going on in these failing families. Some evolutionary biologists point to genetic inheritance and it is clear that some character traits are inherited. Traditional left- wing analyses, on the other hand, highlight material deprivation. But the weight of evidence is that good parents provide good insulation against inherited negative traits - and that being a good parent has little to do with having a good income.
Stephen Scott, professor of child health and behaviour at King's College London, has conducted a range of studies showing how the behaviour of parents influences the life trajectories of their children, even when genetic predispositions are taken into account. "There's an interaction between your genetic predisposition and the way you turn out according to the way you're raised," says Scott. "When it comes to being antisocial, aggressive, stealing and lying, the interaction is a big one. If you have poor self-control and a rather twitchy, irritable temperament and you're brought up in a harsh way, it's bad news. For that group, the rate of criminality aged 17 is about 40%. But if you have that twitchy character and you're brought up in a reasonably calm, soothing way, you will do well."
If low-income parents are doing less well on this front - as it seems they are - the question of how poverty interacts with parenting becomes important. Scott is emphatic here. "Financial poverty is a factor, but not a central one," he says. "I am fond of saying: poverty of what? And actually it seems to be poverty of the parent-child experience . . . that leads to poor child outcomes rather than poverty of a material kind." Consistent parental love and discipline is the motor of the character production line and not all children are lucky enough to receive it.
A poor start in life, in terms of character development, reduces educational performance, which obviously lessens labour market opportunities. But - the third concern - lack of good character has a more direct influence on job opportunities too. In Aesthetic Labour and the Policy-Making Agenda: Time for a Reappraisal of Skills, Chris Warhurst and his colleagues at Strathclyde University show that an increasing number of employers are following the advice of Rocco Forte, who when asked the secret of providing great service in hotels, replied: "Hire nice people."
As the economy shifts towards service jobs, the person increasingly becomes part of the product. This means that "soft skills" such as social confidence, patience and kindness grow in importance. Ironically it is often the children of the middle classes who make the best servants. In Glasgow, studied in detail by Warhurst and his colleagues, 80% of jobs are in the service sector, but the people living in nearby places such as Easterhouse aren't getting them. "The danger is that many people in deprived areas are being denied work because of a lack of cultural capital," says Warhurst. "In Glasgow, 50% of jobs are now filled by commuters from the middle-class suburbs."
What helps to form good character? Margo says there are key ingredients that make for success: "It is regular time with the same adult over an extended period, so you respect them and learn from them. Which is why things like the Scout movement are so effective, because you're progressing, you're ageing through the institution. And there tends to be a very good staying-on rate for the adult workers, so you have a lot of interaction with the same adult over a long period of time."
Baden-Powell and all of us involved in the Scout movement - I've recently "come out" as a Scout leader - would agree. Character is an old idea with contemporary relevance. A considerable number of pressing social problems - obesity, welfare reform, pensions, public disorder, educational failure, social immobility - are all, in part, questions of character. It is a treacherous political terrain but one in which governments are increasingly entangled. Anyone who is interested in creating a successful liberal society is interested in character, too, whether they admit it or not. Good societies need good people.
Source
Paedophile Imperialism
The British government is exploiting the odious Gary Glitter to smash freedom of movement and hector governments in the Third World.
The reckoning is still to come. Having been freed after serving 27 months in a Vietnamese prison for committing obscene acts with two girls then aged 11 and 12, 64-year-old Paul Gadd, otherwise known as `pop-star paedo' Gary Glitter, was due to arrive in the UK this morning. Unfortunately for a media and political elite eager for an easy crusade, Gadd's heart has been fluttering. As I write he remains holed up in Bangkok, refusing to travel, citing ill-health and a possible heart attack.
Yet that hasn't stopped the British political elite and sections of the media clamouring for new laws and restrictions to keep the likes of Glitter under their watchful eye. If his case `proves' anything, it is that the paedophile panic, so passionately indulged by our leaders, is a threat to the sanity of society and to civil liberties, too.
Since being found guilty in Britain in 1999 on 54 counts of possessing indecent images of children, Gadd's stardom has leant itself easily to infamy. After serving his four-month sentence in a British jail, he unsurprisingly left the country. Yet from Spain to Cuba to Cambodia, wherever he went the press followed. Over the past nine years, Gadd has become nothing less than the poster-boy for the paedophile panic; he has been transformed from a convicted sex offender into the strange-looking, pot-bellied symbol of the global paedophile threat that stalks all of our children.
Given the hysteria his return is likely to provoke, his heart-attack ruse in Bangkok is perhaps understandable. Others argue that his reluctance to board the flight has a malicious intent behind it: his real plan, we are told, is to abscond and continue his vile ways across the globe. To think otherwise of this no doubt horrid individual is difficult. From the stencilled arch of the eyebrows, once an innocent Glam-rock style statement, to the strange tufty beard and shaved head, he now looks every inch the demon.
And courtesy of the media's 10-year obsession with his every move, his is also the face that can launch a thousand illiberal measures. The campaign to paint him as a one-man threat to the world's children has been so comprehensive that the British government can threaten to introduce severe new international measures on the back of his sordid sex life. Consider the government's revised Foreign Travel Orders (FTOs), which will potentially ban convicted sex offenders from travelling abroad.
UK home secretary Jacqui Smith felt moved enough by Gadd's return to make what amounts to a policy statement: `We need to control him, and he will be once he returns to this country. It would certainly be my view that with the sort of record that he's got, he shouldn't be travelling anywhere in the world.' (1) Or as the newspaper columnist Deborah Orr put it, this is an opportunity not to be missed: `Glitter's case is a perfect opportunity for Britain to start practising what it has recently been preaching.' (2)
What has Britain been `preaching'? The possibility of banning convicted sex offenders from travelling abroad was originally part of the New Labour government's 2003 Sex Offences Bill. This meant that police, providing they could gather evidence that a particular individual with sex offence convictions intended to travel abroad with the intention of committing further offences, could apply for six-month travel prohibitions. Yet as a recent report by End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and the Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT) informs us, only two FTOs were applied for between 2003 and 2006.
ECPAT's Christine Beddoe argues: `At the moment the Foreign Travel Orders that we have in place are not being used very much; the police say they're a bit unwieldy, there's too much administration.' (3) And one way to make it easier to use them - as both ECPAT and the Home Office have proposed - is to remove the need to prove intent to commit offences overseas. In short, the fact that someone has been convicted in the past of a sex offence ought to be evidence enough to prevent him from travelling abroad.
The ability to ride roughshod over such quaint notions as rehabilitation and `doing one's time' - the idea that once someone has been released from prison he is free and equal again - rests on the presumed exceptionality of the paedophile. The motto of contemporary society is: `Once a child abuser, always a child abuser.' These are not deemed criminals, but slaves to uncontrollable passions, individuals forever in thrall to a sexual demiurge. And on the back of keeping these monsters on a leash, the authorities have been rewriting important aspects of the criminal justice system and seeking to undermine free movement.
One doesn't have to be a friend of the paedophiles or a supporter of the odious Glitter to be concerned by these latest moves. It is worth bearing in mind that there are currently 29,000 individuals on Britain's Sex Offenders' Register, and their crimes range wildly from a thirtysomething teacher having an inappropriate fling with a 15-year-old student to far more serious sex offences. Under the current rules, police must suspect a considerable risk of reoffending overseas before imposing a Foreign Travel Order. Yet if the FTOs were to be freed from the need to prove intent, any one of these 29,000 people could be effectively jailed within Britain's borders on the whim of the authorities, despite being ostensibly `free citizens' who have served their sentences.
Some will say, `So what, they're only paedophiles' - even though the vast majority are not paedophiles. But that is to miss the point. Smith's proposals represent an assault on important ideas of justice and on the culture of liberty itself. The argument that we must monitor, put on a register and restrict the movement of everyone who has committed a certain kind of offence undermines the idea that convicts must be allowed to re-enter society upon serving their time. And if the government creates for itself the power to impose FTOs on one-time offenders whom it does not like, who will be next? Football fans can already have their passports confiscated if it's suspected they will get up to no good overseas. What about the tens of thousands of young Britons who travel to Pakistan every year? Best keep them at home too. Increasing the power of the state to determine who can and cannot leave the country takes us into Soviet-style politics.
Just as the pursuit of nightmarish paedophiles gives shameless politicians a chance to fight the `good fight' domestically, so the campaign against so-called sex tourism represents its transfer to the international sphere. Indeed, be it terrorism, or now child abuse, the politics of fear is one export that Western governments have a monopoly in producing.
So alongside travel bans on convicted offenders, ECPAT is also keen for the authorities to enforce measures to monitor unconvicted British nationals abroad, lest they be tempted to indulge in some sex criminality. It is encouraging closer cooperation between anti-abuse non-governmental organisations and the UK government, and is calling for the presence of British police in certain sex tourist hotspots (Australia already posts police forces in some Far East countries). Think of it as Child Abuse Colonialism. As ECPAT puts it, if sex tourism is to be tackled, the British government needs to `reverse the ideology that if abuse happens overseas then we should simply let the governments "over there" deal with it' (4).
Underpinning such an assumption is that other countries, in particular Thailand and Vietnam, are incapable of maintaining their own rule of law. Whether it's due to their being too `corrupt' or simply a result of their poverty, as an ECPAT report argues, apparently Britain needs to intervene at some level to help clean up the paedophile problem in these unwieldy nations.
This is dangerous stuff. Activists and officials seem keen to use the politics of fear to meddle in other, apparently untrustworthy states. Internationalised, the paedophile panic paints other countries as cesspits of abuse and slavery, and it permits the massive simplification of genuine problems of child exploitation. The ECPAT report notes the case of a British national called `Martin' who bought a 12-year-old girl for $800 in 1991, yet it does not interrogate the level of economic underdevelopment that underpins such an exchange between a wealthy Westerner and an impoverished Easterner. This is not to diminish the moral abhorrence of Martin's act; rather it is to refuse to reduce it to morality alone. Under the newly globalised paedophile panic, complex social and economic problems are simply reduced to a good versus evil battle, where it's the British authorities versus the paedophile, the British state versus untrustworthy legal systems `over there'.
As the media's eyes focus on Gary Glitter and what he will do next, those of us concerned about justice, freedom and social sanity might do better to keep an eye on the Glitter-obsessed Home Office.
Source
Ministers are producing misleading "propaganda" which skirts around new targets for the under-5s in an attempt to head off a revolt by parents of nursery children, campaigners claim today. Under the new Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework which comes into force next week, all preschool children in private, voluntary or state childcare in England will be expected to meet 69 literacy, numeracy and problem-solving targets based on, and even using, computers and other technology.
But a booklet for parents on the framework contains no mention of any of the statutory literacy or numeracy targets, emphasising only that children will be expected to "learn through play" and "develop at their own pace".
Two of the most contentious targets are that children should "write their own names . . . and begin to form simple sentences, sometimes using punctuation" and "use phonic knowledge to write simple regular words and make phonetically plausible attempts at more complex words". The booklet states: "It's not about introducing a curriculum for young children. Or making them read or write before they're ready. Quite the reverse." This is despite the guidance for nurseries and childcarers referring to the targets as "learning and development requirements that all early years providers must by law deliver".
The guidance also refers to "the early learning goals which young children should have acquired by the end of the academic year in which they reach five" and "the matters, skills and processes which are required to be taught to young children".
Kim Simpson of the Open Eye campaign which has been set up with the backing of child-development experts, parents and leading children's authors to campaign for improvement to the EYFS, claims that the booklet is misleading. "It makes a point of mentioning the welfare requirements but the statutory learning requirements, which have caused so much disagreement and dissent, are noticeable by their absence," she told The Times. Ms Simpson, who has run a Montessori centre for preschool children in Richmond, West London, for more than 30 years, added that the booklet would confuse parents.
In July the Government bowed to pressure from critics and said that nurseries would be able to opt out of the two most contentious literacy targets if parents agreed to it. Ms Simpson said that anyone reading the booklet would not see anything in it that would justify a nursery seeking an exemption. "There is plenty in the statutory framework that both parents and practitioners have taken strong and principled issue with because of its developmental inappropriateness," she said. "But, in stark contrast, there is pretty much nothing that any parent or practitioner would take issue with in this parents' booklet. "[The booklet] seems to amount to little more than a propaganda exercise specially launched by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, and designed to head off any `parents' revolt' about the EYFS," she said.
Leading authors and child development experts have criticised some of the statutory targets in the EYFS, claiming that they are unrealistic and risk harming preschool children by setting back their development. They also accuse Beverley Hughes, the Children's Minister, of ignoring her advisers and shelving research commissioned by her department that found that tutoring children to read using basic phonics and simple sentences does not improve their success once they start school.
Source
Polygamists live longer
The usual stupid causal inferences. That you might have to start out more robust in various ways to acquire and keep plural wives seems not to be considered. And the data have to be suspect anyway. All the really long-lived nations (Such as Australia, Japan and Finland) practice monogamy
Men with more than one wife live longer, a new study of longevity has found. Research published in New Scientist magazine found that polygamy may be the key to a long life, with men from polygamous cultures living 12 per cent longer those from monogamous ones.
A team from the University of Sheffield in the UK came to the conclusion after studying older men from 140 countries that practise polygamy to varying degrees and those from 49 mostly monogamous nations. The lead researcher, ecologist Virpi Lummaa, said the explanation could be both social and genetic. Men who continued fathering kids into their 60s and 70s could take better care of their bodies because they had mouths to feed, Dr Lummaa said.
But evolutionary forces acting over thousands of years could also account for longer-lived men in polygamous cultures, a conference in New York was told.
Source
British bank embroiled in row over Sumo advert
Must not pretend to be Japanese?
"HSBC has become embroiled in a race row after it dressed up an overweight white man to look like a Japanese sumo wrestler for its latest advert. The model called Brian, who stars in the bank's commercial with the tag line "Fixed savings rates that won't budge", had his skin darkened and is wearing make-up that makes his eyes look narrower, it has been claimed. He is pictured in a Japanese-style wig and a traditional mawashi belt....
Godfrey King, director of the Anglo-Japanese Society of Wessex, said: "The fact that the picture depicts a sumo wrestler who is not actually a sumo wrestler, but has been made up to look like one, would be considered a high insult to the Japanese community. It is culturally insensitive. "It has insulted the honour of our nation."
HSBC is one of the largest banks in the world, with about 9,500 offices in 85 countries, including several in Asia. It was formerly known as the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.
Source
Society's challenge: to build character
The first headmaster of Stowe school, J F Roxburgh, declared his goal to be turning out young men who would be "acceptable at a dance and invaluable in a shipwreck".
A mixture of courtesy and courage used to be essential to the idea of a British citizen's character. Brits were the sort of people who knew both how to survive a blitz and queue politely. Similarly, Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scout movement, aimed to induce in his young charges "some of the spirit of self-negation, self-discipline, sense of humour, responsibility, helpfulness to others, loyalty and patriotism which go to make `character' ". He described his movement as nothing less than a "character factory".
But in the postwar shift towards a less constrained and judgmental society - "character talk", in Stefan Collini's phrase - dropped out of public discourse, except when considering someone's suitability for high office. The idea of good character came to sound old-fashioned and patronising. "The reason we find the concept of character difficult is because of class conflict in British society," says Matthew Taylor, former head of strategy for Tony Blair. "There was a sense that good character was handed down from a patrician class to the great unwashed." Thinkers and politicians across the political spectrum are trying to revive "character talk".
Taylor is pushing the idea of "pro-social behaviour" recognising, he says, that changes in personal behaviour are essential to successful policy in everything from climate change to obesity. David Cameron last month called for politicians to tackle issues of "public morality". Against the backdrop of the impoverished east end of Glasgow, he insisted politicians had to drop "moral neutrality". He criticised the political classes for "a refusal to make judgments about what is good and bad behaviour, right and wrong". Some people on the left are also starting to argue that character might matter as much as resources in improving life chances. Bestselling books such as Lynne Truss's Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of Everyday Life speak to a generalised anxiety about the breakdown of positive social norms of behaviour.
But it is important to keep this in perspective. Most of the time, most people are perfectly pleasant. British society as a whole is not "broken" in any meaningful sense. Of course, it is notoriously hard for politicians to get traction in the area of behaviour. They often fall into the trap described by the philosopher Jon Elster of "willing what cannot be willed". And Cameron is certainly taking some risks with his incursions into morality.
By insisting that individuals should take a share of responsibility for their obesity or poverty, he is thinking his way towards an integration of his ideas on responsibility, morality and "broken Britain" that may lead him towards a consideration of character formation. Conservatism and character seem natural political bedfellows, given traditional right-wing concerns with social order and reducing state dependency. What is more surprising is the number of people on the centre-left who can also see the point of a new focus on character.
For them, the concern is less with general social interaction - although they worry about that, too - than with the character of a small, influen-tial and expensive group that Blair once labelled the "deeply excluded". Since character is an unfashionable concept, it is important to be clear what it means in this public policy context.
The three key ingredients of a good character are: a sense of personal agency or self-direction; an acceptance of personal responsibility; and effective regulation of one's own emotions, in particular the ability to resist temptation or at least defer gratification. Progressives are realising that, thus defined, character is intimately linked to The specific concerns of progressives can be divided into three themes: the link between character attributes and life chances; the life chances "penalty" being paid by the children who do not develop a good character; and the growing demand for good character in the labour market.
Recent claims about social mobility in Britain grinding to a halt are exaggerated, but it does seem that the likelihood of a person being upwardly mobile is increasingly influenced by personal qualities such as confidence and self-control. Julia Margo, associate director of the Institute for Public Policy Research, has assembled an impressive body of evidence linking character to life chances. Her work, which draws on that by Leon Feinstein at the Institute of Education, shows that measured levels of "application" - defined as dedication and a capacity for concentration - at the age of 10 have a bigger impact on earnings by the age of 30 than ability in maths.
Avner Offer, professor of economic history at Oxford, likewise describes how "commitment devices" can help individuals to manage their own desires. In his book The Challenge of Affluence: Self-Control and Well-Being in the United States and Britain Since 1950, Offer provides a vignette of a familiar self-control challenge. "A young student ponders whether to spend the evening revising at her desk or to go out with friends.
How much to sacrifice tonight for a remote future? When to stop having fun, but also when to stop being serious? Conventions, expectations and institutions have built up gradually over decades and centuries to form a stock of equipment available to deal with her problem . . . sources and strategies of self-control, both cognitive and social, take time to develop." Offer argues that "personal capacity for commitment" is inculcated in institutions such as the family along what Margo calls "paths to socialisation".
Character is made, not born. Offer argues that consumer capitalism, by providing a constant flow of novelty, undermines these sources and strategies. It is harder for us to stick to our commitments in a society bombarded with advertising temptations and saturated with the idea of individual consumer choice. This seems implausible: after all, as Margo's work shows, plenty of people do end up with good character traits - and, if anything, it is the more affluent who do so. Nonetheless, Offer is surely right to argue that the "stock of equipment" that makes up character is of vital importance in the construction of a successful life. The second concern is that children who fail to develop positive character traits are less likely to succeed - and these children come overwhelmingly from low-income homes.
The political right used to argue that poverty is caused by weakness of character; the left is now realising it may be the other way around. "Over time, poverty has become more associated with differences in character development," Margo told me. "So while in the past a poor deprived child would have about the same chance of developing a good character as a more affluent one, our research suggests that children who were born into deprivation in the 1970s as opposed to the late 1950s were much less likely to develop good character than more affluent groups." The family is the main "character factory" - and Margo's work shows that some families are much more effective manufacturers than others.
We need a better understanding of what is going on in these failing families. Some evolutionary biologists point to genetic inheritance and it is clear that some character traits are inherited. Traditional left- wing analyses, on the other hand, highlight material deprivation. But the weight of evidence is that good parents provide good insulation against inherited negative traits - and that being a good parent has little to do with having a good income.
Stephen Scott, professor of child health and behaviour at King's College London, has conducted a range of studies showing how the behaviour of parents influences the life trajectories of their children, even when genetic predispositions are taken into account. "There's an interaction between your genetic predisposition and the way you turn out according to the way you're raised," says Scott. "When it comes to being antisocial, aggressive, stealing and lying, the interaction is a big one. If you have poor self-control and a rather twitchy, irritable temperament and you're brought up in a harsh way, it's bad news. For that group, the rate of criminality aged 17 is about 40%. But if you have that twitchy character and you're brought up in a reasonably calm, soothing way, you will do well."
If low-income parents are doing less well on this front - as it seems they are - the question of how poverty interacts with parenting becomes important. Scott is emphatic here. "Financial poverty is a factor, but not a central one," he says. "I am fond of saying: poverty of what? And actually it seems to be poverty of the parent-child experience . . . that leads to poor child outcomes rather than poverty of a material kind." Consistent parental love and discipline is the motor of the character production line and not all children are lucky enough to receive it.
A poor start in life, in terms of character development, reduces educational performance, which obviously lessens labour market opportunities. But - the third concern - lack of good character has a more direct influence on job opportunities too. In Aesthetic Labour and the Policy-Making Agenda: Time for a Reappraisal of Skills, Chris Warhurst and his colleagues at Strathclyde University show that an increasing number of employers are following the advice of Rocco Forte, who when asked the secret of providing great service in hotels, replied: "Hire nice people."
As the economy shifts towards service jobs, the person increasingly becomes part of the product. This means that "soft skills" such as social confidence, patience and kindness grow in importance. Ironically it is often the children of the middle classes who make the best servants. In Glasgow, studied in detail by Warhurst and his colleagues, 80% of jobs are in the service sector, but the people living in nearby places such as Easterhouse aren't getting them. "The danger is that many people in deprived areas are being denied work because of a lack of cultural capital," says Warhurst. "In Glasgow, 50% of jobs are now filled by commuters from the middle-class suburbs."
What helps to form good character? Margo says there are key ingredients that make for success: "It is regular time with the same adult over an extended period, so you respect them and learn from them. Which is why things like the Scout movement are so effective, because you're progressing, you're ageing through the institution. And there tends to be a very good staying-on rate for the adult workers, so you have a lot of interaction with the same adult over a long period of time."
Baden-Powell and all of us involved in the Scout movement - I've recently "come out" as a Scout leader - would agree. Character is an old idea with contemporary relevance. A considerable number of pressing social problems - obesity, welfare reform, pensions, public disorder, educational failure, social immobility - are all, in part, questions of character. It is a treacherous political terrain but one in which governments are increasingly entangled. Anyone who is interested in creating a successful liberal society is interested in character, too, whether they admit it or not. Good societies need good people.
Source
Paedophile Imperialism
The British government is exploiting the odious Gary Glitter to smash freedom of movement and hector governments in the Third World.
The reckoning is still to come. Having been freed after serving 27 months in a Vietnamese prison for committing obscene acts with two girls then aged 11 and 12, 64-year-old Paul Gadd, otherwise known as `pop-star paedo' Gary Glitter, was due to arrive in the UK this morning. Unfortunately for a media and political elite eager for an easy crusade, Gadd's heart has been fluttering. As I write he remains holed up in Bangkok, refusing to travel, citing ill-health and a possible heart attack.
Yet that hasn't stopped the British political elite and sections of the media clamouring for new laws and restrictions to keep the likes of Glitter under their watchful eye. If his case `proves' anything, it is that the paedophile panic, so passionately indulged by our leaders, is a threat to the sanity of society and to civil liberties, too.
Since being found guilty in Britain in 1999 on 54 counts of possessing indecent images of children, Gadd's stardom has leant itself easily to infamy. After serving his four-month sentence in a British jail, he unsurprisingly left the country. Yet from Spain to Cuba to Cambodia, wherever he went the press followed. Over the past nine years, Gadd has become nothing less than the poster-boy for the paedophile panic; he has been transformed from a convicted sex offender into the strange-looking, pot-bellied symbol of the global paedophile threat that stalks all of our children.
Given the hysteria his return is likely to provoke, his heart-attack ruse in Bangkok is perhaps understandable. Others argue that his reluctance to board the flight has a malicious intent behind it: his real plan, we are told, is to abscond and continue his vile ways across the globe. To think otherwise of this no doubt horrid individual is difficult. From the stencilled arch of the eyebrows, once an innocent Glam-rock style statement, to the strange tufty beard and shaved head, he now looks every inch the demon.
And courtesy of the media's 10-year obsession with his every move, his is also the face that can launch a thousand illiberal measures. The campaign to paint him as a one-man threat to the world's children has been so comprehensive that the British government can threaten to introduce severe new international measures on the back of his sordid sex life. Consider the government's revised Foreign Travel Orders (FTOs), which will potentially ban convicted sex offenders from travelling abroad.
UK home secretary Jacqui Smith felt moved enough by Gadd's return to make what amounts to a policy statement: `We need to control him, and he will be once he returns to this country. It would certainly be my view that with the sort of record that he's got, he shouldn't be travelling anywhere in the world.' (1) Or as the newspaper columnist Deborah Orr put it, this is an opportunity not to be missed: `Glitter's case is a perfect opportunity for Britain to start practising what it has recently been preaching.' (2)
What has Britain been `preaching'? The possibility of banning convicted sex offenders from travelling abroad was originally part of the New Labour government's 2003 Sex Offences Bill. This meant that police, providing they could gather evidence that a particular individual with sex offence convictions intended to travel abroad with the intention of committing further offences, could apply for six-month travel prohibitions. Yet as a recent report by End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and the Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT) informs us, only two FTOs were applied for between 2003 and 2006.
ECPAT's Christine Beddoe argues: `At the moment the Foreign Travel Orders that we have in place are not being used very much; the police say they're a bit unwieldy, there's too much administration.' (3) And one way to make it easier to use them - as both ECPAT and the Home Office have proposed - is to remove the need to prove intent to commit offences overseas. In short, the fact that someone has been convicted in the past of a sex offence ought to be evidence enough to prevent him from travelling abroad.
The ability to ride roughshod over such quaint notions as rehabilitation and `doing one's time' - the idea that once someone has been released from prison he is free and equal again - rests on the presumed exceptionality of the paedophile. The motto of contemporary society is: `Once a child abuser, always a child abuser.' These are not deemed criminals, but slaves to uncontrollable passions, individuals forever in thrall to a sexual demiurge. And on the back of keeping these monsters on a leash, the authorities have been rewriting important aspects of the criminal justice system and seeking to undermine free movement.
One doesn't have to be a friend of the paedophiles or a supporter of the odious Glitter to be concerned by these latest moves. It is worth bearing in mind that there are currently 29,000 individuals on Britain's Sex Offenders' Register, and their crimes range wildly from a thirtysomething teacher having an inappropriate fling with a 15-year-old student to far more serious sex offences. Under the current rules, police must suspect a considerable risk of reoffending overseas before imposing a Foreign Travel Order. Yet if the FTOs were to be freed from the need to prove intent, any one of these 29,000 people could be effectively jailed within Britain's borders on the whim of the authorities, despite being ostensibly `free citizens' who have served their sentences.
Some will say, `So what, they're only paedophiles' - even though the vast majority are not paedophiles. But that is to miss the point. Smith's proposals represent an assault on important ideas of justice and on the culture of liberty itself. The argument that we must monitor, put on a register and restrict the movement of everyone who has committed a certain kind of offence undermines the idea that convicts must be allowed to re-enter society upon serving their time. And if the government creates for itself the power to impose FTOs on one-time offenders whom it does not like, who will be next? Football fans can already have their passports confiscated if it's suspected they will get up to no good overseas. What about the tens of thousands of young Britons who travel to Pakistan every year? Best keep them at home too. Increasing the power of the state to determine who can and cannot leave the country takes us into Soviet-style politics.
Just as the pursuit of nightmarish paedophiles gives shameless politicians a chance to fight the `good fight' domestically, so the campaign against so-called sex tourism represents its transfer to the international sphere. Indeed, be it terrorism, or now child abuse, the politics of fear is one export that Western governments have a monopoly in producing.
So alongside travel bans on convicted offenders, ECPAT is also keen for the authorities to enforce measures to monitor unconvicted British nationals abroad, lest they be tempted to indulge in some sex criminality. It is encouraging closer cooperation between anti-abuse non-governmental organisations and the UK government, and is calling for the presence of British police in certain sex tourist hotspots (Australia already posts police forces in some Far East countries). Think of it as Child Abuse Colonialism. As ECPAT puts it, if sex tourism is to be tackled, the British government needs to `reverse the ideology that if abuse happens overseas then we should simply let the governments "over there" deal with it' (4).
Underpinning such an assumption is that other countries, in particular Thailand and Vietnam, are incapable of maintaining their own rule of law. Whether it's due to their being too `corrupt' or simply a result of their poverty, as an ECPAT report argues, apparently Britain needs to intervene at some level to help clean up the paedophile problem in these unwieldy nations.
This is dangerous stuff. Activists and officials seem keen to use the politics of fear to meddle in other, apparently untrustworthy states. Internationalised, the paedophile panic paints other countries as cesspits of abuse and slavery, and it permits the massive simplification of genuine problems of child exploitation. The ECPAT report notes the case of a British national called `Martin' who bought a 12-year-old girl for $800 in 1991, yet it does not interrogate the level of economic underdevelopment that underpins such an exchange between a wealthy Westerner and an impoverished Easterner. This is not to diminish the moral abhorrence of Martin's act; rather it is to refuse to reduce it to morality alone. Under the newly globalised paedophile panic, complex social and economic problems are simply reduced to a good versus evil battle, where it's the British authorities versus the paedophile, the British state versus untrustworthy legal systems `over there'.
As the media's eyes focus on Gary Glitter and what he will do next, those of us concerned about justice, freedom and social sanity might do better to keep an eye on the Glitter-obsessed Home Office.
Source
Monday, August 25, 2008
Why I refused to let my child be weighed
The British government's fat-headed policy on obesity should be boycotted
It appears my wife and I have upset the Government, as part of the small minority of parents who refused to have our 11-year-old child weighed and measured in school last term. The authorities worry that it was the parents of fat children who opted out. Or it could have been parents like us, who object to being conscripted into a fat-headed crusade against child obesity that is heavy on political intrusion and light on proven effectiveness.
Letters are to be sent to parents whose children were weighed, giving a "mark" ranging from "underweight" through "healthy weight" to "very overweight". There has been a predictable PC-gone-mad reaction to the Department of Health's predictably stupid decision to drop the word "obese". But whatever words they use, the message is clear: that the authorities have the right to decide whether or not our children are living "healthy lives". They want to measure not only body mass but moral worth, to decide whether our children fit the State's model. The most likely results will be to produce miserable kids and anxious parents.
Despite overegged talk of a child obesity "epidemic", the real extent, causes and health consequences of children being overweight remain uncertain. What is more certain is the lack of hard evidence that campaigns of intervention in school or family life have any beneficial effects. But whatever the intentions, they do single out kids for more pressure, harassment and ridicule - which is all that our body-conscious pre-teens need.
Yet the authorities throw their substantial weight behind every stunt from policing lunchboxes to weighing children like little piggies. At a time when governments have lowered horizons from creating the Good Society to moulding the Healthy Citizen, the anti-obesity crusade legitimises public monitoring of private behaviour. Ours is an age when bullies can no longer call children fatty in the playground. Yet it is deemed legitimate for government to bully them and their parents, using obesity as a bogeyman in scary stories about how we are killing our kids.
It will be a joyless world for children if we turn the pleasures of food, drink and play into problems of "healthy living". At the Museum of London yesterday, my daughters learnt about the statue Fat Boy of Pie Corner, erected where the Great Fire of 1666 ended to warn Londoners that it was caused by "the sin of gluttony". Today the pious warn us about our unhealthy lifestyles rather than our sins. Back home, the children borrowed a neighbour's Wii Fit game. The first thing it does is decide whether you are ideal, overweight or obese. What fun!
Source
UK Scientist: Recent weather is 'stark reminder' global warming 'has now stalled'
By UK atmospheric scientist John Kettley, formerly of the Met Office and the Fluid Dynamics Department at the Bracknell headquarters
Atrocious weather has seriously delayed the harvest this year - by now oil seed rape, barley and oats should already have been gathered. The delay could mean either a loss in yield or drop in quality, with a subsequent fall in income for farmers for the second year running.
But this is not a symptom of so-called `global warming'. These conditions are not unique and are more like the poor August weather Britain saw during the Twenties and Sixties. It is more likely a stark reminder that the warming trend we recorded in the last part of the 20th Century has now stalled. Globally, 1998 remains the warmest of the last 150 years.
Of course, we have seen very hot months in the UK recently, but we should be under no illusion about global warming. We are not suddenly about to be catapulted towards a Mediterranean climate. We are surrounded by water, with the vast Atlantic Ocean to our west, while the jet stream and gulf stream will forever influence our daily weather and long-term climate.
So, this year's Sixties-style August has seen bad weather in many places. Northern Ireland suffered particularly from serious flooding last weekend, but it has been the cumulative affect of cool, wet and dull conditions which has really hampered farmers' progress.
For every loser there are always winners. Lerwick in Shetland has largely stayed north of the rain-bearing jet stream and in the past week alone saw almost 40 hours of sunshine. Further south, mainland Scotland was not so blessed, as storms brought 2in (50mm) of heavy rain to many places, including Edinburgh, on Wednesday and Thursday. There will be more rain for the west of Scotland in the next few days, but at long last much of the country can look forward to a change in fortune. Late August should see warm picnic weather - which I think will last through September, in line with recent years.
Source
Anger as British veterans' parade cancelled while gay pride march goes ahead
About 3,000 former and current servicemen and women who served in wars ranging from World War Two to Afghanistan proudly marched through Doncaster town centre last August on the town's inaugural Veterans' Day. But this year the local Royal British Legion branch claims it has been shunned by the council, and told the event could not be staged because of a "lack of amenities." Yet Doncaster staged its first gay pride parade last Sunday, and a few weeks before hosted a civic parade in which dignitaries, community workers and the public took part.
Ken Wood, 46, a Coldstream Guards gunner who served in the Gulf War and is the district secretary of the Royal British Legion said: "All the Doncaster branches of the Legion are disgusted that there will not be a Veterans' Day parade. "The council do not seem to care about the achievements of servicemen and women. "I am not homophobic but the council supported both Doncaster Pride and the Mayor's civic parade."
The veterans assumed they would be allowed to hold a parade this month but were astonished to discover they had little civic support. Mr Wood said: "One of our Legion members spoke to an official at the civic offices who told him we couldn't have a parade this year because the council did not have the amenities. "I rang the official and she effectively told me the police couldn't afford the staff to block off the roads. It's crazy, I went on the parade last year and only saw two community bobbies stopping the traffic. "It's hardly down to finance or manpower is it? I asked her to put what she told me over the phone in writing so I could read it out to my members but I'm still awaiting a reply. "I wrote to say I was sorely disappointed that we were not being allowed to parade in our own town. We just wanted to parade our standards and colours."
Doncaster Council initially said that the police would only provide officers for Remembrance Sunday, the St George's Day parade and the civic parade. But now the council and the police have issued a joint statement saying they had not received an official request to stage the Veterans' Day parade.
Local war veterans were so upset they boycotted the civic parade in protest at the council's handling of the situation. Diane Dernie, the mother of Doncaster paratrooper Ben Parkinson whose compensation fight following his horrific injuries in Afghanistan made national headlines, said: "It is a terrible shame. We've seen in the past that people in general have been very supportive of the Armed Forces. "Ben would have been very keen to take part. He is Army through and through."
Veterans' Day was introduced by the Government on June 27 in 2006 to celebrate the contribution of ex-servicemen and women but events can be held throughout the year. Doncaster Council said: "It is not a matter of finance or the council not wanting to do it. "The police look into the number of parades being held and give the go-ahead on a case-by-case basis. We are quite happy to hold the Veterans' parade provided the police are happy." Acting Chief Insp Andy Kent of South Yorkshire Police added: "Each request is assessed on an individual basis. We have not received a request this year about the Veterans' Day parade."
Source
VERY sad news about Margaret Thatcher's decline.
The British government's fat-headed policy on obesity should be boycotted
It appears my wife and I have upset the Government, as part of the small minority of parents who refused to have our 11-year-old child weighed and measured in school last term. The authorities worry that it was the parents of fat children who opted out. Or it could have been parents like us, who object to being conscripted into a fat-headed crusade against child obesity that is heavy on political intrusion and light on proven effectiveness.
Letters are to be sent to parents whose children were weighed, giving a "mark" ranging from "underweight" through "healthy weight" to "very overweight". There has been a predictable PC-gone-mad reaction to the Department of Health's predictably stupid decision to drop the word "obese". But whatever words they use, the message is clear: that the authorities have the right to decide whether or not our children are living "healthy lives". They want to measure not only body mass but moral worth, to decide whether our children fit the State's model. The most likely results will be to produce miserable kids and anxious parents.
Despite overegged talk of a child obesity "epidemic", the real extent, causes and health consequences of children being overweight remain uncertain. What is more certain is the lack of hard evidence that campaigns of intervention in school or family life have any beneficial effects. But whatever the intentions, they do single out kids for more pressure, harassment and ridicule - which is all that our body-conscious pre-teens need.
Yet the authorities throw their substantial weight behind every stunt from policing lunchboxes to weighing children like little piggies. At a time when governments have lowered horizons from creating the Good Society to moulding the Healthy Citizen, the anti-obesity crusade legitimises public monitoring of private behaviour. Ours is an age when bullies can no longer call children fatty in the playground. Yet it is deemed legitimate for government to bully them and their parents, using obesity as a bogeyman in scary stories about how we are killing our kids.
It will be a joyless world for children if we turn the pleasures of food, drink and play into problems of "healthy living". At the Museum of London yesterday, my daughters learnt about the statue Fat Boy of Pie Corner, erected where the Great Fire of 1666 ended to warn Londoners that it was caused by "the sin of gluttony". Today the pious warn us about our unhealthy lifestyles rather than our sins. Back home, the children borrowed a neighbour's Wii Fit game. The first thing it does is decide whether you are ideal, overweight or obese. What fun!
Source
UK Scientist: Recent weather is 'stark reminder' global warming 'has now stalled'
By UK atmospheric scientist John Kettley, formerly of the Met Office and the Fluid Dynamics Department at the Bracknell headquarters
Atrocious weather has seriously delayed the harvest this year - by now oil seed rape, barley and oats should already have been gathered. The delay could mean either a loss in yield or drop in quality, with a subsequent fall in income for farmers for the second year running.
But this is not a symptom of so-called `global warming'. These conditions are not unique and are more like the poor August weather Britain saw during the Twenties and Sixties. It is more likely a stark reminder that the warming trend we recorded in the last part of the 20th Century has now stalled. Globally, 1998 remains the warmest of the last 150 years.
Of course, we have seen very hot months in the UK recently, but we should be under no illusion about global warming. We are not suddenly about to be catapulted towards a Mediterranean climate. We are surrounded by water, with the vast Atlantic Ocean to our west, while the jet stream and gulf stream will forever influence our daily weather and long-term climate.
So, this year's Sixties-style August has seen bad weather in many places. Northern Ireland suffered particularly from serious flooding last weekend, but it has been the cumulative affect of cool, wet and dull conditions which has really hampered farmers' progress.
For every loser there are always winners. Lerwick in Shetland has largely stayed north of the rain-bearing jet stream and in the past week alone saw almost 40 hours of sunshine. Further south, mainland Scotland was not so blessed, as storms brought 2in (50mm) of heavy rain to many places, including Edinburgh, on Wednesday and Thursday. There will be more rain for the west of Scotland in the next few days, but at long last much of the country can look forward to a change in fortune. Late August should see warm picnic weather - which I think will last through September, in line with recent years.
Source
Anger as British veterans' parade cancelled while gay pride march goes ahead
About 3,000 former and current servicemen and women who served in wars ranging from World War Two to Afghanistan proudly marched through Doncaster town centre last August on the town's inaugural Veterans' Day. But this year the local Royal British Legion branch claims it has been shunned by the council, and told the event could not be staged because of a "lack of amenities." Yet Doncaster staged its first gay pride parade last Sunday, and a few weeks before hosted a civic parade in which dignitaries, community workers and the public took part.
Ken Wood, 46, a Coldstream Guards gunner who served in the Gulf War and is the district secretary of the Royal British Legion said: "All the Doncaster branches of the Legion are disgusted that there will not be a Veterans' Day parade. "The council do not seem to care about the achievements of servicemen and women. "I am not homophobic but the council supported both Doncaster Pride and the Mayor's civic parade."
The veterans assumed they would be allowed to hold a parade this month but were astonished to discover they had little civic support. Mr Wood said: "One of our Legion members spoke to an official at the civic offices who told him we couldn't have a parade this year because the council did not have the amenities. "I rang the official and she effectively told me the police couldn't afford the staff to block off the roads. It's crazy, I went on the parade last year and only saw two community bobbies stopping the traffic. "It's hardly down to finance or manpower is it? I asked her to put what she told me over the phone in writing so I could read it out to my members but I'm still awaiting a reply. "I wrote to say I was sorely disappointed that we were not being allowed to parade in our own town. We just wanted to parade our standards and colours."
Doncaster Council initially said that the police would only provide officers for Remembrance Sunday, the St George's Day parade and the civic parade. But now the council and the police have issued a joint statement saying they had not received an official request to stage the Veterans' Day parade.
Local war veterans were so upset they boycotted the civic parade in protest at the council's handling of the situation. Diane Dernie, the mother of Doncaster paratrooper Ben Parkinson whose compensation fight following his horrific injuries in Afghanistan made national headlines, said: "It is a terrible shame. We've seen in the past that people in general have been very supportive of the Armed Forces. "Ben would have been very keen to take part. He is Army through and through."
Veterans' Day was introduced by the Government on June 27 in 2006 to celebrate the contribution of ex-servicemen and women but events can be held throughout the year. Doncaster Council said: "It is not a matter of finance or the council not wanting to do it. "The police look into the number of parades being held and give the go-ahead on a case-by-case basis. We are quite happy to hold the Veterans' parade provided the police are happy." Acting Chief Insp Andy Kent of South Yorkshire Police added: "Each request is assessed on an individual basis. We have not received a request this year about the Veterans' Day parade."
Source
VERY sad news about Margaret Thatcher's decline.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Censorship online: who needs evidence?
A new UK parliamentary report says the internet must be regulated to protect children - even though there's no proof they are being harmed.
The internet is made up of hardcore pornography, videos of fighting, bullying, rape and websites that glorify extreme diets, selfharm, and suicide. Or at least that's the impression you could easily be left with after reading an alarm-ridden report just published by a UK parliamentary committee. And that means further support for the idea of controls on what we can and cannot view, all in the name of protecting children.
Harmful Content on the Internet and in Video Games , a report by the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee was published last Thursday. The committee's report draws on an earlier report for the UK government authored by popular clinical psychologist, TV pundit and presenter Dr Tanya Byron, published in March. The Byron Report concluded that `[C]hildren and young people need to be empowered to keep themselves safe'.
In what amounts to a child-centred approach to understanding the impact of technology on children, Byron recommended setting up yet another regulatory body, called the UK Council for Child Internet Safety. The government has already agreed to do this before the end of the year. The council's remit will be to work with internet service providers (ISPs) and industry to place the interests of children at the forefront of how the games industry and myriad website publishers must rate, monitor and, in some cases, censor their content.
The consensus is that parents can no longer be trusted to deal with the various hurdles that our risk-averse society has created. In the absence of parental skills, bodies like the new council will help alert parents to the potential dangers when children happen to stray online without any supervision.
News of all this has caused some protest, but only amongst those who produce games and websites. The booming computer games industry argues that it has already put in place all the necessary checks and balances to regulate games. They insist their own standard, Pan European Games Information (PEGI), is good enough for the job.
On this, Bryon's report fudged the issue. She thought a combination of PEGI and the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) ratings would do the job, arguing that both the BBFC and PEGI could put their stickers on the front and on the back respectively on each games' packaging. The select committee's recommendation, on the other hand, is to extend the remit of the BBFC to include computer games.
But regulating the games industry is just one part of the select committee's focus. They also warn that children regularly stray online unsupervised, especially to websites like YouTube and other various social networking websites. What particularly worries the committee is that these websites are full of content uploaded by all kinds of people about any subject of their choosing. And in the case of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, they worry that children are inadvertently putting themselves at risk by posting information about themselves online.
In consequence, fingers are being pointed at website owners including Google (which owns YouTube) because the committee argues that they are not doing enough to protect children from a mass of inappropriate content. The committee believes big service providers like YouTube should be more proactive in reviewing material, more efficient in removing it if it is unsuitable, and better at flagging it up with a label where necessary.
The problem with websites, and the internet in general, is that they are very hard to regulate. Websites like YouTube thrive on massive amounts of content that is constantly being uploaded by thousands of people every day. Google have said that to try to regulate all of this content (some estimate as much as 10 hours worth is uploaded every minute) makes the task of censorship nearly impossible.
As a result, the debate around the select committee report has narrowly focused on who should be regulating who, whilst completely ignoring the major assumption behind this discussion: that the internet is causing children harm. Indeed, no-one seems to be challenging the misconstrued evidence about why children and their parents need help in dealing with the internet's content.
In fact, self-regulation and censorship is already happening. The government-endorsed Internet Watch Foundation, set up in 1996, aims to ensure that all ISPs and mobile operators remove any offensive or illegal content that they might inadvertently host.
The Byron Report and the new select committee report raise the bar of internet regulation. But the central claim that the internet causes children harm is not backed up with any serious evidence. Likewise, the focus on the internet's `dark side' is also unfounded. The obsession with protecting children is opportunist and a convenient means to deflect criticism of the proposed regulation of content; critics are simply told that we must err on the side of caution. The available research offers no conclusive proof either way that the internet is doing irreparable harm to children. As the select committee admits, there is `still no clear evidence of a causal link between activity or behaviour portrayed on-screen and subsequent behaviour by the person who viewed it'.
There is nothing new about using the vulnerable to justify restrictions on what can be viewed, particularly those who are regarded as lacking the maturity or capacity to understand what is being shown (which has always included children and those with special needs, but would once have included women, too). What is new about the select committee report is that it uses the language of risk so as to by-pass the need for evidence of harm or offence; this `you can never be too sure' outlook will always trump the ambiguity of the research to date. The cause of protecting children conveniently makes sense when it is, as the committee says, `based on the probability of risk'. As the committee declares, `incontrovertible evidence of harm is not necessarily required in order to justify a restriction of access to certain types of content in any medium'.
Not only is the new report blase about the lack of evidence to support its conclusion that this new media content can be harmful; the committee cannot even define what is meant by `harmful content': `The definition of what is "harmful" is not hard and fast: for one 10-year-old, a scene will seem very real and disturbing, whereas another will be able apparently to dismiss it or treat it as fantasy.'
But while there is little evidence being presented on how and why the internet is a threat to children, once the spectre of children being at risk is raised, everyone closes ranks. Yet again, the internet provides the perfect prism through which to discuss the culpability of adults as being unfit or ill-equipped to bring up children.
We should be extremely suspicious whenever politicians, campaigners and `experts' play the children card. Almost any kind of restriction can be justified if the young are supposedly at risk. Amidst all this panic, we need to draw the opposite conclusions to the select committee report and demonstrate why the internet should be left alone. While the internet still remains relatively uncensored and unregulated, it causes us to act like adults in how we deal with it, and in how we supervise others, including our children. However, if this latest set of proposals gets through, it will mean allowing the authorities to decide paternalistically what we can watch or play. In the name of protecting children, we will all be treated as children.
Source
Britain's top universities 'favouring the poor'
Leading universities have been accused of discriminating against middle class pupils by favouring less-qualified students from poorer backgrounds. An investigation by The Daily Telegraph reveals five out of 20 elite institutions in the UK make lower grade offers to sixth-formers from poor-performing schools and deprived homes. The London School of Economics, Bristol, Nottingham, Newcastle, and Edinburgh all allow staff to choose students with worse grades. Overall, almost two-thirds of the elite Russell Group - which represents research-intensive universities - attach weighting to candidates' schools, home postcodes and whether family members also attended university as a tiebreaker during the application process.
The findings will fuel allegations of "social engineering" at the most sought-after universities. It comes just days after Oxford was criticised for using postcodes to identify students from less well-off areas when interviewing candidates. Under Government rules, all higher education institutions have a duty to encourage more students from non-traditional backgrounds to apply.
But Martin Stephen, high master of St Paul's, a fee-paying school in west London, branded the move "immensely dangerous and hugely unfair". "One is in very close danger of punishing a child for coming from a good home or going to a good school," he said. Alan Smithers, professor of education at Buckingham University, said: "There would be uproar if we tried to take into account this data when selecting our Olympic team. We don't seem to be able to recognise talent and develop talent as we do in the sporting arena."
At present just a fifth of students at Russell Group universities come from deprived backgrounds, compared to almost a third at other institutions. Three-quarters are from state schools, even though they account for 93 per cent of children educated in the UK. The Telegraph analysed admissions policies at all 20 universities.
Documents reveal that students from poor homes can receive vastly differing advantages depending on where they apply. Twelve universities instructed tutors to use some form of routinely gathered data about students' socio-economic or educational background as a standard part of the admissions procedure. An admissions policy drawn up by the LSE says: "The lower the average performance of the school, the more weight may be given to the candidate whose past examination performance significantly exceeds their school's average performance." Five universities also allow staff to use flexible grade offers to take applicants' backgrounds into consideration.
Newcastle University says: "Admissions tutors have discretion to make conditional offers which differ from the typical entry requirement, if in their judgement the typical entry requirement would not be appropriate because of the particular circumstances of an applicant." A spokesman for Bristol laid out a scenario in which two candidates apply for the same place, "one of whom is predicted to achieve AAB at A-level while the other is heading for AAA".
"The first attends a school that is dealing with many educational challenges and where AAB is exceptional," he said. "The second attends a school where AAA is not unusual. He or she has an uninspiring reference and a lacklustre personal statement. We think that offering a place to the first candidate rather than the second is both fair and in tune with our desire to recruit the students with the strongest academic qualities."
All of the universities who make use of personal information defended their decision, claiming that it allows them to operate a fair policy by identifying potential and not just prior achievement. But eight Russell Group universities - including Birmingham, Cardiff, Imperial, Queen's University Belfast and Southampton - consider the use of such information to be unfair. Some also said it breached their equal opportunities policies and could trigger a decline in academic standards.
An Imperial College London spokesman said: "Admission is based on academic merit... the College will not lower its admission standards as a means of widening access."
Source
Kingsnorth: a camp of uncritical conformity
The British 'climate campers' pose as radical - yet their disdain for consumerism and love of sustainability makes them little different from Prime Minister Brown
Environmental activists have built a climate camp near a power station in Kingsnorth, south-east England, to protest against plans for a new coal-fired plant. Yet Britain's energy infrastructure is heading rapidly for obsolescence, and the British authorities need to start building coal-fired plants now if we are to avoid a shortfall in energy supply. That is of little concern to the climate campers, however - they would positively embrace a fall in energy supply, and the austerity that would follow.
Britain is facing a double whammy of competing problems in terms of electricity generation. For one thing, the ageing stock of power stations currently in use - particularly the nuclear plants - is reaching the end of its life. The amount of electricity generated by these plants will decline sharply over the next 10 years as the plants are decommissioned.
At the same time, there is a widespread desire to reduce the amount of CO2 being produced. One way this might be done is by increasing the proportion of energy we get from low-carbon renewable sources: wind, solar and wave power, in particular. These may supply - if all goes to plan - around 20 per cent of Britain's electricity by 2020 (and that's being ambitious).
But if the nuclear stations, which currently supply more than 20 per cent of our electricity, are not replaced, then Britain will still need to find about 80 per cent of its electricity supplies from non-renewable sources. That mostly means by burning fossil fuels - gas and coal - with all of their accompanying CO2 emissions. Even if the current stock of nuclear stations could be replaced in the next 10 years, there would still be a massive shortfall in electricity supply that must continue to be met by fossil fuels. And the government's one viable plan to replace the ageing nuclear stations - by flogging the company that owns the plants to French power company EDF - has just gone belly-up.
Whatever happens with nuclear and renewables, we're facing a severe shortfall in power in the future unless we use fossil fuels. What we need are more power stations that use reliable technology as soon as possible. Reducing CO2 emissions will simply have to wait. As David Porter, chief executive of the Association of Electricity Producers, pointed out in the Guardian: `If we want diversity of supply - not being overdependent on one fuel, such as gas - and security of supply, we need coal for the foreseeable future.' Paul Golby, head of E.ON, the company that wants to build the new coal-fired plant at Kingsnorth, was blunter still: `The climate campers believe that a combination of wind and wave power and increased energy efficiency will be enough to bridge the gap. But that is simply unrealistic.'
The climate campers' blinkered attitude is not surprising, since meeting the needs of consumers is not very high on their list of priorities. In fact, some of them seem to believe that an `energy crunch' is just the sort of useful thing that might halt our mindless consumption.
One climate camper, Isabelle Michel, told BBC TV's Newsnight: `One of the most important things we need to do is to learn to reduce consumption. I think one of the reasons for saying that nuclear is necessary and renewables will not be enough is if we look at maintaining the levels of consumption or even increasing the levels of consumption - because that's the mentality. So we need more, more, more.' Another protester, Kevin Smith, bemoaned `the madness of trying to maintain a world of perpetual economic growth in a world of finite resources'.
This has always been the most fundamental tenet of environmentalism: that economic growth is a bad thing. We humans should reduce our `ecological footprint' and learn to make do with less because resources are finite - and apparently, as we expand our impact on the planet, we are squeezing out other living things that are just as worthy of existence as we are. This is in direct contradiction to any notion of progress, to the idea that through the development of society and technology, we can generate greater quantities of material wealth that allow us to live longer, healthier, more comfortable and potentially freer lives.
Despite what the anti-growth greens might claim, it's not as if we live in a world where everyone has a private jet and dines on foie gras. The current fuel and food prices are reminding many of us of how little spare cash we really have, even in Britain, one of the richest countries in the world. For the billions in the world who live on less than one dollar per day, environmentalists' demand to `reduce consumption' and `halt economic growth' must sound like a sick joke. Behind environmentalists' various debates about energy supply, coal, nuclear and renewables, there lurks their central moralistic belief system: humans are nothing special, in fact they are destructive, and it is high time they learned to live on less.
What is particularly sickening, given the pressing needs of humanity both at home and abroad, is that the climate camp in Kingsnorth is being presented as the cutting edge of radical protest. When so little else is happening politically, an assortment of slick green campaigners, lentil-eating hippies, misguided, idealistic students and assorted middle-aged oddballs has come to be seen as the touchstone of anti-establishment politics.
In fact, these climate campaigners are very far from anti-establishment. With sustainability at the heart of every government policy, the government shares most of the ideas espoused at Kingsnorth right now. Telling people to tighten their belts and put up with less is an idea that politicians have been keen to stress for centuries, while reducing our impact on the planet is the nearest thing to a `big idea' that the political class possesses today. Indeed, it is hard to tell the difference between Isabelle Michel's demand that we rein in consumption and Gordon Brown's recent advice that we should avoid being wasteful by throwing away our food. From the very top of government right through to the edgy green protest movement, there is a consensus that the greedy, thoughtless masses are demanding too much.
The problem for our political leaders - and the source of charges of hypocrisy from the green movement - is that this sustainability-obsessed outlook must live side-by-side with the need to make society work. And that means addressing practical challenges such as making sure the lights work when you hit the switch, that food gets produced and can be delivered to the shops, and so on. The result of this clash between a low-horizons outlook and the practical need to keep British society chugging along is the kind of administrative paralysis we have seen at the heart of the New Labour government.
If practicality versus ideology is proving a problem for the government, it is starting to generate cracks in the green movement, too. Underpinning green thought is a moral distaste for the vulgarity of consumption, which has an almost religious passion to it: fire and brimstone millenarianism meets monkish self-denial. But even greens want to eat, travel, receive medical treatment, and get an education. And these things require a highly developed society that uses up resources and are a constant reminder of the need for humanity to control Nature.
This paradox within environmentalism is best reflected in the current debate about nuclear power. Those greens who are concerned with climate change above all else can see why nuclear, a low-carbon technology, makes sense in the current `emergency'; most famously, Gaia theorist James Lovelock supports the introduction of nuclear power as a way of `saving the planet'. Other greens, however, would rather see society grind to a halt than allow the construction of one more nuclear power station. So some environmentalists can only put the case for nuclear from the scaremongering standpoint that if we don't go nuclear the world will end - while others oppose nuclear on the basis of unfounded fears about waste and risk, which illustrates their deeply selective attitude towards `scientific evidence'.
These debates paint a pretty unpleasant picture of where society stands at present. Contemporary debate is dominated by fearmongering about global warming and nuclear energy on one side, and anti-consumerist moralism on the other. The end result is crippling indecision rather than a clear-cut vision of how people's needs and desires can be met now, and how their lives can be improved in the future. If this carries on much longer, we might need to get used to the lights going out.
Source
Infertile couples to be priority for NHS IVF treatment
A complete turnaround. Up until now there has been a pervasive attitude in the NHS that infertility is not a "real" problem. I suspect that Britain's socialists have decided that they need to breed all the little future taxpayers that they can
Infertile couples could soon be offered wider and more consistent treatment on the NHS under the first proposals from the government panel that has the task of ending the IVF postcode lottery. NHS trusts should give IVF a much higher importance when drawing up spending plans, by taking into account the effects of infertility on mental health and general wellbeing, the influential group will say today.
The advice from the Expert Group on Commissioning NHS Infertility Provision, which was convened by health ministers this year, will put fresh pressure on the 95 per cent of primary care trusts (PCTs) that do not offer the three cycles of IVF recommended by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).
Its interim report, which suggests several measures designed to improve access to IVF, comes as an NHS regional health authority has agreed for the first time to implement the NICE guidelines across all 14 of its trusts. The decision by NHS East of England means that infertile couples in Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire will be entitled to three cycles of treatment from next April, provided that they meet eligibility criteria.
Infertility is a problem for between one in six and one in seven couples. Almost 45,000 cycles of IVF are performed in Britain each year, but limited NHS provision means that about 75 per cent of these are conducted privately, at an average cost of o2,000 per cycle. NICE, the value-for-money watchdog, recommended in 2004 that PCTs should provide three cycles to infertile couples in which the woman is aged between 23 and 39. It added that these should be full cycles, including the replacement of frozen embryos, should a couple fail to conceive with fresh ones.
A Department of Health survey published in June found, however, that just 9 out of 151 PCTs in England meet this standard. About two thirds offer only one cycle, and half of these do not replace frozen embryos. Three trusts offer no IVF at all.
In March, Dawn Primarolo, the Health Minister, asked an expert group to recommend ways of encouraging more trusts to implement the NICE guidance in full. Its first advice, seen by The Times, will be published today. It found that the main barrier to wider provision was the low priority that many trusts give to IVF. This needed to be reassessed in the light of evidence about links between infertility and depression, stress, relationship breakdown and quality of life. "The provision of infertility treatment has not been seen as a traditional NHS service and, therefore, is often viewed as a relatively low priority compared to more visible conditions whose impact is well established," the report will say.
"The group's final report will seek to consider the often unseen consequences of infertility, including the impact on mental health and general wellbeing, which may draw on other NHS services for treatment, as well as the positive benefits of IVF." The group has also identified a "lack of knowledge and understanding of infertility and its treatment" among commissioning managers, and a poor grasp of what the NICE guidelines actually mean.
In the light of the group's advice, Ms Primarolo will write today to all PCTs to clarify that NHS IVF cycles should include the replacement of frozen embryos as well as fresh ones. If trusts acted on this, it would significantly improve some infertile couples' chances of a baby.
Ms Primarolo's letter will also confirm that NICE will not review its guidance until 2010-11. Many trusts had been holding off from offering three cycles, as NICE had been due to reassess its policy as early as this year.
The expert group, made up of five NHS commissioning experts and a patient representative, will also recommend that the NHS set a fixed price that PCTs would pay for IVF. Such national tariffs already exist for dozens of medical procedures, such as heart bypasses, and help managers to plan their spending. A spokesman for the Department of Health said that it was receptive to this idea. "It is appropriate for IVF to be considered carefully for inclusion on the national tariff," he said.
Mark Hamilton, chairman of the British Fertility Society, which represents medical professionals in the field, said that it was right for PCTs to consider the wider health impact of infertility. "This is a positive development," he said. "Clinicians and practitioners involved in infertility services are all aware that we are not just dealing with a physical pathology. "Infertility is a disease, but it also has fallout beyond that for a significant proportion of couples, causing mental health problems, depression, stress-related illnesses and so on."
Dr Hamilton welcomed the East of England decision, though he questioned whether other parts of the country would match it unless the Department of Health provided more dedicated funds. "It is a tremendous step forward that a region has seen the value of doing this, and I would hope that others will do the same. But there is certainly a view in the sector that central funding would solve an awful lot of problems."
Source
Nod for 'top-up' drugs
Dozens of NHS hospitals are allowing patients to "top up" their treatment with medicines bought privately. These are often expensive cancer drugs the health authority refuses to fund.
Topping up or "co-pay" is against NHS regulations, according to the Department of Health. But there is nothing in NHS regulations that prohibits patients buying in treatment if they wish, according to senior legal opinion obtained by health insurer Western Provident Association.
John Barron, Conservative MP for Billericay, discovered the hospitals' "top-up" figures through freedom of information laws.
The subject is relevant to expats returning to the UK seeking to switch from NHS to private care, or the other way round, because under many policies cover is capped at certain cash levels.
Source
Cholesterol drug linked to cancer deaths
A cholesterol lowering drug may increase the risk of cancer, according to new findings. The drug called Inegy is taken by thousands of people in the UK and the drug regulator is studying research which has linked to indicated a link to increased cancers and deaths from cancer. It is a combination of the statin simvastatin and ezetimibe for use in patients whose cholesterol cannot be controlled by one drug alone. Just under 300,000 prescriptions were dispensed for Inergy in the last two years in England and Wales, official figures show.
The American Food and Drug Administration issued a statement saying preliminary findings from a study has shown found the drug did not reduce cardiovascular problems as expected and a larger percentage of patients on the drug were diagnosed with and died from all types of cancer than those on the placebo during the five year study.
The FDA did not say how big the alleged increased risk of cancer was and said is not advising that patients should come off the drug nor that doctors should stop prescribing it. Its statement said other trials have shown no increased risk of cancer in patients using the drug. The final report from the trial should be available to the FDA in three months and it expects the analysis to take further six months after that.
A spokesman for the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency in the UK, said: "The MHRA is aware of the issue. Any regulatory action that may be necessary to minimise harm to patients will be taken once the new information has been carefully reviewed."
A statement from the makers of the drug Merck and Schering-Plough said the finding was likely to be an "anomaly". It said: "Based on the information presented by the study investigator and the analyses conducted independently by the University of Oxford Clinical Trial Service Unit and Epidemiological Studies Unit, MSP believes the cancer finding is likely to be an anomaly that, taken in the light of all the available data, does not support an association with Vytorin (also known as Inegy). "We are committed to working with regulatory agencies to further evaluate the available data and interpretations of those data; we do not believe that changes in the clinical use of Vytorin are warranted. Of course, patients taking Vytorin should talk to their doctor if they have questions."
Source
The British Labour party has finally killed the Thatcher boom: "The longest period of uninterrupted economic growth in British history has ended, leaving the country on the brink of recession. Almost two decades of increasing employment, disposable income and house prices ground to a halt in June, official figures showed yesterday. After 16 years, or 63 consecutive quarters, of continuous growth it is likely that Britain is already in recession, City analysts say. Another downgrade in a month's time could confirm that the economy has shrunk. The latest data, from the Office for National Statistics, showed a slump in every part of the economy as the credit crunch and the rising cost of living took their toll."
A new UK parliamentary report says the internet must be regulated to protect children - even though there's no proof they are being harmed.
The internet is made up of hardcore pornography, videos of fighting, bullying, rape and websites that glorify extreme diets, selfharm, and suicide. Or at least that's the impression you could easily be left with after reading an alarm-ridden report just published by a UK parliamentary committee. And that means further support for the idea of controls on what we can and cannot view, all in the name of protecting children.
Harmful Content on the Internet and in Video Games , a report by the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee was published last Thursday. The committee's report draws on an earlier report for the UK government authored by popular clinical psychologist, TV pundit and presenter Dr Tanya Byron, published in March. The Byron Report concluded that `[C]hildren and young people need to be empowered to keep themselves safe'.
In what amounts to a child-centred approach to understanding the impact of technology on children, Byron recommended setting up yet another regulatory body, called the UK Council for Child Internet Safety. The government has already agreed to do this before the end of the year. The council's remit will be to work with internet service providers (ISPs) and industry to place the interests of children at the forefront of how the games industry and myriad website publishers must rate, monitor and, in some cases, censor their content.
The consensus is that parents can no longer be trusted to deal with the various hurdles that our risk-averse society has created. In the absence of parental skills, bodies like the new council will help alert parents to the potential dangers when children happen to stray online without any supervision.
News of all this has caused some protest, but only amongst those who produce games and websites. The booming computer games industry argues that it has already put in place all the necessary checks and balances to regulate games. They insist their own standard, Pan European Games Information (PEGI), is good enough for the job.
On this, Bryon's report fudged the issue. She thought a combination of PEGI and the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) ratings would do the job, arguing that both the BBFC and PEGI could put their stickers on the front and on the back respectively on each games' packaging. The select committee's recommendation, on the other hand, is to extend the remit of the BBFC to include computer games.
But regulating the games industry is just one part of the select committee's focus. They also warn that children regularly stray online unsupervised, especially to websites like YouTube and other various social networking websites. What particularly worries the committee is that these websites are full of content uploaded by all kinds of people about any subject of their choosing. And in the case of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, they worry that children are inadvertently putting themselves at risk by posting information about themselves online.
In consequence, fingers are being pointed at website owners including Google (which owns YouTube) because the committee argues that they are not doing enough to protect children from a mass of inappropriate content. The committee believes big service providers like YouTube should be more proactive in reviewing material, more efficient in removing it if it is unsuitable, and better at flagging it up with a label where necessary.
The problem with websites, and the internet in general, is that they are very hard to regulate. Websites like YouTube thrive on massive amounts of content that is constantly being uploaded by thousands of people every day. Google have said that to try to regulate all of this content (some estimate as much as 10 hours worth is uploaded every minute) makes the task of censorship nearly impossible.
As a result, the debate around the select committee report has narrowly focused on who should be regulating who, whilst completely ignoring the major assumption behind this discussion: that the internet is causing children harm. Indeed, no-one seems to be challenging the misconstrued evidence about why children and their parents need help in dealing with the internet's content.
In fact, self-regulation and censorship is already happening. The government-endorsed Internet Watch Foundation, set up in 1996, aims to ensure that all ISPs and mobile operators remove any offensive or illegal content that they might inadvertently host.
The Byron Report and the new select committee report raise the bar of internet regulation. But the central claim that the internet causes children harm is not backed up with any serious evidence. Likewise, the focus on the internet's `dark side' is also unfounded. The obsession with protecting children is opportunist and a convenient means to deflect criticism of the proposed regulation of content; critics are simply told that we must err on the side of caution. The available research offers no conclusive proof either way that the internet is doing irreparable harm to children. As the select committee admits, there is `still no clear evidence of a causal link between activity or behaviour portrayed on-screen and subsequent behaviour by the person who viewed it'.
There is nothing new about using the vulnerable to justify restrictions on what can be viewed, particularly those who are regarded as lacking the maturity or capacity to understand what is being shown (which has always included children and those with special needs, but would once have included women, too). What is new about the select committee report is that it uses the language of risk so as to by-pass the need for evidence of harm or offence; this `you can never be too sure' outlook will always trump the ambiguity of the research to date. The cause of protecting children conveniently makes sense when it is, as the committee says, `based on the probability of risk'. As the committee declares, `incontrovertible evidence of harm is not necessarily required in order to justify a restriction of access to certain types of content in any medium'.
Not only is the new report blase about the lack of evidence to support its conclusion that this new media content can be harmful; the committee cannot even define what is meant by `harmful content': `The definition of what is "harmful" is not hard and fast: for one 10-year-old, a scene will seem very real and disturbing, whereas another will be able apparently to dismiss it or treat it as fantasy.'
But while there is little evidence being presented on how and why the internet is a threat to children, once the spectre of children being at risk is raised, everyone closes ranks. Yet again, the internet provides the perfect prism through which to discuss the culpability of adults as being unfit or ill-equipped to bring up children.
We should be extremely suspicious whenever politicians, campaigners and `experts' play the children card. Almost any kind of restriction can be justified if the young are supposedly at risk. Amidst all this panic, we need to draw the opposite conclusions to the select committee report and demonstrate why the internet should be left alone. While the internet still remains relatively uncensored and unregulated, it causes us to act like adults in how we deal with it, and in how we supervise others, including our children. However, if this latest set of proposals gets through, it will mean allowing the authorities to decide paternalistically what we can watch or play. In the name of protecting children, we will all be treated as children.
Source
Britain's top universities 'favouring the poor'
Leading universities have been accused of discriminating against middle class pupils by favouring less-qualified students from poorer backgrounds. An investigation by The Daily Telegraph reveals five out of 20 elite institutions in the UK make lower grade offers to sixth-formers from poor-performing schools and deprived homes. The London School of Economics, Bristol, Nottingham, Newcastle, and Edinburgh all allow staff to choose students with worse grades. Overall, almost two-thirds of the elite Russell Group - which represents research-intensive universities - attach weighting to candidates' schools, home postcodes and whether family members also attended university as a tiebreaker during the application process.
The findings will fuel allegations of "social engineering" at the most sought-after universities. It comes just days after Oxford was criticised for using postcodes to identify students from less well-off areas when interviewing candidates. Under Government rules, all higher education institutions have a duty to encourage more students from non-traditional backgrounds to apply.
But Martin Stephen, high master of St Paul's, a fee-paying school in west London, branded the move "immensely dangerous and hugely unfair". "One is in very close danger of punishing a child for coming from a good home or going to a good school," he said. Alan Smithers, professor of education at Buckingham University, said: "There would be uproar if we tried to take into account this data when selecting our Olympic team. We don't seem to be able to recognise talent and develop talent as we do in the sporting arena."
At present just a fifth of students at Russell Group universities come from deprived backgrounds, compared to almost a third at other institutions. Three-quarters are from state schools, even though they account for 93 per cent of children educated in the UK. The Telegraph analysed admissions policies at all 20 universities.
Documents reveal that students from poor homes can receive vastly differing advantages depending on where they apply. Twelve universities instructed tutors to use some form of routinely gathered data about students' socio-economic or educational background as a standard part of the admissions procedure. An admissions policy drawn up by the LSE says: "The lower the average performance of the school, the more weight may be given to the candidate whose past examination performance significantly exceeds their school's average performance." Five universities also allow staff to use flexible grade offers to take applicants' backgrounds into consideration.
Newcastle University says: "Admissions tutors have discretion to make conditional offers which differ from the typical entry requirement, if in their judgement the typical entry requirement would not be appropriate because of the particular circumstances of an applicant." A spokesman for Bristol laid out a scenario in which two candidates apply for the same place, "one of whom is predicted to achieve AAB at A-level while the other is heading for AAA".
"The first attends a school that is dealing with many educational challenges and where AAB is exceptional," he said. "The second attends a school where AAA is not unusual. He or she has an uninspiring reference and a lacklustre personal statement. We think that offering a place to the first candidate rather than the second is both fair and in tune with our desire to recruit the students with the strongest academic qualities."
All of the universities who make use of personal information defended their decision, claiming that it allows them to operate a fair policy by identifying potential and not just prior achievement. But eight Russell Group universities - including Birmingham, Cardiff, Imperial, Queen's University Belfast and Southampton - consider the use of such information to be unfair. Some also said it breached their equal opportunities policies and could trigger a decline in academic standards.
An Imperial College London spokesman said: "Admission is based on academic merit... the College will not lower its admission standards as a means of widening access."
Source
Kingsnorth: a camp of uncritical conformity
The British 'climate campers' pose as radical - yet their disdain for consumerism and love of sustainability makes them little different from Prime Minister Brown
Environmental activists have built a climate camp near a power station in Kingsnorth, south-east England, to protest against plans for a new coal-fired plant. Yet Britain's energy infrastructure is heading rapidly for obsolescence, and the British authorities need to start building coal-fired plants now if we are to avoid a shortfall in energy supply. That is of little concern to the climate campers, however - they would positively embrace a fall in energy supply, and the austerity that would follow.
Britain is facing a double whammy of competing problems in terms of electricity generation. For one thing, the ageing stock of power stations currently in use - particularly the nuclear plants - is reaching the end of its life. The amount of electricity generated by these plants will decline sharply over the next 10 years as the plants are decommissioned.
At the same time, there is a widespread desire to reduce the amount of CO2 being produced. One way this might be done is by increasing the proportion of energy we get from low-carbon renewable sources: wind, solar and wave power, in particular. These may supply - if all goes to plan - around 20 per cent of Britain's electricity by 2020 (and that's being ambitious).
But if the nuclear stations, which currently supply more than 20 per cent of our electricity, are not replaced, then Britain will still need to find about 80 per cent of its electricity supplies from non-renewable sources. That mostly means by burning fossil fuels - gas and coal - with all of their accompanying CO2 emissions. Even if the current stock of nuclear stations could be replaced in the next 10 years, there would still be a massive shortfall in electricity supply that must continue to be met by fossil fuels. And the government's one viable plan to replace the ageing nuclear stations - by flogging the company that owns the plants to French power company EDF - has just gone belly-up.
Whatever happens with nuclear and renewables, we're facing a severe shortfall in power in the future unless we use fossil fuels. What we need are more power stations that use reliable technology as soon as possible. Reducing CO2 emissions will simply have to wait. As David Porter, chief executive of the Association of Electricity Producers, pointed out in the Guardian: `If we want diversity of supply - not being overdependent on one fuel, such as gas - and security of supply, we need coal for the foreseeable future.' Paul Golby, head of E.ON, the company that wants to build the new coal-fired plant at Kingsnorth, was blunter still: `The climate campers believe that a combination of wind and wave power and increased energy efficiency will be enough to bridge the gap. But that is simply unrealistic.'
The climate campers' blinkered attitude is not surprising, since meeting the needs of consumers is not very high on their list of priorities. In fact, some of them seem to believe that an `energy crunch' is just the sort of useful thing that might halt our mindless consumption.
One climate camper, Isabelle Michel, told BBC TV's Newsnight: `One of the most important things we need to do is to learn to reduce consumption. I think one of the reasons for saying that nuclear is necessary and renewables will not be enough is if we look at maintaining the levels of consumption or even increasing the levels of consumption - because that's the mentality. So we need more, more, more.' Another protester, Kevin Smith, bemoaned `the madness of trying to maintain a world of perpetual economic growth in a world of finite resources'.
This has always been the most fundamental tenet of environmentalism: that economic growth is a bad thing. We humans should reduce our `ecological footprint' and learn to make do with less because resources are finite - and apparently, as we expand our impact on the planet, we are squeezing out other living things that are just as worthy of existence as we are. This is in direct contradiction to any notion of progress, to the idea that through the development of society and technology, we can generate greater quantities of material wealth that allow us to live longer, healthier, more comfortable and potentially freer lives.
Despite what the anti-growth greens might claim, it's not as if we live in a world where everyone has a private jet and dines on foie gras. The current fuel and food prices are reminding many of us of how little spare cash we really have, even in Britain, one of the richest countries in the world. For the billions in the world who live on less than one dollar per day, environmentalists' demand to `reduce consumption' and `halt economic growth' must sound like a sick joke. Behind environmentalists' various debates about energy supply, coal, nuclear and renewables, there lurks their central moralistic belief system: humans are nothing special, in fact they are destructive, and it is high time they learned to live on less.
What is particularly sickening, given the pressing needs of humanity both at home and abroad, is that the climate camp in Kingsnorth is being presented as the cutting edge of radical protest. When so little else is happening politically, an assortment of slick green campaigners, lentil-eating hippies, misguided, idealistic students and assorted middle-aged oddballs has come to be seen as the touchstone of anti-establishment politics.
In fact, these climate campaigners are very far from anti-establishment. With sustainability at the heart of every government policy, the government shares most of the ideas espoused at Kingsnorth right now. Telling people to tighten their belts and put up with less is an idea that politicians have been keen to stress for centuries, while reducing our impact on the planet is the nearest thing to a `big idea' that the political class possesses today. Indeed, it is hard to tell the difference between Isabelle Michel's demand that we rein in consumption and Gordon Brown's recent advice that we should avoid being wasteful by throwing away our food. From the very top of government right through to the edgy green protest movement, there is a consensus that the greedy, thoughtless masses are demanding too much.
The problem for our political leaders - and the source of charges of hypocrisy from the green movement - is that this sustainability-obsessed outlook must live side-by-side with the need to make society work. And that means addressing practical challenges such as making sure the lights work when you hit the switch, that food gets produced and can be delivered to the shops, and so on. The result of this clash between a low-horizons outlook and the practical need to keep British society chugging along is the kind of administrative paralysis we have seen at the heart of the New Labour government.
If practicality versus ideology is proving a problem for the government, it is starting to generate cracks in the green movement, too. Underpinning green thought is a moral distaste for the vulgarity of consumption, which has an almost religious passion to it: fire and brimstone millenarianism meets monkish self-denial. But even greens want to eat, travel, receive medical treatment, and get an education. And these things require a highly developed society that uses up resources and are a constant reminder of the need for humanity to control Nature.
This paradox within environmentalism is best reflected in the current debate about nuclear power. Those greens who are concerned with climate change above all else can see why nuclear, a low-carbon technology, makes sense in the current `emergency'; most famously, Gaia theorist James Lovelock supports the introduction of nuclear power as a way of `saving the planet'. Other greens, however, would rather see society grind to a halt than allow the construction of one more nuclear power station. So some environmentalists can only put the case for nuclear from the scaremongering standpoint that if we don't go nuclear the world will end - while others oppose nuclear on the basis of unfounded fears about waste and risk, which illustrates their deeply selective attitude towards `scientific evidence'.
These debates paint a pretty unpleasant picture of where society stands at present. Contemporary debate is dominated by fearmongering about global warming and nuclear energy on one side, and anti-consumerist moralism on the other. The end result is crippling indecision rather than a clear-cut vision of how people's needs and desires can be met now, and how their lives can be improved in the future. If this carries on much longer, we might need to get used to the lights going out.
Source
Infertile couples to be priority for NHS IVF treatment
A complete turnaround. Up until now there has been a pervasive attitude in the NHS that infertility is not a "real" problem. I suspect that Britain's socialists have decided that they need to breed all the little future taxpayers that they can
Infertile couples could soon be offered wider and more consistent treatment on the NHS under the first proposals from the government panel that has the task of ending the IVF postcode lottery. NHS trusts should give IVF a much higher importance when drawing up spending plans, by taking into account the effects of infertility on mental health and general wellbeing, the influential group will say today.
The advice from the Expert Group on Commissioning NHS Infertility Provision, which was convened by health ministers this year, will put fresh pressure on the 95 per cent of primary care trusts (PCTs) that do not offer the three cycles of IVF recommended by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).
Its interim report, which suggests several measures designed to improve access to IVF, comes as an NHS regional health authority has agreed for the first time to implement the NICE guidelines across all 14 of its trusts. The decision by NHS East of England means that infertile couples in Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire will be entitled to three cycles of treatment from next April, provided that they meet eligibility criteria.
Infertility is a problem for between one in six and one in seven couples. Almost 45,000 cycles of IVF are performed in Britain each year, but limited NHS provision means that about 75 per cent of these are conducted privately, at an average cost of o2,000 per cycle. NICE, the value-for-money watchdog, recommended in 2004 that PCTs should provide three cycles to infertile couples in which the woman is aged between 23 and 39. It added that these should be full cycles, including the replacement of frozen embryos, should a couple fail to conceive with fresh ones.
A Department of Health survey published in June found, however, that just 9 out of 151 PCTs in England meet this standard. About two thirds offer only one cycle, and half of these do not replace frozen embryos. Three trusts offer no IVF at all.
In March, Dawn Primarolo, the Health Minister, asked an expert group to recommend ways of encouraging more trusts to implement the NICE guidance in full. Its first advice, seen by The Times, will be published today. It found that the main barrier to wider provision was the low priority that many trusts give to IVF. This needed to be reassessed in the light of evidence about links between infertility and depression, stress, relationship breakdown and quality of life. "The provision of infertility treatment has not been seen as a traditional NHS service and, therefore, is often viewed as a relatively low priority compared to more visible conditions whose impact is well established," the report will say.
"The group's final report will seek to consider the often unseen consequences of infertility, including the impact on mental health and general wellbeing, which may draw on other NHS services for treatment, as well as the positive benefits of IVF." The group has also identified a "lack of knowledge and understanding of infertility and its treatment" among commissioning managers, and a poor grasp of what the NICE guidelines actually mean.
In the light of the group's advice, Ms Primarolo will write today to all PCTs to clarify that NHS IVF cycles should include the replacement of frozen embryos as well as fresh ones. If trusts acted on this, it would significantly improve some infertile couples' chances of a baby.
Ms Primarolo's letter will also confirm that NICE will not review its guidance until 2010-11. Many trusts had been holding off from offering three cycles, as NICE had been due to reassess its policy as early as this year.
The expert group, made up of five NHS commissioning experts and a patient representative, will also recommend that the NHS set a fixed price that PCTs would pay for IVF. Such national tariffs already exist for dozens of medical procedures, such as heart bypasses, and help managers to plan their spending. A spokesman for the Department of Health said that it was receptive to this idea. "It is appropriate for IVF to be considered carefully for inclusion on the national tariff," he said.
Mark Hamilton, chairman of the British Fertility Society, which represents medical professionals in the field, said that it was right for PCTs to consider the wider health impact of infertility. "This is a positive development," he said. "Clinicians and practitioners involved in infertility services are all aware that we are not just dealing with a physical pathology. "Infertility is a disease, but it also has fallout beyond that for a significant proportion of couples, causing mental health problems, depression, stress-related illnesses and so on."
Dr Hamilton welcomed the East of England decision, though he questioned whether other parts of the country would match it unless the Department of Health provided more dedicated funds. "It is a tremendous step forward that a region has seen the value of doing this, and I would hope that others will do the same. But there is certainly a view in the sector that central funding would solve an awful lot of problems."
Source
Nod for 'top-up' drugs
Dozens of NHS hospitals are allowing patients to "top up" their treatment with medicines bought privately. These are often expensive cancer drugs the health authority refuses to fund.
Topping up or "co-pay" is against NHS regulations, according to the Department of Health. But there is nothing in NHS regulations that prohibits patients buying in treatment if they wish, according to senior legal opinion obtained by health insurer Western Provident Association.
John Barron, Conservative MP for Billericay, discovered the hospitals' "top-up" figures through freedom of information laws.
The subject is relevant to expats returning to the UK seeking to switch from NHS to private care, or the other way round, because under many policies cover is capped at certain cash levels.
Source
Cholesterol drug linked to cancer deaths
A cholesterol lowering drug may increase the risk of cancer, according to new findings. The drug called Inegy is taken by thousands of people in the UK and the drug regulator is studying research which has linked to indicated a link to increased cancers and deaths from cancer. It is a combination of the statin simvastatin and ezetimibe for use in patients whose cholesterol cannot be controlled by one drug alone. Just under 300,000 prescriptions were dispensed for Inergy in the last two years in England and Wales, official figures show.
The American Food and Drug Administration issued a statement saying preliminary findings from a study has shown found the drug did not reduce cardiovascular problems as expected and a larger percentage of patients on the drug were diagnosed with and died from all types of cancer than those on the placebo during the five year study.
The FDA did not say how big the alleged increased risk of cancer was and said is not advising that patients should come off the drug nor that doctors should stop prescribing it. Its statement said other trials have shown no increased risk of cancer in patients using the drug. The final report from the trial should be available to the FDA in three months and it expects the analysis to take further six months after that.
A spokesman for the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency in the UK, said: "The MHRA is aware of the issue. Any regulatory action that may be necessary to minimise harm to patients will be taken once the new information has been carefully reviewed."
A statement from the makers of the drug Merck and Schering-Plough said the finding was likely to be an "anomaly". It said: "Based on the information presented by the study investigator and the analyses conducted independently by the University of Oxford Clinical Trial Service Unit and Epidemiological Studies Unit, MSP believes the cancer finding is likely to be an anomaly that, taken in the light of all the available data, does not support an association with Vytorin (also known as Inegy). "We are committed to working with regulatory agencies to further evaluate the available data and interpretations of those data; we do not believe that changes in the clinical use of Vytorin are warranted. Of course, patients taking Vytorin should talk to their doctor if they have questions."
Source
The British Labour party has finally killed the Thatcher boom: "The longest period of uninterrupted economic growth in British history has ended, leaving the country on the brink of recession. Almost two decades of increasing employment, disposable income and house prices ground to a halt in June, official figures showed yesterday. After 16 years, or 63 consecutive quarters, of continuous growth it is likely that Britain is already in recession, City analysts say. Another downgrade in a month's time could confirm that the economy has shrunk. The latest data, from the Office for National Statistics, showed a slump in every part of the economy as the credit crunch and the rising cost of living took their toll."
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Censored: Imam of Dibley is banned from British TV
We read:
("Imam of Dibley" is a reference to a popular British TV comedy: "The vicar of Dibley" -- featuring a fat female priest of the Church of England)
Disorganized British paramedics kill woman
A Midland widower whose wife died after alleged delays by paramedics in getting her to hospital has criticised the ambulance service for not apologising four years after her death. Roger Bereza, who lives in Coventry, spoke out after West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) paid an undisclosed six-figure-sum in an out of court settlement earlier this month.
His 41-year-old wife Tracey had suffered asthma since childhood but on April 11, 2004 she had an acute attack and her condition continued to worsen, so Mr Bereza dialled 999 for an ambulance.
As well as complaints about the way the ambulance crew treated his wife at the scene, he said they had to ask him for directions to the nearest hospital and went the wrong way. A crew of two paramedics arrived at the family home at just after 9.20pm but, he said, it took more than 75 minutes to take his wife to hospital during which time she went into respiratory arrest.
Mr Bereza, a 47-year-old RAC patrolman, claimed there was a series of shortcomings in the way his wife's care was handled and once in the ambulance she suffered a respiratory arrest. He said he could only watch as his wife vomited blood, turned blue and arrested in front of him, as his three daughters looked on from the house. "By now I knew I had to do something, so I started doing chest compressions on Tracey's chest while one of the paramedics tried to get the defibrilator to work. Monitors were showing her pulse was at zero, and we were still on the driveway. I couldn't give up on her, even though I realised it was the beginning of the end."
They arrived at Coventry & Warwickshire A&E at 10.35pm. Mrs Bereza never regained consciousness and died four days later after her family took the difficult decision to turn off her life support machine. The couple, who had three daughters aged 20, 19 and nine, were due to celebrate their 21st wedding anniversary in June 2004.
Despite the pay-out from WMAS, the family said they had yet to receive a formal apology or admission of liability. A trust spokesman said: "WMAS first became involved in the treatment of Mrs Bereza on the evening April 11, 2004 when her husband called for an ambulance. Mrs Bereza had suffered an asthma attack after inhaling polish fumes. "The trust wrote to Mr Bereza on July 22, 2008 in regard to his claims about the level of care given to his wife and expressed its `sincere regret'. "WMAS is always learning from its experiences and strives constantly to find ways of improving patient care. "In light of this case, further inquiries into the trust's protocols were undertaken to ensure that the training and actions of staff are appropriate at all times."
Mr Bereza added: "I am still extremely angry. This tragedy should never have happened. "Although Tracey had suffered from asthma since childhood, it was controlled most of the time. We knew that if she had a severe attack we had to get her to hospital as soon as possible. Even though we live just 10 minutes from the nearest A&E, I had always been told to call an ambulance and not to attempt to drive there myself in case we got stuck in traffic or Tracey required emergency oxygen for her nebuliser. "I wish I'd ignored this advice and taken Tracey to hospital myself."
Lindsay Gibb, a medical negligence expert with Birmingham-based law firm Irwin Mitchell, said: "This is a hollow victory for the family because despite agreeing to pay a significant sum by way of compensation, the trust has not apologised to the family or accepted that its paramedics were negligent in any way. "The relevant guidelines state that: .'in a life threatening or acute severe asthma attack - do not delay transportation. Load and go to nearest suitable receiving hospital and provide nebulisation en route'. "This clearly was not the case on this occasion and the evidence suggests these delays were responsible for the fatal outcome."
Source
HRT 'boosts quality of life'
Nice to see an admission of how vanishingly small any risk is
Six years after widespread panic about hormone replacement therapy causing cancer and strokes, research suggests it improves quality of life. One of the world's longest and largest trials of hormone replacement therapy has found it can improve sleep, sexuality and joint pain in post-menopausal women. Published today by the British Medical Journal, the results are from a study by the WISDOM research team (Women's international study of long duration oestrogen after menopause). The study involved 2130 post-menopausal women in Britain, Australia and New Zealand, and assessed the impact of combined oestrogen and progestogen hormone therapy on the quality of life.
The average age of women in the study was 63, and 70 per cent of participants did not have menopausal symptoms of hot flushes and night sweats. University of Adelaide obstetrics and gynaecology Professor Alastair MacLennan, who led the Australian arm of the research, said the results were interesting but he was not recommending that women with no symptoms use HRT. "Our results show that hot flushes, night sweats, sleeplessness and joint pains were less common in women on HRT in this age group," he said yesterday. "Sexuality was also improved. Overall, quality of life measures improved. Even when women did not have hot flushes and were well past menopause, there was a small but measurable improvement in quality of life and a noted improvement in sleep, sexuality and joint pains."
Professor MacLennan said studies such as those conducted by WISDOM enabled the risks of HRT to be reduced and benefits maximised when the treatment was tailored to the individual. Early side effects could usually be eased by adjusting the treatment, he said. For most women with significant menopausal symptoms, the benefits of HRT outweigh the risks.
In 2002, an eight-year HRT trial was stopped after five years because researchers concluded the risks were too great, with evidence of more cancers and strokes. The news caused women around the world to abandon HRT, with Australian women reacting more strongly than most. In Europe, about 5 per cent of women stopped treatment, compared with up to 40 per cent in Australia, although many have since returned.
Professor MacLennan said the most recent analyses of the main long-term randomised control trial of HRT - the Women's Health Initiative - showed breast cancer incidence did not increase with oestrogen-only HRT and was only increased in women using combined oestrogen and progestogen HRT after seven years of use. This increased risk was less than 0.1 per cent [That's one tenth of one percent] per year of use. If a woman feels that HRT is needed for quality of life, then doctors can find the safest regimen for her, Professor MacLennan said. She can try going off HRT every four to five years, and can then make an informed choice about whether she takes and continues HRT.
The WISDOM research is independent of the pharmaceutical industry and has been funded by UK, Australian and New Zealand government research bodies. Australian Medical Association state president Dr Peter Ford said women should weigh up the known risks and benefits of HRT. Those with acute menopausal symptoms could gain considerable relief from the therapy. When people are really in distress from those symptoms, its a godsend, quite frankly, to be able to offer it, he said.
Source
A disgusting example of `junk television'
BBC3 has given us yet another helping of mechanically-generated TV designed to scare us about what we eat.
Cheap food is often not very good. Sometimes it might look the part, but the content is frequently sickly and leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. How appropriate, then, that a programme `revealing' this fact should have been shown on BBC3 - the Beeb's yoof TV channel which produces documentaries that seem like a tasty treat on the outside but are actually stuffed with crap.
Britain's Really Disgusting Foods, presented by the mildly amusing Alex Riley, was the search for the worst thing you could eat that is legally available in shops. Riley has thick, black-rimmed glasses and could probably do with a haircut. He looks like a dork and has a vaguely northern accent, but his management calls him `tall, sleek and unconventionally handsome'. Whatever.
He went in search of foods that had the most `stuff' added to them. Unsurprisingly, this didn't mean organic parsnips, but the kind of food churned out by big food processors and sold in your local cash-and-carry.
His first target was something called `cheese alternative'. This is an `analogue', a substance that contains some of the qualities of cheese - it even contains some skimmed milk - but isn't actually produced in the same way as cheese. Instead, it is created by the block load to pad out cheap supermarket food and takeaway pizzas and is packed full of `E' numbers - that is, artificial additives. And it doesn't taste of anything very much, never mind cheese.
If the `cheese' is full of additives, the chicken breasts are full of water. Riley managed to find some in his local Booker cash-and-carry store (yes, bizarrely, it is the same Booker that sponsors Britain's most famous literary prize) which contained just 60 per cent chicken and lots of water. You won't find chicken breasts like this in the local supermarket, but you might find them in your restaurant-bought chicken fried rice or chicken vindaloo. A trader in Smithfield, London's main meat market, told Britain's Really Disgusting Foods that chicken breasts stuffed full of water are popular with Chinese and Indian takeaways.
Another unsurprising target were sausages. They're absolutely full of rubbish, right? Well, actually, not as much as you might think. Riley was most disappointed to find that eyelids, scrotums, anuses and ears aren't allowed into any product labelled `sausage'. In fact, sausages must be 32 per cent meat at least, and most good-quality sausages contain 80 per cent or more.
However there's lots of other stuff you can put into meat products - like connective tissue - which might otherwise be thrown away. You'd have thought in an era of waste-not-want-not eco-frugality that the efficiency of the meat industry in this respect would have been praised. Many processed products are also bulked out with ingredients that are a hell of a lot cheaper than real meat: rusk, soya, colouring, etc. Confront people with the raw ingredients and they will turn their noses up. Offer samples of such a sausage at the posh nosh exhibition the Good Food Show, as Riley did, and people seem to think they're actually quite nice. Just don't mention what's in them.
This only goes to show the pragmatic attitude we Brits have to our food. As long as someone can assure us that what we eat isn't harmful, we'll happily munch away. Restaurants perform much the same trick. It doesn't really matter what you're eating - if it's cooked with half a pack of butter and seasoned well, it's going to taste good. We just love salt and fat, whether it's fine dining or the local takeaway after a heavy session.
As is often the way with this kind of TV show, Riley pulled in an expert or two to suggest that eating this kind of rubbish is responsible for the `wave of degenerative disease' in Britain, without actually detailing why that might be the case (or even proving that it is true). Like the pies he created to show off the worst of British processed food practices, Riley's film didn't have a lot of meat in it.
He did, however, manage one good thing. Booker's magazine for the Good Food Show featured a column by potty-mouthed celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, which apparently extolled the virtues of Booker's wares to the catering trade. No doubt Ramsay was mortified to be featured in a programme on crap sausages and dodgy chicken; these are the type of catering practices he attacks in shows like Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. But that's what you risk if you whore your reputation as a multi-Michelin starred chef to all-comers - just the kind of thing that a young, up-and-coming chef called Gordon Ramsay was railing against 10 years ago.
Britain's Really Disgusting Foods was another prime cut of the kind of no-need-to-watch factual programming mechanically generated by BBC3 and, indeed, by every other channel these days. From Honey, We're Killing the Kids to It's Shit Being an Indian Sweatshop Worker (okay, I made the last one up), factual television has been reduced to junk telly, as obvious and unsatisfying as a Pot Noodle. Yummy!
Source
Immigration pushes British population to record high
Immigration and a sharp rise in births by non-British mothers have pushed the population to almost 61m, figures show. The total number of people in Britain grew by 388,000 to 60,975,000 in the year up to mid-2007, leaving it more than 2m higher than in 2001. A record 605,000 long-term migrants - those staying longer than a year - settled in the country during the year, according to the Office for National Statistics - 21 per cent more than did in 2001.
However long-term migration out of Britain also reached a record high of 406,000 in the year. This means the number of people leaving Britain is now 30pc cent higher than it was just seven years ago. Statisticians said they were "surprised" to find that net migration - the difference between comings and goings - stood at 198,000 - 11,000 more than in 2001.
Meanwhile rising fertility rates and an increase in the number of women at childbearing age - many of whom are recent arrivals - saw a sharp increase in the birth rate. A total of 758,000 children were born - an increase of more than 12pc on the year before.
The population was also boosted by a fall in the number of deaths, which has decreased from 599,000 in 2001 to 571,000 last year. For the first time ever, there are now more people in Britain of a pensionable age than there are children. Men aged 65+ and women aged 60+ now make up almost a fifth of the population. The oldest age group - those aged 80+ - is also the fastest growing in Britain, and has increased by more than 1.2m since 1981.
The figures also showed that the changes in population vary dramatically across Britain. The areas that have experienced the highest increases to their populations are Westminster, Camden, South Northants, Forest Heath, Colchester and South Derbyshire. All have seen jumps in their total populations of more than 12pc since 2001.
In the same period the largest reductions in population occurred in Sefton, Burnley, Middlesbrough, Rushmoor, Wirral and Sunderland - all of which have seen their headcounts drop by 2pc. Researchers found that Cambridge had the most mobile population in the country - a higher proportion of people have moved in and out of the city since 2001 than in any other part of Britain.
Source
Yet more proof that you can NEVER entrust ID details to British bureaucrats: "Confidential records and sensitive intelligence on tens of thousands of the country's most prolific criminals have been lost in a major breach of data security at the heart of Whitehall. Scotland Yard is investigating the loss of the information, which was taken from the Police National Computer and entrusted by the Home Office to a private consultancy firm. The data had been encrypted for security reasons but was decoded by staff at PA Consulting Group and placed on a computer memory stick that was subsequently lost. The device contains personal details and intelligence on 33,000 serious offenders, dossiers on 10,000 "priority criminals" and the names and dates of birth of all 84,000 prisoners in England and Wales."
We read:
"Have you heard the one about the Islamic comedy sketch that ITV ordered its latest star to remove? Katy Brand was the victim of humourless lawyers who instructed her to delete a harmless-sounding spoof called The Iman of Dibley.
"It was not intended to be offensive," says the comedian, whose Katy Brand's Big Ass Show returns on ITV2. "A new iman arrives in a sleepy parish and the comedy arrives from the misunderstandings that causes. But the lawyers said it might be culturally insensitive."
It's no laughing matter, argues Brand, 29, an Oxford theology graduate. "The vast majority of Muslims are able to have a laugh at themselves just like everyone else. Why should they be excluded from comedy? It's funny that ITV had no problem with a new sketch about a pregnant Jesus's girlfriend who has to deal with dating the Son of God."
Source
("Imam of Dibley" is a reference to a popular British TV comedy: "The vicar of Dibley" -- featuring a fat female priest of the Church of England)
Disorganized British paramedics kill woman
A Midland widower whose wife died after alleged delays by paramedics in getting her to hospital has criticised the ambulance service for not apologising four years after her death. Roger Bereza, who lives in Coventry, spoke out after West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) paid an undisclosed six-figure-sum in an out of court settlement earlier this month.
His 41-year-old wife Tracey had suffered asthma since childhood but on April 11, 2004 she had an acute attack and her condition continued to worsen, so Mr Bereza dialled 999 for an ambulance.
As well as complaints about the way the ambulance crew treated his wife at the scene, he said they had to ask him for directions to the nearest hospital and went the wrong way. A crew of two paramedics arrived at the family home at just after 9.20pm but, he said, it took more than 75 minutes to take his wife to hospital during which time she went into respiratory arrest.
Mr Bereza, a 47-year-old RAC patrolman, claimed there was a series of shortcomings in the way his wife's care was handled and once in the ambulance she suffered a respiratory arrest. He said he could only watch as his wife vomited blood, turned blue and arrested in front of him, as his three daughters looked on from the house. "By now I knew I had to do something, so I started doing chest compressions on Tracey's chest while one of the paramedics tried to get the defibrilator to work. Monitors were showing her pulse was at zero, and we were still on the driveway. I couldn't give up on her, even though I realised it was the beginning of the end."
They arrived at Coventry & Warwickshire A&E at 10.35pm. Mrs Bereza never regained consciousness and died four days later after her family took the difficult decision to turn off her life support machine. The couple, who had three daughters aged 20, 19 and nine, were due to celebrate their 21st wedding anniversary in June 2004.
Despite the pay-out from WMAS, the family said they had yet to receive a formal apology or admission of liability. A trust spokesman said: "WMAS first became involved in the treatment of Mrs Bereza on the evening April 11, 2004 when her husband called for an ambulance. Mrs Bereza had suffered an asthma attack after inhaling polish fumes. "The trust wrote to Mr Bereza on July 22, 2008 in regard to his claims about the level of care given to his wife and expressed its `sincere regret'. "WMAS is always learning from its experiences and strives constantly to find ways of improving patient care. "In light of this case, further inquiries into the trust's protocols were undertaken to ensure that the training and actions of staff are appropriate at all times."
Mr Bereza added: "I am still extremely angry. This tragedy should never have happened. "Although Tracey had suffered from asthma since childhood, it was controlled most of the time. We knew that if she had a severe attack we had to get her to hospital as soon as possible. Even though we live just 10 minutes from the nearest A&E, I had always been told to call an ambulance and not to attempt to drive there myself in case we got stuck in traffic or Tracey required emergency oxygen for her nebuliser. "I wish I'd ignored this advice and taken Tracey to hospital myself."
Lindsay Gibb, a medical negligence expert with Birmingham-based law firm Irwin Mitchell, said: "This is a hollow victory for the family because despite agreeing to pay a significant sum by way of compensation, the trust has not apologised to the family or accepted that its paramedics were negligent in any way. "The relevant guidelines state that: .'in a life threatening or acute severe asthma attack - do not delay transportation. Load and go to nearest suitable receiving hospital and provide nebulisation en route'. "This clearly was not the case on this occasion and the evidence suggests these delays were responsible for the fatal outcome."
Source
HRT 'boosts quality of life'
Nice to see an admission of how vanishingly small any risk is
Six years after widespread panic about hormone replacement therapy causing cancer and strokes, research suggests it improves quality of life. One of the world's longest and largest trials of hormone replacement therapy has found it can improve sleep, sexuality and joint pain in post-menopausal women. Published today by the British Medical Journal, the results are from a study by the WISDOM research team (Women's international study of long duration oestrogen after menopause). The study involved 2130 post-menopausal women in Britain, Australia and New Zealand, and assessed the impact of combined oestrogen and progestogen hormone therapy on the quality of life.
The average age of women in the study was 63, and 70 per cent of participants did not have menopausal symptoms of hot flushes and night sweats. University of Adelaide obstetrics and gynaecology Professor Alastair MacLennan, who led the Australian arm of the research, said the results were interesting but he was not recommending that women with no symptoms use HRT. "Our results show that hot flushes, night sweats, sleeplessness and joint pains were less common in women on HRT in this age group," he said yesterday. "Sexuality was also improved. Overall, quality of life measures improved. Even when women did not have hot flushes and were well past menopause, there was a small but measurable improvement in quality of life and a noted improvement in sleep, sexuality and joint pains."
Professor MacLennan said studies such as those conducted by WISDOM enabled the risks of HRT to be reduced and benefits maximised when the treatment was tailored to the individual. Early side effects could usually be eased by adjusting the treatment, he said. For most women with significant menopausal symptoms, the benefits of HRT outweigh the risks.
In 2002, an eight-year HRT trial was stopped after five years because researchers concluded the risks were too great, with evidence of more cancers and strokes. The news caused women around the world to abandon HRT, with Australian women reacting more strongly than most. In Europe, about 5 per cent of women stopped treatment, compared with up to 40 per cent in Australia, although many have since returned.
Professor MacLennan said the most recent analyses of the main long-term randomised control trial of HRT - the Women's Health Initiative - showed breast cancer incidence did not increase with oestrogen-only HRT and was only increased in women using combined oestrogen and progestogen HRT after seven years of use. This increased risk was less than 0.1 per cent [That's one tenth of one percent] per year of use. If a woman feels that HRT is needed for quality of life, then doctors can find the safest regimen for her, Professor MacLennan said. She can try going off HRT every four to five years, and can then make an informed choice about whether she takes and continues HRT.
The WISDOM research is independent of the pharmaceutical industry and has been funded by UK, Australian and New Zealand government research bodies. Australian Medical Association state president Dr Peter Ford said women should weigh up the known risks and benefits of HRT. Those with acute menopausal symptoms could gain considerable relief from the therapy. When people are really in distress from those symptoms, its a godsend, quite frankly, to be able to offer it, he said.
Source
A disgusting example of `junk television'
BBC3 has given us yet another helping of mechanically-generated TV designed to scare us about what we eat.
Cheap food is often not very good. Sometimes it might look the part, but the content is frequently sickly and leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. How appropriate, then, that a programme `revealing' this fact should have been shown on BBC3 - the Beeb's yoof TV channel which produces documentaries that seem like a tasty treat on the outside but are actually stuffed with crap.
Britain's Really Disgusting Foods, presented by the mildly amusing Alex Riley, was the search for the worst thing you could eat that is legally available in shops. Riley has thick, black-rimmed glasses and could probably do with a haircut. He looks like a dork and has a vaguely northern accent, but his management calls him `tall, sleek and unconventionally handsome'. Whatever.
He went in search of foods that had the most `stuff' added to them. Unsurprisingly, this didn't mean organic parsnips, but the kind of food churned out by big food processors and sold in your local cash-and-carry.
His first target was something called `cheese alternative'. This is an `analogue', a substance that contains some of the qualities of cheese - it even contains some skimmed milk - but isn't actually produced in the same way as cheese. Instead, it is created by the block load to pad out cheap supermarket food and takeaway pizzas and is packed full of `E' numbers - that is, artificial additives. And it doesn't taste of anything very much, never mind cheese.
If the `cheese' is full of additives, the chicken breasts are full of water. Riley managed to find some in his local Booker cash-and-carry store (yes, bizarrely, it is the same Booker that sponsors Britain's most famous literary prize) which contained just 60 per cent chicken and lots of water. You won't find chicken breasts like this in the local supermarket, but you might find them in your restaurant-bought chicken fried rice or chicken vindaloo. A trader in Smithfield, London's main meat market, told Britain's Really Disgusting Foods that chicken breasts stuffed full of water are popular with Chinese and Indian takeaways.
Another unsurprising target were sausages. They're absolutely full of rubbish, right? Well, actually, not as much as you might think. Riley was most disappointed to find that eyelids, scrotums, anuses and ears aren't allowed into any product labelled `sausage'. In fact, sausages must be 32 per cent meat at least, and most good-quality sausages contain 80 per cent or more.
However there's lots of other stuff you can put into meat products - like connective tissue - which might otherwise be thrown away. You'd have thought in an era of waste-not-want-not eco-frugality that the efficiency of the meat industry in this respect would have been praised. Many processed products are also bulked out with ingredients that are a hell of a lot cheaper than real meat: rusk, soya, colouring, etc. Confront people with the raw ingredients and they will turn their noses up. Offer samples of such a sausage at the posh nosh exhibition the Good Food Show, as Riley did, and people seem to think they're actually quite nice. Just don't mention what's in them.
This only goes to show the pragmatic attitude we Brits have to our food. As long as someone can assure us that what we eat isn't harmful, we'll happily munch away. Restaurants perform much the same trick. It doesn't really matter what you're eating - if it's cooked with half a pack of butter and seasoned well, it's going to taste good. We just love salt and fat, whether it's fine dining or the local takeaway after a heavy session.
As is often the way with this kind of TV show, Riley pulled in an expert or two to suggest that eating this kind of rubbish is responsible for the `wave of degenerative disease' in Britain, without actually detailing why that might be the case (or even proving that it is true). Like the pies he created to show off the worst of British processed food practices, Riley's film didn't have a lot of meat in it.
He did, however, manage one good thing. Booker's magazine for the Good Food Show featured a column by potty-mouthed celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, which apparently extolled the virtues of Booker's wares to the catering trade. No doubt Ramsay was mortified to be featured in a programme on crap sausages and dodgy chicken; these are the type of catering practices he attacks in shows like Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. But that's what you risk if you whore your reputation as a multi-Michelin starred chef to all-comers - just the kind of thing that a young, up-and-coming chef called Gordon Ramsay was railing against 10 years ago.
Britain's Really Disgusting Foods was another prime cut of the kind of no-need-to-watch factual programming mechanically generated by BBC3 and, indeed, by every other channel these days. From Honey, We're Killing the Kids to It's Shit Being an Indian Sweatshop Worker (okay, I made the last one up), factual television has been reduced to junk telly, as obvious and unsatisfying as a Pot Noodle. Yummy!
Source
Immigration pushes British population to record high
Immigration and a sharp rise in births by non-British mothers have pushed the population to almost 61m, figures show. The total number of people in Britain grew by 388,000 to 60,975,000 in the year up to mid-2007, leaving it more than 2m higher than in 2001. A record 605,000 long-term migrants - those staying longer than a year - settled in the country during the year, according to the Office for National Statistics - 21 per cent more than did in 2001.
However long-term migration out of Britain also reached a record high of 406,000 in the year. This means the number of people leaving Britain is now 30pc cent higher than it was just seven years ago. Statisticians said they were "surprised" to find that net migration - the difference between comings and goings - stood at 198,000 - 11,000 more than in 2001.
Meanwhile rising fertility rates and an increase in the number of women at childbearing age - many of whom are recent arrivals - saw a sharp increase in the birth rate. A total of 758,000 children were born - an increase of more than 12pc on the year before.
The population was also boosted by a fall in the number of deaths, which has decreased from 599,000 in 2001 to 571,000 last year. For the first time ever, there are now more people in Britain of a pensionable age than there are children. Men aged 65+ and women aged 60+ now make up almost a fifth of the population. The oldest age group - those aged 80+ - is also the fastest growing in Britain, and has increased by more than 1.2m since 1981.
The figures also showed that the changes in population vary dramatically across Britain. The areas that have experienced the highest increases to their populations are Westminster, Camden, South Northants, Forest Heath, Colchester and South Derbyshire. All have seen jumps in their total populations of more than 12pc since 2001.
In the same period the largest reductions in population occurred in Sefton, Burnley, Middlesbrough, Rushmoor, Wirral and Sunderland - all of which have seen their headcounts drop by 2pc. Researchers found that Cambridge had the most mobile population in the country - a higher proportion of people have moved in and out of the city since 2001 than in any other part of Britain.
Source
Yet more proof that you can NEVER entrust ID details to British bureaucrats: "Confidential records and sensitive intelligence on tens of thousands of the country's most prolific criminals have been lost in a major breach of data security at the heart of Whitehall. Scotland Yard is investigating the loss of the information, which was taken from the Police National Computer and entrusted by the Home Office to a private consultancy firm. The data had been encrypted for security reasons but was decoded by staff at PA Consulting Group and placed on a computer memory stick that was subsequently lost. The device contains personal details and intelligence on 33,000 serious offenders, dossiers on 10,000 "priority criminals" and the names and dates of birth of all 84,000 prisoners in England and Wales."
Friday, August 22, 2008
An 'anti-natal' society tells parents not to have big families
Society unfairly pressurises parents into having small families, according to a new report. The study for the think tank Civitas claims that the middle-classes are made to feel guilty about the impact on the environment and the damage to their careers if they have large numbers of babies. Everything from house prices to car tax makes it far more expensive for them to raise more than two children, it says.
The report says that this "anti-natal" prejudice against large families is misplaced, however, and that young people who have lots of brothers and sisters grow up happier and better-adjusted than only children.
Colin Brazier, a father-of-five who wrote the report, concluded: "Few television advertisements show a family with more than two children. Many feature just one. "The only child - once pitiable - is now fashionable. "A growing canon of work exists to justify the decision to restrict family size in the interests of the environment or career. "Respectable authors sidestep a substantial body of evidence to argue that only children suffer no material disadvantage by dint of their solitary status."
Mr Brazier, a presenter on Sky News, claims in his article in this month's Civitas Review that many British parents would like to have more than one or two children but that they cannot afford to do so. He says that the property market acts as a "contraceptive" because developers now build smaller homes, and that having more than three bedrooms adds two-thirds to the price of a house in some areas.
The report points out that parents who send their children to fee-paying schools suffer as there are only "modest discounts" for having multiple siblings on the roll. Meanwhile state schools no longer guarantee that all children from the same family will get a place, forcing parents to make several visits on the school-run each day.
Large families suffer financially on holiday as "family tickets" invariably admit two adults and two children, Mr Brazier said, while some councils insist that parents take no more than two children into swimming pools.
The study claims environmental concerns are now increasingly being cited as reasons to charge large families more for services, with people carriers facing higher road tax and "pay-as-you-throw" bin charges likely to penalise households with more children for throwing away more rubbish.
Despite this, Mr Brazier insists there are great benefits to children, their parents and society as a whole from large families. He cites academic studies that have shown children from larger families get into fewer fights at school and make more friends, because they are used to negotiation and team-playing, and are less likely to develop allergies.
He suggests having older siblings creates a "trickle-down" effect of knowledge to younger children in middle-class homes, and claims that in some broken families, deprived children only learn valuable social skills from their brothers and sisters.
The report claims parents are less likely to be over-protective or pushy if they have lots of children, while young people themselves benefit from having older siblings to play with and look after them.
Source
British road sign insults the elderly?
We read:
(In Britain, a "pensioner" is someone living on Social Security)
Update:
The following email from a Brit may be of interest:
"Just a small correction. "In Britain, a "pensioner" is someone living on Social Security" is misleading. A pensioner is, broadly speaking, any woman over 60 and any man over 65, because they are entitled to receive the state pension to which they have contributed during their working lives. I am a pensioner and receive this payment, but because I also have an occupational pension and some independent income, I could easily do without it. It is true that some pensioners have no other income, and as the state pension is niggardly theirs is not a lot to be envied. But most are perfectly comfortable financially, and would be rather piqued at the suggestion they were living on social security!
I think pensioners' views on the road signs would be ambivalent. On the one hand many of us are very spritely (I go hill-walking and sailing, am perfectly upright, do not use a stick and am physically strong provided I watch my back a little) and don't look the least bit like the sign. On the other hand, most of us couldn't give a toss, having more important things to think about!"
Thousands of NHS operations cancelled
Thousands of NHS operations were cancelled last year, many because of shortages of staff, beds or equipment, figures suggest. One in three hospital trusts cancelled surgery for the same patient at least three times, and up to 7,014 patients had operations cancelled or rescheduled more than once, data obtained by the Conservatives shows.
The most common reported reason for cancellation was problems with theatre bookings, responsible for 16,617 cases. Other causes included: 400 operations cancelled because the patient's notes had been lost, more than 10,000 cancelled because of bed shortages, nearly 4,000 because of equipment failure and more than 11,000 because of staffing shortages.
Data from 124 trusts - more than three quarters of those in England - responding to requests under the Freedom of Information Act, suggested that 77,302 operations were cancelled for "non-clinical reasons" in 2007-08. However, the trusts with the highest reported cases of cancelled surgery apologised yesterday for providing inaccurate data.
Kingston Hospital NHS Trust, which reported 10,351 operations cancelled last year, said that this figure was incorrect. "This was an error on our part and we apologise for any confusion this mistake has caused," the trust said, adding that only 190 operations were cancelled in 2007-08. Other trusts reporting more than 3,000 cancellations included hospitals in York and Brighton and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London. They also said that the figures were erroneous or had been misinterpreted.
Many cases could have been cancellations by patients themselves or have been logged as changes by hospitals before the patient was notified of a date for surgery, NHS staff said.
A spokesman for Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals Trust said: "Over six hundred of the operations that were `cancelled' were in fact brought forward to an earlier date and around 1,000 were administrative cancellations, which are about how the hospital schedules its work."
Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Health Secretary, said: "Having an operation cancelled can cause huge distress for patients and their families. It's simply unacceptable that these figures are so high."
Government figures show that the number of cancelled operations has increased by 14 per cent since 1997. There were 57,350 cancelled operations in 2007-08, compared with 50,505 in 1997-98, official records state, but they include only operations cancelled 24 hours in advance or less.
Richard Collins, a spokesman for the Royal College of Surgeons, said that the figures would almost certainly relate to elective, planned surgery rather than urgent care. "The shortage of ICU [intensive care unit] beds for major surgery patients is a common problem, especially in winter," he added. "Notes are also lost on a worryingly frequent basis."
A Department of Health spokesman said: "The number of cancelled operations needs to be set against the huge increase in the number of patients that the NHS is treating. "Between 1997 and 2008, the number of elective admissions has increased by over 1.5million while the number of operations cancelled at the last moment remained at less than 1.5 per cent."
Source
Britain: Parents applying to university on children's behalf
Pushy parents are being allowed to apply to university on their children's behalf, it has been revealed. Students starting higher education next month will be the first to be able to leave the admissions process to mothers and fathers. Some universities are even allowing parents to sit in on vital interviews. Critics said the move risked turning universities into "schools for biologically mature children". It is also feared that it will benefit middle-class teenagers, with some students from poor homes unable to call upon articulate parents.
In the past, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) had to deal directly with students themselves. But officials insisted a rise in the number of calls from parents had prompted a rule change, with applicants now able to nominate parents, guardians or teachers to act as "agents" on their behalf. Ucas said the service - which affects almost all students applying to university - was also intended to benefit those on gap years. Around one in 10 this year are estimated to have nominated parents to make calls on their behalf this year.
Experts said it underlined the influence of so-called "helicopter parents" - mothers and fathers who hover over their children at school, putting too much pressure on them at a young age. Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at Kent University, said over-protective parents were "destroying the distinction between school and higher education". "All universities now have to take the parent factor into account," he told BBC Online. "On university open days you can see more parents attending than children. "There is a powerful sense of infantilism, where parents can't let go."
He told how some parents arrived at university expecting to attend their son or daughter's interview. Some academics even accepted that it would be "a family discussion", and allowed parents to take part.
Cary Cooper, professor of organisational psychology at Lancaster University Management School, said parents wanted to control the "psychological and financial investment in their children". "These parents are paying more, so they think they can demand more," he said.
A Ucas spokesman said: "This is usually because the parent feels they haven't got all the information they need from their son or daughter and so phone back to double check and clarify points."
Source
Old King Coal may be our saviour yet
Britain is not alone in finding it hard to come to grips with reconciling the need for energy to fuel economic growth with the emerging consensus that something must be done about global warming, while moving away from the dependence on oil. The Democratic-controlled Congress slunk out of Washington last week without even voting on the various policy proposals before it.
So be kind to your own politicians. Making energy policy is a tough job, made tougher by politicians' refusal to acknowledge facts. The most basic is that the promotion of nuclear, solar, wind and other forms will do nothing in the near or medium term to end reliance on oil to propel cars and lorries. For as far ahead as a planner should try to see, we will depend on oil to move ourselves and our products around the country.
You can't fill up at a wind machine or a nuclear plant - and won't be able to until the electric car becomes economic, and that is a long way off. Which means that one ingredient of energy policy is the ability to defend oil supply routes, a job that the world has so far largely out-sourced to America.
No good saying Britain has plenty of oil in the North Sea - which might prove to be the case if oil prices stay high enough to make development of smaller, more difficult-to-access fields profitable, and if the Government resists the siren call of windfall taxes.
Oil markets are international, and if the Iranians try to close the Straits of Hormuz, or the crazies take over Saudi Arabia, prices would reach levels that will have us pining for the good old days of $150 oil.
Which is why the Government's decision to go ahead with the construction of new aircraft carriers is a sensible form of energy policy, assuming it does not come out of an already stretched military budget.
The next reality check is to accept that nuclear power is far dearer than the Government is anticipating. The cost of a nuclear plant is now estimated to be significantly more than twice the figure put about by the industry only five years ago - and rising. Many nuclear advocates have been pinning their hopes for cost reductions on the next-generation nuclear plant being built in Finland by Areva, a French company that Gordon Brown has announced might be allowed a monopoly of nuclear plant construction.
The Finnish project is two years behind schedule and $1.5 billion-plus over budget. High construction costs mean that electricity from nuclear plants can be competitive with the output of fossil fuel plants only if the price of carbon emissions rises and if investors are somehow guaranteed that those prices will stay high for the 20- to 40-year life of the nuclear plants. No such guarantee is possible, given the volatility of carbon markets, so pay no heed to industry promises that it will not seek subsidies.
Most likely, owners of the massive amounts of capital required to build these facilities will insist that they be guaranteed above-market prices for their power, a covert subsidy that will be hidden on electricity bills.
Nuclear's need for subsidies is not unique. Wind and solar, currently receiving large inflows of investment capital, also remain heavily dependent on subsidies. As does ethanol, part of the programme that has contributed to soaring food prices by giving farmers an incentive to transfer acreage to growing fuel.
Which leaves only natural gas, an efficient fuel, but one on which western Europe is overly dependent, to Vladimir Putin's delight - and coal. The world has limitless supplies of coal, most located in nations friendly to the West. But coal is an abomination in the eyes of environmentalists because of its alleged contribution to global warming.
Nevertheless, it will be a key ingredient in the world's energy future: India and China between them have 700 plants planned or under construction; the Government has sensibly authorised a new plant in Kent; and European countries plan to build 50 new coal stations in the next five years.
Source
Society unfairly pressurises parents into having small families, according to a new report. The study for the think tank Civitas claims that the middle-classes are made to feel guilty about the impact on the environment and the damage to their careers if they have large numbers of babies. Everything from house prices to car tax makes it far more expensive for them to raise more than two children, it says.
The report says that this "anti-natal" prejudice against large families is misplaced, however, and that young people who have lots of brothers and sisters grow up happier and better-adjusted than only children.
Colin Brazier, a father-of-five who wrote the report, concluded: "Few television advertisements show a family with more than two children. Many feature just one. "The only child - once pitiable - is now fashionable. "A growing canon of work exists to justify the decision to restrict family size in the interests of the environment or career. "Respectable authors sidestep a substantial body of evidence to argue that only children suffer no material disadvantage by dint of their solitary status."
Mr Brazier, a presenter on Sky News, claims in his article in this month's Civitas Review that many British parents would like to have more than one or two children but that they cannot afford to do so. He says that the property market acts as a "contraceptive" because developers now build smaller homes, and that having more than three bedrooms adds two-thirds to the price of a house in some areas.
The report points out that parents who send their children to fee-paying schools suffer as there are only "modest discounts" for having multiple siblings on the roll. Meanwhile state schools no longer guarantee that all children from the same family will get a place, forcing parents to make several visits on the school-run each day.
Large families suffer financially on holiday as "family tickets" invariably admit two adults and two children, Mr Brazier said, while some councils insist that parents take no more than two children into swimming pools.
The study claims environmental concerns are now increasingly being cited as reasons to charge large families more for services, with people carriers facing higher road tax and "pay-as-you-throw" bin charges likely to penalise households with more children for throwing away more rubbish.
Despite this, Mr Brazier insists there are great benefits to children, their parents and society as a whole from large families. He cites academic studies that have shown children from larger families get into fewer fights at school and make more friends, because they are used to negotiation and team-playing, and are less likely to develop allergies.
He suggests having older siblings creates a "trickle-down" effect of knowledge to younger children in middle-class homes, and claims that in some broken families, deprived children only learn valuable social skills from their brothers and sisters.
The report claims parents are less likely to be over-protective or pushy if they have lots of children, while young people themselves benefit from having older siblings to play with and look after them.
Source
British road sign insults the elderly?
We read:
"Pensioners' groups called for the road sign depicting old people to be scrapped because it is insulting.
Age Concern and Help the Aged said that the hunched figure with a walking stick, above, should be replaced with a new image. Barry Earnshaw, Age Concern Lincoln chief executive, said: "The sign doesn't represent older people as they are today. There should be a generic sign that is representative of all vulnerable pedestrians, regardless of age."
A Highways Agency spokesman said that new signs would be costly and require a change in the law.
Source
(In Britain, a "pensioner" is someone living on Social Security)
Update:
The following email from a Brit may be of interest:
"Just a small correction. "In Britain, a "pensioner" is someone living on Social Security" is misleading. A pensioner is, broadly speaking, any woman over 60 and any man over 65, because they are entitled to receive the state pension to which they have contributed during their working lives. I am a pensioner and receive this payment, but because I also have an occupational pension and some independent income, I could easily do without it. It is true that some pensioners have no other income, and as the state pension is niggardly theirs is not a lot to be envied. But most are perfectly comfortable financially, and would be rather piqued at the suggestion they were living on social security!
I think pensioners' views on the road signs would be ambivalent. On the one hand many of us are very spritely (I go hill-walking and sailing, am perfectly upright, do not use a stick and am physically strong provided I watch my back a little) and don't look the least bit like the sign. On the other hand, most of us couldn't give a toss, having more important things to think about!"
Thousands of NHS operations cancelled
Thousands of NHS operations were cancelled last year, many because of shortages of staff, beds or equipment, figures suggest. One in three hospital trusts cancelled surgery for the same patient at least three times, and up to 7,014 patients had operations cancelled or rescheduled more than once, data obtained by the Conservatives shows.
The most common reported reason for cancellation was problems with theatre bookings, responsible for 16,617 cases. Other causes included: 400 operations cancelled because the patient's notes had been lost, more than 10,000 cancelled because of bed shortages, nearly 4,000 because of equipment failure and more than 11,000 because of staffing shortages.
Data from 124 trusts - more than three quarters of those in England - responding to requests under the Freedom of Information Act, suggested that 77,302 operations were cancelled for "non-clinical reasons" in 2007-08. However, the trusts with the highest reported cases of cancelled surgery apologised yesterday for providing inaccurate data.
Kingston Hospital NHS Trust, which reported 10,351 operations cancelled last year, said that this figure was incorrect. "This was an error on our part and we apologise for any confusion this mistake has caused," the trust said, adding that only 190 operations were cancelled in 2007-08. Other trusts reporting more than 3,000 cancellations included hospitals in York and Brighton and Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London. They also said that the figures were erroneous or had been misinterpreted.
Many cases could have been cancellations by patients themselves or have been logged as changes by hospitals before the patient was notified of a date for surgery, NHS staff said.
A spokesman for Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals Trust said: "Over six hundred of the operations that were `cancelled' were in fact brought forward to an earlier date and around 1,000 were administrative cancellations, which are about how the hospital schedules its work."
Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Health Secretary, said: "Having an operation cancelled can cause huge distress for patients and their families. It's simply unacceptable that these figures are so high."
Government figures show that the number of cancelled operations has increased by 14 per cent since 1997. There were 57,350 cancelled operations in 2007-08, compared with 50,505 in 1997-98, official records state, but they include only operations cancelled 24 hours in advance or less.
Richard Collins, a spokesman for the Royal College of Surgeons, said that the figures would almost certainly relate to elective, planned surgery rather than urgent care. "The shortage of ICU [intensive care unit] beds for major surgery patients is a common problem, especially in winter," he added. "Notes are also lost on a worryingly frequent basis."
A Department of Health spokesman said: "The number of cancelled operations needs to be set against the huge increase in the number of patients that the NHS is treating. "Between 1997 and 2008, the number of elective admissions has increased by over 1.5million while the number of operations cancelled at the last moment remained at less than 1.5 per cent."
Source
Britain: Parents applying to university on children's behalf
Pushy parents are being allowed to apply to university on their children's behalf, it has been revealed. Students starting higher education next month will be the first to be able to leave the admissions process to mothers and fathers. Some universities are even allowing parents to sit in on vital interviews. Critics said the move risked turning universities into "schools for biologically mature children". It is also feared that it will benefit middle-class teenagers, with some students from poor homes unable to call upon articulate parents.
In the past, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) had to deal directly with students themselves. But officials insisted a rise in the number of calls from parents had prompted a rule change, with applicants now able to nominate parents, guardians or teachers to act as "agents" on their behalf. Ucas said the service - which affects almost all students applying to university - was also intended to benefit those on gap years. Around one in 10 this year are estimated to have nominated parents to make calls on their behalf this year.
Experts said it underlined the influence of so-called "helicopter parents" - mothers and fathers who hover over their children at school, putting too much pressure on them at a young age. Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at Kent University, said over-protective parents were "destroying the distinction between school and higher education". "All universities now have to take the parent factor into account," he told BBC Online. "On university open days you can see more parents attending than children. "There is a powerful sense of infantilism, where parents can't let go."
He told how some parents arrived at university expecting to attend their son or daughter's interview. Some academics even accepted that it would be "a family discussion", and allowed parents to take part.
Cary Cooper, professor of organisational psychology at Lancaster University Management School, said parents wanted to control the "psychological and financial investment in their children". "These parents are paying more, so they think they can demand more," he said.
A Ucas spokesman said: "This is usually because the parent feels they haven't got all the information they need from their son or daughter and so phone back to double check and clarify points."
Source
Old King Coal may be our saviour yet
Britain is not alone in finding it hard to come to grips with reconciling the need for energy to fuel economic growth with the emerging consensus that something must be done about global warming, while moving away from the dependence on oil. The Democratic-controlled Congress slunk out of Washington last week without even voting on the various policy proposals before it.
So be kind to your own politicians. Making energy policy is a tough job, made tougher by politicians' refusal to acknowledge facts. The most basic is that the promotion of nuclear, solar, wind and other forms will do nothing in the near or medium term to end reliance on oil to propel cars and lorries. For as far ahead as a planner should try to see, we will depend on oil to move ourselves and our products around the country.
You can't fill up at a wind machine or a nuclear plant - and won't be able to until the electric car becomes economic, and that is a long way off. Which means that one ingredient of energy policy is the ability to defend oil supply routes, a job that the world has so far largely out-sourced to America.
No good saying Britain has plenty of oil in the North Sea - which might prove to be the case if oil prices stay high enough to make development of smaller, more difficult-to-access fields profitable, and if the Government resists the siren call of windfall taxes.
Oil markets are international, and if the Iranians try to close the Straits of Hormuz, or the crazies take over Saudi Arabia, prices would reach levels that will have us pining for the good old days of $150 oil.
Which is why the Government's decision to go ahead with the construction of new aircraft carriers is a sensible form of energy policy, assuming it does not come out of an already stretched military budget.
The next reality check is to accept that nuclear power is far dearer than the Government is anticipating. The cost of a nuclear plant is now estimated to be significantly more than twice the figure put about by the industry only five years ago - and rising. Many nuclear advocates have been pinning their hopes for cost reductions on the next-generation nuclear plant being built in Finland by Areva, a French company that Gordon Brown has announced might be allowed a monopoly of nuclear plant construction.
The Finnish project is two years behind schedule and $1.5 billion-plus over budget. High construction costs mean that electricity from nuclear plants can be competitive with the output of fossil fuel plants only if the price of carbon emissions rises and if investors are somehow guaranteed that those prices will stay high for the 20- to 40-year life of the nuclear plants. No such guarantee is possible, given the volatility of carbon markets, so pay no heed to industry promises that it will not seek subsidies.
Most likely, owners of the massive amounts of capital required to build these facilities will insist that they be guaranteed above-market prices for their power, a covert subsidy that will be hidden on electricity bills.
Nuclear's need for subsidies is not unique. Wind and solar, currently receiving large inflows of investment capital, also remain heavily dependent on subsidies. As does ethanol, part of the programme that has contributed to soaring food prices by giving farmers an incentive to transfer acreage to growing fuel.
Which leaves only natural gas, an efficient fuel, but one on which western Europe is overly dependent, to Vladimir Putin's delight - and coal. The world has limitless supplies of coal, most located in nations friendly to the West. But coal is an abomination in the eyes of environmentalists because of its alleged contribution to global warming.
Nevertheless, it will be a key ingredient in the world's energy future: India and China between them have 700 plants planned or under construction; the Government has sensibly authorised a new plant in Kent; and European countries plan to build 50 new coal stations in the next five years.
Source
Thursday, August 21, 2008
UK Scientist: As Earth faces cooling, media exhibits 'cognitive dissonance'
I must ask a very serious and urgent question of our media. Why do you continue to talk glibly about current climate `warming' when it is now widely acknowledged that there has been no `global warming' for the last ten years, a cooling trend that many think may continue for at least another ten years? How can you talk of the climate `warming' when, on the key measures, it isn't? And now a leading Mexican scientist is even predicting that we may enter another `Little Ice Age' - a `pequena era de hielo'.
Such media behaviour exhibits a classic condition known as `cognitive dissonance'. This is experienced when belief in a grand narrative persists blindly even when the facts in the real world begin to contradict what the narrative is saying. Sadly, our media have come to have a vested interest in `global warming', as have so many politicians and activists. They are terrified that the public may begin to question everything if climate is acknowledged, on air and in the press, not to be playing ball with their pet trope.
But that is precisely what is happening. Since 1998, according to all the main world temperature records, including the UK Met Office's `HadCRUT3' data set [a globally-gridded product of near-surface temperatures consisting of annual differences from 1961-90 normals], the world average surface temperature has exhibited no warming whatsoever. Indeed, the trend has been a combination of flat-lining and cooling, with a particularly marked plunge over the last few months. Many parts of the world, including Canada, China, and the US, have just experienced their worst winter in years (as is currently Australia), while skiing in Scotland has benefited from the trend, and the summit of Snowdon carried snow even up to the end of April.
To put it simply, since 1998, there has been no `global warming', despite the fact that, during this same period, atmospheric CO2 has continued to rise, from c. 368 ppm by volume in 1998 to c. 384 ppmv in November, 2007. Moreover, another `greenhouse gas', methane, has also been rising, following a period of relative stability, by about 0.5% between 2006 and 2007.
Of course, little can be gleaned from a short data run of only 10-years, a fact, I might add, which `global warming' fanatics have too often failed to stress. Nevertheless, recent work demonstrates that the Earth's temperature may stay roughly the same for at least a further decade through the workings of a phenomenon known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). The cause of this oscillation, which is related to the currents that bring warmth from the tropics to Europe, is not well understood, but the cycle appears to have an effect every 60 to 70 years. It may well prove to be part of the explanation as to why global mean temperatures rose in the early years of the 20th Century, before then starting to cool again in the late-1940s. Thus, according to the new model, cooling remains on the cards for another ten years at least, making a potential 20 years of cooling in all.
But the sun isn't playing ball either. The big question is: "What has happened to Solar Cycle 24?" Solar-cycle intensity is measured by the maximum number of sunspots. These are dark blotches on the Sun that mark areas of heightened magnetic activity. The more sunspots there are, the more likely it is that major solar storms will occur, and these are related to warming on Earth; the fewer the sunspots, the more likely there is to be cooling. The next 11-year cycle of solar storms [Solar Cycle 24] was predicted to have begun in autumn, 2006, but it appears to have been delayed. It was then expected to take off in March last year, and to peak in late-2011, or mid-2012. But the Sun remains largely spotless, except for an odd fading spot. This delayed onset has somewhat confused the official Solar Cycle 24 Prediction Panel, leaving them evenly split as to whether a weak or a strong period of solar storms now lies ahead.
However, some other scientists are deeply concerned, including Phil Chapman, the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut, who comments: "Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously."
Chapman then explains why the absence of sunspots might exacerbate this cooling trend: "The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790. Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots." Thus, all the immediate signs and portents are pointing in the direction of a cooling period, not a warming one.
So, why are newspapers, magazines, radio, and television not telling us all this? Because they have invested so much effort over the last ten years in hyping up the exact opposite. Moreover, it is especially pathetic sophistry to claim, as dedicated `global warmers' are wont to do, that `natural forces' are having the temerity to "suppress" `global warming'. The fundamental point has always been this: climate change is governed by hundreds of factors, or variables, and the very idea that we can manage climate change predictably by understanding and manipulating at the margins one politically-selected factor is as misguided as it gets.
And now a Mexican expert, Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera (National Autonomous University of Mexico), is warning that the Earth will enter a new `Little Ice Age' for up to 80 years due to decreases in solar activity [see: `Auguran breve era del hielo en 2010', Milenio, August 16]. He describes the predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as "erroneous".
If this cooling phase really does persist, it will be illuminating to observe how long our media can maintain its befuddled state of `cognitive dissonance'. Mind you, I jolly well hope that we aren't entering a cooling period - it's the very last thing we need! Give me warming any time. Brrrr!
Source
Why haven't the Left got Georgia on their minds?
Comment from Britain
Pity I was away last week. I must have missed the march through London against the Russian invasion of Georgia. What a magnificent sight it must have been - half a million protesters standing firm against tyranny and supporting freedom and democracy. I'd have loved to have heard Red Ken denouncing the bloodthirsty gangster regime in Moscow, George Galloway comparing Vladimir Putin to Hitler and Tony Benn declaring it was all about oil.
What's that you say? There was no such rally? I suppose they must all have been too busy demonstrating against Chinese oppression in Tibet and demanding a boycott of the Beijing Olympics. Or perhaps not. Funny how the Not In My Name crowd always overlooks aggression by Communist or 'former' Communist regimes.
There's no such reticence when it comes to portraying George W. Bush as the new Hitler or daubing swastikas on the Israeli flag. Look at the protests against the wars in Iraq and Lebanon. The same people who can't wait to burn the American flag in Trafalgar Square are only too happy to ignore Russian, Chinese and Iraqi genocide.
Where were all the marchers when the Russians were crushing Chechnya? Why so silent on Tibet? They must have been looking the other way when Saddam slaughtered the Kurds.
It hasn't been difficult to find apologists for the invasion of Georgia. We're told that the 'American-educated' Mikhail Saakashvili provoked the Russians beyond all reason. What did we expect encouraging the spread of democracy in former Soviet satellite states? No wonder Moscow feels threatened when independent countries it once ruled by military might become members of the European Union and apply to join Nato. Putting a Western missile defence system in Poland is like waving a red rag at a bull, the sophisticates say. Putin has no option but to retaliate. I don't remember them demanding the withdrawal of Soviet nukes pointing at Western capitals from East Germany. Back then, the Guardianistas were all for one-sided disarmament on our part.
The Left has always been picky about their protests. While they rightly denounce white racism in South Africa, they stay silent on black racism in Zimbabwe. They bang on about American cultural imperialism, but have nothing to say about Russian or Chinese military imperialism. America is constantly denounced for its 'yuman rites' abuses, but you never hear a dicky bird about the denial of basic freedoms in China or throughout the Muslim world.
Europe's Leftists define themselves by their hatred of the U.S., yet cheerfully tolerate all kinds of tyranny elsewhere. They're against 'torture' at Guantanamo Bay, but take a relaxed view of Chinese and Russian death squads. There are still plenty of 'comrades' in the Labour Party and the trades union movement who regret the day the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. They're only too willing to give succour to the enemies of freedom and democracy around the world.
Source
Labour's 'open-door' policy sees immigration soar eight-fold compared to last Tory decade
Immigration under Labour has soared eight-fold compared with the last decade of Tory rule, it emerged last night. The astonishing impact of the Government's controversial 'open door' policy is revealed for the first time in a study by the independent House of Commons Library. Between 1997 and 2006, the population increased by 1,196,000 as a direct result of immigration - the equivalent of almost 330 extra people arriving each day. In the preceding decade of Conservative rule, from 1987 to 1996, the increase was only 141,000.
The study, compiled by Parliamentary researchers earlier this month, also found that between 1980 and 1986 at the start of Margaret Thatcher's term in office the number of arrivals from overseas was outstripped by those leaving, with the population falling by 40,000. MPs said the study - which is based on official figures only and does not include any migrants who have sneaked into the country illegally - gave the clearest indication yet that Labour had deliberately presided over mass migration.
Tory MP James Clappison, who uncovered the research, said: 'This shows an historically unprecedented level of immigration has taken place under the Labour Government, as a direct result of its economic policies.' Separate figures obtained by Mr Clappison show that, over the course of the last decade, the vast majority of arrivals have been from outside the EU.
Between 1997 and 2006, there were more than three times as many arrivals from the rest of the world as from within Europe. According to research released by the Cabinet Office, the trend even continued in the wake of the EU being extended to eastern Europe in 2004, sparking a massive influx to the UK from countries such as Poland. In 2004, there were 150,000 arrivals from within the EU, making up 26 per cent of the total. This rose to 182,000 in 2005, and 205,000 in 2006. But even the 2006 figure constituted only 35 per cent of the total, with 386,000 people - or 65 per cent - pouring in from the rest of the world.
It will raise questions why ministers - faced with such large numbers of arrivals from eastern Europe - did not seek to limit the numbers coming in from elsewhere to ease the pressure on schools, hospitals and other public services. They have no control over arrivals from within the EU, due to free movement regulations, but can deny work permits and visas to migrants from the rest of the world.
Tories say the research is clear proof ministers took a deliberate decision not to do so. Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: 'Immigration can be of real benefit to the country but only if it is properly controlled. These figures show that Labour patently does not have control of immigration in this country. 'These stats put pay to ( Immigration Minister) Liam Byrne's spin that an annual limit on non-EU immigration would be ineffective.'
The figures emerged as ministers confirmed plans for 'no fly' lists of foreign nationals such as criminals, suspected extremists and immigration offenders who will be banned from flying with airlines into the UK. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith also restated a promise to electronically count all passengers in and out of the country by 2014. A Home Office spokesman said: 'We're delivering the biggest shakeup to Britain's border security for 40 years. 'This includes an Australian-style points based system which will cover close to six in ten of all migrants to ensure only those we want and no more can come here.
Source
Alexander Technique effective for back pain
An alternative therapy used to improve posture and to help women to cope with labour pain can be more effective at treating backache than conventional treatments, a study suggests. Combining exercise with practising the Alexander Technique could significantly reduce back pain and improve mobility, researchers found.
The technique was developed by the actor Frederick Alexander (1869-1955) to help his vocal and breathing problems. It is designed to change the way people move their bodies, with an emphasis on balance, posture and co-ordination. A team from the universities of Bristol and Southampton compared the effectiveness of massage, exercise and the Alexander Technique in 579 patients with back pain. Those who had received 24 lessons in the Alexander Technique reported 18 fewer days of back pain over four weeks compared with those who had been taking exercise alone, according to the study published online by the British Medical Journal today.
Source
Childhood's End
By Theodore Dalrymple
Britain is the worst country in the Western world in which to be a child, according to a recent UNICEF report. Ordinarily, I would not set much store by such a report; but in this case, I think it must be right--not because I know so much about childhood in all the other 20 countries examined but because the childhood that many British parents give to their offspring is so awful that it is hard to conceive of worse, at least on a mass scale. The two poles of contemporary British child rearing are neglect and overindulgence.
Consider one British parent, Fiona MacKeown, who in November 2007 went on a six-month vacation to Goa, India, with her boyfriend and eight of her nine children by five different fathers, none of whom ever contributed financially for long to the children's upkeep. (The child left behind--her eldest, at 19--was a drug addict.) She received $50,000 in welfare benefits a year, and doubtless decided--quite rationally, under the circumstances--that the money would go further, and that life would thus be more agreeable, in Goa than in her native Devon.
Reaching Goa, MacKeown soon decided to travel with seven of her children to Kerala, leaving behind one of them, 15-year-old Scarlett Keeling, to live with a tour guide ten years her elder, whom the mother had known for only a short time. Scarlett reportedly claimed to have had sex with this man only because she needed a roof over her head. According to a witness, she was constantly on drugs; and one night, she went to a bar where she drank a lot and took several different illicit drugs, including LSD, cocaine, and pot. She was seen leaving the bar late, almost certainly intoxicated.
The next morning, her body turned up on a beach. At first, the local police maintained that she had drowned while high, but further examination proved that someone had raped and then forcibly drowned her. So far, three people have been arrested in the investigation, which is continuing.
About a month later, Scarlett's mother, interviewed by the liberal Sunday newspaper the Observer, expressed surprise at the level of public vituperation aimed at her and her lifestyle in the aftermath of the murder. She agreed that she and her children lived on welfare, but "not by conscious choice," and she couldn't see anything wrong with her actions in India apart from a certain naivety in trusting the man in whose care she had left her daughter. Scarlett was always an independent girl, and if she, the mother, could turn the clock back, she would behave exactly the same way again.
It is not surprising that someone in Fiona MacKeown's position would deny negligence; to acknowledge it would be too painful. But--and this is what is truly disturbing--when the newspaper asked four supposed child-rearing experts for their opinions, only one saw anything wrong with the mother's behavior, and even she offered only muted criticism. It was always difficult to know how much independence to grant an adolescent, the expert said; but in her view, the mother had granted too much too quickly to Scarlett.
Even that seemed excessively harsh to the Observer's Barbara Ellen. We should not criticize the mother's way of life, she wrote, since it had nothing to do with her daughter's death: "Scarlett died for the simple fact that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people, as well as being blitzed with drugs, late at night, in a foreign country." On this view, being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people is a raw fact of nature, not the result of human agency, decision, education, or taste. It could happen to anybody, and it just happened to happen to Scarlett. As for drugs, they emerge from the ether and blitz people completely at random. It all seems very unfair. A columnist for the left-wing Guardian took a similarly exculpatory line:
No one criticizes Rod Stewart, Jack Nicholson, or Mick Jagger for how they behave; therefore, apparently, there was nothing wrong with how Fiona MacKeown behaved.
It is worth remembering that the Observer and the Guardian are not the publications of a lunatic fringe but the preferred newspapers of the British intelligentsia, of those who work in the educational and social services, and of broadcasting elites (the BBC advertises vacancies almost exclusively in the Guardian). Not every person who reads these newspapers agrees with everything written in them--and both, commendably, offer a little space to writers whose worldview differs from their own--but the general moral tone must be one with which most readers agree. In other words, it is likely that a large part of the educated elite sees nothing wrong, or at least affects to see nothing wrong, with MacKeown's conduct.
This nonjudgmentalism surely helps explain why British youth are among the Western world's leaders in such indicators of social pathology as teenage pregnancy, violence, criminality, underage drinking, and consumption of illicit drugs. Britain has the third-highest rate of teenage pregnancy in the industrialized world, according to the UNICEF report (only the United States and New Zealand are higher)--a startling case recently made headlines of 16-, 14-, and 12-year-old sisters, all of whom gave birth within a year of one another. British children have the earliest and highest consumption of cocaine of any young people in Europe, are ten times more likely to sniff solvents than are Greek children, and are six to seven times more likely to smoke pot than are Swedish children. Almost a third of British young people aged 11, 13, and 15 say they have been drunk at least twice.
What explains the nonjudgmental attitude among elites? The reluctance to criticize Fiona MacKeown might be an expression of sympathy for someone in the throes of grief: however foolishly (or worse) she behaved, she certainly did not deserve the murder of her daughter. Furthermore, the Guardian and Observer journalists might argue, we do not know enough about the details of her life to criticize her fairly. Perhaps she is a good mother in most respects; perhaps her children, apart from the drug addict and the murdered Scarlett, are happy, and will lead lives of fulfillment and achievement. After all, no style of upbringing guarantees success or, for that matter, failure; and therefore we should suspend judgment about her.
I suspect, however, that the main consideration inhibiting elite criticism of MacKeown is that passing judgment would call into question the shibboleths of liberal social policy for the last 50 or 60 years--beliefs that give their proponents a strong sense of moral superiority. It would be to entertain the heretical thought that family structure might matter after all, along with such qualities as self-restraint and self-respect; and that welfare dependency is unjust to those who pay for it and disastrous for those who wind up trapped in it.
One day after Scarlett Keeling's murder, a nine-year-old girl, Shannon Matthews, went missing from her home in Dewsbury, in northern England. Twenty-four days later, after an extensive police search, she was found alive, locked in a drawer under a bed in her stepfather's uncle's house. Police soon arrested the stepfather, 22-year-old Craig Meehan, for possession of 140 pornographic pictures of children, and charged the uncle, Michael Donovan, with kidnapping. Shannon's mother, Karen Matthews, 32, was also arrested, for child cruelty, neglect, and obstructing the police by lying during the search for her daughter.
Karen Matthews, who received welfare payments of $40,000 a year, had borne seven children to five different men. She called two of her children with the same father "the twins," thus transferring the meaning of "twin" from the relatively unusual biological occurrence of double birth to what she clearly thought the equally unusual social circumstance of full siblinghood. Three of her children lived with their fathers, and four lived with her and Meehan, whom Shannon reportedly regarded as her father. Shannon's true father--one Leon Rose, who has since "moved on" to live with another "partner"--apparently was happy to find himself usurped by the young Meehan; but Karen Matthews's brother reported that Shannon often spoke of Meehan's violence to her and of her deep unhappiness at home.
The reasons for Shannon's abduction have not yet emerged, but again the Guardian managed to distract the reader's attention from less than optimal family arrangements. Instead, it ran an upbeat story on the housing project where the Matthews family lived; that way, the obvious could be ignored rather than denied. The Sun, a tabloid newspaper whose readership is virtually entirely working-class, had described the project as "like Beirut--only worse." But the Guardian, whose readership is largely middle-class and employed in the public sector, drew attention to the improvements that had taken place in the project, thanks to the local council's having spent $8 million on it over the last three years--supplying traffic bollards shaped like penguins, for example. Before the improvements, one resident said, "We'd houses burgled, sheds burned, caravans blown up." Now, only one house in 90 is robbed per year; and, thanks to the penguins, joy-riding by youths ! in stolen cars is presumably much reduced. The implication is clear: with more public spending of this kind everywhere in the country, administered by Guardian readers and their peers, everything will be all right. It won't matter in the slightest if children either have no fathers, or different fathers every few years.
One might dismiss the stories of Scarlett Keeling and Shannon Matthews as the kind of horrific things that can take place in any society from time to time. But I think that they are the tip of an iceberg. As the liberal newspapers' response shows, the problem with British childhood is by no means confined to the underclass. Our society has lost the most elementary common sense about what children need.
More than four out of ten British children are born out of wedlock; the unions of which they are the issue are notoriously unstable. Even marriage has lost much of its meaning. In a post-religious society, it is no longer a sacrament. The government has ensured that marriage brings no fiscal advantages and, indeed, for those at the lower end of the social scale, that it has only disadvantages. Easy divorce means that a quarter of all marriages break up within a decade.
The results of this social dysfunction are grim for children. Eighty percent of British children have televisions in their bedrooms, more than have their biological fathers at home. Fifty-eight percent of British children eat their evening meal in front of the television (a British child spends more than five hours per day watching a screen); 36 percent never eat any meals together with other family members; and 34 percent of households do not even own dining tables. In the prison where I once worked, I discovered that many inmates had never eaten at a table together with someone else.
Let me speculate briefly on the implications of these startling facts. They mean that children never learn, from a sense of social obligation, to eat when not hungry, or not to eat when they are. Appetite is all they need consult in deciding whether to eat--a purely egotistical outlook. Hence anything that interferes with the satisfaction of appetite will seem oppressive. They do not learn such elementary social practices as sharing or letting others go first. Since mealtimes are usually when families get to converse, the children do not learn the art of conversation, either; listening to what others say becomes a challenge. There is a time and place for everything: if I feel like it, the time is now, and the place is here.
If children are not taught self-control, they do not learn it. Violence against teachers is increasing: injuries suffered by teachers at the hands of pupils rose 20 percent between 2000 and 2006, and in one survey, which may or may not be representative, 53 percent of teachers had objects thrown at them, 26 percent had been attacked with furniture or equipment, 2 percent had been threatened with a knife, and 1 percent with a gun. Nearly 40 percent of teachers have taken time off to recover from violent incidents at students' hands. About a quarter of British teachers have been assaulted by their students over the last year.
The British, never fond of children, have lost all knowledge or intuition about how to raise them; as a consequence, they now fear them, perhaps the most terrible augury possible for a society. The signs of this fear are unmistakable on the faces of the elderly in public places. An involuntary look of distaste, even barely controlled terror, crosses their faces if a group of young teens approaches; then they try to look as if they are not really there, hoping to avoid trouble. And the children themselves are afraid. The police say that many children as young as eight are carrying knives for protection. Violent attacks by the young between ten and 17, usually on other children, have risen by 35 percent in the last four years.
The police, assuming that badly behaved children will become future criminals, have established probably the largest database of DNA profiles in the world: 1.1 million samples from children aged ten to 18, taken over the last decade, and at an accelerating rate (some law enforcement officials have advocated that every child should have a DNA profile on record). Since the criminal-justice system reacts to the commission of serious crimes hardly at all, however, British youth do not object to the gathering of the samples: they know that they largely act with impunity, profiles or no profiles.
The British may have always inclined toward harshness or neglect (or both) in dealing with children; but never before have they combined such attitudes with an undiscriminating material indulgence. My patients would sometimes ask me how it was that their children had turned out so bad when they had done everything for them. When I asked them what they meant by "everything," it invariably meant the latest televisions in their bedrooms or the latest fashionable footwear--to which modern British youth attaches far more importance than Imelda Marcos ever did.
Needless to say, the British state's response to the situation that it has in part created is simultaneously authoritarian and counterproductive. The government pretends, for example, that the problem of child welfare is one of raw poverty. Britain does have the highest rate of child poverty, bar the United States, in the West, as defined (as it usually is) by the percentage of children living in households with an income of less than 50 percent of the median. (Whether this is a sensible definition of poverty is a subject rarely broached.) But after many years of various redistributive measures and billions spent to reduce it, child poverty is, if anything, more widespread.
The British government thus pursues social welfare policies that encourage the creation of households like the Matthews', and then seeks, via yet more welfare spending, to reduce the harm done to children in them. But was the Matthews household poor, in any but an artificial sense? At the time of Shannon's current stepfather's arrest, the household income was $72,000; it lived free of rent and local taxes, and it boasted three computers and a large plasma-screen television. Would another $5,000 or $10,000 or $20,000 have made any difference?
A system of perverse incentives in a culture of undiscriminating materialism, where the main freedom is freedom from legal, financial, ethical, or social consequences, makes childhood in Britain a torment both for many of those who live it and those who observe it. Yet the British government will do anything but address the problem, or that part of the problem that is its duty to address: the state-encouraged breakdown of the family. If one were a Marxist, one might see in this refusal the self-interest of the state-employee class: social problems, after all, are their raison d'etre.
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"Un experto de la Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico pronostico que en alrededor de diez anos la Tierra entrara a una `pequena era de hielo' que durara de 60 a 80 anos y sera causada por la disminucion de la actividad solar." [Milenio, August 16]
I must ask a very serious and urgent question of our media. Why do you continue to talk glibly about current climate `warming' when it is now widely acknowledged that there has been no `global warming' for the last ten years, a cooling trend that many think may continue for at least another ten years? How can you talk of the climate `warming' when, on the key measures, it isn't? And now a leading Mexican scientist is even predicting that we may enter another `Little Ice Age' - a `pequena era de hielo'.
Such media behaviour exhibits a classic condition known as `cognitive dissonance'. This is experienced when belief in a grand narrative persists blindly even when the facts in the real world begin to contradict what the narrative is saying. Sadly, our media have come to have a vested interest in `global warming', as have so many politicians and activists. They are terrified that the public may begin to question everything if climate is acknowledged, on air and in the press, not to be playing ball with their pet trope.
But that is precisely what is happening. Since 1998, according to all the main world temperature records, including the UK Met Office's `HadCRUT3' data set [a globally-gridded product of near-surface temperatures consisting of annual differences from 1961-90 normals], the world average surface temperature has exhibited no warming whatsoever. Indeed, the trend has been a combination of flat-lining and cooling, with a particularly marked plunge over the last few months. Many parts of the world, including Canada, China, and the US, have just experienced their worst winter in years (as is currently Australia), while skiing in Scotland has benefited from the trend, and the summit of Snowdon carried snow even up to the end of April.
To put it simply, since 1998, there has been no `global warming', despite the fact that, during this same period, atmospheric CO2 has continued to rise, from c. 368 ppm by volume in 1998 to c. 384 ppmv in November, 2007. Moreover, another `greenhouse gas', methane, has also been rising, following a period of relative stability, by about 0.5% between 2006 and 2007.
Of course, little can be gleaned from a short data run of only 10-years, a fact, I might add, which `global warming' fanatics have too often failed to stress. Nevertheless, recent work demonstrates that the Earth's temperature may stay roughly the same for at least a further decade through the workings of a phenomenon known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). The cause of this oscillation, which is related to the currents that bring warmth from the tropics to Europe, is not well understood, but the cycle appears to have an effect every 60 to 70 years. It may well prove to be part of the explanation as to why global mean temperatures rose in the early years of the 20th Century, before then starting to cool again in the late-1940s. Thus, according to the new model, cooling remains on the cards for another ten years at least, making a potential 20 years of cooling in all.
But the sun isn't playing ball either. The big question is: "What has happened to Solar Cycle 24?" Solar-cycle intensity is measured by the maximum number of sunspots. These are dark blotches on the Sun that mark areas of heightened magnetic activity. The more sunspots there are, the more likely it is that major solar storms will occur, and these are related to warming on Earth; the fewer the sunspots, the more likely there is to be cooling. The next 11-year cycle of solar storms [Solar Cycle 24] was predicted to have begun in autumn, 2006, but it appears to have been delayed. It was then expected to take off in March last year, and to peak in late-2011, or mid-2012. But the Sun remains largely spotless, except for an odd fading spot. This delayed onset has somewhat confused the official Solar Cycle 24 Prediction Panel, leaving them evenly split as to whether a weak or a strong period of solar storms now lies ahead.
However, some other scientists are deeply concerned, including Phil Chapman, the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut, who comments: "Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously."
Chapman then explains why the absence of sunspots might exacerbate this cooling trend: "The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790. Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots." Thus, all the immediate signs and portents are pointing in the direction of a cooling period, not a warming one.
So, why are newspapers, magazines, radio, and television not telling us all this? Because they have invested so much effort over the last ten years in hyping up the exact opposite. Moreover, it is especially pathetic sophistry to claim, as dedicated `global warmers' are wont to do, that `natural forces' are having the temerity to "suppress" `global warming'. The fundamental point has always been this: climate change is governed by hundreds of factors, or variables, and the very idea that we can manage climate change predictably by understanding and manipulating at the margins one politically-selected factor is as misguided as it gets.
And now a Mexican expert, Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera (National Autonomous University of Mexico), is warning that the Earth will enter a new `Little Ice Age' for up to 80 years due to decreases in solar activity [see: `Auguran breve era del hielo en 2010', Milenio, August 16]. He describes the predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as "erroneous".
If this cooling phase really does persist, it will be illuminating to observe how long our media can maintain its befuddled state of `cognitive dissonance'. Mind you, I jolly well hope that we aren't entering a cooling period - it's the very last thing we need! Give me warming any time. Brrrr!
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Why haven't the Left got Georgia on their minds?
Comment from Britain
Pity I was away last week. I must have missed the march through London against the Russian invasion of Georgia. What a magnificent sight it must have been - half a million protesters standing firm against tyranny and supporting freedom and democracy. I'd have loved to have heard Red Ken denouncing the bloodthirsty gangster regime in Moscow, George Galloway comparing Vladimir Putin to Hitler and Tony Benn declaring it was all about oil.
What's that you say? There was no such rally? I suppose they must all have been too busy demonstrating against Chinese oppression in Tibet and demanding a boycott of the Beijing Olympics. Or perhaps not. Funny how the Not In My Name crowd always overlooks aggression by Communist or 'former' Communist regimes.
There's no such reticence when it comes to portraying George W. Bush as the new Hitler or daubing swastikas on the Israeli flag. Look at the protests against the wars in Iraq and Lebanon. The same people who can't wait to burn the American flag in Trafalgar Square are only too happy to ignore Russian, Chinese and Iraqi genocide.
Where were all the marchers when the Russians were crushing Chechnya? Why so silent on Tibet? They must have been looking the other way when Saddam slaughtered the Kurds.
It hasn't been difficult to find apologists for the invasion of Georgia. We're told that the 'American-educated' Mikhail Saakashvili provoked the Russians beyond all reason. What did we expect encouraging the spread of democracy in former Soviet satellite states? No wonder Moscow feels threatened when independent countries it once ruled by military might become members of the European Union and apply to join Nato. Putting a Western missile defence system in Poland is like waving a red rag at a bull, the sophisticates say. Putin has no option but to retaliate. I don't remember them demanding the withdrawal of Soviet nukes pointing at Western capitals from East Germany. Back then, the Guardianistas were all for one-sided disarmament on our part.
The Left has always been picky about their protests. While they rightly denounce white racism in South Africa, they stay silent on black racism in Zimbabwe. They bang on about American cultural imperialism, but have nothing to say about Russian or Chinese military imperialism. America is constantly denounced for its 'yuman rites' abuses, but you never hear a dicky bird about the denial of basic freedoms in China or throughout the Muslim world.
Europe's Leftists define themselves by their hatred of the U.S., yet cheerfully tolerate all kinds of tyranny elsewhere. They're against 'torture' at Guantanamo Bay, but take a relaxed view of Chinese and Russian death squads. There are still plenty of 'comrades' in the Labour Party and the trades union movement who regret the day the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. They're only too willing to give succour to the enemies of freedom and democracy around the world.
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Labour's 'open-door' policy sees immigration soar eight-fold compared to last Tory decade
Immigration under Labour has soared eight-fold compared with the last decade of Tory rule, it emerged last night. The astonishing impact of the Government's controversial 'open door' policy is revealed for the first time in a study by the independent House of Commons Library. Between 1997 and 2006, the population increased by 1,196,000 as a direct result of immigration - the equivalent of almost 330 extra people arriving each day. In the preceding decade of Conservative rule, from 1987 to 1996, the increase was only 141,000.
The study, compiled by Parliamentary researchers earlier this month, also found that between 1980 and 1986 at the start of Margaret Thatcher's term in office the number of arrivals from overseas was outstripped by those leaving, with the population falling by 40,000. MPs said the study - which is based on official figures only and does not include any migrants who have sneaked into the country illegally - gave the clearest indication yet that Labour had deliberately presided over mass migration.
Tory MP James Clappison, who uncovered the research, said: 'This shows an historically unprecedented level of immigration has taken place under the Labour Government, as a direct result of its economic policies.' Separate figures obtained by Mr Clappison show that, over the course of the last decade, the vast majority of arrivals have been from outside the EU.
Between 1997 and 2006, there were more than three times as many arrivals from the rest of the world as from within Europe. According to research released by the Cabinet Office, the trend even continued in the wake of the EU being extended to eastern Europe in 2004, sparking a massive influx to the UK from countries such as Poland. In 2004, there were 150,000 arrivals from within the EU, making up 26 per cent of the total. This rose to 182,000 in 2005, and 205,000 in 2006. But even the 2006 figure constituted only 35 per cent of the total, with 386,000 people - or 65 per cent - pouring in from the rest of the world.
It will raise questions why ministers - faced with such large numbers of arrivals from eastern Europe - did not seek to limit the numbers coming in from elsewhere to ease the pressure on schools, hospitals and other public services. They have no control over arrivals from within the EU, due to free movement regulations, but can deny work permits and visas to migrants from the rest of the world.
Tories say the research is clear proof ministers took a deliberate decision not to do so. Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: 'Immigration can be of real benefit to the country but only if it is properly controlled. These figures show that Labour patently does not have control of immigration in this country. 'These stats put pay to ( Immigration Minister) Liam Byrne's spin that an annual limit on non-EU immigration would be ineffective.'
The figures emerged as ministers confirmed plans for 'no fly' lists of foreign nationals such as criminals, suspected extremists and immigration offenders who will be banned from flying with airlines into the UK. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith also restated a promise to electronically count all passengers in and out of the country by 2014. A Home Office spokesman said: 'We're delivering the biggest shakeup to Britain's border security for 40 years. 'This includes an Australian-style points based system which will cover close to six in ten of all migrants to ensure only those we want and no more can come here.
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Alexander Technique effective for back pain
An alternative therapy used to improve posture and to help women to cope with labour pain can be more effective at treating backache than conventional treatments, a study suggests. Combining exercise with practising the Alexander Technique could significantly reduce back pain and improve mobility, researchers found.
The technique was developed by the actor Frederick Alexander (1869-1955) to help his vocal and breathing problems. It is designed to change the way people move their bodies, with an emphasis on balance, posture and co-ordination. A team from the universities of Bristol and Southampton compared the effectiveness of massage, exercise and the Alexander Technique in 579 patients with back pain. Those who had received 24 lessons in the Alexander Technique reported 18 fewer days of back pain over four weeks compared with those who had been taking exercise alone, according to the study published online by the British Medical Journal today.
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Childhood's End
By Theodore Dalrymple
Britain is the worst country in the Western world in which to be a child, according to a recent UNICEF report. Ordinarily, I would not set much store by such a report; but in this case, I think it must be right--not because I know so much about childhood in all the other 20 countries examined but because the childhood that many British parents give to their offspring is so awful that it is hard to conceive of worse, at least on a mass scale. The two poles of contemporary British child rearing are neglect and overindulgence.
Consider one British parent, Fiona MacKeown, who in November 2007 went on a six-month vacation to Goa, India, with her boyfriend and eight of her nine children by five different fathers, none of whom ever contributed financially for long to the children's upkeep. (The child left behind--her eldest, at 19--was a drug addict.) She received $50,000 in welfare benefits a year, and doubtless decided--quite rationally, under the circumstances--that the money would go further, and that life would thus be more agreeable, in Goa than in her native Devon.
Reaching Goa, MacKeown soon decided to travel with seven of her children to Kerala, leaving behind one of them, 15-year-old Scarlett Keeling, to live with a tour guide ten years her elder, whom the mother had known for only a short time. Scarlett reportedly claimed to have had sex with this man only because she needed a roof over her head. According to a witness, she was constantly on drugs; and one night, she went to a bar where she drank a lot and took several different illicit drugs, including LSD, cocaine, and pot. She was seen leaving the bar late, almost certainly intoxicated.
The next morning, her body turned up on a beach. At first, the local police maintained that she had drowned while high, but further examination proved that someone had raped and then forcibly drowned her. So far, three people have been arrested in the investigation, which is continuing.
About a month later, Scarlett's mother, interviewed by the liberal Sunday newspaper the Observer, expressed surprise at the level of public vituperation aimed at her and her lifestyle in the aftermath of the murder. She agreed that she and her children lived on welfare, but "not by conscious choice," and she couldn't see anything wrong with her actions in India apart from a certain naivety in trusting the man in whose care she had left her daughter. Scarlett was always an independent girl, and if she, the mother, could turn the clock back, she would behave exactly the same way again.
It is not surprising that someone in Fiona MacKeown's position would deny negligence; to acknowledge it would be too painful. But--and this is what is truly disturbing--when the newspaper asked four supposed child-rearing experts for their opinions, only one saw anything wrong with the mother's behavior, and even she offered only muted criticism. It was always difficult to know how much independence to grant an adolescent, the expert said; but in her view, the mother had granted too much too quickly to Scarlett.
Even that seemed excessively harsh to the Observer's Barbara Ellen. We should not criticize the mother's way of life, she wrote, since it had nothing to do with her daughter's death: "Scarlett died for the simple fact that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people, as well as being blitzed with drugs, late at night, in a foreign country." On this view, being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people is a raw fact of nature, not the result of human agency, decision, education, or taste. It could happen to anybody, and it just happened to happen to Scarlett. As for drugs, they emerge from the ether and blitz people completely at random. It all seems very unfair. A columnist for the left-wing Guardian took a similarly exculpatory line:
Anyone taking even a fleeting glance at recent news will have picked up a crucial message: women with children by more than one partner are apparently hussies, who deserve everything they get. The opprobrium . . . served up to Fiona MacKeown, mother of murdered 15-year-old, Scarlett Keeling . . . has been hideous to behold. The spitting criticism is particularly interesting when you compare it to attitudes to men in the public eye. Rod Stewart (seven children by five women), Jack Nicholson (five children by four women), and Mick Jagger (seven children by four women) are painted as great, swinging studs. Anyone else smell a vile double standard?
No one criticizes Rod Stewart, Jack Nicholson, or Mick Jagger for how they behave; therefore, apparently, there was nothing wrong with how Fiona MacKeown behaved.
It is worth remembering that the Observer and the Guardian are not the publications of a lunatic fringe but the preferred newspapers of the British intelligentsia, of those who work in the educational and social services, and of broadcasting elites (the BBC advertises vacancies almost exclusively in the Guardian). Not every person who reads these newspapers agrees with everything written in them--and both, commendably, offer a little space to writers whose worldview differs from their own--but the general moral tone must be one with which most readers agree. In other words, it is likely that a large part of the educated elite sees nothing wrong, or at least affects to see nothing wrong, with MacKeown's conduct.
This nonjudgmentalism surely helps explain why British youth are among the Western world's leaders in such indicators of social pathology as teenage pregnancy, violence, criminality, underage drinking, and consumption of illicit drugs. Britain has the third-highest rate of teenage pregnancy in the industrialized world, according to the UNICEF report (only the United States and New Zealand are higher)--a startling case recently made headlines of 16-, 14-, and 12-year-old sisters, all of whom gave birth within a year of one another. British children have the earliest and highest consumption of cocaine of any young people in Europe, are ten times more likely to sniff solvents than are Greek children, and are six to seven times more likely to smoke pot than are Swedish children. Almost a third of British young people aged 11, 13, and 15 say they have been drunk at least twice.
What explains the nonjudgmental attitude among elites? The reluctance to criticize Fiona MacKeown might be an expression of sympathy for someone in the throes of grief: however foolishly (or worse) she behaved, she certainly did not deserve the murder of her daughter. Furthermore, the Guardian and Observer journalists might argue, we do not know enough about the details of her life to criticize her fairly. Perhaps she is a good mother in most respects; perhaps her children, apart from the drug addict and the murdered Scarlett, are happy, and will lead lives of fulfillment and achievement. After all, no style of upbringing guarantees success or, for that matter, failure; and therefore we should suspend judgment about her.
I suspect, however, that the main consideration inhibiting elite criticism of MacKeown is that passing judgment would call into question the shibboleths of liberal social policy for the last 50 or 60 years--beliefs that give their proponents a strong sense of moral superiority. It would be to entertain the heretical thought that family structure might matter after all, along with such qualities as self-restraint and self-respect; and that welfare dependency is unjust to those who pay for it and disastrous for those who wind up trapped in it.
One day after Scarlett Keeling's murder, a nine-year-old girl, Shannon Matthews, went missing from her home in Dewsbury, in northern England. Twenty-four days later, after an extensive police search, she was found alive, locked in a drawer under a bed in her stepfather's uncle's house. Police soon arrested the stepfather, 22-year-old Craig Meehan, for possession of 140 pornographic pictures of children, and charged the uncle, Michael Donovan, with kidnapping. Shannon's mother, Karen Matthews, 32, was also arrested, for child cruelty, neglect, and obstructing the police by lying during the search for her daughter.
Karen Matthews, who received welfare payments of $40,000 a year, had borne seven children to five different men. She called two of her children with the same father "the twins," thus transferring the meaning of "twin" from the relatively unusual biological occurrence of double birth to what she clearly thought the equally unusual social circumstance of full siblinghood. Three of her children lived with their fathers, and four lived with her and Meehan, whom Shannon reportedly regarded as her father. Shannon's true father--one Leon Rose, who has since "moved on" to live with another "partner"--apparently was happy to find himself usurped by the young Meehan; but Karen Matthews's brother reported that Shannon often spoke of Meehan's violence to her and of her deep unhappiness at home.
The reasons for Shannon's abduction have not yet emerged, but again the Guardian managed to distract the reader's attention from less than optimal family arrangements. Instead, it ran an upbeat story on the housing project where the Matthews family lived; that way, the obvious could be ignored rather than denied. The Sun, a tabloid newspaper whose readership is virtually entirely working-class, had described the project as "like Beirut--only worse." But the Guardian, whose readership is largely middle-class and employed in the public sector, drew attention to the improvements that had taken place in the project, thanks to the local council's having spent $8 million on it over the last three years--supplying traffic bollards shaped like penguins, for example. Before the improvements, one resident said, "We'd houses burgled, sheds burned, caravans blown up." Now, only one house in 90 is robbed per year; and, thanks to the penguins, joy-riding by youths ! in stolen cars is presumably much reduced. The implication is clear: with more public spending of this kind everywhere in the country, administered by Guardian readers and their peers, everything will be all right. It won't matter in the slightest if children either have no fathers, or different fathers every few years.
One might dismiss the stories of Scarlett Keeling and Shannon Matthews as the kind of horrific things that can take place in any society from time to time. But I think that they are the tip of an iceberg. As the liberal newspapers' response shows, the problem with British childhood is by no means confined to the underclass. Our society has lost the most elementary common sense about what children need.
More than four out of ten British children are born out of wedlock; the unions of which they are the issue are notoriously unstable. Even marriage has lost much of its meaning. In a post-religious society, it is no longer a sacrament. The government has ensured that marriage brings no fiscal advantages and, indeed, for those at the lower end of the social scale, that it has only disadvantages. Easy divorce means that a quarter of all marriages break up within a decade.
The results of this social dysfunction are grim for children. Eighty percent of British children have televisions in their bedrooms, more than have their biological fathers at home. Fifty-eight percent of British children eat their evening meal in front of the television (a British child spends more than five hours per day watching a screen); 36 percent never eat any meals together with other family members; and 34 percent of households do not even own dining tables. In the prison where I once worked, I discovered that many inmates had never eaten at a table together with someone else.
Let me speculate briefly on the implications of these startling facts. They mean that children never learn, from a sense of social obligation, to eat when not hungry, or not to eat when they are. Appetite is all they need consult in deciding whether to eat--a purely egotistical outlook. Hence anything that interferes with the satisfaction of appetite will seem oppressive. They do not learn such elementary social practices as sharing or letting others go first. Since mealtimes are usually when families get to converse, the children do not learn the art of conversation, either; listening to what others say becomes a challenge. There is a time and place for everything: if I feel like it, the time is now, and the place is here.
If children are not taught self-control, they do not learn it. Violence against teachers is increasing: injuries suffered by teachers at the hands of pupils rose 20 percent between 2000 and 2006, and in one survey, which may or may not be representative, 53 percent of teachers had objects thrown at them, 26 percent had been attacked with furniture or equipment, 2 percent had been threatened with a knife, and 1 percent with a gun. Nearly 40 percent of teachers have taken time off to recover from violent incidents at students' hands. About a quarter of British teachers have been assaulted by their students over the last year.
The British, never fond of children, have lost all knowledge or intuition about how to raise them; as a consequence, they now fear them, perhaps the most terrible augury possible for a society. The signs of this fear are unmistakable on the faces of the elderly in public places. An involuntary look of distaste, even barely controlled terror, crosses their faces if a group of young teens approaches; then they try to look as if they are not really there, hoping to avoid trouble. And the children themselves are afraid. The police say that many children as young as eight are carrying knives for protection. Violent attacks by the young between ten and 17, usually on other children, have risen by 35 percent in the last four years.
The police, assuming that badly behaved children will become future criminals, have established probably the largest database of DNA profiles in the world: 1.1 million samples from children aged ten to 18, taken over the last decade, and at an accelerating rate (some law enforcement officials have advocated that every child should have a DNA profile on record). Since the criminal-justice system reacts to the commission of serious crimes hardly at all, however, British youth do not object to the gathering of the samples: they know that they largely act with impunity, profiles or no profiles.
The British may have always inclined toward harshness or neglect (or both) in dealing with children; but never before have they combined such attitudes with an undiscriminating material indulgence. My patients would sometimes ask me how it was that their children had turned out so bad when they had done everything for them. When I asked them what they meant by "everything," it invariably meant the latest televisions in their bedrooms or the latest fashionable footwear--to which modern British youth attaches far more importance than Imelda Marcos ever did.
Needless to say, the British state's response to the situation that it has in part created is simultaneously authoritarian and counterproductive. The government pretends, for example, that the problem of child welfare is one of raw poverty. Britain does have the highest rate of child poverty, bar the United States, in the West, as defined (as it usually is) by the percentage of children living in households with an income of less than 50 percent of the median. (Whether this is a sensible definition of poverty is a subject rarely broached.) But after many years of various redistributive measures and billions spent to reduce it, child poverty is, if anything, more widespread.
The British government thus pursues social welfare policies that encourage the creation of households like the Matthews', and then seeks, via yet more welfare spending, to reduce the harm done to children in them. But was the Matthews household poor, in any but an artificial sense? At the time of Shannon's current stepfather's arrest, the household income was $72,000; it lived free of rent and local taxes, and it boasted three computers and a large plasma-screen television. Would another $5,000 or $10,000 or $20,000 have made any difference?
A system of perverse incentives in a culture of undiscriminating materialism, where the main freedom is freedom from legal, financial, ethical, or social consequences, makes childhood in Britain a torment both for many of those who live it and those who observe it. Yet the British government will do anything but address the problem, or that part of the problem that is its duty to address: the state-encouraged breakdown of the family. If one were a Marxist, one might see in this refusal the self-interest of the state-employee class: social problems, after all, are their raison d'etre.
Source
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Lots of antisemitism in British universities
A massive rise in anti-semitic incidents involving students and campus life has contributed towards a overall increase in cases of hate against Jews, according to new statistics released today. The Community Security Trust recorded a total of 266 incidents during the first half of 2008, representing a nine percent hike on the same period last year and including many more incidents of abusive behaviour and mass-produced anti-semitic literature. One of the few positives seemed to be the fall in violent assaults by 24 percent.
However, "particular concern" was expressed over the fact there were almost double the number of incidents reported to the CST involving Jewish students, student bodies or academics, 49 compared with 26. Among them were 41 classified under the category of abusive behaviour', 27 of which involved anti-semitic verbal abuse, while there were also 12 cases of anti-semitic graffiti on property belonging to universities or non-Jewish students including graffiti saying Kill the Jews at leeds University. There were also two minor assaults off campus.
"We will work with the Union of Jewish Students, university authorities and the government to tackle what is clearly a growing problem," said CST spokesman Mark Gardner. UJS, for its part, challenged "all relevant organisations to take a firmer stance against anti-semitism, which affects students either on or off campus", but claimed the increased numbers reflect the attitude of students not to accept anti-semitism.
"One of the main campus related recommendations of the All Party Inquiry into Antisemitism was that UJS and CST "set up reporting facilities that allow unchallengeable, evidences examples of abusive behaviour" associated with university life. These latest figures show that the recommendation has been, and continues to be, implemented. The next step is for the sector to work with UJS to find effective and creative methods to tackle the problem."
Nevertheless, the union's Campaigns Director Yair Zivan insisted "really good progress" was being made with government and higher education sector "in our strategy to confront the problem. Last year UJS and Jewish students had a fantastic year with key political victories across the country. We are confident that these will play a vital role in firmly tackling anti-semitic incidents over the next year. "At the National Union of Students conference this year we set the precedent of how we expect anti-semitism to be dealt with when an organisation handing out antisemitic material was removed and banned. The stance taken by the NUS should be an example to the rest of the higher education sector."
The CST's report - which represents the first time the organisation has supplemented its annual incidents report by also publishing figures for the first six months of a year - showed schools, synagogues and individuals all fell victim. One of the worst incidents came when a visibly Jewish man was walking down the street when a gang of youths on bicycles surrounded him, called him a "f***ing Jew" and kicked and punched him.
While the number of incidents in London and Manchester were almost identical to the period between January and June last year, the overall rise was attributed largely to a significant increase in incidents reported from elsewhere - 98 in 38 towns and cities compared to 70 in 25 separate places. This was put partly down to the orgaisation's efforts to improve contact with less populous Jewish areas.
The final figures do not include a further 158 incidents reported to the CST that on investigation did not appear to be anti-semitic.
Source
THE STRANGE DEATH OF THE TORY CLIMATE CRUSADE
Britain's Conservative Party tried to exploit global warming alarmism. It backfired enormously. Lesson learned?
Britain's Conservative Party has surged to an historic 22-point opinion-poll lead over the incumbent Labour Party. This turnabout has followed an energetic campaign by the Tory leader, David Cameron, to wrench the party out of its ideological comfort zone and overhaul its public image. Cameron has indeed handled many issues deftly. However, his initial attempt to spark a bidding war over climate alarmism backfired enormously, and it should serve as a warning to other Western political parties that are trying to burnish their green credentials.
From the moment he was elected Conservative leader in 2005, Cameron was eager to woo the upper-class voters who had shunned the party in the post-Thatcher era. He chose to make environmental policy the focus of his stylistic revolution, and he commissioned Zac Goldsmith (a fellow Eton graduate and director of The Ecologist magazine) to chair a "Quality of Life" policy group. Goldsmith, an heir to a billion-dollar fortune and well-known green activist, claimed "an invitation to be radical."
Goldsmith's policy group soon unleashed a fury of impractical ideas. It proposed placing prohibitive taxes on landfill and big cars, halting investment in air and road infrastructure, taxing parking at out-of-town malls, and even mandating that car advertisements include emissions statistics. The Conservative MP Tim Yeo, who chairs the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, declared that domestic plane flights should be taxed out of existence. (Yeo boasted that he now travels to Scotland by train "as a matter of conscience.")
Without doing much to appeal to suburbanites interested in clean rivers and parks, the new Tory agenda threatened the low-cost flights that had only recently made European travel affordable for millions. It also confirmed the suspicion of many working-class voters that the Conservatives were rich elitists who cared little about job loss.
While many of the Tories' environmental proposals were harmlessly ridiculous and had no real prospect of enactment, the empty rhetoric proved very costly. The Labour government, refusing to let the Conservative Party claim the mantle of environmental champion, swung left on the issue. The failure of environmental taxes to change behavior was taken as a sign that those taxes should be raised even further. Big increases in annual road taxes were rolled out; drivers of Honda Accords will owe over $500 per year by 2010-11. Taxes on gasoline went up, forcing motorists to pay nearly $9 a gallon. Meanwhile, taxes on plane flights were doubled, despite evidence that such a change may actually increase emissions.
British leaders have long struggled to convince the public that significant resources should be allocated to fight climate change. Yet the burgeoning global warming industry-a motley assortment of activists and NGOs-has relentlessly driven its agenda through bureaucratic and legal channels that are cut off from democratic accountability. Further insulated from political attack by Cameron's green posturing, the climate change alarmists were able to set the terms of the debate.
While most peer-reviewed cost-benefit analyses of climate change tend to find that the costs of global warming do not merit a radical and immediate shift away from carbon-based fuels, moderate anti-carbon policies have failed to satisfy the demands of climate activists. In response to the inconvenient economics, the Labour government decided to base all its policymaking on a Treasury study by Nicholas Stern. The Stern report used an extremely low discount rate to grossly magnify the future environmental costs of climate change.
Yet, far from rebuking this folly, the Conservative Party's Quality of Life policy group criticised the Stern report for tolerating too much planetary warming. As the Labour government advocated a 60 percent reduction in British carbon emissions by the year 2050, the Tories shot back with a demand that the nation roll back 80 percent of its emissions by that time. This merely upped the ante. The third-party Liberal Democrats responded with a call for complete decarbonization-a 100 percent reduction in emissions. No matter how hard the Tories tried, they could never "out-green" their rivals on the left.
The popular press were less indulgent of such nonsense, and many media outlets lampooned the proposed climate initiatives. Voters did not like having wealthy politicians lecture them on the demerits of prosperity, and every green policy that the Tories promoted was greeted with derision or worse. When the Tory Quality of Life group's disastrous report was eventually released in September 2007, the Conservatives were in disarray. They were so far behind in the opinion polls that Prime Minister Gordon Brown even considered calling an early election.
Cameron had no choice but to change tack. The recovery that saw the Tories rise to their present poll lead began with a call to significantly reduce the inheritance tax. This was followed by proposals for comprehensive school choice and welfare reform. The Conservatives also suggested some tough new anti-crime initiatives. The idea that proved most useful in de-stigmatizing the Tory brand was a plan to rebuild poverty-stricken communities in disadvantaged areas.
To be sure, the Conservatives have also benefited from a complete collapse of popular support for the Labour government. Indeed, this has been perhaps the biggest factor in the Tories' resurgence. The British economy has faltered, and voters have become less tolerant of fiscal extravagance. They are especially angry about an increase in the annual car tax, which was sold as a green measure. In a recent YouGov poll commissioned by the TaxPayers' Alliance, 63 percent agreed with this statement: "politicians are not serious about the environment and are using the issue as an excuse to raise more revenue from green taxes." When a recent Mori poll asked voters to name important issues facing Great Britain, only 7 percent cited the environment, while 42 percent named immigration and 35 percent said crime.
None of this is to say that conservatives should neglect the environment. Over the past few months, Cameron has been trumpeting a more holistic environmentalism, arguing that being green is "not just about the stratosphere, it's about the street corner." He stresses the need to eliminate graffiti and cut crime in local parks. While there is little public appetite for raising energy taxes or overhauling the British economy to deal with climate change, there is widespread support for boosting investment in green-friendly technologies, and the Tories are well-placed to advance this.
The recent success of the Conservative Party has owed little to quixotic environmentalism, and almost every Tory attempt to play the green card has been a disaster. The party seems to have learned its lesson, and is now embracing a results-driven conservation policy that defends green spaces and promotes the development of efficient clean-energy technologies. While the climate debate is often dominated by clamorous activists, ordinary voters tend to favor a more pragmatic approach. If the Tories want to maintain their huge lead over Labour, that is the type of approach they should endorse.
Source
Breast cancer hope as brittle bone drug gets clinical trial in UK
A treatment for brittle bones can have a dramatic effect on breast cancer when combined with chemotherapy, research has shown. Scientists found that the two drugs acted together to slow down the growth of tumours. In mice given the therapy, growing breast tumours were almost stopped in their tracks.
A clinical trial is under way in the UK that could lead to the treatment becoming widely available to patients. Since both drugs are already well established, and need only the terms of their use to be changed, this may not take long, the researchers suggest. The therapy involves the breast cancer chemotherapy agent doxorubicin and the bisphosphonate drug zoledronic acid.
In the mouse study, doxorubicin was given first, followed 24 hours later by zoledronic acid. When the order was reversed, or the drugs administered on their own, the treatment had little effect. The scientists said that the chemotherapy drug appeared to "prime" the tumour and make it sensitive to the bisphosphonate. Tests showed that the treatment triggered a "suicide" response known as apoptosis in the cancer cells, causing them to self-destruct. It also blocked angiogenesis, the process by which blood vessels are created that fuel tumours with oxygen and nutrients.
The researchers, from the University of Sheffield and the University of Kuopio in Finland, published their findings in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Bisphosphonates are normally used to prevent bone thinning in patients with osteoporosis. They also protect bones from the destructive effects of tumours. For this reason they are sometimes given to men with prostate cancer, which has a habit of spreading to the bones. The new study showed that zoledronic acid can have a powerful direct effect on breast cancer without any bone involvement.
The results of the clinical trial, led by Professor Robert Coleman, of the University of Sheffield, should be known this year.
Source
The destructive British Left on view: "The Conservatives tried to preempt Gordon Brown's autumn offensive with the launch yesterday of a 19-page paper, called An Unfair Britain, in which they attempt to show that Labour policies have made Britain more unfair. They claim that the number of people in deep poverty has risen by 900,000 since Labour came to power and that the gap in life expectancy between rich and poor is the highest since the Victorian age. They also claim that Labour's "stealth" tax policies meant that the poorest now pay more than the rich, while a failure to reform schools meant that the education gap between poorer and better-off students is getting worse."
A massive rise in anti-semitic incidents involving students and campus life has contributed towards a overall increase in cases of hate against Jews, according to new statistics released today. The Community Security Trust recorded a total of 266 incidents during the first half of 2008, representing a nine percent hike on the same period last year and including many more incidents of abusive behaviour and mass-produced anti-semitic literature. One of the few positives seemed to be the fall in violent assaults by 24 percent.
However, "particular concern" was expressed over the fact there were almost double the number of incidents reported to the CST involving Jewish students, student bodies or academics, 49 compared with 26. Among them were 41 classified under the category of abusive behaviour', 27 of which involved anti-semitic verbal abuse, while there were also 12 cases of anti-semitic graffiti on property belonging to universities or non-Jewish students including graffiti saying Kill the Jews at leeds University. There were also two minor assaults off campus.
"We will work with the Union of Jewish Students, university authorities and the government to tackle what is clearly a growing problem," said CST spokesman Mark Gardner. UJS, for its part, challenged "all relevant organisations to take a firmer stance against anti-semitism, which affects students either on or off campus", but claimed the increased numbers reflect the attitude of students not to accept anti-semitism.
"One of the main campus related recommendations of the All Party Inquiry into Antisemitism was that UJS and CST "set up reporting facilities that allow unchallengeable, evidences examples of abusive behaviour" associated with university life. These latest figures show that the recommendation has been, and continues to be, implemented. The next step is for the sector to work with UJS to find effective and creative methods to tackle the problem."
Nevertheless, the union's Campaigns Director Yair Zivan insisted "really good progress" was being made with government and higher education sector "in our strategy to confront the problem. Last year UJS and Jewish students had a fantastic year with key political victories across the country. We are confident that these will play a vital role in firmly tackling anti-semitic incidents over the next year. "At the National Union of Students conference this year we set the precedent of how we expect anti-semitism to be dealt with when an organisation handing out antisemitic material was removed and banned. The stance taken by the NUS should be an example to the rest of the higher education sector."
The CST's report - which represents the first time the organisation has supplemented its annual incidents report by also publishing figures for the first six months of a year - showed schools, synagogues and individuals all fell victim. One of the worst incidents came when a visibly Jewish man was walking down the street when a gang of youths on bicycles surrounded him, called him a "f***ing Jew" and kicked and punched him.
While the number of incidents in London and Manchester were almost identical to the period between January and June last year, the overall rise was attributed largely to a significant increase in incidents reported from elsewhere - 98 in 38 towns and cities compared to 70 in 25 separate places. This was put partly down to the orgaisation's efforts to improve contact with less populous Jewish areas.
The final figures do not include a further 158 incidents reported to the CST that on investigation did not appear to be anti-semitic.
Source
THE STRANGE DEATH OF THE TORY CLIMATE CRUSADE
Britain's Conservative Party tried to exploit global warming alarmism. It backfired enormously. Lesson learned?
Britain's Conservative Party has surged to an historic 22-point opinion-poll lead over the incumbent Labour Party. This turnabout has followed an energetic campaign by the Tory leader, David Cameron, to wrench the party out of its ideological comfort zone and overhaul its public image. Cameron has indeed handled many issues deftly. However, his initial attempt to spark a bidding war over climate alarmism backfired enormously, and it should serve as a warning to other Western political parties that are trying to burnish their green credentials.
From the moment he was elected Conservative leader in 2005, Cameron was eager to woo the upper-class voters who had shunned the party in the post-Thatcher era. He chose to make environmental policy the focus of his stylistic revolution, and he commissioned Zac Goldsmith (a fellow Eton graduate and director of The Ecologist magazine) to chair a "Quality of Life" policy group. Goldsmith, an heir to a billion-dollar fortune and well-known green activist, claimed "an invitation to be radical."
Goldsmith's policy group soon unleashed a fury of impractical ideas. It proposed placing prohibitive taxes on landfill and big cars, halting investment in air and road infrastructure, taxing parking at out-of-town malls, and even mandating that car advertisements include emissions statistics. The Conservative MP Tim Yeo, who chairs the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, declared that domestic plane flights should be taxed out of existence. (Yeo boasted that he now travels to Scotland by train "as a matter of conscience.")
Without doing much to appeal to suburbanites interested in clean rivers and parks, the new Tory agenda threatened the low-cost flights that had only recently made European travel affordable for millions. It also confirmed the suspicion of many working-class voters that the Conservatives were rich elitists who cared little about job loss.
While many of the Tories' environmental proposals were harmlessly ridiculous and had no real prospect of enactment, the empty rhetoric proved very costly. The Labour government, refusing to let the Conservative Party claim the mantle of environmental champion, swung left on the issue. The failure of environmental taxes to change behavior was taken as a sign that those taxes should be raised even further. Big increases in annual road taxes were rolled out; drivers of Honda Accords will owe over $500 per year by 2010-11. Taxes on gasoline went up, forcing motorists to pay nearly $9 a gallon. Meanwhile, taxes on plane flights were doubled, despite evidence that such a change may actually increase emissions.
British leaders have long struggled to convince the public that significant resources should be allocated to fight climate change. Yet the burgeoning global warming industry-a motley assortment of activists and NGOs-has relentlessly driven its agenda through bureaucratic and legal channels that are cut off from democratic accountability. Further insulated from political attack by Cameron's green posturing, the climate change alarmists were able to set the terms of the debate.
While most peer-reviewed cost-benefit analyses of climate change tend to find that the costs of global warming do not merit a radical and immediate shift away from carbon-based fuels, moderate anti-carbon policies have failed to satisfy the demands of climate activists. In response to the inconvenient economics, the Labour government decided to base all its policymaking on a Treasury study by Nicholas Stern. The Stern report used an extremely low discount rate to grossly magnify the future environmental costs of climate change.
Yet, far from rebuking this folly, the Conservative Party's Quality of Life policy group criticised the Stern report for tolerating too much planetary warming. As the Labour government advocated a 60 percent reduction in British carbon emissions by the year 2050, the Tories shot back with a demand that the nation roll back 80 percent of its emissions by that time. This merely upped the ante. The third-party Liberal Democrats responded with a call for complete decarbonization-a 100 percent reduction in emissions. No matter how hard the Tories tried, they could never "out-green" their rivals on the left.
The popular press were less indulgent of such nonsense, and many media outlets lampooned the proposed climate initiatives. Voters did not like having wealthy politicians lecture them on the demerits of prosperity, and every green policy that the Tories promoted was greeted with derision or worse. When the Tory Quality of Life group's disastrous report was eventually released in September 2007, the Conservatives were in disarray. They were so far behind in the opinion polls that Prime Minister Gordon Brown even considered calling an early election.
Cameron had no choice but to change tack. The recovery that saw the Tories rise to their present poll lead began with a call to significantly reduce the inheritance tax. This was followed by proposals for comprehensive school choice and welfare reform. The Conservatives also suggested some tough new anti-crime initiatives. The idea that proved most useful in de-stigmatizing the Tory brand was a plan to rebuild poverty-stricken communities in disadvantaged areas.
To be sure, the Conservatives have also benefited from a complete collapse of popular support for the Labour government. Indeed, this has been perhaps the biggest factor in the Tories' resurgence. The British economy has faltered, and voters have become less tolerant of fiscal extravagance. They are especially angry about an increase in the annual car tax, which was sold as a green measure. In a recent YouGov poll commissioned by the TaxPayers' Alliance, 63 percent agreed with this statement: "politicians are not serious about the environment and are using the issue as an excuse to raise more revenue from green taxes." When a recent Mori poll asked voters to name important issues facing Great Britain, only 7 percent cited the environment, while 42 percent named immigration and 35 percent said crime.
None of this is to say that conservatives should neglect the environment. Over the past few months, Cameron has been trumpeting a more holistic environmentalism, arguing that being green is "not just about the stratosphere, it's about the street corner." He stresses the need to eliminate graffiti and cut crime in local parks. While there is little public appetite for raising energy taxes or overhauling the British economy to deal with climate change, there is widespread support for boosting investment in green-friendly technologies, and the Tories are well-placed to advance this.
The recent success of the Conservative Party has owed little to quixotic environmentalism, and almost every Tory attempt to play the green card has been a disaster. The party seems to have learned its lesson, and is now embracing a results-driven conservation policy that defends green spaces and promotes the development of efficient clean-energy technologies. While the climate debate is often dominated by clamorous activists, ordinary voters tend to favor a more pragmatic approach. If the Tories want to maintain their huge lead over Labour, that is the type of approach they should endorse.
Source
Breast cancer hope as brittle bone drug gets clinical trial in UK
A treatment for brittle bones can have a dramatic effect on breast cancer when combined with chemotherapy, research has shown. Scientists found that the two drugs acted together to slow down the growth of tumours. In mice given the therapy, growing breast tumours were almost stopped in their tracks.
A clinical trial is under way in the UK that could lead to the treatment becoming widely available to patients. Since both drugs are already well established, and need only the terms of their use to be changed, this may not take long, the researchers suggest. The therapy involves the breast cancer chemotherapy agent doxorubicin and the bisphosphonate drug zoledronic acid.
In the mouse study, doxorubicin was given first, followed 24 hours later by zoledronic acid. When the order was reversed, or the drugs administered on their own, the treatment had little effect. The scientists said that the chemotherapy drug appeared to "prime" the tumour and make it sensitive to the bisphosphonate. Tests showed that the treatment triggered a "suicide" response known as apoptosis in the cancer cells, causing them to self-destruct. It also blocked angiogenesis, the process by which blood vessels are created that fuel tumours with oxygen and nutrients.
The researchers, from the University of Sheffield and the University of Kuopio in Finland, published their findings in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Bisphosphonates are normally used to prevent bone thinning in patients with osteoporosis. They also protect bones from the destructive effects of tumours. For this reason they are sometimes given to men with prostate cancer, which has a habit of spreading to the bones. The new study showed that zoledronic acid can have a powerful direct effect on breast cancer without any bone involvement.
The results of the clinical trial, led by Professor Robert Coleman, of the University of Sheffield, should be known this year.
Source
The destructive British Left on view: "The Conservatives tried to preempt Gordon Brown's autumn offensive with the launch yesterday of a 19-page paper, called An Unfair Britain, in which they attempt to show that Labour policies have made Britain more unfair. They claim that the number of people in deep poverty has risen by 900,000 since Labour came to power and that the gap in life expectancy between rich and poor is the highest since the Victorian age. They also claim that Labour's "stealth" tax policies meant that the poorest now pay more than the rich, while a failure to reform schools meant that the education gap between poorer and better-off students is getting worse."
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
John McCain and Britain's David Cameron are best suited to defy Russian aggression
McCain and the British Conservative leader were decisive while Gordon Brown (the British Labor Party Prime Minister) and Obama dithered
Suddenly we have a very different picture of the sort of political leader that we need. The world is not the same place that it was when the four main players on the Anglo-American political scene came on to the field. Barack Obama and John McCain began their contest in an atmosphere of relative security and prosperity. David Cameron emerged at a time of such general contentment that work-life balance seemed like the most urgent question facing the nation. (Remember that?)
When Gordon Brown took office he was immediately presented with a series of what seemed at the time to be testing crises that he surmounted with stoical authority: now the floods, the amateurish terror attacks and the brief revival of foot-and-mouth disease seem like flea bites. Where is he now that we are facing the most genuinely terrifying international confrontation in a generation? This is the man who has reminded us repeatedly (and rather plaintively) of the triumphal opening chapter of his premiership, implying that he would like nothing more than another opportunity to display Courage Under Fire. And he is missing in action. Gone AWOL? Hidden deep in his bunker surrounded by reassuring aides? Paralysed by the collapse of relations with his own Foreign Secretary? Hunched over his plans for a great autumn relaunch? Who knows?
Mr Cameron, meanwhile, cleverly filled the vacuum by taking himself off to Georgia to utter an uncompromising message of defiance to the Russians - and to deliver an unambiguous message to the British media that he wasn't just a politician for the soft times. He may have the luxury that Heaven bestows on opposition politicians of being powerless and therefore not encumbered with the problem of actually having to make anything happen, but his statements were unequivocal enough to commit him to a course of action in office - which is brave enough.
So in Britain we have seen a startling role reversal: the man billed as a brusque but resolute presence who came into his own in times of danger and anxiety has disappeared from the scene. And the one who was supposed to be cuddly and consumed with lightweight lifestyle issues is bestriding the world stage handing out ultimatums to an aggressive superpower.
In the United States, the story is taking a more predictable but no less riveting course. John McCain was always going to be the net gainer in a foreign crisis. Not only does he have precisely the experience - both personal and political - of coping with war and international threat, but his manner and his presence seem designed to be both reassuring and inspiring.
More here
British universities pay women to study science
Affirmative action madness: Cash awards, often unrelated to merit, are being used to filll places on undersubscribed university courses
Women can win cash payments of $2,000 a year to study science as universities struggle to fill places on undersubscribed courses, an investigation has found. An undercover reporter was told by Leicester University physics department that she was a strong candidate for the money partly because women were "underrepresented" on the course.
The policy, which critics argue is the result of "social engineering", is evidence of the booming market in cash awards to fill some courses. Other offers made to reporters posing as applicants last week included an institution paying up to $2,000 cash to all comers, regardless of their income. Another was offered $1,000 a year for choosing a less popular course.
Professor Alan Smithers, director of Buckingham University's centre for education research, said using gender as a justification for offering money was "really quite alarming". "It's all about the social engineering from government. The universities have to respond," he said.
The inquiries about degree places were made during clearing, the method by which institutions scramble to allocate unfilled degree places after A-level results are released. The process began last week following the publication of record A-level grades, which showed nearly 26% of exams resulting in an A and a further 25% scoring a B; 11% of teenagers scored at least three As.
The market in awards is unrelated to income and operates outside the usual hardship assistance given to students from poor families. They are often described as scholarships and linked to grades, although these are often not high. Leicester is a well-respected university - ranked 19th equal in The Sunday Times University Guide - but physics courses nationally are hard to fill because there has been a near-halving of A-level pupils studying the subject in the past 25 years.
The department told the reporter that she had a strong case for $2,000 a year partly because she was from an "underrepresented" group as well as being a good candidate. About 30% of Leicester's physics intake are women and, although this is above the national average, she was told: "You tick that box because you are female."
Almost every undergraduate course in England costs students the maximum $6,290 tuition fee. Institutions have been reluctant to appear cheap, and they market the cash awards as scholarships, paying them directly into students' bank accounts rather than reducing fee bills.
Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne offered a reporter $2,000 a year simply to take up a place - the cash is not means-tested and is open to any British or EU student. The reporter told the staff member: "It's a pretty good offer. It's basically just cutting the tuition fees, isn't it?", to which the staff member replied: "Yes". Westminster University told a reporter he was highly likely to receive a "silver scholarship" worth $4,000 a year - if he had applied earlier, his three As would have won him twice as much money.
Hull told a reporter that grades of ABB were enough for a 50% fee reduction to study economics - worth $9,000 over the four-year degree because the university wanted to "encourage good students to come, people with grades like yours, we need more of them". Bangor offered $1,000 a year to a reporter to study subjects including chemistry, languages and law. "There is no condition," said a staff member. "It's to assist in recruitment of the sciences."
Smithers said the boom in cash awards was because universities were "trying to lift themselves through the league tables and they are like a football team paying to attract new talent". Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, said: "The shift towards a market in higher education is inevitably bringing about a consumer culture."
All the universities contacted last week said financial incentives were a sensible way to attract talented applicants and that they had generous additional bursaries to help low-income candidates. [So you get money if you are smart and money if you are poor and money if you are female. How come mainstream men need no help? Sounds like gross bigotry against mainstream men to me] "It's part of the reality for a competitive marketplace," said Matthew Andrews, academic registrar at Oxford Brookes University. Applicants to highly ranked institutions, by contrast, can expect no payment as thousands of applicants with three As are being turned away.
Independent and grammar pupils have dramatically widened their lead over comprehensives, with four or more As now commonplace. Some of the strongest performances are at girls' schools. Minette Monteith, 18, from Perthshire, left Cheltenham Ladies College in Gloucester-shire with five As.
Monteith, who has been talent-spotted as a potential rower for the 2012 Olympics, was turned down by Cambridge, Imperial College London, Ddinburgh and St Andrews. She won a place at Edinburgh to study medicine through clearing only last week. "I'm very happy with the course I've got now, but I didn't really see what more I could have done," said Monteith.
Source
NHS watchdog to tell patients how to buy medicine unavailable on health service
Patients are to be given advice on drugs rejected by the NHS - so they can choose to buy them privately.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is drawing up plans to provide patients with independent medical guidance on treatments for diseases such as cancer. The advice would include drugs that NICE has ruled the NHS should not use because they are too expensive. For the first time patients would be able to receive impartial guidance on the health benefits of unapproved treatments and compare them with those available on the NHS. They could then decide if they want to pay for them privately rather than opting for the free drugs, which can be less effective.
The development follows growing public anger over the number of drugs and treatments being blocked by the Nice because they are not 'cost effective'. Many are available abroad and can offer people longer life expectancy or health benefits. Last week the watchdog ruled that four kidney cancer drugs costing around o24,000 a year per patient did not represent value for money.
Under current health service rules patients who choose to buy drugs that the NHS deems too expensive are made to pay for the rest of the care. But ministers are expected to end this following a review of the system which is due to report in October. It is expected this will give the green light for patients to 'top up' their treatment. As a result, NICE - which is currently only responsible for deciding which treatments are available free on the NHS - is preparing to publish guidance on drugs they have ruled against.
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, Andrew Dillon, the chief executive, revealed his organisation was preparing to play a central role if the Department of Health give the go-ahead to so-called "co-payments" in the autumn. He said: "If the Government wants to go in that direction we are absolutely the right organisation to support the process for doing so. "One of the things we think we could do really well would be to provide entirely independent objective information for individuals to make up their own mind. We think we could do that very well and would be happy to do that."
NICE has faced criticism for rejecting a series of drugs widely available in Europe and America - sparking allegations that it is putting financial considerations above medical benefits. The disclosure that it is now preparing to offer advice to patients buying their own drugs will underline concerns that the development of expensive new drugs is leading to the emergence of a "two-tier NHS".
There are also fears that patients unable to afford 'top ups' will be angered at learning they may not be receiving the best treatment available.
It is understood that the information will largely be provided on-line via a new website called "NHS Evidence". The site is being established to offer advice to NHS doctors and hospitals but could be extended to provide patients with clear information on different treatments and drugs available. If co-payments are permitted the medical benefits of privately-available drugs will also be set out. The NHS will also be able to detail the likely costs of a prescription.
Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrats' health spokesman, welcomed the move. "One of the big dangers of allowing people to top-up their treatment is that consumers aren't informed and they can be susceptible in a moment of crisis to pressure from pharmaceutical companies," he said. "These drugs can be very expensive and I would welcome the provision of a source of independent, reliable advice."
Medical experts and patient groups said the development may also put more pressure on NICE to approve drugs which have medical benefits which are currently unavailable on prescription. Christoph Lees, an NHS consultant and founder member of the Doctors for Reform group, said: "The fact that NICE are preparing to offer advice shows that the realisation is finally filtering through that you can't withhold information on good drugs which are out there and what they can do, even if the NHS can't afford it. "But that has got to be balanced with some sort of mechanism to make sure that people can afford access to these treatments."
Michael Summers, vice chairman of the Patients Association said: "Any information which is available is obviously valuable. But people would have less need to top-up if NICE did not reject cancer drugs available elsewhere."
Andrew Lansley, the shadow Health Secretary, said: "It seems that the Government is intent on pre-empting the outcome of its own consultation on top-up payments and that it wants to assist people to buy their own drugs, rather than have them provided on the NHS. "But Labour are still avoiding two key questions: if patients buy top-up drugs, will that prejudice their access to NHS treatment? Secondly, why is access to new cancer medicines worse in the UK than in the rest of Europe and America?"
NICE is under mounting pressure after barring four kidney cancer drugs available in other countries last week. Charities and patients are preparing to make official complaints about the approval process with one sufferer claiming he was "patronised and bullied" by the process.
Sutent, one of the drugs rejected, can double life expectancy to 28 months for people diagnosed with kidney cancer. A report has claimed that more than 1,000 patients had been turned down for cancer drugs over the past two years because of a "postcode lottery" in treatment.
Patients are also being forced to mount legal action to get hold of drugs that NICE have not yet approved. A grandfather told he only has two months to live has mounted a legal challenge to gain access to a drug that could possibly extend his life expectancy by up to three years. Colin Ross, 55, of Horsham, West Sussex, who has multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood cells is fighting for the drug Revlimid after being refused it by West Sussex Primary Care Trust because it has not yet been granted approval by NICE.
Source
From food to sex: defend spontaneity
Whether we're drinking or fornicating, why are we always being told to `stop, think, proceed with caution'?
It was only an innocent desire for a snack. I nipped into a supermarket for a pint of milk and a little `treat' - a multi-pack of Twix biscuits. However, it seems you can't even enjoy a chocolate bar these days without a health warning. On the front of the pack was a helpful suggestion: `Be Treatwise.' Apparently, I should get to know my GDAs, and each bar in the pack I had just bought contains `6%' of my kcal GDA. A quick examination of the back of the pack revealed that kcals are in fact what we normally call `calories' and `GDA' means Guideline Daily Amount.
`Treatwise' may have been around for years, but I had never noticed it before. Is it necessary? I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to work out that if I have a biscuit with my cup of tea, I'm not likely to experience any negative consequences. In fact, having just engaged in this activity for research purposes, I can confirm it is actually jolly nice. But if I scoff an entire pack of these chocolate, toffee and biscuit fingers - all 1,107 calories' worth - I'm likely to start putting on weight. More importantly, I hope such gluttonous behaviour would make me want to vomit.
`Be Treatwise' is supported by Britain's big confectionery producers, including Mars and Cadbury. It is essentially the industry telling you to eat sweets responsibly. And chocolate makers are not alone in suggesting that you stop before you indulge. `Drinkaware' is funded by Britain's big brewers and distillers; its website encourages readers to `Respect Alcohol, Respect Yourself'. Drinkaware supports the government's `Know Your Limits' campaign and reminds us that drinking any more than our recommended number of `units' per day - three for men, two for women - could be dangerous.
I have a certain amount of sympathy for the companies behind these ventures. After all, nobody's forcing us to use their products. We keep buying them because we like them. Yet because of today's overblown panics about obesity and binge drinking - and because the producers must be seen to be doing the responsible thing - we are constantly reminded that there's a potential downside to consumption. Even if it's absolutely bleedin' obvious. Take this example from the website of single-malt whisky, Glen Grant:
`Enjoy your evening. Drinking should be a pleasurable activity, and certainly after the first drink you may experience a warm, mellow feeling. Your inhibitions may also be lowered which could make for a relaxed experience. However, as you would expect, the more alcohol you consume the less alert and the less inhibited you are likely to become. Your judgement will become impaired as will your coordination.'
Then things really take a turn for the worse: `It doesn't take a genius to realise that this could cause problems. If you continue drinking after this point, you could experience mood swings and possibly put yourself in compromising or dangerous situations. People who have drunk too much are unattractive and can be off-putting, miles away from the sophistication and relaxation that they could be enjoying.'
Some may argue that one of the main aims of having a few drinks is to end up in a compromising situation [LOL!], with our inhibitions relaxed; but maybe the makers of Glen Grant don't get out enough.
So the message is: sugary sweets will make you fat if you eat enough of them; alcoholic drinks will get you drunk if you imbibe a lot, and nobody likes a drunk. And if you chronically eat or drink to excess, it can cause health problems. Like the nice people at Glen Grant point out, this kind of thing `doesn't take a genius'.
There's something slightly dishonest about this trend. The manufacturers put these statements on their products, but must actually hope that we buy them anyway. And we carefully peruse various items on the supermarket shelf before consuming them anyway, while feeling a little guilty thanks to the `wise' and `aware' information. It all becomes a rather pointless ritual.
It is also irrational. Big corporations have effectively been placed in a situation where they must ask us not to buy their products. A similar situation applies to energy companies: they seem to spend more and more time telling us how we can save money and the planet by using less of their product. One energy company in the UK is even encouraging children to become `climate cops' and inform on their parents if they waste electricity (see Children, Forward to the Glorious Green Future!, by Lee Jones).
Such a screwed-up arrangement suits governments, though. Out of touch, and feeling like society is out of control, the political class knows that moralising our behaviour is one of the few ways in which it can exercise some influence. Hence, there is a relentless desire to make us stop and think about everything we do.
Spontaneity, in this view, is the road to ruin. So we are told to be `treatwise' and `drinkaware', and reminded to leave nothing on standby because it wastes power. This is also why governments think condoms are superior to the Pill - because you have to think in advance that you would like to have sex, and then fiddle about in the dark to get it on before you can get it on. As the new Department of Health posters instruct us: `Think B4 sex.' No danger of spontaneity there.
It's like a Green Cross Code for life in general: stop, think, proceed with caution. It is the essence of Puritanism - hectoring from on high disguised as an invitation to self-restraint.
Source
Prince Charles wrong on GM, says British government minister
A senior minister has accused Prince Charles of "ignoring" the needs of starving people in the developing world by attacking genetically modified crops. Phil Woolas, the environment minister, said it was "easy for those with plentiful food" to ignore Third World hunger. He told The Sunday Telegraph that the Government would press ahead with GM crop trials and look at moving to a more "liberal" regime in Britain, unless scientific evidence showed that the crops had done harm.
The defiant stance came days after the Prince called GM a "gigantic experiment with nature and the whole of humanity which has gone seriously wrong". The Prince told The Daily Telegraph last week that future reliance on corporations to mass-produce food would drive millions of farmers off their land.
Ministers were privately furious about the attack, which they believe risks becoming a constitutional crisis. One Labour source said the Prince had "overstepped the mark". Mr Woolas said: "I'm grateful to Prince Charles for raising the issue. He raises some very important doubts that are held by many people. But government ministers have a responsibility to base policy on science and I do strongly believe that we have a moral responsibility to the developing world to ask the question: can GM crops help? "It's easy for those of us with plentiful food supplies to ignore the issue, but we have a responsibility to use science to help the less well off where we can. I'm asking to see the evidence. If it has been a disaster, then please provide the evidence."
Mr Woolas disputed the Prince's claim that the crops had caused climate change, adding: "I don't understand the reasoning behind the assertion that this is dangerous for climate change."
While Mr Woolas chose his words carefully, privately ministers are furious. Gordon Brown is said to be determined that anti-GM campaigners will not dictate his policy. The destruction of a GM trial in North Yorkshire two months ago is said to have hardened his stance. A Labour source said: "Usually we welcome Prince Charles's contributions to various debates, but on this issue he seems to have overstepped the mark."
Mr Woolas said the Government will base its future strategy on a number of tests, the crucial one being: "Should the UK change our policy on GM to one that is more liberal?" He added: "The Government has not got a predetermined decision."
Sources close to the Prince stressed that he had not been trying to cause a political row. "This was in no way an attempt to lay down a challenge to Government policy. The Prince's considerable interests in the environment are non-political: he simply cares for the future."
Prof John Wibberley, of the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, has offered support to the Prince. "The Prince of Wales is a very welcome champion of farmers not only nationally but internationally. As a farmer himself, he is all too aware of the brilliance that most possess in cherishing the countryside and their farms," he said.
Source
Beijing Olympics: British athletes do well: "Britain's athletes have won four more gold medals in Beijing as their remarkable success over the weekend is hailed as the "greatest in British Olympics history". Sailors, cyclists, rowers and a teenage swimmer claimed eight golds in 48 hours and placed Britain third in the medal table ahead of Australia and Germany. Britain now has 11 gold - more than Athens - five silver and seven bronze medals to its name with another week to go. The homegrown Olympic squad is tipped to win a possible eight more golds. Prime minister Gordon Brown described the weekend as "unprecedented", while Buckingham Palace said the Queen was taking such an interest she had decided to invite all the Olympians to a reception on their return". [I suppose I expose myself to the charge of being curmudgeonly but I feel that I should note that the triumphs were no accident. Britain has spent a huge amount of charity money on preparing its athletes. Whether that is a good use for charity money I will leave for others to judge]
McCain and the British Conservative leader were decisive while Gordon Brown (the British Labor Party Prime Minister) and Obama dithered
Suddenly we have a very different picture of the sort of political leader that we need. The world is not the same place that it was when the four main players on the Anglo-American political scene came on to the field. Barack Obama and John McCain began their contest in an atmosphere of relative security and prosperity. David Cameron emerged at a time of such general contentment that work-life balance seemed like the most urgent question facing the nation. (Remember that?)
When Gordon Brown took office he was immediately presented with a series of what seemed at the time to be testing crises that he surmounted with stoical authority: now the floods, the amateurish terror attacks and the brief revival of foot-and-mouth disease seem like flea bites. Where is he now that we are facing the most genuinely terrifying international confrontation in a generation? This is the man who has reminded us repeatedly (and rather plaintively) of the triumphal opening chapter of his premiership, implying that he would like nothing more than another opportunity to display Courage Under Fire. And he is missing in action. Gone AWOL? Hidden deep in his bunker surrounded by reassuring aides? Paralysed by the collapse of relations with his own Foreign Secretary? Hunched over his plans for a great autumn relaunch? Who knows?
Mr Cameron, meanwhile, cleverly filled the vacuum by taking himself off to Georgia to utter an uncompromising message of defiance to the Russians - and to deliver an unambiguous message to the British media that he wasn't just a politician for the soft times. He may have the luxury that Heaven bestows on opposition politicians of being powerless and therefore not encumbered with the problem of actually having to make anything happen, but his statements were unequivocal enough to commit him to a course of action in office - which is brave enough.
So in Britain we have seen a startling role reversal: the man billed as a brusque but resolute presence who came into his own in times of danger and anxiety has disappeared from the scene. And the one who was supposed to be cuddly and consumed with lightweight lifestyle issues is bestriding the world stage handing out ultimatums to an aggressive superpower.
In the United States, the story is taking a more predictable but no less riveting course. John McCain was always going to be the net gainer in a foreign crisis. Not only does he have precisely the experience - both personal and political - of coping with war and international threat, but his manner and his presence seem designed to be both reassuring and inspiring.
More here
British universities pay women to study science
Affirmative action madness: Cash awards, often unrelated to merit, are being used to filll places on undersubscribed university courses
Women can win cash payments of $2,000 a year to study science as universities struggle to fill places on undersubscribed courses, an investigation has found. An undercover reporter was told by Leicester University physics department that she was a strong candidate for the money partly because women were "underrepresented" on the course.
The policy, which critics argue is the result of "social engineering", is evidence of the booming market in cash awards to fill some courses. Other offers made to reporters posing as applicants last week included an institution paying up to $2,000 cash to all comers, regardless of their income. Another was offered $1,000 a year for choosing a less popular course.
Professor Alan Smithers, director of Buckingham University's centre for education research, said using gender as a justification for offering money was "really quite alarming". "It's all about the social engineering from government. The universities have to respond," he said.
The inquiries about degree places were made during clearing, the method by which institutions scramble to allocate unfilled degree places after A-level results are released. The process began last week following the publication of record A-level grades, which showed nearly 26% of exams resulting in an A and a further 25% scoring a B; 11% of teenagers scored at least three As.
The market in awards is unrelated to income and operates outside the usual hardship assistance given to students from poor families. They are often described as scholarships and linked to grades, although these are often not high. Leicester is a well-respected university - ranked 19th equal in The Sunday Times University Guide - but physics courses nationally are hard to fill because there has been a near-halving of A-level pupils studying the subject in the past 25 years.
The department told the reporter that she had a strong case for $2,000 a year partly because she was from an "underrepresented" group as well as being a good candidate. About 30% of Leicester's physics intake are women and, although this is above the national average, she was told: "You tick that box because you are female."
Almost every undergraduate course in England costs students the maximum $6,290 tuition fee. Institutions have been reluctant to appear cheap, and they market the cash awards as scholarships, paying them directly into students' bank accounts rather than reducing fee bills.
Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne offered a reporter $2,000 a year simply to take up a place - the cash is not means-tested and is open to any British or EU student. The reporter told the staff member: "It's a pretty good offer. It's basically just cutting the tuition fees, isn't it?", to which the staff member replied: "Yes". Westminster University told a reporter he was highly likely to receive a "silver scholarship" worth $4,000 a year - if he had applied earlier, his three As would have won him twice as much money.
Hull told a reporter that grades of ABB were enough for a 50% fee reduction to study economics - worth $9,000 over the four-year degree because the university wanted to "encourage good students to come, people with grades like yours, we need more of them". Bangor offered $1,000 a year to a reporter to study subjects including chemistry, languages and law. "There is no condition," said a staff member. "It's to assist in recruitment of the sciences."
Smithers said the boom in cash awards was because universities were "trying to lift themselves through the league tables and they are like a football team paying to attract new talent". Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, said: "The shift towards a market in higher education is inevitably bringing about a consumer culture."
All the universities contacted last week said financial incentives were a sensible way to attract talented applicants and that they had generous additional bursaries to help low-income candidates. [So you get money if you are smart and money if you are poor and money if you are female. How come mainstream men need no help? Sounds like gross bigotry against mainstream men to me] "It's part of the reality for a competitive marketplace," said Matthew Andrews, academic registrar at Oxford Brookes University. Applicants to highly ranked institutions, by contrast, can expect no payment as thousands of applicants with three As are being turned away.
Independent and grammar pupils have dramatically widened their lead over comprehensives, with four or more As now commonplace. Some of the strongest performances are at girls' schools. Minette Monteith, 18, from Perthshire, left Cheltenham Ladies College in Gloucester-shire with five As.
Monteith, who has been talent-spotted as a potential rower for the 2012 Olympics, was turned down by Cambridge, Imperial College London, Ddinburgh and St Andrews. She won a place at Edinburgh to study medicine through clearing only last week. "I'm very happy with the course I've got now, but I didn't really see what more I could have done," said Monteith.
Source
NHS watchdog to tell patients how to buy medicine unavailable on health service
Patients are to be given advice on drugs rejected by the NHS - so they can choose to buy them privately.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is drawing up plans to provide patients with independent medical guidance on treatments for diseases such as cancer. The advice would include drugs that NICE has ruled the NHS should not use because they are too expensive. For the first time patients would be able to receive impartial guidance on the health benefits of unapproved treatments and compare them with those available on the NHS. They could then decide if they want to pay for them privately rather than opting for the free drugs, which can be less effective.
The development follows growing public anger over the number of drugs and treatments being blocked by the Nice because they are not 'cost effective'. Many are available abroad and can offer people longer life expectancy or health benefits. Last week the watchdog ruled that four kidney cancer drugs costing around o24,000 a year per patient did not represent value for money.
Under current health service rules patients who choose to buy drugs that the NHS deems too expensive are made to pay for the rest of the care. But ministers are expected to end this following a review of the system which is due to report in October. It is expected this will give the green light for patients to 'top up' their treatment. As a result, NICE - which is currently only responsible for deciding which treatments are available free on the NHS - is preparing to publish guidance on drugs they have ruled against.
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, Andrew Dillon, the chief executive, revealed his organisation was preparing to play a central role if the Department of Health give the go-ahead to so-called "co-payments" in the autumn. He said: "If the Government wants to go in that direction we are absolutely the right organisation to support the process for doing so. "One of the things we think we could do really well would be to provide entirely independent objective information for individuals to make up their own mind. We think we could do that very well and would be happy to do that."
NICE has faced criticism for rejecting a series of drugs widely available in Europe and America - sparking allegations that it is putting financial considerations above medical benefits. The disclosure that it is now preparing to offer advice to patients buying their own drugs will underline concerns that the development of expensive new drugs is leading to the emergence of a "two-tier NHS".
There are also fears that patients unable to afford 'top ups' will be angered at learning they may not be receiving the best treatment available.
It is understood that the information will largely be provided on-line via a new website called "NHS Evidence". The site is being established to offer advice to NHS doctors and hospitals but could be extended to provide patients with clear information on different treatments and drugs available. If co-payments are permitted the medical benefits of privately-available drugs will also be set out. The NHS will also be able to detail the likely costs of a prescription.
Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrats' health spokesman, welcomed the move. "One of the big dangers of allowing people to top-up their treatment is that consumers aren't informed and they can be susceptible in a moment of crisis to pressure from pharmaceutical companies," he said. "These drugs can be very expensive and I would welcome the provision of a source of independent, reliable advice."
Medical experts and patient groups said the development may also put more pressure on NICE to approve drugs which have medical benefits which are currently unavailable on prescription. Christoph Lees, an NHS consultant and founder member of the Doctors for Reform group, said: "The fact that NICE are preparing to offer advice shows that the realisation is finally filtering through that you can't withhold information on good drugs which are out there and what they can do, even if the NHS can't afford it. "But that has got to be balanced with some sort of mechanism to make sure that people can afford access to these treatments."
Michael Summers, vice chairman of the Patients Association said: "Any information which is available is obviously valuable. But people would have less need to top-up if NICE did not reject cancer drugs available elsewhere."
Andrew Lansley, the shadow Health Secretary, said: "It seems that the Government is intent on pre-empting the outcome of its own consultation on top-up payments and that it wants to assist people to buy their own drugs, rather than have them provided on the NHS. "But Labour are still avoiding two key questions: if patients buy top-up drugs, will that prejudice their access to NHS treatment? Secondly, why is access to new cancer medicines worse in the UK than in the rest of Europe and America?"
NICE is under mounting pressure after barring four kidney cancer drugs available in other countries last week. Charities and patients are preparing to make official complaints about the approval process with one sufferer claiming he was "patronised and bullied" by the process.
Sutent, one of the drugs rejected, can double life expectancy to 28 months for people diagnosed with kidney cancer. A report has claimed that more than 1,000 patients had been turned down for cancer drugs over the past two years because of a "postcode lottery" in treatment.
Patients are also being forced to mount legal action to get hold of drugs that NICE have not yet approved. A grandfather told he only has two months to live has mounted a legal challenge to gain access to a drug that could possibly extend his life expectancy by up to three years. Colin Ross, 55, of Horsham, West Sussex, who has multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood cells is fighting for the drug Revlimid after being refused it by West Sussex Primary Care Trust because it has not yet been granted approval by NICE.
Source
From food to sex: defend spontaneity
Whether we're drinking or fornicating, why are we always being told to `stop, think, proceed with caution'?
It was only an innocent desire for a snack. I nipped into a supermarket for a pint of milk and a little `treat' - a multi-pack of Twix biscuits. However, it seems you can't even enjoy a chocolate bar these days without a health warning. On the front of the pack was a helpful suggestion: `Be Treatwise.' Apparently, I should get to know my GDAs, and each bar in the pack I had just bought contains `6%' of my kcal GDA. A quick examination of the back of the pack revealed that kcals are in fact what we normally call `calories' and `GDA' means Guideline Daily Amount.
`Treatwise' may have been around for years, but I had never noticed it before. Is it necessary? I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to work out that if I have a biscuit with my cup of tea, I'm not likely to experience any negative consequences. In fact, having just engaged in this activity for research purposes, I can confirm it is actually jolly nice. But if I scoff an entire pack of these chocolate, toffee and biscuit fingers - all 1,107 calories' worth - I'm likely to start putting on weight. More importantly, I hope such gluttonous behaviour would make me want to vomit.
`Be Treatwise' is supported by Britain's big confectionery producers, including Mars and Cadbury. It is essentially the industry telling you to eat sweets responsibly. And chocolate makers are not alone in suggesting that you stop before you indulge. `Drinkaware' is funded by Britain's big brewers and distillers; its website encourages readers to `Respect Alcohol, Respect Yourself'. Drinkaware supports the government's `Know Your Limits' campaign and reminds us that drinking any more than our recommended number of `units' per day - three for men, two for women - could be dangerous.
I have a certain amount of sympathy for the companies behind these ventures. After all, nobody's forcing us to use their products. We keep buying them because we like them. Yet because of today's overblown panics about obesity and binge drinking - and because the producers must be seen to be doing the responsible thing - we are constantly reminded that there's a potential downside to consumption. Even if it's absolutely bleedin' obvious. Take this example from the website of single-malt whisky, Glen Grant:
`Enjoy your evening. Drinking should be a pleasurable activity, and certainly after the first drink you may experience a warm, mellow feeling. Your inhibitions may also be lowered which could make for a relaxed experience. However, as you would expect, the more alcohol you consume the less alert and the less inhibited you are likely to become. Your judgement will become impaired as will your coordination.'
Then things really take a turn for the worse: `It doesn't take a genius to realise that this could cause problems. If you continue drinking after this point, you could experience mood swings and possibly put yourself in compromising or dangerous situations. People who have drunk too much are unattractive and can be off-putting, miles away from the sophistication and relaxation that they could be enjoying.'
Some may argue that one of the main aims of having a few drinks is to end up in a compromising situation [LOL!], with our inhibitions relaxed; but maybe the makers of Glen Grant don't get out enough.
So the message is: sugary sweets will make you fat if you eat enough of them; alcoholic drinks will get you drunk if you imbibe a lot, and nobody likes a drunk. And if you chronically eat or drink to excess, it can cause health problems. Like the nice people at Glen Grant point out, this kind of thing `doesn't take a genius'.
There's something slightly dishonest about this trend. The manufacturers put these statements on their products, but must actually hope that we buy them anyway. And we carefully peruse various items on the supermarket shelf before consuming them anyway, while feeling a little guilty thanks to the `wise' and `aware' information. It all becomes a rather pointless ritual.
It is also irrational. Big corporations have effectively been placed in a situation where they must ask us not to buy their products. A similar situation applies to energy companies: they seem to spend more and more time telling us how we can save money and the planet by using less of their product. One energy company in the UK is even encouraging children to become `climate cops' and inform on their parents if they waste electricity (see Children, Forward to the Glorious Green Future!, by Lee Jones).
Such a screwed-up arrangement suits governments, though. Out of touch, and feeling like society is out of control, the political class knows that moralising our behaviour is one of the few ways in which it can exercise some influence. Hence, there is a relentless desire to make us stop and think about everything we do.
Spontaneity, in this view, is the road to ruin. So we are told to be `treatwise' and `drinkaware', and reminded to leave nothing on standby because it wastes power. This is also why governments think condoms are superior to the Pill - because you have to think in advance that you would like to have sex, and then fiddle about in the dark to get it on before you can get it on. As the new Department of Health posters instruct us: `Think B4 sex.' No danger of spontaneity there.
It's like a Green Cross Code for life in general: stop, think, proceed with caution. It is the essence of Puritanism - hectoring from on high disguised as an invitation to self-restraint.
Source
Prince Charles wrong on GM, says British government minister
A senior minister has accused Prince Charles of "ignoring" the needs of starving people in the developing world by attacking genetically modified crops. Phil Woolas, the environment minister, said it was "easy for those with plentiful food" to ignore Third World hunger. He told The Sunday Telegraph that the Government would press ahead with GM crop trials and look at moving to a more "liberal" regime in Britain, unless scientific evidence showed that the crops had done harm.
The defiant stance came days after the Prince called GM a "gigantic experiment with nature and the whole of humanity which has gone seriously wrong". The Prince told The Daily Telegraph last week that future reliance on corporations to mass-produce food would drive millions of farmers off their land.
Ministers were privately furious about the attack, which they believe risks becoming a constitutional crisis. One Labour source said the Prince had "overstepped the mark". Mr Woolas said: "I'm grateful to Prince Charles for raising the issue. He raises some very important doubts that are held by many people. But government ministers have a responsibility to base policy on science and I do strongly believe that we have a moral responsibility to the developing world to ask the question: can GM crops help? "It's easy for those of us with plentiful food supplies to ignore the issue, but we have a responsibility to use science to help the less well off where we can. I'm asking to see the evidence. If it has been a disaster, then please provide the evidence."
Mr Woolas disputed the Prince's claim that the crops had caused climate change, adding: "I don't understand the reasoning behind the assertion that this is dangerous for climate change."
While Mr Woolas chose his words carefully, privately ministers are furious. Gordon Brown is said to be determined that anti-GM campaigners will not dictate his policy. The destruction of a GM trial in North Yorkshire two months ago is said to have hardened his stance. A Labour source said: "Usually we welcome Prince Charles's contributions to various debates, but on this issue he seems to have overstepped the mark."
Mr Woolas said the Government will base its future strategy on a number of tests, the crucial one being: "Should the UK change our policy on GM to one that is more liberal?" He added: "The Government has not got a predetermined decision."
Sources close to the Prince stressed that he had not been trying to cause a political row. "This was in no way an attempt to lay down a challenge to Government policy. The Prince's considerable interests in the environment are non-political: he simply cares for the future."
Prof John Wibberley, of the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, has offered support to the Prince. "The Prince of Wales is a very welcome champion of farmers not only nationally but internationally. As a farmer himself, he is all too aware of the brilliance that most possess in cherishing the countryside and their farms," he said.
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Beijing Olympics: British athletes do well: "Britain's athletes have won four more gold medals in Beijing as their remarkable success over the weekend is hailed as the "greatest in British Olympics history". Sailors, cyclists, rowers and a teenage swimmer claimed eight golds in 48 hours and placed Britain third in the medal table ahead of Australia and Germany. Britain now has 11 gold - more than Athens - five silver and seven bronze medals to its name with another week to go. The homegrown Olympic squad is tipped to win a possible eight more golds. Prime minister Gordon Brown described the weekend as "unprecedented", while Buckingham Palace said the Queen was taking such an interest she had decided to invite all the Olympians to a reception on their return". [I suppose I expose myself to the charge of being curmudgeonly but I feel that I should note that the triumphs were no accident. Britain has spent a huge amount of charity money on preparing its athletes. Whether that is a good use for charity money I will leave for others to judge]
Monday, August 18, 2008
More British "Health & Safety" nonsense
Card-playing oldsters landed with $500 bill
The 14 whist players - aged between 70 and 90 - met every Friday for almost 10 years in a communal room at a sheltered housing complex in Norfolk. But officials at Neville Court, in Heacham, told the group they must pay liability insurance for all those who did not live at the complex before they could meet again. Tom Coulstock, from Hunstanton, said the cheapest insurance the group could find was $500 a year, which would have to be paid in addition to the $3 a head entrance fee. Just six of the players are residents and as none of the group can afford to pay the charge, the card-lovers have been forced to disband and re-locate elsewhere.
Freebridge Community Housing (FCH), which runs Neville Court which comprises 20 flats, said the insurance was "common practice". But player Bill Corbett, who lives nearby, said: "Perhaps they think that pensioners will attack one another with the playing cards? The situation is so stupid its laughable. "Freebridge claim the insurance is a matter of course but you can't tell me every group meeting needs public liability insurance. They are just trying to cover their own backs. We should not have to pay for that."
Mr Corbett, 86, said the game took up five tables in a corner of the communal room and insisted there had never been any trouble in the club's eight year history. He said the six residents who live at the home find it hard to travel outside the premises. "They don't understand why they can't have their friends over to play cards," he said. "It's health and safety gone mad and it is short-sighted of Freebridge."
Mr Coulstock said: "It's a farce. If they offer room hire they should have the insurance cover in place for the service they offer. "We won't be using the room in the future. We'll find somewhere that already has the insurance in place." Another player, who did not wish to be named, added: "It's disgusting that Freebridge is more concerned about making sure no-one could ever sue them than ensuring their residents have a good quality of living. "How on earth is someone going to injure themselves whilst playing cards?"
The card players were told they had been banned from the premises after their game on August 1. Tony Hall, chief executive of FCH, said it was standard procedure to ensure members of the public using their facilities were insured. "Freebridge Community Housing actively promotes the use of its community rooms as the social interaction of its elderly residents and people from the local community is a positive contribution to their lives," he said. [By banning them? Bare-faced British hypocrisy again]
"It is general practice that any room hire includes a requirement for insurance. "This can be covered by the group, club insurance or could form part of the hire cost. Freebridge charges a nominal hire charge but then require individuals to organise their own insurance. "The requirement has been in place for many years, but as Freebridge has recently updated the hire agreement it is checking that groups have their own insurance in place. "I am surprised Mr Corbett has been quoted $500 for insurance and Freebridge will make enquiries with our own insurance company to see if alternative quotes are more competitive."
FCH owns and manages around 7,000 properties for rent in the King's Lynn and West Norfolk area. [It is a QANGO -- a hived-off local government body]
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Rape compensation disgrace in Britain
The latest revelation about Britain's rape policies is cause for indignation, tempered by a small sigh of relief. The news that there existed a practice of cutting compensation to rape victims who had been drinking alcohol before the attack provides the indignation; the fact that it has been disputed and rowed back, the relief.
According to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, 14 rape victims - accounting for around one percent of rape-related applications - were told that they would be paid less compensation because of the involvement of alcohol.
Compensation reflects a desire to mitigate for the harm suffered by an innocent victim. The idea that this can be parcelled up and chipped away at because a woman had a few glasses of Pinot Grigio before being brutally attacked is abhorrent. As Helen, a rape victim whose compensation was cut by a quarter, puts it: "Which 25 per cent did they think I was responsible for?"
It may well be common sense that drinking excessively makes women more vulnerable to being raped, and that it clouds the issue of consent. But the fact that a woman can choose to take responsibility for minimising her risk of being raped is in no way comparable with saying that she is responsible should the worst come to pass.
For someone to be convicted of rape, a jury will have decided that there is sufficient evidence to prove that the victim did not give consent, and that the defendant was aware that consent was not given. This is no straightforward task, helping to explain the woeful statistic that less than six percent of reported rapes currently result in a conviction.
For the few who battle through their ordeal to achieve justice, the last thing they deserve is belittlement at the hands of the CICA. For their sake, it's just as well this ignominious policy has been repealed.
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British security laws are eroding human rights, says UN
This UN body is generally anti-Western but there is nonetheless much truth in what they say below
A report from the UN's committee on human rights hit out at Britain's terror and libel laws and use of the Offical Secrets Act. The UN said provisions under the Terrorism Act 2006 covering encouragement of terrorism are too "broad and vague" which could infringe on freedom of expression. Under the new law people convicted of encouragement of terrorism face up to seven years in jail even if they did not intend to incite violence
"In particular, a person can commit the offence even when he or she did not intend members of the public to be directly or indirectly encouraged by his or her statement to commit acts of terrorism, but where his or her statement was understood by some members of the public as encouragement to commit such acts," concluded the committee.
The body also said tough libel laws should be reformed to end "libel tourism" - where people come to the UK to sue over articles they would not be able to pursue in their own countries.
And it said the use of the Official Secrets Act was gagging civil servants from bringing issues of genuine public interest to wider attention even when national security was not at risk.
The criticisms came as part of the committee's analysis into human rights in the UK. But the body welcomed the government's abolition of common-law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel in England and Wales and the adoption of the civil partnership act recognising unions between gay and lesbian couples.
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Drug companies fed up with blundering British bureaucracy
So Brits don't get new drugs
One of the world’s leading drug companies is threatening to withdraw some of its new cancer treatments from the process by which they are approved for use in the National Health Service. Cancer patients in Britain will consequently be denied more effective drugs that are available to sufferers in other countries.
Roche, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant, has already refused to supply economic data on its drug Avastin for treatment of lung and breast cancer to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), the authority that evaluates the cost-effectiveness of medicines for the NHS. This means Avastin will not be available on the NHS for those diseases. Avastin is said to double the time a breast cancer patient’s condition remains stable when compared with existing treatments. Studies have also shown improved survival rates for lung cancer victims.
Roche said last week it will consider withdrawing from other evaluations rather than submit products only for them to be rejected by Nice as too expensive. The statement is the latest twist in the growing row over decisions by Nice. Earlier this month Nice caused an outcry in a preliminary decision when it rejected the use of Avastin (also known as bevacizumab), Sutent (sunitinib), Nexavar (sorafenib) and Torisel (temsirolimus) as too expensive to treat kidney cancer.
“The alternative to these drugs for many patients is death,” said Jonathan Waxman, professor of oncology at Imperial College, London. “Nice is making terrible mistakes.” The survival rates for cancer in Britain are already among the lowest in Europe — on a par with Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic, according to data published last year. However, cancer charities acknowledge there has been significant improvement in rates since the government made the issue a priority with its NHS Cancer Plan, first launched in 2000. Some consultants argue, however, that Britain already spends less on cancer drugs than many other European countries and that it is “crazy” to reject drugs proven to prolong life.
Richard Barker, director- general of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, which represents the drug companies, said: “Nice does a tough and necessary job, but is making errors because of a very mechanistic approach. It relies too much on arithmetic and not enough on clinical judgment.”
Nice was created in 1999 with the aim of ensuring that decisions on the best and most cost-effective drugs for the NHS were made at a national level, were transparent and could be challenged. When the drug companies scrutinised the economic modelling used by Nice, they realised that the estimated costs of their drugs and effectiveness could vary widely. Even more seriously, some of the calculations were wrong. There was an outcry in the medical community in February 2006 when Nice stated that Temodal (temozolomide) — declared as the biggest breakthrough in treating brain tumours for decades — did not offer value for money. Temodal had won approval from the European regulator in 2004, but many British patients were denied treatment as Nice wrangled over costs.
Peter Davison, 48, a manager for Cambridge University Press, was among the few British patients who received the drug — because he was diagnosed with a brain tumour while working in Singapore. “I was lucky to be abroad,” said Davison, who is now in remission. “Four months after I had the operation to remove the tumour, I was running and climbing mountains.” When Schering-Plough — the pharmaceutical company which markets Temodal — prepared its appeal against the Nice decision, it identified an error in the modelling. Once corrected, the model showed the drug was cost-effective — and as a result it was ultimately approved for NHS use.
Not surprisingly, the drugs companies now want full access to the economic models, with the chance to check the accuracy of the calculations. In May, the High Court ruled that Pfizer and Esai, the companies which market the Alzheimer drug Aricept, should be given full access to these models. “We believe this modelling might not be fit for purpose and we want to check it,” said a Pfizer spokesman last week. Nice said it was seeking leave to appeal to the House of Lords after the High Court decision.
Even where the models are correct, consultants and patients’ groups say Nice fails to give proper weight to the evidence from clinicians and patients’ groups. The Sunday Times has highlighted the fact that NHS patients do not even have the option of paying for the drugs privately because of government ban on “co-payments”. The government has said it will review the issue.
Professor Sir Michael Rawlins, chairman of Nice, said the evaluation process was recognised internationally and Nice had been commended by the World Health Organisation for the quality of its work. He said: “We have a finite amount of money to spend on healthcare and we have to divide it up in as fair and as equitable a way as we can. We can’t say to yes to everything. It’s awkward, it’s difficult, it’s unpleasant.”
Source
The internet shrinks your brain? What rubbish
One lot of assertions is countered by another lot of assertions below.
Winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature are entitled to grand pronouncements, or else what is it for? So Doris Lessing, last winter, anathematised the entire internet, declaring that it had "seduced a whole generation into its inanities". According to Lessing, the web helped to create "'a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned, and where it is common for young men and women who have had years of education to know nothing of the world".
One might wonder how she knew this with such certainty. How many of these young men and women had she met, and held conversations with? Slightly more, perhaps, than the average immobile person in her late eighties.
But Lessing has received confirmation in recent weeks from much more contemporary quarters. In the latest Atlantic Monthly, the headline over a major article by Nicholas Carr asked the question: "Is Google making us stupid?" to which Carr's answer was a Dorisian affirmation. Not long afterwards, Bryan Appleyard penned a long piece entitled "Stoooopid... why the Google generation isn't as smart as it thinks", which - as you can imagine - also took the Lessing line.
"Once," wrote Carr, "I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a jet ski." The culprit was the net, which, with its search engines, YouTubes, blogs and Facebooks, seemed to be "chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation". And not just his. Carr quoted a writer who blamed the internet for changing his mental habits. "I can't read War and Peace any more," this writer complained, leaving unclear whether he was trying to re-read Tolstoy's masterpiece, or had got halfway through before webweariness overtook him.
Carr's view was that there are two kinds of reading: deep reading, which - essentially - is books, and web reading, where all we're doing is the much lesser decoding of information. In the first we make "rich mental connections" and in the second we just don't. In one we are properly engaged, in the other we ain't. "In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book," says Carr, invoking an ideal, "or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas." With the net and its instant access to information we turn into "pancake people", widely and thinly spread.
Appleyard had just been inside that quintessential British experience-former, the intercity train carriage. On the train to Wakefield, with his new 3G iPhone, he was "distracted from distraction by distraction". There were the calls, the texts, the e-mails, "and I'd better throw in the 400-odd news alerts that I receive from all the websites I monitor via my iPhone". I get seven or eight a day on my phone - Sky news, Tottenham Hotspur and London weather. Four hundred on one train trip seems excessive. Anyway... "The digital age is destroying us by ruining our ability to concentrate... it's killing me and it's killing you," says Appleyard, who might die more slowly if he elected to receive fewer news alerts.
"Attention," he asserts, "is the golden key to the mystery of human consciousness... the opposite of attention is distraction, an unnatural condition." Which argument, if taken to its logical conclusion, would make the idiot savant, with the inability to be distracted, the most natural human being of all.
The rot set in with television, but "the internet multiplies the effect a thousandfold... Now teenagers just go to their laptops on coming home from school and sink into their online cocoon," wasting their time on stuff like MySpace on which, apparently, they create connections which are all "threadbare", lacking "the complexity and depth of real-world interactions", lacking in loyalty and feeling.
Appleyard fears that we are now "infantilised cyber-serfs", whose lives the internet has made easier, "but only by destroying the very selves that should be protesting at every distraction, demanding peace, quiet and contemplation". Yes, we all should all be monks. Matins, then work in the fields, then simple food, then Compline, some contemplation, then up - slowly - to the Scriptorium to illuminate some manuscripts, supper, prayers and bed.
How often do such Weh ist mir [Woe is me] arguments rest on an idea of our "natural" selves being alienated by the world of progress? Wasn't it better when we all skinned our own rabbits and made our own music? Let us salute the ideal, St Simeon Stylites, up his pillar in the Syrian desert. Now there was an undistracted man.
Let us begin then at the level of personal experience. I have no problem with reading long novels, despite being a daily and constant user of the internet. I was one of the few people I knew who had read War and Peace 35 years ago, and I still am. Far from turning me into a bibliphobe, the internet has made it much easier for me to find and buy books that were hard to get before.
Nor do I recognise in Lessing's and Appleyard's strictures the experiences of my own daughters. I think they know, not just as much as Lessing did in her teens, but a lot more. Nor, from what I can see, are their Facebook contacts "threadbare". They are almost all people the girls know in real life and see regularly, supplemented with contacts that might otherwise have easily been lost, such as friends from earlier schools. In this sense the internet has helped my kids' social life be just as rich, if not richer, than my own was.
How can, for example, the Google project to place on the internet as many books as possible be productive of anything other than greater learning? What we are asked to do is to look. If we have that capacity, then we don't need to be ordained into the learned priesthood, or try to wangle ourselves library cards to which we aren't entitled. Just type three words, in the right order, and as Aladdin says, Open Sesame, and connections are made - some predicted, many fortuitous. Perhaps it is this uncontrollable, self-sustaining spread of knowledge that threatens the "certainties" that Lessing recalls.
Of course, what all three of my Jeremiahs entirely miss about the internet is its quality of engagement. That's what makes the new era so much better than the television age. As Clay Shirky, the American writer, put it, the new media are a triathlon: "People like to consume, but they also like to produce, and they like to share..." Isn't that superior, he asks, to being stuck in a basement watching reruns of Gilligan's Island? The challenge is not to lament, but to equip, to teach ourselves how to search and how to discriminate. A GCSE [diploma] in search engine skills, perhaps.
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One injection 'vaccine' cure for arthritis within five years
A single injection that could cure rheumatoid arthritis is being developed by British scientists. The treatment works like a vaccine and could be available within five years. Cells would be taken from the body, altered, and injected back into the affected joint.
A team at Newcastle University will now test the vaccine on volunteers with the disease. Scientists in the field are extremely excited about the development. There are 350,000 people in the UK with rheumatoid arthritis, which is a condition where the body's immune system attacks the joints, unlike oestoarthritis which is more like wear and tear of the joints. Rheumatoid arthritis is difficult to treat because it is caused by a malfunctioning immune system, causing inflammation in the wrong places.
Prof Alan Silman, medical director of the charity Arthritis Research Campaign, which funded the research, said: "This is an important potential cure. It is possible one injection could switch off the abnormal immune response. "If it works it could reverse the disease and stop further episodes."
The Newcastle team will test the effectiveness of the new vaccine in eight volunteers with rheumatoid arthritis from the Freeman Hospital as part of a pilot study, which could then lead to larger trials.
The vaccine works by reprogramming the body's own immune cells. Using chemicals, steroids and Vitamin D, the team has devised a way to manipulate a patient's white blood cells so they surpress, rather than activate, the immune system. It is thought the cells will then act as a brake on the over-reacting immune system and stop it attacking its own joints. Although a similar technique has been used in cancer research, this is the first time it has been adapted to rheumatoid arthritis.
John Isaacs, Professor of Clinical Rheumatology at Newcastle University's Musculoskeletal Research Group, who is leading the team, said that although the work was in a very early, experimental stage it was "hugely exciting". "Based on previous laboratory research we would expect that this will specifically suppress or down regulate the auto-immune response," he said. Samples will be taken two weeks after the injection to establish whether it has induced the expected response.
The team also hope to find out if the vaccine is effective only in the joints it is injected into, or whether the new cells spread throughout the body. Prof Silman said the treatment may prove expensive as each patient would have to have their own cells taken and manipulated rather than a drug which can be made in bulk and prescribed to all people with a condition. He said it would be unlikely that the vaccine could be offered in normal local hospitals because of the expertise necessary to manipulate the cells in the laboratory.
It raises fears the vaccine would have to go through the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence cost effectiveness tests. But if the vaccine did work with a one off injection and completely stop the disease it is likely to offer such a huge benefit to the patient that even a relatively large price may be deemed acceptable. Prof Silman said he expected the jab to cost less than $50,000. The research is being funded by medical research charity the Arthritis Research Campaign, which is providing $432,000 over 18 months.
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British government tries to civilize its Leftist academics
British academics will be encouraged to conduct research with their Israeli peers in an attempt to heal fractured relations between UK and Israeli universities. Gordon Brown has signed up to a $1,480,000 academic exchange scheme during his trip to Israel today. The government has been keen to promote links between the two countries to play down attempts by British academics to boycott Israeli academics over the treatment of Palestinians.
In May, members of the University and College Union voted to consider the moral and political implications of education links with Israeli institutions. But the UK government's contribution of $40,000 to the scheme which is mainly funded by charities was described as an insult by a leading Anglo-Jewish historian. Geoffrey Alderman, visiting professor of theology and education at York St John University, said: "Compared to the money that the government is giving to the Palestinian Authority, this is an insult. I would throw this back in their faces. If the government was seriously interested in a programme to foster academic cooperation, it would think in terms of millions."
The higher education minister, Bill Rammell, said the new scheme would help foster academic cooperation through joint research programmes and academic exchange trips between the UK and Israel.
The Britain-Israel research and academic exchange partnership (BIRAX) will award scientific research grants to junior academics - from postdoctoral students to mid-career researchers and lecturers - who tend to have far fewer international opportunities. The British Council will manage the scheme, which is funded by the Pears Foundation, the United Jewish Israel Appeal, with smaller contributions from the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Israel's Ministry of Science.
The academic who led the call for the boycott, Tom Hickey, a politics and philosophy lecturer from the University of Brighton, said academics should consider whether it was "morally acceptable to continue links with Israeli institutions where there was evidence that they were complicit in the occupation".
The government will give the same amount to improve links between British researchers and their peers in Palestine. Rammell said this would be "in the near future".
The scheme will last for five years in the first instance, although it is anticipated that it will develop over time into a longer-term partnership.
The British Council is also working on proposals to support academic links between Britain and Palestine, which the government will offer equal funding to support. Rammell said: "There is a long history of cooperation between Israel and the UK and BIRAX will help further cement this relationship and create new partnerships. It will help strengthen academic links between individual researchers and between universities in both countries. "There have been calls in the past for a boycott of Israeli academics but I strongly believe that we have much to learn from each other and our researchers have much to gain from working together. Education should be a bridge between nations not a barrier."
Trevor Pears, the executive chair of the Pears Foundation, said: "The new scheme increases academic collaboration in science and technology with potentially lasting benefits for Britain, Israel and, hopefully, the world."
The chairman of UJIA, Mick Davis, said the scheme would strengthen "the living bridge that draws on the great history of academic cooperation that has benefited Israel and the UK so greatly over the years".
Source
Desperation time: Forget Global Warming -- The Oxygen Crisis Threatens human survival
A brand new scare. The lack of warming and the collapse of the agw fear machine is leading to new causes. We may soon see the creation of a new UN IPOC - Intergovernmental Panel on Oxygen Crisis. The author of the screed below, Peter Tatchell, is best known as a British homosexual activist. He appears to base his latest cry for attention on the contents of an as-yet unwritten book
The rise in carbon dioxide emissions is big news. It is prompting action to reverse global warming. But little or no attention is being paid to the long-term fall in oxygen concentrations and its knock-on effects. Compared to prehistoric times, the level of oxygen in the earth's atmosphere has declined by over a third and in polluted cities the decline may be more than 50%. [This is risible. Gaseous diffusion is very rapid. A huge difference like this in Oxygen concentration between city and country is impossible] This change in the makeup of the air we breathe has potentially serious implications for our health. Indeed, it could ultimately threaten the survival of human life on earth, according to Roddy Newman, who is drafting a new book, The Oxygen Crisis.
I am not a scientist, but this seems a reasonable concern. It is a possibility that we should examine and assess. So, what's the evidence? Around 10,000 years ago, the planet's forest cover was at least twice what it is today, which means that forests are now emitting only half the amount of oxygen. Desertification and deforestation are rapidly accelerating this long-term loss of oxygen sources. The story at sea is much the same. Nasa reports that in the north Pacific ocean oxygen-producing phytoplankton concentrations are 30% lower today, compared to the 1980s. This is a huge drop in just three decades.
Moreover, the UN environment programme confirmed in 2004 that there were nearly 150 "dead zones" in the world's oceans where discharged sewage and industrial waste, farm fertiliser run-off and other pollutants have reduced oxygen levels to such an extent that most or all sea creatures can no longer live there. This oxygen starvation is reducing regional fish stocks and diminishing the food supplies of populations that are dependent on fishing. It also causes genetic mutations and hormonal changes that can affect the reproductive capacity of sea life, which could further diminish global fish supplies.
Professor Robert Berner of Yale University has researched oxygen levels in prehistoric times by chemically analysing air bubbles trapped in fossilised tree amber. He suggests that humans breathed a much more oxygen-rich air 10,000 years ago.
Further back, the oxygen levels were even greater. Robert Sloan has listed the percentage of oxygen in samples of dinosaur-era amber as: 28% (130m years ago), 29% (115m years ago), 35% (95m years ago), 33% (88m years ago), 35% (75m years ago), 35% (70m years ago), 35% (68m years ago), 31% (65.2m years ago), and 29% (65m years ago).
Professor Ian Plimer of Adelaide University and Professor Jon Harrison of the University of Arizona concur. Like most other scientists they accept that oxygen levels in the atmosphere in prehistoric times averaged around 30% to 35%, compared to only 21% today - and that the levels are even less in densely populated, polluted city centres and industrial complexes, perhaps only 15 % or lower.
Much of this recent, accelerated change is down to human activity, notably the industrial revolution and the burning of fossil fuels. The Professor of Geological Sciences at Notre Dame University in Indiana, J Keith Rigby, was quoted in 1993-1994 as saying:
Very interesting. But does this decline in oxygen matter? Are there any practical consequences that we ought to be concerned about? What is the effect of lower oxygen levels on the human body? Does it disrupt and impair our immune systems and therefore make us more prone to cancer and degenerative diseases?
Surprisingly, no significant research has been done, perhaps on the following presumption: the decline in oxygen levels has taken place over millions of years of our planet's existence. The changes during the shorter period of human life have also been slow and incremental - until the last two centuries of rapid urbanisation and industrialisation. Surely, this mostly gradual decline has allowed the human body to evolve and adapt to lower concentrations of oxygen? Maybe, maybe not.
The pace of oxygen loss is likely to have speeded up massively in the last three decades, with the industrialisation of China, India, South Korea and other countries, and as a consequence of the massive worldwide increase in the burning of fossil fuels.
In the view of Professor Ervin Laszlo, the drop in atmospheric oxygen has potentially serious consequences. A UN advisor who has been a professor of philosophy and systems sciences, Laszlo writes:
Scaremongering? I don't think so. A reason for doomsaying? Not yet. What is needed is an authoritative evidence-based investigation to ascertain current oxygen levels and what consequences, if any, there are for the long-term wellbeing of our species - and, indeed, of all species.
Source
UPDATE: An emailed comment from Prof. Roy Spencer of UAH below.
"It doesn't get much more stupid than this. The O2 concentration of the atmosphere has been measured off and on for about 100 years now, and the concentration (20.95%) has not varied within the accuracy of the measurements. Only in recent years have more precise measurement techniques been developed, and the tiny decrease in O2 with increasing CO2 has been actually measured....but I believe the O2 concentration is still 20.95%....maybe it's down to 20.94% by now...I'm not sure.
There is SO much O2 in the atmosphere, it is believed to not be substantially affected by vegetation, but it is the result of geochemistry in deep-ocean sediments...no one really knows for sure.
Since too much O2 is not good for humans, the human body keeps O2 concentrations down around 5% in our major organs. Extra O2 can give you a burst of energy, but it will harm you (or kill you) if the exposure is too long.
It has been estimated that global wildfire risk would increase greatly if O2 concentrations were much more than they are now.
To say there is an impending "oxygen crisis" is the epitome of fear mongering."
Update 2: I think Lubos Motl has the final word on the matter
Lomborg replies to the ticklish one
Says that Alarmist predictions of climate change, like those from Britain's Oliver Tickell, are bad science
Much of the global warming debate is perhaps best described as a constant outbidding by frantic campaigners, producing a barrage of ever-more scary scenarios in an attempt to get the public to accept their civilisation-changing proposals. Unfortunately, the general public - while concerned about the environment - is distinctly unwilling to support questionable solutions with costs running into tens of trillions of pounds. Predictably, this makes the campaigners reach for even more outlandish scares.
These alarmist predictions are becoming quite bizarre, and could be dismissed as sociological oddities, if it weren't for the fact that they get such big play in the media. Oliver Tickell, for instance, writes that a global warming causing a 4C temperature increase by the end of the century would be a "catastrophe" and the beginning of the "extinction" of the human race. This is simply silly.
His evidence? That 4C would mean that all the ice on the planet would melt, bringing the long-term sea level rise to 70-80m, flooding everything we hold dear, seeing billions of people die. Clearly, Tickell has maxed out the campaigners' scare potential (because there is no more ice to melt, this is the scariest he could ever conjure). But he is wrong. Let us just remember that the UN climate panel, the IPCC, expects a temperature rise by the end of the century between 1.8 and 6.0C. Within this range, the IPCC predicts that, by the end of the century, sea levels will rise 18-59 centimetres - Tickell is simply exaggerating by a factor of up to 400.
Tickell will undoubtedly claim that he was talking about what could happen many, many millennia from now. But this is disingenuous. First, the 4C temperature rise is predicted on a century scale - this is what we talk about and can plan for. Second, although sea-level rise will continue for many centuries to come, the models unanimously show that Greenland's ice shelf will be reduced, but Antarctic ice will increase even more (because of increased precipitation in Antarctica) for the next three centuries. What will happen beyond that clearly depends much more on emissions in future centuries. Given that CO2 stays in the atmosphere about a century, what happens with the temperature, say, six centuries from now mainly depends on emissions five centuries from now (where it seems unlikely non-carbon emitting technology such as solar panels will not have become economically competitive).
Third, Tickell tells us how the 80m sea-level rise would wipe out all the world's coastal infrastructure and much of the world's farmland - "undoubtedly" causing billions to die. But to cause billions to die, it would require the surge to occur within a single human lifespan. This sort of scare tactic is insidiously wrong and misleading, mimicking a firebrand preacher who claims the earth is coming to an end and we need to repent. While it is probably true that the sun will burn up the earth in 4-5bn years' time, it does give a slightly different perspective on the need for immediate repenting.
Tickell's claim that 4C will be the beginning of our extinction is again many times beyond wrong and misleading, and, of course, made with no data to back it up. Let us just take a look at the realistic impact of such a 4C temperature rise. For the Copenhagen Consensus, one of the lead economists of the IPCC, Professor Gary Yohe, did a survey of all the problems and all the benefits accruing from a temperature rise over this century of about approximately 4C. And yes, there will, of course, also be benefits: as temperatures rise, more people will die from heat, but fewer from cold; agricultural yields will decline in the tropics, but increase in the temperate zones, etc.
The model evaluates the impacts on agriculture, forestry, energy, water, unmanaged ecosystems, coastal zones, heat and cold deaths and disease. The bottom line is that benefits from global warming right now outweigh the costs (the benefit is about 0.25% of global GDP). Global warming will continue to be a net benefit until about 2070, when the damages will begin to outweigh the benefits, reaching a total damage cost equivalent to about 3.5% of GDP by 2300. This is simply not the end of humanity. If anything, global warming is a net benefit now; and even in three centuries, it will not be a challenge to our civilisation. Further, the IPCC expects the average person on earth to be 1,700% richer by the end of this century.
Tickell's hellfire and damnation sermon also misinforms us of the solutions to global warming: panicking is rarely the right state of mind for finding smart solutions. In essence, Tickell says that because the outlook is so frightening, we need to cut much, much more than the Kyoto protocol called for. Now, all peer-reviewed, published economic models demonstrate that such an effort is a colossal waste of money - one of the leading models shows that, for every pound spent, Tickell's solution would do about 13p-worth of good.
Tickell finds that current climate efforts like Kyoto have been "miserable failures", which is true, but makes it seem rather odd that he thinks much-more-of-the-same will suddenly be great policy. He claims that the reason these policies are not realised is because our governments are "craven to special interests". While this is convenient to believe, it is, of course, incorrect; the real reason is that no one in the electorate wants to pay œ2, œ3 or even œ4 for a litre of petrol.
If we are to find a workable and economically smart solution, we would do well to look at the best climate solution from the top economists from the Copenhagen Consensus. They found that, unlike even moderate CO2 cuts, which cost more than they do good, we should focus on investing in finding cheaper low-carbon energy. This requires us to invest massively in energy research and development (R&D). Right now, we don't - because the climate panic makes us focus exclusively on cutting CO2.
R&D has been dropping worldwide since the early 1980s. If we increased this investment ten-fold, it would still be ten times cheaper than Kyoto, and probably hundreds to thousands of times cheaper than Tickell's proposal. The literature indicates that for every pound invested, we would do œ11-worth of good. The reason: because when we all talk about cutting CO2, we might get some well-meaning westerners to put up a few inefficient solar panels on their roof-tops. While it costs a lot, it will do little and have no impact on Chinese and Indian emissions. But if we focus on investing in making cheaper solar panels, they will become competitive sooner, making everyone, including the Chinese and Indians, switch.
Such a proposal is efficient, politically feasible and will actually fix climate change in the medium term. Being panicked by incorrect data and suggesting outlandish policies might create a splash, but it will stall our prospects of achieving real change. Let's not be silly - let's choose the best solution.
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UK: Ex-drugs policy director calls for legalisation: "A former senior civil servant who was responsible for coordinating the government's anti-drugs policy now believes that legalisation would be less harmful than the current strategy. Julian Critchley, the former director of the Cabinet Office's anti-drugs unit, also said that his views were shared by the 'overwhelming majority' of professionals in the field, including police officers, health workers and members of the government."
Card-playing oldsters landed with $500 bill
The 14 whist players - aged between 70 and 90 - met every Friday for almost 10 years in a communal room at a sheltered housing complex in Norfolk. But officials at Neville Court, in Heacham, told the group they must pay liability insurance for all those who did not live at the complex before they could meet again. Tom Coulstock, from Hunstanton, said the cheapest insurance the group could find was $500 a year, which would have to be paid in addition to the $3 a head entrance fee. Just six of the players are residents and as none of the group can afford to pay the charge, the card-lovers have been forced to disband and re-locate elsewhere.
Freebridge Community Housing (FCH), which runs Neville Court which comprises 20 flats, said the insurance was "common practice". But player Bill Corbett, who lives nearby, said: "Perhaps they think that pensioners will attack one another with the playing cards? The situation is so stupid its laughable. "Freebridge claim the insurance is a matter of course but you can't tell me every group meeting needs public liability insurance. They are just trying to cover their own backs. We should not have to pay for that."
Mr Corbett, 86, said the game took up five tables in a corner of the communal room and insisted there had never been any trouble in the club's eight year history. He said the six residents who live at the home find it hard to travel outside the premises. "They don't understand why they can't have their friends over to play cards," he said. "It's health and safety gone mad and it is short-sighted of Freebridge."
Mr Coulstock said: "It's a farce. If they offer room hire they should have the insurance cover in place for the service they offer. "We won't be using the room in the future. We'll find somewhere that already has the insurance in place." Another player, who did not wish to be named, added: "It's disgusting that Freebridge is more concerned about making sure no-one could ever sue them than ensuring their residents have a good quality of living. "How on earth is someone going to injure themselves whilst playing cards?"
The card players were told they had been banned from the premises after their game on August 1. Tony Hall, chief executive of FCH, said it was standard procedure to ensure members of the public using their facilities were insured. "Freebridge Community Housing actively promotes the use of its community rooms as the social interaction of its elderly residents and people from the local community is a positive contribution to their lives," he said. [By banning them? Bare-faced British hypocrisy again]
"It is general practice that any room hire includes a requirement for insurance. "This can be covered by the group, club insurance or could form part of the hire cost. Freebridge charges a nominal hire charge but then require individuals to organise their own insurance. "The requirement has been in place for many years, but as Freebridge has recently updated the hire agreement it is checking that groups have their own insurance in place. "I am surprised Mr Corbett has been quoted $500 for insurance and Freebridge will make enquiries with our own insurance company to see if alternative quotes are more competitive."
FCH owns and manages around 7,000 properties for rent in the King's Lynn and West Norfolk area. [It is a QANGO -- a hived-off local government body]
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Rape compensation disgrace in Britain
The latest revelation about Britain's rape policies is cause for indignation, tempered by a small sigh of relief. The news that there existed a practice of cutting compensation to rape victims who had been drinking alcohol before the attack provides the indignation; the fact that it has been disputed and rowed back, the relief.
According to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, 14 rape victims - accounting for around one percent of rape-related applications - were told that they would be paid less compensation because of the involvement of alcohol.
Compensation reflects a desire to mitigate for the harm suffered by an innocent victim. The idea that this can be parcelled up and chipped away at because a woman had a few glasses of Pinot Grigio before being brutally attacked is abhorrent. As Helen, a rape victim whose compensation was cut by a quarter, puts it: "Which 25 per cent did they think I was responsible for?"
It may well be common sense that drinking excessively makes women more vulnerable to being raped, and that it clouds the issue of consent. But the fact that a woman can choose to take responsibility for minimising her risk of being raped is in no way comparable with saying that she is responsible should the worst come to pass.
For someone to be convicted of rape, a jury will have decided that there is sufficient evidence to prove that the victim did not give consent, and that the defendant was aware that consent was not given. This is no straightforward task, helping to explain the woeful statistic that less than six percent of reported rapes currently result in a conviction.
For the few who battle through their ordeal to achieve justice, the last thing they deserve is belittlement at the hands of the CICA. For their sake, it's just as well this ignominious policy has been repealed.
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British security laws are eroding human rights, says UN
This UN body is generally anti-Western but there is nonetheless much truth in what they say below
A report from the UN's committee on human rights hit out at Britain's terror and libel laws and use of the Offical Secrets Act. The UN said provisions under the Terrorism Act 2006 covering encouragement of terrorism are too "broad and vague" which could infringe on freedom of expression. Under the new law people convicted of encouragement of terrorism face up to seven years in jail even if they did not intend to incite violence
"In particular, a person can commit the offence even when he or she did not intend members of the public to be directly or indirectly encouraged by his or her statement to commit acts of terrorism, but where his or her statement was understood by some members of the public as encouragement to commit such acts," concluded the committee.
The body also said tough libel laws should be reformed to end "libel tourism" - where people come to the UK to sue over articles they would not be able to pursue in their own countries.
And it said the use of the Official Secrets Act was gagging civil servants from bringing issues of genuine public interest to wider attention even when national security was not at risk.
The criticisms came as part of the committee's analysis into human rights in the UK. But the body welcomed the government's abolition of common-law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel in England and Wales and the adoption of the civil partnership act recognising unions between gay and lesbian couples.
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Drug companies fed up with blundering British bureaucracy
So Brits don't get new drugs
One of the world’s leading drug companies is threatening to withdraw some of its new cancer treatments from the process by which they are approved for use in the National Health Service. Cancer patients in Britain will consequently be denied more effective drugs that are available to sufferers in other countries.
Roche, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant, has already refused to supply economic data on its drug Avastin for treatment of lung and breast cancer to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), the authority that evaluates the cost-effectiveness of medicines for the NHS. This means Avastin will not be available on the NHS for those diseases. Avastin is said to double the time a breast cancer patient’s condition remains stable when compared with existing treatments. Studies have also shown improved survival rates for lung cancer victims.
Roche said last week it will consider withdrawing from other evaluations rather than submit products only for them to be rejected by Nice as too expensive. The statement is the latest twist in the growing row over decisions by Nice. Earlier this month Nice caused an outcry in a preliminary decision when it rejected the use of Avastin (also known as bevacizumab), Sutent (sunitinib), Nexavar (sorafenib) and Torisel (temsirolimus) as too expensive to treat kidney cancer.
“The alternative to these drugs for many patients is death,” said Jonathan Waxman, professor of oncology at Imperial College, London. “Nice is making terrible mistakes.” The survival rates for cancer in Britain are already among the lowest in Europe — on a par with Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic, according to data published last year. However, cancer charities acknowledge there has been significant improvement in rates since the government made the issue a priority with its NHS Cancer Plan, first launched in 2000. Some consultants argue, however, that Britain already spends less on cancer drugs than many other European countries and that it is “crazy” to reject drugs proven to prolong life.
Richard Barker, director- general of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, which represents the drug companies, said: “Nice does a tough and necessary job, but is making errors because of a very mechanistic approach. It relies too much on arithmetic and not enough on clinical judgment.”
Nice was created in 1999 with the aim of ensuring that decisions on the best and most cost-effective drugs for the NHS were made at a national level, were transparent and could be challenged. When the drug companies scrutinised the economic modelling used by Nice, they realised that the estimated costs of their drugs and effectiveness could vary widely. Even more seriously, some of the calculations were wrong. There was an outcry in the medical community in February 2006 when Nice stated that Temodal (temozolomide) — declared as the biggest breakthrough in treating brain tumours for decades — did not offer value for money. Temodal had won approval from the European regulator in 2004, but many British patients were denied treatment as Nice wrangled over costs.
Peter Davison, 48, a manager for Cambridge University Press, was among the few British patients who received the drug — because he was diagnosed with a brain tumour while working in Singapore. “I was lucky to be abroad,” said Davison, who is now in remission. “Four months after I had the operation to remove the tumour, I was running and climbing mountains.” When Schering-Plough — the pharmaceutical company which markets Temodal — prepared its appeal against the Nice decision, it identified an error in the modelling. Once corrected, the model showed the drug was cost-effective — and as a result it was ultimately approved for NHS use.
Not surprisingly, the drugs companies now want full access to the economic models, with the chance to check the accuracy of the calculations. In May, the High Court ruled that Pfizer and Esai, the companies which market the Alzheimer drug Aricept, should be given full access to these models. “We believe this modelling might not be fit for purpose and we want to check it,” said a Pfizer spokesman last week. Nice said it was seeking leave to appeal to the House of Lords after the High Court decision.
Even where the models are correct, consultants and patients’ groups say Nice fails to give proper weight to the evidence from clinicians and patients’ groups. The Sunday Times has highlighted the fact that NHS patients do not even have the option of paying for the drugs privately because of government ban on “co-payments”. The government has said it will review the issue.
Professor Sir Michael Rawlins, chairman of Nice, said the evaluation process was recognised internationally and Nice had been commended by the World Health Organisation for the quality of its work. He said: “We have a finite amount of money to spend on healthcare and we have to divide it up in as fair and as equitable a way as we can. We can’t say to yes to everything. It’s awkward, it’s difficult, it’s unpleasant.”
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The internet shrinks your brain? What rubbish
One lot of assertions is countered by another lot of assertions below.
Winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature are entitled to grand pronouncements, or else what is it for? So Doris Lessing, last winter, anathematised the entire internet, declaring that it had "seduced a whole generation into its inanities". According to Lessing, the web helped to create "'a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned, and where it is common for young men and women who have had years of education to know nothing of the world".
One might wonder how she knew this with such certainty. How many of these young men and women had she met, and held conversations with? Slightly more, perhaps, than the average immobile person in her late eighties.
But Lessing has received confirmation in recent weeks from much more contemporary quarters. In the latest Atlantic Monthly, the headline over a major article by Nicholas Carr asked the question: "Is Google making us stupid?" to which Carr's answer was a Dorisian affirmation. Not long afterwards, Bryan Appleyard penned a long piece entitled "Stoooopid... why the Google generation isn't as smart as it thinks", which - as you can imagine - also took the Lessing line.
"Once," wrote Carr, "I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a jet ski." The culprit was the net, which, with its search engines, YouTubes, blogs and Facebooks, seemed to be "chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation". And not just his. Carr quoted a writer who blamed the internet for changing his mental habits. "I can't read War and Peace any more," this writer complained, leaving unclear whether he was trying to re-read Tolstoy's masterpiece, or had got halfway through before webweariness overtook him.
Carr's view was that there are two kinds of reading: deep reading, which - essentially - is books, and web reading, where all we're doing is the much lesser decoding of information. In the first we make "rich mental connections" and in the second we just don't. In one we are properly engaged, in the other we ain't. "In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book," says Carr, invoking an ideal, "or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas." With the net and its instant access to information we turn into "pancake people", widely and thinly spread.
Appleyard had just been inside that quintessential British experience-former, the intercity train carriage. On the train to Wakefield, with his new 3G iPhone, he was "distracted from distraction by distraction". There were the calls, the texts, the e-mails, "and I'd better throw in the 400-odd news alerts that I receive from all the websites I monitor via my iPhone". I get seven or eight a day on my phone - Sky news, Tottenham Hotspur and London weather. Four hundred on one train trip seems excessive. Anyway... "The digital age is destroying us by ruining our ability to concentrate... it's killing me and it's killing you," says Appleyard, who might die more slowly if he elected to receive fewer news alerts.
"Attention," he asserts, "is the golden key to the mystery of human consciousness... the opposite of attention is distraction, an unnatural condition." Which argument, if taken to its logical conclusion, would make the idiot savant, with the inability to be distracted, the most natural human being of all.
The rot set in with television, but "the internet multiplies the effect a thousandfold... Now teenagers just go to their laptops on coming home from school and sink into their online cocoon," wasting their time on stuff like MySpace on which, apparently, they create connections which are all "threadbare", lacking "the complexity and depth of real-world interactions", lacking in loyalty and feeling.
Appleyard fears that we are now "infantilised cyber-serfs", whose lives the internet has made easier, "but only by destroying the very selves that should be protesting at every distraction, demanding peace, quiet and contemplation". Yes, we all should all be monks. Matins, then work in the fields, then simple food, then Compline, some contemplation, then up - slowly - to the Scriptorium to illuminate some manuscripts, supper, prayers and bed.
How often do such Weh ist mir [Woe is me] arguments rest on an idea of our "natural" selves being alienated by the world of progress? Wasn't it better when we all skinned our own rabbits and made our own music? Let us salute the ideal, St Simeon Stylites, up his pillar in the Syrian desert. Now there was an undistracted man.
Let us begin then at the level of personal experience. I have no problem with reading long novels, despite being a daily and constant user of the internet. I was one of the few people I knew who had read War and Peace 35 years ago, and I still am. Far from turning me into a bibliphobe, the internet has made it much easier for me to find and buy books that were hard to get before.
Nor do I recognise in Lessing's and Appleyard's strictures the experiences of my own daughters. I think they know, not just as much as Lessing did in her teens, but a lot more. Nor, from what I can see, are their Facebook contacts "threadbare". They are almost all people the girls know in real life and see regularly, supplemented with contacts that might otherwise have easily been lost, such as friends from earlier schools. In this sense the internet has helped my kids' social life be just as rich, if not richer, than my own was.
How can, for example, the Google project to place on the internet as many books as possible be productive of anything other than greater learning? What we are asked to do is to look. If we have that capacity, then we don't need to be ordained into the learned priesthood, or try to wangle ourselves library cards to which we aren't entitled. Just type three words, in the right order, and as Aladdin says, Open Sesame, and connections are made - some predicted, many fortuitous. Perhaps it is this uncontrollable, self-sustaining spread of knowledge that threatens the "certainties" that Lessing recalls.
Of course, what all three of my Jeremiahs entirely miss about the internet is its quality of engagement. That's what makes the new era so much better than the television age. As Clay Shirky, the American writer, put it, the new media are a triathlon: "People like to consume, but they also like to produce, and they like to share..." Isn't that superior, he asks, to being stuck in a basement watching reruns of Gilligan's Island? The challenge is not to lament, but to equip, to teach ourselves how to search and how to discriminate. A GCSE [diploma] in search engine skills, perhaps.
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One injection 'vaccine' cure for arthritis within five years
A single injection that could cure rheumatoid arthritis is being developed by British scientists. The treatment works like a vaccine and could be available within five years. Cells would be taken from the body, altered, and injected back into the affected joint.
A team at Newcastle University will now test the vaccine on volunteers with the disease. Scientists in the field are extremely excited about the development. There are 350,000 people in the UK with rheumatoid arthritis, which is a condition where the body's immune system attacks the joints, unlike oestoarthritis which is more like wear and tear of the joints. Rheumatoid arthritis is difficult to treat because it is caused by a malfunctioning immune system, causing inflammation in the wrong places.
Prof Alan Silman, medical director of the charity Arthritis Research Campaign, which funded the research, said: "This is an important potential cure. It is possible one injection could switch off the abnormal immune response. "If it works it could reverse the disease and stop further episodes."
The Newcastle team will test the effectiveness of the new vaccine in eight volunteers with rheumatoid arthritis from the Freeman Hospital as part of a pilot study, which could then lead to larger trials.
The vaccine works by reprogramming the body's own immune cells. Using chemicals, steroids and Vitamin D, the team has devised a way to manipulate a patient's white blood cells so they surpress, rather than activate, the immune system. It is thought the cells will then act as a brake on the over-reacting immune system and stop it attacking its own joints. Although a similar technique has been used in cancer research, this is the first time it has been adapted to rheumatoid arthritis.
John Isaacs, Professor of Clinical Rheumatology at Newcastle University's Musculoskeletal Research Group, who is leading the team, said that although the work was in a very early, experimental stage it was "hugely exciting". "Based on previous laboratory research we would expect that this will specifically suppress or down regulate the auto-immune response," he said. Samples will be taken two weeks after the injection to establish whether it has induced the expected response.
The team also hope to find out if the vaccine is effective only in the joints it is injected into, or whether the new cells spread throughout the body. Prof Silman said the treatment may prove expensive as each patient would have to have their own cells taken and manipulated rather than a drug which can be made in bulk and prescribed to all people with a condition. He said it would be unlikely that the vaccine could be offered in normal local hospitals because of the expertise necessary to manipulate the cells in the laboratory.
It raises fears the vaccine would have to go through the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence cost effectiveness tests. But if the vaccine did work with a one off injection and completely stop the disease it is likely to offer such a huge benefit to the patient that even a relatively large price may be deemed acceptable. Prof Silman said he expected the jab to cost less than $50,000. The research is being funded by medical research charity the Arthritis Research Campaign, which is providing $432,000 over 18 months.
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British government tries to civilize its Leftist academics
British academics will be encouraged to conduct research with their Israeli peers in an attempt to heal fractured relations between UK and Israeli universities. Gordon Brown has signed up to a $1,480,000 academic exchange scheme during his trip to Israel today. The government has been keen to promote links between the two countries to play down attempts by British academics to boycott Israeli academics over the treatment of Palestinians.
In May, members of the University and College Union voted to consider the moral and political implications of education links with Israeli institutions. But the UK government's contribution of $40,000 to the scheme which is mainly funded by charities was described as an insult by a leading Anglo-Jewish historian. Geoffrey Alderman, visiting professor of theology and education at York St John University, said: "Compared to the money that the government is giving to the Palestinian Authority, this is an insult. I would throw this back in their faces. If the government was seriously interested in a programme to foster academic cooperation, it would think in terms of millions."
The higher education minister, Bill Rammell, said the new scheme would help foster academic cooperation through joint research programmes and academic exchange trips between the UK and Israel.
The Britain-Israel research and academic exchange partnership (BIRAX) will award scientific research grants to junior academics - from postdoctoral students to mid-career researchers and lecturers - who tend to have far fewer international opportunities. The British Council will manage the scheme, which is funded by the Pears Foundation, the United Jewish Israel Appeal, with smaller contributions from the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Israel's Ministry of Science.
The academic who led the call for the boycott, Tom Hickey, a politics and philosophy lecturer from the University of Brighton, said academics should consider whether it was "morally acceptable to continue links with Israeli institutions where there was evidence that they were complicit in the occupation".
The government will give the same amount to improve links between British researchers and their peers in Palestine. Rammell said this would be "in the near future".
The scheme will last for five years in the first instance, although it is anticipated that it will develop over time into a longer-term partnership.
The British Council is also working on proposals to support academic links between Britain and Palestine, which the government will offer equal funding to support. Rammell said: "There is a long history of cooperation between Israel and the UK and BIRAX will help further cement this relationship and create new partnerships. It will help strengthen academic links between individual researchers and between universities in both countries. "There have been calls in the past for a boycott of Israeli academics but I strongly believe that we have much to learn from each other and our researchers have much to gain from working together. Education should be a bridge between nations not a barrier."
Trevor Pears, the executive chair of the Pears Foundation, said: "The new scheme increases academic collaboration in science and technology with potentially lasting benefits for Britain, Israel and, hopefully, the world."
The chairman of UJIA, Mick Davis, said the scheme would strengthen "the living bridge that draws on the great history of academic cooperation that has benefited Israel and the UK so greatly over the years".
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Desperation time: Forget Global Warming -- The Oxygen Crisis Threatens human survival
A brand new scare. The lack of warming and the collapse of the agw fear machine is leading to new causes. We may soon see the creation of a new UN IPOC - Intergovernmental Panel on Oxygen Crisis. The author of the screed below, Peter Tatchell, is best known as a British homosexual activist. He appears to base his latest cry for attention on the contents of an as-yet unwritten book
The rise in carbon dioxide emissions is big news. It is prompting action to reverse global warming. But little or no attention is being paid to the long-term fall in oxygen concentrations and its knock-on effects. Compared to prehistoric times, the level of oxygen in the earth's atmosphere has declined by over a third and in polluted cities the decline may be more than 50%. [This is risible. Gaseous diffusion is very rapid. A huge difference like this in Oxygen concentration between city and country is impossible] This change in the makeup of the air we breathe has potentially serious implications for our health. Indeed, it could ultimately threaten the survival of human life on earth, according to Roddy Newman, who is drafting a new book, The Oxygen Crisis.
I am not a scientist, but this seems a reasonable concern. It is a possibility that we should examine and assess. So, what's the evidence? Around 10,000 years ago, the planet's forest cover was at least twice what it is today, which means that forests are now emitting only half the amount of oxygen. Desertification and deforestation are rapidly accelerating this long-term loss of oxygen sources. The story at sea is much the same. Nasa reports that in the north Pacific ocean oxygen-producing phytoplankton concentrations are 30% lower today, compared to the 1980s. This is a huge drop in just three decades.
Moreover, the UN environment programme confirmed in 2004 that there were nearly 150 "dead zones" in the world's oceans where discharged sewage and industrial waste, farm fertiliser run-off and other pollutants have reduced oxygen levels to such an extent that most or all sea creatures can no longer live there. This oxygen starvation is reducing regional fish stocks and diminishing the food supplies of populations that are dependent on fishing. It also causes genetic mutations and hormonal changes that can affect the reproductive capacity of sea life, which could further diminish global fish supplies.
Professor Robert Berner of Yale University has researched oxygen levels in prehistoric times by chemically analysing air bubbles trapped in fossilised tree amber. He suggests that humans breathed a much more oxygen-rich air 10,000 years ago.
Further back, the oxygen levels were even greater. Robert Sloan has listed the percentage of oxygen in samples of dinosaur-era amber as: 28% (130m years ago), 29% (115m years ago), 35% (95m years ago), 33% (88m years ago), 35% (75m years ago), 35% (70m years ago), 35% (68m years ago), 31% (65.2m years ago), and 29% (65m years ago).
Professor Ian Plimer of Adelaide University and Professor Jon Harrison of the University of Arizona concur. Like most other scientists they accept that oxygen levels in the atmosphere in prehistoric times averaged around 30% to 35%, compared to only 21% today - and that the levels are even less in densely populated, polluted city centres and industrial complexes, perhaps only 15 % or lower.
Much of this recent, accelerated change is down to human activity, notably the industrial revolution and the burning of fossil fuels. The Professor of Geological Sciences at Notre Dame University in Indiana, J Keith Rigby, was quoted in 1993-1994 as saying:
In the 20th century, humanity has pumped increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning the carbon stored in coal, petroleum and natural gas. In the process, we've also been consuming oxygen and destroying plant life - cutting down forests at an alarming rate and thereby short-circuiting the cycle's natural rebound. We're artificially slowing down one process and speeding up another, forcing a change in the atmosphere.
Very interesting. But does this decline in oxygen matter? Are there any practical consequences that we ought to be concerned about? What is the effect of lower oxygen levels on the human body? Does it disrupt and impair our immune systems and therefore make us more prone to cancer and degenerative diseases?
Surprisingly, no significant research has been done, perhaps on the following presumption: the decline in oxygen levels has taken place over millions of years of our planet's existence. The changes during the shorter period of human life have also been slow and incremental - until the last two centuries of rapid urbanisation and industrialisation. Surely, this mostly gradual decline has allowed the human body to evolve and adapt to lower concentrations of oxygen? Maybe, maybe not.
The pace of oxygen loss is likely to have speeded up massively in the last three decades, with the industrialisation of China, India, South Korea and other countries, and as a consequence of the massive worldwide increase in the burning of fossil fuels.
In the view of Professor Ervin Laszlo, the drop in atmospheric oxygen has potentially serious consequences. A UN advisor who has been a professor of philosophy and systems sciences, Laszlo writes:
Evidence from prehistoric times indicates that the oxygen content of pristine nature was above the 21% of total volume that it is today. It has decreased in recent times due mainly to the burning of coal in the middle of the last century. Currently the oxygen content of the Earth's atmosphere dips to 19% over impacted areas, and it is down to 12 to 17% over the major cities. At these levels it is difficult for people to get sufficient oxygen to maintain bodily health: it takes a proper intake of oxygen to keep body cells and organs, and the entire immune system, functioning at full efficiency. At the levels we have reached today cancers and other degenerative diseases are likely to develop. And at 6 to 7% life can no longer be sustained.
Scaremongering? I don't think so. A reason for doomsaying? Not yet. What is needed is an authoritative evidence-based investigation to ascertain current oxygen levels and what consequences, if any, there are for the long-term wellbeing of our species - and, indeed, of all species.
Source
UPDATE: An emailed comment from Prof. Roy Spencer of UAH below.
"It doesn't get much more stupid than this. The O2 concentration of the atmosphere has been measured off and on for about 100 years now, and the concentration (20.95%) has not varied within the accuracy of the measurements. Only in recent years have more precise measurement techniques been developed, and the tiny decrease in O2 with increasing CO2 has been actually measured....but I believe the O2 concentration is still 20.95%....maybe it's down to 20.94% by now...I'm not sure.
There is SO much O2 in the atmosphere, it is believed to not be substantially affected by vegetation, but it is the result of geochemistry in deep-ocean sediments...no one really knows for sure.
Since too much O2 is not good for humans, the human body keeps O2 concentrations down around 5% in our major organs. Extra O2 can give you a burst of energy, but it will harm you (or kill you) if the exposure is too long.
It has been estimated that global wildfire risk would increase greatly if O2 concentrations were much more than they are now.
To say there is an impending "oxygen crisis" is the epitome of fear mongering."
Update 2: I think Lubos Motl has the final word on the matter
Lomborg replies to the ticklish one
Says that Alarmist predictions of climate change, like those from Britain's Oliver Tickell, are bad science
Much of the global warming debate is perhaps best described as a constant outbidding by frantic campaigners, producing a barrage of ever-more scary scenarios in an attempt to get the public to accept their civilisation-changing proposals. Unfortunately, the general public - while concerned about the environment - is distinctly unwilling to support questionable solutions with costs running into tens of trillions of pounds. Predictably, this makes the campaigners reach for even more outlandish scares.
These alarmist predictions are becoming quite bizarre, and could be dismissed as sociological oddities, if it weren't for the fact that they get such big play in the media. Oliver Tickell, for instance, writes that a global warming causing a 4C temperature increase by the end of the century would be a "catastrophe" and the beginning of the "extinction" of the human race. This is simply silly.
His evidence? That 4C would mean that all the ice on the planet would melt, bringing the long-term sea level rise to 70-80m, flooding everything we hold dear, seeing billions of people die. Clearly, Tickell has maxed out the campaigners' scare potential (because there is no more ice to melt, this is the scariest he could ever conjure). But he is wrong. Let us just remember that the UN climate panel, the IPCC, expects a temperature rise by the end of the century between 1.8 and 6.0C. Within this range, the IPCC predicts that, by the end of the century, sea levels will rise 18-59 centimetres - Tickell is simply exaggerating by a factor of up to 400.
Tickell will undoubtedly claim that he was talking about what could happen many, many millennia from now. But this is disingenuous. First, the 4C temperature rise is predicted on a century scale - this is what we talk about and can plan for. Second, although sea-level rise will continue for many centuries to come, the models unanimously show that Greenland's ice shelf will be reduced, but Antarctic ice will increase even more (because of increased precipitation in Antarctica) for the next three centuries. What will happen beyond that clearly depends much more on emissions in future centuries. Given that CO2 stays in the atmosphere about a century, what happens with the temperature, say, six centuries from now mainly depends on emissions five centuries from now (where it seems unlikely non-carbon emitting technology such as solar panels will not have become economically competitive).
Third, Tickell tells us how the 80m sea-level rise would wipe out all the world's coastal infrastructure and much of the world's farmland - "undoubtedly" causing billions to die. But to cause billions to die, it would require the surge to occur within a single human lifespan. This sort of scare tactic is insidiously wrong and misleading, mimicking a firebrand preacher who claims the earth is coming to an end and we need to repent. While it is probably true that the sun will burn up the earth in 4-5bn years' time, it does give a slightly different perspective on the need for immediate repenting.
Tickell's claim that 4C will be the beginning of our extinction is again many times beyond wrong and misleading, and, of course, made with no data to back it up. Let us just take a look at the realistic impact of such a 4C temperature rise. For the Copenhagen Consensus, one of the lead economists of the IPCC, Professor Gary Yohe, did a survey of all the problems and all the benefits accruing from a temperature rise over this century of about approximately 4C. And yes, there will, of course, also be benefits: as temperatures rise, more people will die from heat, but fewer from cold; agricultural yields will decline in the tropics, but increase in the temperate zones, etc.
The model evaluates the impacts on agriculture, forestry, energy, water, unmanaged ecosystems, coastal zones, heat and cold deaths and disease. The bottom line is that benefits from global warming right now outweigh the costs (the benefit is about 0.25% of global GDP). Global warming will continue to be a net benefit until about 2070, when the damages will begin to outweigh the benefits, reaching a total damage cost equivalent to about 3.5% of GDP by 2300. This is simply not the end of humanity. If anything, global warming is a net benefit now; and even in three centuries, it will not be a challenge to our civilisation. Further, the IPCC expects the average person on earth to be 1,700% richer by the end of this century.
Tickell's hellfire and damnation sermon also misinforms us of the solutions to global warming: panicking is rarely the right state of mind for finding smart solutions. In essence, Tickell says that because the outlook is so frightening, we need to cut much, much more than the Kyoto protocol called for. Now, all peer-reviewed, published economic models demonstrate that such an effort is a colossal waste of money - one of the leading models shows that, for every pound spent, Tickell's solution would do about 13p-worth of good.
Tickell finds that current climate efforts like Kyoto have been "miserable failures", which is true, but makes it seem rather odd that he thinks much-more-of-the-same will suddenly be great policy. He claims that the reason these policies are not realised is because our governments are "craven to special interests". While this is convenient to believe, it is, of course, incorrect; the real reason is that no one in the electorate wants to pay œ2, œ3 or even œ4 for a litre of petrol.
If we are to find a workable and economically smart solution, we would do well to look at the best climate solution from the top economists from the Copenhagen Consensus. They found that, unlike even moderate CO2 cuts, which cost more than they do good, we should focus on investing in finding cheaper low-carbon energy. This requires us to invest massively in energy research and development (R&D). Right now, we don't - because the climate panic makes us focus exclusively on cutting CO2.
R&D has been dropping worldwide since the early 1980s. If we increased this investment ten-fold, it would still be ten times cheaper than Kyoto, and probably hundreds to thousands of times cheaper than Tickell's proposal. The literature indicates that for every pound invested, we would do œ11-worth of good. The reason: because when we all talk about cutting CO2, we might get some well-meaning westerners to put up a few inefficient solar panels on their roof-tops. While it costs a lot, it will do little and have no impact on Chinese and Indian emissions. But if we focus on investing in making cheaper solar panels, they will become competitive sooner, making everyone, including the Chinese and Indians, switch.
Such a proposal is efficient, politically feasible and will actually fix climate change in the medium term. Being panicked by incorrect data and suggesting outlandish policies might create a splash, but it will stall our prospects of achieving real change. Let's not be silly - let's choose the best solution.
Source
UK: Ex-drugs policy director calls for legalisation: "A former senior civil servant who was responsible for coordinating the government's anti-drugs policy now believes that legalisation would be less harmful than the current strategy. Julian Critchley, the former director of the Cabinet Office's anti-drugs unit, also said that his views were shared by the 'overwhelming majority' of professionals in the field, including police officers, health workers and members of the government."
Sunday, August 17, 2008
"Junk" diet makes kids naughty
What utter crap! All the data show is that mothers who fed their kids disapproved food had kids who were less well behaved -- i.e. working class mothers had rattier children. It's entirely explicable as a class effect, not a diet effect
Eating junk food as toddlers makes kids more badly behaved at school, medics reveal today. Sugary and fatty snacks have been blamed for naughtiness and poor concentration, leading to campaigns for healthier lunches. But research has now found that if children are given bad diet as young as THREE the damage has already been done by the time they go to school.
Studies showed that pupils who had been fed processed grub as toddlers were the worst-behaved in class and performed the worst in tests. The findings emerged from a major study by the University of London's Institute for Education. The probe, part of the Bristol Children of the 90s medical research project, looked at data from 14,000 children. It found that those on a junk food diet aged three were less likely to achieve the expected levels of improvement between six and ten.
Dr Pauline Emmett, a nutritionist from the University of Bristol, said: "We are confident that this is a robust association. "It indicates that early eating patterns have effects that persist over time, regardless of later changes in diet. So it is very important for children to eat a well-balanced diet from an early age if they are to get the best out of their education." The study showed that a child's diet at a later age has less impact on their school performance.
Turkey twizzlers, burgers and chips have been blamed for behaviour problems and the Government has spent millions overhauling school meals following a campaign led by TV chef Jamie Oliver. Many schools have banned junk food completely as a result. Improved meals are expected to boost performance in the classroom.
Source
British fat Fascists want to seize kids
Grossly overweight children may be taken from their families and put into care if Britain's obesity epidemic continues to escalate, council chiefs said yesterday. The Local Government Association argued that parents who allowed their children to eat too much could be as guilty of neglect as those who did not feed their children at all.
The association said that until now there had been only a few cases when social services had intervened in obesity cases. But it gave warning that local councils may have to take action much more often and, if necessary, put obese children on "at risk" registers or take them into care. It called for new guidelines to be drawn up to help authorities deal with the issue.
There have been some reported cases where children under 10 have weighed up to 14st (89kg) and a three-year-old has weighed 10st - putting them at a high risk of diabetes and heart disease. Only last week a 15-year-old girl in Wales was told by doctors that she could "drop dead at any moment" after tipping the scales at 33st.
David Rogers, the Local Government Association's public health spokesman, said that by 2012 an estimated million children would be obese and by 2025 about a quarter of all boys would be grossly overweight. "Councils are increasingly having to consider taking action where parents are putting children's health in real danger," he said. "As the obesity epidemic grows, these tricky cases will keep on cropping up. Councils would step in to deal with an undernourished and neglected child, so should a case with a morbidly obese child be different? If parents consistently place their children at risk through bad diet and lack of exercise, is it right that a council should step in to keep the child's health under review?"
"The nation's expanding waistline threatens to have a devastating impact on our public services. It's a huge issue for public health, but it also risks placing an unprecedented amount of pressure on council services."
The association called for a national debate on how much local authorities should intervene in obesity cases. As a basic minimum, social services or health visitors should talk to the families involved, give them advice and show them how to provide healthy meals. "But in the worst cases [the children] would need to be put on `at risk' registers or taken into care."
Last year Cumbria County Council put an eight-year old girl into care as she was dangerously overweight. Anne Ridgway, of Cumbria Primary Care Trust, said that it was extremely rare for a child to be put into care just because of their weight. "Even then the care proceedings may well have been instigated because of related problems rather than exclusively because of their weight," she said. Extreme cases of obesity could become a child protection issue because obesity "can have very serious consequences for a child's health and the parental behaviour that leads to childhood obesity can be a form of neglect".
Tam Fry, of the National Obesity Forum, said: "Children who are dangerously overweight should be brought into hospital, where they can be given 24-hour care for several weeks or months. But their parents should have access to them."
The Conservative Party said that taking children into care was a serious step. Andrew Landsley, the Shadow Health Secretary, said that in many cases "it would be better to help the parents provide better nutrition for their child rather than break up the family".
Source
Why seizing fat kids would solve nothing
A recent Department of Health study showed that one schoolchild in three is either overweight or clinically obese - and they were the ones who agreed to be weighed. A fifth of the children opted out of their appointment with the scales. I'm willing to bet that an even higher proportion of them would have been wearing clothes labelled "XXL".
I usually meet at least one fat child a day in my surgery and I can guarantee that they will have been brought along to talk about a cough, a verruca, anything apart from their weight. More often than not the accompanying parent is also markedly overweight.
We learn how to cope with stress on our mother's knees. It would seem that these children have learnt how to comfort eat from one parent or both. I know that these children will grow up to suffer heart problems, premature arthritis and early-onset diabetes as a direct result of their obesity. I also know that if I comment on it their parent will go on the defensive. They usually make light of it, asking why I am making a big deal about a couple of inches of puppy fat.
Some experts argue that these children will do better if they are removed from the parental home. They need to consider two issues. First, the child may have developed the comfort-eating habit as a way of coping with stress, so being moved to another family will not undo that. Secondly, removal from the family is the most stressful event that could happen in a young child's life and could well lead to even more overeating.
It is easy to talk about "tough love" and locks on the fridge door but the only way to get to the root of the problem is to deal with the family as a whole.
Source
Disgusting British bureaucrats again
Have some nausea tablets on hand when you read their totally dishonest final comment below. The hypocrisy is unbelievable
They are calling it the Battle of Birks Road. An indignant group of neighbours stood like David against the Goliath of local authority instransigence: council refusemen and their waste lorry. A dispute over the binmen's refusal to collect a backlog of rubbish developed into a tense, one-hour stand-off in the quiet cul-de-sac. Children and parents formed a human chain to prevent the lorry leaving. One resident parked his car across the road to block its departure. Tempers boiled. Police were called and eventually order was restored when the binmen backed down. The lorry duly collected all the rubbish bags and was waved on its way.
Residents of Birks Road, in Huddersfield, had become frustrated by Kirklees Council's failure to remove extra bags of rubbish which had built up after refuse collectors staged a two-day strike last month. After the stoppage, collections resumed but although the householders' bins were emptied as normal, the accumulated extra bags were left to rot at the side of the road. Residents say they contacted the council and were promised that a "rapid response" vehicle would be sent to collect the bags. Two weeks later, they were still lying on the road.
Patience finally snapped on Wednesday when the binmen arrived, several hours late, and again refused to clear away the excess rubbish. Neighbours offered to load the bags into the lorry themselves, but were told that was against the regulations.
Mark Copley, an electrician, finally snapped and made the first move by climbing into his car and trapping the dustcart inside the cul-de-sac. Mr Copley, 30, said he told the three refuse men: "I'm not having this. Move my rubbish and I'll move my car." His neighbour, Rebecca Jones, 32, said that as the blockade continued the council agreed to send a second vehicle to pick up the excess rubbish. When it arrived, "a guy in a shirt and tie appeared and said that to teach us a lesson they were not going to empty the bins in the street". It was then that a human chain, including children, was formed around the lorry.
"Finally, one of the men said they would clear the rubbish if we moved, so we did and they kept to their word. "We pay $288 a month in council tax. For them to strike when they feel like it and then not to collect our rubbish was just not on."
A council spokesman said: "The collection crews always do their best to collect everyone's waste," he said. "This minor incident was quickly resolved, in line with what we would expect of our collection crews."
Source
British kids can get a GCSE (Middle school) mathematics pass by reading a thermometer
Teenagers were required to read a simple thermometer and measure a straight line with a ruler to pass a GCSE maths exam, The Daily Telegraph has learned. Just days before results for 600,000 pupils will be released, it emerged 16-year-olds could gain a C grade in the test - officially a good pass - by answering two-thirds of the "simple" questions correctly. The disclosure prompted fresh claims that tests were being "dumbed down", with the Conservatives insisting they were "suitable for an eight-year-old".
It comes as results published next week are expected to show fewer than half of pupils leave school with five good GCSEs including English and maths - the standard expected of all 16-year-olds. Just over 55 per cent of pupils gained at least a C grade in maths last year. It follows fears that many young people are being turned off the subject because of a lack of rigour in the curriculum.
A report by the think-tank Reform said GCSEs were "considerably" easier than 50 years ago as questions had been simplified to make them more relevant to modern teenagers. The Telegraph obtained a foundation tier GCSE paper set by the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance, Britain's biggest exam board. In one question, pupils are asked to read a diagram of a thermometer. One arrow points to 13C and another to -4C, with students required write down the temperatures for two marks. Another question presents pupils with seven numbers - 24, 26, 29, 34, 40, 47 and 55 - and asks to write down the multiples of five and eight.
Pupils are also shown a short line and asked to measure it - giving their answer in millimetres. They are then required to measure 4cm along the line and mark it on the exam script.
In another question pupils are asked to write down the most suitable metric unit to measure the distance from London to Edinburgh. And one more asks students, who cannot use a calculator, to multiply 350 by two.
Pupils sitting the foundation tier test can score C to G grades. They need to get around two-thirds of questions correct to gain a C in the exam element of the GCSE.
Last night, AQA said questions were easier at the beginning of the exam but became more challenging, including those testing circle area, formulation and solution of equations, algebraic simplification and angle geometry. The exam was just one element of the GCSE, the board said, and pupils must also complete two pieces of coursework, a statistics module, a number module and a second test paper - some four hours and 40 minutes worth of assessment.
"The skills tested by the questions in the paper referred to are all part of the specified content for GCSE which has been unchanged for five years so such questions will have appeared on foundation papers in the past," said a spokesman. "AQA is confident that sufficient evidence is therefore present to ensure that candidates awarded a grade C on this tier will have shown comparable performance to candidates awarded grade C on the higher tier this year."
Nick Gibb, the Conservative shadow schools minister, said: "This is primary level maths suitable for an eight or nine-year-old. It is clear evidence that GCSEs have been dumbed down."
Source
Britain today: "Imagine telling somebody twenty years ago that by 2007, it would be illegal to smoke in a pub or bus shelter or your own vehicle or that there would be $160 fines for dropping cigarette butts, or that the words "tequila slammer" would be illegal or the government would mandate what angle a drinker's head in an advertisement may be tipped at, or that it would be illegal to criticise religions or homosexuality, or rewire your own house, or that having sex after a few drinks would be classed as rape or that the State would be confiscating children for being overweight. Imagine telling them the government would be contemplating ration cards for fuel and even foods, that every citizen would be required to carry an ID card filled with private information which could be withdrawn at the state's whim. They'd have thought you a paranoid loon."
British bureaucrats condemn 4-year-olds: "School inspectors have written to children as young as 4 warning them that they were not learning enough to prepare them for their adult lives. The letters, from Ofsted, the education watchdog, were written in simple English as part of a drive for transparency on how schools are performing. Pupils at a primary school in Nottinghamshire that had been placed under special measures were told that they were failing in core subjects. The children were told to make more effort to behave in class. A letters to pupils in West Yorkshire read: "We decided that the school needs to be helped to improve. Most aspects of the school's work are not good enough." Children in London were told: "You need to improve your writing and maths to help you get jobs when you are older."
What utter crap! All the data show is that mothers who fed their kids disapproved food had kids who were less well behaved -- i.e. working class mothers had rattier children. It's entirely explicable as a class effect, not a diet effect
Eating junk food as toddlers makes kids more badly behaved at school, medics reveal today. Sugary and fatty snacks have been blamed for naughtiness and poor concentration, leading to campaigns for healthier lunches. But research has now found that if children are given bad diet as young as THREE the damage has already been done by the time they go to school.
Studies showed that pupils who had been fed processed grub as toddlers were the worst-behaved in class and performed the worst in tests. The findings emerged from a major study by the University of London's Institute for Education. The probe, part of the Bristol Children of the 90s medical research project, looked at data from 14,000 children. It found that those on a junk food diet aged three were less likely to achieve the expected levels of improvement between six and ten.
Dr Pauline Emmett, a nutritionist from the University of Bristol, said: "We are confident that this is a robust association. "It indicates that early eating patterns have effects that persist over time, regardless of later changes in diet. So it is very important for children to eat a well-balanced diet from an early age if they are to get the best out of their education." The study showed that a child's diet at a later age has less impact on their school performance.
Turkey twizzlers, burgers and chips have been blamed for behaviour problems and the Government has spent millions overhauling school meals following a campaign led by TV chef Jamie Oliver. Many schools have banned junk food completely as a result. Improved meals are expected to boost performance in the classroom.
Source
British fat Fascists want to seize kids
Grossly overweight children may be taken from their families and put into care if Britain's obesity epidemic continues to escalate, council chiefs said yesterday. The Local Government Association argued that parents who allowed their children to eat too much could be as guilty of neglect as those who did not feed their children at all.
The association said that until now there had been only a few cases when social services had intervened in obesity cases. But it gave warning that local councils may have to take action much more often and, if necessary, put obese children on "at risk" registers or take them into care. It called for new guidelines to be drawn up to help authorities deal with the issue.
There have been some reported cases where children under 10 have weighed up to 14st (89kg) and a three-year-old has weighed 10st - putting them at a high risk of diabetes and heart disease. Only last week a 15-year-old girl in Wales was told by doctors that she could "drop dead at any moment" after tipping the scales at 33st.
David Rogers, the Local Government Association's public health spokesman, said that by 2012 an estimated million children would be obese and by 2025 about a quarter of all boys would be grossly overweight. "Councils are increasingly having to consider taking action where parents are putting children's health in real danger," he said. "As the obesity epidemic grows, these tricky cases will keep on cropping up. Councils would step in to deal with an undernourished and neglected child, so should a case with a morbidly obese child be different? If parents consistently place their children at risk through bad diet and lack of exercise, is it right that a council should step in to keep the child's health under review?"
"The nation's expanding waistline threatens to have a devastating impact on our public services. It's a huge issue for public health, but it also risks placing an unprecedented amount of pressure on council services."
The association called for a national debate on how much local authorities should intervene in obesity cases. As a basic minimum, social services or health visitors should talk to the families involved, give them advice and show them how to provide healthy meals. "But in the worst cases [the children] would need to be put on `at risk' registers or taken into care."
Last year Cumbria County Council put an eight-year old girl into care as she was dangerously overweight. Anne Ridgway, of Cumbria Primary Care Trust, said that it was extremely rare for a child to be put into care just because of their weight. "Even then the care proceedings may well have been instigated because of related problems rather than exclusively because of their weight," she said. Extreme cases of obesity could become a child protection issue because obesity "can have very serious consequences for a child's health and the parental behaviour that leads to childhood obesity can be a form of neglect".
Tam Fry, of the National Obesity Forum, said: "Children who are dangerously overweight should be brought into hospital, where they can be given 24-hour care for several weeks or months. But their parents should have access to them."
The Conservative Party said that taking children into care was a serious step. Andrew Landsley, the Shadow Health Secretary, said that in many cases "it would be better to help the parents provide better nutrition for their child rather than break up the family".
Source
Why seizing fat kids would solve nothing
A recent Department of Health study showed that one schoolchild in three is either overweight or clinically obese - and they were the ones who agreed to be weighed. A fifth of the children opted out of their appointment with the scales. I'm willing to bet that an even higher proportion of them would have been wearing clothes labelled "XXL".
I usually meet at least one fat child a day in my surgery and I can guarantee that they will have been brought along to talk about a cough, a verruca, anything apart from their weight. More often than not the accompanying parent is also markedly overweight.
We learn how to cope with stress on our mother's knees. It would seem that these children have learnt how to comfort eat from one parent or both. I know that these children will grow up to suffer heart problems, premature arthritis and early-onset diabetes as a direct result of their obesity. I also know that if I comment on it their parent will go on the defensive. They usually make light of it, asking why I am making a big deal about a couple of inches of puppy fat.
Some experts argue that these children will do better if they are removed from the parental home. They need to consider two issues. First, the child may have developed the comfort-eating habit as a way of coping with stress, so being moved to another family will not undo that. Secondly, removal from the family is the most stressful event that could happen in a young child's life and could well lead to even more overeating.
It is easy to talk about "tough love" and locks on the fridge door but the only way to get to the root of the problem is to deal with the family as a whole.
Source
Disgusting British bureaucrats again
Have some nausea tablets on hand when you read their totally dishonest final comment below. The hypocrisy is unbelievable
They are calling it the Battle of Birks Road. An indignant group of neighbours stood like David against the Goliath of local authority instransigence: council refusemen and their waste lorry. A dispute over the binmen's refusal to collect a backlog of rubbish developed into a tense, one-hour stand-off in the quiet cul-de-sac. Children and parents formed a human chain to prevent the lorry leaving. One resident parked his car across the road to block its departure. Tempers boiled. Police were called and eventually order was restored when the binmen backed down. The lorry duly collected all the rubbish bags and was waved on its way.
Residents of Birks Road, in Huddersfield, had become frustrated by Kirklees Council's failure to remove extra bags of rubbish which had built up after refuse collectors staged a two-day strike last month. After the stoppage, collections resumed but although the householders' bins were emptied as normal, the accumulated extra bags were left to rot at the side of the road. Residents say they contacted the council and were promised that a "rapid response" vehicle would be sent to collect the bags. Two weeks later, they were still lying on the road.
Patience finally snapped on Wednesday when the binmen arrived, several hours late, and again refused to clear away the excess rubbish. Neighbours offered to load the bags into the lorry themselves, but were told that was against the regulations.
Mark Copley, an electrician, finally snapped and made the first move by climbing into his car and trapping the dustcart inside the cul-de-sac. Mr Copley, 30, said he told the three refuse men: "I'm not having this. Move my rubbish and I'll move my car." His neighbour, Rebecca Jones, 32, said that as the blockade continued the council agreed to send a second vehicle to pick up the excess rubbish. When it arrived, "a guy in a shirt and tie appeared and said that to teach us a lesson they were not going to empty the bins in the street". It was then that a human chain, including children, was formed around the lorry.
"Finally, one of the men said they would clear the rubbish if we moved, so we did and they kept to their word. "We pay $288 a month in council tax. For them to strike when they feel like it and then not to collect our rubbish was just not on."
A council spokesman said: "The collection crews always do their best to collect everyone's waste," he said. "This minor incident was quickly resolved, in line with what we would expect of our collection crews."
Source
British kids can get a GCSE (Middle school) mathematics pass by reading a thermometer
Teenagers were required to read a simple thermometer and measure a straight line with a ruler to pass a GCSE maths exam, The Daily Telegraph has learned. Just days before results for 600,000 pupils will be released, it emerged 16-year-olds could gain a C grade in the test - officially a good pass - by answering two-thirds of the "simple" questions correctly. The disclosure prompted fresh claims that tests were being "dumbed down", with the Conservatives insisting they were "suitable for an eight-year-old".
It comes as results published next week are expected to show fewer than half of pupils leave school with five good GCSEs including English and maths - the standard expected of all 16-year-olds. Just over 55 per cent of pupils gained at least a C grade in maths last year. It follows fears that many young people are being turned off the subject because of a lack of rigour in the curriculum.
A report by the think-tank Reform said GCSEs were "considerably" easier than 50 years ago as questions had been simplified to make them more relevant to modern teenagers. The Telegraph obtained a foundation tier GCSE paper set by the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance, Britain's biggest exam board. In one question, pupils are asked to read a diagram of a thermometer. One arrow points to 13C and another to -4C, with students required write down the temperatures for two marks. Another question presents pupils with seven numbers - 24, 26, 29, 34, 40, 47 and 55 - and asks to write down the multiples of five and eight.
Pupils are also shown a short line and asked to measure it - giving their answer in millimetres. They are then required to measure 4cm along the line and mark it on the exam script.
In another question pupils are asked to write down the most suitable metric unit to measure the distance from London to Edinburgh. And one more asks students, who cannot use a calculator, to multiply 350 by two.
Pupils sitting the foundation tier test can score C to G grades. They need to get around two-thirds of questions correct to gain a C in the exam element of the GCSE.
Last night, AQA said questions were easier at the beginning of the exam but became more challenging, including those testing circle area, formulation and solution of equations, algebraic simplification and angle geometry. The exam was just one element of the GCSE, the board said, and pupils must also complete two pieces of coursework, a statistics module, a number module and a second test paper - some four hours and 40 minutes worth of assessment.
"The skills tested by the questions in the paper referred to are all part of the specified content for GCSE which has been unchanged for five years so such questions will have appeared on foundation papers in the past," said a spokesman. "AQA is confident that sufficient evidence is therefore present to ensure that candidates awarded a grade C on this tier will have shown comparable performance to candidates awarded grade C on the higher tier this year."
Nick Gibb, the Conservative shadow schools minister, said: "This is primary level maths suitable for an eight or nine-year-old. It is clear evidence that GCSEs have been dumbed down."
Source
Britain today: "Imagine telling somebody twenty years ago that by 2007, it would be illegal to smoke in a pub or bus shelter or your own vehicle or that there would be $160 fines for dropping cigarette butts, or that the words "tequila slammer" would be illegal or the government would mandate what angle a drinker's head in an advertisement may be tipped at, or that it would be illegal to criticise religions or homosexuality, or rewire your own house, or that having sex after a few drinks would be classed as rape or that the State would be confiscating children for being overweight. Imagine telling them the government would be contemplating ration cards for fuel and even foods, that every citizen would be required to carry an ID card filled with private information which could be withdrawn at the state's whim. They'd have thought you a paranoid loon."
British bureaucrats condemn 4-year-olds: "School inspectors have written to children as young as 4 warning them that they were not learning enough to prepare them for their adult lives. The letters, from Ofsted, the education watchdog, were written in simple English as part of a drive for transparency on how schools are performing. Pupils at a primary school in Nottinghamshire that had been placed under special measures were told that they were failing in core subjects. The children were told to make more effort to behave in class. A letters to pupils in West Yorkshire read: "We decided that the school needs to be helped to improve. Most aspects of the school's work are not good enough." Children in London were told: "You need to improve your writing and maths to help you get jobs when you are older."
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Paperwork more important than saving a life?
Only in Britain: Coastguards face reprimand for using "uninspected" boat to rescue girl
A volunteer coastguard crew face disciplinary action after going to the rescue of a teenage swimmer in a boat that had recently been repaired and was awaiting a seaworthiness inspection.
The four crewmen were on duty at Hope Cove in South Devon when the 15-year-old girl was swept out to sea by a powerful rip tide. They braved heavy surf to launch their 17ft rigid inflatable. The girl was rescued by a diver and the coastguard crew brought her ashore. But within hours their boat had been confiscated and the station officer and his crew had been threatened with disciplinary action.
The boat had been out of service since June and the 11-strong crew, fed up with waiting for it to be repaired by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA), spent $4,000 of their own money on the work. But the repairs had yet to be approved and the boat - which has rescued more than 120 people since 2000 - was languishing in the boathouse at the pretty fishing village awaiting a further inspection.
Ian Pedrick, 49, the station officer, radioed for permission to launch the boat because the girl was already 150 yards out to sea but the crew lost radio contact with coastguard headquarters at Brixham and went ahead with the rescue.
Within three hours the boat was towed away by a senior MCA officer and is now locked in a garage at their office five miles away in Kingsbridge. Mr Pedrick, who runs the Hope and Anchor pub near the beach, said that he had been ordered by the MCA not to comment on the incident. Dave Clark, aged 54, a recently retired coastguard, said: "Everyone in the village is very angry. They feel the crew are being punished for trying to save a life. "The boat at Hope Cove is vital because it takes 25 minutes for the lifeboat to get from Salcombe and a swimmer could easily drown. When the MCA withdrew the boat in June they said it would be for six weeks but the crew wanted it back as soon as possible so they paid for the repairs themselves.
"They were then told it had to stay off service until it was surveyed and that would have taken it out for the whole of the summer season. Anyone would have done the same thing when they saw the girl in trouble."
A spokesman for the MCA said: "The health and safety of the boat crews and those who they may render assistance to is of paramount importance." He added: "Search-and-rescue effectiveness will not be compromised by the suspension of the general purpose boat. These general purpose boats are additional facilities and are not generally used as part of the first response to an incident. "We have identified serious breaches of health and safety procedures and they are currently being investigated. The boat has been stood down for a further eight weeks while we investigate the possibility of repair or replacement." [I'd like to shoot that c*nt!]
Source
Stupid EU rules lead to huge waste of fish
A UK fishing boat has been caught on film dumping tons of unwanted fish into the sea. A Norwegian coastguard vessel took video footage of a Shetland boat discarding about 80 per cent of its catch. Under EU rules the trawler Prolific had no choice to but to get rid of the fish because they were the wrong type. The film of the discard at a time of diminishing fish stocks and food shortages has caused outrage in Norway which is not an EU member.
Norway bans the dumping of fish in its own waters but the Prolific - which caught the fish legally in Norwegian waters - waited until it reached British waters in the North Sea before dropping an estimated five tons of fish overboard. In the film a steady stream of fish mostly saithe - a relative of the cod - can be seen being pumped out of the hold and hands are also seen emptying boxes of fish over the side.
Norwegian Fisheries and Coastal Affairs Minister Helga Pedersen slammed the incident and said she will now demand that all foreign vessels fishing in Norwegian waters must land all fish caught at whatever port the boat docks in. She described discard as one of the most serious threats to sustainable management and added: "Discard is a terrible practice. In addition to the moral aspects of this sheer waste of food, discards lead to unrecorded catches, which lead to incorrect fisheries statistics, which again disrupt the basis for scientific assessments of stocks and scientific advice on management."
Greenpeace Oceans campaigner Willie MacKenzie said: "The best scientific advice is that we shouldn't be fishing for cod at all because stocks have been so depleted in the North Sea and yet here we have tons of fish being dumped overboard. "Discard is happening all the time but normally it takes place at sea where nobody can see what is happening. This incident has to be multiplied many, many times to get an idea of the scale of the waste. "The fishermen would say it happens because quotas are too small and they have to throw fish back but you would have to be insane to agree with that argument."
The incident on August 2 has also led to angry exchanges on websites with one Norwegian claiming: "It is morally wrong and its just p***ing in your own bed. This has been illegal in Norway since the eighties and the boat would have been arrested had it done it in the Norwegian sector. It is just calculated environmental criminality. The whole thing is very provocative, disappointing and shocking."
But Hansen Black, chief executive of the Shetland Fishermen's Association, said the Prolific had been caught between a rock and a hard place. "The system forces fishermen to go to a place they are unfamiliar with to seek the fish they have quotas for. Unfortunately in this case they landed a quantity of saithe which they didn't have a quota for. "If they had dumped it there and then they would have been breaking Norwegian laws and if they had landed it back in the UK they would have been fined. "They did the only think they could do which was to steam 100 miles away - wasting time and fuel - to an area where they hoped to find the type of fish they are entitled to catch and where they could legally dump the saithe. "This is a horrible indictment of the system fishermen have to operate under. These are young men under massive pressures trying to make a living. No fisherman wants to dump fish - his job is to find fish for people to eat - not to see it thrown over the side."
A Defra spokesperson said: "Throwing dead fish back into the sea is a waste that nobody wants to see, but there is no easy answer. "UK fishermen have shown that they are committed to finding new ways of protecting vulnerable stocks, and the European Union has backed a UK action plan designed to reduce the amount of discards. "The UK is keen to ensure more effective and sustainable fisheries by reducing by-catch and discards, and the Government is working closely with fishermen to achieve that."
Mark Anderson, skipper of the Prolific's sister boat, Copious, returned to Shetland after five weeks at sea, and said he had not yet seen the film footage. He said the vast majority of the fish that was dumped by the Prolific was not cod, as reported in the national media, but low value coley or saithe. He said it was not too small to land but had it been brought ashore part of their fishing quota would have been lost. Mr Anderson condemned the European quota rules which force fishing boats to dump vast quantities of fish by only giving permission to land small quantities. "This is all about quota management. They give us so little that we have to do crazy things just to make a living. Two years ago when we came with the Copious the quotas were better, but what they have done is whittled it away," he said.
Source
NHS discriminates against the old
i.e. those who need medical care most. Great system!
Hospitals have been accused of age discrimination after a study found that they failed to provide basic standards of care to many patients aged 50 and over. Health experts found shortfalls in the quality of care offered to patients with conditions such as osteoarthritis, incontinence and osteoporosis. They also found that doctors paid particular attention to assessments that earned them extra money, including heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure.
Nick Steel, senior lecturer in primary care at the University of East Anglia, who led the study, said: "One of the conditions that came out worst was osteoarthritis, where we asked people if they'd received basic advice such as doing exercises to control the condition, and whether they had effective pain relief. "At the more severe end of the scale, for those with severe osteoarthritis, we asked if they had been given the opportunity to see a specialist to talk about joint replacement. There were also issues around whether elderly patients had been asked the reason for their falls. These types of areas did not fare so well in the study."
The research, published in the British Medical Journal, found that the quality of healthcare for people with common health conditions "varied substantially by condition". The researchers quantified what treatments for 13 different conditions - including heart disease, diabetes, stroke, depression and osteoarthritis - could be expected. In total, these numbered more than 19,000 different opportunities for care to be delivered to people, but actual care was given only in 11,900 (62 per cent) of those cases. Scores on the quality of care ranged from 83 per cent for heart disease to 29 per cent for osteoarthritis.
The researchers found that substantially more care was provided for general medical conditions (74 per cent) than for geriatric conditions (57 per cent), including falls, osteoarthritis, urinary incontinence, cataract problems, hearing problems and osteoporosis.
Campaigners said that patients with arthritis were often being "fobbed off" by GPs and accused the NHS being guilty of a degree of ageism. Gordon Lishman, director-general of Age Concern, said: "These figures show that age discrimination within the NHS is still rife. "The rewards system for GPs to treat particular conditions has worked - but this hasn't included health problems older people particularly suffer from like depression, falls and vision and hearing problems. The system is therefore clearly failing thousands of older people."
The study involved a series of questionnaires and face-to-face interviews with 8,688 people.
Kate Jopling, head of public affairs at Help the Aged, called the results depressing. "This is extremely shortsighted in an increasingly ageing society," she said. "This kind of ageist treatment is precisely why legislation against age discrimination is needed."
Source
Meaningless British High School qualifications
97% of students get a High School diploma
Increasing numbers of teenagers believe that three good A levels are no longer a passport to a university degree and are opting to take four or more subjects in an attempt to stand out from the growing crowd getting three A grades. A-level results published yesterday showed that more than 11 per cent of teenagers now get three A grades, increasing parental and school pressure on the most able students to go the extra mile with an extra A level to impress university admissions officers. This year's record crop of A-level results showed that the pass rate has exceeded 97 per cent for the first time, with the percentage of pupils achieving A grades up to nearly 26 per cent.
The results, published yesterday by the Joint Council for Qualifications, representing exam boards, also show that while the number of A-level candidates this year remains stable at around 317,000, the number of A levels taken has risen by more than 22,000. The number of candidates studying further mathematics, usually taken as a fourth A level to accompany maths, rose by 15.5 per cent with more than 9,000 entries.
Howard Loh, a pupil at Abingdon School, Oxfordshire, yesterday celebrated seven A grades. Similar tales abounded throughout the country. Tom Morley and Clarence Frank, pupils at City of London School, got six grade As each, as did Jenny Crowhurst, a pupil at Sutton High School in southwest London.
University admissions officials said last night that they were seeing a steady increase in the number of candidates with four or more A levels, excluding general studies. But many questioned the wisdom of such a move. Wendy Piatt, director-general of the elite Russell Group of research- intensive universities, said: "In many cases all candidates have three As - and increasingly four As."
Geoff Parks, director of admissions at Cambridge, said that taking four subjects was a growing trend, given that three As was now virtually a minimum requirement. "Some talented pupils do more than three A levels because they enjoy the work and the challenge. But you can see how some pupils might think that doing more might make them stand out from those with three As. "In fact they might be disadvantaging themselves by taking the edge off their overall performance by doing so much," he said. Dr Parks said that he hoped the introduction of the new top A* grade from 2010 would reverse the trend and persuade more students to take three because the key discriminator will be quality rather than quantity.
Angela Milln, head of admissions at Bristol, said that growing numbers of pupils with four A levels were applying to the university, which attracts a record 12 applications per place (rising to 40 for drama places). "Some do it just to stretch themselves," she said. "But I'm sure there are those who think that offering something extra will give them extra credit with universities. It won't."
Richard Cairns, head of Brighton College, said: "Increasingly pupils have opted for four or five as a way of distinguishing themselves from other candidates. Sixty per cent of our pupils do four A levels for this reason. "My own feeling is that pupils should not be encouraged to do too many A levels because it eats into time that should be devoted to all those other important aspects of an education such as sport, public speaking and the performing arts." He agreed that the A*, to be introduced next month for testing in 2010 as part of a package of reforms to make A levels harder, would ease the pressure on students.
Yesterday's record results meant that more pupils than ever met their university offers, but this also led to renewed concerns that the exams were getting easier. For the first time the exam board released a regional breakdown, examining pass rates and the proportion of students getting A grades in various areas of the country. It showed that the greatest improvements in the past six years have been in the South East, and the North East appears to be lagging behind. Between 2002 and 2008, the number of A grades in the South East rose 6.1 per cent, while in the North East there was an improvement of 2.1 per cent. Mike Cresswell, director-general of the AQA exam board, said that the figures suggested a worrying "long-standing historical pattern" with causes beyond what went on in school.
The results showed signs of a revival in traditional subjects, such as sciences and languages. The number of maths candidates rose from 60,093 last year to 64,593 this year. There are more candidates doing mathematics than at any time in the past. Entries rose by 2.7 per cent in biology, 3.5 per cent in chemistry and by 2.3per cent in physics, although numbers are still down on what they were in the early 2000s.
Fears that languages would undergo a slump in popularity proved unfounded as the number of candidates taking A levels in French rose to its highest level since 1993. Spanish entries were the highest they had ever been at 7,055.
Source
Google blocks blog because of reference to Down's syndrome
It was a reference in the "Comments" section:
Must not regard the mentally defective as undesirable, apparently. Where does this end? What about ugly women? Is it forbidden to regard them as undesirable?
Only in Britain: Coastguards face reprimand for using "uninspected" boat to rescue girl
A volunteer coastguard crew face disciplinary action after going to the rescue of a teenage swimmer in a boat that had recently been repaired and was awaiting a seaworthiness inspection.
The four crewmen were on duty at Hope Cove in South Devon when the 15-year-old girl was swept out to sea by a powerful rip tide. They braved heavy surf to launch their 17ft rigid inflatable. The girl was rescued by a diver and the coastguard crew brought her ashore. But within hours their boat had been confiscated and the station officer and his crew had been threatened with disciplinary action.
The boat had been out of service since June and the 11-strong crew, fed up with waiting for it to be repaired by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA), spent $4,000 of their own money on the work. But the repairs had yet to be approved and the boat - which has rescued more than 120 people since 2000 - was languishing in the boathouse at the pretty fishing village awaiting a further inspection.
Ian Pedrick, 49, the station officer, radioed for permission to launch the boat because the girl was already 150 yards out to sea but the crew lost radio contact with coastguard headquarters at Brixham and went ahead with the rescue.
Within three hours the boat was towed away by a senior MCA officer and is now locked in a garage at their office five miles away in Kingsbridge. Mr Pedrick, who runs the Hope and Anchor pub near the beach, said that he had been ordered by the MCA not to comment on the incident. Dave Clark, aged 54, a recently retired coastguard, said: "Everyone in the village is very angry. They feel the crew are being punished for trying to save a life. "The boat at Hope Cove is vital because it takes 25 minutes for the lifeboat to get from Salcombe and a swimmer could easily drown. When the MCA withdrew the boat in June they said it would be for six weeks but the crew wanted it back as soon as possible so they paid for the repairs themselves.
"They were then told it had to stay off service until it was surveyed and that would have taken it out for the whole of the summer season. Anyone would have done the same thing when they saw the girl in trouble."
A spokesman for the MCA said: "The health and safety of the boat crews and those who they may render assistance to is of paramount importance." He added: "Search-and-rescue effectiveness will not be compromised by the suspension of the general purpose boat. These general purpose boats are additional facilities and are not generally used as part of the first response to an incident. "We have identified serious breaches of health and safety procedures and they are currently being investigated. The boat has been stood down for a further eight weeks while we investigate the possibility of repair or replacement." [I'd like to shoot that c*nt!]
Source
Stupid EU rules lead to huge waste of fish
A UK fishing boat has been caught on film dumping tons of unwanted fish into the sea. A Norwegian coastguard vessel took video footage of a Shetland boat discarding about 80 per cent of its catch. Under EU rules the trawler Prolific had no choice to but to get rid of the fish because they were the wrong type. The film of the discard at a time of diminishing fish stocks and food shortages has caused outrage in Norway which is not an EU member.
Norway bans the dumping of fish in its own waters but the Prolific - which caught the fish legally in Norwegian waters - waited until it reached British waters in the North Sea before dropping an estimated five tons of fish overboard. In the film a steady stream of fish mostly saithe - a relative of the cod - can be seen being pumped out of the hold and hands are also seen emptying boxes of fish over the side.
Norwegian Fisheries and Coastal Affairs Minister Helga Pedersen slammed the incident and said she will now demand that all foreign vessels fishing in Norwegian waters must land all fish caught at whatever port the boat docks in. She described discard as one of the most serious threats to sustainable management and added: "Discard is a terrible practice. In addition to the moral aspects of this sheer waste of food, discards lead to unrecorded catches, which lead to incorrect fisheries statistics, which again disrupt the basis for scientific assessments of stocks and scientific advice on management."
Greenpeace Oceans campaigner Willie MacKenzie said: "The best scientific advice is that we shouldn't be fishing for cod at all because stocks have been so depleted in the North Sea and yet here we have tons of fish being dumped overboard. "Discard is happening all the time but normally it takes place at sea where nobody can see what is happening. This incident has to be multiplied many, many times to get an idea of the scale of the waste. "The fishermen would say it happens because quotas are too small and they have to throw fish back but you would have to be insane to agree with that argument."
The incident on August 2 has also led to angry exchanges on websites with one Norwegian claiming: "It is morally wrong and its just p***ing in your own bed. This has been illegal in Norway since the eighties and the boat would have been arrested had it done it in the Norwegian sector. It is just calculated environmental criminality. The whole thing is very provocative, disappointing and shocking."
But Hansen Black, chief executive of the Shetland Fishermen's Association, said the Prolific had been caught between a rock and a hard place. "The system forces fishermen to go to a place they are unfamiliar with to seek the fish they have quotas for. Unfortunately in this case they landed a quantity of saithe which they didn't have a quota for. "If they had dumped it there and then they would have been breaking Norwegian laws and if they had landed it back in the UK they would have been fined. "They did the only think they could do which was to steam 100 miles away - wasting time and fuel - to an area where they hoped to find the type of fish they are entitled to catch and where they could legally dump the saithe. "This is a horrible indictment of the system fishermen have to operate under. These are young men under massive pressures trying to make a living. No fisherman wants to dump fish - his job is to find fish for people to eat - not to see it thrown over the side."
A Defra spokesperson said: "Throwing dead fish back into the sea is a waste that nobody wants to see, but there is no easy answer. "UK fishermen have shown that they are committed to finding new ways of protecting vulnerable stocks, and the European Union has backed a UK action plan designed to reduce the amount of discards. "The UK is keen to ensure more effective and sustainable fisheries by reducing by-catch and discards, and the Government is working closely with fishermen to achieve that."
Mark Anderson, skipper of the Prolific's sister boat, Copious, returned to Shetland after five weeks at sea, and said he had not yet seen the film footage. He said the vast majority of the fish that was dumped by the Prolific was not cod, as reported in the national media, but low value coley or saithe. He said it was not too small to land but had it been brought ashore part of their fishing quota would have been lost. Mr Anderson condemned the European quota rules which force fishing boats to dump vast quantities of fish by only giving permission to land small quantities. "This is all about quota management. They give us so little that we have to do crazy things just to make a living. Two years ago when we came with the Copious the quotas were better, but what they have done is whittled it away," he said.
Source
NHS discriminates against the old
i.e. those who need medical care most. Great system!
Hospitals have been accused of age discrimination after a study found that they failed to provide basic standards of care to many patients aged 50 and over. Health experts found shortfalls in the quality of care offered to patients with conditions such as osteoarthritis, incontinence and osteoporosis. They also found that doctors paid particular attention to assessments that earned them extra money, including heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure.
Nick Steel, senior lecturer in primary care at the University of East Anglia, who led the study, said: "One of the conditions that came out worst was osteoarthritis, where we asked people if they'd received basic advice such as doing exercises to control the condition, and whether they had effective pain relief. "At the more severe end of the scale, for those with severe osteoarthritis, we asked if they had been given the opportunity to see a specialist to talk about joint replacement. There were also issues around whether elderly patients had been asked the reason for their falls. These types of areas did not fare so well in the study."
The research, published in the British Medical Journal, found that the quality of healthcare for people with common health conditions "varied substantially by condition". The researchers quantified what treatments for 13 different conditions - including heart disease, diabetes, stroke, depression and osteoarthritis - could be expected. In total, these numbered more than 19,000 different opportunities for care to be delivered to people, but actual care was given only in 11,900 (62 per cent) of those cases. Scores on the quality of care ranged from 83 per cent for heart disease to 29 per cent for osteoarthritis.
The researchers found that substantially more care was provided for general medical conditions (74 per cent) than for geriatric conditions (57 per cent), including falls, osteoarthritis, urinary incontinence, cataract problems, hearing problems and osteoporosis.
Campaigners said that patients with arthritis were often being "fobbed off" by GPs and accused the NHS being guilty of a degree of ageism. Gordon Lishman, director-general of Age Concern, said: "These figures show that age discrimination within the NHS is still rife. "The rewards system for GPs to treat particular conditions has worked - but this hasn't included health problems older people particularly suffer from like depression, falls and vision and hearing problems. The system is therefore clearly failing thousands of older people."
The study involved a series of questionnaires and face-to-face interviews with 8,688 people.
Kate Jopling, head of public affairs at Help the Aged, called the results depressing. "This is extremely shortsighted in an increasingly ageing society," she said. "This kind of ageist treatment is precisely why legislation against age discrimination is needed."
Source
Meaningless British High School qualifications
97% of students get a High School diploma
Increasing numbers of teenagers believe that three good A levels are no longer a passport to a university degree and are opting to take four or more subjects in an attempt to stand out from the growing crowd getting three A grades. A-level results published yesterday showed that more than 11 per cent of teenagers now get three A grades, increasing parental and school pressure on the most able students to go the extra mile with an extra A level to impress university admissions officers. This year's record crop of A-level results showed that the pass rate has exceeded 97 per cent for the first time, with the percentage of pupils achieving A grades up to nearly 26 per cent.
The results, published yesterday by the Joint Council for Qualifications, representing exam boards, also show that while the number of A-level candidates this year remains stable at around 317,000, the number of A levels taken has risen by more than 22,000. The number of candidates studying further mathematics, usually taken as a fourth A level to accompany maths, rose by 15.5 per cent with more than 9,000 entries.
Howard Loh, a pupil at Abingdon School, Oxfordshire, yesterday celebrated seven A grades. Similar tales abounded throughout the country. Tom Morley and Clarence Frank, pupils at City of London School, got six grade As each, as did Jenny Crowhurst, a pupil at Sutton High School in southwest London.
University admissions officials said last night that they were seeing a steady increase in the number of candidates with four or more A levels, excluding general studies. But many questioned the wisdom of such a move. Wendy Piatt, director-general of the elite Russell Group of research- intensive universities, said: "In many cases all candidates have three As - and increasingly four As."
Geoff Parks, director of admissions at Cambridge, said that taking four subjects was a growing trend, given that three As was now virtually a minimum requirement. "Some talented pupils do more than three A levels because they enjoy the work and the challenge. But you can see how some pupils might think that doing more might make them stand out from those with three As. "In fact they might be disadvantaging themselves by taking the edge off their overall performance by doing so much," he said. Dr Parks said that he hoped the introduction of the new top A* grade from 2010 would reverse the trend and persuade more students to take three because the key discriminator will be quality rather than quantity.
Angela Milln, head of admissions at Bristol, said that growing numbers of pupils with four A levels were applying to the university, which attracts a record 12 applications per place (rising to 40 for drama places). "Some do it just to stretch themselves," she said. "But I'm sure there are those who think that offering something extra will give them extra credit with universities. It won't."
Richard Cairns, head of Brighton College, said: "Increasingly pupils have opted for four or five as a way of distinguishing themselves from other candidates. Sixty per cent of our pupils do four A levels for this reason. "My own feeling is that pupils should not be encouraged to do too many A levels because it eats into time that should be devoted to all those other important aspects of an education such as sport, public speaking and the performing arts." He agreed that the A*, to be introduced next month for testing in 2010 as part of a package of reforms to make A levels harder, would ease the pressure on students.
Yesterday's record results meant that more pupils than ever met their university offers, but this also led to renewed concerns that the exams were getting easier. For the first time the exam board released a regional breakdown, examining pass rates and the proportion of students getting A grades in various areas of the country. It showed that the greatest improvements in the past six years have been in the South East, and the North East appears to be lagging behind. Between 2002 and 2008, the number of A grades in the South East rose 6.1 per cent, while in the North East there was an improvement of 2.1 per cent. Mike Cresswell, director-general of the AQA exam board, said that the figures suggested a worrying "long-standing historical pattern" with causes beyond what went on in school.
The results showed signs of a revival in traditional subjects, such as sciences and languages. The number of maths candidates rose from 60,093 last year to 64,593 this year. There are more candidates doing mathematics than at any time in the past. Entries rose by 2.7 per cent in biology, 3.5 per cent in chemistry and by 2.3per cent in physics, although numbers are still down on what they were in the early 2000s.
Fears that languages would undergo a slump in popularity proved unfounded as the number of candidates taking A levels in French rose to its highest level since 1993. Spanish entries were the highest they had ever been at 7,055.
Source
Google blocks blog because of reference to Down's syndrome
It was a reference in the "Comments" section:
"Google has unblocked Scamp, the UK's most popular advertising industry blog, following the removal of comments containing "hate speech". The comments, in a post on dating in the advertising industry, were removed after complaints were made to Google's "hate crimes" division. Scamp, which is run by advertising executive Simon Veksner, had been blocked since Friday by Google-owned blogging platform Blogger.
Veksner speculated that the post that triggered the complaints was called Sauce Poll on the subject of "who in an ad agency you would prefer to date?". He said that while Google did not refer to which post or posts had caused the blog to be blocked, he assumed that it was an offensive comment, which has now been deleted, "along the lines of how they would rather have sex with someone with Down's syndrome than an advertising professional".
Veksner said that while the post, made on Friday, did draw a backlash from the online community he at first left it on the blog. "A lot of people were offended, but I decided not to delete the comment," he told MediaGuardian.co.uk. "My policy is I do delete comments where the commenter is intending to be offensive, but I don't delete comments where the commenter's primary intention is to be witty, even if what they say ends up offending people." Veksner said that he moved to edit the posts following the official blocking of the website.
"I've deleted all the comments on here relating to sex with people who have Down's syndrome," he said in a post on Scamp. "Although Google haven't informed me exactly which post on this blog caused the activation of their hate crimes division, the strength of feeling in the comments section here leads me to believe it was this one."
Source
Must not regard the mentally defective as undesirable, apparently. Where does this end? What about ugly women? Is it forbidden to regard them as undesirable?
Friday, August 15, 2008
Amazing: Patients 'should not expect NHS to save their life if it costs too much'
The NHS should not always attempt to save someone's life if the cost is too much, the medical regulator has ruled. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Guidelines (Nice) has ruled for the first time that saving a life cannot be justified at any cost, in a review of its ethical guidelines.
The ruling - made by the board of the controversial organisation - contradicts advice it received from its own 'Citizens Council' which offers advice from a representative sample of the general public. Nice is facing growing criticism over the number of drugs it is now rejecting which are available throughout Europe and in America. Last week, it refused to sanction four kidney cancer drugs which can double life expectancy.
It has now rejected the so-called "rule of rescue" which stipulates that people facing death should be treated regardless of the costs. The rule is based on the natural impulse to aid individuals in trouble.
In a report on "social values judgement" the regulator says: "There is a powerful human impulse, known as the 'rule of rescue', to attempt to help an identifiable person whose life is in danger, no matter how much it costs. When there are limited resources for healthcare, applying the 'rule of rescue' may mean that other people will not be able to have the care or treatment they need.
"Nice recognises that when it is making its decisions it should consider the needs of present and future patients of the NHS who are anonymous and who do not necessarily have people to argue their case on their behalf.The Institute has not therefore adopted an additional 'rule of rescue'."
The ruling contradicts the advice of Nice's Citizens Council, which said that a rule of rescue was an essential mark of a humane society. The report said that where individuals are in "desperate and exceptional circumstances" they should sometimes receive greater help than can be justified by a "purely utilitarian approach".
Doctors have also criticised the ruling. Tony Calland, chairman of the ethics committee of the British Medical Association, said: "We would be opposed to ignoring a rule of rescue when it introduces a degree of flexibility around extreme cases. So what if you waste a few pounds if you are doing your best for humanity?"
Nice defended its ruling last night saying that the Citizens Council provided useful input to its decisions but that the organisation's role was to determine how best to allocate the health service's limited resources.
Nice is facing increasing accusations that it is giving undue weight to financial considerations - rather than medical benefits - when making decisions on whether to allow drugs or other treatments on the NHS. Doctors and patients have alleged that they are treated with contempt by the organisation and that life-saving drugs are being unfairly denied.
The Daily Telegraph disclosed yesterday that Nice is preparing to offer patients advice on the medical benefits of drugs that are not available on the NHS. The disclosure is likely to anger patients who face paying tens of thousands of pounds for expensive drugs which may prolong their lives.
Source
Reading standards drop in Britain
Reading standards among 14-year-olds have fallen in the past year, national curriculum test results revealed yesterday. The Schools minister, Jim Knight, called on parents to encourage their children to read after results showed a drop of two percentage points in the number of students who had attained the required reading standard. The results of the tests, taken by 14-year-olds, showed 73 per cent of students were up to par in English (down one percentage point), 77 per cent in maths (up one point) and 71 per cent in science (down two). The drop in English was based on the reading tests, where the number of up-to-standard students fell from 71 per cent to 69 per cent. Writing, however, went up from 74 to 77 per cent.
The results were published despite calls from education professionals to delay their issue, because so many papers were missing or unmarked. Only 84 per cent of English scripts and 94 per cent of maths and science ones had been marked when the figures were compiled. Leaders of the National Association of Head Teachers said the results should not have been published. Mary Bousted, the general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, claimed the tests were an "irrelevance" and should be scrapped.
Nearly 250,000 students failed to reach standards in writing, reading and maths. Only 60 per cent were up to par, the same as last year and well short of a target of 85 per cent set by ministers. Boys lagged behind girls in reading and writing. Only 62 per cent of boys reached the reading standard, compared with 76 per cent of girls, and 70 per cent attained the writing standard, compared with 83 per cent of girls. Mr Knight said boys should read more fiction instead of stories about football teams and asked parents to read the same books as their children, so they could discuss them.
The results show that writing weaknesses identified in 11-year-olds appear to have been addressed by the time children reach the age of 14, but reading and science standards fall away.
Source
Is there a cold future just lying in wait for us?
Comment from Ulster
Our own observatory at Armagh is one of the oldest in the world and has been observing solar cycles for more than 200 years. What this work has shown is that, over all of this time, short and intense cycles coincide with global warmth and long and weak cycles coincide with cooling. Most recently, this pattern continued in the 1980s and 1990s when cycles 21 and 22 were short (less than 10 years) and intense and it was notably hot. But all this now looks set to change.
Cycle 23, which hasn't finished yet, looks like it will be long (at least 12 to 13 years) and cycle 24, which has still to start, looks like it will be exceptionally weak. Based on the past Armagh measurements, this suggests that over the next two decades, global temperatures may fall by about 2 degrees C - that is, to a level lower than any we have seen in the last 100 years. Of course, nothing in science is certain. Perhaps (though I doubt it) Armagh's old measurements are wrong or perhaps there are now other factors, such as CO2 emissions, which may change things somewhat.
However, temperatures have already fallen by about 0.5 degrees C over the past 12 months and, if this is only the start of it, it would be a serious concern. Northern Ireland is not noted for extreme warmth at the best of times and has much more to fear from cold weather than it does from hot. We really need to be sure what is going to happen before spending too much money on combating global warming. We may need all the money we can save just to help us keep warm.
Source
Official spying expands in Left-run Britain
A big disincentive to free speech:
Leftists used to say they supported privacy -- but I guess that applies to homosexuals only.
The Pill may put you off smell of your man and ruin your relationship. An update
To millions of women it has been the great liberator over the past four decades, allowing them the freedom to control their fertility and their relationships. But the contraceptive Pill could also be responsible for skewing their hormones and attracting them to the "wrong" partner. A study by British scientists suggests that taking the Pill can change a woman's taste in men - to those who are genetically less compatible.
The research found that the Pill can alter the type of male scent that women find most attractive, which may in turn affect the kind of men they choose as partners. It suggests that the popular form of contraception - used by a quarter of British women aged between 16 and 50 - could have implications for fertility and relationship breakdowns.
The findings, from a team at the University of Liverpool, add to growing evidence that the hormones in the Pill influence the way that women assess male sexual attractiveness. The Pill is thought to disrupt an instinctive mechanism that brings together people with complementary genes and immune systems. Such a couple, by passing on a wide-ranging set of immune system genes, increase their chances of having a healthy child that is not vulnerable to infection. Couples with different genes are also less likely to experience fertility problems or miscarriages. Experts believe that women are naturally attracted to men with immune system genes different to their own because of their smell.
Commenting on the latest study, the researchers said that it could indicate that the Pill disrupts women's ability to judge the genetic compatibility of men by means of their smell. They said that this might not only impact on fertility and miscarriage risk, but could even contribute to the end of relationships as women who stop or start taking the Pill no longer find their boyfriend or husband so attractive.
Several previous studies have suggested that women tend to prefer the smell of men who are different from them in a cluster of genes called the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), which governs the immune system. Some of these studies have also found that this effect is not seen among Pill users.
The latest study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society, has now assessed the impact of Pill use in the same women, both before and after they began using oral contraception. A group of 97 women was tested, some of whom started taking the Pill during the course of the research. All had their MHC genes tested and were asked to sniff T-shirts worn in bed by men with different patterns of MHC genes.
Unlike some previous studies, the research did not find any preference for dissimilar MHC genes. However, when the women started taking the Pill their preferences shifted towards the scent of men with more similar genes to their own. This suggests that Pill use has an effect on perceptions of scent attractiveness, even if there is no underlying female preference for similar or dissimilar MHC genes.
Craig Roberts, who led the study, said: "The results showed that the preferences of women who began using the Pill shifted towards men with genetically similar odours. Not only could MHC-similarity in couples lead to fertility problems, but it could ultimately lead to the breakdown of relationships when women stop using the Pill, as odour perception plays a significant role in maintaining attraction to partners."
The research also found differences between women in relationships, who tended to prefer odours of men with different MHC genes, and single women, who tended to prefer the smell of MHC-similar men. This could potentially indicate that if women are tempted to have an affair, they are more likely to choose a man with very different genes, to maximise the diversity of any offspring that they might have.
The scientists said that more work was needed to explain the way various studies have obtained different results on whether women naturally prefer men with different or similar MHC genes. They also cautioned that the importance of scent in human mating preferences remains uncertain.
The research backs up an earlier study of how women's perceptions of partners can alter when taking the Pill. Psychologists from St Andrews and Stirling universities found that women on the Pill tend to prefer macho types with strong jaw lines and prominent cheekbones. However, women who are not taking that form of contraception seem to be more likely to go for more sensitive types of men without traditionally masculine features.
Source
Improved IVF process
A couple have become the first in Britain to have a baby using a new fertility technique, after seven years of trying to become parents. Evie Bloomer was conceived using vitrification - a method of embryo storage that has a higher success rate than the standard slow-freezing process. Her parents, Ian and Rebecca, from Cwmbran, South Wales, have been trying for a baby since marrying in 2001. Mrs Bloomer, 28, suffers endometriosis, a condition in which womb tissue grows elsewhere in the abdomen.
Evie's birth is a landmark because vitrification could deliver substantial improvements in fertility treatment. Embryo freezing allows parents to store surplus embryos should the first cycle fail, or to try for further children later on. The first such baby was born in the United States in 1984 and thousands have since been born in Britain.
But only 50-80 per cent of frozen embryos survive the thawing process because of ice crystals, which can cause fatal damage. Vitrification is an improved method by which embryos are flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen, together with an antifreeze. Around 98 per cent of embryos frozen this way survive thawing. Lyndon Miles, head of embryology and andrology at IVF Wales, who treated the Bloomers, said that a vitrification programme started in August last year was already delivering very promising results. Of 39 couples treated so far, 17 have had a pregnancy and the success rate of 43.5 per cent is more than double the 21 per cent that the clinic has achieved with slow-frozen embryos.
Dr Miles said wider use of vitrification could help the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to persuade more couples to use just one embryo in IVF treatment, potentially cutting the multiple birthrate from one in four to one in ten. "If you are going to have single embryo transfer, your embryo freezing programme has to be very good so you have embryos available as a back-up," he said.
"Though this is a new technique for the UK, early results and publications in Japan and the USA have been extremely encouraging. The first published study on babies born from vitrification shows no adverse effects and there are no implications to Evie's health as a result of the process."
Source
Britain's newest epidemic: "The knife violence in Britain has reached epidemic proportions according to an article at Dailymail.co.uk, an online news agency in England. . Americans recognize the sensational headlines and use of the term epidemic to describe the actions of common criminals because of articles by the U.S. media that use the same format but vilify guns instead of knives. The nature of this type of news reporting makes it obvious they are used to sway public opinion against guns, or knives or the use of self-defense by the average citizen. When Britain outlawed guns (and self-defense), their elected officials claimed that the impending domestic tranquility would make them the envy of the world."
The NHS should not always attempt to save someone's life if the cost is too much, the medical regulator has ruled. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Guidelines (Nice) has ruled for the first time that saving a life cannot be justified at any cost, in a review of its ethical guidelines.
The ruling - made by the board of the controversial organisation - contradicts advice it received from its own 'Citizens Council' which offers advice from a representative sample of the general public. Nice is facing growing criticism over the number of drugs it is now rejecting which are available throughout Europe and in America. Last week, it refused to sanction four kidney cancer drugs which can double life expectancy.
It has now rejected the so-called "rule of rescue" which stipulates that people facing death should be treated regardless of the costs. The rule is based on the natural impulse to aid individuals in trouble.
In a report on "social values judgement" the regulator says: "There is a powerful human impulse, known as the 'rule of rescue', to attempt to help an identifiable person whose life is in danger, no matter how much it costs. When there are limited resources for healthcare, applying the 'rule of rescue' may mean that other people will not be able to have the care or treatment they need.
"Nice recognises that when it is making its decisions it should consider the needs of present and future patients of the NHS who are anonymous and who do not necessarily have people to argue their case on their behalf.The Institute has not therefore adopted an additional 'rule of rescue'."
The ruling contradicts the advice of Nice's Citizens Council, which said that a rule of rescue was an essential mark of a humane society. The report said that where individuals are in "desperate and exceptional circumstances" they should sometimes receive greater help than can be justified by a "purely utilitarian approach".
Doctors have also criticised the ruling. Tony Calland, chairman of the ethics committee of the British Medical Association, said: "We would be opposed to ignoring a rule of rescue when it introduces a degree of flexibility around extreme cases. So what if you waste a few pounds if you are doing your best for humanity?"
Nice defended its ruling last night saying that the Citizens Council provided useful input to its decisions but that the organisation's role was to determine how best to allocate the health service's limited resources.
Nice is facing increasing accusations that it is giving undue weight to financial considerations - rather than medical benefits - when making decisions on whether to allow drugs or other treatments on the NHS. Doctors and patients have alleged that they are treated with contempt by the organisation and that life-saving drugs are being unfairly denied.
The Daily Telegraph disclosed yesterday that Nice is preparing to offer patients advice on the medical benefits of drugs that are not available on the NHS. The disclosure is likely to anger patients who face paying tens of thousands of pounds for expensive drugs which may prolong their lives.
Source
Reading standards drop in Britain
Reading standards among 14-year-olds have fallen in the past year, national curriculum test results revealed yesterday. The Schools minister, Jim Knight, called on parents to encourage their children to read after results showed a drop of two percentage points in the number of students who had attained the required reading standard. The results of the tests, taken by 14-year-olds, showed 73 per cent of students were up to par in English (down one percentage point), 77 per cent in maths (up one point) and 71 per cent in science (down two). The drop in English was based on the reading tests, where the number of up-to-standard students fell from 71 per cent to 69 per cent. Writing, however, went up from 74 to 77 per cent.
The results were published despite calls from education professionals to delay their issue, because so many papers were missing or unmarked. Only 84 per cent of English scripts and 94 per cent of maths and science ones had been marked when the figures were compiled. Leaders of the National Association of Head Teachers said the results should not have been published. Mary Bousted, the general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, claimed the tests were an "irrelevance" and should be scrapped.
Nearly 250,000 students failed to reach standards in writing, reading and maths. Only 60 per cent were up to par, the same as last year and well short of a target of 85 per cent set by ministers. Boys lagged behind girls in reading and writing. Only 62 per cent of boys reached the reading standard, compared with 76 per cent of girls, and 70 per cent attained the writing standard, compared with 83 per cent of girls. Mr Knight said boys should read more fiction instead of stories about football teams and asked parents to read the same books as their children, so they could discuss them.
The results show that writing weaknesses identified in 11-year-olds appear to have been addressed by the time children reach the age of 14, but reading and science standards fall away.
Source
Is there a cold future just lying in wait for us?
Comment from Ulster
Our own observatory at Armagh is one of the oldest in the world and has been observing solar cycles for more than 200 years. What this work has shown is that, over all of this time, short and intense cycles coincide with global warmth and long and weak cycles coincide with cooling. Most recently, this pattern continued in the 1980s and 1990s when cycles 21 and 22 were short (less than 10 years) and intense and it was notably hot. But all this now looks set to change.
Cycle 23, which hasn't finished yet, looks like it will be long (at least 12 to 13 years) and cycle 24, which has still to start, looks like it will be exceptionally weak. Based on the past Armagh measurements, this suggests that over the next two decades, global temperatures may fall by about 2 degrees C - that is, to a level lower than any we have seen in the last 100 years. Of course, nothing in science is certain. Perhaps (though I doubt it) Armagh's old measurements are wrong or perhaps there are now other factors, such as CO2 emissions, which may change things somewhat.
However, temperatures have already fallen by about 0.5 degrees C over the past 12 months and, if this is only the start of it, it would be a serious concern. Northern Ireland is not noted for extreme warmth at the best of times and has much more to fear from cold weather than it does from hot. We really need to be sure what is going to happen before spending too much money on combating global warming. We may need all the money we can save just to help us keep warm.
Source
Official spying expands in Left-run Britain
A big disincentive to free speech:
"Councils [municipalities] and health authorities are to be given the right to access e-mail and internet records under surveillance powers to be introduced next year, the Home Office said yesterday. Although first proposed to tackle terrorism and serious crime, powers have been extended to cover other criminal activity, public health, threats to public safety and even prevention of self-harm.
The Home Office said that the move would involve internet service providers storing one billion incidents of data each day and storing them for a minimum of 12 months. Under the plans the taxpayer would pay $92 million to internet service providers for holding information, even though some already keep similar records for marketing purposes.
Opposition MPs criticised the plans as a "snoopers' charter".
Source
Leftists used to say they supported privacy -- but I guess that applies to homosexuals only.
The Pill may put you off smell of your man and ruin your relationship. An update
To millions of women it has been the great liberator over the past four decades, allowing them the freedom to control their fertility and their relationships. But the contraceptive Pill could also be responsible for skewing their hormones and attracting them to the "wrong" partner. A study by British scientists suggests that taking the Pill can change a woman's taste in men - to those who are genetically less compatible.
The research found that the Pill can alter the type of male scent that women find most attractive, which may in turn affect the kind of men they choose as partners. It suggests that the popular form of contraception - used by a quarter of British women aged between 16 and 50 - could have implications for fertility and relationship breakdowns.
The findings, from a team at the University of Liverpool, add to growing evidence that the hormones in the Pill influence the way that women assess male sexual attractiveness. The Pill is thought to disrupt an instinctive mechanism that brings together people with complementary genes and immune systems. Such a couple, by passing on a wide-ranging set of immune system genes, increase their chances of having a healthy child that is not vulnerable to infection. Couples with different genes are also less likely to experience fertility problems or miscarriages. Experts believe that women are naturally attracted to men with immune system genes different to their own because of their smell.
Commenting on the latest study, the researchers said that it could indicate that the Pill disrupts women's ability to judge the genetic compatibility of men by means of their smell. They said that this might not only impact on fertility and miscarriage risk, but could even contribute to the end of relationships as women who stop or start taking the Pill no longer find their boyfriend or husband so attractive.
Several previous studies have suggested that women tend to prefer the smell of men who are different from them in a cluster of genes called the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), which governs the immune system. Some of these studies have also found that this effect is not seen among Pill users.
The latest study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society, has now assessed the impact of Pill use in the same women, both before and after they began using oral contraception. A group of 97 women was tested, some of whom started taking the Pill during the course of the research. All had their MHC genes tested and were asked to sniff T-shirts worn in bed by men with different patterns of MHC genes.
Unlike some previous studies, the research did not find any preference for dissimilar MHC genes. However, when the women started taking the Pill their preferences shifted towards the scent of men with more similar genes to their own. This suggests that Pill use has an effect on perceptions of scent attractiveness, even if there is no underlying female preference for similar or dissimilar MHC genes.
Craig Roberts, who led the study, said: "The results showed that the preferences of women who began using the Pill shifted towards men with genetically similar odours. Not only could MHC-similarity in couples lead to fertility problems, but it could ultimately lead to the breakdown of relationships when women stop using the Pill, as odour perception plays a significant role in maintaining attraction to partners."
The research also found differences between women in relationships, who tended to prefer odours of men with different MHC genes, and single women, who tended to prefer the smell of MHC-similar men. This could potentially indicate that if women are tempted to have an affair, they are more likely to choose a man with very different genes, to maximise the diversity of any offspring that they might have.
The scientists said that more work was needed to explain the way various studies have obtained different results on whether women naturally prefer men with different or similar MHC genes. They also cautioned that the importance of scent in human mating preferences remains uncertain.
The research backs up an earlier study of how women's perceptions of partners can alter when taking the Pill. Psychologists from St Andrews and Stirling universities found that women on the Pill tend to prefer macho types with strong jaw lines and prominent cheekbones. However, women who are not taking that form of contraception seem to be more likely to go for more sensitive types of men without traditionally masculine features.
Source
Improved IVF process
A couple have become the first in Britain to have a baby using a new fertility technique, after seven years of trying to become parents. Evie Bloomer was conceived using vitrification - a method of embryo storage that has a higher success rate than the standard slow-freezing process. Her parents, Ian and Rebecca, from Cwmbran, South Wales, have been trying for a baby since marrying in 2001. Mrs Bloomer, 28, suffers endometriosis, a condition in which womb tissue grows elsewhere in the abdomen.
Evie's birth is a landmark because vitrification could deliver substantial improvements in fertility treatment. Embryo freezing allows parents to store surplus embryos should the first cycle fail, or to try for further children later on. The first such baby was born in the United States in 1984 and thousands have since been born in Britain.
But only 50-80 per cent of frozen embryos survive the thawing process because of ice crystals, which can cause fatal damage. Vitrification is an improved method by which embryos are flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen, together with an antifreeze. Around 98 per cent of embryos frozen this way survive thawing. Lyndon Miles, head of embryology and andrology at IVF Wales, who treated the Bloomers, said that a vitrification programme started in August last year was already delivering very promising results. Of 39 couples treated so far, 17 have had a pregnancy and the success rate of 43.5 per cent is more than double the 21 per cent that the clinic has achieved with slow-frozen embryos.
Dr Miles said wider use of vitrification could help the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to persuade more couples to use just one embryo in IVF treatment, potentially cutting the multiple birthrate from one in four to one in ten. "If you are going to have single embryo transfer, your embryo freezing programme has to be very good so you have embryos available as a back-up," he said.
"Though this is a new technique for the UK, early results and publications in Japan and the USA have been extremely encouraging. The first published study on babies born from vitrification shows no adverse effects and there are no implications to Evie's health as a result of the process."
Source
Britain's newest epidemic: "The knife violence in Britain has reached epidemic proportions according to an article at Dailymail.co.uk, an online news agency in England. . Americans recognize the sensational headlines and use of the term epidemic to describe the actions of common criminals because of articles by the U.S. media that use the same format but vilify guns instead of knives. The nature of this type of news reporting makes it obvious they are used to sway public opinion against guns, or knives or the use of self-defense by the average citizen. When Britain outlawed guns (and self-defense), their elected officials claimed that the impending domestic tranquility would make them the envy of the world."
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Motoring writer Jeremy Clarkson on British envy
Recently, I wrote in another part of the paper about the difficulties of trying to work while staying for the summer at your bolthole in the country. There are too many distractions, the view is too consuming, the children too needy and the constant longing for a beer too overwhelming.
Well, soon all the problems will be erased because a government think tank has looked carefully at the question of second homes and has announced that the rich bastards who have them should be forced to rent them out to underachieving, fat people. Hmmm. I wonder. Did it deliver its findings to Gordon Brown at No 10, or to his second home in Buckinghamshire? And how does it think such a scheme could possibly work?
Many people, for instance, claim they live in Monaco for tax reasons. Whereas in fact, all they do is buy a small flat and employ an estate agent to pop in every morning to make a few phone calls. The bills are then used as proof that they were there. Second-home owners would adopt similar tactics here. Or they'd say their country cottage is their primary residence and that their apartment in London is a pied-a-terre. Then, the local council would have to prove otherwise by going through everyone's knicker drawer and employing men with binoculars and coffee breath to follow us about. I fear the government think tank hasn't considered any of this because it was so consumed with bitterness, hatred and envy for people with money. It is not alone.
Just the other day, I read a report that said musicals in London's West End are bucking the trend with higher than ever audiences. This, you might think if you were a normal, well balanced soul, is a good thing. But sadly the red top reporter was not. He was just bothered that bigger audiences meant Andrew Lloyd Webber would have even more money. And that made him incandescent with fury. Why? It's not like Andrew Lloyd Webber spends his evenings being carried around council estates in Slough in a sedan chair, waving his jewels out of the window. He just gets on with his life in a way that has no effect whatsoever on the way you live yours or I live mine.
It's like being kept awake at night with a burning sense of envy about Cliff Richard's youthful good looks. What should we do? Take a Black & Decker sander to his cheekbones? Why? Because disfiguring Cliff's face won't make any difference to your own. I don't yearn for many aspects of the American way but they do seem to have this dreadful bitterness under control. When they see a man pass by in a limousine, they say: "One day, I'll have one of those." When we see a man pass by in a limo, we say: "One day, I'll have him out of that."
All this past week, I've been driving around in a Rolls-Royce coupe and it's been a genuinely alarming insight into the bitterness of Britain's obese and stupid underclass. Because when you drive this enormous monster past a bus queue, you realise that hate is not an emotion. It's something you can touch, and see and smell. Just yesterday, a man in a beaten-up van deliberately straddled two lanes to make sure I could not get past. It would have made no difference at all to his life if I'd done so, but there was no way in hell he was going to let a Roller by. I find that shoulder-saggingly depressing.
More here
New British secrecy laws are a huge temptation to corruption
We read:
Exams for British High School diplomas 'now two grades easier than 20 years ago'
A-level exams are now two grades easier than they were 20 years ago, academics claimed last night. Sixth-formers of the same ability awarded C grades in the late 1980s can now expect to gain As, they said.
Researchers found that average results improved by more than two grades in most subjects, even though students were no brighter. In mathematics, scores jumped by three-and-a-half grades. Academics said the trend was likely to be influenced by a number of factors, including a fall in the rigour of exams combined with an increased focus on test preparation in schools and colleges, reigniting the debate over A-level standards.
The findings - in a study by Durham University - come as almost 250,000 students prepare to receive results of A-levels on Thursday. Experts are already predicting a rise in the number of passes and A grades. Last year, 25.3 per cent of papers were awarded the top mark - more than double the number in 1990.
Ministers have long claimed that the rise is down to improved teaching. But the latest study - published yesterday(MON) as part of a wide-ranging review of A-levels by the Institute of Directors - said it was "hard to see how the claim could be convincingly substantiated". The claims fail to explain why results improve quicker some years than others, or why improvements at A-level have been much quicker than GCSEs.
"A-level and GCSE grades achieved in 2007 certainly do correspond to a lower level of general academic ability than the same grades would have done in previous years," said the report. "Whether or not they are better taught makes no difference to this interpretation; the same grade corresponds to a lower level of general ability."
Robert Coe and Peter Tymms, from Durham's Curriculum, Evaluation and Management Centre, analysed standards achieved in A-levels between 1988 and 2007. They then compared them with the outcome of aptitude tests over the last two decades, which measure pupils' skills in a range of subjects without testing curriculum knowledge. They found that students with similar results in the independently-administered exam went on to score much better A-levels in 2007 than in 1988.
In the study group, the average student was awarded an E in biology in 1988, but similar sixth-formers gained a comfortable C last summer. In French, students of the same ability saw results rise from a low D grade to a B. In maths, marks were inflated by 3.5 grades. Average students in the 1988 sample gained a U (ungraded) but saw results rise to a low B by 2007. Academics said rises in GCSE results were more modest, increasing by less than a grade in science, English, history, French and maths between 1996 and last summer. "The quality of work presented for examination may well be equal to or better than that of candidates in previous years," said the study. "However, given identical conditions, today's candidates might nevertheless be unable to match the performance of their predecessors."
The IoD report also warned that university admissions tutors have seen no rise in the quality of new undergraduates, despite steadily improving A-level results in the past decade. Seven in 10 tutors believe standards either stayed the same or deteriorated in recent years.
The conclusions come as Ofqual, England's new exams regulator, said it would launch a major review of standards in the Autumn. The study will cover setting, marking and long term standards in A-levels, GCSEs, Sats and other school examinations.
Nick Gibb, Tory shadow schools minister, said A-levels lacked "rigour and relevance". "The Government has been undermining A-levels for the last few years," he said. "We are determined to restore public confidence in the A-level as the gold standard of British education."
A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said syllabuses and examinations were "appropriate and reliable". "We've commented on Durham University's research time and time again," she said. "Their work is quite different to GCSE or A-level as it uses aptitude tests which are not directly comparable to performance at GCSE and A level."
Source
Racist for the Irish to abuse the British
We read:
Irish hatred for the British goes back a long way so I doubt that there would be much popular support for the verdict
New pill to offer respite from the common cold
A PILL to cure the common cold has been developed by scientists. The holy grail of cold research, it could be used to clear up sniffles in healthy people and prevent life-threatening infections in asthma and cystic fibrosis sufferers. Trials on hundreds of British volunteers started yesterday. If successful, the cold-busting pill could be on the market in five years. Effective against the bugs that cause half of colds in adults and almost all colds in children, it could net its Australian creators billions of dollars a year.
The drug, which is known as BTA798, latches on to cold-causing human rhinoviruses (HRV), preventing them breaking into the body's cells and causing infection. In a double-pronged attack, it also stops any infection that has taken hold from spreading. In lab tests, the drug killed large quantities of cold virus within a couple of hours. The first limited human trials finished last year and showed BTA798, which is being developed by the Victoria-based Biota Holdings, to be safe.
Peter Cook, the company's chief executive officer, hailed the results as a significant milestone in the development of what could be a world-first anti-viral treatment for HRV in high-risk patients. Larger-scale trials are now under way to determine whether it can actually prevent people from catching a cold. Two hundred healthy people will be given the drug or a dummy pill before being exposed to human rhinovirus. Three different doses of the drug will be used, in order to determine which, if any, can keep the infection at bay.
Source
Recently, I wrote in another part of the paper about the difficulties of trying to work while staying for the summer at your bolthole in the country. There are too many distractions, the view is too consuming, the children too needy and the constant longing for a beer too overwhelming.
Well, soon all the problems will be erased because a government think tank has looked carefully at the question of second homes and has announced that the rich bastards who have them should be forced to rent them out to underachieving, fat people. Hmmm. I wonder. Did it deliver its findings to Gordon Brown at No 10, or to his second home in Buckinghamshire? And how does it think such a scheme could possibly work?
Many people, for instance, claim they live in Monaco for tax reasons. Whereas in fact, all they do is buy a small flat and employ an estate agent to pop in every morning to make a few phone calls. The bills are then used as proof that they were there. Second-home owners would adopt similar tactics here. Or they'd say their country cottage is their primary residence and that their apartment in London is a pied-a-terre. Then, the local council would have to prove otherwise by going through everyone's knicker drawer and employing men with binoculars and coffee breath to follow us about. I fear the government think tank hasn't considered any of this because it was so consumed with bitterness, hatred and envy for people with money. It is not alone.
Just the other day, I read a report that said musicals in London's West End are bucking the trend with higher than ever audiences. This, you might think if you were a normal, well balanced soul, is a good thing. But sadly the red top reporter was not. He was just bothered that bigger audiences meant Andrew Lloyd Webber would have even more money. And that made him incandescent with fury. Why? It's not like Andrew Lloyd Webber spends his evenings being carried around council estates in Slough in a sedan chair, waving his jewels out of the window. He just gets on with his life in a way that has no effect whatsoever on the way you live yours or I live mine.
It's like being kept awake at night with a burning sense of envy about Cliff Richard's youthful good looks. What should we do? Take a Black & Decker sander to his cheekbones? Why? Because disfiguring Cliff's face won't make any difference to your own. I don't yearn for many aspects of the American way but they do seem to have this dreadful bitterness under control. When they see a man pass by in a limousine, they say: "One day, I'll have one of those." When we see a man pass by in a limo, we say: "One day, I'll have him out of that."
All this past week, I've been driving around in a Rolls-Royce coupe and it's been a genuinely alarming insight into the bitterness of Britain's obese and stupid underclass. Because when you drive this enormous monster past a bus queue, you realise that hate is not an emotion. It's something you can touch, and see and smell. Just yesterday, a man in a beaten-up van deliberately straddled two lanes to make sure I could not get past. It would have made no difference at all to his life if I'd done so, but there was no way in hell he was going to let a Roller by. I find that shoulder-saggingly depressing.
More here
New British secrecy laws are a huge temptation to corruption
We read:
"Inquests that are deemed a risk to national security by the Government would be held in secret in future under proposed powers to come before the House of Lords this autumn.
The provisions, under a clause in the Counter-Terrorism Bill, allow the Home Secretary to stop a jury being summoned, replace the coroner with a government appointee and bar the public from inquests if it is deemed to be in the public interest.
It could be applied to inquests similar to those into the deaths of the weapons inspector David Kelly, "friendly-fire" military casualties or Diana, Princess of Wales, and Dodi Fayed. In future, inquests similar to that into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, which is due to start next month with 44 police officers giving evidence anonymously, could also be subject to the secrecy clause.
Lawyers, opposition MPs and pressure groups have told The Times that the move represents a fundamental breach of the right to a public inquiry into a death - a centuries-old mainstay of British justice...
It would enable specially vetted coroners to sit in private without a jury when there is evidence involving national intelligence to be heard, or any matter that the Home Secretary deems not in the public interest. ...
The Coroners' Society condemned the measure as an absolute disgrace, saying that the system could be abused to draw a veil over politically inconvenient cases.
Source
Exams for British High School diplomas 'now two grades easier than 20 years ago'
A-level exams are now two grades easier than they were 20 years ago, academics claimed last night. Sixth-formers of the same ability awarded C grades in the late 1980s can now expect to gain As, they said.
Researchers found that average results improved by more than two grades in most subjects, even though students were no brighter. In mathematics, scores jumped by three-and-a-half grades. Academics said the trend was likely to be influenced by a number of factors, including a fall in the rigour of exams combined with an increased focus on test preparation in schools and colleges, reigniting the debate over A-level standards.
The findings - in a study by Durham University - come as almost 250,000 students prepare to receive results of A-levels on Thursday. Experts are already predicting a rise in the number of passes and A grades. Last year, 25.3 per cent of papers were awarded the top mark - more than double the number in 1990.
Ministers have long claimed that the rise is down to improved teaching. But the latest study - published yesterday(MON) as part of a wide-ranging review of A-levels by the Institute of Directors - said it was "hard to see how the claim could be convincingly substantiated". The claims fail to explain why results improve quicker some years than others, or why improvements at A-level have been much quicker than GCSEs.
"A-level and GCSE grades achieved in 2007 certainly do correspond to a lower level of general academic ability than the same grades would have done in previous years," said the report. "Whether or not they are better taught makes no difference to this interpretation; the same grade corresponds to a lower level of general ability."
Robert Coe and Peter Tymms, from Durham's Curriculum, Evaluation and Management Centre, analysed standards achieved in A-levels between 1988 and 2007. They then compared them with the outcome of aptitude tests over the last two decades, which measure pupils' skills in a range of subjects without testing curriculum knowledge. They found that students with similar results in the independently-administered exam went on to score much better A-levels in 2007 than in 1988.
In the study group, the average student was awarded an E in biology in 1988, but similar sixth-formers gained a comfortable C last summer. In French, students of the same ability saw results rise from a low D grade to a B. In maths, marks were inflated by 3.5 grades. Average students in the 1988 sample gained a U (ungraded) but saw results rise to a low B by 2007. Academics said rises in GCSE results were more modest, increasing by less than a grade in science, English, history, French and maths between 1996 and last summer. "The quality of work presented for examination may well be equal to or better than that of candidates in previous years," said the study. "However, given identical conditions, today's candidates might nevertheless be unable to match the performance of their predecessors."
The IoD report also warned that university admissions tutors have seen no rise in the quality of new undergraduates, despite steadily improving A-level results in the past decade. Seven in 10 tutors believe standards either stayed the same or deteriorated in recent years.
The conclusions come as Ofqual, England's new exams regulator, said it would launch a major review of standards in the Autumn. The study will cover setting, marking and long term standards in A-levels, GCSEs, Sats and other school examinations.
Nick Gibb, Tory shadow schools minister, said A-levels lacked "rigour and relevance". "The Government has been undermining A-levels for the last few years," he said. "We are determined to restore public confidence in the A-level as the gold standard of British education."
A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said syllabuses and examinations were "appropriate and reliable". "We've commented on Durham University's research time and time again," she said. "Their work is quite different to GCSE or A-level as it uses aptitude tests which are not directly comparable to performance at GCSE and A level."
Source
Racist for the Irish to abuse the British
We read:
"An English pipe fitter who was racially abused and taunted in his Irish workplace has been awarded $30,000 in compensation by an equality tribunal in Dublin. The unnamed man, who worked for an engineering company on a building site in Dublin, claimed that colleagues called him names and frequently ganged up on him to sing Irish rebel songs.
Source
Irish hatred for the British goes back a long way so I doubt that there would be much popular support for the verdict
New pill to offer respite from the common cold
A PILL to cure the common cold has been developed by scientists. The holy grail of cold research, it could be used to clear up sniffles in healthy people and prevent life-threatening infections in asthma and cystic fibrosis sufferers. Trials on hundreds of British volunteers started yesterday. If successful, the cold-busting pill could be on the market in five years. Effective against the bugs that cause half of colds in adults and almost all colds in children, it could net its Australian creators billions of dollars a year.
The drug, which is known as BTA798, latches on to cold-causing human rhinoviruses (HRV), preventing them breaking into the body's cells and causing infection. In a double-pronged attack, it also stops any infection that has taken hold from spreading. In lab tests, the drug killed large quantities of cold virus within a couple of hours. The first limited human trials finished last year and showed BTA798, which is being developed by the Victoria-based Biota Holdings, to be safe.
Peter Cook, the company's chief executive officer, hailed the results as a significant milestone in the development of what could be a world-first anti-viral treatment for HRV in high-risk patients. Larger-scale trials are now under way to determine whether it can actually prevent people from catching a cold. Two hundred healthy people will be given the drug or a dummy pill before being exposed to human rhinovirus. Three different doses of the drug will be used, in order to determine which, if any, can keep the infection at bay.
Source
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
APS, A thought-free zone
Below is the substance of a communication received from The Right Honourable The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
The American Physical Society ceased to be a scientific body and became a mere pressure-group when, in 2007, it adopted "National Policy 07.1" on climate change, reproduced in full below. The "policy" cites not a single scientific authority: it is a purely political manifesto whose tendentious conclusions are materially at odds with scientific theory and with observed reality.
A scientifically accurate revision of the APS' "National Policy" on "Climate Change" is below
Plastic flowers banned from British cemetery for posing a 'health and safety risk'
Only in Britain. Watch out for that dangerous plastic flower!
Grieving families have been told not to put plastic flowers in a garden of remembrance because they pose a health and safety risk. Council officials have banned plastic memorials in case they get caught in mowers. Workmen removed several displays from a cemetery in Keynsham, near Bristol, and moved them to the chapel of rest for collection by loved ones.
Retired school teacher Graham Lees, 60, regularly visits the Garden of Remembrance in Keynsham Cemetery, near Bristol, to pay his respects to his late father Ernest. He said Keynsham Town Council's plan had been 'very upsetting' for his entire family and is now demanding the decision is overturned. 'In the 42 years since I started visiting my father's final resting place I have always seen artificial flowers placed on graves throughout the cemetery, so to say it is unsafe now is total rubbish,' he said.
'Their sudden removal was very upsetting for my mother, who is in her 80s and has placed flowers, both real and artificial, in memorial vases continuously since my father died in 1966 and my stepfather in 1996. 'My mother hates the idea of leaving an empty vase as it seems the loved one is forgotten and the thought of the dead flowers left, smelling of putrid water, is very upsetting. 'The council really needs to rethink this decision as it is upsetting for all concerned.'
Mr Lees added that many elderly people were being forced to buy artificial flowers as they were looking at ways to save cash during the effects of the credit crunch. 'Most artificial flowers are left because financially the elderly can't afford to continually buy real ones, and since the bus stop outside the cemetery has been removed it makes it even harder for them to visit frequently,' he said. 'Many of the artificial flowers that people place are very new, life-like and obviously bought at some expense,' he added. 'They could be no way called unsightly.'
The ban applies only to the cemetery's Garden of Remembrance where ashes and memorial plaques are placed - not to the main graveyard where the plots provide enough room for flowers so they do not get in the way of mowers. The council says it has always had a ban on plastic flowers in the garden but had not enforced it fully until staff complained that cutting the grass was becoming difficult. Warning signs went up in June and the plastic floral displays were removed last month.
A spokeswoman said: 'It became more of a problem over time with more people leaving more and more mementoes, which makes it difficult for staff to carry out maintenance. 'We also have heath-and-safety reasons to consider: if the flowers get caught up in the lawnmower the bits of plastic flying around could be very dangerous.' In June Croydon Council banned plastic flowers from an elderly accommodation block because they were also deemed to be a health-and-safety risk.
Source
Below is the substance of a communication received from The Right Honourable The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
The American Physical Society ceased to be a scientific body and became a mere pressure-group when, in 2007, it adopted "National Policy 07.1" on climate change, reproduced in full below. The "policy" cites not a single scientific authority: it is a purely political manifesto whose tendentious conclusions are materially at odds with scientific theory and with observed reality.
"Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth's climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes.
"The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.
"Because the complexity of the climate makes accurate prediction difficult, the APS urges an enhanced effort to understand the effects of human activity on the Earth's climate, and to provide the technological options for meeting the climate challenge in the near and longer terms. The APS also urges governments, universities, national laboratories and its membership to support policies and actions that will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases."
A scientifically accurate revision of the APS' "National Policy" on "Climate Change" is below
Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities have increased the proportion of the atmosphere occupied by carbon dioxide by one-ten-thousandth part since 1750 (Keeling & Whorf, 2004, updated). This minuscule perturbation may cause a small, harmless, and beneficial warming (Monckton, 2008). Greenhouse gases also include water vapor, the most significant greenhouse gas because of its volume, and methane, of which the atmospheric concentration ceased to increase in 2000 and is now declining (IPCC, 2007). Greenhouse gases are not pollutants, but occur naturally in quantities greater than those emitted from fossil fuel combustion and industrial and agricultural processes.
The evidence is incontrovertible: global cooling is occurring (GISStemp, HadCRU, RSS, UAH, NCDC). Though a natural warming trend of ~0.5 øC per century began in 1700, long before humankind could possibly have had any significant effect on global temperature (Akasofu, 2008), there has been no new record year for global temperature since 1998 and, since late 2001, there has been a downtrend. The cooling between January 2007 and January 2008 was the sharpest since records began in 1880.
Therefore no action need be taken to mitigate "global warming", for there is no evidence in the instrumental record that humankind has caused any significant increase in the 300-year-long natural warming rate, and no theoretical reason why future greenhouse-gas emissions should prove harmful. In any event, mitigating actions would be orders of magnitude less cost-effective than adaptation as, and if, necessary (all economists except Stern, 2006). The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide was ~18 times today's in the Cambrian era (IPCC, 2001). Humankind was not responsible - we were not there. The planet came to no harm. Significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are unlikely to occur.
Because the complexity of the climate makes accurate long-run prediction impossible (Lorenz, 1963), the APS urges caution in relying upon computer models when making long-term climate predictions. There is no basis for the oft-repeated contention that the effects of human activity on the Earth's climate are likely to be great enough to influence the future climate. The APS therefore urges governments and peoples to provide the technological options for meeting real short-term and long-term environmental challenges, of which "global warming" from greenhouse-gas enrichment is not one. The APS also urges governments, universities, national laboratories and its membership to support policies and actions that will reduce the current official misinformation and unscientific alarmism about emission of greenhouse gases.
Plastic flowers banned from British cemetery for posing a 'health and safety risk'
Only in Britain. Watch out for that dangerous plastic flower!
Grieving families have been told not to put plastic flowers in a garden of remembrance because they pose a health and safety risk. Council officials have banned plastic memorials in case they get caught in mowers. Workmen removed several displays from a cemetery in Keynsham, near Bristol, and moved them to the chapel of rest for collection by loved ones.
Retired school teacher Graham Lees, 60, regularly visits the Garden of Remembrance in Keynsham Cemetery, near Bristol, to pay his respects to his late father Ernest. He said Keynsham Town Council's plan had been 'very upsetting' for his entire family and is now demanding the decision is overturned. 'In the 42 years since I started visiting my father's final resting place I have always seen artificial flowers placed on graves throughout the cemetery, so to say it is unsafe now is total rubbish,' he said.
'Their sudden removal was very upsetting for my mother, who is in her 80s and has placed flowers, both real and artificial, in memorial vases continuously since my father died in 1966 and my stepfather in 1996. 'My mother hates the idea of leaving an empty vase as it seems the loved one is forgotten and the thought of the dead flowers left, smelling of putrid water, is very upsetting. 'The council really needs to rethink this decision as it is upsetting for all concerned.'
Mr Lees added that many elderly people were being forced to buy artificial flowers as they were looking at ways to save cash during the effects of the credit crunch. 'Most artificial flowers are left because financially the elderly can't afford to continually buy real ones, and since the bus stop outside the cemetery has been removed it makes it even harder for them to visit frequently,' he said. 'Many of the artificial flowers that people place are very new, life-like and obviously bought at some expense,' he added. 'They could be no way called unsightly.'
The ban applies only to the cemetery's Garden of Remembrance where ashes and memorial plaques are placed - not to the main graveyard where the plots provide enough room for flowers so they do not get in the way of mowers. The council says it has always had a ban on plastic flowers in the garden but had not enforced it fully until staff complained that cutting the grass was becoming difficult. Warning signs went up in June and the plastic floral displays were removed last month.
A spokeswoman said: 'It became more of a problem over time with more people leaving more and more mementoes, which makes it difficult for staff to carry out maintenance. 'We also have heath-and-safety reasons to consider: if the flowers get caught up in the lawnmower the bits of plastic flying around could be very dangerous.' In June Croydon Council banned plastic flowers from an elderly accommodation block because they were also deemed to be a health-and-safety risk.
Source
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
More of the unending tyranny of petty bureaucracy in Britain
Lawyer wins thirty month battle against his borough council over the right to own a second garbage bin. In Australia, you just have to ask for one and pay a bit extra. I have had two for years
The policy of councils across Britain of limiting households to one wheelie bin each may have to change after an official complaint by a solicitor exasperated at having to make regular trips to his local rubbish tip. The local government ombudsman has ruled in favour of Roger Houlker, who has fought a 2« year battle against Congleton borough council to be given a second bin for his six-bedroom Cheshire home. The ombudsman, Anne Seex, found the council guilty of "maladministration with injustice" for failing to collect all his waste and ordered it to review its policy. She also said she had "reservations" about the authority's refusal to collect additional bags of waste left beside wheelie bins.
While waiting for his bin to be emptied, Houlker had to deal with vermin ripping open black bags used to hold extra waste in his garden and he made regular 12-mile trips to take them to a dump because dustmen would only take waste from his one 240-litre bin. Congleton council insisted the bin should have been enough for him, his wife Julie and their three children. [How nice to have bureaucrats deciding what you need!]
The ruling could lead to a flood of appeals against councils with similar one-bin-per-house rules. Houlker, who lives in the village of Swettenham, first complained to the council in February 2006. He said he was doing all he could to recycle and claimed the council had a legal duty to pick up the extra waste. In December 2007 Houlker complained to the ombudsman that he was being forced to take waste to the tip in his car.
In addition to telling the council to review its policy, Seex has said Houlker should be given $500 for his "time, trouble and costs" in taking his own bin bags to the tip. A spokesman for the environment department said: "As quoted in the ombudsman's report, it is hard to see how the authority can justify refusing to collect waste from a second bin especially where the resident is offering to pay for the additional receptacle." Congleton council confirmed it was reviewing its policies.
Source
Over 1,000 cancer patients refused drugs by NHS managers
More than 1,000 patients been turned down for cancer drugs in the last two years because NHS managers judged they were not "exceptional" cases, according to a new report. The Rarer Cancers Forum, which compiled the data, called on ministers to intervene to end a "bizarre and demeaning" postcode lottery, which it said was leaving patients to die. Their analysis shows that almost all patients in some areas were given the often expensive drugs, while in other areas no patient received them.
The call comes just days after patients groups and doctors reacted angrily to a decision that four kidney cancer drugs were not cost effective enough to be provided on the NHS. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) judged that the drugs, which can prolong the average sufferers life for around five or six months, did not provide enough benefits for their cost of up to $48,000.
Primary Care Trusts have a duty to make the drugs available if they have been approved by the watchdog. But NHS managers can also choose to fund drugs which have yet to be approved or have been turned down by Nice if they think a patient's case is "exceptional". The report shows that while the majority of the 5,000 requests to be exceptional cases were approved, 1,300 were turned down. It also reveals wide variations in how some trusts judge what is "exceptional", for example some take into account a patient's wider family situation, whereas others look only at their medical case. Earlier this year a High Court judge ordered an NHS panel to reconsider its decision to refuse one of the kidney cancer drugs, called Sutent, to a woman who is the sole carer of her seriously ill husband, claiming it had not looked at her circumstances "in the round".
The figures, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, show that more than 5,000 patients asked for their cases to be considered by their local healthcare authorities, since October 2006. While 96 per cent of patients in living in Mid Essex had their requests approved, all those in South West Essex who asked to be considered "exceptional" cases were turned down.
The committees who made the decisions were often controlled by NHS managers rather than doctors, the charity, which received detailed answers from 104 of the 152 PCTs across the country, a total of 68 per cent, claims. The Forum plans to submit the report, Taking Exception, to the Department of Health. Penny Wilson-Webb, from the charity, said: "The NHS should be available to all who need it. "Yet 1,300 cancer patients were denied the treatment that could have made all the difference to them. This audit shows that the exceptional cases process is in chaos and patients are suffering. In the last 20 months, 5,000 cancer patients have been forced to plead for their lives. There has to be a better way. We urge the Government to ... end this bizarre and demeaning lottery."
A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "We have heard from patients that one of their major concerns is the perceived "postcode lottery" in access to drugs – that there are too many variations around who gets access to prescribed drugs and that these variations are a lottery depending on where you live. "The draft NHS Constitution will address this by making it explicit that patients have the right to NICE-approved drugs if clinically appropriate. We will also speed up the national process for appraising new drugs and make more transparent and consistent the process for local funding of drugs not appraised by NICE or where NICE has yet to issue guidance."
Roche, the pharmaceutical company, provided funding for the new research, but the charity insisted it retained editorial control.
Source
British education spending spree has 'failed pupils'
The literacy and numeracy of new employees have tumbled over the past decade despite Labour's œ28 billion increase in annual education spending, according to research by a leading employers' organisation. The Institute of Directors (IoD) found that 71% of its members believe the writing abilities of new employees had worsened, while 60% believed numeracy had also declined; 52% reported a worsening of the basic ability to communicate.
With the exam results season under way, more than 60% of company directors now think GCSEs and A-levels are less demanding than a decade ago. Overall, only 27% believe schools have got better under Labour. A-level results to be released this Thursday are expected to show the number of passes going above 97% and the proportion of A grades rising slightly from last year's 25.3%, the 11th successive annual rise. One exam board chief said the results will show continued decline in the numbers taking languages but rises in some science subjects, reversing the trend of recent years.
According to the IoD report, to be published this week, the results of Labour's education policies fall far short of what might be expected given the surge in school spending since the party came to power. In 1997-8, $96 billion was devoted to education, rising to $152.6 billion in the current year, an increase of nearly 60% when adjusted for inflation. "Despite the impressive political energy and resources focused on education, our members believe the government has generally performed poorly in this critical area," said Miles Templeman, the IoD's director-general. "There is a substantial credibility gap between what official statistics show and what employers feel on the front line."
Exam grades improve almost every year, leading to arguments between ministers who claim they show a real improvement and critics who argue that standards are becoming more lax.
The research also includes a review by Durham University academics of evidence on whether the rigour of GCSEs, A-levels and primary education has been maintained. They find that, at best, standards have remained the same or improved marginally. In basic scientific knowledge - such as knowing what density means - they report a "dramatic" fall, particularly for boys.
The Durham academics, Robert Coe and Peter Tymms, found strong evidence of "grade inflation" in their analysis of GCSE and A-level results over the past three decades. They also report that the understanding of basic scientific concepts such as volume and weight among 11 and 12-year-olds has deteriorated since 1976. The proportion of boys giving the right answer to an elementary question on the displacement of water fell from 54% to 17% over the period. "The fact schools are not teaching this is a real problem," Coe said. "The scale of the drop is just huge: it is dramatic. Many people would argue that you cannot do science without these fundamentals."
Jim Knight, the schools minister, said: "English and maths standards have risen over the last decade and quality has been rigorously scrutinised. "Business concerns about school-leavers reflect the reality of the changing economy with historic low unemployment and the virtual elimination of low-skill jobs. Employers rightly have far higher expectations of workers' skills than ever. "We are tackling employers' concerns head-on with the biggest education reforms for generations such as tougher A-levels and GCSEs; improved skills training across the board; and raising the participation age to 18."
- More teenagers are not in education, employment or training (Neet) than studying for A-levels in three of Britain's poorest boroughs, according to new research by the Conservatives. Michael Gove, the shadow schools secretary, argues that the figures for Rochdale in Greater Manchester, Sandwell in the West Midlands, and Knowsley, Merseyside, are evidence of "shocking" polarisation between rich and poor areas.
Source
Lawyer wins thirty month battle against his borough council over the right to own a second garbage bin. In Australia, you just have to ask for one and pay a bit extra. I have had two for years
The policy of councils across Britain of limiting households to one wheelie bin each may have to change after an official complaint by a solicitor exasperated at having to make regular trips to his local rubbish tip. The local government ombudsman has ruled in favour of Roger Houlker, who has fought a 2« year battle against Congleton borough council to be given a second bin for his six-bedroom Cheshire home. The ombudsman, Anne Seex, found the council guilty of "maladministration with injustice" for failing to collect all his waste and ordered it to review its policy. She also said she had "reservations" about the authority's refusal to collect additional bags of waste left beside wheelie bins.
While waiting for his bin to be emptied, Houlker had to deal with vermin ripping open black bags used to hold extra waste in his garden and he made regular 12-mile trips to take them to a dump because dustmen would only take waste from his one 240-litre bin. Congleton council insisted the bin should have been enough for him, his wife Julie and their three children. [How nice to have bureaucrats deciding what you need!]
The ruling could lead to a flood of appeals against councils with similar one-bin-per-house rules. Houlker, who lives in the village of Swettenham, first complained to the council in February 2006. He said he was doing all he could to recycle and claimed the council had a legal duty to pick up the extra waste. In December 2007 Houlker complained to the ombudsman that he was being forced to take waste to the tip in his car.
In addition to telling the council to review its policy, Seex has said Houlker should be given $500 for his "time, trouble and costs" in taking his own bin bags to the tip. A spokesman for the environment department said: "As quoted in the ombudsman's report, it is hard to see how the authority can justify refusing to collect waste from a second bin especially where the resident is offering to pay for the additional receptacle." Congleton council confirmed it was reviewing its policies.
Source
Over 1,000 cancer patients refused drugs by NHS managers
More than 1,000 patients been turned down for cancer drugs in the last two years because NHS managers judged they were not "exceptional" cases, according to a new report. The Rarer Cancers Forum, which compiled the data, called on ministers to intervene to end a "bizarre and demeaning" postcode lottery, which it said was leaving patients to die. Their analysis shows that almost all patients in some areas were given the often expensive drugs, while in other areas no patient received them.
The call comes just days after patients groups and doctors reacted angrily to a decision that four kidney cancer drugs were not cost effective enough to be provided on the NHS. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) judged that the drugs, which can prolong the average sufferers life for around five or six months, did not provide enough benefits for their cost of up to $48,000.
Primary Care Trusts have a duty to make the drugs available if they have been approved by the watchdog. But NHS managers can also choose to fund drugs which have yet to be approved or have been turned down by Nice if they think a patient's case is "exceptional". The report shows that while the majority of the 5,000 requests to be exceptional cases were approved, 1,300 were turned down. It also reveals wide variations in how some trusts judge what is "exceptional", for example some take into account a patient's wider family situation, whereas others look only at their medical case. Earlier this year a High Court judge ordered an NHS panel to reconsider its decision to refuse one of the kidney cancer drugs, called Sutent, to a woman who is the sole carer of her seriously ill husband, claiming it had not looked at her circumstances "in the round".
The figures, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, show that more than 5,000 patients asked for their cases to be considered by their local healthcare authorities, since October 2006. While 96 per cent of patients in living in Mid Essex had their requests approved, all those in South West Essex who asked to be considered "exceptional" cases were turned down.
The committees who made the decisions were often controlled by NHS managers rather than doctors, the charity, which received detailed answers from 104 of the 152 PCTs across the country, a total of 68 per cent, claims. The Forum plans to submit the report, Taking Exception, to the Department of Health. Penny Wilson-Webb, from the charity, said: "The NHS should be available to all who need it. "Yet 1,300 cancer patients were denied the treatment that could have made all the difference to them. This audit shows that the exceptional cases process is in chaos and patients are suffering. In the last 20 months, 5,000 cancer patients have been forced to plead for their lives. There has to be a better way. We urge the Government to ... end this bizarre and demeaning lottery."
A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "We have heard from patients that one of their major concerns is the perceived "postcode lottery" in access to drugs – that there are too many variations around who gets access to prescribed drugs and that these variations are a lottery depending on where you live. "The draft NHS Constitution will address this by making it explicit that patients have the right to NICE-approved drugs if clinically appropriate. We will also speed up the national process for appraising new drugs and make more transparent and consistent the process for local funding of drugs not appraised by NICE or where NICE has yet to issue guidance."
Roche, the pharmaceutical company, provided funding for the new research, but the charity insisted it retained editorial control.
Source
British education spending spree has 'failed pupils'
The literacy and numeracy of new employees have tumbled over the past decade despite Labour's œ28 billion increase in annual education spending, according to research by a leading employers' organisation. The Institute of Directors (IoD) found that 71% of its members believe the writing abilities of new employees had worsened, while 60% believed numeracy had also declined; 52% reported a worsening of the basic ability to communicate.
With the exam results season under way, more than 60% of company directors now think GCSEs and A-levels are less demanding than a decade ago. Overall, only 27% believe schools have got better under Labour. A-level results to be released this Thursday are expected to show the number of passes going above 97% and the proportion of A grades rising slightly from last year's 25.3%, the 11th successive annual rise. One exam board chief said the results will show continued decline in the numbers taking languages but rises in some science subjects, reversing the trend of recent years.
According to the IoD report, to be published this week, the results of Labour's education policies fall far short of what might be expected given the surge in school spending since the party came to power. In 1997-8, $96 billion was devoted to education, rising to $152.6 billion in the current year, an increase of nearly 60% when adjusted for inflation. "Despite the impressive political energy and resources focused on education, our members believe the government has generally performed poorly in this critical area," said Miles Templeman, the IoD's director-general. "There is a substantial credibility gap between what official statistics show and what employers feel on the front line."
Exam grades improve almost every year, leading to arguments between ministers who claim they show a real improvement and critics who argue that standards are becoming more lax.
The research also includes a review by Durham University academics of evidence on whether the rigour of GCSEs, A-levels and primary education has been maintained. They find that, at best, standards have remained the same or improved marginally. In basic scientific knowledge - such as knowing what density means - they report a "dramatic" fall, particularly for boys.
The Durham academics, Robert Coe and Peter Tymms, found strong evidence of "grade inflation" in their analysis of GCSE and A-level results over the past three decades. They also report that the understanding of basic scientific concepts such as volume and weight among 11 and 12-year-olds has deteriorated since 1976. The proportion of boys giving the right answer to an elementary question on the displacement of water fell from 54% to 17% over the period. "The fact schools are not teaching this is a real problem," Coe said. "The scale of the drop is just huge: it is dramatic. Many people would argue that you cannot do science without these fundamentals."
Jim Knight, the schools minister, said: "English and maths standards have risen over the last decade and quality has been rigorously scrutinised. "Business concerns about school-leavers reflect the reality of the changing economy with historic low unemployment and the virtual elimination of low-skill jobs. Employers rightly have far higher expectations of workers' skills than ever. "We are tackling employers' concerns head-on with the biggest education reforms for generations such as tougher A-levels and GCSEs; improved skills training across the board; and raising the participation age to 18."
- More teenagers are not in education, employment or training (Neet) than studying for A-levels in three of Britain's poorest boroughs, according to new research by the Conservatives. Michael Gove, the shadow schools secretary, argues that the figures for Rochdale in Greater Manchester, Sandwell in the West Midlands, and Knowsley, Merseyside, are evidence of "shocking" polarisation between rich and poor areas.
Source
Monday, August 11, 2008
British "safety" nonsense never stops
Organ grinder and his toy monkey 'banned'
An organ grinder and his monkey were banned from the streets on health and safety grounds. Paddy Cooke, 64, from Matlock in Derbyshire, and his stuffed toy Simon cannot perform until they complete a risk assessment. Ripley Town Council in Derbyshire decided to cancel the act who were due to perform in the town centre during the summer holidays. The decision was made by licensing bosses at Amber Valley Borough Council. It comes after a Punch and Judy show and a dance act were also shelved in the past three weeks.
Paddy, of Crich, near Matlock, Derbys, wears Victorian costume as he walks around playing his organ, a copy of an instrument used more than 150 years ago. The former fireman has been grinding organs for 15 years. He said: 'It's not as if I have a live monkey which might jump at people. Mine is a battery-operated interactive toy and the best I have ever had. He says things like "I want a banana" and even once offered to tell me the sum of pi squared. 'Simon is sometimes quiet and sometimes chatty. He's very realistic but is no danger to anyone. 'I suppose someone might trip over a paving slab when listening to the music and blame me but I have been doing this for years without a problem.'
Paddy, whose two sons are also organ grinders, was hired as part of the summer entertainment provided by the town council and has $20m public liability insurance cover. He is also a member of the actors' union, Equity. But before his act hit the streets the authority received orders from Amber Valley Borough Council which demanded to see a general risk assessment before letting street acts go ahead. It wanted to study a list of hazards and know how they could be made safe, and even how many people might watch the shows.
Ripley Mayor Lynn Joyes said: 'The risks are very low and how do performers know how big an audience they'll get? 'That depends on the weather. If it's raining you might get five, but if the weather is nice, there'll be 105.' Labour group leader Geoff Carlile said: 'This is typical of bureaucracy gone mad. This was sprung on us at the last minute and left us in a difficult situation.' The council was told the ruling also applies to dance groups, clowns and brass bands, including the Salvation Army. Steve Freeborn, who represents Butterley ward, said: 'What is the risk - it's absolutely potty.'
But last night the borough council defended its decision. Simon Gladwin, head of landscape services, said: 'We always require that anyone organising a public event or entertainment on land managed by the borough council completes a risk assessment. 'In cases such as this, where performers are unable to supply a personal risk assessment of their activities, it is the responsibility of the organiser to provide the risk assessment. 'These are not required for every performer. We simply require an assessment that takes into account the different activities taking place in each location,' he said.
The town council's summer entertainments programme has now been suspended until further notice. It is hoped that a risk assessment can be completed within the next seven days then sent to the borough council for approval.
Source
Feminism fading?
Cambridge University study suggests growing numbers of people are concerned about working mums' impact on family life
Support for gender equality in Britain and the US appears to have peaked and could now be going into decline, research at Cambridge University has revealed. The study, by Professor Jacqueline Scott from the University's Department of Sociology, found evidence of "mounting concern" that women who play a full and equal role in the workforce do so at the expense of family life. Although there are no signs of a full-scale gender-role backlash, there does appear to be growing sympathy for the old-fashioned view that a woman's place is in the home, rather than in the office.
The study appears in a new book, Women And Employment; Changing Lives And New Challenges, which Professor Scott also edited. "The notion that there has been a steady increase in favour of women taking an equal role in the workplace and away from their traditional role in the home is clearly a myth," she said. "Instead, there is clear evidence that women's changing role is viewed as having costs both for the woman and the family. "It is conceivable that opinions are shifting as the shine of the 'super-mum' syndrome wears off, and the idea of women juggling high-powered careers while also baking cookies and reading bedtime stories is increasingly seen to be unrealisable by ordinary mortals."
The survey compared the results of social attitude surveys from the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s - using recent data from the International Social Survey Programme as well as older polls. Professor Scott focused on the results from Britain, the United States and - because the earlier surveys pre-dated the fall of the Berlin Wall - the former Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany).
In each survey, samples of between 1,000 and 5,000 people were asked to say whether they agreed or disagreed with a number of statements. Statements such as "A husband's job is to earn income; a wife's to take care of the children," were designed to test their overall views on gender equality. Others, such as "Family life suffers if a woman works full time," examined whether they considered maternal employment as harmful to children or families.
The study shows that while British attitudes are more egalitarian than in the 1980s, there are signs that support for gender equality may have hit a high point some time during the 1990s. When it comes to the clash between work and family life, doubts about whether a woman should be doing both are starting to creep in. In the 1990s, for example, more than 50% of women and 51% of men said they believed that family life would not suffer if a woman went to work. Since then, the figure has fallen - to 46% of women and 42% of men. Fewer people (54.9% of women and 54.1% of men) now take the view that a job is the best way for a woman to be independent than in 1991.
The results are even more extreme in the United States, where the percentage of people arguing that family life does not suffer if a woman works has plummeted, from 51% in 1994 to 38% in 2002. About the same number of West Germans (37%) agree; but the number there has risen, having been just 24% in the mid-1990s.
Professor Scott argues that each country is at a different stage in a cycle of sympathy for gender equality. In West Germany, where up until the 1990s a large majority of people still believed that men should be the family breadwinners while women stayed at home, acceptance for the notion of working mums is now increasing.
In Britain and the US, however, where support for equal opportunities for both sexes is much longer-standing, some people are now starting to have second thoughts. In most cases, this appears to revolve around concerns that the welfare of children and of the family are being compromised the more women spend their time at work and find themselves lumbered with the double burden of employment and family care.
The report adds that there should now be further investigation into whether the attitude shift is occurring because caring for the family is seen as predominantly women's work, or because people feel there is no practical alternative to a woman fulfilling the role. "A change in attitude is not the same thing as a change in behaviour, but attitudes do matter," Professor Scott added. "Women - particularly mothers - can experience considerable strain when attitudes reinforce the notion that employment and family interests conflict. "If we are to make progress in devising policies that encourage equal working opportunities for women, we need to know more about what gender roles people view as practical, as possible and as fair."
Source
British universities discriminating against private school students
Under big pressure from the government -- in the name of "equality"
Top universities are at the centre of a new social engineering row over plans to reject the new A* grade at A-level, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal. An investigation by this newspaper has uncovered plans by several leading universities to ignore the new award because it will mean offering more places to independent school pupils.
The A* grade was introduced by ministers because universities were finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish between top candidates in an era when 25 per cent of sixth formers gain an A grade at A-level. That proportion is expected to rise when exam results are released next week. Internal documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that admission committees at a number of Britain's universities are reluctant to sanction the new A* because they fear that state school pupils will not achieve the grade in sufficient numbers. Oxford University said it is "highly unlikely" that it will utilise the A* in offers until "there is a sense of the probable grade distribution".
Exeter and Bath Universities cite concerns that if the top grade is used in offers, it is likely to "disadvantage state schools" and "have a detrimental effect on widening participation efforts". Bristol has also expressed reservations about the A* because "some schools will be able to provide intensive preparation for their pupils and others will not" which could "exacerbate existing inequalities in education provision".
Critics last night accused the universities of trying to "fix" their admissions. "It is quite disgraceful if universities are saying 'we are not going to use this measure because we are afraid of what it is going to show'," said Professor Alan Smithers, the director of the centre for education and employment research at Buckingham University. "It is a terrible situation to get in to that higher education is avoiding the best qualified candidates because of where they were educated in a bid to comply with state school benchmarks set by its paymasters. "We will have good institutions, that should be recruiting the brightest talent, trying to fix admissions by ignoring a new grade."
Independent schools accused universities of being "lilly-livered" in their approach to the A*. "If there are reservations, they should be about potential differences between subjects and exam boards in the awarding of A*, not how different schools will perform," said Geoff Lucas, the secretary of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference. "This is woolly, lilly-livered thinking and not very honest. It shows the extent to which universities are cowered by Government pressure to widen participation. They should be giving credit to pupils who are best equipped to do well in the subject they are applying for."
Pupils starting out on their courses in September will have the chance of gaining the grade when they complete their exams in 2010. It was assumed that universities would use the grade when making offers in that year. However, internal documents reveal many institutions have yet to decide and could delay using it in case it increases the dominance of independent school pupils. Admission tutors' concerns are based on research which suggests that private school pupils will do better in A* than comprehensive pupils. Almost a quarter of those at fee-paying schools are expected to gain at least one A*, compared to just nine per cent at comprehensives, according to an analysis by exam board AQA.
Bath University admissions committee, which will consult with tutors on the issue in the autumn, fears that independent schools will gain too many of the top grades. "It was noted that the A* grade was intended to be awarded only to the highest scoring percentage of students, who would largely be in attendance at independent schools," said minutes of a meeting earlier this year. "There are some concerns that selection on the basis of A* might have adverse effects on widening participation."
Extracts from the minutes of Exeter's admissions working group said: "Other institutions are not including the A* in their offers as they feel that this is likely to disadvantage state schools." It added: "The admissions group felt they required a more informed debate on the issue and have asked for an indicator from the 1994 Group of universities (of which it is a member)."
Bristol University said despite reservations, it would accept the A* but take in to account the school context in which candidates have studied. Only one university said it had made the decision to include the A* in some offers. At University College London, departments such as history, English and economics, which currently demand three grade As, will be permitted to ask for a maximum of one A* from 2010.
Source
Another desperate attempt to get NHS computers working
A confectionery and soft drinks executive and the man in charge of programming the nation's pensions have been appointed to take charge of the largest civilian IT project in the world, the Government has announced (David Rose writes).
The Department of Health has named Christine Connelly, formerly of Cadbury-Schweppes, and Martin Bellamy, of the Department for Work and Pensions, jointly to head the mammoth $24.9 BILLION overhaul of NHS computer systems, formerly the highest-paid job in Whitehall. As The Times reported in April, the previous head of the project, Richard Granger, earned $540,000 to $570,000 a year.
Mr Granger, the former director-general of NHS IT, resigned last year after five years. The Government has split his job into two - each advertised for around $400,000 - costing the taxpayer potentially 40 per cent more in managerial wage bills for the project.
The NHS National Programme for IT, designed to link 300 hospitals with thousands of GP surgeries, is running up to two years late in parts and has been repeatedly criticised by auditors, doctors and patients.
Source
Organ grinder and his toy monkey 'banned'
An organ grinder and his monkey were banned from the streets on health and safety grounds. Paddy Cooke, 64, from Matlock in Derbyshire, and his stuffed toy Simon cannot perform until they complete a risk assessment. Ripley Town Council in Derbyshire decided to cancel the act who were due to perform in the town centre during the summer holidays. The decision was made by licensing bosses at Amber Valley Borough Council. It comes after a Punch and Judy show and a dance act were also shelved in the past three weeks.
Paddy, of Crich, near Matlock, Derbys, wears Victorian costume as he walks around playing his organ, a copy of an instrument used more than 150 years ago. The former fireman has been grinding organs for 15 years. He said: 'It's not as if I have a live monkey which might jump at people. Mine is a battery-operated interactive toy and the best I have ever had. He says things like "I want a banana" and even once offered to tell me the sum of pi squared. 'Simon is sometimes quiet and sometimes chatty. He's very realistic but is no danger to anyone. 'I suppose someone might trip over a paving slab when listening to the music and blame me but I have been doing this for years without a problem.'
Paddy, whose two sons are also organ grinders, was hired as part of the summer entertainment provided by the town council and has $20m public liability insurance cover. He is also a member of the actors' union, Equity. But before his act hit the streets the authority received orders from Amber Valley Borough Council which demanded to see a general risk assessment before letting street acts go ahead. It wanted to study a list of hazards and know how they could be made safe, and even how many people might watch the shows.
Ripley Mayor Lynn Joyes said: 'The risks are very low and how do performers know how big an audience they'll get? 'That depends on the weather. If it's raining you might get five, but if the weather is nice, there'll be 105.' Labour group leader Geoff Carlile said: 'This is typical of bureaucracy gone mad. This was sprung on us at the last minute and left us in a difficult situation.' The council was told the ruling also applies to dance groups, clowns and brass bands, including the Salvation Army. Steve Freeborn, who represents Butterley ward, said: 'What is the risk - it's absolutely potty.'
But last night the borough council defended its decision. Simon Gladwin, head of landscape services, said: 'We always require that anyone organising a public event or entertainment on land managed by the borough council completes a risk assessment. 'In cases such as this, where performers are unable to supply a personal risk assessment of their activities, it is the responsibility of the organiser to provide the risk assessment. 'These are not required for every performer. We simply require an assessment that takes into account the different activities taking place in each location,' he said.
The town council's summer entertainments programme has now been suspended until further notice. It is hoped that a risk assessment can be completed within the next seven days then sent to the borough council for approval.
Source
Feminism fading?
Cambridge University study suggests growing numbers of people are concerned about working mums' impact on family life
Support for gender equality in Britain and the US appears to have peaked and could now be going into decline, research at Cambridge University has revealed. The study, by Professor Jacqueline Scott from the University's Department of Sociology, found evidence of "mounting concern" that women who play a full and equal role in the workforce do so at the expense of family life. Although there are no signs of a full-scale gender-role backlash, there does appear to be growing sympathy for the old-fashioned view that a woman's place is in the home, rather than in the office.
The study appears in a new book, Women And Employment; Changing Lives And New Challenges, which Professor Scott also edited. "The notion that there has been a steady increase in favour of women taking an equal role in the workplace and away from their traditional role in the home is clearly a myth," she said. "Instead, there is clear evidence that women's changing role is viewed as having costs both for the woman and the family. "It is conceivable that opinions are shifting as the shine of the 'super-mum' syndrome wears off, and the idea of women juggling high-powered careers while also baking cookies and reading bedtime stories is increasingly seen to be unrealisable by ordinary mortals."
The survey compared the results of social attitude surveys from the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s - using recent data from the International Social Survey Programme as well as older polls. Professor Scott focused on the results from Britain, the United States and - because the earlier surveys pre-dated the fall of the Berlin Wall - the former Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany).
In each survey, samples of between 1,000 and 5,000 people were asked to say whether they agreed or disagreed with a number of statements. Statements such as "A husband's job is to earn income; a wife's to take care of the children," were designed to test their overall views on gender equality. Others, such as "Family life suffers if a woman works full time," examined whether they considered maternal employment as harmful to children or families.
The study shows that while British attitudes are more egalitarian than in the 1980s, there are signs that support for gender equality may have hit a high point some time during the 1990s. When it comes to the clash between work and family life, doubts about whether a woman should be doing both are starting to creep in. In the 1990s, for example, more than 50% of women and 51% of men said they believed that family life would not suffer if a woman went to work. Since then, the figure has fallen - to 46% of women and 42% of men. Fewer people (54.9% of women and 54.1% of men) now take the view that a job is the best way for a woman to be independent than in 1991.
The results are even more extreme in the United States, where the percentage of people arguing that family life does not suffer if a woman works has plummeted, from 51% in 1994 to 38% in 2002. About the same number of West Germans (37%) agree; but the number there has risen, having been just 24% in the mid-1990s.
Professor Scott argues that each country is at a different stage in a cycle of sympathy for gender equality. In West Germany, where up until the 1990s a large majority of people still believed that men should be the family breadwinners while women stayed at home, acceptance for the notion of working mums is now increasing.
In Britain and the US, however, where support for equal opportunities for both sexes is much longer-standing, some people are now starting to have second thoughts. In most cases, this appears to revolve around concerns that the welfare of children and of the family are being compromised the more women spend their time at work and find themselves lumbered with the double burden of employment and family care.
The report adds that there should now be further investigation into whether the attitude shift is occurring because caring for the family is seen as predominantly women's work, or because people feel there is no practical alternative to a woman fulfilling the role. "A change in attitude is not the same thing as a change in behaviour, but attitudes do matter," Professor Scott added. "Women - particularly mothers - can experience considerable strain when attitudes reinforce the notion that employment and family interests conflict. "If we are to make progress in devising policies that encourage equal working opportunities for women, we need to know more about what gender roles people view as practical, as possible and as fair."
Source
British universities discriminating against private school students
Under big pressure from the government -- in the name of "equality"
Top universities are at the centre of a new social engineering row over plans to reject the new A* grade at A-level, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal. An investigation by this newspaper has uncovered plans by several leading universities to ignore the new award because it will mean offering more places to independent school pupils.
The A* grade was introduced by ministers because universities were finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish between top candidates in an era when 25 per cent of sixth formers gain an A grade at A-level. That proportion is expected to rise when exam results are released next week. Internal documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that admission committees at a number of Britain's universities are reluctant to sanction the new A* because they fear that state school pupils will not achieve the grade in sufficient numbers. Oxford University said it is "highly unlikely" that it will utilise the A* in offers until "there is a sense of the probable grade distribution".
Exeter and Bath Universities cite concerns that if the top grade is used in offers, it is likely to "disadvantage state schools" and "have a detrimental effect on widening participation efforts". Bristol has also expressed reservations about the A* because "some schools will be able to provide intensive preparation for their pupils and others will not" which could "exacerbate existing inequalities in education provision".
Critics last night accused the universities of trying to "fix" their admissions. "It is quite disgraceful if universities are saying 'we are not going to use this measure because we are afraid of what it is going to show'," said Professor Alan Smithers, the director of the centre for education and employment research at Buckingham University. "It is a terrible situation to get in to that higher education is avoiding the best qualified candidates because of where they were educated in a bid to comply with state school benchmarks set by its paymasters. "We will have good institutions, that should be recruiting the brightest talent, trying to fix admissions by ignoring a new grade."
Independent schools accused universities of being "lilly-livered" in their approach to the A*. "If there are reservations, they should be about potential differences between subjects and exam boards in the awarding of A*, not how different schools will perform," said Geoff Lucas, the secretary of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference. "This is woolly, lilly-livered thinking and not very honest. It shows the extent to which universities are cowered by Government pressure to widen participation. They should be giving credit to pupils who are best equipped to do well in the subject they are applying for."
Pupils starting out on their courses in September will have the chance of gaining the grade when they complete their exams in 2010. It was assumed that universities would use the grade when making offers in that year. However, internal documents reveal many institutions have yet to decide and could delay using it in case it increases the dominance of independent school pupils. Admission tutors' concerns are based on research which suggests that private school pupils will do better in A* than comprehensive pupils. Almost a quarter of those at fee-paying schools are expected to gain at least one A*, compared to just nine per cent at comprehensives, according to an analysis by exam board AQA.
Bath University admissions committee, which will consult with tutors on the issue in the autumn, fears that independent schools will gain too many of the top grades. "It was noted that the A* grade was intended to be awarded only to the highest scoring percentage of students, who would largely be in attendance at independent schools," said minutes of a meeting earlier this year. "There are some concerns that selection on the basis of A* might have adverse effects on widening participation."
Extracts from the minutes of Exeter's admissions working group said: "Other institutions are not including the A* in their offers as they feel that this is likely to disadvantage state schools." It added: "The admissions group felt they required a more informed debate on the issue and have asked for an indicator from the 1994 Group of universities (of which it is a member)."
Bristol University said despite reservations, it would accept the A* but take in to account the school context in which candidates have studied. Only one university said it had made the decision to include the A* in some offers. At University College London, departments such as history, English and economics, which currently demand three grade As, will be permitted to ask for a maximum of one A* from 2010.
Source
Another desperate attempt to get NHS computers working
A confectionery and soft drinks executive and the man in charge of programming the nation's pensions have been appointed to take charge of the largest civilian IT project in the world, the Government has announced (David Rose writes).
The Department of Health has named Christine Connelly, formerly of Cadbury-Schweppes, and Martin Bellamy, of the Department for Work and Pensions, jointly to head the mammoth $24.9 BILLION overhaul of NHS computer systems, formerly the highest-paid job in Whitehall. As The Times reported in April, the previous head of the project, Richard Granger, earned $540,000 to $570,000 a year.
Mr Granger, the former director-general of NHS IT, resigned last year after five years. The Government has split his job into two - each advertised for around $400,000 - costing the taxpayer potentially 40 per cent more in managerial wage bills for the project.
The NHS National Programme for IT, designed to link 300 hospitals with thousands of GP surgeries, is running up to two years late in parts and has been repeatedly criticised by auditors, doctors and patients.
Source
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Aggressive Greenie "protesters"
Coercion and self-publicity are the stock in trade of the Green/Left. They NEED to be noticed
Hundreds of riot police pushed back protesters at the Kingsnorth coal power station "climate camp" in Kent yesterday, as officers raided the site and made eight arrests. Kent Police seized four men aged between 24 and 45 for public order offences in dawn skirmishes. A 27-year-old man was also arrested for obstructing police and a 40-year-old man was held on suspicion of possessing a prohibited weapon.
Scuffles broke out as shield-carrying officers moved in to surround protesters in the afternoon after the high-profile arrival of five campaigners who are trying to breach a court order banning them from entering the site. Police also stopped food deliveries to the camp.
The five protesters - Paul Morozzo, Jonathan Stevenson, Ellen Potts, Mel Evans and Oli Rodker - were among 29 that were arrested in June for stopping a coal delivery train outside Drax power station in North Yorkshire. Their bail conditions ban them from going near any British power station and from attending the climate camp but they phoned ahead to warn the local police commander of their arrival aboard the 1.33pm train from London Victoria to Chatham, Kent.
Mr Morozzo, 41, was arrested after being identified as a bail-breaker but the other four managed to sneak inside the camp despite the police sealing off the perimeter and holding identity checks. Another man was arrested at the time. Lawyers warned the group they are likely to face prison by entering the site. A spokeswoman for Kent Police said: "Police are investigating the arrival of campaigners believed to have breached their bail conditions but we cannot confirm how many arrests have been made."
About 700 protesters were on site yesterday; police sources said they expect about 2,000 this week, gathering to show their disapproval at plans by the plant's owners, E.ON, to build a new coal-powered station on the site. Protesters have promised to shut down Kingsnorth on Saturday.
Before arriving at the site, Mr Morozzo said: "I'm pretty nervous about being arrested because I've never been to prison. It will be bad but the worst thing about being arrested will be that I won't get to go to an event that I have been planning for a long time. This is one of the most important issues of our generation and it's vital that we are allowed to discuss it. It's tragic that the police seem to want to stop that."
Mr Stevenson, 26, who remained at large last night, had prepared for arrest by posting his father a birthday card and texting his parents: "I'm sorry I haven't said anything before, but I didn't want to worry you. It looks like I might be arrested at climate camp. It is my choice and it's something I feel strongly about. Please don't be angry." Ms Potts, 32, added: "We are also doing this because we feel our bail conditions are disproportionate to our supposed offences. I can see the logic in keeping us away from power stations, but to keep us away from this event, where people are meeting to discuss how to tackle climate change, is wrong."
Source
Why I'm not a good Samaritan
Britain today: Dangerous
Well, what would you have done? Linda Buchanan, 58, was verbally abused by two louts after she had asked them not to smoke on a crowded railway platform. They did the same the next day. On the third day, these big brave men shoved her off the platform and on to the rail tracks. It was only then that other commuters intervened.
I like to think I would have stepped in the first time. But, realistically, I can't be sure. Only the other day on a Tube, I saw two young men swigging wine from a bottle. Boris Johnson has outlawed consumption of alcohol anywhere on the Underground network. But the trouble is that he has not provided the resources to police the ban. I decided to say nothing, unlike a gentleman further down the carriage. He was braver than me and told them to pack it in.
You can imagine the result. "What the ---- are you going to do about it?" One then lit a cigarette. The passenger, wisely in my view, backed off. It was after 10pm; there were no staff in sight; there were no other passengers. We both got off at the next station to a chorus of abuse.
Both these incidents happened in a week when the 22nd teenager was murdered in London. Ryan Bravo, 18, was in a supermarket when he became caught up in a street gang feud. Another lad in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And so I have changed my pattern of behaviour. Would I walk late at night in certain areas? Never. Catch a night bus? Never. The last time I did, I dozed off and woke to the sound of four men kicking the hell out of an American tourist in the seat behind me. They stole his wallet. The driver connived in the crime by opening the door to let the gang off the bus. He didn't want any trouble, either.
A few years ago in east London, where I used to live, I was attacked by two hoodies. I fought back as best I could by wielding my briefcase at them. To my amazement, one hoodie went down. I grappled with the other, all the time shouting for help. A passerby who heard the commotion stopped at the gates of the park, but kept his distance until the boys had run away. He told me he felt guilty for not intervening. When I got home, I discovered the reason for my strength was not my regular work-outs, but a forgotten bottle of champagne in the bottom of my bag.
Would I do the same again? Never. I'd hand over my wallet today, because I would be scared the hoodies would have knives. In one of his most thoughtful speeches, David Cameron said: "There is a danger of becoming quite literally a de-moralised society, where nobody will tell the truth any more about what is good and bad, right and wrong." He's right. But I think there are many more people like me who fear that we have lost the courage to do the right thing.
Source
Correct spelling under attack
Just because students can't spell `their' and `truly' doesn't mean we should accept variations that break all our useful rules
So English spelling is in the dock once again. This time it's students who write "thier", "ignor" and "arguement" (and obviously don't know how to use a spell checker). The solution? According to Ken Smith, an academic at Bucks New University, we should now tolerate variant spellings. Students are now incapable of learning the spellings of "their" and "truly" that countless millions have mastered over the centuries. So let's change our attitudes to spelling to help this deserving minority.
Two important things are left out of this argument. One is that English spelling does have a system. The silent "e" in "tone" shows that the preceding "o" is long; the lack of "e" in "ton" show the "o" is short.
And so on with all the other vowels: "Dane/Dan", "pin/pine" etc. (The exception is TV commercials for Danone that pronounce the name to rhyme with "salmon" in breach of the silent "e" rule.) If we allowed odd variants like "ignor/ignore", this would obscure the silent "e" system in English. Better to teach people the real rules of English spelling, not folk myths about "i" before "e", which at best affects 11 common words.
The real advantage of a sound-based system like English is indeed that anything can be read aloud - as newsreaders demonstrate with foreign names, such as Solzhenitsyn and Pervez Musharraf in the past couple of days. As the system has been around for centuries, it has stuck with various anomalies, like the 11 ways of saying "a" - "age", "bad", "bath", "about", "beat", "many", "aisle", "coat", "ball", "beauty" and "cauliflower". The only languages that don't have such problems are those with "shallow" spelling systems that were standardised comparatively recently, such as Finnish.
English is called a "deep" spelling system because of rules like silent "e" and because it treats words as wholes. When we're reading silently, we don't read words like "the" and "of" letter by letter; we recognise them as wholes, just as we recognise a Nike swoosh or McDonald's golden arches. We go straight from the whole word to its meaning without passing through the sounds. We recognise the two hundred or so most frequent words of English as shapes - and we couldn't read silently at speed if we didn't. But reading whole words also applies to the famous oddities like "lieutenant" and "yacht": we store them as one-offs and don't work out their pronunciation letter by letter.
If we made the spelling of "they're", "there" and "their" interchangeable, we would be ignoring all the aspects of English writing other than sounds. The three forms fit into sentences in very different ways; the difference in spelling helps us to see the structure of the sentence. Spelling makes distinctions that are impossible in speech, such as "whole" versus "hole" or "beech" versus "beach". Reducing writing to a pale shadow of speech is impoverishing the English language.
There's nothing very unusual about using whole words: it's how Chinese works. Speakers of the different Chinese dialects can understand each other in writing even if they have different words for the same character. An educated Chinese speaker knows about 5,000 characters; a dictionary has 40,000. Surely we can manage a few hundred unique words in English? Memorising the spelling of the hundred most common words of English would mean that you spelt at least 45 per cent of the words correctly in any piece of typical writing, quite a useful start.
The panel (above right) shows some of the words that English-speakers are most likely to get wrong, the variants that people produce and the percentage of web pages that get them wrong. Would accepting all these variants make life easier?
One type of variation is between styles of spelling. Look up "judgment" or "minuscule" and the preferred spelling varies between North American and British dictionaries and from publisher to publisher. It's a matter of identity; use "color" and you're American, use "colour" and you're British.
The most common type concerns the consonant doubling rules of English - "embarrass", "accommodate", "desiccate". "Supersede" and "definitely" are probably examples of one-offs where you have to remember the word as a unique whole.
Before adopting greater tolerance to spelling, we need to take many factors into consideration, not just how letters go with sounds. And we need to take far more people into consideration than UK students.
The majority of people using English in the world are not native speakers and live outside English-speaking countries. Any change will have to take their needs into account, in particular the need for a consistent spelling system with constant word forms rather than something based on native speakers' pronunciation and characteristic spelling mistakes.
Source
Coercion and self-publicity are the stock in trade of the Green/Left. They NEED to be noticed
Hundreds of riot police pushed back protesters at the Kingsnorth coal power station "climate camp" in Kent yesterday, as officers raided the site and made eight arrests. Kent Police seized four men aged between 24 and 45 for public order offences in dawn skirmishes. A 27-year-old man was also arrested for obstructing police and a 40-year-old man was held on suspicion of possessing a prohibited weapon.
Scuffles broke out as shield-carrying officers moved in to surround protesters in the afternoon after the high-profile arrival of five campaigners who are trying to breach a court order banning them from entering the site. Police also stopped food deliveries to the camp.
The five protesters - Paul Morozzo, Jonathan Stevenson, Ellen Potts, Mel Evans and Oli Rodker - were among 29 that were arrested in June for stopping a coal delivery train outside Drax power station in North Yorkshire. Their bail conditions ban them from going near any British power station and from attending the climate camp but they phoned ahead to warn the local police commander of their arrival aboard the 1.33pm train from London Victoria to Chatham, Kent.
Mr Morozzo, 41, was arrested after being identified as a bail-breaker but the other four managed to sneak inside the camp despite the police sealing off the perimeter and holding identity checks. Another man was arrested at the time. Lawyers warned the group they are likely to face prison by entering the site. A spokeswoman for Kent Police said: "Police are investigating the arrival of campaigners believed to have breached their bail conditions but we cannot confirm how many arrests have been made."
About 700 protesters were on site yesterday; police sources said they expect about 2,000 this week, gathering to show their disapproval at plans by the plant's owners, E.ON, to build a new coal-powered station on the site. Protesters have promised to shut down Kingsnorth on Saturday.
Before arriving at the site, Mr Morozzo said: "I'm pretty nervous about being arrested because I've never been to prison. It will be bad but the worst thing about being arrested will be that I won't get to go to an event that I have been planning for a long time. This is one of the most important issues of our generation and it's vital that we are allowed to discuss it. It's tragic that the police seem to want to stop that."
Mr Stevenson, 26, who remained at large last night, had prepared for arrest by posting his father a birthday card and texting his parents: "I'm sorry I haven't said anything before, but I didn't want to worry you. It looks like I might be arrested at climate camp. It is my choice and it's something I feel strongly about. Please don't be angry." Ms Potts, 32, added: "We are also doing this because we feel our bail conditions are disproportionate to our supposed offences. I can see the logic in keeping us away from power stations, but to keep us away from this event, where people are meeting to discuss how to tackle climate change, is wrong."
Source
Why I'm not a good Samaritan
Britain today: Dangerous
Well, what would you have done? Linda Buchanan, 58, was verbally abused by two louts after she had asked them not to smoke on a crowded railway platform. They did the same the next day. On the third day, these big brave men shoved her off the platform and on to the rail tracks. It was only then that other commuters intervened.
I like to think I would have stepped in the first time. But, realistically, I can't be sure. Only the other day on a Tube, I saw two young men swigging wine from a bottle. Boris Johnson has outlawed consumption of alcohol anywhere on the Underground network. But the trouble is that he has not provided the resources to police the ban. I decided to say nothing, unlike a gentleman further down the carriage. He was braver than me and told them to pack it in.
You can imagine the result. "What the ---- are you going to do about it?" One then lit a cigarette. The passenger, wisely in my view, backed off. It was after 10pm; there were no staff in sight; there were no other passengers. We both got off at the next station to a chorus of abuse.
Both these incidents happened in a week when the 22nd teenager was murdered in London. Ryan Bravo, 18, was in a supermarket when he became caught up in a street gang feud. Another lad in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And so I have changed my pattern of behaviour. Would I walk late at night in certain areas? Never. Catch a night bus? Never. The last time I did, I dozed off and woke to the sound of four men kicking the hell out of an American tourist in the seat behind me. They stole his wallet. The driver connived in the crime by opening the door to let the gang off the bus. He didn't want any trouble, either.
A few years ago in east London, where I used to live, I was attacked by two hoodies. I fought back as best I could by wielding my briefcase at them. To my amazement, one hoodie went down. I grappled with the other, all the time shouting for help. A passerby who heard the commotion stopped at the gates of the park, but kept his distance until the boys had run away. He told me he felt guilty for not intervening. When I got home, I discovered the reason for my strength was not my regular work-outs, but a forgotten bottle of champagne in the bottom of my bag.
Would I do the same again? Never. I'd hand over my wallet today, because I would be scared the hoodies would have knives. In one of his most thoughtful speeches, David Cameron said: "There is a danger of becoming quite literally a de-moralised society, where nobody will tell the truth any more about what is good and bad, right and wrong." He's right. But I think there are many more people like me who fear that we have lost the courage to do the right thing.
Source
Correct spelling under attack
Just because students can't spell `their' and `truly' doesn't mean we should accept variations that break all our useful rules
So English spelling is in the dock once again. This time it's students who write "thier", "ignor" and "arguement" (and obviously don't know how to use a spell checker). The solution? According to Ken Smith, an academic at Bucks New University, we should now tolerate variant spellings. Students are now incapable of learning the spellings of "their" and "truly" that countless millions have mastered over the centuries. So let's change our attitudes to spelling to help this deserving minority.
Two important things are left out of this argument. One is that English spelling does have a system. The silent "e" in "tone" shows that the preceding "o" is long; the lack of "e" in "ton" show the "o" is short.
And so on with all the other vowels: "Dane/Dan", "pin/pine" etc. (The exception is TV commercials for Danone that pronounce the name to rhyme with "salmon" in breach of the silent "e" rule.) If we allowed odd variants like "ignor/ignore", this would obscure the silent "e" system in English. Better to teach people the real rules of English spelling, not folk myths about "i" before "e", which at best affects 11 common words.
The real advantage of a sound-based system like English is indeed that anything can be read aloud - as newsreaders demonstrate with foreign names, such as Solzhenitsyn and Pervez Musharraf in the past couple of days. As the system has been around for centuries, it has stuck with various anomalies, like the 11 ways of saying "a" - "age", "bad", "bath", "about", "beat", "many", "aisle", "coat", "ball", "beauty" and "cauliflower". The only languages that don't have such problems are those with "shallow" spelling systems that were standardised comparatively recently, such as Finnish.
English is called a "deep" spelling system because of rules like silent "e" and because it treats words as wholes. When we're reading silently, we don't read words like "the" and "of" letter by letter; we recognise them as wholes, just as we recognise a Nike swoosh or McDonald's golden arches. We go straight from the whole word to its meaning without passing through the sounds. We recognise the two hundred or so most frequent words of English as shapes - and we couldn't read silently at speed if we didn't. But reading whole words also applies to the famous oddities like "lieutenant" and "yacht": we store them as one-offs and don't work out their pronunciation letter by letter.
If we made the spelling of "they're", "there" and "their" interchangeable, we would be ignoring all the aspects of English writing other than sounds. The three forms fit into sentences in very different ways; the difference in spelling helps us to see the structure of the sentence. Spelling makes distinctions that are impossible in speech, such as "whole" versus "hole" or "beech" versus "beach". Reducing writing to a pale shadow of speech is impoverishing the English language.
There's nothing very unusual about using whole words: it's how Chinese works. Speakers of the different Chinese dialects can understand each other in writing even if they have different words for the same character. An educated Chinese speaker knows about 5,000 characters; a dictionary has 40,000. Surely we can manage a few hundred unique words in English? Memorising the spelling of the hundred most common words of English would mean that you spelt at least 45 per cent of the words correctly in any piece of typical writing, quite a useful start.
The panel (above right) shows some of the words that English-speakers are most likely to get wrong, the variants that people produce and the percentage of web pages that get them wrong. Would accepting all these variants make life easier?
One type of variation is between styles of spelling. Look up "judgment" or "minuscule" and the preferred spelling varies between North American and British dictionaries and from publisher to publisher. It's a matter of identity; use "color" and you're American, use "colour" and you're British.
The most common type concerns the consonant doubling rules of English - "embarrass", "accommodate", "desiccate". "Supersede" and "definitely" are probably examples of one-offs where you have to remember the word as a unique whole.
Before adopting greater tolerance to spelling, we need to take many factors into consideration, not just how letters go with sounds. And we need to take far more people into consideration than UK students.
The majority of people using English in the world are not native speakers and live outside English-speaking countries. Any change will have to take their needs into account, in particular the need for a consistent spelling system with constant word forms rather than something based on native speakers' pronunciation and characteristic spelling mistakes.
Source
Saturday, August 09, 2008
Common fertility treatments are 'no better than nature', study finds
Once again, conventional medical wisdom fails under test
Fertility treatments offered to couples trying for a baby are no more effective than attempts to conceive naturally, a study suggests today. Couples who attempt artificial insemination or use a drug designed to aid conception do not have significantly higher chances of a pregnancy than those not receiving treatment, the researchers found.
One in seven couples in Britain experiences problems conceiving, with about a quarter of these having unexplained infertility. Treatments are offered in line with fertility guidelines issued by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). They include artificial insemination, and the drug clomiphene citrate, which is believed to correct subtle ovulatory dysfunction. Such treatments are relatively inexpensive and do not involve stimulation of a woman's ovaries or IVF (in vitro fertilisation).
Researchers writing in the British Medical Journal, however, have thrown into question the provision of such treatments on the NHS. Intrauterine insemination (IUI) and clomiphene citrate (Clomifert or Clomid) are recommended for couples who have had difficulty conceiving, but where investigations have failed to find out why. Couples would typically be offered these methods before considering IVF, which involves collecting a woman's eggs, fertilising them outside the body and returning them to her womb.
For the study, 580 women who had been trying unsuccessfully to conceive for more than two years were recruited from four teaching hospitals and one general hospital in Scotland. One group of 193 women were given advice on having sex regularly but were left to try to conceive naturally. Another 194 women were given clomifene. The remaining 193 were given IUI, which is thought to enhance the chance of pregnancy by injecting sperm behind the cervical barrier. All treatments were followed for six months.
At the end of the study, there had been 101 live births - 32 among the 193 women trying to conceive naturally (17 per cent), 26 among those on the drug (14 per cent) and 43 among those having insemination (23 per cent). The researchers, from the universities of Aberdeen and Oxford, and hospitals in Edinburgh, Dundee, Falkirk and Glasgow, said that these differences were not significant enough to be attributed solely to treatment or lack of it. They suggested that the NHS could be wasting time and money on providing the therapies and called for the NICE guidelines to be reviewed.
Siladitya Bhattacharya, Professor of Reproductive Medicine in Aberdeen, who led the study, said that it was difficult to estimate how many women currently used IUI or clomifene citrate treatments, but added that it must be "hundreds of thousands".
NICE endorses the use of up to six free cycles of IUI without ovarian stimulation in couples with unexplained infertility. Thousands of couples are being denied the three free cycles of IVF recommended by NICE as an advanced treatment, largely because of the expense. Figures from the Department of Health showed in June that nine out of 151 primary care trusts in England provided three cycles of IVF, leaving many patients to pay up to $4,000 per cycle for private treatment.
NICE said that the fertility guidance published in 2004 set "clear standards by outlining which types of treatment offer couples the best chance of conceiving, based on the best available evidence from around the world".
Source. Another account of the above findings here.
Researchers Say Antibiotic From Maggots May Kill MRSA
British researchers said Tuesday they've developed an antibiotic from maggots that can be used to fight different kinds of bacteria including certain strains of deadly methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. The team from Swansea University in south Wales has developed a drug called Seraticin, which is made from the secretions of green bottle fly larvae, Agence France-Presse reported. The researchers are hoping to turn the antibiotic into a drug that can be injected, swallowed as a pill or used as an ointment.
More than 90,000 Americans get MRSA infections each year, according to a study released by the government last October. Medical and government experts worry annual deaths from the drug-resistant "superbug" may soon exceed deaths from AIDS.
MRSA bacteria can be carried by healthy people, living on their skin or in their noses. Most infections occur in hospitals. However, in recent years, the bug has invaded schools, locker rooms and fitness centers.
Source
Scottish government hospital faces criminal charges over 18 superbug deaths
Sad that patients have to die before negligence is noted
Criminal charges could be lodged over "appalling and completely unacceptable" conditions at a hospital where there were 18 deaths linked to Clostridium difficile after a damning independent report was passed to the Procurator Fiscal, the public prosecutor in Scotland. The report into infection control at the Vale of Leven hospital, Dunbartonshire, ordered by the Scottish government and published yesterday, describes inadequate facilities, poor practice and lack of leadership. Fifty-five patients contracted C.difficile at the hospital between last December and June and the bug was recorded as the underlying or contributory cause of death in 18 cases.
The hospital had insufficient handwashing facilities or single rooms, beds were too close together, patients were transferred frequently between wards and the building was rundown. The report also found a lack of leadership and supervision with regard to infection control, and a lack of clarity of roles and responsibilities. It noted that the hospital, which had been under threat of closure for ten years, had a lower priority than others in implementation of policies, surveillance systems and staff development.
Cairns Smith, Professor of Public Health at Aberdeen University, led the independent review team that visited the hospital five times last month and, on one occasion, walked round the wards affected by the outbreak.
Nicola Sturgeon, the Health Minister at Holyrood, said that she had passed the report to the Lord Advocate, who had in turn asked the area Procurator Fiscal for Argyll and Clyde to consider any further action.
Ms Sturgeon said: "Let me be absolutely clear that the picture painted by the review team report is appalling and completely unacceptable. The absence of clear lines of professional responsibility has fostered an environment where there was an inadequate management of a cluster of cases at ward level, or awareness at higher levels. There were also inadequacies and inconsistencies in advice to relatives and in management of patients."
Ms Sturgeon said that she had apologised to families of the victims when she met them yesterday morning and that the health board at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde owed them "a direct and unconditional apology for the serious failings on its part". The minister demanded "a clear and unequivocal commitment" to the future of the Vale of Leven hospital and the sustainability of its services. Ms Sturgeon pointed to a "history of neglect" at the hospital. The debate must no longer be about what services were to be withdrawn, she said, but about how the board could create a "modern, fit-for-purpose hospital".
A report from Health Protection Scotland yesterday into levels of C.difficile across the country from last December to June found that there were 3,174 cases, of which 285 patients died with the bacterium an underlying cause or a contributory factor. There were no clusters or outbreaks that had not been identified or reported.
Tom Divers, chief executive of Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board, apologised to patients and families. He said: "I recognise the concerns of relatives of patients that they were not properly informed every step of the way of the infection and how to help protect themselves and others from the risk of infection." Mr Divers said that he had ordered immediate improvements to, among other things, hand-washing facilities and bed spacing. A system of infection surveillance across all hospitals had been introduced. "As a result of today's recommendations we will take forward further actions to reinforce leadership, accountability and empowerment both at the ward and hospital level and ensure clear lines of communication and responsibility to the board's medical and nurse directors," he said.
"The uncertainty over the future of this local hospital has undoubtedly been a factor in the lack of major modernisation investments. I can give a commitment that this board will bring forward proposals in August and September that will set out a clear vision for the future of the site."
Syed Ahmed, Consultant in Public Health Medicine at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, said: "The Vale of Leven certainly had more cases of C.difficile than one would expect during the first six months of 2008. Sadly, C.difficile is a germ that is in the community and there will always be sick and vulnerable patients, especially among the elderly, who will develop C.difficile-associated diseases."
Richard Simpson, the Labour public health spokesman, and Jackie Baillie, the local Labour MSP, called for a public inquiry into the deaths. They were joined by Ross Finnie, the Scottish Liberal Democrat health spokesman, while Jackson Carlaw, of the Scottish Conservatives, said that NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde could not avoid responsibility for the "appalling" loss of life.
Source
Guardian Scientist (and leftist activist) Watson Predicts 4C Rise
Today's headline grabber is part-time scientist, part-time Obama and leftwing activist, Professor Robert Watson. Watson's latest prediction, in a long line of alarmist climate statements, is that the world is set for a four degree C rise in temperatures unless the world listens to him and stops that very nasty carbon emitting business.
Now you might think that yet another doom and gloom prediction from any 'scientific' source would elicit a yawn from most people - not least given the latest cycle of temperature rise ended 10 years ago and that global temperatures are already dropping and set to drop further. Not so the climate alarmist's intrepid flag-waver, The Guardian, which broke today's scary story. Bravely sidestepping the facts and evidence once again it has given a scaremongering platform designed to set the mass media sheep running - not to mention spiking sales. But why Robert Watson?
Well Watson is no ordinary scientist. He makes a living from climate alarmism not only in his taxpayer-funded 'laboratory' but also, in the cause of leftwing politics in the US and UK. The Guardian describes him as a 'chief advisor to the UK government'. Prior to that, of course, he was a senior advisor to Bill Clinton's administration, was a would-be chairman of the alarmist IPCC (till the Vast-Rightwing Conspiracy 'conspired' to unseat him) - who now spends his off-duty hours writing op-eds to get that Obarmy chap elected. Spot the politics here? Are we talking 'fair and balanced'?
Well Watson likes to do more than talk science in his op-eds. Take the one he wrote in May for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel papers in May in which he attempted to re-write history. In his 'politically neutral piece 'Obama Needs Support of Jewish Voters' Watson claimed that Harry Truman was not, as history has it, a blatant anti-semite at all, but was, in fact, sensitive to the "plight of the Jews". As this outraged Jewish reader noted, Truman was in fact an antisemite. And Truman's autobiography makes it perfectly clear that Truman "...was proud of the fact that not one Jew had ever set foot into the homes he shared with his wife."
Good to know The Guardian has maintained its usual high standard of journalistic integrity via such an a-political, 'scientific' source. But wait! Watson ... The Guardian ... Bill Clinton ... Obarmy ... scaremongering for a living ... re-writing anti-semitic history ... could it all just be a Vast Leftwing Conspiracy? Perhaps I'll write a letter to The Guardian ...
Source
Britain: Suddenly being green is not cool any more
Julie Burchill can't stand them. According to her new book, Not in my Name: A Compendium of Modern Hypocrisy, she thinks all environmentalists are po-faced, unsexy, public school alumni who drivel on about the end of the world because they don't want the working classes to have any fun, go on foreign holidays or buy cheap clothes.
Michael O'Leary, the chief executive of Ryanair, agrees. In an interview with Rachel Sylvester and me, he told us that the "nutbag ecologists" are the overindulged rich who have nothing better to do with their lives than talk about hot air and beans.
So the salad days are over; it's the end of the greens. Where only a year ago the smart new eco-warriors were revered, wormeries and unbleached cashmere jeans are now seen as a middle-class indulgence. But the problem for the green lobby isn't that it has been overrun by "toffs": it's the chilly economic climate that has frozen the shoots of environmentalism. Espousing the green life, with its misshapen vegetables and non-disposable nappies, is increasingly being seen as a luxury by everyone.
Only a year ago, according to MORI, 15 per cent of those polled put the environment in their top three concerns. That figure has dropped by a third to 10 per cent this month. Now that people are fighting for their own survival rather than their grandchildren's, they put crime, the economy and rising prices at the top of their list.
According to Andrew Cooper, director of the research company, Populus: "There is a direct correlation between how people perceive the economy and the importance they place on the environment. When times are tough people resent paying more to salve their conscience." This means that fewer people are now buying organic chickens from smart supermarkets when they can pay œ3.99 at Lidl. With all food prices rising, the organic market is being credit-crunched. Demand for it grew by 70 per cent from 2002 to 2007; now it has stalled, according to the consultancy Organic Monitor. The vast new organic Whole Foods Store on Kensington High Street in London is so quiet you can hear the cheese breathe in the specially designed glass room. Meanwhile the demand for takeaway pizzas and McDonald's has risen as people find the cheapest way to eat.
When David Cameron became leader of the Conservative Party he said that green issues were at the top of his agenda. His slogan for the local elections last year was "Vote Blue, Go Green". But in the past few months he has realised that voters have lost the appetite for their greens. He has only given one environmental speech since Christmas. Once he used to talk about putting a $6,000 windmill on top of his house. Now the message is not about conserving the planet but preserving his bank balance. He wears catalogue clothes, grows his own vegetables and holidays barefoot in Britain because it is less extravagant, not because he is trying to reduce his global footprint.
In fact, when the Tory leader's bicycle was stolen a week ago, the message of the story was not how green he was for riding his bike, but how broken our society has become when a politician finds his bike nicked from under his nose.
Boris Johnson was the first to realise that the tolerance for green taxes may have peaked. When he became Mayor of London, he dropped plans to charge a $50 congestion fee on gas-guzzling cars.
The Tories have quietly been reviewing many of their green policies. A range of measures designed to penalise motoring and other polluting activities has been put on hold in case they alienate families struggling to pay their bills. A proposal to tax the highest emitting cars up to œ500 more than the greenest vehicles has been quietly shelved, as has the plan to raise taxes on short-haul flights. Instead George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, has promised to cut tax on fuel when oil prices rise.
Gordon Brown has also stopped discussing his solar panels and compost heap in Scotland and is trying to dissociate himself from local council rubbish taxes - even though they have been driven by central government plans to put up landfill charges.
Both parties are looking at ways of rewarding people for being green rather than penalising them for throwing out their yoghurt pots with their teabags. Mr Osborne, in a speech last month, admitted: "When people are feeling the pinch, we need to make it pay to go green. Instead of being fined for not recycling, households should be paid for recycling."
When Barack Obama first decided to run for the presidency, he embraced the green cause. Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, about global warming had just become the biggest grossing documentary in history and Mr Gore had won the Nobel prize. But recently Mr Obama has been talking more about thrift than trees. Instead of showing off his recycling skills, he explains that his children don't receive Christmas or birthday presents.
It's not just the economic downturn that has harmed the green order. People have become wary of environmental causes that can turn out to do more harm than good. They don't want wind turbines marching across Britain's moors when nuclear power stations can do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They worry that washing and bleaching all those non-disposable nappies may be damaging the ozone layer, that the massive incentives for biofuels have distorted the world food market, and that green taxes are actually stealth taxes.
But paradoxically, just as Britain is turning its back on the environment, the country is finally becoming greener. Fewer people are moving house so they are buying fewer new white goods such as washing machines and fridges. They may not be queueing up for $18 organic Poilane bread, but for the first time in a decade they are discarding less food. They buy less impulsively and think more carefully before their weekly shop. Children are wearing hand-me-down uniforms rather than new ones made in sweatshops.
Bottled water sales have fallen. Garden centres have reported a 10 per cent rise in the sales of vegetable seeds in the past 12 months. People are saving money by growing their own potatoes and carrots. They are turning off their central heating for a few more months of the year and ditching their second car rather than buying an electric runaround. And instead of carbon-offsetting their holidays, they are simply going on fewer of them. It's the downturn that has made greenery look unappetising - but it may yet prove to do more than anything to save the planet.
Source
Nine passengers on every British Airways jumbo lose their bags: "British Airways loses more bags and operates more delayed planes than any other big airline in Europe, a confidential report seen by The Times has found. On the day that BA launched its first advertising campaign to rescue the reputation of Terminal 5 at Heathrow using the tag line "Terminal 5 is working", it emerged that BA customers were 80 per cent more likely to lose their luggage than average in the first half of 2008. Britain's third largest airline, bmi, also had one of the worst records for lost luggage this year, beaten only by BA in a table of 29 European airlines. Nine passengers travelling on a typical BA jumbo jet flight between January and June found that their bags were missing when they arrived at their destination. The research found that one third of BA's short-haul and medium-haul flights and roughly one third of its long-haul arrivals and departures were at least 15 minutes late this year, well below the European average. According to the Association of European Airlines (AEA), which carried out the study, Tarom Romanian Airlines was the most punctual airline."
Once again, conventional medical wisdom fails under test
Fertility treatments offered to couples trying for a baby are no more effective than attempts to conceive naturally, a study suggests today. Couples who attempt artificial insemination or use a drug designed to aid conception do not have significantly higher chances of a pregnancy than those not receiving treatment, the researchers found.
One in seven couples in Britain experiences problems conceiving, with about a quarter of these having unexplained infertility. Treatments are offered in line with fertility guidelines issued by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). They include artificial insemination, and the drug clomiphene citrate, which is believed to correct subtle ovulatory dysfunction. Such treatments are relatively inexpensive and do not involve stimulation of a woman's ovaries or IVF (in vitro fertilisation).
Researchers writing in the British Medical Journal, however, have thrown into question the provision of such treatments on the NHS. Intrauterine insemination (IUI) and clomiphene citrate (Clomifert or Clomid) are recommended for couples who have had difficulty conceiving, but where investigations have failed to find out why. Couples would typically be offered these methods before considering IVF, which involves collecting a woman's eggs, fertilising them outside the body and returning them to her womb.
For the study, 580 women who had been trying unsuccessfully to conceive for more than two years were recruited from four teaching hospitals and one general hospital in Scotland. One group of 193 women were given advice on having sex regularly but were left to try to conceive naturally. Another 194 women were given clomifene. The remaining 193 were given IUI, which is thought to enhance the chance of pregnancy by injecting sperm behind the cervical barrier. All treatments were followed for six months.
At the end of the study, there had been 101 live births - 32 among the 193 women trying to conceive naturally (17 per cent), 26 among those on the drug (14 per cent) and 43 among those having insemination (23 per cent). The researchers, from the universities of Aberdeen and Oxford, and hospitals in Edinburgh, Dundee, Falkirk and Glasgow, said that these differences were not significant enough to be attributed solely to treatment or lack of it. They suggested that the NHS could be wasting time and money on providing the therapies and called for the NICE guidelines to be reviewed.
Siladitya Bhattacharya, Professor of Reproductive Medicine in Aberdeen, who led the study, said that it was difficult to estimate how many women currently used IUI or clomifene citrate treatments, but added that it must be "hundreds of thousands".
NICE endorses the use of up to six free cycles of IUI without ovarian stimulation in couples with unexplained infertility. Thousands of couples are being denied the three free cycles of IVF recommended by NICE as an advanced treatment, largely because of the expense. Figures from the Department of Health showed in June that nine out of 151 primary care trusts in England provided three cycles of IVF, leaving many patients to pay up to $4,000 per cycle for private treatment.
NICE said that the fertility guidance published in 2004 set "clear standards by outlining which types of treatment offer couples the best chance of conceiving, based on the best available evidence from around the world".
Source. Another account of the above findings here.
Researchers Say Antibiotic From Maggots May Kill MRSA
British researchers said Tuesday they've developed an antibiotic from maggots that can be used to fight different kinds of bacteria including certain strains of deadly methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. The team from Swansea University in south Wales has developed a drug called Seraticin, which is made from the secretions of green bottle fly larvae, Agence France-Presse reported. The researchers are hoping to turn the antibiotic into a drug that can be injected, swallowed as a pill or used as an ointment.
More than 90,000 Americans get MRSA infections each year, according to a study released by the government last October. Medical and government experts worry annual deaths from the drug-resistant "superbug" may soon exceed deaths from AIDS.
MRSA bacteria can be carried by healthy people, living on their skin or in their noses. Most infections occur in hospitals. However, in recent years, the bug has invaded schools, locker rooms and fitness centers.
Source
Scottish government hospital faces criminal charges over 18 superbug deaths
Sad that patients have to die before negligence is noted
Criminal charges could be lodged over "appalling and completely unacceptable" conditions at a hospital where there were 18 deaths linked to Clostridium difficile after a damning independent report was passed to the Procurator Fiscal, the public prosecutor in Scotland. The report into infection control at the Vale of Leven hospital, Dunbartonshire, ordered by the Scottish government and published yesterday, describes inadequate facilities, poor practice and lack of leadership. Fifty-five patients contracted C.difficile at the hospital between last December and June and the bug was recorded as the underlying or contributory cause of death in 18 cases.
The hospital had insufficient handwashing facilities or single rooms, beds were too close together, patients were transferred frequently between wards and the building was rundown. The report also found a lack of leadership and supervision with regard to infection control, and a lack of clarity of roles and responsibilities. It noted that the hospital, which had been under threat of closure for ten years, had a lower priority than others in implementation of policies, surveillance systems and staff development.
Cairns Smith, Professor of Public Health at Aberdeen University, led the independent review team that visited the hospital five times last month and, on one occasion, walked round the wards affected by the outbreak.
Nicola Sturgeon, the Health Minister at Holyrood, said that she had passed the report to the Lord Advocate, who had in turn asked the area Procurator Fiscal for Argyll and Clyde to consider any further action.
Ms Sturgeon said: "Let me be absolutely clear that the picture painted by the review team report is appalling and completely unacceptable. The absence of clear lines of professional responsibility has fostered an environment where there was an inadequate management of a cluster of cases at ward level, or awareness at higher levels. There were also inadequacies and inconsistencies in advice to relatives and in management of patients."
Ms Sturgeon said that she had apologised to families of the victims when she met them yesterday morning and that the health board at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde owed them "a direct and unconditional apology for the serious failings on its part". The minister demanded "a clear and unequivocal commitment" to the future of the Vale of Leven hospital and the sustainability of its services. Ms Sturgeon pointed to a "history of neglect" at the hospital. The debate must no longer be about what services were to be withdrawn, she said, but about how the board could create a "modern, fit-for-purpose hospital".
A report from Health Protection Scotland yesterday into levels of C.difficile across the country from last December to June found that there were 3,174 cases, of which 285 patients died with the bacterium an underlying cause or a contributory factor. There were no clusters or outbreaks that had not been identified or reported.
Tom Divers, chief executive of Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board, apologised to patients and families. He said: "I recognise the concerns of relatives of patients that they were not properly informed every step of the way of the infection and how to help protect themselves and others from the risk of infection." Mr Divers said that he had ordered immediate improvements to, among other things, hand-washing facilities and bed spacing. A system of infection surveillance across all hospitals had been introduced. "As a result of today's recommendations we will take forward further actions to reinforce leadership, accountability and empowerment both at the ward and hospital level and ensure clear lines of communication and responsibility to the board's medical and nurse directors," he said.
"The uncertainty over the future of this local hospital has undoubtedly been a factor in the lack of major modernisation investments. I can give a commitment that this board will bring forward proposals in August and September that will set out a clear vision for the future of the site."
Syed Ahmed, Consultant in Public Health Medicine at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, said: "The Vale of Leven certainly had more cases of C.difficile than one would expect during the first six months of 2008. Sadly, C.difficile is a germ that is in the community and there will always be sick and vulnerable patients, especially among the elderly, who will develop C.difficile-associated diseases."
Richard Simpson, the Labour public health spokesman, and Jackie Baillie, the local Labour MSP, called for a public inquiry into the deaths. They were joined by Ross Finnie, the Scottish Liberal Democrat health spokesman, while Jackson Carlaw, of the Scottish Conservatives, said that NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde could not avoid responsibility for the "appalling" loss of life.
Source
Guardian Scientist (and leftist activist) Watson Predicts 4C Rise
Today's headline grabber is part-time scientist, part-time Obama and leftwing activist, Professor Robert Watson. Watson's latest prediction, in a long line of alarmist climate statements, is that the world is set for a four degree C rise in temperatures unless the world listens to him and stops that very nasty carbon emitting business.
Now you might think that yet another doom and gloom prediction from any 'scientific' source would elicit a yawn from most people - not least given the latest cycle of temperature rise ended 10 years ago and that global temperatures are already dropping and set to drop further. Not so the climate alarmist's intrepid flag-waver, The Guardian, which broke today's scary story. Bravely sidestepping the facts and evidence once again it has given a scaremongering platform designed to set the mass media sheep running - not to mention spiking sales. But why Robert Watson?
Well Watson is no ordinary scientist. He makes a living from climate alarmism not only in his taxpayer-funded 'laboratory' but also, in the cause of leftwing politics in the US and UK. The Guardian describes him as a 'chief advisor to the UK government'. Prior to that, of course, he was a senior advisor to Bill Clinton's administration, was a would-be chairman of the alarmist IPCC (till the Vast-Rightwing Conspiracy 'conspired' to unseat him) - who now spends his off-duty hours writing op-eds to get that Obarmy chap elected. Spot the politics here? Are we talking 'fair and balanced'?
Well Watson likes to do more than talk science in his op-eds. Take the one he wrote in May for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel papers in May in which he attempted to re-write history. In his 'politically neutral piece 'Obama Needs Support of Jewish Voters' Watson claimed that Harry Truman was not, as history has it, a blatant anti-semite at all, but was, in fact, sensitive to the "plight of the Jews". As this outraged Jewish reader noted, Truman was in fact an antisemite. And Truman's autobiography makes it perfectly clear that Truman "...was proud of the fact that not one Jew had ever set foot into the homes he shared with his wife."
Good to know The Guardian has maintained its usual high standard of journalistic integrity via such an a-political, 'scientific' source. But wait! Watson ... The Guardian ... Bill Clinton ... Obarmy ... scaremongering for a living ... re-writing anti-semitic history ... could it all just be a Vast Leftwing Conspiracy? Perhaps I'll write a letter to The Guardian ...
Source
Britain: Suddenly being green is not cool any more
Julie Burchill can't stand them. According to her new book, Not in my Name: A Compendium of Modern Hypocrisy, she thinks all environmentalists are po-faced, unsexy, public school alumni who drivel on about the end of the world because they don't want the working classes to have any fun, go on foreign holidays or buy cheap clothes.
Michael O'Leary, the chief executive of Ryanair, agrees. In an interview with Rachel Sylvester and me, he told us that the "nutbag ecologists" are the overindulged rich who have nothing better to do with their lives than talk about hot air and beans.
So the salad days are over; it's the end of the greens. Where only a year ago the smart new eco-warriors were revered, wormeries and unbleached cashmere jeans are now seen as a middle-class indulgence. But the problem for the green lobby isn't that it has been overrun by "toffs": it's the chilly economic climate that has frozen the shoots of environmentalism. Espousing the green life, with its misshapen vegetables and non-disposable nappies, is increasingly being seen as a luxury by everyone.
Only a year ago, according to MORI, 15 per cent of those polled put the environment in their top three concerns. That figure has dropped by a third to 10 per cent this month. Now that people are fighting for their own survival rather than their grandchildren's, they put crime, the economy and rising prices at the top of their list.
According to Andrew Cooper, director of the research company, Populus: "There is a direct correlation between how people perceive the economy and the importance they place on the environment. When times are tough people resent paying more to salve their conscience." This means that fewer people are now buying organic chickens from smart supermarkets when they can pay œ3.99 at Lidl. With all food prices rising, the organic market is being credit-crunched. Demand for it grew by 70 per cent from 2002 to 2007; now it has stalled, according to the consultancy Organic Monitor. The vast new organic Whole Foods Store on Kensington High Street in London is so quiet you can hear the cheese breathe in the specially designed glass room. Meanwhile the demand for takeaway pizzas and McDonald's has risen as people find the cheapest way to eat.
When David Cameron became leader of the Conservative Party he said that green issues were at the top of his agenda. His slogan for the local elections last year was "Vote Blue, Go Green". But in the past few months he has realised that voters have lost the appetite for their greens. He has only given one environmental speech since Christmas. Once he used to talk about putting a $6,000 windmill on top of his house. Now the message is not about conserving the planet but preserving his bank balance. He wears catalogue clothes, grows his own vegetables and holidays barefoot in Britain because it is less extravagant, not because he is trying to reduce his global footprint.
In fact, when the Tory leader's bicycle was stolen a week ago, the message of the story was not how green he was for riding his bike, but how broken our society has become when a politician finds his bike nicked from under his nose.
Boris Johnson was the first to realise that the tolerance for green taxes may have peaked. When he became Mayor of London, he dropped plans to charge a $50 congestion fee on gas-guzzling cars.
The Tories have quietly been reviewing many of their green policies. A range of measures designed to penalise motoring and other polluting activities has been put on hold in case they alienate families struggling to pay their bills. A proposal to tax the highest emitting cars up to œ500 more than the greenest vehicles has been quietly shelved, as has the plan to raise taxes on short-haul flights. Instead George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, has promised to cut tax on fuel when oil prices rise.
Gordon Brown has also stopped discussing his solar panels and compost heap in Scotland and is trying to dissociate himself from local council rubbish taxes - even though they have been driven by central government plans to put up landfill charges.
Both parties are looking at ways of rewarding people for being green rather than penalising them for throwing out their yoghurt pots with their teabags. Mr Osborne, in a speech last month, admitted: "When people are feeling the pinch, we need to make it pay to go green. Instead of being fined for not recycling, households should be paid for recycling."
When Barack Obama first decided to run for the presidency, he embraced the green cause. Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, about global warming had just become the biggest grossing documentary in history and Mr Gore had won the Nobel prize. But recently Mr Obama has been talking more about thrift than trees. Instead of showing off his recycling skills, he explains that his children don't receive Christmas or birthday presents.
It's not just the economic downturn that has harmed the green order. People have become wary of environmental causes that can turn out to do more harm than good. They don't want wind turbines marching across Britain's moors when nuclear power stations can do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They worry that washing and bleaching all those non-disposable nappies may be damaging the ozone layer, that the massive incentives for biofuels have distorted the world food market, and that green taxes are actually stealth taxes.
But paradoxically, just as Britain is turning its back on the environment, the country is finally becoming greener. Fewer people are moving house so they are buying fewer new white goods such as washing machines and fridges. They may not be queueing up for $18 organic Poilane bread, but for the first time in a decade they are discarding less food. They buy less impulsively and think more carefully before their weekly shop. Children are wearing hand-me-down uniforms rather than new ones made in sweatshops.
Bottled water sales have fallen. Garden centres have reported a 10 per cent rise in the sales of vegetable seeds in the past 12 months. People are saving money by growing their own potatoes and carrots. They are turning off their central heating for a few more months of the year and ditching their second car rather than buying an electric runaround. And instead of carbon-offsetting their holidays, they are simply going on fewer of them. It's the downturn that has made greenery look unappetising - but it may yet prove to do more than anything to save the planet.
Source
Nine passengers on every British Airways jumbo lose their bags: "British Airways loses more bags and operates more delayed planes than any other big airline in Europe, a confidential report seen by The Times has found. On the day that BA launched its first advertising campaign to rescue the reputation of Terminal 5 at Heathrow using the tag line "Terminal 5 is working", it emerged that BA customers were 80 per cent more likely to lose their luggage than average in the first half of 2008. Britain's third largest airline, bmi, also had one of the worst records for lost luggage this year, beaten only by BA in a table of 29 European airlines. Nine passengers travelling on a typical BA jumbo jet flight between January and June found that their bags were missing when they arrived at their destination. The research found that one third of BA's short-haul and medium-haul flights and roughly one third of its long-haul arrivals and departures were at least 15 minutes late this year, well below the European average. According to the Association of European Airlines (AEA), which carried out the study, Tarom Romanian Airlines was the most punctual airline."
Friday, August 08, 2008
British public hospitals infested with rats, fleas and bed bugs
Hygiene standards in NHS hospitals have been called into question after it emerged they are routinely dealing with infestations of vermin
Outbreaks have included rats in maternity wards, wasps and fleas in neo-natal units, bed bug infestations, flies in operating theatres and maggots found in patients' slippers. The data, uncovered using Freedom of Information rules, include hospitals with maggots, "over-run" with ants and mice "all over" wards; cockroaches in a urology unit and a store for sterile materials infested with mice. The figures raise questions over standards of cleanliness and hygiene in hospitals although the healthcare regulator said complaints about pests were 'negligible'.
The Conservatives asked all 171 hospital trusts in England for details of pest control incidents for the last two years. Of those, 127 Trusts responded and almost all had experienced problems and 100 of them collected detailed information about pest infestations. In total there were almost 20,000 reports of pest problems and seven out of 10 trusts that responded reported they had called in pest control officers more than 50 times since January 2006 - an average of once a fortnight.
Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells Hospital Trust, the trust at the centre of Britain's biggest superbug scandal when more than 300 patient deaths were linked to Clostridium difficile, reported more than 50 pest incidents in two years. A spokesman for Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust said: "Most incidents relate to old buildings which have now been demolished at Pembury Hospital. There is no specific problem."
Of the trusts that collected detailed information 80 per cent had problems with ants, 66 per cent had rats, 77 per cent had mice, 59 per cent had problems with cockroaches, 65 per cent had biting insects or fleas, 24 per cent had problems with bed bugs and 6 per cent had maggots.
Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley said: "Labour have said over and over again that they will improve cleanliness in our hospitals but these figures clearly show that they are failing. It is difficult for health service estates to maintain a completely pest free environment but the level and variety of these infestations is concerning. "We need greater transparency in NHS infection control, and publishing data like this is one way in which we can drive up overall hygiene standards."
Eight hospitals trusts called in pest control officers more than 500 times, with Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust having the most severe problem with 1,070 incidents in two years.
The healthcare watchdog inspects hospital trusts against a strict hygiene code and has the power to shut down wards, departments or even a whole hospital if there is a risk to patients. Christine Braithwaite, head of healthcare associated infection programme at the Healthcare Commission said: "We receive a wide range of information on hygiene from different sources. However, concerns around pest control have, to date, been negligible. "Clearly, it may be necessary to take action against pests in these large public buildings from time to time. "However, it is important for hospital trusts to have robust procedures in place to deal with any pest problems and if they persist, trusts should question whether they have the right systems in place. "If we were concerned that the safety of patients was at risk, through poor hygiene standards or in any other way, we would take immediate action."
Health Minister Ivan Lewis said: "Hospitals must be responsible for ensuring their buildings are clean and that patient safety is not compromised. The Hygiene Code requires NHS bodies to have a pest control policy that anticipates and manages this issue. "Trusts should take rapid action and follow through with surveillance in place to avoid pest incidents and minimize hazards. Use of pest control is a sign of good proactive management. "The claim that insects spread hospital acquired infections is entirely unproven. There is no evidence of their carriage of antibiotic resistant bacteria being a hazard to patients. Despite this we expect hospitals to take continued action to tackle pest problems"
Nottingham University Hospital had the most pest control incidents of any that responded to the Conservatives' request for information. John Simpson, Director of Estates and Facilities Management at Nottingham University Hospitals, said: "These figures must be put into context. It goes without saying that as the fourth largest trust in the country, our hospitals are bigger than most others around the country and therefore our figures should be compared with trusts with similar-sized estates rather than smaller acute trusts. "It is also worth bearing in mind that trusts are likely to have recorded and reported figures differently and therefore the table may not be comparing like-for-like data."
Source
Neglect the kids ... it will stop them getting bored
Modern parents over-organise children's playtime. Just let them get on with it, urges our writer
Just days into the long holiday and the summer soundtrack isn't so much the sleepy drone of busy bees as the whine of listless children. The thrills of liberty and long lie-ins have worn thin, everyone else seems to have fled the country to enjoy holidays abroad and the "I'm bored..." mantra is driving parents to breaking point.
The reaction of many well-meaning adults is to swiftly organise weeks of activity aimed at keeping every minute of every hour so crammed with events that their offspring's ennui will be eased before it gets a chance to set in. But should we bother? Isn't it time we recognised the benefits of boredom and gave children the chance to use their own initiative and learn how to entertain themselves?
Guilt simply comes with the territory for most parents, especially as so many people now work full-time and perform amazing juggling acts to ferry their children around, with timetables crammed not just with education but also with huge amounts of extracurricular activities. Holidays too are now packed with sports/art/drama camps, every minute timetabled.
Paddy O'Donnell, professor of social psychology at the University of Glasgow, has been studying the long-term effects of structured play and the way it has impacted at university level over the past ten to 15 years. "Children have a natural inclination to play and explore and until they reach around the age of 3 this is directed by the parents, hopefully helping them to deepen their curiosity and learn to use language to explore the world. "Once they reach 3 they are interested in social play, which becomes a major feature of their activities. Boredom shouldn't last long if children are in the right environment where they're dragged off either by curiosity or the desire to socialise. It continues only if there's no one to play with or the environment's too restrictive."
The age of 5 or 6 has always been a crucial stage at which youngsters naturally tend to stop spending so much time with their parents and seek the company of their peers. Children like playing with their own age group and find siblings less interesting, though they'll make do with them when there's no alternative, such as during family holidays.
Adults who feel morally obliged to spend every waking hour entertaining their children and doing everything "as a family" might want to take stock at this point, especially as O'Donnell also points out that "parents should not be pals. Their role is as a parent, not as a friend, and children need to make their own friends."
According to O'Donnell, the shift in play over the past couple of decades is reflected in the attitudes of today's students. "Schools, clubs and other activities are now very much leader-related," he says. "Unstructured play is becoming rarer with no moving as a pack or just getting on with activities - children always expect and want to relate individually to whomever is in charge and we now have 18, 19, 20-year-olds who can only function effectively like that. Students are far less confident than they were 15 years ago, far less likely to make a decision by themselves and with little aspiration to get things moving without someone else being in charge and directing them."
What are parents so scared of when it comes to leaving their children to get on with it? Desiring nothing more than freedom to do nothing is incomprehensible to modern parents, who steadfastly believe that structuring supervised activities is the best they can do for their ofspring. Escape and creativity are vital for development, but supervision now tempers a vast amount of activity.
Dr Richard Ralley, a senior psychology lecturer at Edge Hill College in Lancashire, is now quantifying a research project he carried out with 300 participants to assess the wider implications and benefits of boredom: "People often report that when they are bored they do nothing. Seen this way, boredom is useful - we conserve energy, but do not find this pleasant, so are ready to engage with the next useful activity that comes along. "The brain sucks up a fifth of our energy and our children are the most heavily assessed in Europe. Some genuine downtime seems due."
One of the hardest parts of parenting is letting children develop independence to learn to think for themselves, but if sent off cheerfully to try something different few children will demur. However, add a nervous or weepy parent, over-the-top exhortations to take care and a terrifying list of what can go wrong - and failure seems the most likely outcome. We would all like our children to grow into well-rounded and capable human beings in the safety of our own living rooms, but it doesn't work like that.
Ralley says that parents should leave their children to feel fed-up, rather than keeping them constantly occupied, as boredom could also allow children to get sufficient rest. "One of the features that has arisen in people's reports so far is a loneliness that comes with boredom, as well as the inadequacy of grasping on to any kind of activity to relieve it. I'm starting to believe that being bored is a signal to stop doing other things and to re-engage socially. I've always suggested that social activity is best: a family beach trip, playing football, having a picnic." Once you've embraced the idea of benign neglect having a valid position in parenting, you're still left with the problem of actually finding the places where children can entertain themselves safely. Aim for physical activity, especially as that will ensure real sleep at the end of the day and remove the time constraints, irrespective of whether you're at a beach, country park or in a forest. Give children basic safety instructions, make sure they know where to find you and then tell them that you'll see them when they're hungry or bored with messing around.
The real test then will actually be for the parents, as very few of us can sit peacefully for two or three hours and not leap fretfully towards every sound, or lack of sound. Build up the time if you lack confidence in yourself or your children, watch over them unseen if you really cannot bear to let them out of your sight and then let them get on with it - the Lord of the Flies-style confrontations excepted.
Letting kids run screaming into the wind on an empty beach, leaving them to get filthy building a den in the woods, or just spending a whole day slouching in their pyjamas without one parental exhortation to get dressed, might be hard for parents who are used to driving their children everywhere - in every sense. But when it comes to journeying into their own imagination, children are best left to travel solo.
Source
Archbishop compares homosexual relationships to marriage : "The Archbishop of Canterbury has claimed that active homosexual relationships are "comparable to marriage" in the eyes of God. [Thus showing complete contempt for the Bible]
Hygiene standards in NHS hospitals have been called into question after it emerged they are routinely dealing with infestations of vermin
Outbreaks have included rats in maternity wards, wasps and fleas in neo-natal units, bed bug infestations, flies in operating theatres and maggots found in patients' slippers. The data, uncovered using Freedom of Information rules, include hospitals with maggots, "over-run" with ants and mice "all over" wards; cockroaches in a urology unit and a store for sterile materials infested with mice. The figures raise questions over standards of cleanliness and hygiene in hospitals although the healthcare regulator said complaints about pests were 'negligible'.
The Conservatives asked all 171 hospital trusts in England for details of pest control incidents for the last two years. Of those, 127 Trusts responded and almost all had experienced problems and 100 of them collected detailed information about pest infestations. In total there were almost 20,000 reports of pest problems and seven out of 10 trusts that responded reported they had called in pest control officers more than 50 times since January 2006 - an average of once a fortnight.
Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells Hospital Trust, the trust at the centre of Britain's biggest superbug scandal when more than 300 patient deaths were linked to Clostridium difficile, reported more than 50 pest incidents in two years. A spokesman for Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust said: "Most incidents relate to old buildings which have now been demolished at Pembury Hospital. There is no specific problem."
Of the trusts that collected detailed information 80 per cent had problems with ants, 66 per cent had rats, 77 per cent had mice, 59 per cent had problems with cockroaches, 65 per cent had biting insects or fleas, 24 per cent had problems with bed bugs and 6 per cent had maggots.
Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley said: "Labour have said over and over again that they will improve cleanliness in our hospitals but these figures clearly show that they are failing. It is difficult for health service estates to maintain a completely pest free environment but the level and variety of these infestations is concerning. "We need greater transparency in NHS infection control, and publishing data like this is one way in which we can drive up overall hygiene standards."
Eight hospitals trusts called in pest control officers more than 500 times, with Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust having the most severe problem with 1,070 incidents in two years.
The healthcare watchdog inspects hospital trusts against a strict hygiene code and has the power to shut down wards, departments or even a whole hospital if there is a risk to patients. Christine Braithwaite, head of healthcare associated infection programme at the Healthcare Commission said: "We receive a wide range of information on hygiene from different sources. However, concerns around pest control have, to date, been negligible. "Clearly, it may be necessary to take action against pests in these large public buildings from time to time. "However, it is important for hospital trusts to have robust procedures in place to deal with any pest problems and if they persist, trusts should question whether they have the right systems in place. "If we were concerned that the safety of patients was at risk, through poor hygiene standards or in any other way, we would take immediate action."
Health Minister Ivan Lewis said: "Hospitals must be responsible for ensuring their buildings are clean and that patient safety is not compromised. The Hygiene Code requires NHS bodies to have a pest control policy that anticipates and manages this issue. "Trusts should take rapid action and follow through with surveillance in place to avoid pest incidents and minimize hazards. Use of pest control is a sign of good proactive management. "The claim that insects spread hospital acquired infections is entirely unproven. There is no evidence of their carriage of antibiotic resistant bacteria being a hazard to patients. Despite this we expect hospitals to take continued action to tackle pest problems"
Nottingham University Hospital had the most pest control incidents of any that responded to the Conservatives' request for information. John Simpson, Director of Estates and Facilities Management at Nottingham University Hospitals, said: "These figures must be put into context. It goes without saying that as the fourth largest trust in the country, our hospitals are bigger than most others around the country and therefore our figures should be compared with trusts with similar-sized estates rather than smaller acute trusts. "It is also worth bearing in mind that trusts are likely to have recorded and reported figures differently and therefore the table may not be comparing like-for-like data."
Source
Neglect the kids ... it will stop them getting bored
Modern parents over-organise children's playtime. Just let them get on with it, urges our writer
Just days into the long holiday and the summer soundtrack isn't so much the sleepy drone of busy bees as the whine of listless children. The thrills of liberty and long lie-ins have worn thin, everyone else seems to have fled the country to enjoy holidays abroad and the "I'm bored..." mantra is driving parents to breaking point.
The reaction of many well-meaning adults is to swiftly organise weeks of activity aimed at keeping every minute of every hour so crammed with events that their offspring's ennui will be eased before it gets a chance to set in. But should we bother? Isn't it time we recognised the benefits of boredom and gave children the chance to use their own initiative and learn how to entertain themselves?
Guilt simply comes with the territory for most parents, especially as so many people now work full-time and perform amazing juggling acts to ferry their children around, with timetables crammed not just with education but also with huge amounts of extracurricular activities. Holidays too are now packed with sports/art/drama camps, every minute timetabled.
Paddy O'Donnell, professor of social psychology at the University of Glasgow, has been studying the long-term effects of structured play and the way it has impacted at university level over the past ten to 15 years. "Children have a natural inclination to play and explore and until they reach around the age of 3 this is directed by the parents, hopefully helping them to deepen their curiosity and learn to use language to explore the world. "Once they reach 3 they are interested in social play, which becomes a major feature of their activities. Boredom shouldn't last long if children are in the right environment where they're dragged off either by curiosity or the desire to socialise. It continues only if there's no one to play with or the environment's too restrictive."
The age of 5 or 6 has always been a crucial stage at which youngsters naturally tend to stop spending so much time with their parents and seek the company of their peers. Children like playing with their own age group and find siblings less interesting, though they'll make do with them when there's no alternative, such as during family holidays.
Adults who feel morally obliged to spend every waking hour entertaining their children and doing everything "as a family" might want to take stock at this point, especially as O'Donnell also points out that "parents should not be pals. Their role is as a parent, not as a friend, and children need to make their own friends."
According to O'Donnell, the shift in play over the past couple of decades is reflected in the attitudes of today's students. "Schools, clubs and other activities are now very much leader-related," he says. "Unstructured play is becoming rarer with no moving as a pack or just getting on with activities - children always expect and want to relate individually to whomever is in charge and we now have 18, 19, 20-year-olds who can only function effectively like that. Students are far less confident than they were 15 years ago, far less likely to make a decision by themselves and with little aspiration to get things moving without someone else being in charge and directing them."
What are parents so scared of when it comes to leaving their children to get on with it? Desiring nothing more than freedom to do nothing is incomprehensible to modern parents, who steadfastly believe that structuring supervised activities is the best they can do for their ofspring. Escape and creativity are vital for development, but supervision now tempers a vast amount of activity.
Dr Richard Ralley, a senior psychology lecturer at Edge Hill College in Lancashire, is now quantifying a research project he carried out with 300 participants to assess the wider implications and benefits of boredom: "People often report that when they are bored they do nothing. Seen this way, boredom is useful - we conserve energy, but do not find this pleasant, so are ready to engage with the next useful activity that comes along. "The brain sucks up a fifth of our energy and our children are the most heavily assessed in Europe. Some genuine downtime seems due."
One of the hardest parts of parenting is letting children develop independence to learn to think for themselves, but if sent off cheerfully to try something different few children will demur. However, add a nervous or weepy parent, over-the-top exhortations to take care and a terrifying list of what can go wrong - and failure seems the most likely outcome. We would all like our children to grow into well-rounded and capable human beings in the safety of our own living rooms, but it doesn't work like that.
Ralley says that parents should leave their children to feel fed-up, rather than keeping them constantly occupied, as boredom could also allow children to get sufficient rest. "One of the features that has arisen in people's reports so far is a loneliness that comes with boredom, as well as the inadequacy of grasping on to any kind of activity to relieve it. I'm starting to believe that being bored is a signal to stop doing other things and to re-engage socially. I've always suggested that social activity is best: a family beach trip, playing football, having a picnic." Once you've embraced the idea of benign neglect having a valid position in parenting, you're still left with the problem of actually finding the places where children can entertain themselves safely. Aim for physical activity, especially as that will ensure real sleep at the end of the day and remove the time constraints, irrespective of whether you're at a beach, country park or in a forest. Give children basic safety instructions, make sure they know where to find you and then tell them that you'll see them when they're hungry or bored with messing around.
The real test then will actually be for the parents, as very few of us can sit peacefully for two or three hours and not leap fretfully towards every sound, or lack of sound. Build up the time if you lack confidence in yourself or your children, watch over them unseen if you really cannot bear to let them out of your sight and then let them get on with it - the Lord of the Flies-style confrontations excepted.
Letting kids run screaming into the wind on an empty beach, leaving them to get filthy building a den in the woods, or just spending a whole day slouching in their pyjamas without one parental exhortation to get dressed, might be hard for parents who are used to driving their children everywhere - in every sense. But when it comes to journeying into their own imagination, children are best left to travel solo.
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Archbishop compares homosexual relationships to marriage : "The Archbishop of Canterbury has claimed that active homosexual relationships are "comparable to marriage" in the eyes of God. [Thus showing complete contempt for the Bible]