Eye on Britain (2)

February 9, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — jonjayray @ 6:04 pm

British class war based on a denial of reality

Inequality in Britain isn’t down to class but brains

The National Equality Panel, set up by the Government to examine inequality in Britain, published its findings last week. And surprise, surprise: it found that there is a lot of inequality in Britain. People from poorer backgrounds do not usually achieve as much as people from richer ones.

That this is a basic fact of life in the UK is certainly true – although it is not true, as the NEP report claims, that we are significantly more unequal than most other Western countries. The differences are marginal. Even in the places it cites as egalitarian utopias, Sweden and Denmark, it is still the case that who your parents are has a very significant effect on how your life works out.

Indeed, no country anywhere comes close to the egalitarian ideal of ensuring that everyone, irrespective of their background, has exactly the same chance to succeed. And there is a very straightforward reason: people everywhere care more about themselves and their immediate families than they care about everyone else. We all devote our efforts and ingenuity to promoting our own and our families’ interests rather than those of “society as a whole”; when the two conflict, we prioritise the former. That’s why every attempt to achieve a society in which each person is treated in exactly the same way not only requires state coercion of the most extreme kind, but also always ends in abject failure.

The authors of the NEP report have noticed that our fondness for ourselves and our kin stands in the way of making Britain more equal. They do not want to endorse that tendency, because that might mean endorsing the inequalities that it helps to create. So instead, they imply that inequality in Britain derives less from our concern for our families than from prejudice and snobbery: people at the bottom of the social ladder are being held back because those who are higher up treat them unjustly – and if they were given a fair chance by those who select from applicants for university places or for well-paid jobs, they would do much better.

That belief is certainly widely held. But to what extent is it actually true? The most striking thing about this report is what it leaves out. In common with the other two studies of equality commissioned by the Government in the last 18 months, it does not say a single word about a factor that should at least be considered in any explanation of why some people are more successful than others: their greater intelligence. There is a mass of data which shows that the measurement which best predicts how a child will do in later life is not its parents’ income, but its IQ score at the age of 10 or 11. It’s not a perfect correlation – but it’s a far better guide than any of the variables that the NEP report considered, such as class, gender, ethnic or religious group, or whether you went to a private school rather than the local comprehensive.

Around half of the variation between two people’s income and status at work is explained by differences in their IQ. Studies of twins separated at birth and raised in very different families indicate that between 50 and 60 per cent of an individual’s IQ score is down to their genes. The remainder can be affected by how you are brought up. It can be boosted if you are also raised by intelligent parents, or diminished if they don’t provide an environment which is sufficiently stimulating. So smart children, born to smart parents, have a double advantage – which may be why they do so well.

Recognising the role that intelligence plays in differing levels of achievement does not mean endorsing every inequality in British society. Clearly, many of them are without any justification at all: examples include the income of some bankers and the abysmal condition of some state schools. But identifying ways for the state to tackle inequality requires accurately identifying its causes. This report fails that test, and so can’t provide any useful advice on what should be done. Still, don’t expect that to stop the Government constructing policies based on its claims.

SOURCE

Former British council chief, 84, arrested for assault for waving walking stick at feral youths

Sick British policing again. They hate middle class Britain

For several months, 84-year-old Graham Powell and his wife have felt frightened and ‘under siege’ in their own home. The couple say a gang of youths has waged a campaign of harassment against them – vandalising their car, subjecting them to verbal abuse and violence – without censure from the police. So Mr Powell was surprised when he waved his walking stick to remonstrate with one of the teenagers – and was promptly arrested on suspicion of assault.

The former council chief was forced to spend six hours in a police station being questioned by officers after the 15-year-old claimed he had been struck. Now facing a possible court appearance, Mr Powell has written to the chief constable of the force to demand answers over why no action was taken to protect him and his 74-year-old wife from the ‘feral’ youths.

He said yesterday: ‘My wife and myself are under siege from up to ten local youths aged between 11 and 15 and the police are doing nothing about it. ‘I have identified the youths but despite my complaints the police do not seem to be taking it seriously. ‘It is outrageous that these feral youths believe they are beyond the law. Instead of them being arrested I am now facing standing in the dock.’

Mr and Mrs Powell say they have been virtual prisoners in their flat at Caldicot near Newport, South Wales. A series of incidents which Mr Powell has listed in his letter includes their car rear lights being smashed, and tyres let down. His wife, a former Mayor of Caldicot, has been trapped in her garage twice by youths who have jammed the door shut and on another occasion a teenager tried to drive her car away as she cleaned it.

Mr Powell, a Labour councillor and former leader of Gwent County Council, said yesterday: ‘I have lived here peacefully for 31 years until recently. ‘We are constantly being verbally abused whenever we step outside, youths peer into our living room and ring our door bell. ‘Our kitchen window has been smeared with eggs and drawing pins have been placed upright under our doormat. ‘During the recent wintry weather our letter box was filled with ice and our back door barricaded with snow. They have also threatened to cut the brake pipes on my car.’

The former railway guard also spoke of his recollection of the confrontation which led to his arrest. He said: ‘I remonstrated with the youth after my wife caught him fiddling with one of the letter boxes. ‘He told me to mid my own ‘effing’ business and punched me on the arm and tried to run up the stairs of the flats. ‘I poked my walking stick through the rails to stop him and he forced the stick down with his arm. ‘A few seconds later two heavy plant pots were thrown at me narrowly missing my head.’

The grandfather added: ‘I was amazed when the police accused me of assault and kept me in the police station for six hours. ‘I am on police bail and have to report back at the beginning of next month. My letter to the chief constable is a plea for help.’ He said in his open letter to Mick Giannasi, Chief Constable of Gwent Police: ‘My wife and I are desperately in need of your help in common with all those who find themselves in a similar situation. ‘The problem is feral youths who appear to be beyond the law despite the ample legislation which Parliament has enacted to deal with them. ‘We are constantly harassed by a group of youths who seem to be able to do what they like without fear of the law or any form of sanction or punishment.’

Comparing his situation to the experience of Fiona Pilkington, who killed herself and her disabled daughter after they were subjected to a similar catalogue of abuse, he continued: ‘The boys seem to get bolder each time they do something and find nothing happens to them. ‘We are left constantly wondering what his going to happen next – is it going to be a lighted petrol-soaked rag through a door or window? ‘I have dialled 999 several times and officers have visited me but there has been no real action. ‘Surely it is not acceptable that elderly people should feel in a state of siege in their own homes and live in fear of that the next day is going to bring.’

A spokesman for Gwent Police said: ‘An 84-year-old-man was arrested following an incident on suspicion of assault. ‘He was released on police bail pending further enquiries.’ She added: ‘Any report of crime made to Gwent Police will be fully investigated and the appropriate course of action taken. ‘It would be inappropriate for us to comment further about reports made or correspondence received from a particular individual.’

SOURCE

Climate scepticism grows among Britain’s Conservative politicians

Most Conservative MPs, including at least six members of the shadow cabinet, are sceptical about their party’s continued focus on climate change policies, it has been claimed. The recent furore around “Climategate” has hardened the views of Tory MPs, many of whom were already unconvinced by the scientific consensus, and has led to increasing calls for the issue to be pushed down the priority list.

Tim Montgomerie, founder and editor of the ConservativeHome website, said climate change had the potential to be as divisive for the party as Europe once was. “You have got 80% or 90% of the party just not signed up to this. No one minded at the beginning, but people are starting to realise this could be quite expensive, so opinion is hardening.”

Montgomerie said that while some MPs simply did not believe the science, others felt it would harm the economy too much to focus on policies to reduce emissions. “Some think, ‘What is the point in taking all these decisions if India and China and others row ahead?’ Nigel Lawson makes the point that 30% of Indian people have no electricity and the Indian government has to give that to them. The cheapest way to do that is fossil fuels.”

Lord Lawson chairs the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a thinktank that claims the climate debate has been distorted by exaggeration. On pages 28 and 29, Benny Peiser, director of the foundation, debates the issue with the Observer’s science editor, Robin McKie. A recent BBC poll found that 25% of people did not think global warming was happening – compared with 15% in November – and a similar trend is taking place among Conservative MPs. “You scratch almost any backbencher and you find they are sceptical and I know of six shadow cabinet ministers who are sceptical about the economic consequences of a low-carbon policy,” said Montgomerie. He said the leadership was “recalibrating” its message.

Last week, representatives of 50 Tory councils gathered in London for a “Lean and Green” conference where Nick Herbert and Greg Clark – the shadow environment and energy secretaries – argued that green policies could save money and improve Britain’s energy security. Clark rejected the notion that it was a change in direction. “There is a real threat to our energy security and there is a risk of a black-out,” he said. Green policies that developed alternatives to fossil fuels and persuaded people to reduce energy consumption were “win-win” because they saved money, provided energy security and reduced carbon emissions.

One MP said the party was much more likely to respond to economic arguments: “There is a large group in the party – probably the majority – who are sceptical. That ranges from those who don’t believe any of it to those that think the climate is changing but are not sure how much it is down to human beings, to those who accept the science but think we could act, but then in one year China and India could wipe out that effort. “

There are fears that the issue could flare up after the election if the Conservatives win power – particularly around plans for a third runway at Heathrow, which the party has said it will scrap.

Tim Yeo, the Tory MP who chairs the environmental audit select ­committee, said the shift had come about because of scientific mistakes, and a “backwash” from Copenhagen. “That has created a context in which it is easy for sceptics to build momentum and that is influencing a good number of politicians. “What people have lost sight of is that serious climate-change scientists have always argued that the climate is changing gradually, that temperatures are rising and that one factor – and probably the main one – is the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. But they have never argued that it is easy to know how quickly that is happening.

The scientist at the centre of “Climate­gate” last night revealed he was so traumatised by the scandal that he considered killing himself. Professor Phil Jones told the Sunday Times the support of his family, especially the love of his five-year-old granddaughter, had helped him to shake off suicidal thoughts.

SOURCE

Why “The Observer” is Wrong

By Prof. Philip Stott

Today, The Observer hosts a vitriolic ‘Debate’ [pp.28 - 29] between its long-standing Science Editor, Robin McKie, and Dr. Benny Peiser, Director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). The fact that this newspaper is now holding a debate is in itself indicative of the media change with respect to ‘global warming’, and I congratulate Dr. Peiser on being willing to enter the lion’s den. However, and perhaps inevitably, the debate is then followed by a highly-predictable Observer ‘Comment’ [p.34].

Nevertheless, this ‘Comment’ is more intriguing than Robin McKie’s aggressive debating stance, because, unfortunately for The Observer, it inadvertently reveals precisely why its arguments are fallacious: “But deniers deal not in the balance of risk but the exposure of uncertainty. Tiny doubts on the periphery of the case, they say, undermine the whole story, banishing the threat.”

This could not be farther from the truth. Indeed, it is somewhat ironic that The Observer should claim this when Dr. Peiser, Mr. McKie’s nemesis, is, in part, a social anthropologist of risk, who wisely responds in one of his exchanges as follows: “You ask whether I doubt that global warming poses a potential risk. Of course it does. So do asteroid impacts, nuclear warfare and ice ages, to name just a few. What these potential risks have in common is that they have a low probability but a high impact. Just because we cannot rule out any of these risks doesn’t mean that there is a need for panic measures.”

The Attempt To Make Global Warming A Cost-Benefit Zero Has Failed

Part of the visceral anger of people like Robin McKie is that their goose has been cooked. For some 20 years now, there has been a ruthless, and at times disgraceful, attempt to make ‘global warming’ a zero in any cost-benefit analysis with regards to political and economic actions relating to climate change, which would mean that there is no balancing of risks at all, but simply the one risk of ‘global warming’. This fundamental flaw was first brilliantly exposed by none other than Bjørn Lomborg [right] in his devastating The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, which appeared as early as 2001. The fury heaped on Lomborg was inevitably proportional to the threat that his arguments posed to the ‘Green’ agenda over this key issue. He had exposed the true agenda for what it was.

Today, many more people are fully aware of this fatal weakness, and newspapers like The Observer, despite their continued bluster, can no longer hide the fact that the ‘global warming’ risk has to be balanced against many other competing risks, not to mention against the serious risk to the world economy, and to the poor, posed by precipitate and ill-judged political and economic actions. This is why Robin McKie, The Observer, and their ilk are growing increasingly desperate to maintain a zero status for ‘global warming’. It is also precisely why Dr. Peiser – “the sceptic” – presents a far more reasoned and nuanced analysis of risk: “I am not advocating political inaction. Far from it. While I reject economically damaging and, for that reason, politically unattainable climate policies, I am in favour of adapting to a changing climate and making our societies more resilient, as mankind has throughout its existence.”

Risk And Science

The Observer and Robin McKie are just plain wrong. They are also wrong with respect to risk when we specifically address the science. There can be no predictable outcomes for fiddling at the margins with one single human factor in a system such as climate, the most complex, coupled, non-linear, semi-chaotic known. What climate will Mr. McKie and The Observer produce for us? And, won’t it change when we get there, in any case? They can have no idea.

No, The Observer and Robin McKie are deeply, even naively, misguided. Scepticism and risk assessment go together naturally; faith, by contrast, is an absolute definition of risk, and one appropriate in neither science nor economics.

SOURCE

British schools ‘forced to spend on IT which doesn’t work’

Governments and IT are usually a bad combination

An academy designed to be the first fully wireless school has been blighted by computer problems since being opened by Gordon Brown more than two years ago. The head of the £24 million Bristol Brunel Academy — a beacon of Labour’s Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme — said that its wireless system had yet to work properly, teachers still did the register on paper because of problems with swipe cards and fingerprint recognition systems were unreliable.

Brunel’s problems, similar to those experienced in other schools, raise questions about the education department’s £1.65 billion annual expenditure on IT for classrooms, which accounts for a significant share of the £55 billion BSF programme.

Armando Di-Finizio, the head of Brunel, said that millions of pounds were being wasted on “white elephant” technology in schools. He said that his school — the first to be rebuilt under BSF — had continuing technical difficulties. “The school was designed to be completely wireless but I have yet to see a school where wireless works well. “We have been told that we have one of the most powerful systems in the country, but it is still not enough. We keep being told that lots of lessons have been learnt. We have had to beef it up out of our own budget.”

Mr Di-Finizio criticised the millions of pounds being spent on technology in schools, and suggested that there was a fixation with constantly updating classrooms with the latest gadgets. A government drive to provide state schools with the latest technology has seen most equipped with a large number of computers and “interactive whiteboards” in classrooms. Some have installed swipe cards, fingerprint recognition systems, and have “virtual learning environments” to allow children and teachers to access the curriculum online.

Mr Di-Finizio said that there were pressures on schools to buy expensive equipment. “One could be led up the wrong path by IT experts. Is it worth having card-swiping and fingerprint detection systems in place, if the teacher still has to do the register? “We introduced a system of swipe cards because it encourages children to use them in the library and to pay for lunch, rather than carrying cash. We spent all this money installing a swipe-card room entry system but the teacher ends up having to do the register anyway, because how do you know a child has not stolen someone else’s card, or isn’t covering for a friend?”

He said that there were problems with some of the latest fads, such as fingerprint recognition systems, which apparently do not work properly if the child has dirty fingers. But he did not call for the removal of technology from schools, saying that it had been useful for raising attainment.

Schools spend £1.65 billion a year on information technology, with one computer to every three pupils in secondary schools, and one to six in primary schools. Yet some heads, particularly those involved with the BSF programme complain that they have lost freedom over their IT budgets, and are forced to buy expensive equipment through designated suppliers.

SOURCE

British thug gets shot by victim: “Jamie Bunter, 20, of Ramilles Close, Brixton, held the loaded gun to the head of a stranger and pulled the trigger after rifling through his pockets. When the gun jammed, the shocked victim bravely fought back and managed to beat his attacker across the head with the butt. He was then shot in the stomach by a second armed robber, but was still able to blast Bunter in the leg. Bunter was armed with a shortened .410 calibre double-barrelled folding shotgun. He was with two other white men, one armed with a pistol and the other carrying a hunting knife, who remain at large. The court heard Bunter racially abused his black victim before demanding a phone from the man, who refused to hand it over. The robber needed hospital treatment for head and leg injuries and was identified as one of the gunmen from his wounds. Bunter, who committed an almost identical robbery with a fake weapon when he was 15, was convicted of attempted murder, robbery, and firearms charges after a trial at the Old Bailey last month. He was given an indeterminate sentence for public protection on Wednesday and ordered to serve at least 12 years before he is eligible for release.”

February 8, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — jonjayray @ 11:18 pm

BBC’s billions that fund a green agenda

How amusing! This has made my day. The BBC is betting its employees’ retirement money on global warming being right. It’s literally putting its money where its mouth is — but it is backing the wrong horse. Its employees will be frothing mad about it in the not too distant future. Those responsible will undoubtedly answer for it in court one day. What right have they got to gamble with other people’s money? Most racegoers think their horse is a “cert” when they back it. The BBC has gambled on such a prophecy too. The money should have gone into blue chip stocks — real present-day assets. As for ethics, what ethics? But skeptics will be laughing about it for years. “He laughs loudest ….”

STRIKING parallels between the BBC’s coverage of the global warming debate and the activities of its pension fund can be revealed today. The corporation is under investigation after being inundated with complaints that its editorial coverage of climate change is biased in favour of those who say it is a man-made phenomenon.

The £8billion pension fund is likely to come under close scrutiny over its commitment to promote a low-carbon economy while struggling to reverse an estimated £2billion deficit.

Concerns are growing that BBC journalists and their bosses regard disputed scientific theory that climate change is caused by mankind as “mainstream” while huge sums of employees’ money is invested in companies whose success depends on the theory being widely accepted. The fund, which has 58,744 members, accounts for about £8 of the £142.50 licence fee and the proportion looks likely to rise while programme budgets may have to be cut to help reduce the deficit.

The BBC is the only media organisation in Britain whose pension fund is a member of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, which has more than 50 members across Europe. Its chairman is Peter Dunscombe, also the BBC’s Head of Pensions Investment.

Prominent among its recent campaigns was a call for a “strong and binding” global agreement on climate change – one that fell on deaf ears after the UN climate summit in Copenhagen failed to reach agreement on emissions targets and a cut in greenhouse gases.

Veteran journalist and former BBC newsreader Peter Sissons is unhappy with the corporation’s coverage. He said recently: “The corporation’s most famous interrogators invariably begin by accepting that ‘the science is settled’ when there are countless reputable scientists and climatologists producing work that says it isn’t. It is, in effect, BBC policy, enthusiastically carried out by the BBC’s environment correspondents, that those views should not be heard. “I was not proud to be working for an organisation with a corporate mind so closed on such an important issue.”

Official BBC editorial policy governing how its correspondents should cover global warming was revealed after a member of the public wrote in: “I have heard reports that the BBC has decided not to broadcast any news or reports which disprove, disagree, or cast doubt on global warming theory. Could you provide some form of justification for this?”

In a reply dated October 26 last year, Stephanie Harris, Head of Accountability at BBC News, said: “BBC News takes the view that our reporting needs to be calibrated to take into account the scientific consensus that global warming is man-made.” She went on to quote from a BBC-commissioned report published in June 2007, which said: “There may be now a broad scientific consensus that climate change is definitely happening and that it is at least predominantly man-made. The weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to opponents of the consensus.”

Last month the BBC Trust announced an investigation after a string of complaints that the corporation was promoting the theory that climate change was a man-made phenomenon.

SOURCE

Official coverup! How Britain’s Met Office blocked questions on its own man’s role in ‘hockey stick’ climate row

The Meteorological Office is blocking public scrutiny of the central role played by its top climate scientist in a highly controversial report by the beleaguered United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Professor John Mitchell, the Met Office’s Director of Climate Science, shared responsibility for the most worrying headline in the 2007 Nobel Prize-winning IPCC report – that the Earth is now hotter than at any time in the past 1,300 years. And he approved the inclusion in the report of the famous ‘hockey stick’ graph, showing centuries of level or declining temperatures until a steep 20th Century rise.

By the time the 2007 report was being written, the graph had been heavily criticised by climate sceptics who had shown it minimised the ‘medieval warm period’ around 1000AD, when the Vikings established farming settlements in Greenland. In fact, according to some scientists, the planet was then as warm, or even warmer, than it is today. Early drafts of the report were fiercely contested by official IPCC reviewers, who cited other scientific papers stating that the 1,300-year claim and the graph were inaccurate. But the final version, approved by Prof Mitchell, the relevant chapter’s review editor, swept aside these concerns.

Now, the Met Office is refusing to disclose Prof Mitchell’s working papers and correspondence with his IPCC colleagues in response to requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act. The block has been endorsed in writing by Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth – whose department has responsibility for the Met Office.

Documents obtained by The Mail on Sunday reveal that the Met Office’s stonewalling was part of a co-ordinated, legally questionable strategy by climate change academics linked with the IPCC to block access to outsiders. Last month, the Information Commissioner ruled that scientists from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia – the source of the leaked ‘Warmergate’ emails – acted unlawfully in refusing FOI requests to share their data.

Some of the FOI requests made to them came from the same person who has made requests to the Met Office. He is David Holland, an electrical engineer familiar with advanced statistics who has written several papers questioning orthodox thinking on global warming. The Met Office’s first response to Mr Holland was a claim that Prof Mitchell’s records had been ‘deleted’ from its computers. Later, officials admitted they did exist after all, but could not be disclosed because they were ‘personal’, and had nothing to do with the professor’s Met Office job. Finally, they conceded that this too was misleading because Prof Mitchell had been paid by the Met Office for his IPCC work and had received Government expenses to travel to IPCC meetings. The Met Office had even boasted of his role in a Press release when the report first came out.

But disclosure, they added, was still rejected on the grounds it would ‘inhibit the free and frank provision of advice or the free and frank provision of views’. It would also ‘prejudice Britain’s relationship with an international organisation’ and thus be contrary to UK interests. In a written response justifying the refusal dated August 20, 2008, Mr Ainsworth – then MoD Minister of State – used exactly the same language.

Mr Holland also filed a request for the papers kept by Sir Brian Hoskins of Reading University, who was the review editor of a different chapter of the IPCC report. When this too was refused, Mr Holland used the Data Protection Act to obtain a copy of an email from Sir Brian to the university’s information officer. The email, dated July 17, 2008 – when Mr Holland was also trying to get material from the Met Office and the CRU – provides clear evidence of a co-ordinated effort to hide data. Sir Brian wrote: ‘I have made enquiries and found that both the Met Office/MOD and UEA are resisting the FOI requests made by Holland. The latter are very relevant to us, as UK universities should speak with the same voice on this. I gather that they are using academic freedom as their reason.’

At the CRU, as the Warmergate emails reveal, its director, Dr Phil Jones (who is currently suspended), wrote to an American colleague: ‘[We are] still getting FOI requests as well as Reading. All our FOI officers have been in discussions and are now using the same exceptions – not to respond.’

Last night Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, said the affair further undermined the credibility of the IPCC and those associated with it. He said: ‘It’s of critical importance that data such as this should be open. More importantly, the questions being raised about the hockey stick mean that we may have to reassess the climate history of the past 2,000 years. ‘The attempt to make the medieval warm period disappear is being seriously weakened, and the claim that now is the warmest time for 1,300 years is no longer based on reliable evidence.’

Despite repeated requests, the MoD and Met Office failed to comment.

SOURCE

Higher pay, shorter hours… but complaints about British GPs soar 12 per cent in ONE year

Complaints against GPs have risen by 12 per cent in just a year. Grievances lodged by patients totalled almost 40,000, official NHS figures show. That means a rise of a quarter in a decade during which GPs have seen their pay increased massively and their workload slashed. Much of the increase in complaints has followed the introduction of a new GP contract in 2004, which sent family doctors’ salaries soaring by 47 per cent to an average of £106,000 a year.

At the same time, more than nine out of ten GPs stopped providing care at evenings and weekends – slashing their workload by an average of seven hours a week in exchange for an annual pay cut of £6,000.

Now figures from the NHS Information Centre indicate that this fall in the amount of work they are carrying out has damaged patient care. Some 7,448 complaints were termed administration errors, including GPs not communicating properly with out-of-hours doctors and, between them, failing to provide proper care. The largest group of complaints – 14,866 – was about clinical care, including failure to diagnose illnesses or refer patients to specialists.

Last week a coroner ruled that failings in NHS out of hours care led to the death of pensioner David Gray at the hands of Dr Daniel Ubani, an exhausted German GP who had just flown in on his first UK shift.

Out of hours care has been the focus of increasing concern since primary care trusts assumed responsibility. A shortage of GPs willing to take up the work means PCTs often employ private companies, many of whom use overseas doctors.

It also emerged recently that medical lawyers have seen the number of complaints about out of hours care shoot up by 50 per cent in two years.

The Daily Mail revealed last week that care is so bad in some parts of the country that you only have a one-in-50 chance of a home visit from an on-call GP.

The latest official figures from the NHS revealed that 48,597 formal concerns were lodged with primary care trusts about GPs and dentists in 2008/09. This was up around 10,000 in a decade – and up more than 5,000 on the 2007/08 total. Dentists accounted for 8,909 of the complaints.

The Patients Association said failings in out-of-hours services and difficulties getting an appointment with a GP were likely to explain the rise in complaints. Claire Rayner, president of the Patients’ Association, called for people unhappy with their GP to complain and do all they can to get onto a rival doctor’s list. She said: ‘Too often people who are ill and frightened are not getting the care they need, especially when they are trying to get care outside normal surgery hours. ‘When people are not happy with their GP, we would urge them to vote with their feet.’

Both major political parties want to see the end of formal boundaries between GP practices, so patients can go to any doctor they choose. But they face a tough battle with the British Medical Association, which would prefer to see them retained.

Tory health spokesman Mark Simmonds called the findings ‘extremely concerning’. He blamed the 2004 change to out of hours arrangements for much of the rise, with family doctors taking the blame when patients could not get adequate help in an emergency in some cases. Other complaints were triggered when out of hours services and GPs failed to share vital information.

Mr Simmonds said the Tories would tear up the 2004 contract and return responsibility for commissioning out of hours care to GPs. He said: ‘I have no doubt that this is in part due to Labour’s failure to put the patients at the heart of the NHS and their changes to the GP out of hours system, which took responsibility for the service away from GPs and gave it to local bureaucrats.’

Dr Laurence Buckman, chairman of the GP committee of the BMA, said that while poor clinical care and bad behaviour could never be excused, it was possible that patients were more likely to complain now than they were ten years ago. He added: ‘Putting this in perspective, there are nearly 300 million consultations every year in general practice and surveys show that, on average, nine out of ten patients are satisfied.’

A league table shows that the London borough of Islington had the highest number of complaints per head of population, followed by Lincolnshire, the London boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark, and Great Yarmouth & Waveney in Norfolk.

The NHS was forced to turn to foreign doctors to plug shortages in hospitals when Labour took office and set targets for cutting waiting times for treatment. Since them, many more Britons have gone through the seven-year training period for doctors and begun work on the wards. But the NHS still has to fly in foreign doctors to cover out of hours shifts since the vast majority of GPs were allowed to opt out of what was a traditional duty of care.

A Department of Health spokesperson said: ‘It is important to note this is not representative of the picture across the NHS. The NHS treats millions of people every day and the vast majority of patients experience good quality, safe and effective care – the Care Quality Commission’s recent patient experience survey shows that 93 per cent of patients rate their overall care as good or excellent. ‘In April last year, we introduced a new, simpler complaints system, which encourages patient feedback and ensures Trusts act on this to make their services more effective, personal and safe.’

SOURCE

Top British scientist says UN panel is losing credibility

Now it’s “Africa-gate”!

A LEADING British government scientist has warned the United Nations’ climate panel to tackle its blunders or lose all credibility. Robert Watson, chief scientist at Defra, the environment ministry, who chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 1997 to 2002, was speaking after more potential inaccuracies emerged in the IPCC’s 2007 benchmark report on global warming.

The most important is a claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up to 50% by 2020, a remarkably short time for such a dramatic change. The claim has been quoted in speeches by Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, and by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general. This weekend Professor Chris Field, the new lead author of the IPCC’s climate impacts team, told The Sunday Times that he could find nothing in the report to support the claim. The revelation follows the IPCC’s retraction of a claim that the Himalayan glaciers might all melt by 2035.

The African claims could be even more embarrassing for the IPCC because they appear not only in its report on climate change impacts but, unlike the glaciers claim, are also repeated in its Synthesis Report.

This report is the IPCC’s most politically sensitive publication, distilling its most important science into a form accessible to politicians and policy makers. Its lead authors include Pachauri himself. In it he wrote: “By 2020, in some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50%. Agricultural production, including access to food, in many African countries is projected to be severely compromised.” The same claims have since been cited in speeches to world leaders by Pachauri and Ban. Speaking at the 2008 global climate talks in Poznan, Poland, Pachauri said: “In some countries of Africa, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by 50% by 2020.” In a speech last July, Ban said: “Yields from rain-fed agriculture could fall by half in some African countries over the next 10 years.”

Speaking this weekend, Field said: “I was not an author on the Synthesis Report but on reading it I cannot find support for the statement about African crop yield declines.”

Watson said such claims should be based on hard evidence. “Any such projection should be based on peer-reviewed literature from computer modelling of how agricultural yields would respond to climate change. I can see no such data supporting the IPCC report,” he said.

The claims in the Synthesis Report go back to the IPCC’s report on the global impacts of climate change. It warns that all Africa faces a long-term threat from farmland turning to desert and then says of north Africa, “additional risks that could be exacerbated by climate change include greater erosion, deficiencies in yields from rain-fed agriculture of up to 50% during the 2000-20 period, and reductions in crop growth period (Agoumi, 2003)”. “Agoumi” refers to a 2003 policy paper written for the International Institute for Sustainable Development, a Canadian think tank. The paper was not peer-reviewed.

Its author was Professor Ali Agoumi, a Moroccan climate expert who looked at the potential impacts of climate change on Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria. His report refers to the risk of “deficient yields from rain-based agriculture of up to 50% during the 2000–20 period”. These claims refer to other reports prepared by civil servants in each of the three countries as submissions to the UN. These do not appear to have been peer-reviewed either.

The IPCC is also facing criticism over its reports on how sea level rise might affect Holland. Dutch ministers have demanded that it correct a claim that more than half of the Netherlands lies below sea level when, in reality, it is about a quarter.

The errors seem likely to bring about change at the IPCC. Field said: “The IPCC needs to investigate a more sophisticated approach for dealing with emerging errors.”

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Boredom shortens life expectancy, scientists say

It would be more reasonable to conclude from the findings that less healthy people have fewer options and are hence more likely to be bored

Boredom could be shaving years off your life, scientists have found. Researchers say that people who complain of boredom are more likely to die young, and that those who experienced “high levels” of tedium are more than 2½ times as likely to die from heart disease or stroke than those satisfied with their lot.

More than 7000 civil servants were studied over 25 years – and those who said they were bored were nearly 40 per cent more likely to have died by the end of study than those who did not. The scientists said this could be a result of those unhappy with their lives turning to such unhealthy habits as smoking or drinking, which would cut their life expectancy.

Specialists from the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London looked at data from 7524 civil servants, aged between 35 and 55, interviewed between 1985 and 1988 about their levels of boredom. They then found out whether they had died by April last year. Those who reported feeling a great deal of boredom were 37 per cent more likely to have died by the end of the study.

Researcher Martin Shipley, who co-wrote the report to be published in the International Journal of Epidemiology this week, said: “The findings on heart disease show there was sufficient evidence to say there is a link with boredom.”

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New British teachers lack the training to handle violence in the classroom, survey reveals

Nearly half of new teachers have not been given enough training to deal with violence in the classroom, a survey showed today. Figures also suggest two-thirds of newly qualified teachers have received no clear guidance on restraining violent students. The Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), which carried out the survey, has called for such training to be made compulsory.

According to the union, 49 per cent of newly-qualified teachers and probationers in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland felt they had not had enough training to deal with challenging behaviour. One in five said they had been provided with clear guidance on restraining violent pupils, with nearly 30 per cent saying they had not yet covered this area ofthe job in their training.

Guidance by the Department for Children, Schools and Families lists the types of force teachers can use on children. It can include passive physical contact such as blocking a pupil’s path and active contact such as leading a pupil by the hand or arm. In more extreme circumstances, ‘appropriate restrictive holds, which may require specific expertise or training’, may be used, it says.

ATL says the problem with the official guidance is that teachers are not clear on how to interpret it. Sharon Liburd, from the ATL, told the BBC: ‘These violent confrontations can erupt very very quickly, they [teachers] need to be clear about what sort of steps they can take to try to stop the situation from escalating, if they have to physically intervene and how, in fact, they do that.’

But National Association of Head Teachers general secretary Mick Brookes said there was no need for compulsory training in schools because many never saw a violent incident. The ATL surveyed 1,001 of its members across the UK.

A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said new teachers were given support to ensure they had the skills they needed and said the Government’s ‘behaviour tsar’ Sir Alan Steer had noted progress in pupils’ conduct across Britan. He said: ‘Good behaviour and an atmosphere of respect should be the norm in all schools. ‘In his recent review, Sir Alan Steer said that behaviour standards have improved and are good in the majority of schools. ‘We are determined to tackle poor behaviour and raise overall behaviour standards – that is why we have given schools clearer and stronger powers than ever before to ensure good school discipline.’

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British government has taken too long to address student visa abuse

Comment from Scotland below. The Scots welcome anybody, as long as they are not Catholic. But even they don’t like the blatantly fraudulent entry of “students” that the British government makes only token efforts to tackle

The Home Secretary was trying to talk tough yesterday as the government finally moved to tackle “the Achilles heel” of Britain’s immigration system. But in addressing the abuse of student visas, was Alan Johnson doing more than trying to score points in what promises to be a key fighting ground in the General Election?

In mid-2007, Andrew Denholm, The Herald’s education correspondent, exposed a number of bogus colleges in Glasgow that were taking large fees from overseas students for questionable or non-existent courses. There were hundreds of others across the UK, some of which were mere brass-plate operations with pretentious websites. Some acted as fronts for illegal immigration. Many of those coming in on poorly policed student visas were in Britain to work illegally, rather than further their studies. The same system can be a conduit for potential terrorists.

Britain is a popular choice for bright foreign students seeking further or higher education qualifications. They add at least £5bn a year to the UK economy and the full fees they pay are especially welcome in Scotland, where top-up fees from home-based students, an extra source of income, rightly have been resisted. But the widespread abuse of the student visa system besmirches the country’s well-founded reputation in this area, especially when the charlatans claim with bona fide institutions.

As Immigration Minister Phil Woolas admitted, bogus colleges are the Achilles heel of the immigration system. The new rules will impose a more exacting English language test and allow students on short courses to work no more than 10 hours per week. Institutions offering non-degree courses will have to feature on a new Highly Trusted Sponsors List. However, if this title is to avoid irony, it must be policed more rigorously than its predecessor. Some of the colleges highlighted by The Herald appeared on the previous Home Office list and one reappeared under a new name after being barred. The UK Border Agency often gives advance warnings of inspections and the problems have been exacerbated by the lack of exit checks at ports and airports.

In addition, the splitting of responsibilities between several government departments, as well as the police and trading standards, aggravates the issue, as does the misleading use of the term “college”.

Abuse of student visas serves to stoke support for those who adopt the “fortress Britain” approach, which is profoundly unhelpful in Scotland, a country that needs a steady supply of enthusiastic, hard-working immigrants and welcomes genuine students. Scotland has special need of a fair, coherent immigration system, not an easily abused student visa scheme, or colleges that exist primarily for the enrichment of their owners or as a backdoor for illegal immigration. It has taken the government far too long to get to grips with this issue.

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Man makes a mockery of British “ageism” laws

A SERIAL litigant is believed to have earned thousands of pounds by bombarding employers with claims of ageism simply because they used the words “school leaver” or “recent graduate” in job advertisements. John Berry, 54, has initiated actions against at least 60 firms over three years even though he does not apply for the jobs. He uses the government’s tribunal service website to lodge age discrimination claims against recruitment agencies and other businesses.

Lawyers say they have complained to the Ministry of Justice that the online system — which allows numerous actions to be lodged free and with minimal evidence — needs changing. Once the firm becomes aware of the action, Berry emails his targets to warn them they can avoid an employment tribunal only by making him a “settlement” payment of up to £3,500. One small trader said: “I am not prepared to be bullied by this man. I cannot afford to pay him. We’re in a recession and I am struggling to keep the business afloat.”

To encourage companies to settle, Berry usually opts to hold the tribunal far away from where the business is based. He made a similar claim of age discrimination against a woman running a small business in the Midlands last year. He demanded £2,500, but lowered his price by £1,000 after she wrote back saying it would leave her struggling to pay her mortgage or feed her family. He wrote: “I will arrange all legal closing formalities with the tribunal in time for you to have an enjoyable Xmas without this hanging over you.”

Audrey Williams, partner and head of discrimination law at the international law firm Eversheds, said: “Under current UK law a claimant will have to show that they have actually been a victim of discrimination. Simply seeing an advert is not enough.” Berry’s claims are consistently struck out by tribunal chairmen as “misconceived” and “vexatious” but businesses can still be left with legal bills of about £9,000 because Berry ignores orders to pay costs. He has had claims struck out in London, Exeter, Bedford, Ashford, Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool, Watford and Southampton in the past two years.

Gordon Turner, a solicitor at Partners Employment Lawyers, said: “We have found 57 such court decisions with Mr Berry’s name [on them], but that could be just the tip of the iceberg as it does not take account of all those people who chose to settle and not fight.”

Berry, who is married and lives in a semi-detached house in Downend, Bristol, repeatedly declined to answer questions put to him by The Sunday Times at his home and by email last week. Later he replied in an email: “I like many other older job seekers are (sic) suffering age discrimination here in all these issues. You are grossly misinformed about the facts.”

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Harperson is on a crazy crusade

Harriet Harman is the deputy leader of Britain’s governing Labour party

It does not take much to stir the English into a spasm of anti-Catholicism. Front-page stories declaring that Pope Benedict XVI had called on his flock to oppose the government’s Equality Bill were enough to stir 15,000 people to add their signatures to the National Secular Society’s petition opposing the pontiff’s forthcoming state visit to this country.

Even allowing for the centuries-old suspicion that the “left footers” represent some subversive papal army loyal to Rome rather than to the crown, this has been a wilful misinterpretation, not least on the part of the media. The papal address to the Catholic bishops of England and Wales — the cause of the fury — did not once refer to the Equality Bill (which inter alia sought to tighten the rules governing religious organisations’ exemptions from anti-discrimination law). The relevant passage states: “Your country is well known for its firm commitment to equality of opportunity for all members of society. Yet as you have rightly pointed out, the effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs.” And that’s it.

It seems most obviously to have been a reference to laws already passed, notably those that did not exempt Catholic adoption agencies from the “anti-discrimination” requirement to accept applications from homosexual couples — as a result of which many such agencies have closed rather than face prosecution. There is, it is true, a continuous underlying conflict here: that between the demands of faith and those of secular authority, most vividly expressed in Matthew 22.21 (“Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s”).

While Labour abandoned the idea of the state as all-virtuous in the economic sphere — it privatised businesses that even Margaret Thatcher balked at selling off — some of its leading figures have held firm to the view that it is possible through the enforcement power of the state to improve society’s moral character. What constitutes that “better character” will also be decided by the state, of course, although it is never very clear from what its leaders’ superior moral wisdom derives, other than the very Judeao-Christian tradition whose influence they instinctively wish to relegate.

While Pope Benedict never mentioned the Equality Bill, or even Harriet Harman, it is clear that the deputy leader of the Labour party is one of the few revolutionary idealists left on the government front benches. She still believes, like a St Paul’s girls’ school Robespierre, that the state will set us free from the tyranny of individual choice and the prejudices of faith and family. Her pet project, a bill that attempts to enforce “equality” via a legally binding so-called “socio-economic duty”, is now heading for the statute book.

To read the full text of “The Equality Bill and other action to make equality a reality”, as distributed by something called the Government Equalities Office, is to enter the world according to Harriet. It all seems sweetly reasonable — until you start to think. Its prime example of what “the equality duty could mean” is the following: “In respect of age, a local council putting extra park benches in local parks so older people can enjoy public spaces as well as younger people.” One wonders what possessed those municipal authorities over the centuries to put benches in their parks. Clearly they had not been inspired by Harman’s Equality Bill to think of the needs of their elderly. Was it possible they were able to have such thoughts quite independently of government edicts?

Her document goes on to say that the Equality Bill’s “new positive action measures could mean: the board of a bank that is 100% male … choosing a woman will help to address the gender imbalance at the top, making the management more representative of its customer base, which is 50% female”. Is it possible that such a bank is aware that its customer base is 50% female and does not need to be informed of that fact by the Government Equalities Office? Is it also possible that such a commercial organisation will do whatever it can not to discriminate against female customers, because it actually does not like to lose business? The condescension of this document is astounding, even by the debased standards of such government screeds.

The next paragraph seeks to reassure us that “positive action is not about banning certain groups” — Etonians? — “from certain jobs. It is about allowing employers to increase diversity if they want their workforce to better reflect the local community or customer base”. Oh, it’s just about allowing us to do what we want, is it? So why legislate?

There is a still more bizarre document put out by the Government Equalities Office: this one is called “The Equality Bill: impact assessment (third version)”. I have in front of me all 233 pages. It tells us that the cost of implementing Harman’s measure, in its first year, will be “between £270.4m and £310.8m”. It admits that part of this vast cost of the Equality Bill might be “additional tribunal/court cases”. No, really?

The document concedes that up to £225m of those additional costs will be borne by “1,174,945 small and medium-sized enterprises”. That’s even before you begin to work out the cost to the taxpayer directly, as all the myriad public bodies created by new Labour get their teeth into the business of enforcing the “socio-economic duty”. The document has an interminable list of the organisations that are ready to do battle against the forces of inequality, not to mention the existing acronymic strategies ready to be inflated still further (“sustainable community strategy (SCS), local area agreements (LAA), local development framework (LDF)”), and so on ad infinitum.

Yet despite all this, the impact assessment insists that the measure will save money. It asserts that the Equality Bill will save the country the sum of “£537,958,543”. How is this enormous and yet precise sum arrived at? Let the Government Equalities Office explain: “This is a benefit to society in general. This concept presumes that a more equitable distribution of resources will raise economic welfare since additional consumption by poor individuals is valued more highly than it is by wealthy individuals.”

So on one side of the balance sheet we have real money — the costs to business and the taxpayer — and on the other side we have psychic money, the financial value that Harman’s advisers have arbitrarily decided to attribute to a more equal distribution of income. No maths teacher used to telling pupils not to add apples and pears would have encountered such a monstrosity.

Besides, what makes the Government Equalities Office believe that this will be the effect of its legislation, however calculated? Last week the government’s own national equality panel (it exists) admitted that despite new Labour’s intense social engineering over the past 13 years, inequalities have increased. It also revealed some fascinating discrepancies in the average wealth of various religious/ ethnic groups. The average Sikh family is richer than the average Christian family (and the average Jewish family is richer than either). Is this the outcome of state support for the Sikh way of life? Is it because Jews have never faced discrimination? Or is because nothing can stop the rise of a social group or family if it has an appetite for hard work?

Alternatively we are asked to believe Harman’s psychic numbers, supposedly the mathematical proof that her legislation, of itself, will make Britain a better society. Whatever you think of the man in the Vatican, he has said nothing as crazy as that.

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The incomparable Pat Condell on the trial of Geert Wilders

No-one speaks the truth about Islam better than Pat Condell. Background: Conservative Dutch politician Geert Wilders is on trial in Amsterdam for inciting hatred against Muslims. The Dutch judges have refused to allow most of the defense witnesses Wilders wanted to call — probably because they knew that the Muslim fanatics he wanted to call would confirm everything he has said. For more details of what is happening, see here

There’s another fabulous Pat Condell video here

February 7, 2010

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Filed under: Uncategorized — jonjayray @ 11:28 pm

You, Britain, are the breeding ground for Muslim terrorists

The Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka says the UK, not Nigeria, should be on the terrorism watch-list. He’s got a point. Extremist Muslim preachers are encouraged in their hatred of Western civilization by a similar hatred among Green/Leftists — and British Leftists are virulent haters, with Israel being a top hate-object for them.

Ever since I told the US website The Daily Beast that Britain was a cesspit and a breeding ground for fundamentalist Muslims, people have been asking me what I meant: “Why do you, a Nobel laureate, say such things? Where’s the evidence?” So let me clarify: I was responding to a question about what I thought about Nigeria, my home country, being placed on a US watch-list of states deemed to be incubators of Islamist terrorism. The listing — which puts Nigeria into a club whose members include Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen — followed the failed attack by the Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the young man who boarded a plane with a bomb in his underpants.

I believe it was irrational to point the finger of suspicion at Nigeria because this young man — the so-called Christmas Day bomber — was not radicalised in Nigeria. Everything we know about Abdulmutallab suggests that it happened in London, where he went to university. The same is true of the shoe bomber, Richard Reid. And of the extremists who bombed the London Underground and the buses in July 2005. (A Nigerian was killed in those bombings.) The terrorists who primed a car found outside a London nightclub in 2007 with petrol containers, gas canisters and nails were based in Britain. If Nigeria qualifies for a place on the US list of terrorist countries then, admit it, Britain is overqualified.

The truth is that Britain has created a breeding ground for religious terrorists. I have a number of Muslim friends in Nigeria who have expressed fears that their sons, who are studying at British universities, might be caught up in Islamic fundamentalism. They are worried about the company they are keeping and by changes in their attitudes. Their children are becoming intolerant of other religions, developing a kind of holier-than-thou stance even towards their fellow Muslims. Holier, or purer, than thou — that sums up the mental conditioning. It is the beginning of a religious psychopathy that ends in bombs in underpants. One friend with a son at university in the northeast of England has not — yet — pulled his son out but he is certainly keeping a watchful eye on him. He has reason to be worried.

Where are these students developing these attitudes? Mostly off-campus in local mosques. There are so-called schools of Islamic teaching attached to mosques in certain British cities. These ghetto schools, which are often situated in innocuous places, are a real problem in Britain. You have them in many of your northern cities; you have them in London. They are not mainstream Islamic schools. What their mullahs recruit are impressionable youths who have been extracted from the regular Islamic schools and mosques and taken for special grooming for a narrower, more fundamentalist view of Islam. I do not know how many such schools there are but I have met the products of these schools in Britain. I have heard their pronouncements. I have heard them in the company of my African friends in Britain. I have heard them declare the necessity of destruction of all non-Islamic religions. Their conviction is absolute — and mindless.

On some of the many occasions I have passed through Britain I have encountered religious clerics, some preaching religious hatred. Remember that, interacting with a black man, such preachers tend to be less inhibited in their utterances. They assume — especially if they discern a critical attitude towards western society — that you must be basically sympathetic to their cause.

In 2004 I gave the BBC’s Reith lectures on the theme of a “climate of fear”. My contention was that fear itself posed the greatest danger to our society. At the question-and-answer sessions that followed the lectures, and afterwards, I was assailed by both Jews and Muslims — some genuine and objective disputants, some outright maniacal extremists. One of the most memorable encounters took place at Emory University, Atlanta. I should explain that the Reith lectures that year took an itinerant format, with the lectures delivered before live audiences across a number of cities, including some in the United States.

In Atlanta I was aggressively confronted by members of a Jewish group who remonstrated over what they considered my lack of understanding of the dimensions of the Islamist global threat.

After one of the London lectures, the chauffeur from a private car-hire company who drove me to the airport subjected me to a non-stop fundamentalist defence of 9/11. I actually felt a need to report him to his company for harassment and received an apology.

In my view, Britain has taken far too long to curb such extremes. The harvest of such long neglect is being reaped today by British society. I possess some tracts that have been passed among students by some of these hate clerics and sometimes openly preached. If they were racist in content — as opposed to “religious” — they would long ago have been stopped.

Britain has always prided itself on opening its doors to dissidents, even of the most radical nature. This tradition has its virtues: it enabled revolutionaries such as Karl Marx to study and develop radical theories of history and human society, but it also meant that during the 1970s the terrorist Carlos the Jackal moved freely in and out of Britain.

I am not condemning the idea of the open society, but alongside freedom sits responsibility. When freedom of expression is abused by the preachers of hate — either racial or religious — then the state has a responsibility to act.

I think Britain is finally waking up to this terrorist threat at its heart. But sadly the phenomenon of religious extremism is spreading to Nigeria.

When I was growing up there was harmonious co-existence between the Muslim and Christian parts of its society. That has changed drastically. In Nigeria today there are Christian fundamentalists who go out and destroy traditional African shrines. Sometimes they even join hands with Muslim extremists to destroy places of worship of traditional religions. Roaming hordes of killers in northern Nigeria are breaking into homes, dragging out people of other faiths and hacking them to death.

These things spread. One of my friends, a prominent Nigerian, has a daughter who was married to a young Muslim man in the United States. This young man would not allow any non-Muslim, including his wife’s relatives, into the house. He began by saying her family could come in only on certain days and then it escalated. In the end, of course, they divorced. The father took the daughter home. It is that kind of extreme mental conditioning that fuels religious fundamentalism and threatens world peace.

If a place can be designated — preferably in outer space — for those who believe they are so holy, their religious “truths” so absolute, that they cannot cohabit with other faiths then we should all contribute to the creation of a space armada that would shuttle all such purists to that sanctuary. Failing that, a policy of rigorous educational rehabilitation for these dislocated minds has become mandatory for the very survival of humanity.

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The problem isn’t the Pope, it’s the Vatican of political correctness

By Peter Hitchens

Actually, I am uneasy about the Pope telling us what to do. This is part of being British, or was when I was growing up. I can still recite great chunks of Tennyson’s wonderful Ballad Of The Fleet, all about Sir Richard Grenville and the little ship Revenge, with her valiant Protestant crew, fighting her unequal battle against the great sea-castles of King Philip, ‘the Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain’. I had relatives who viewed the Vatican as Babylon. I was taught at school about Bloody Mary, 400 years later still a loathed figure. Even now, I like to roll over my tongue the defiant 37th of the English Church’s 39 articles: ‘The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this Realm of England.’

The Pope’s warning about growing intolerance of Christianity in the British State should have been issued by the Church of England, and once could have been. But its present leaders are for the most part pretty dim, and almost all liberals – whereas Benedict is a serious thinker, a major intellect and a conservative.

Those who are outraged – or claim to be – about the Pontiff’s warning from Rome are trying to use a force they don’t really sympathise with. My anti-Catholic forebears were Cromwellian Puritans, and would have loathed the sexual revolution even more than they disliked the RC Church. And if these protesters are worried about foreign intervention in British affairs, they are looking in the wrong direction.

Harriet Harman’s ‘Equality’ Bill, a monstrous piece of far-Left fanaticism, flows mainly from the ideas of continental Marxists who knew little of Britain and cared less. And – here’s the really important bit – its planned attempt to force the Churches to hire openly homosexual employees against their will have originated in that Vatican of political correctness, the European Union.

I have the document in front of me, though our leaders have tried to keep it secret and Brussels has never officially released it. It is a ‘Reasoned Opinion’ on ‘infringement No 2006/ 2450’, signed by Commissioner Vladimir Spidla, and it orders the British Government, its subordinate, to amend the law of this country. It declares that the United Kingdom has ‘failed to fulfil its obligation to transpose correctly Articles 2(4), 4 and 9 of Council Directive 2000/78/EC of 27 November 2000’. It goes on to ‘invite’ this country to ‘take the necessary measures to comply’. If we don’t, we’ll end up being ordered to act by the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

Beside this peremptory stuff, it seems to me that a sermon from the Bishop of Rome is pretty small beer.

It’s not foreign interference the sexual revolutionaries are against. It’s any sort of opposition to their semi-secret elite plan to do away with traditional morality in these islands and everywhere else. So who is really interfering in our way of life?

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A senior doctor swore at me for staying with a dying man… THAT’S how bad Britain’s out-of-hours crisis has become

(In a classic British government bungle, very few British doctors are prepared to work after hours because the government makes it financial folly for them to do so)

By Dr Ellie Cannon

Since qualifying as a GP I have chosen to work in an out-of-hours co-operative. I am one of a huge number of home-grown GPs to do this for the clinical experience, the skills training and, yes, the financial rewards. Working out-of-hours was a crucial part of my GP training, and for me it remains a fundamental part of being a doctor.

It is time-consuming, tiring and inconvenient. But I never assumed the work of a GP was going to be nine-to-five and I don’t believe I stop being a doctor in the evening when I go home to my children.

I realise this isn’t a view shared by all in my profession. Since 2004, many doctors have opted out of doing work that, I still believe, is a vital part of general practice. They did so because the introduction of a new GP contract has meant surgeries receive just 6 per cent more for providing out-of-hours cover for a lot more work. After costs that means very little difference in salary.

With a swathe of doctors no longer willing to pick up the phone outside surgery times, the out-of-hours co-ops were born. These are GP-run, not-for-profit groups that cover a far larger area than any practice ever would – half of Kent, for example. Many doctors who work in this way are well qualified, sincere and skilled but there is no requirement to be a regularly practising GP.

Nothing could illustrate the risks of the system more clearly than the death of David Gray. The 70-year-old died at the hands of Daniel Ubani – I struggle to refer to him as ‘Dr’ – a locum who had just arrived in Britain. This case may be extreme but it has rightly put the out-of-hours system under scrutiny, something I personally welcome.

Working for an out-of-hours co-op put me in the most harrowing situation I have ever faced as a doctor. One develops a degree of emotional resilience, moulded by years of seeing physical pain and emotional suffering, but there are times when that resilience is tested to the extreme.

I do my out-of-hours work on a Saturday night, when my children are in bed and my husband can babysit. Early last year, I had to visit a 36-year-old man called James, who was dying from terminal cancer. My remit was simply to make him comfortable. At this point he was beyond communication, hours from death and struggling for comfort.

Normally such patients are cared for by district nurses and the wonderful service provided by Marie Curie sitters, who look after patients in their final hours. Unfortunately, in the area this man lived, there were none available and the district nurses had finished for the night. This was a cruel misfortune for a man already dealt such a terrible fate. It is not an understatement to say that the family were devastated, trying to keep their dying son at home in his final hours with no professional care. I remember his mother hugged me on arrival, so relieved was she that someone had appeared.

From the outset it was clear that James needed more medication to ease his agitation. I spoke to the local hospice and started to optimise his drugs with the telephone guidance of one of its doctors. While I waited for the medication to take effect, I discussed with James’s parents what would happen next. I would leave for my next house-visit and, if he was still in pain, they would call the co-op back.

Because guidelines dictate patients are not allowed to call doctors directly, another GP would come to help. I couldn’t guarantee how quickly that might be but I would ask the co-op to prioritise any calls from this house – in general even an urgent call can take two hours to mobilise. That could have been all James had left. Not convinced James had been made any more comfortable, I again tried to optimise his medication. A momentary air of calm prevailed. His family were desperate to have a professional with them, as he was clearly swinging in and out of discomfort.

At this point, I made the clinical and humane judgment that I could not leave James. I firmly believe that most doctors would have done the same. My shift at this point was over and I judged that it was appropriate to stay out of my own time to ensure James was given the death he wanted. It was midnight. I informed my co-op driver and the base team of my decision and continued to monitor James, giving him the necessary medication and comforting his parents.

Within ten minutes I was called by the clinical supervisor from the co-op, an older more senior doctor. I was greeted with a tirade of abuse. Why was I staying wasting co-op time when there were a huge number of visits outstanding? I should call the district nurses, not waste doctor’s time on palliative care. Was I expecting someone to come and replace me? You can’t spend three hours on one visit! When I tried to explain the situation, he swore at me before hanging up. To add insult to injury, James’s father overheard and apologised for the trouble his son’s death was causing.

You see, while my supervisor was supposedly ‘clinical’, his concerns were anything but. The new GP contract is a target-driven concern. Shifts are paid by the hour, calls must be answered within a certain time and, most troubling of all, a certain number of visits must be undertaken in a six-hour shift. These are not measured by the quality of care but by the volume of patients seen. It is an alarmingly similar approach to the targets introduced in accident and emergency wards, where it has become more important that a patient is seen within four hours than by whom or why.

We have moved so far into a target-based system that common sense has been left behind. The clinical supervisor I had to deal with had forgotten his compassion for the dying and his empathy for a distressed colleague. Compassion and sense had been replaced with performance and targets; I believe he had forgotten what it means to be a GP. The out-of-hours services have to prove on paper they are performing well, otherwise the Primary Care Trusts take away their contracts for the next year. This poisonous culture means that they need to fill all shifts with doctors to have any chance of meeting these targets.

Does this mean the recruitment of doctors may be compromised? Clearly it does, as shown in the case of Mr Gray.

I am in no doubt that there should be a return to a more old-fashioned approach because the fragmentation of the current system leaves little chance for continuity of care. GPs should treat patients they know, or at least ones they are aware of. Doctors and patients deserve that. I remained at James’s house, where I continued to monitor him and give him medication. I cried looking at the photos on the lounge wall of a schoolboy with a cheeky smile, who was now dying at just 36. Even thinking about it a year later I can’t stop a lump forming in my throat. I left the house when I felt that he was settled, about five hours after I arrived. He died at 4.30am in bed peacefully, with his family by his side.

Do I regret being involved? Absolutely not. Was I shocked, even as a jaded foot soldier of the NHS, by the reaction I received from my colleague? Absolutely. What could have been more important than making a dying man more comfortable in his final hours?

Meeting the time targets for my shift? Ticking the right boxes to show the co-op was performing well? There were no tick boxes for being a good GP, for compassion, or for helping someone to have a ‘good’ death.

For James, given the circumstances, I did the best I could have done. But his own GP, who would have known his family and had at least spoken to him about his death, would have been better than one who knew him for no more than five hours. The boy in the photographs, the boy with the cheeky smile and his whole life before him, deserved better than that.

SOURCE

A sad example of British government regulations leading to poorer health

DOCTORS have uncovered the first evidence that fathers of test-tube babies may be passing on their infertility to their sons. A new study has found that boys conceived through IVF treatment involving a single sperm being directly injected into a female egg often inherit shorter fingers, a trait known to be associated with infertility. The results raise the prospect of a new and growing generation who may be less likely to have children of their own.

There are now an estimated 1m children across Europe born through IVF treatment. Almost one in 50 British babies is conceived artificially and nearly half the couples having treatment go through a procedure known as ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection). The technique bypasses the normal competition where only the healthiest sperm cell is able to reach the female egg and fertilise it.

Alastair Sutcliffe, a paediatrician at the Institute of Child Health in London, led the Anglo-German study which compared 211 six-year-olds conceived through ICSI with 195 naturally conceived children of the same age. The ICSI group were similar heights to the naturally conceived group, but the boys had significantly shorter fingers. It is known that men with low sperm counts often have ring fingers the same length as their index finger, whereas fertile men are more likely to have a ring finger which is relatively longer than their index finger. The effect is reversed in women, where the most fertile are likely to have index fingers significantly longer than their ring fingers.

Sutcliffe’s findings appeared recently in the journal Reproductive Biomedicine Online. “This is the first study of this kind on these children,” Sutcliffe said. “We don’t yet know the implication of the findings because the children are very young, but we need to inform people [about the possible risks of the ICSI procedure].”

Scientists have long suspected that the test-tube baby boom would bring its own problems. Infertility treatment began as a commercial operation only in the 1990s. The first ICSI baby was born in 1992 and there are now about 3,700 such births a year in Britain.

Finger length is known to be set within the first 14 weeks of pregnancy and is linked to testosterone exposure which is, in turn, governed by a specific group of genes. “This [research] is telling us that we should only use ICSI when it is absolutely necessary,” said John Manning, an evolutionary biologist at Southampton University who has examined the link between finger length and fertility and who is one of the authors of the latest study. “We know the extraordinary depression and pain that childlessness can cause and we have a responsibility to ensure that the focus on the wellbeing of the children born as a result of these techniques is as high as it can be.”

Josephine Quintavalle, from the pressure group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, pointed out that ICSI is becoming the preferred option in infertility treatment because of a shortage of healthy sperm. This occurred after the introduction of legislation requiring donors to agree to be identified to their offspring in adulthood. “Using ICSI is obviously counter-intuitive to good health and this research would demonstrate that may be true,” she said.

Allan Pacey, a senior expert in male infertility at Sheffield University and a spokesman for the British Fertility Society, said ICSI should be used “only when absolutely necessary”.

A spokesman for the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which regulates private IVF clinics, said doctors are expected to warn couples of the risks of treatment before they are enrolled as patients.

SOURCE

Environmentalism as self-glorification for airheads

These days when I hear the words “ethical” and “sustainable” applied to objects as unaffordable or bizarre as £1,000 designer bark chairs or frocks made of milk — a fibre from an industrial process of dubious eco-merit — I feel like knitting a scarf from endangered butterflies or buying some conflict-diamond bling. While the ethical fashion cause is undeniably sound — it is a disgrace that developing-world sweatshops make one-season wonders for jaded Western trollops — it is not enhanced by rich celebrities using it as a means to buy indulgences and entry into eco-Heaven.

Yet celebrities who purport to be “ethical” can never see how funny they are. Or how likely we are to point out the shortfall between their noble intent and personal practice. And when we do they get huffy, like Sting did when Jeremy Paxman queried how owning several homes could be helping the rainforest.

Gwyneth Paltrow, creator of the Goop website, which encourages you to “nourish your inner aspect” with organic seeds and ayurvedic unguents, seems to believe — as many stars do — that the worst thing about pollution or global warming is that it frizzes her hair, clogs her complexion and toxes up her temple-like bod. Ecological change can be achieved, she suggests, through the sheer force of her vanity.

And, meanwhile, Gwynnie has bought half her London street and, to the horror of her neighbours, wants to enclose it in a huge metal fence. She drives her children to school in a monster 4×4. Can she not see this is hysterical? And Livia, jetting between Venice, New York, London and LA on her “green-carpet” quest: unless the plane is also fuelled with milk, how sustainable is that?

In a largely secular society, we are still trying to figure out the practicalities of our ethical code. Too often, what is done in the name of our new god, The Planet, is steeped in self-glorification. At Christmas, when someone announces that, instead of buying you a present, he has given money to Oxfam to buy Africans a goat, what should one say? “Oh you shouldn’t have! Yes, if you want to make a charitable donation, do it with money you planned to spend on yourself, not on me.” Instead, the goat-giver enjoys both a virtuous glow and the lovely gift you bought for him. You, meanwhile, have nothing.

Similarly, the stars who can afford to wear organic cotton, eat lavishly raised poultry or buy a wood in Pembrokeshire as offset penance for their transatlantic commutes, lord it on the green high ground. Meanwhile, the poor wander far below, clad in unsustainable clothing, surviving on cheap factory protein, taking budget flights to the sun. Green celebrities have so much, we so little. Yet somehow they are saintly and we the damned.

Ethical fashion is, anyway, almost an oxymoron. The very nature of the industry is to instill a cycle of perpetual dissatisfaction and consumption. Buying less is the only way to confound its purpose, and the eco-WAGs certainly won’t do that. Like Livia, they just ditch Gucci for dresses made of “sasawashi, bamboo, sea cell and soya”. And next season they will be bored, just as Peta-supporting supermodels stopped caring about critters once fur was back in style. The dogged, unglamorous work of groups such as Behind the Label, who have championed garment workers, hassled greedy high street stores into paying a living wage and guilt-tripped brands such as Nike and Gap into weeding out child labour, have made a difference. Not the shopping fancies of the rich.

Fashion itself has no soul; cares only about surfaces and stuff. Tom Ford, the designer who directs the Oscar-nominated A Single Man, styles it into sterility. The camera lingers on the gorgeous Frank Lloyd Wright house and exquisite clothes, and a bathroom drawer opens to show toiletries prissily arranged like a magazine still life. It is a movie of cold edges and empty silences: thankfully, Ford chose Julianne Moore and Firth to fill them.

SOURCE

A new idea for Britain: Private schools plan to set up a university

A new college would put the emphasis on teaching, not research, The university, to be named after Edward Thring, could be sited at Wye college (below). Britain has a rich tradition of private education at primary and secondary level but tertiary education has long been heavily government-dependant

A GROUP of leading independent schools are studying plans to set up an elite private university for families frustrated by the quality of education at mainstream institutions. The university would be modelled on American liberal arts colleges, which concentrate on providing high-quality teaching for undergraduates rather than research. Fees would be at least £10,000 a year. The plan is being considered by the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC) of independent schools and has been drawn up by Terence Kealey, vice-chancellor of Buckingham, the only private university in the country.

The backers believe complaints about impersonal teaching and oversized classes at many traditional universities mean there will be strong demand for higher education at the standard provided by independent secondary schools. It may also attract pupils worried about government pressure on top universities to discriminate in favour of state school-educated pupils.

Bernard Trafford, headmaster of the Royal grammar school, Newcastle, and former chairman of the HMC, said: “I don’t think you’ll find many parents who are happy that at age 18 their children go to university and get four hours’ teaching a week. “When they paid school fees they got a lot more. I can see an awful lot of independent school pupils would see this as an attractive alternative. It would be all about dependable quality and high accountability to the people paying the fees.”

David Willetts, the shadow universities secretary, said he would welcome the setting up of the institution if the Tories came to power. “A more diverse university sector, with a range of organisations delivering higher education, is no bad thing,” said Willetts. “As long as they reach the required standard, it would be the most blinkered ideology to stand in the way just because they were privately run.”

The plan is at an early stage but its proponents have made approaches to at least two philanthropists about funding the set-up costs. Kevin Riley, headmaster of Harrow International School in Bangkok, an offshoot of the London public school, said tycoons in Thailand might also back it. HMC schools, whose 243 members include Eton, Winchester and St Paul’s, would provide governors and help to design the curriculum.

Kealey has made inquiries about siting the university at Wye college, a disused agricultural teaching institution in Kent which is now owned by Imperial College London. The HMC has held initial discussions and will study Kealey’s plan in more detail in the next few weeks. The provisional idea is for the university to be named after Edward Thring, a 19th-century educationist who founded the HMC and was headmaster of Uppingham school in Rutland. It would offer arts, science and medical degrees to about 2,000 British and overseas students.

James Tooley, professor of education at Newcastle University, who was involved in early discussions and is expected to advise on the development, said: “The idea is that the independent sector should not be dependent on the whims of government dictating who is and is not let into university.”

Initially the university would cater for a small number of students on the Buckingham campus before becoming a separate institution and applying for the royal charter it would need to award its own degrees. Kealey estimates that at least £25m would be needed to launch the project.

The idea of opening a private university is likely to provoke charges of elitism and of private school pupils trying to remain separate from mainstream education. Kealey pointed out, however, that tuition fees in mainstream universities are likely to rise sharply. He added that within 20 years it could be possible for the university to have an endowment fund big enough to offer “needs-blind” admission to successful candidates, regardless of parental income.

Kealey argues in an article in The Sunday Times today that “state-funded universities have been so battered that they are reeling … step forward our private schools.”

SOURCE

A-level physics is not available at one in four British schools

More than one in four secondary schools are unable to offer A-level [matriculation] physics because of a shortage of teachers. At least 500 secondary schools with sixth forms do not offer advanced study in the subject, an MPs’ inquiry was told yesterday. Peter Main, of the Institute of Physics, who provided the figure, blamed “incoherent” policy changes.

The number of pupils studying A-level physics has fallen from about 45,000 a year in the late 1980s to about 29,000 now, although the figure has begun to rise slightly. Girls make up only 22 per cent of A-level physics students, MPs on the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee were told. Professor Main said the fall coincided with the introduction of GCSE science exams, criticised as being easy.

David Perks, head of physics at Graveney School, Tooting, South London, blamed curriculum changes intended to make science relevant. Changes such as encouraging students to debate the case for nuclear power or the dangers of genetic engineering had moved science from being a laboratory and experiment-based discipline to one more focused on arguments, he said. Such changes failed to recognise that science was interesting in itself. “The essence of all reform to the science curriculum in the past ten or 15 years has been to reduce content and replace it with something else,” Mr Perks said. Schools and students also had incentive to choose vocational courses such as a BTEC in science because they were much easier but had equivalent status to GCSEs, he said.

Sir John Holman, science director at the Department for Children, Schools and Families, said every school should offer separate GCSEs in physics, chemistry and biology.

Several witnesses criticised the Conservatives’ plan to refuse to fund teacher training of graduates with a third-class degree. John Oversby, of the Association for Science Education, said such a move paid no regard to how long ago a prospective teacher took their degree and so might stop a graduate who had spent their early career deepening their subject knowledge from retraining to be a teacher.

Scientists told the inquiry that some physics graduates were put off a career in teaching by fearing they would also have to teach chemistry and biology, and said schools should be more flexible and allow physics graduates to teach mathematics.

SOURCE

No free speech for Israelis at British universities

But Muslims can say what they like

“The Israel Society at Cambridge University has succumbed to pressure and canceled a talk by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev historian Benny Morris after protesters accused him of “Islamophobia” and “racism.”

Morris was scheduled to speak to students at the university on Thursday, but following a campaign led by anti-Israel activist Ben White the Israel Society canceled the talk. Instead Morris was invited to speak at an event hosted by the university’s Department of Political and International Studies.

White, who graduated from the university in 2005 and authored the book Israeli Apartheid: A Beginners Guide, set up a protest page on Facebook in which he claimed that “on different occasions, Morris has expressed Islamophobic and racist sentiments towards Arabs and Muslims.” …

Last year, Cambridge’s Palestine Society hosted Abd al-Bari Atwan, editor-in-chief of the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper. In 2008, Atwan said the terrorist attack on Jerusalem’s Mercaz Harav yeshiva, in which eight students were killed and 15 were wounded, was “justified”

Source

February 6, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — jonjayray @ 9:11 pm

Death at hands of Nigerian doctor prompts out-of-hours shake-up for NHS

Doctors applying to work as weekend and evening cover for GPs will be put on a national database that will highlight all alerts over their competence, the Government said yesterday. The measure comes as part of a series of tighter controls on out-of-hours services after a coroner ruled that a patient given a fatal overdose by a underqualified locum was unlawfully killed.

The death of David Gray, 70, amounted to gross negligence and manslaughter, William Morris, Cambridgeshire North and East Coroner, said. He added that Daniel Ubani, the stand-in doctor who was carrying out his first GP shift in Britain, was “incompetent and not of an acceptable standard”. Mr Gray died after he was injected with 100mg of diamorphine — ten times the recommended daily dose. He was suffering from severe pain from kidney stones when he was treated by Dr Ubani, a German doctor, at his home in Manea, Cambridgeshire, in 2008.

Mr Morris said: “If he did not know the properties or the size of the drug he was administering he should not have administered it. If he had any doubts or queries I am satisfied he could seek advice. Nonetheless, he went ahead and injected the fatal overdose.” Referring to the standard of out-of-hours services offered to patients, Mr Morris added: “Weaknesses remain in the system.”

Dr Ubani, a specialist in cosmetic medicine based in Witten, Germany, had flown into England the day before and had a few hours’ sleep before starting a 12-hour shift.

Speaking after the coroner’s ruling yesterday, Mike O’Brien, the Health Minister, said that lessons would be learnt from the tragedy. He said that legal requirements for trusts to provide quality care would now be enforced with tougher regulations. These will include a shared database of doctors performing out-of-hours shifts, including alerts on those that have been refused work for failing competency assessments.

Dr Ubani failed a language test with the NHS in Leeds but managed to get on a performers’ list in Cornwall with fewer tests — allowing him to work in Cambridgeshire.

An official review ordered by the Government and published yesterday concluded that patients were being put at risk by out-of-hours services that were poorly monitored, chosen for ease rather than quality and delivered without guidance from local doctors. It said that, while there were robust requirements in place, there was “unacceptable variation” in how these were implemented and monitored.

Mr O’Brien said that all 24 recommendations made by the review, led by David Colin-Thomé, clinical director for primary care at the Department of Health, and Steve Field, chairman of the Royal College of General Practitioners, would be implemented.

More here

Politicized British police ignore emergency calls

A chief constable is in hot water for saying police cannot attend every 999 call – and most people do not expect them to. Cambridgeshire’s Julie Spence made the claim after a judge criticised her force for its ‘indifferent’ response to a man who reported an attacker hiding behind his house who was ‘coming for a fight’. No officers were sent in response to the emergency call and the man was badly beaten.

Mrs Spence, who yesterday also came under fire for ‘wasting money’ on an internet blog supposedly written by a police dog, said ‘a note of realism’ was required. She added: ‘The fact is the bestfunded, biggest force in the world would not be able to attend every 999 call. ‘Nor do I believe that is the expectation of most of our callers. ‘Most know and appreciate and understand that their need may sometimes be less pressing than another’s.’

Politicians and campaign groups responded with dismay. A spokesman for Alan Johnson said: ‘The Home Secretary expects the police to respond promptly and effectively to every emergency.’

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said: ‘We have to get more of our police out from behind their desks filling in forms and on to the streets where they are needed. ‘We cannot go on with a situation where bureaucracy takes precedence over policing.’

Mark Wallace, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘It is not good enough for any chief constable to simply shrug their shoulders and wash their hands of a case like this. ‘The police have a serious responsibility to protect the public from crime, and too often people are being let down. ‘If you phone 999 about a serious crime or threat, then it is not unreasonable to expect the police to respond promptly.’

The force was savaged by Judge Sean Enright for not sending an officer out immediately after a 999 caller rang to say he was about to be attacked at his home. Despite telling the operator a man was hiding behind his house and ‘coming for a fight’, Sadegh Ghanbara, from Peterborough, was told to call back if he returned. The operator graded the incident as B, which does not warrant an immediate call-out.

Minutes later, Sherwan Rasul, 18, launched a savage assault with a baseball bat, leaving Mr Ghanbara unconscious with a broken nose. He called 999 again half an hour later, saying Rasul had returned and had started hitting him and pleaded for an officer to be sent. Police arrived eight minutes later.

Judge Enright said the initial response ’smacked of indifference’. He added: ‘It was plain Mr Ghanbara feared he would be assaulted and the assault was imminent. ‘The inescapable fact is that had the police responded to the 999 call, it is highly likely that an assault wouldn’t have taken place.’

SOURCE

BBC: ‘Dramatic shift’ — Climate skepticism ‘on the rise’ — AGW believers in minority

The number of British people who are sceptical about climate change is rising, a poll for BBC News suggests. The Populus poll of 1,001 adults found 25% did not think global warming was happening, a rise of 8% since a similar poll was conducted in November. The percentage of respondents who said climate change was a reality had fallen from 83% in November to 75% this month. And only 26% of those asked believed climate change was happening and “now established as largely man-made”. The findings are based on interviews carried out on 3-4 February.

In November 2009, a similar poll by Populus – commissioned by the Times newspaper – showed that 41% agreed that climate change was happening and it was largely the result of human activities. “It is very unusual indeed to see such a dramatic shift in opinion in such a short period,” Populus managing director Michael Simmonds told BBC News. “The British public are sceptical about man’s contribution to climate change – and becoming more so,” he added. “More people are now doubters than firm believers.”

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ (Defra) chief scientific adviser, Professor Bob Watson, called the findings “very disappointing”. “The fact that there has been a very significant drop in the number of people that believe that we humans are changing the Earth’s climate is serious,” he told BBC News. “Action is urgently needed,” Professor Watson warned. “We need the public to understand that climate change is serious so they will change their habits and help us move towards a low carbon economy.”

Of the 75% of respondents who agreed that climate change was happening, one-in-three people felt that the potential consequences of living in a warming world had been exaggerated, up from one-in-five people in November. The number of people who felt the risks of climate change had been understated dropped from 38% in November to 25% in the latest poll.

During the intervening period between the two polls, there was a series of high profile climate-related stories, some of which made grim reading for climate scientists and policymakers. In November, the contents of emails stolen from a leading climate science unit led to accusations that a number of researchers had manipulated data. And in January, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admitted that it had made a mistake in asserting that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035.

All of this happened against the backdrop of many parts of the northern hemisphere being gripped by a prolonged period of sub-zero temperatures.

However, 73% of the people who said that they were aware of the “science flaws” stories stated that the media coverage had not changed their views about the risks of climate change. “People tend to make judgements over time based on a whole range of different sources,” Mr Simmonds explained. He added that it was very unusual for single events to have a dramatic impact on public opinion. “Normally, people make their minds up over a longer period and are influenced by all the voices they hear, what they read and what people they know are talking about.”

SOURCE (See the original for graphics)

Pope says separate Catholic schools help combat sectarianism in Scotland

The old Protestant hatred of Catholics dies hard in Scotland. The Pope appears to think that keeping them apart is for the best. Scotland does have a substantial Catholic minority, mostly of Irish ancestry. Protestant “Orange Men” in Scotland still celebrate July 11 as a great patriotic holiday when “King Billy slew the Papish crew, at The Battle of Boyne Water.”

The Pope has launched an unprecedented defence of separate Catholic schooling in Scotland, claiming that the system helps to combat sectarianism and promote good community relations. His comments, which came in an address to Scotland’s bishops, will reignite the debate over Catholic schools. One former Scottish education minister last night took issue with the Pontiff, and said Catholic schools were the reason for the country’s deep-rooted problem of sectarianism.

Religious bigotry has long been recognised as a scar on Scottish society. In 1999, the composer James MacMillan gave a speech that described sectarianism as Scotland’s shame. His views were later repeated by Jack McConnell, then first minister, who hosted a summit in an attempt to form a national strategy on the issue.

In his speech, the Pope praised Scotland’s Catholic schools, and urged the country’s 11 Catholic bishops, in Rome on a five yearly ad limina visit, to protect Catholic education and promote it as a tool for tackling sectarianism. “You can be proud of the contribution made by Scotland’s Catholic schools in overcoming sectarianism and building good relations between communities,” he said. “Faith schools are a powerful force for social cohesion, and when the occasion arises, you do well to underline this point.”

The Pope courted further controversy by suggesting that Catholic teachers should place special emphasis on religious education in order to produce “articulate and well-informed” followers capable of taking part in the highest levels of Scottish public life. “A strong Catholic presence in the media, local and national politics, the judiciary, the professions and the universities can only serve to enrich Scotland’s national life, as people of faith bear witness to the truth, especially when that truth is called into question,” he said.

Opponents of separate Catholic schooling expressed dismay over the speech. Sam Galbraith, a former Scottish education minister and Labour MP, rejected the Pope’s argument that Catholic schools were helping to reduce sectarianism. “I don’t think Catholics get any skills different from anyone else,” he said. “My view of Catholic schools are that they are the basis of sectarianism in Scotland and as long as we continue to have them we will never get rid of the problem.”

In other remarks, the Pope called on the bishops to “grapple” with the challenges presented by “the increasing tide of secularism” in Scotland, including embryo experimentation and assisted suicide.

More here

February 5, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — jonjayray @ 10:01 pm

Anger as British judge spares devout Muslim from jail

Cherie Blair is to be investigated by the organisation that deals with complaints against judges after she gave a more lenient sentence to a Muslim offender because he was “religious”.

The Judicial Complaints Office is to look into a complaint by the National Secular Society that Mrs Blair, who practises law under her maiden name of Booth, suspended a six-month jail sentence passed on Shamso Miah on the ground that he was devout.

Miah was convicted at the Inner London Crown Court last month of assault after he broke a stranger’s jaw. Terry Sanderson, president of the society, said: “We think this is discriminatory and unjust. and we wish to make a formal complaint about it. It’s wrong that someone so high-profile as Mrs Blair — and she is very high-profile as a Catholic — should make such remarks in court.”

The court was told that in August last year Miah, 25, from Redbridge, northeast London, went from prayers at a mosque to a bank, where he got into an argument with Mohammed Furcan over who was first in the queue. He punched Mr Furcan in the face and ran out. Mr Furcan followed him but was knocked to the pavement, breaking his jaw.

Miah told police that he had been acting in self-defence, but CCTV footage showed that he was the aggressor, the jury heard. Miah pleaded guilty. Mrs Blair said that violence on the streets had to be taken seriously but added: “I am going to suspend this sentence for the period of two years based on the fact you are a religious person and have not been in trouble before. You are a religious man and you know this is not acceptable behaviour.”

He was ordered to complete 200 hours of community service and pay £200 in costs.

SOURCE

Once again Britain’s Marxist-trained social workers ignore appalling working class abuses

But middle class people get targeted on mere suspicion

A judge today criticised scandal-hit Doncaster social services for failing to protect two young girls subjected to a shocking catalogue of cruelty over a four-year period. The sisters, now aged eight and ten, were repeatedly beaten with a slipper and belt, had food taken from their plates to give to pet dogs and were sent to school crawling with lice and in a filthy condition.

The girls were put on the child protection register because of the family’s history of neglect, but were removed six months later. This decision by social workers left the children at the mercy of their mother’s brutal boyfriend.

The shocking case emerged just weeks after the same social services department was criticised for its handling of the ‘torture boys’ case in which two young boys left close to death after being tortured by two sadistic brothers. The victims were strangled, hit with bricks, made to eat nettles, stripped and forced to sexually abuse each other. Doncaster’s social services were heavily criticised in a serious case review which cited ‘multi-agency’ failings and an inability to connect the boys’ worsening behaviour to their neglectful family background.

Doncaster’s social services was taken over by a Government hit squad last year and emergency measures implemented because of a series of failures and concerns over the high number of child deaths.

Judge Jacqueline Davies today said the case was a ‘horrid process of intimidation towards two defenceless little girls’ and jailed their 31-year-old mother for 21 months and her ex-boyfriend, 26, for three years and three months at Doncaster Crown Court. And the judge slammed Doncaster social services again after hearing the children were removed from the child protection register six months after they were deemed to be at risk.

Details of the sisters’ appalling treatment and neglect were revealed in court. The elder girl told police they had both been hit with a slipper on the hands, back and bottom. She had been struck 50 times with a belt buckle and had her face squeezed by the boyfriend and her head banged against a wall. She had also been punched in the stomach by the boyfriend, who is not her father, so hard she had to crawl across the floor because she was in so much pain. The girls told their mother to ‘tell him to stop’ but she failed to intervene.

When the mother bought things for the children her partner said ‘they don’t deserve anything.’ One witness said he took food from them to give to the dogs.

Prosecutor Richard Sheldon said the violence usually happened when the mother worked the night shift at a bakery and her lover was left in charge. She knew about the assaults but did nothing. The alarm was raised when the girls’ grandmother, who refused to enter the filthy house, alerted social services and the police.

Teachers at their school described the girls as ‘ill-kempt, in ill-fitting clothes and stinking or urine with insect bites to their body and lice on their head’. Mr Sheldon said: ‘The school said the mother had a similar appearance as if she didn’t have a penny to her name and skinny but she always said the marks on her children were accidental.’

The girls’ welfare declined when the mother began working nights and in January, 2008 it was noted the girls went to school in freezing weather wearing summer dresses and smelling of urine.

When interviewed by police the boyfriend said the girls were ‘little bastards’ who didn’t know how to look after themselves and they would not be told off so he did not believe his behaviour was unreasonable.

The mother said she didn’t want him to hit the kids but admitted doing nothing to protect them because she had nowhere else to go and he would not leave the house.

Mr Sheldon said the partner often referred to the girls as ‘tarts’ and ’scruffy idiots’. The boyfriend admitted wilful assault and ill treatment of the children. Their mother admitted wilful neglect. They also admitted causing unnecessary suffering or injury by failing to provide adequate accommodation and care.

Kath Goddard, for the mother, said she was a ‘damaged and vulnerable’ woman who needed help. But she had begin to turn her life around and the jail term would prevent her from having contact with her new baby son, over which court proceedings are taking place.

Michael Caine-Soothill, for the boyfriend, said he had been on the ‘at risk’ register himself as a child and his behaviour was motivated by a lack of parenting skills rather than a ‘wilful want to hurt children’. It led to the mother and her partner being arrested for cruelty offences dating from 2004-2008.

Doncaster council tonight declined to comment on the case.

SOURCE

Scathing British report rules foreign doctors will have to undertake English tests before becoming out-of-hours GPs

Foreign doctors should face tough English tests before being allowed to become an out of hours GP, a scathing report will rule today. They should receive basic training on how the NHS works and what drugs are commonly used in Britain before they are allowed to practise here. The report will add that some primary care trusts are so bad they are breaking the law and in future they will be ordered to inform all other trusts if they find a doctor does not come up to scratch – something that does not always happen at the moment.

The landmark study – written by leading doctors and commissioned by health minister Mike O’Brien – will lay bare the failings which have led to the creaking out of hours system that puts patients at so much risk. It is expected to say that many health trusts entered into contracts with out of hours providers and did not bother to set minimum quality standards. Often, local GPs play no part in the decision-making – meaning it is left to managers, who have more interest in cost than quality of care, to choose which company to employ.

Mr O’Brien was forced to condemn unacceptable variations in out of hours care after the Daily Mail revealed this week that, in some areas, doctors only make home visits in one in 50 cases.

Last night the Tories demanded wholesale reforms to the out of hours system….

PCTs have been in charge of commissioning private companies to provide out of hours care after the vast majority of GPs opted out of responsibility. Once a company has been taken on, the report will say PCTs are not good at reviewing their performance – so they do not take action if the quality is poor.

One of the biggest criticisms will be that trusts are not doing enough to ensure foreign GPs can speak English properly. Language tests are mandatory for doctors from outside the European Union – but not for doctors within it. The report will say that language tests should be put in place for all foreign GPs, and will call for better training and so they know about how the NHS works, what the area they will be working in is like, and which drugs are used.

The Tories blamed the GP contract of 2004 which allowed doctors to opt out of responsibility to patients in evenings and weekends. Tory health spokesman Mark Simmonds said: ‘For too long the out of hours GP service provided by bureaucrats has let families down. For the sake of patients we must return responsibility for out of hours care back to GPs.’

The Department of Health said ministers would accept all of the report’s 24 recommendations. A spokesman added: ‘The quality of out of hours care for most people is better than it was in 2004, but some PCTs are not meeting their legal obligations. ‘The department is determined to tackle this.’

DIAGNOSIS BLUNDER ‘KILLED MY WIFE’

Barbara Mizen would be alive today if she had not been wrongly diagnosed by an out of hours doctor, says her husband. Retired Eric Mizen says his 65-year-old wife had severe chest pain – the classic sign of a heart attack – when he called their GP out of hours medical service Thamesdoc. But instead she was diagnosed with a stomach upset by a doctor providing temporary cover for the couple’s home area of Haslemere, Surrey. Two days later the retired auxiliary nurse was rushed to hospital, but died later of a heart attack.

Mr Mizen, 73, has won a legal claim for ‘tens of thousands’ of pounds but says nothing can compensate him for the loss of his wife. He said: ‘I have no doubt Barbara would be alive today if the out of ours doctor had picked up on the problems.’

Mr Mizen’s solicitors, who won a settlement from the insurers of Thamesdoc’s Dr Mukhtar Hussain, said it was achieved without any admission of liability on the part of the doctor or the Medical Protection Society.

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NHS kills another oldster

Hospital nurses did not help a dying man after they were given wrong information about whether he should be resuscitated. Peter Clarke, 86, lay for an hour before the error was realised and doctors tried in vain to restart his heart. On Tuesday Derby Hospitals NHS Trust apologised to Mr Clarke’s family and said that stringent measures had been put in place to prevent a repeat.

Mr Clarke, who suffered from heart disease, was a patient at the former Derby City General Hospital in January last year experiencing flu-like symptoms when he suffered cardiac arrest.

Ward staff told an inquest into his death that guidance provided to them in a hand-over note stated that a Do Not Attempt Resuscitation order had been made for clinical reasons.

Ann Proctor, a nurse, said that it was between 45 minutes and one hour before she discovered that there was no mention of such an order in Mr Clarke’s medical records, and that a blank Do Not Resuscitate form, which had been placed in the folder as a matter of routine by clerical staff, had not been filled in.

Dr Paul Webb, who was the first doctor on the scene, told the hearing: “I asked the nurses at the station what time he had collapsed and they said around 9am. “I said ‘do you mean 10am?’ and they said ‘no, 9am’.”

It has not been made public how or why the order was given not to resuscitate Mr Clarke on the hand over note, given that no such order existed on his medical records.

Offering Mr Clarke’s family the hospital’s “sincere apologies,” Alison Fowlie, the Trust’s Medical Director, said: “It was found that the cause of the mistake, for which we’re very sorry, was the ‘Do Not Attempt Resuscitation’ instruction on the nurses’ hand-over sheet and that it should not have been there.”

The inquest was told that that Mr Clarke’s heart was so badly damaged that he could have suffered cardiac arrest at any time, and that he was in heart failure. Dr Alistair McCance, a heart specialist, told the hearing in Derby that even if staff had tried to resuscitate him immediately, the chances of saving his life would have been “very low”.

Mr Clarke’s son, Keith, 57, from Belper, Derbys, said: “They said it was unlikely that he could have been revived but we’ll never know. “I think my dad was badly let down by the NHS.” Adding that it was “too late in the day for my father”, he said he hoped that changes in hospital procedures would protect other patients.

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‘Bully’ British deputy head teacher is fired after death of bulimia victim

Thus closing the barn door after the horse had escaped. Brilliant!

A deputy headmistress has been sacked over allegations that she bullied a colleague who died at school of bulimia. Moira Ogilvie, 39, was suspended from her job at a junior school after the death of fellow teacher Britt Pilton. The 29-year-old was found collapsed on a toilet floor last February and died despite attempts to resuscitate her. Miss Pilton had the eating disorder bulimia and had been prescribed anti- depressants. She died from health problems caused by her illness.

On the day of her death she was said to have been ‘in a panic’ over teaching notes that had gone missing from a photocopier. She believed the teacher who had been bullying her was responsible. The teacher accused of bullying Miss Pilton at High Greave Junior School, Rotherham, was not identified at the inquest into her death last June. But Kelly Parkin, a colleague and friend of Miss Pilton, told the hearing: ‘The teacher involved would go round and bully a different teacher until they left and Britt felt she was the next one. ‘Two or three other teachers left as a result of the bullying.’

The local education authority has since investigated and yesterday revealed that the teacher had been dismissed. A close friend of Miss Pilton confirmed Miss Ogilvie was the teacher sacked.

Miss Pilton’s inquest heard her bulimia may have been made worse because of the levels of anxiety she experienced. A pathologist said she died of bulimia syndrome associated with lack of blood flow to the gut. Dr Len Harvey said: ‘People with bulimia literally can just die for no apparent reason.’

Miss Pilton, from Woodlaithes, Rotherham, had complained to the National Union of Teachers about the bullying but the teacher she blamed found out and confronted her, a colleague told the inquest. She was engaged and had been planning to marry last summer. Those plans and her love of teaching meant she felt unable to leave her post, the hearing was told.

Her father Trevor, a retired deputy headmaster, said her stress at work was ‘almost the sole topic of conversation’.

Teaching assistant Rachel Green told the hearing of Miss Pilton’s panic over the missing notes: ‘She was sure with events going on at the time that a certain person had taken them to spite her, to go and see the headteacher about the standard of her lessons.’

Rotherham Coroner Nicola Munday recorded a narrative verdict, saying Miss Pilton had faced ‘additional pressures in her working environment which led to considerable levels of anxiety over a period of months’.

A spokesman for Rotherham Council said: ‘This case has now been resolved and the teacher involved has been dismissed. ‘The result of this case will now be passed on to the General Teaching Council to consider.’ The GTC is the profession’s official body and if it finds a teacher guilty of breaching standards they can be permanently struck off.

The school refused to comment and Miss Ogilvie was unavailable for comment. Miss Pilton’s fiancé James French refused to comment, but confirmed Miss Ogilvie was the teacher involved.

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Aerobic exercise can be ‘a waste of time’

Once again, it all depends on your genes

MILLIONS of people who try to keep fit by jogging, cycling or going to the gym could be wasting their time, a study revealed today. The international research, led by the University of London, found that aerobic exercise does not benefit everyone in equal measures, and its usefulness is determined by a person’s genes. According to the results, published in the Journal of Applied Physiology today, 20 per cent of people do not receive any health benefits from aerobic exercise.

The study, which stretched from London to Ontario, saw an international team of researchers from 14 institutions examine the human genome to find a way of predicting who would benefit the most from exercise. The work built on the belief among researchers that one of the best predictors of health was a body’s ability to take in and use oxygen during maximum exercise. In theory the more blood a heart can pump, and the more oxygen muscles use, the less risk there would be of early disease and death.

James Timmons of the Royal Veterinary College at the University of London, who headed the study, said aerobic exercise would not help certain people ward off heart disease, diabetes and other potential ailments.

Mr Timmons argued this new research could help advance and improve healthcare. “If a patient is not likely to benefit much from aerobic exercise, the physician could turn to other types of exercise or alternative therapies. This would be one of the first examples of personalised, genomic-based medicine,” he said. Alternative types of exercise include anaerobic pursuits such as weightlifting, push-ups and pull-ups.

Participants in the study were asked to undergo rigorous aerobic training, while researchers took muscle tissue samples before and after. Using new procedures the team then identified a set of about 30 genes that predicted the increase of oxygen their body consumed. By the end of the study 20 per cent saw their maximum oxygen increase by less than five per cent. About 30 per cent showed no increase in insulin sensitivity, meaning that the exercise did not reduce their risk of diabetes.

“We know that low maximal oxygen consumption is a strong risk factor for premature illness and death, so the tendency is for physicians and public health experts to automatically prescribe aerobic exercise to increase oxygen capacity,” Mr Timmons said. “Our hope is that before too long, they will be able to target that prescription just to those who may stand a greater chance of benefiting, and prescribe more effective preventive or therapeutic measures to the others,” he added.

SOURCE

February 4, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — jonjayray @ 7:32 pm

Study links excessive internet use to depression

Good to see some skepticism about the direction of causation

PEOPLE who spend a lot of time surfing the internet are more likely to show signs of depression, British scientists said today. But it is not clear whether the internet causes depression or whether depressed people are drawn to it.

Psychologists from Leeds University found what they said was “striking” evidence that some avid net users develop compulsive internet habits in which they replace real-life social interaction with online chat rooms and social networking sites. “This study reinforces the public speculation that over-engaging in websites that serve to replace normal social function might be linked to psychological disorders like depression and addiction,” the study’s lead author, Catriona Morrison, wrote in the journal Psychopathology. “This type of addictive surfing can have a serious impact on mental health.”

In the first large-scale study of Western young people to look at this issue, the researchers analysed internet use and depression levels of 1,319 Britons aged between 16 and 51. Of these, 1.2 percent were “internet addicted”, they concluded. These “internet addicts” spent proportionately more time browsing sexually gratifying websites, online gaming sites and online communities, Morrison said. They also had a higher incidence of moderate to severe depression than normal users.

“Excessive internet use is associated with depression, but what we don’t know is which comes first — are depressed people drawn to the internet or does the internet cause depression?,” Morrison said. “What is clear is that for a small subset of people, excessive use of the internet could be a warning signal for depressive tendencies.”

Morrison noted that while the 1.2 percent figure for those classed as “addicts” was small, it was larger than the incidence of gambling in Britain, which is around 0.6 percent.

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Carer slaps an autistic child who cannot speak to stop an attack on another child — So the carer gets fired in Batty Britain!

A woman in charge of looking after children on a school bus run was sacked after she ‘tapped’ a boy on the back of his hand, an employment tribunal heard. Margaret Parsons, 72, was dismissed by Flintshire County Council for gross misconduct after the alleged incident in October 2007. She is claiming unfair dismissal.

The school escort had tried to stop the severely autistic child from fighting with another child on a minibus, the tribunal heard. She was dismissed following a second incident the following month, when she allegedly hit the same child with a shoe. Miss Parsons, now 72, of Mold, North Wales, had worked as a school escort for 14 years, accompanying special needs children to and from school in a taxi or minibus.

She was suspended from her job following a complaint from the child’s mother after the alleged incident on November 26, 2007. Head of regeneration at Flintshire County Council, David Heggarty, told the tribunal at Abergele the special needs youngster, referred to as ‘Child C’ during the hearing, was ’severely autistic’. “On November 26, 2007 there was a complaint from the mother of a special needs child who complained that Miss Parsons had been hitting the child on the foot with a shoe,” he said.

Miss Parsons was suspended pending an investigation, during which, the other incident in October was looked into. Mr Heggarty read a statement from a disciplinary meeting with Miss Parsons in January 2008. During the meeting Miss Parsons spoke about the October incident and said Child C was kicking the other boy’s legs. She said that boy was banging his own legs and that she ‘tapped’ the back of Child C’s hand. On the same day Miss Parsons told the mother of the child that she had ‘tapped’ the little boy on the hand for being naughty.

The hearing was told that on the day she ‘tapped’ the child she told a friend, the boy’’s mother and her line manager about what she had done. The mother did not mind her doing that, Mr Heggarty said. Mr Heggarty said: ‘The morning after the shift she told a friend things had got on top of her and “I smacked him.” ‘She said “I don’t make a habit of it” and said she had never smacked him.’

Her solicitor, Tudor Williams, in making a claim for unfair dismissal, asked Mr Heggarty whether his decision to dismiss Miss Parsons was “over the top”.

Mr Heggarty replied: ‘The child has severe autism and is unable to speak. I believe the behaviour of Miss Parsons was completely inappropriate.’ He added: ‘Miss Parsons was employed to react to situations of that nature. ‘We would expect that the children were protected from themselves and others.’

Mr Williams said Miss Parsons had “no alternative but to prevent one child being assaulted by another’. He said: ‘She was seatbelted and had to intervene to stop the attack continuing.’ Miss Parsons was paid 12 weeks notice of termination.

Mr Heggarty added: ‘There were some mitigating factors. There was a belief on behalf of Miss Parsons that she had been given permission to slap. She also reported it to a line manager but it hadn’t been followed up.’

SOURCE

Whistleblower who was harassed when he criticised NHS cost-cutting wins damages

“Shut up!” — the usual Leftist reply to criticism

A consultant urologist who was suspended after speaking out against cost-cutting at an NHS hospital has won damages at an employment tribunal in a landmark case. Ramon Niekrash, 50, was removed from duty at the hospital and called a “troublemaker” after he questioned the effects of cost-cutting on patients at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, South London.

A tribunal ruled that he was entitled to damages because he has been acting as a whistle-blower in the public interest when he wrote letters to hospital management raising his concerns about the health of patients. The verdict also placed blame on government targets for raising tensions between management and clinical staff at the NHS hospital.

Mr Niekrash claimed he was the victim of bullying and harassment after he criticised cutbacks at the hospital, which he said included a shortage of senior medical staff and the closure of the specialist urology ward.

At one point a senior doctor at the hospital allegedly said she wished that Mr Niekrash, who was trained in Australia, was “in chains on a plane in Heathrow back to Australia.”

Mr Niekrash’s lawyers said the case revealed the way in which senior NHS whistle-blowers are punished for speaking out. One case he raised was of a prostate cancer patient who was allegedly not told that he had the disease, nor given treatment for six months after he was diagnosed.

In a letter, he also accused hospital management of behaving like a “plantation owner” towards doctors, The Independent reported.

A 50-page ruling from the tribunal found that Mr Niekrash’s suspension from the hospital breached laws put in place to protect whistle-blowers. Judge Burton, sitting at the tribunal, said: “We have no doubt that the exclusion of a consultant, being a rare occurrence, must have an adverse impact on the claimant’s reputation,” adding that Mr Niekrash had been “hurt” and that his health had suffered.

The judge said tensions had arisen between the claimant’s desire to provide health care and “the requirement of management to reduce or limit costs and also comply with varying targets laid down by the Department of Health from time to time.”

A hospital spokesman said: “We are considering this judgment very carefully … There are nearly always lessons to be learned from cases like this, and as soon as we have carefully considered the judgment, we will respond in full.”

SOURCE

Even Greenpeace wants Pachauri to go

So they obviously think that the IPCC has damaged its case

The head of the UN’s climate change body is under pressure to resign after one of his strongest allies in the environmental movement said his judgment was flawed and called for a new leader to restore confidence in climatic science.

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has insisted that he will remain in post for another four years despite having failed to act on a serious error in the body’s 2007 report.

John Sauven, director of Greenpeace UK , said that Dr Pachauri should have acted as soon as he had been informed of the error, even though issuing a correction would have embarrassed the IPCC on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit.

A journalist working for Science had told Dr Pachauri several times late last year that glaciologists had refuted the IPCC claim that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035. Dr Pachauri refused to address the problem, saying: “I don’t have anything to add on glaciers.” He suggested that the error would not be corrected until 2013 or 2014, when the IPCC next reported.

The IPCC issued a correction and apology on January 20, three days after the error had made global headlines. Mr Sauven said: “Mistakes will always be made but it’s how you handle those mistakes which affects the credibility of the institution. Pachauri should have put his hand up and said ‘we made a mistake’. It’s in these situations that your character and judgment is tested. Do you make the right judgment call? He clearly didn’t.”

The IPCC needed a new chairman who would hold public confidence by introducing more rigorous procedures, Mr Sauven said. “The IPCC needs to regain credibility. Is that going to happen with Pachauri [as chairman]? I don’t think so. We need someone held in high regard who has extremely good judgment and is seen by the global public as someone on their side.

“If we get a new person in with an open mind, prepared to fundamentally review how the IPCC works, we would regain confidence in the organisation.”

Dr Pachauri did not return calls yesterday but he told Indian television at the weekend that he believed attacks on him were being orchestrated by companies facing lower profits because of actions against climate change recommended by the IPCC.He added: “My credibility has been established because I was re-elected chairman in 2008 by all the countries of the world. They must have been satisfied with what I did in terms of the fourth assessment report [published in 2007] because they have given me the mandate of completing the fifth assessment report [[to be released over 2013 and 2014] which I intend doing.”

Bob Ward, of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, said the countries that had appointed Dr Pachauri should consider his handling of the glacier issue when the IPCC plenary meeting is held in October. “That issue ought to be dealt with by them. It would depend on how he responds to the crisis facing the IPCC.

“He has made mistakes but I don’t think those mistakes are so serious that you would automatically get rid of him. If you changed the head, I don’t think that would necessarily restore the credibility of the IPCC.”

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Failing government schools entrench the grip of the middle classes on top British universities

ELITE schools and the middle classes are tightening their grip on top universities, defying years of government attempts to curb their dominance, according to evidence presented to inquiries ordered by Lord Mandelson. The Sutton Trust, a social mobility charity favoured by Gordon Brown, has blamed “stark inequalities” in standards between comprehensives, grammar and independent schools for hindering change.

The trust finds that in 13 leading institutions, an elite of 200 schools won nearly 38% of places in 2007, a figure that had hardly changed since 2002. At Oxford and Cambridge they took 44.4% of places.

The evidence gathered by the trust, chaired by Sir Peter Lampl, the philanthropist, is likely to be used as ammunition by supporters of “positive discrimination” policies, when universities automatically favour candidates from poorly performing comprehensives.

“Universities, schools and the government have made considerable efforts to widen access to highly selective universities,” said Lampl. “But this evidence reveals the extent of the challenge we are facing.”

The study has been sent to Sir Martin Harris, former vice-chancellor of Manchester University, who has been ordered by Mandelson to draw up guidance for how universities should increase the numbers of students from state schools and poorer families. The trust recommends that they ought to create additional places reserved for these applicants. Harris’s inquiry, which will report in March, is expected to form part of the “aspiration” agenda backed by Gordon Brown and Mandelson for the election. It has led to fears that universities will be pushed into “rigging” admissions.

Critics argue it is justifiable to use talent-spotting schemes to favour individual pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds with strong ability. But they oppose “handicap systems” used by universities including Durham, which apply “modifiers” to help the applications of every pupil at a school with poor GCSE grades.

John Morgan, head teacher of Conyers comprehensive in Stockton-on-Tees and president of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “I don’t think any of us are happy with the idea that if you go to a particular school you are given modified points or a lower offer. It has to be about the individual.”

The Sutton Trust study also analysed admissions to three groups of universities — Oxford and Cambridge, the Russell Group of 20 research universities and its own selection of 13 institutions — and found similar patterns in each. The report will also be submitted to a review of university funding chaired by Lord Browne, former head of BP, the oil firm.

Between 2002 and 2007 the proportion of independent school pupils admitted by the top 13 universities, for example, rose from 32% to 33%, while those from the poorest socio-economic groups stayed at 16%. The figures contrast with a report by the Higher Education Funding Council for England that found big rises in university attendance by poorer groups. However, this looked at higher education as a whole and did not analyse research institutions separately.

The trust attributes the dominance of independent and grammar schools not to social elitism by universities but to their better performance at A-levels and their teaching of more academic subjects, such as science and languages.

Wendy Piatt, director general of the Russell Group, said the trust’s figures were “a little out of date and do not reflect the fact that efforts by Russell Group universities to widen access and improve results in schools are making inroads into the stubborn problems of educational disadvantage”.

Tim Hands, master of Magdalen College school, Oxford, who chairs the joint universities’ committee of two independent school groups — the HMC and the Girls’ Schools Association — said: “With funding cuts and the emphasis on strategic subjects such as science and engineering, of which we are the key providers, this situation will only become more pronounced. “What is required is honest attention to problems in our education system which have been government-induced, not ineffectual social engineering.”

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New British tax comes a cropper: “I was live on CNBC when the 50 percent top tax rate was announced. Asked for an immediate reaction, I predicted emphatically that the new would raise less money, not more. Now The Times reports that the Treasury has ’significantly reduced’ (as Lord Myners puts it) its estimate of the revenue to be yielded. The increase, which publicly broke Labour’s solemn manifesto pledge not to raise tax rates, has led people to shelter income.”

February 3, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — jonjayray @ 11:44 pm

British attack on religious freedom dropped after Papal intervention

So now Leftists hate the Pope — but they did anyway

Harriet Harman has backed away from a confrontation with religious leaders over who they can employ, making clear that she will not force contentious amendments to the Equality Bill through Parliament. Ministers were astonished on Monday when the Pope said that the Bill violated “natural justice” and urged bishops to fight it. But that attack, along with the strength of opposition in the Lords and the limited time left to get Bills passed before the election, has sapped the Government’s enthusiasm to continue the fight.

Ms Harman, the Equalities Minister, has been engaged in a long dispute with churches and religious organisations over their exemption from anti-discrimination employment law, and how it affects “non-religious” posts. The dispute led to a government defeat on a key amendment to the Bill last week in the Lords, but it was expected that Ms Harman would reintroduce the measure, or one similar.

The amendment clarified rather than changed existing law, stating that churches were exempt from discrimination legislation when appointing priests and other “religious” posts, but that they must comply with its terms for “non-religious” jobs, such as youth workers or accountants. Although that was enshrined in law in 2003, it has been ignored by many organisations, which have interpreted the exemption to cover all posts. Ms Harman felt that religious groups should be reminded they were breaking the law, and tabled an amendment making it clear that there was a distinction between religious and lay jobs. But she said last night that she would not bring back the amendment when the Bill returned to the Commons.

“We have never insisted on nondiscrimination legislation applying to religious jobs, such as being a vicar, a bishop, an imam or a rabbi,” she said. “Religious organisations can decide themselves how to do that. However, when it comes to non-religious jobs, those organisations must comply with the law. We thought that it would be helpful for everyone involved to clarify the law, and that is what the amendment … aimed to do. That amendment was rejected, so the law remains as it was.”

Although Ms Harman made no mention of the Pope’s visit to Britain this year, it is understood that the Government did not want the dispute to overshadow preparations.

Sources close to the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster indicated that problems remained, saying that the Pope’s criticism went beyond the Equality Bill, and was a broader attack on all recent legislation, which he believes has affected religious freedoms. During an ad limina – a five-yearly visit to Rome – the 35 Catholic bishops from England and Wales told the Pope of their concern that Catholic adoption agencies had had to close or sever their links with the Church because of rules forcing agencies not to discriminate against gay couples.

The Pope’s position has received support in the Church of England and other faith groups. Writing in The Times today, Lord Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, says: “There are times when human rights become human wrongs … a political ideology, relentlessly trampling down everything in their path. This is happening increasingly in Britain, and it is why the Pope’s protest against the Equality Bill … should be taken seriously.”

But Ben Summerskill, chief executive of Stonewall, a gay rights group, warned churches that it would support discrimination claims if gay people were prevented from taking up lay posts. “If any church dismisses someone from a non-liturgical role, such as a youth worker or a press officer, we will support their case.”

SOURCE

BBC managers attacked for attempting to update their programmes

A WOMAN who was dropped from presenting a rural affairs program made by Britain’s public broadcaster has become the first presenter to sue them for sex and age discrimination. The Times of London reported today Miriam O’Reilly and three other women in their 40s and 50s were told in November 2008 they were being removed from presenting duties on the BBC One network’s Countryfile program as part of a revamp.

O’Reilly, 52, an award-winning journalist who spent 25 years at Britain’s public broadcaster, the BBC, lodged papers at London Central employment tribunal last week, claiming the corporation discriminated against her on grounds of sex and age.

The case was embarrassing for Mark Thompson, the corporation’s Director General, who said recently that the BBC had “taken on board” that viewers wanted “much more than just youth on screen”. It followed outrage over the removal of West End choreographer Arlene Phillips, 66, from prime time program Strictly Come Dancing, in favour of singer Alesha Dixon, 30.

O’Reilly told The Times of London, “I think ageism is endemic at the BBC, and women have been reluctant to speak out, because they have their careers to think about and it is a big risk.”

As part of the revamp, O’Reilly left along with fellow reporters Juliet Morris, Charlotte Smith and Michaela Strachan, who were all in their 40s and 50s. The male hosts, Ben Fogle and Tom Heap, were also removed, but Fogle was given a new countryside show, and Heap returned later.

The BBC recently fought back against accusations of ageism after the exit of older women such as news presenters Moira Stuart, 60, and Anna Ford, 66. A BBC spokesman said, “Any suggestion the presenters of Countryfile were replaced on the grounds of age is absolute nonsense.”

SOURCE

British Taxi drivers accused of racism for displaying sign saying they are ‘English speaking’

I personally find it difficult to deal with many people who do not have a native command of English so I would certainly choose a cab that was unlikely to give me such difficulties. Why should I not? It is not a question of race. There are people of all races who speak good English.

A racism row has broken out after a city’s taxi drivers started displaying stickers in their cars saying they are ‘English speaking’. Up to a dozen drivers have been showing off the notices bearing the St George’s Cross on the back windows of their cars in Southampton, Hampshire. The small red and white sticker declares the cab is being driven by an ‘English speaking driver.’

But the flags have been branded ‘racist’ by trade representatives, councillors and racism campaigners who have demanded they are removed. Taxi drivers have hit back, claiming the stickers are simply a protest to force the council to make sure new drivers can speak good English. The stickers were placed in the cars after drivers received complaints about the standard of spoken English among them. There have also been complaints from passengers about drivers using sat navs and over-charging.

Perry McMillan, chairman of the Southampton cab section of trade union Unite, said the group’s ethnic minority members had been upset by the stickers. He said: ‘Surely all drivers speak English. If they don’t, then what’s going on? ‘We hope that licensing officers can investigate this and satisfy the trade that this isn’t the case.’

Campaign group Show Racism the Red Card demanded the stickers be taken down from the cab windows. Chief Executive Ged Grebby said: ‘I don’t have a problem with displaying the cross of St George because this is a symbol we have managed to reclaim from the far right. ‘But the “English speaking driver” part is where it crosses the line into racism. ‘Cab drivers have to have a command of English [But only a bare minimum in some cases] and there are strong racist undertones in this message. ‘I think the drivers should take the flags down immediately and if they don’t, they should be told to by the council who licences them.’

But taxi drivers have hit back at the allegations of racism. Clive Johnson, chairman of taxi firm Radio Taxis and the Southampton Trade Association, said: ‘These signs are not racial. ‘They are a protest to the council saying please make sure all new drivers have command of the English language. ‘There are a few drivers out there who cannot speak English and just bluff their way along. ‘It doesn’t matter if they are Polish, Russian, French or Spanish, if they can’t communicate with passengers then it’s a problem.’

Taxi driver Peter Ford, 48, said: ‘It’s just about letting customers know that the driver will actually be able to speak English, which isn’t always the case.’ Fellow driver Chris Head, 49, added: ‘I have no problem with the stickers. ‘Lots of customers will wait at ranks until an English driver comes along because they want someone they can talk to.’

Ian Hall, chairman of the Southampton Hackney Association, said half of the group’s 126 members are from an Asian background. He added: ‘I don’t think any drivers should have these stickers in the back of their car because it’s racist. ‘If drivers have got these stickers in their back windows then they need to take them down.’ Mr Hall said night trade in Southampton would ‘collapse’ without ethnic minority drivers, who buy the majority of taxi plates.

The sticker issue was raised at a meeting between cab firms and Southampton City Council. It is believed that the council would order them to be removed if it received complaints from passengers. Chairman of the council’s licensing committee Councillor Brian Parnell said the stickers were ‘offensive’. He said: ‘It’s certainly not the image we want for Southampton. ‘It is offensive to drivers from ethnic minorities who form a large part of the city’s drivers and without whom Southampton’s taxi service would suffer. ‘We want to promote harmony in the city.

‘But it is important that taxi drivers meet a certain set of standards and one of those is the ability to speak English. ‘It is normal good practice for anyone working in another country to be able to speak the language of that country. ‘I think the problem might be that many drivers do speak English but with a heavy accent that can be difficult to understand.’

Cllr Don Thomas, who sits on the licensing committee, added: ‘Taxis and taxi drivers can form the first impression that visitors have of Southampton. ‘I think this is completely the wrong sort of message to be sending out in what is proudly a cosmopolitan city.’

A council spokesman said: ‘People should contact the council and let us know if they see signs and stickers being used in taxis, particularly if they find them offensive.’

Currently, anyone who wants to drive a taxi must hold a British driving licence, pass a medical, undergo a criminal record check and complete a ‘knowledge’ test of Southampton. Last year council chiefs added a driving assessment and a test in basic reading, writing and communication skills. Within six months of taking to the road, drivers must also pass a BTec qualification in Road Transport Passenger Driving.

SOURCE

NHS “professionalism” again

Dad delivers own baby when nurse storms off

A FURIOUS father branded a British hospital a disgrace after he was forced to deliver his girlfriend’s baby in a maternity ward because the midwife had stormed out. The Sun reported Thomas Howard, 33, frantically called for help when he realised that the birth was imminent, but nobody came to his aid.

By the time the midwife returned, Emily Baron had already given birth to their daughter Madeline.

Baron, who is now recovering at home with Madeline, said, “I was really worried about the bleeding. When Thomas asked if the midwife knew what was wrong and she said ‘No’, he asked her to find someone who did. “She then just stormed out and you could hear her stomping down the corridor. I think her attitude was unprofessional.”

Thomas said his instinct kicked in when it became clear the baby was coming. He delivered the newborn, tapped her on the back to help her breathe, and was cleaning mucous from her mouth when the midwife finally returned. “I was in shock at what had happened but the nurse didn’t say anything to me. She just carried on as if it was normal,” Howard said.

The couple said they may file a formal complaint against Royal Blackburn Hospital in northern England.

A National Childbirth Trust spokesman said, “Being left alone in labour in hospital is unacceptable. As a civilised society, we must ensure this basic need of women is met. Having a midwife with you when you give birth is vital to ensure there are no complications.”

Last month, the Nursing and Midwifery Council said the midwifery profession was “still playing catch up” after a report warned Britain’s rising birth rate was leading to a shortage of staff.

SOURCE

Failing out-of-hours care almost killed British baby

In parts of the country one doctor is responsible for 300,000 people at night

It started with a bruise the size of a shrivelled raisin that slowly grew into a magenta plum. It was Sunday evening, our baby was sleepy as we lifted him out of the bath and I noticed the mark under his tummy button. But he’d been running round London Zoo with his brothers and sister and I thought he must have knocked himself as he raced from the gorillas to the flamingos.

I wasn’t concerned as he lay on the bed while the other children bounded around him. He didn’t even have a fever. But I rang the local surgery, which gave an emergency number. I left a message and put the other children to bed. By 9pm no one had replied, so I looked up NHS Direct. An “information handler” answered. When I explained the almost non-existent symptoms, she suggested that I could go to A&E if I was concerned. By now all four children were asleep in bed, and I felt that I was turning a bruise into a drama and was more worried that my 18-month-old would pick up a bug if we queued all night in hospital.

I finally rang a private GP’s surgery when I realised that he had a slight temperature. The doctor on call arrived on her moped in 20 minutes. She lifted our son out of bed, joked with him and asked him to show her his tummy. At that moment she stopped smiling and phoned the consultant paediatrician at the hospital.

“You both need to go to hospital just to be on the safe side,” she said. We drove through dark, empty streets, reassuring ourselves that our baby was still babbling. The consultant laughed when our son started playing with his stethoscope but then he lifted up his pyjama top and began issuing orders. We suggested that it might be a bruise but no one was listening as they inserted drips to pump drugs and fluids into his arms and legs, and started preparing him for a lumbar puncture, The nurse was told to wake him every 15 minutes to prevent him falling into a deep sleep. We finally realised that they thought he might have meningitis.

Our baby screamed, tied to the bed by his tubes, but every time he fell into a fitful sleep he had to be woken. By dawn he was receding into himself, the bruise was vast and pulsating, but he was fading away. The paediatrician with 40 years experience didn’t think it could be meningococcal disease, the surgeon arrived and suggested cutting away the bruise and cleaning out the infected area. It took eight hours to synchronise the anaesthetist’s and surgeon’s timetables. The surgeon was Lebanese, the anaesthetist German and the two nurses were from the Philippines. They were amazing in their dedication. It was only when the anaesthetist said in a mild German accent: “We are going to put your son down now. Do you want to kiss him goodbye,” that I cried.

We sat in the waiting room under the strip lights watching babies tottering past us, not thinking about our son’s first step or his first word until the nurse came back from theatre. As I cuddled my child, the surgeon told my husband that he thought that they had managed to clear the infection. His stomach had been mangled but he looked beautiful as he slept.

It is impossible to draw conclusions from one case, but as our son recuperated over the next two weeks, and we lived our lives in shifts by his side, parents, doctors, nurses and cleaners gave us their views. And I did learn lessons. No one should automatically think that a foreign doctor or nurse is second best. Ours were extraordinary. The hospital wasn’t particularly clean, but we could provide our own pillow cases and food.

Almost everyone in the hospital believed that the NHS out-of-hours service was defective. I kept thinking back to the Sunday night when we nearly left our son to sleep. And I still think about it when I read reports that in parts of the country a single doctor is responsible for more than 300,000 people out-of-hours.

Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, has finally admitted that this may be “unacceptable” but it has been obvious for several years that Primary Care Trusts who were given responsibility for this in 2004 have, in many areas, failed to provide a safe service, as required by law.

GPs must take back control of their out-of-hours services. This is not because they are greedy professionals who only work from 8.30am to 6pm for average salaries of more than £106,000 a year, or even because one exhausted German locum caused a man’s death through an accidental drugs overdose. They should do it because the current system doesn’t work. A&E departments are overwhelmed because most evening inquiries are directed to them and the emergency services have to mop up much of the rest.

GPs used to act as gatekeepers night and day. Our private GP had seen four children that Sunday, two had colds, but one had croup and ours was the fourth. In our case personal contact was vital. GPs should know who is being sent to treat their patients if it isn’t them and should want to be informed if a patient is suddenly on the critical list.

The Confidential Inquiry into Maternal and Child Health, commissioned by the Department of Health each year, says that one in four child deaths in Britain could be prevented if a parent had realised the child was ill earlier or if a hospital had reacted more rapidly. GPs can help both patients and hospitals to make the right diagnosis whether it’s at 3am or 3pm. At the moment they are the missing link.

SOURCE

Too little too late: Irresponsible medical journal retracts MMR scare paper

Peer review? What peer review? The tiny sample size — if you can call it a sample — made the purported observations no more than anecdotal

A leading medical journal has officially retracted the discredited study which sparked a health scare over the MMR vaccine. The Lancet said it now accepted claims made by the researchers which linked MMR to bowel disorders and autism, were “false”. It comes after Andrew Wakefield, the lead researcher in the 1998 paper, was ruled last week to have been irresponsible and dishonest in carrying out the original study on 12 children.

MMR is the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine which was introduced in 1988. The fall-out from the research, first published in February 1998, caused vaccination rates to plummet and has been blamed for a resurgence of measles in Britain.

The General Medical Council (GMC) ruled last week that Wakefield showed a “callous disregard” for the suffering of children and that two fellow authors of the paper also “failed in their duties” as responsible doctors in carrying out the study. Invasive procedures were carried out on the 12 children without proper ethics committee approval and without due regard to their clinical needs, the GMC found.

Wakefield was also found to have received 50,000 pounds from the Legal Aid Board to carry out the research on behalf of parents who believed their children had already been harmed by MMR. Wakefield and two former colleagues, John Walker-Smith and Simon Murch, now face being struck off the medical register if they are found guilty of a further charge of serious professional misconduct later this year.

The three doctors deny any wrongdoing. The Lancet had already issued a partial retraction of the paper in 2004, rejecting the interpretation that the vaccine could be linked to health problems. This was signed by ten of the 13 original authors of the study, including Professors Walker-Smith and Murch. At the time, The Lancet argued it had been right to publlish the study as the journal was there to “raise new ideas”.

But it said yesterday that in light of the conflict of interest and other charges found proved by the GMC: “We fully retract this paper from the published record.” Leading doctors welcomed the decision, although some complained it was ten years too late. Professor Adam Finn, Professor Of Paediatrics at University of Bristol Medical School, added: “This is not before time. Let’s hope this will do something to re-establish the good reputation of this excellent vaccine. And I hope the country can now draw a line under this particular health scare and move onto new opportunities for vaccination.”

SOURCE

Is it still worth going to university in Britain?

I think this question is simplistic in any country. For some career paths university is beneficial or even essential, but for most career paths it is superfluous — as many a burger-flipping or taxi-driving humanities graduate will tell you. Credentialism has become a metastatic growth — JR

It’s a tough time for graduates, as we report in the paper today. But it’s also a tough time for undergraduates, post-graduates and aspiring students too. There’s so much demand for places, fewer jobs, (one survey suggested that a quarter of vacancies for this September will be filled by last year’s graduates) and huge pressures on the universities themselves to cut costs (not to mention those student debts).

All this doom and gloom made it the perfect time to focus the next School Gate debate on universities, and to ask a very big question – is is still worth going to university? Here recent graduate Sarah Beard, gives her thoughts:

“I graduated in 2009 without a job. Was going to university a complete waste of time for me? I don’t think so.

Despite ‘graduate unemployment reaching 7.9 per cent, a level not seen since 1996’ and ‘the prediction that student debt will soon average £23,000, I’m pleased I went. My four University years were (so far) the best of my life. I was able to taste real independence for the first time, mix with people I would never normally meet, be educated on a subject of great personal interest and experience the most amazing social life. On top of that, I came away with a 2:1 degree and many lifelong friends.

That’s not to say that graduating into a recession is easy. In fact, I explained my situation last year on School Gate and received a torrent of abuse. Much of this centred around claims my University experience had been a waste of time but only because I had chosen to study Business & Tourism at the University of Lincoln. A sample comment was ‘what do you expect when you go to a mediocre university like University of Lincoln and your degree is what most employers would regard as “Mickey Mouse-esque?’

As a graduate, I have taken part in the Shell Step Programme, which gave me a valuable 8-week placement, and I’ve been accepted onto an MA course. It might come as no surprise then, that I think university is a superb investment and is one that’s available to any student, regardless of whether they choose to attend a Russell Group University or an emerging one. This is rightly, a view that still appears to be upheld as there is ‘unprecedented demand for higher education, which has seen applications to some universities rise by 35 per cent’

Tom Mursell, founder of notgoingtouni.co.uk would, however, disagree with me because he believes “Degrees are already not worth what they used to be, so by 2020 they’ll be worth even less’ and that university simply sees teenagers ‘saddling themselves with thousands of pounds of debt’. Tom has since handed his company over to Craig Spencer in order to become an apprentice of Dragons Den millionaire, Shaf Rasul.

Vice-Chancellor David Greenaway, from the University of Nottingham, rejects such views, as he believes that ‘the benefits of higher education to individuals and to society are significant and persistent. Graduates benefit from a wage premium, which lasts for their entire working lives; and there are important links between investment in education and economic growth. If we want more wealth creation and poverty alleviation, we need more growth’

“Non-economic benefits are no less important. Having better educated, more tolerant, more socially responsible citizens deliver great returns for society as well as for individuals.”

SOURCE

Crooked “scientist” hid flaws in Chinese data

Now the dodgy Chinese data is finally getting a bit of attention — even from “The Guardian” (below)

It is difficult to imagine a more bizarre academic dispute. Where exactly are 42 weather monitoring stations in remote parts of rural China? But the argument over the weather stations, and how it affects an important set of data on global warming, has led to accusations of scientific fraud and may yet result in a significant revision of a scientific paper that is still cited by the UN’s top climate science body.

It also further calls into question the integrity of the scientist at the centre of the scandal over hacked climate emails, the director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), Dr Phil Jones. The emails suggest that he helped to cover up flaws in temperature data from China that underpinned his research on the strength of recent global warming.

The Guardian has learned that crucial data obtained by American scientists from Chinese collaborators cannot be verified because documents containing them no longer exist. And what data is available suggests that the findings are fundamentally flawed.

Jones and his Chinese-American colleague Wei-Chyung Wang, of the University at Albany in New York, are being accused of scientific fraud by an independent British researcher over the contents of a research paper back in 1990. That paper, which was published in the prestigious journal Nature, claimed to answer an important question in climate change science: how much of the warming seen in recent decades is due to the local effects of spreading cities, rather than global warming?

It is well-known that the concrete, bricks and asphalt of urban areas absorb more heat than the countryside. They result in cities being warmer than the countryside, especially at night. So the question is whether rising mercury is simply a result of thermometers once in the countryside gradually finding themselves in expanding urban areas.

The pair, with four fellow researchers, concluded that the urban influence was negligible. Some of their most compelling evidence came from a study of temperature data from eastern China, a region urbanising fast even then.

The paper became a key reference source for the conclusions of succeeding reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – including a chapter in the 2007 one co-authored by Jones. It said that globally “the urbanisation influence . is, at most, an order of magnitude less than the warming seen on a century timescale”. In other words, it is tiny.

But many climate sceptics did not believe the claim. They were convinced that the urban effect was much bigger, even though it might not change the overall story of global warming too much. After all, two-thirds of the planet is covered by ocean, and the oceans are warming, too.

But when Jones turned down requests from them to reveal details about the location of the 84 Chinese weather stations used in the study, arguing that it would be “unduly burdensome”, they concluded that he was covering up the error.

And when, in 2007, Jones finally released what location data he had, British amateur climate analyst and former City banker Doug Keenan accused Jones and Wang of fraud. He pointed out that the data showed that 49 of the Chinese meteorological stations had no histories of their location or other details. These mysterious stations included 40 of the 42 rural stations. Of the rest, 18 had certainly been moved during the story period, perhaps invalidating their data.

Keenan told the Guardian: “The worst case was a station that moved five times over a distance of 41 kilometres”; hence, for those stations, the claim made in the paper that “there were ‘few if any changes’ to locations is a fabrication”. He demanded that Jones retract his claims about the Chinese data.

The emails, which first emerged online in November last year following a hack of the university’s computer systems that is being investigated by police, reveal that Jones was hurt, angry and uncertain about the allegations. “It is all malicious . I seem to be a marked man now,” he wrote in April 2007.

Another email from him said: “My problem is I don’t know the best course of action. I know I’m on the right side and honest, but I seem to be telling myself this more often recently!” An American colleague, and frequent contributor to the leaked emails, Dr Mike Mann at Pennsylvania State University, advised him: “This crowd of charlatans look for one little thing they can say is wrong, and thus generalise that the science is entirely compromised. The last thing you want to do is help them by feeding the fire. Best thing is to ignore them completely.”

Another colleague, Kevin Trenberth at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, urged a fightback. “The response should try to somehow label these guys and [sic] lazy and incompetent and unable to do the huge amount of work it takes to construct such a database.”

In August 2007, Keenan submitted a formal complaint about Wang to Wang’s employers. The university launched an inquiry. Reporting in May 2008, it found “no evidence of the alleged fabrication of results” and exonerated him. But it did not publish its detailed findings, and refused to give a copy to Keenan.

By then, Keenan had published his charges in Energy & Environment, a peer-reviewed journal edited by a Hull University geographer, Dr Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen. The paper was largely ignored at the time, but Guardian investigations of the hacked emails now reveal that there was concern among Jones’s colleagues about Wang’s missing data – and the apparent efforts by Jones and Wang over several years to cover this up.

Those concerns were most cogently expressed to Jones by his ex-boss, and former head of the CRU, Dr Tom Wigley. In August 2007, Wigley warned Jones by email: “It seems to me that Keenan has a valid point. The statements in the papers that he quotes seem to be incorrect statements, and that someone (W-C W at the very least) must have known at the time that they were incorrect.”

Wigley was concerned partly because he had been director of the CRU when the original paper was published in 1990. As he told Jones later, in 2009: “The buck should eventually stop with me.”

Wigley put to Jones the allegations made by the sceptics. “Wang had been claiming the existence of such exonerating documents for nearly a year, but he has not been able to produce them. Additionally, there was a report published in 1991 (with a second version in 1997) explicitly stating that no such documents exist.” This is believed to be a report from the US department of energy, which obtained the original Chinese temperature data.

Wang’s defence to the university inquiry says that he had got the Chinese temperature data from a Chinese colleague, although she is not an author on the 1990 Nature paper. Wang’s defence explains that the colleague had lost her notes on many station locations during a series of office moves. Nonetheless, “based on her recollections”, she could provide information on 41 of the 49 stations. In all, that meant that no fewer than 51 of the 84 stations had been moved during the 30-year study period, 25 had not moved, and eight she could not recollect.

Wang, however, maintained to the university that the 1990 paper’s claim that “few, if any” stations had moved was true. The inquiry apparently agreed.

Wigley, in his May 2009 email to Jones, said of Wang: “I have always thought W-C W was a rather sloppy scientist. I would .not be surprised if he screwed up here . Were you taking W-C W on trust? Why, why, why did you and W-C W not simply say this right at the start? Perhaps it’s not too late.” There is no evidence of any doubts being raised over Wang’s previous work.

Jones told the Guardian he was not able to comment on the allegations. Wang said: “I have been exonerated by my university on all the charges. When we started on the paper we had all the station location details in order to identify our network, but we cannot find them any more. Some of the location changes were probably only a few metres, and where they were more we corrected for them.”

The story has a startling postscript. In 2008, Jones prepared a paper for the Journal of Geophysical Research re-examining temperatures in eastern China. It found that, far from being negligible, the urban heat phenomenon was responsible for 40% of the warming seen in eastern China between 1951 and 2004.

This does not flatly contradict Jones’s 1990 paper. The timeframe for the new analysis is different. But it raises serious new questions about one of the most widely referenced papers on global warming, and about the IPCC’s reliance on its conclusions.

SOURCE

BRITAIN’S VERY OWN INSPECTOR CLOUSEAU TAKES ON CLIMATEGATE

It was the Russians. Or possibly the Chinese. No, wait, it was the Americans. Yes, our very own version of Inspector Clouseau is on the case of the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. Yesterday Sir David King, Tony Blair’s former chief scientific advisor, told this newspaper: “It was an extraordinarily sophisticated operation. There are several bodies of people who could do this sort of work. These are national intelligence agencies… there is the possibility that it could be the Russian intelligence agency.” However, King goes on to suggest that the expense of such an operation would be too great for the entire Russian state to undertake: “In terms of the expense, there is the American lobby system, which is a very likely source of finance, so the finger must point to them.”

And why is it that Sir David thinks that the Kremlin joined forces with unspecified “American agencies” to leak emails from the UEA’s Climatic Research Unit? He claims it was to undermine the UN’s Copenhagen climate Conference (as if it hadn’t been doomed anyway). The more interesting question is why the content of the emails might have been thought to have such an effect, as King apparently believes they did.

Perhaps – let’s make a wild stab – it was because they revealed that the unit described as the world’s most authoritative source of evidence for the threat of man-made climate change had been trying to prevent the methodology behind its predictions from being made public via the Freedom of Information Act.

Perhaps it was also because the emails showed how some members of the UEA team had lobbied scientific journals to block the publishing of papers that dissented from their own opinion about the entirely anthropogenic cause of allegedly unprecedented global temperatures; and perhaps it was also because it contained such emails as this one, from the head of climate analysis of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it’s a travesty that we can’t… we cannot account for what is happening in the climate system.”

For Sir David King, clearly, the travesty is that the public should be allowed to have a glimpse of the true level of uncertainty within climate science. It is astonishing arrogance on his part. His intervention is on the same moral level as any MP who declared that the most important issue about the expenses claims within the Palace of Westminster was how it came to be that the disc on which they were stored was passed to the press. In fact, no MP was that arrogant – or that stupid.

As it happens, we now know that disc was leaked by someone legitimately in possession of it – a whistleblower who was appalled by what he saw, and thought that the public should know. For some reason, it has not occurred to Sir David King that the UEA emails might have been accessed and then leaked by an insider shocked at what he had discovered. Remember also that they were in any case all being collated following a request under the Freedom of Information Act; perhaps this insider became aware that the now suspended head of the Climate Research Unit, Phil Jones, had asked colleagues to delete certain emails, and was determined that Jones should not be allowed to get away with it.

Even if the leak were not the work of a whistleblower from inside the UEA, it is still ludicrous scaremongering on Sir David’s part to declare that this must have been a concerted operation by one or more foreign intelligence services. Is he unaware that an autistic loner, Gary McKinnon, is facing extradition to the US, after he hacked into some of the Pentagon’s most sensitive codes using nothing more than a domestic dial-up internet connection? Yet, according to Sir David King, such a non-secure academic database as the University of East Anglia’s could only have been penetrated by SMERSH, sorry, the FSB, sorry, the CIA….oh, whatever.

On the wider issue of climate change, Sir David has form for scaremongering. In 2004 he declared that if the world did not act to reduce its Co2 emissions, by the end of the century Antarctica would be the planet’s only inhabitable continent. It is, by the way, most welcome that his successor as chief scientist, John Beddington, has an altogether more…well, scientific approach. Last week Beddington said: “I don’t think it’s healthy to dismiss proper [climate] scepticism…there is a fundamental uncertainty about climate change prediction…there are uncertainties both in terms of empirical evidence and the climate models themselves.”

Beddington was speaking in the wake of a number of damaging revelations about the whole process by which the International Panel On Climate Change comes up with its terrifying forecasts. The most notable was the admission by the IPCC that its 2007 report’s claim that the Himalayan glaciers would “disappear by the year 2035″ was based on a misunderstanding (let’s not be cynical) by the World Wildlife Fund, which was itself citing a magazine article, which was in turn quoting a single Indian glaciologist, who in his turn subsequently claimed that he hadn’t said any such thing.

Yet when a number of the IPCC’s critics questioned the astonishing claim that the Himalayas would be free of ice by 2035, the IPCC’s chairman dismissed them as “voodoo scientists.” Among those alleged “voodoo” practitioners was the Indian Government. Last week the Indian Environment Minister, Jairiam Ramesh, welcomed the IPCC’s retraction of its most headline-grabbing claim: “The IPCC’s claim that [Himalayan] glaciers will vanish by 2035 was not based on an iota of scientific evidence.” One can understand Mr Ramesh’s fury. About two billion people depend on meltwater from Himalayan glaciers. If they had believed what the IPCC said, then we could have witnessed a panic movement of population of unprecedented scale.

And where does our own climate change minister, Ed Miliband, stand on this? Last month he harrumphed that “We must not let the sceptics pass off political opinion as scientific fact… the melting of the Himalayan glaciers that feed the great rivers of South Asia could put hundreds of millions of people at risk of drought. Our security is at stake.”

Now that Miliband stands revealed as someone who passed off political opinion as scientific fact, what does he say? Under the headline “Miliband declares war on climate change sceptics”, the minister was reported this weekend as follows:” I think it would be wrong that when a mistake is made it’s somehow used to undermine the overwhelming picture… when the next IPCC report comes out it will suggest that there have been areas where things have been happening more dramatically than the 2007 report implied.”

A mistake? The single most significant and newsworthy claim in the IPCC’s report is shown to be complete garbage, undermining confidence in the whole process, and it’s just “a mistake”? One is reminded of Tony Blair’s response to the Chilcot committee last week, when asked about his utterly discredited claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that would take just 45 minutes to launch. A mere detail, said Blair: it was the media’s fault for overstating its significance within the wider picture.

After non-existent weapons of mass destruction, the British Government now wants to terrify us – and the world – with scaremongering about “man-made” weather of mass destruction. That’s the scandal – not whether someone has hacked into an East Anglian computer.

SOURCE

“Give me your liberty-haters”: “Comparing America and England, and the respective dominant ‘cultures’ of each, gave me an idea. Why not encourage all the gun-haters and otherwise self-hating, socialism-loving people to emigrate to England where guns are illegal and where self-defense is now routinely punished more harshly than aggression? Then there would be plenty of room to encourage all the freedom-loving people of England to immigrate, with or without government ‘permission,’ to America.”

February 2, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — jonjayray @ 11:47 pm

Pope attacks British “equality” laws

The Pope has made an unprecedented attack on the Government, accusing it of pursuing “unjust” equality laws. Benedict XVI claimed that legislation introduced by Labour to end discrimination “actually violates natural law” because it stopped worshippers remaining true to their beliefs. Rather than making society more equal, the Government’s new rules limited religious freedom, he said.

His strongly worded intervention in British politics comes after leaders of both the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England clashed with Labour over its Equality Bill, which they fear will make them admit homosexuals to the priesthood or face prosecution for discriminating against them.

In an address delivered yesterday to 35 Catholic bishops from England and Wales, the Pope attacked Labour’s equality proposals. He said: “Your country is well known for its firm commitment to equality of opportunity for all members of society. Yet … the effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs.

“In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed.” Harriet Harman’s Equality Bill, currently going through Parliament, contains a new, narrow definition of religious workers. It means clergy will not be allowed to opt out of the rules and so will either have to go against their teachings by employing homosexuals, or face prosecution.

It is also believed the law, intended to outlaw discrimination against any group in the “provision of services” from health care to shopping, would restrict the right of a church school to employ a head teacher who shared their faith, and would open the job up to members of any religion or atheists.

Since coming to power, Labour’s drive for equality has led to a series of high-profile disputes with the 4.1million Catholics in England and Wales. Ministers wanted to force popular and successful faith schools to take a quarter of their pupils from other religious backgrounds but backed down following a Catholic campaign. Many Catholic adoption agencies have either closed down or cut their links with the Church over the past year after they were refused exemptions from anti-discrimination rules that forced them to consider homosexual couples as potential parents.

As he confirmed that he would make a historic state visit to the country later this year, the Pontiff also urged Catholics in Britain to speak “with a united voice” in a secular and multi-cultural society. He said staying true to the Gospel “in no way restricts the freedom of others” but rather “serves their freedom by offering them the truth”. He told the bishops that they must continue to assert the Catholic point of view in national debates.

The Pope is seen as more conservative than his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, and has been unafraid to assert the Church’s traditional teachings on subjects such as contraception and sexuality, despite criticism in the liberal West.

At a press conference in Rome, the Most Rev Peter Smith, Archbishop of Cardiff, said: “The Church of course upholds absolutely the equal dignity of every person, irrespective of their faith, age and ability. But I think there is a misunderstanding, because sometimes in government legislation equality seems to be that we are all absolutely equal, which we are not. We are equal in dignity, beyond that each one of us is unique.”

The Pope’s comments come at a critical time, just months ahead of the general election. English and Welsh bishops are expected to publish their own guide to issues that voters should consider when choosing a party, such as family life, abortion and assisted suicide.

SOURCE

Fat parents to blame for childhood obesity epidemic by over-feeding under-fives, British study claims

Complete and utter garbage. The most obvious conclusion from the findings is in fact that weight is genetically determined — which we already know to be so

Overweight parents who simply feed their children too much at a young age are to largely blame for Britain’s childhood obesity crisis, a report will warn this week. The study claims that the Government may be misguided in its policy of trying to tackle the problem through expensive projects aimed at persuading children in primary school to eat healthily and exercise mored. Instead, the report suggests, they should focus on educating new parents and parents-to-be to feed their children less before they start school, so they do not become overweight in the first place. Parents must learn to reduce portion sizes it suggests.

The findings from one of the few long-term studies on childhood obesity in Britain show that daughters of overweight mothers are 10 times more likely to be obese by the time they reach the age of eight than a daughter born to a slim mother. [Which is entirely to be expected given the highly heredity determination of weight] Sons of obese fathers are six times more likely to be overweight, according to the research from scientists working on the EarlyBird Diabetes Project at the medical school in Plymouth.

Children of fat parents tended to be over-fed and under-exercised, setting them on a trajectory towards obesity, it found. The chief cause of weight gain, the report said, was “over-nutrition” of children by their parents.

One of the report’s co-authors, Terry Wilkin, Professor of Endocrinology and Metabolism at Peninsula Medical School, told The Daily Telegraph that the results showed “physical activity will help a child’s fitness but not his or her fatness”. Prof Wilkin, together with Dr Linda Voss from the school, said in the report: “We have found no evidence that physical inactivity precedes obesity, but good evidence that obesity precedes inactivity. “A picture is emerging from the EarlyBird study to suggest that weight gain trajectories are set early in life, perhaps very early, by some behavioural sympathy between obese parents and their same-sex offspring.”

More than 2.3million children in Britain are estimated to be overweight or obese and many under-12s already show signs of high blood pressure and cholesterol, diabetes and liver disease. The Government has spent nearly £2billion over the past decade tackling obesity levels, with a large part of the money being spent on encouraging children to lead healthier lives. The figures include £733million on school sport, £650million on school food and £235million on play facilities.

However, the scientists said “the implications are clear [from the research] – strategies aimed at increasing physical activity, even if they ever achieved the increase, are unlikely to reduce BMI [Body Mass Index]. “The observation is important, because it may turn the causality of childhood obesity on its head. A large amount of money and effort has been directed at children in the belief that the prevention of childhood obesity would reduce adult obesity.

“Importantly the factors popularly associated with childhood obesity – poor school meals, lack of playing fields, insufficient PE at school, too much screen watching – appear to have little impact, at least at primary school age.”

The report said that while eight out of 10 obese adults were not overweight as children, “a high proportion of obese children are the offspring of overweight/obese adults. Maybe the focus of childhood obesity prevention should be on parents-to-be”.

The findings have been drawn from the EarlyBird research project, which has been taking blood tests, weight measurements and low level X-rays of the same group of 300 children for the past 10 years. This week’s new “pointers” report, which is being published on the medical school’s website, is the first time the scientists have started to draw conclusions from the long term study. Earlier research published in 2008 by the same scientists showed that more than 90 per cent of excess weight gained by girls before puberty is before they are five years old. The figure is 70 per cent for boys.

The project is due to complete in 2013 but there are now fears that the project could end this September because of lack of funds. Prof Wilkin said he had applied for further funding from the Government, but was turned down because EarlyBird is an observational project, rather than interventionist scheme.

A Department for Health spokesman said: “Our Change4Life campaign is aimed at families – parents and their children. Supporting them to eat better and move more to live longer and healthier lives. “As part of this, our Start4Life campaign launched in December, will support pregnant women and parents of babies give their families a ‘good start for a healthier life’.”

SOURCE

Britain shivers through coldest January since 1987… and February starts with more snow and temperatures of -7c

More sun and less rain – what’s to complain about? Quite a lot, actually. For January this year turned out to be perishingly cold.

The sunnier and drier than usual combination is normally ideal for most of us. But the usual rules were turned on their head in the first half of January when heavy snow meant it was also the coldest for 20 years, according to a monthly review by climatologist Philip Eden. He said: ‘Although the second half of the month was unremarkable temperature-wise, the severity of the cold period during the first half was such that January turned out to be the coldest since 1987, and the ninth coldest in the past 100 years.

‘Snow fell frequently and sometimes heavily during the first fortnight, notably on the 4th/5th when depths of 25-35cm (10-14ins) were measured across a large area from the Cotswolds to the Weald. ‘Accumulated depths of 40-60cm (16-24ins) were noted in upland parts of eastern Scotland and North-East England and here snow on the ground lasted throughout the month. ‘Overall it was both drier and sunnier than an average January although most of the sunshine came during the first and last weeks.’

Temperatures dropped to minus 22.3c (minus 8f) at Altnaharra, Sutherland, overnight on January 7-8 – the lowest temperature recorded in the UK since late December 1995, Mr Eden said. The lowest daytime maximum occurred on January 10 when the temperature failed to climb higher than minus 13.5c (8f) at Altnaharra. A peak daytime high of 12.4c (54f) was recorded in Exeter on January 16 while the warmest night was 9.2c (49f) at St Mary’s in the Isles of Scilly on January 14-15.

According to Mr Eden, the Central England Temperature of 1.1c (34f) was 3.1c (38f) below the 1971-2000 mean, the lowest since 1987. The CET in January 1987 was 0.8c (33f). The month started off as normal, but within a week virtually the whole country was covered in snow with temperatures below zero. Up to two inches could settle in northern Scotland and in northern and western Wales, with lighter snow showers expected in Merseyside, Shropshire and Derbyshire. Temperatures dropped well below freezing over the weekend with a low of -7c recorded in Benson, Oxfordshire.

The Met Office warned of widespread icy roads in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, north-west and south-west England and the West Midlands. But the chilly spell will be replaced by warmer weather as bands of rain move in from the West, forecasters said.

Heavy snow in some parts over the weekend caused disruption to motorists and forced the cancellation of several sports fixtures. The worst-hit areas were the east and west coasts of England, northern Scotland and south-west Wales. Drivers had to battle icy conditions and road closures as snow hit parts of the North East on Friday night.

There were five separate crashes on Bonemill Lane in Sunderland on Saturday morning and police were forced to close the road for an hour-and-a-half. And an icy road surface led to a three-vehicle collision at a roundabout near Crowther Road in the city. Nobody was injured in any of the incidents, police said.

SOURCE

Leftist class war continues in Britain

Children of better-off parents left in tears after they are banned by the local council from attending school trips at half-term. British local councils are often very Leftist

They had been looking forward to their half-term excursions for weeks. But dozens of children have been barred from school trips to a safari park, football ground and indoor ski centre because their parents are too well-off. Families said their children had been left in tears, unable to understand why they were banned from going on trips with their friends.

Last night council officials were accused of penalising working parents as only ‘economically disadvantaged’ pupils can take part in the excursions. A Government-funded scheme, being trialled across Trafford Council in Greater Manchester, is open only to children who receive free school meals because their parents are on benefits.

Families not on state support are not eligible for the trips to Knowsley Safari Park, football sessions with the Manchester United Foundation and a day at the Chill Factore indoor snow centre, even if the parents are willing to pay. Sarah Rumney, whose five-year-old son attends Partington Primary School, said he had been upset when told he could not go on the outings. ‘I’m really angry,’ she said. ‘I’m being penalised for working and wanting to do better for myself and my children.’

The 29-year-old self-employed cleaner was willing to pay for her son to take part but was told places were restricted. She said: ‘It’s a nightmare. What sort of incentive does it give to these kids to want to go out and work if all their friends are allowed to go on fantastic trips but they aren’t? I’m quite annoyed about it.’

Margaret Woodhouse, from Trafford Council’s children and young people’s service, confirmed 22 schools in the area had been included in the pilot scheme. She said: ‘It was a government requirement the money be used to support children from “economically disadvantaged” families within the area. Trafford Council chose to follow the guidance from the Training and Development Agency – responsible for allocating funding on the government’s behalf – and use free school meals as its criteria. ‘This ensures the funding goes to support children from lower-income families.’

But yesterday the Government said the council appeared to have missed the point of the scheme. Officials said the aim was to ensure all children were able to enjoy out-of-school activities – regardless of their parents’ income. A spokesman at the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: ‘Our guidance is crystal clear that no child should be left out. ‘Activities should be available to all children – with those who can afford it being able to pay and take part.’

Officials pointed to guidance saying the scheme should ‘encourage those who can afford to pay to do so, while using the subsidy to make particular efforts to encourage the participation of those who are unable to pay’. The spokesman added there was no stipulation the money be ring-fenced for those on free school meals. ‘It is down to schools to use their professional judgments in deciding who is or is not eligible for a subsidy,’ he said. ‘We’re clear that many groups can be covered, including children in care, young carers and those with special educational needs – not necessarily limiting subsidies to pupils on free school meals.’

Last night Trafford Council officials said activities had been restricted to children on free school meals only in the Partington area. This was because of higher than average levels of children with families on state support. In other areas of Trafford running the scheme, paying parents had been able to send their children on the activities.

A Training and Development Agency spokesman said: ‘The extended services disadvantage subsidy is provided to schools specifically, and quite rightly, to help those children whose parents are less well-off and who have fewer opportunities, and a greater need than others. ‘Our guidance to schools clearly states that any new activities – from breakfast clubs to summer camps – should be open to all pupils and should be financially sustainable, including charging for activities where appropriate.’

SOURCE

British GPs ‘visit just one in 50 sick patients out of hours’ in some areas

Major variations in the quality of out of hours care across the country mean that in the best areas one in four patients will receive a home visit if they call for a doctor at night or over weekends. But elsewhere the proportion is much lower, according to the report by the Primary Care Foundation.

The study, which compares the quality of health services provided by all of England’s Primary Care Trusts (PCTs), has disclosed “gaping holes” in the out-of-hours provision. It shows huge variations in the quality of care across the country, although none of the trusts is named. The number of patients receiving home visits varied from 25 per cent in one PCT to 2 per cent in another, the report said. Meanwhile, the number of patients given only a telephone diagnosis also varied between 20 and 70 per cent.

The study also shows that many PCTs are failing to respond quickly enough to urgent calls. Government targets say a GP should visit, or at least telephone within 20 minutes, all patients whose cases are designated urgent. But just two PCTs met this target out of 84 surveyed. The worst achieved the target in only a third of cases. The study also showed large variations in the amount spent on out-of-hours services between PCTs, which ranged from £16 and £3 per person.

An investigation by the Daily Telegraph disclosed yesterday that in the worst areas, there is just one GP covering as many as 650,000 people. Just four GPs are on duty overnight for the 1.1m people living in east, north and west Hertfordshire, while 11 doctors are available to a similar number of people living in east, north and south Birmingham and south Staffordshire.

Katherine Murphy, director of the Patients’ Association, called gaps in out of hours provision “scandalous.” “It is such a vital service because it can be very frightening for somebody to get ill in the night, knowing that there’s nobody at their doctor’s surgery,” she said. “We know from our helpline that this is a national problem. The situation is appalling and it needs to be resolved.”

SOURCE

A brilliant British pupil — by State school standards

I often mention posts from other blogs, as there is so much out there worth reading. But I recently read one which I wanted to share in more detail. It is a brilliant read – and extremely thought provoking.

Miss Snuffleupagus is a black teacher in London who’s never scared to speak her mind. She writes a fantastic, honest, blog, To Miss With Love , about teaching in the inner-city. She’s a talented writer and it really is worth reading what she says – often about the frustrations of pupils who don’t care about learning and don’t take it seriously.

A few months ago, I mentioned one of her posts because it tied in so beautifully with another piece I had just posted. The topic was Oxbridge, and whether colleges were now discriminating against private school applicants. Just a few days after posting on this, I read an article by Miss Snuffleupagus where she said, as a state school teacher, that the universities must be discriminating – otherwise all the places would go to the privately educated….

It’s ironic that this topic has now reared its head again, in a beautifully written, heartfelt post, entitled the best they’ve ever seen. Here Miss Snuffleupagus and the head of her school are in shock. A pupil she calls Brilliant didn’t get into Oxford. “Brilliant is one of the brightest girls I have ever known,” she writes. “She is also kind, determined, responsible and utterly superb in every possible way. We thought for sure she’d get in. If she doesn’t get in, then who does?” The school has been told that the Oxford college took six pupils and that Brilliant was number seven. Miss S thinks it’s “unlucky.”

“My Head winces at my statement,” she writes. “‘Well, no, I just wish I could be like the old boys and ring up someone and say Hello, this is Mr Contacts here, I’m just wondering ahem, about you know, well, I understand there isn’t a place for her at your college, but might we not find her a place at another college?’

I draw my eyebrows together demonstrating disagreement.

‘Well that’s what they say in the books about how it’s done!’ My Head shouts.

‘Yes, but that was ages ago… I don’t think that now…’

My Head laughs. ‘You know they said that her essays were the BEST essays that they have ever seen from a state school student before!… The BEST! What does that mean? She’s the best but we won’t have her?’

I nod, thinking lots of things, and not saying any of them.

My Head shakes his head. ‘Well, I won’t go into it, we all know there are issues with Oxbridge taking state students and well, I won’t waste time talking about it.’”

Why didn’t Brilliant get in? Was it because of her school? Was it because she actually wasn’t good enough? Or wasn’t she prepared properly for the interview. We all know that Oxbridge is incredibly over-subscribed. Not everyone can get in. Everyone who applies is extremely clever and the interviews do really matter – private schools make sure their pupils are extremely well prepared. But one phrase haunts Miss S. She writes:

‘From a state school applicant’… the words reverberate around my head as I walk down the hall. If Brilliant is the best that we can produce and all that means in the grand scheme of things is that her essays are only good by state school standards, then what on earth are they doing in private schools?

What must they be teaching in private schools? What are they able to do with their kids that we cannot do? I guess they aren’t chasing loads of bad behaviour. I guess they’re actually able to teach for an entire lesson. I guess they plan their lessons according to what would make for good learning, as opposed to what will keep them in their seats. I guess they can teach their children whatever they want and are not bound by the national curriculum and influenced by the madness that all lessons must be ‘fun’. I guess they simply live in a different world.”

The state school/private school divide continues and we shouldn’t expect universities to pick up the pieces. I am not at all convinced that the top universities discriminate against state school pupils. I think they want to teach the best overall and will make their decision to reflect that. But I feel sorry for Brilliant and the school.

SOURCE

Bizarre Climategate Update: Prince Charles Supports Lawbreaking Science Unit

After the British government’s Information Commissioner’s Office concluded the Climate Research Center at the University of East Anglia violated Britain’s Freedom of Information Act law, Prince Charles visited to show his support…

…that is, he showed support for the Climate Research Unit, not the Information Commissioner (the report starts at 4:16 in the video).

Surprising to me, the prince specifically met with Phil Jones (reported at 5:21 in the video), the head of the unit (on leave since the scandal broke) and the man most under fire for the FOIA violation.

Typically in these bad-PR situations an institution will get rid of problem-causers first, and then bring the bigwigs in for a photo op expressing support for the replacement team. Fresh start, break with the past, that kind of message.

Seems Prince Charles doesn’t see a need for a fresh start.

John O’Sullivan on Climategate.com has another detail about the prince’s visit. Reportedly, the prince told the Climategate team: “Well done all of you. Many, many congratulations on your work. I wish you great success in the future. Don’t get downhearted by these little blips here and there!”

Well done? Blips?

SOURCE

February 1, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — jonjayray @ 11:06 pm

‘Burglars give up any human rights’: British Conservative leader gets tough on right to defend home

David Cameron backed the rights of homeowners to protect themselves yesterday by warning that burglars surrender their ‘human rights’ the moment they break in. He raised the election stakes on crime by saying a Tory government would change the law to protect householders who exercise their ‘legitimate’ right to self defence. The Tory leader’s comments follow public outrage at sentences handed out in cases like that of Munir Hussain, who chased and beat a man who had held his family at knifepoint in their home.

Mr Cameron said he wanted to see fewer people arrested for defending their family and property. He told the BBC1 Politics Show: ‘It’s to make sure that fewer cases, frankly, are taken to court, that fewer people are arrested for doing what I think is perfectly legitimate, which is to defend yourself in your own home. ‘The moment a burglar steps over your threshold and invades your property, with all the threat that gives to you, your family and your livelihood, I think they leave their human rights outside.’

Under existing laws, homeowners are allowed to use only ‘reasonable’ force to tackle a burglar. The Tory proposals would strengthen the law so they would face prosecution only for using ‘grossly disproportionate’ force. It was unclear how Mr Cameron’s controversial proposals would work, but the Tories have pledged to abolish the Human Rights Act and replace it with a Bill of Rights if they win power. Mr Cameron has insisted that a Bill of Rights would ‘better tailor, but also strengthen, the protection of our core rights.’

The Tory leader’s tough stance put him on a collision course with the legal establishment and civil rights campaigners. Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said he was speaking ‘nonsense’ and accused him of electioneering. She said: ‘Both main parties have become old hands at using law and order as a political football and inflated language is the tool of their trade. But as neither Mr Cameron nor the Government believe in the summary execution of burglars, the idea that anyone “leaves their human rights” at the door, as opposed to jeopardising their freedom, is nonsense.’

Business Secretary Lord Mandelson told the Politics Show: ‘It’s a wonderful soundbite but that’s all it is. ‘You know it’s not a practical policy. What sort of country is he trying to create? ‘Of course it will receive short-term public applause from those who want to get tough on burglars, as we do in our Government, but where’s the practical common sense policy thinking?’

Leading barrister Paul Mendelle, QC, chairman of the Criminal Bar Association, has warned that the Tory proposals would encourage vigilantism and allow householders to kill burglars without being prosecuted. He said: ‘Burglars, knowing that they could be killed, might be more likely to carry weapons and/or use extreme violence. So it would be wholly counterproductive. The law on self-defence works well and has done for years.’ [i.e. It's very lucrative for lawyers]

But Dr David Green, from the thinktank Civitas, said Mr Cameron’s policy was ‘common sense’. He said: ‘If someone is faced with a threat in their own home they should be able to use anything at hand to protect themselves – even if it is in hot pursuit. ‘There are a lot of people out there who are afraid that they could find themselves in the dock if they defend themselves.’

Businessman Mr Hussain was jailed for two and a half years in December after chasing career criminal Waled Salem and attacking him with a cricket bat. Last month, the Lord Chief Justice freed Mr Hussain, saying the case demanded mercy in the face of a national outcry.

SOURCE

500,000 British hospital patients sent home too soon every year (and 1,500 a day readmitted for emergency care)

More than 500,000 patients every year are readmitted to hospital after apparently being sent home too soon, alarming figures reveal. Labour’s waiting-time targets have been blamed for the 50 per cent rise in emergency readmissions of patients within days of them being discharged. Critics said it was a scandal that almost 1,500 a day were apparently being released before they are well enough, harming their recovery. They say the targets put pressure on hospitals to discharge people early to free up beds and have turned the NHS into a ‘revolving door’.

Elderly patients are particularly vulnerable if they are sent home too soon, charities warned. There are also fears hospitals are trying to cash in from being paid twice to treat the same patient.

The figures, obtained by the Conservatives, show the numbers readmitted through A&E within 28 days of being sent home from hospital has risen steadily in the past 12 years. In 1998, the figure was 359,719, but it has risen every year since then, reaching 546,354 in 2007-08. A large number of those affected are vulnerable elderly patients, with 159,134 being over the age of 75, up from 94,283 in 1998.

Under Labour’s strict target regime, hospitals must ensure no patient waits more than 18 weeks for treatment after being referred by their GP. However, in recent years, the number of NHS beds has been cut by around 20,000, or 10 per cent of the total, meaning many are being discharged too soon from crowded wards to make way for new patients. This is despite a Government pledge to increase beds, as well as a tripling in health spending.

NHS trusts trying to save money have also cut back on community services. As a result a large number of patients do not receive the support they need in their own homes – and often end up back in hospital.

Conservative health spokesman Andrew Lansley said a Tory government intended to change NHS rules so hospitals are not paid for treating patients they have recently discharged. ‘It’s staggering that there has been such a huge increase in the number of patients having to be readmitted to hospital as emergencies almost as soon as they’ve been allowed home,’ Mr Lansley said. ‘It’s also a deeply worrying sign that the quality of care in hospitals is being undermined. ‘This raises real concerns that patients are routinely being discharged too soon. Hospitals should not have an incentive to discharge patients quickly and then get paid by the taxpayer a second when they have to be readmitted. ‘I will ensure that through our payment for results approach, hospitals have to meet any costs arising from emergency readmissions themselves.’

Experts blame a number of factors for emergency readmissions, including early discharge, poor treatment, infections and badly organised rehabilitation and support services.

The figures show hospitals that send patients home more quickly than others – with lower than average lengths of stay for first admission – have higher readmission rates. There is also evidence that patients who have to be readmitted actually stay in hospital longer than after their first admissions.

Patients Association director Katherine Murphy said: ‘The pressure on getting beds cleared to meet treatment targets should never be allowed to compromise patient care. It’s indefensible that this might be happening and nothing is being done about it.’

A Department of Health spokesman said: ‘Patients are only discharged from hospital if the clinicians involved consider it safe and in their best interests. ‘Some patients might require readmission if their health deteriorates, but the numbers are small. Only about 5 per cent of patients discharged from hospital are readmitted within seven days of their discharge.’

However, the spokesman added: ‘A high rate of emergency readmission after elective surgery is a matter of concern –so we are encouraging hospitals to measure the trends in order to improve the quality of care they provide.’

SOURCE

Muir-Wood’s climate change study was ‘misused’ in the Stern report

This weakness in the Stern report has been noted elsewhere but it is interesting to see Muir-Wood saying the same. The response from Stern is astounding, however

LORD STERN’S report on climate change, which underpins [British] government policy, has come under fire from a disaster analyst who says the research he contributed was misused.

Robert Muir-Wood, head of research at Risk Management Solutions, a US-based consultancy, said the Stern report misquoted his work to suggest a firm link between global warming and the frequency and severity of disasters such as floods and hurricanes.

The Stern report, citing Muir-Wood, said: “New analysis based on insurance industry data has shown that weather-related catastrophe losses have increased by 2% each year since the 1970s over and above changes in wealth, inflation and population growth/movement. “If this trend continued or intensified with rising global temperatures, losses from extreme weather could reach 0.5%-1% of world GDP by the middle of the century.”

Muir-Wood said his research showed no such thing and accused Stern of “going far beyond what was an acceptable extrapolation of the evidence”.

The criticism is among the strongest made of the Stern report, which, since its publication in 2006, has influenced policy, including green taxes.

Muir-Wood’s study did show an association between global warming and the impact and frequency of disasters. But he said this was caused by exceptionally strong hurricanes in the final two years of his study.

A spokesman for Stern said: “Muir-Wood may have been deceived by his own observations.” [Whaaaat???]

SOURCE

Britain pays hefty bribes to keep its dysfunctional public schools staffed

THE salaries of the best-paid state school headteachers have risen to almost £200,000, overtaking the pay packet of the headmaster of Eton College, according to new figures released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The data show that two principals at academies, Labour’s semi-independent state comprehensives, were paid between £190,000 and £199,999 in 2008/09. Tony Little of Eton, is paid £180,000—£189,999 and is believed to be the highest-paid private-sector head.

The data show the emergence of an elite of at least 11 academy principals, condemned by critics as “fat cats” paid more than £150,000. This was an increase from six the previous year. A third of academies have yet to submit accounts.

In addition, seven heads working for local authority-controlled schools were paid in excess of this figure in 2008, the latest year for which figures were available.

The salaries may even understate the total packages received, because many heads receive generous bonuses and add-on payments for running spin-off businesses based on school premises. Some also charge consultancy fees for advising other schools on how to improve results.

Vernon Coaker, the schools minister, said: “Being the head of a school is a very challenging, but also very rewarding role. We know that the best heads deliver leadership which raises aspirations for all pupils and makes everyone feel part of a team. The difference good leadership can make is beyond measure; it can make or break a school. “That’s why it’s right salaries are competitive and we allow schools further flexibility to reward the best candidates meaning schools that are underperforming or have challenging circumstances can actually recruit and retain the best heads.”

Academies, which are often among the toughest inner-city schools to run, are not subject to the same salary restrictions that apply to mainstream state schools and they pay high figures to attract the best candidates.

Alasdair Smith, national secretary of the Anti-Academies Alliance, said: “In addition to millions squandered on consultancies, we now have unaccountable, fat-cat headteachers shamelessly enriching themselves at public expense. “It is yet more evidence that the academies programme is not fit for purpose and it is a pointer to what will happen if the next government extend the market in education.”

According to a study received last week, the average secondary school head earns £74,000. Although the maximum salary possible is in theory £109,658 for inner London and £102,734 elsewhere, pay is in practice raised far higher by bonuses and other deals.

State school teachers were once seen as under-paid, but have seen salaries soar under Labour. This helped plug shortages in key areas of teaching, but has led to a series of rows over “excessive” pay packets for heads.

Sir Alan Davies, former headmaster of Copland, a comprehensive in Brent, west London, is being investigated by Scotland Yard over a series of generous payments. In a single year, he was allegedly paid more than £400,000 in a single year after clinching a series of lucrative deals including a contract to work as “project manager” on a development at his own school. His extra payments are said to have totalled £600,000 over five years in addition to his six-figure salary. Davies resigned amid claims of financial mismanagement by the governors.

Greg Martin, head at Durand primary school in Stockwell, south London, more than doubled his £70,000 salary by charging fees for managing the school’s health spa and other facilities.

SOURCE

After the war on salt, the battle against butter

Healthy-living killjoys now even want to ban the yellow creamy stuff that makes food so tasty and enjoyable. ‘By banning butter and replacing it with a healthy spread, the average daily sat-fat intake would be reduced by eight grams. This would save thousands of lives each year and help to protect them from cardiovascular disease – the UK’s biggest killer.’

So said London-based heart surgeon Shyam Kolvekar last week. He, along with many others, is offering us out-of-date advice that would rob us of one of life’s great pleasures.

The theory is that a diet high in saturated fats will lead to atherosclerosis – so-called ‘furry’ arteries. This narrowing and hardening of the arteries in turn is thought to make it more likely that we will suffer a clot in one of the blood vessels leading to the heart, causing a ‘heart attack’ as that vital organ is deprived of oxygen.

It’s the story we’ve been told for decades now. Rich, animal-derived foods like butter and other dairy products, eggs and meat are little more than a ‘heart attack on a plate’. Butter – with a saturated fat content of 50 per cent – is a prime target for health campaigners, and manufacturers of spreads with low levels of saturated fats make great play on how they are heart-healthy.

It certainly seems to be the case that eating more saturated fat increases the amount of cholesterol in your blood. It’s the cholesterol – or more particularly these days, the so-called bad cholesterol – which is deemed to cause those furry arteries. The trouble is that intervening in diet doesn’t seem to make a great deal of difference. In the early Eighties, a massive intervention trial called MRFIT reduced cholesterol and saturated fat intake for a large group of Americans. If the theory was right, the result should have been a sharp drop in heart attacks. The actual result? No change. The kind of dietary changes that people are constantly told to make had no effect on the risk of having a coronary. Incredibly, however, this negative result had no effect on the popularity of the diet-causes-heart-attacks thesis, either.

In 1998, the Danish doctor and cholesterol sceptic Uffe Ravnskov noted: ‘The crucial test is the controlled, randomised trial. Eight such trials using diet as the only treatment have been performed but neither the number of fatal or non-fatal heart attacks was reduced.’ Indeed, as Gary Taubes notes in his book The Diet Delusion, there was initially a lot of scepticism about the idea that cholesterol was a killer and it was only when the idea got the official stamp of approval from the US government in the 1960s that it became regarded as common sense; as Taubes shows, the epidemiological evidence for the theory was full of holes. (For a review of the book, see The Copernicus of the diet debate? by Rob Lyons.)

Kolvekar’s comments last week represent just the latest in a long line of attacks on the basic pleasures of food. If it’s not butter that’s going to kill us, apparently it will be salt or bacon or anything else that actually tastes of something. Time and again the evidence for these assertions turns out to be as feeble as the flavour of the salad we’re supposed to be munching instead. It’s all reminiscent of an old joke. A doctor advises his patient to stop smoking, drinking or eating rich foods. ‘Will this mean I’ll live longer?’, asks the patient. ‘No, but it’ll seem longer’, came the reply.

Even if there were some risk attached to eating butter, would we really want to do without it? In Kitchen Confidential, the American chef and writer Anthony Bourdain is forthright in his defence of butter: ‘I don’t care what they tell you they’re putting or not putting in your food at your favourite restaurant, chances are you’re eating a ton of butter. In a professional kitchen, it’s almost always the first and last thing in the pan… Margarine? That’s not food. I Can’t Believe it’s Not Butter? I can.’ Even the Italians, says Bourdain, famed for their olive-oil heavy diets, are in fact whacking loads of that yellowy, creamy nectar into the pasta, risotto and veal chop.

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, known as much for his health crusades as his cooking, knows which side his bread is buttered on. A spokesman told the Daily Mail: ‘He is completely against a ban on butter. He uses butter in his recipes, for example for roasting potatoes in his Christmas programme. He doesn’t like the whole kind of food police, we must ban everything, point of view.’ That last statement is a little hard to swallow, given some of the claims made in Oliver’s own TV shows, but he’s not so stupid that he thinks you can cook good food without butter.

It’s not even the case that butter is all that important as a source of fat in our diets. As Felicity Lawrence points out in the Guardian, ‘Butter and fat spreads between them make up just one-eighth of our total fat intake’, with meat, dairy products and even cereal products like bread and biscuits being more important. Unfortunately, Lawrence can’t help but see the whole affair as a scam on the part of food manufacturers who produce those ‘heart-healthy’ spreads, insinuating that the tentative links between the heart surgeon Kolvekar and food giant Unilever amount to a conflict of interest. But while manufacturers have undoubtedly pumped up advice in order to flog their products – and some cholesterol-lowering products come at a 300 per cent mark-up – the real source of confusion has been the willingness of some noisy doctors and health authorities to overstate the case against certain foods in order to influence how we live.

This has produced some notable ironies. For example, polyunsaturated fats have in the past proven difficult to use in certain situations like baking and high-temperature frying. The furore over saturated fats three decades ago led many manufacturers, particularly in the US, to replace products rich in saturated fat, like butter and lard, with partially-hydrogenated vegetable fats. In recent years, however, these new fats – which contain so-called ‘trans fats’ – have been claimed to be even worse than saturated fat for causing heart disease. It may well be that the case against trans fats is as ropey as the evidence linking butter with heart disease has proven to be. But whatever the truth is, a little more scepticism and careful evaluation of the evidence, rather than a hysterical leaping from one killer food to another, would make more sense.

Those who claim that our food is killing us are not averse to laying it on a bit thick when it comes to scare stories. But the only thing we should be laying on thick is that lovely, creamy butter.

SOURCE

Must not speak the truth about Islam

We read:

“A Tory MP was plunged into a race row after he accused some ethnic communities of importing ‘barbaric and medieval’ views about women into Britain. David Davies, a member of the Home Affairs select committee, was accused of a ‘crass misunderstanding’ of the issues after his comments over a rape by 14-year-old Asian Balal Khan.

The MP for Monmouth told BBC Radio 5 Live: ‘What is it about this young man’s upbringing… his community or his parental upbringing, that led him to think that women are second-class people whose rights can be trampled over like this?

‘There are some sensitive issues here, but there do seem to be some people in some communities who don’t respect women’s rights at all and who – if I may say, without necessarily saying that this is the case on this occasion – who have imported into this country barbaric and medieval views about women.’

But critics described the remarks as ‘dangerous’ and the Conservative Party said they ‘do not reflect the views of the party in any way’.

Source

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

January 30, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — jonjayray @ 11:40 pm

SOCIALIZED MEDICINE IN BRITAIN

Four current horror stories below

Is this the worst diagnosis and treatment of all time? NHS told dying woman she was lying and locked her up in a mental hospital!

I had chronic fatigue syndrome once but luckily I have a very good immune system and it only lasted a month. It was a very real debility, though — JR

As Criona Wilson knelt beside her dying daughter’s bedside, she promised her that her death would not be in vain. Before the frail body of 32-year-old Sophia finally succumbed to the medical complications and ravages of ME, she replied in a whisper: “Then it’s all worth it.” In the years that followed, Mrs Wilson, 66, a former midwife, dedicated her life to proving that her daughter’s condition was not a figment of imagination, nor one that merited her youngest child’s incarceration in a mental hospital.

Her battle saw her take on the medical profession and accepted thinking about the diagnosis and treatment of ME, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome. Eventually, in 2006, a coroner ruled that Sophia’s death was the result of myalgic encephalomyelitis — the first such ruling at an English inquest.

The fierce debate over ME has been highlighted once again by the case of Kay Gilderdale, who admitted assisting her daughter, Lynn, to kill herself after suffering from ME for 17 years. When she walked free from Lewes Crown Court on Monday, having been cleared of murder, Mrs Wilson was among those cheering her from the public gallery. “I had to be there,” said Mrs Wilson yesterday. “It was such an important case. And the verdict was a vote for common sense in a trial that highlighted what people suffering ME and their carers have to face.”

Her daughter, Sophia Mirza, was a talented and popular arts graduate living with her mother in Brighton in 1999 when she contracted ME at the age of 25. She became confined to her bedroom and, just as Miss Gilderdale had, needed round-the-clock care. In 2003 she was visited by a psychiatrist, even though Miss Mirza complained only of physical discomfort. The psychiatrist told her that she was making up her symptoms and if she continued to pretend to be ill he would section her under the Mental Health Act. Mrs Wilson said: “I knew my daughter. There was no way she was mentally ill or pretending.”

When the dread knock on her door finally came in 2003, there was little she could do. A policeman forced the door open and the psychiatrist and a social worker locked themselves into Miss Mirza’s room to prepare her for her trip to a psychiatric ward. Her condition took a dramatic turn for the worse. After 13 days she was released and taken back to the care of her mother. “That spell in a mental hospital set her back terribly. We lost all faith in medical professionals. We were alone,” said Mrs Wilson.

In 2005 Miss Mirza could barely muster the energy to speak, eat or drink. She and her mother had already agreed that no doctors should be called in case she would be sectioned again. On November 25, 2005, Miss Mirza died in her bed at home.

Wiping tears from her eyes, Mrs Wilson said: “We did everything we could.” Determined to get to the bottom of why her daughter’s treatment had been so bad, she got hold of her medical records. After being contacted by the 25 Per Cent ME Group, which campaigns for those with the most acute form of ME, she agreed to her daughter’s body being examined.

At the inquest the next year a neuropathologist told the court that Miss Mirza’s spinal cord was inflamed and three quarters of her sensory cells had abnormalities. It was, the court heard, a clear physical manifestation of ME. The coroner ruled that she had died from “acute renal failures as a result of chronic fatigue syndrome”.

A year later, the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) issued its first guidelines on the diagnosis and treatment of the illness, describing it as “relatively common”, affecting up to 193,000 people in Britain. At the heart of that guidance is the need to take into account the opinions of the patients. Mrs Wilson is campaigning to get the Government to fund research into ME. “It’s not over yet.”

SOURCE

NHS doctors can kill people but that’s OK

A doctor who prescribed “potentially hazardous” levels of painkillers to elderly patients who died has escaped being struck off the medical register. Jane Barton will be allowed to continue working as a doctor, despite being found guilty of serious professional misconduct, a fitness to practise panel ruled.

She was accused of a series of serious failings in her care of 12 elderly patients at Gosport War Memorial Hospital, in Hampshire, in the 1990s. These included prescribing prescription drugs at “excessive” and “inappropriate” levels, a hearing at the General Medical Council (GMC) was told.

The fitness to practise panel found that Dr Barton was guilty of putting patients at risk of premature death at the hospital between January 1996 and November 1999. She was found to have prescribed diamorphine, the opiate painkiller, at varying levels “and created a situation whereby drugs could be administered which were excessive to the patients’ needs” the panel found. However, it said that it had taken into account her ten years of safe practice as a GP in Gosport and 200 letters of support and ruled that she could continue working under certain conditions.

Relatives of the patients who had died reacted furiously to the verdict and walked out of the hearing in central London today. Iain Wilson, the son of Robert Wilson, one of the patients who died, shouted at the panel: “You should hang your head in shame.”

The GMC, which regulates the work of 150,000 doctors in Britain, had recommended that Dr Barton be struck off and also criticised the decision. Niall Dickson, the council’s chief executive, said: “We are surprised by the decision to apply conditions in this case. “Our view was the doctor’s name should have been erased from the medical register following the panel’s finding of serious professional misconduct. “We will be carefully reviewing the decision before deciding what further action, if any, may be necessary.”

The case will now be reviewed by the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence, an ombudsman of misconduct cases. If found to be unduly lenient the decision could be referred to the High Court and possibly overturned.

In April last year a jury inquest at Portsmouth Coroner’s Court ruled that at least five elderly patients who died at a hospital in Hampshire were overprescribed strong painkillers that hastened their deaths.

In the cases of patients Robert Wilson, 74, Geoffrey Packman, 66, and Elsie Devine, 88, the use of painkillers was found to have been inappropriate for their conditions. Arthur Cunningham, 79, and Elsie Lavender, 83, were prescribed medication appropriate for their condition but in doses that contributed to their deaths, the jury found.

Dr Barton, who worked as a clinical assistant at the hospital, was the only individual to be investigated by police in connection with the deaths but was not charged with any offence.

SOURCE

Grandmother disgusted at filthy NHS hospital nursed and bathed other patients on her ward

A grandmother was so disgusted by the filthy conditions and neglect on a hospital ward that she bathed and cared for the patients herself. Janet Halsall, 74, was admitted to Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, for three days to have a scan on her liver, when she was shocked to see staff repeatedly ignore pleas for help and leave fellow elderly patients to ‘fend for themselves’. The kind-hearted pensioner was so appalled by the conditions in the hospital that she bathed, washed and tucked in the frail elderly patients herself.

The grandmother-of-seven said fellow patients were distressed after being left without water, and when she went to the pantry to clean their glasses, she found it in a ‘disgusting state’. When one elderly lady got no help after repeatedly complaining to staff she was cold, Mrs Halsall was moved to search a store cupboard for a blanket. The former hairdresser even washed and bathed one lady who needed help to clean herself and took another pensioner to the toilet after staff continually ignored her requests because they were ‘too busy’. When she was discharged on Monday afternoon, her fellow patients cheered and clapped her – branding her their ‘guardian angel’.

Speaking from her home in Little Staughton, Beds., she said: ‘I was absolutely disgusted when I entered the ward. ‘At 7pm I arrived in the ward and was appalled to find the bed was unmade and the water jug and glass were on the floor. ‘There was no locker or table to put my things on or bag to dispose of rubbish. ‘The patient in the next bed to me kept asking staff if she could go to the bathroom to have a wash and clean her teeth before breakfast. The reply was always “in a minute”. ‘She was really upset so I found her a bowl and washed her from head to toe and made her feel better. She was so grateful.

‘Never before have I seen so many people rushing around, working so hard but achieving nothing.’

Mrs Halsall, whose partner Eric died five years ago, blames the shoddy treatment on a shortage of staff. She added: ‘There simply weren’t enough staff looking after the ward. People were asking for help and it was falling on deaf ears. ‘The poor nurse was running around and didn’t have time to help everyone. I couldn’t just sit there and watch so, being quite agile, I got up and helped them myself. ‘When I left the ward on Monday they all cheered me out and said I was their guardian angel.’

Mrs Halsall was referred to the Hinchingbrooke Hospital at around 11am on Friday amid fears she was suffering a liver complaint. She was told she could not have the scan until Monday and was later transferred to the Appletree Ward for the weekend. But within minutes of arriving, she became angry after spotting a number of patients who were not being cared for. Pensioner Joyce Bates, who was also on the Appletree Ward as she underwent physiotherapy for rheumatoid arthritis in her legs, hailed Janet a ‘heroine’. Widower Mrs Bates, from March, Cambs., said: ‘I don’t know what we would have done without Janet. The place was an absolute disgrace and our treatment was even worse. ‘I’ve stayed in hospital 38 times and I’ve never watched as a patient is forced to give another a bed bath because the nurses won’t. ‘She truly was magnificent in what was a nightmare situation.’

Director of the Patients Association Katherine Murphy said: ‘Unfortunately we hear far too many examples of the kinds of things described by Janet Halsall. ‘It is completely unacceptable for patients not to be treated with dignity and respect and not to receive the help they need with things like personal hygiene. ‘That should be fundamental to NHS care-whenever it’s not it’s an appalling indictment of our treatment of some of the most vulnerable users of our health services.’

A spokesman for Hinchingbrooke said: ‘Hinchingbrooke Health Care NHS Trust takes all complaints extremely seriously. ‘We would ask Mrs Halsall to contact us directly so that a full investigation can be conducted into her experience on the ward. ‘Until we can look into these incidents in more detail it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time.’ [Blah, blah, blah!]

SOURCE

Don’t fall sick out of hours in Britain: GPs refusing to work nights and weekends claimed boy’s life

Like so many proud parents, Jean and Nicola Seevaraj meticulously recorded the milestones in the life of their first child, Joseph. He smiled when he was a month old, stood up on his own four days before his first birthday and loved the movie Madagascar. And there was so much more to look forward to – his first day at school, learning to read and to ride a bike. Instead, at the age of three years, one month and 19 days, Joseph was dead. ‘I remember checking on him around 4am,’ says Mr Seevaraj, 33, a church minister from Hove, East Sussex.

‘I went back to bed and the next thing I knew it was 7.30am and my wife was screaming. She was absolutely frantic and I knew something terrible had happened. She was next to Joseph’s bed. His eyes were open, but he wasn’t responding to anything she did or said. ‘It was the worst moment of my life. We called 999 and they told us to try to resuscitate him, but I knew inside myself that it was too late. He’d already passed away. ‘The paramedics arrived and rushed him to hospital, but it was hopeless. And that was the beginning of our nightmare.’

It was a nightmare that would be made all the more ghastly because of the fact that Joseph’s death had been avoidable. His parents had sought medical help for their son, who had tonsillitis. Joseph was prescribed antibiotics, but when he started to vomit and had diarrhoea, Mr Seevaraj phoned for further help. Because it was a Sunday, he could not talk to the family doctor. Instead, he was connected to the out-of-hours service and was put through to a German-trained medic. The locum doctor, who Mr Seevaraj claims struggled to understand what was being said to him, told him there was nothing to worry about and that, no, it wasn’t necessary to bring in the child for further treatment.

Mr Seevaraj followed that advice – and the following morning woke to find that his son was dead. An inquest would later hear that had Joseph been taken to hospital, then the septicaemia that claimed his life could have been treated. ‘He needed basic medical attention,’ the coroner said, ruling that neglect had contributed to Joseph’s death. ‘The failure to provide it was gross failure.’

Mr Seevaraj says: ‘If we had been able to speak to our family GP that weekend, I believe Joseph would still be alive. There are lots of holes in the out-of-hours system – it needs to be sorted out.’

And he is not alone in that view. New figures show that serious complaints about out-of-hours care have shot up by 50 per cent in just two years. The Medical Defence Union, the leading insurance company that covers most GPs, reported a sharp rise in the number of grievances against doctors following deaths, misdiagnoses and negligence. In 2007 and 2008, there were 517 complaints related to consultations at evenings and weekends – up from 337 over the previous two years. Seventeen insurance claims followed the deaths of patients.

And then there is the shocking case of David Gray, a 70-year-old kidney patient, who died in February 2008 after being injected accidentally with ten times the maximum recommended dose of morphine. It was administered by Dr Daniel Ubani, a locum who had travelled to Britain from Germany and had slept for just three hours before going on his first out-of-hours weekend shift in Cambridgeshire. As well as giving the fatal injection to Mr Gray, an 86-year-old woman died of a heart attack after the Nigerian-born Dr Ubani failed to send her to hospital.

While the deaths of Mr Gray and young Joseph may differ in their circumstances, both serve to shine a spotlight on the growing scandal of British doctors’ refusal to work nights and weekends, with their places too often being filled by doctors from abroad, some of whom speak poor English.

All this, of course, is the result of one of the Government’s most disastrous pieces of meddling, which allowed British doctors to opt out of out- of-hours duties – and meant they were no longer responsible for the care of their patients 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

That’s why, six years on, Suffolk – a county of 600,000 people – has just two British doctors on call overnight and at weekends. Similarly poor coverage is offered elsewhere, as sick patients are fobbed off with telephone assessments or forced to make their own way to overloaded Accident & Emergency hospital departments.

Before the introduction of the new contracts in 2004, GPs were responsible for providing out-of-hours care to their patients. Since then, however, the responsibility for in-hours and out-of-hours care was split, so that primary care trusts took on responsibility for patients at nights and on weekends. As a result, despite the fact that British GPs are the highest-paid in the developed world – average earnings are £106,000 – they earn their crust during office hours.

Under pressure to return profits and cut costs, primary care trusts introduced ways of dealing with patients that reduced the need for time- consuming home visits while looking for ‘cheaper’ doctors from elsewhere. Though precise figures are not available, research by the Daily Mail suggests that a third of primary care trusts are flying in GPs to fill these posts. The doctors come from as far away as Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland, and are attracted by the comparatively good rates of pay.

While the NHS has a long history of employing foreign doctors, their presence on the front-line of healthcare has raised specific concerns. Top of these are question marks over the foreign medics’ qualifications and language skills.

It’s something that 66-year- old Renee Forrow discovered when her husband Derek died at their Suffolk home two years ago after a longterm illness. It was a Saturday evening and, with her GP surgery closed, she called the out-of-hours service – Suffolk Doctors on Call (Sufdoc) – to request that a doctor be sent to certify the death. But what should have been a dignified process quickly degenerated into what Mrs Forrow describes as a ‘Monty Python farce’. First, the Polish doctor and his driver could not find the house and took two hours to arrive.

When he did arrive, there were no sympathetic words. Instead, the doctor asked the stunned widow to fill in a form with her husband’s name, address and other details. ‘When he came in, he didn’t say anything to anybody,’ she says. ‘He just scuttled in, pointed at my husband on the bed and said: “Accident?” ‘He then examined him, gave me a form and said: “You say, you do. You fill in. I don’t understand.” I felt it was wrong that I had to fill in the details myself, but it was impossible to have a proper conversation with him. He simply could not converse in English adequately.’

As if that was not distressing enough, the doctor then pointed at her husband’s morphine pills and asked: ‘How many you give him?’ Mrs Forrow said: ‘It sounded insensitive because it almost suggested that he could have overdosed. It was almost as if I had done my husband in.’ Just minutes after his arrival, the Polish doctor left. Shocked by what had happened, Mrs Forrow decided to speak out. She is concerned by what might have happened had the doctor been called to treat a complicated case.

‘Suppose he visited an ill, old lady and was trying to pick up the nuances of what she was saying,’ she says. ‘Communication is half of diagnosis and he was like a little scared rabbit caught in the headlights.’ A letter of apology subsequently arrived from Sufdoc. It stated: ‘There is no question about his (the doctor’s) competence as a clinician. It is just an issue about communication.’

It is these twin issues – competence and communication – that are at the heart of concerns over the role being played by foreign doctors in the out-of-hours service. While concerns over the competency of foreign doctors are pressing-there is a growing belief that the way to address them is by a fundamental overhaul of the outofhours system that would make their presence unnecessary.

This would be achieved by handing back responsibility for roundthe- clock care to family GPs. In this way, continuity of care between patient and doctor would be ensured, as would direct accountability. Perhaps unsurprisingly, doctors’ leaders oppose these suggestions, saying that it would be ‘unsafe’ to make GPs work longer hours.

It is not an argument that cuts much ice with the likes of Dr Frank Newton, who worked as a GP for 25 years in rural Northamptonshire before retiring in 1989. ‘When I started, there were two of us and we covered 200 square miles with about 4,500 patients,’ the 80-year-old told me. ‘I worked every hour the other guy didn’t work. We took it in turns during the week for the nights, and in turns for the weekends. ‘We took a fortnight’s holiday each, so if the other guy was away you would be on for two weeks in his absence and he would do the same when you took your fortnight. ‘I can tell you that we weren’t on our knees with exhaustion and we were not unsafe – we were used to it. We wanted to be involved because we were part of the community and that is what the job was about. ‘I find it very sad the way things have gone today, because I think that the people who are missing out are the practitioners themselves as well as the patients. What pleasure can you get from doing only half a job?’

So, should GPs be involved in arranging out-of-hours care for their own patients? As providers or commissioners of this care, they would not necessarily be obliged to return to outofhours work themselves, but they would be obliged to organise it (experts predict that if this happened, more local doctors and nurses would get involved). Even the NHS Alliance – an independent body that represents NHS professionals working outside hospitals, including some GPs – is calling for doctors to take back at least some of the responsibilities they cast off in 2004.

Many patients who have experienced the shortcomings of the system – such as negotiating complex phone systems or being forced to take a sick child to a dropin centre in the middle of the night – would go further and demand that, in return for their increased salaries, doctors would be available when they were most needed.

As Katherine Murphy, director of the Patients Association, points out, ill-health can strike at any time. ‘There should be no less emphasis put on the out-of-hours care than there is on the care on offer between 9am and 6pm,’ she says. ‘No one decides when they get ill, so the same importance should be given to the provision of care whatever the time of day.’

SOURCE

British local authority snoopers question five-year-olds on home life

Children as young as five are being told to fill in Big Brother-style forms which let councils snoop on intimate details about their home lives. The questions – which have been attacked as exploitative – ask about junk food, television habits, family time and even whether the youngsters ‘like themselves’. Results are stored on a database, allowing families deemed to be ‘at risk’ to be referred to social services or doctors.

Children are asked to colour in answers to questions such as how much fruit they eat each day compared to crisps and fizzy drinks. Hundreds of the ‘lifestyle’ quizzes, which are backed by the Department of Health, have been handed out in an attempt to build a picture of the health and wellbeing of individual households.

But privacy campaigners last night condemned the forms. Alex Deane, of Big Brother Watch, described it as ‘an unbelievable intrusion into private life’. He said: ‘The state doesn’t bring up children, parents do. There is an important distinction between teaching and nannying – or even bullying – and this steps way over the mark.’

The lifestyle quizzes were piloted in Erewash, Derbyshire, where children filled in the forms at ‘healthy living’ after-school clubs, to which parents are invited. Although the survey was not compulsory, pupils were strongly encouraged to fill it in. The forms will now be sent out to 200 schools across the county and other councils are monitoring the scheme closely.

Daniella Yeo, of Erewash council, said the after-school clubs were very popular and that the questions followed guidelines set by NICE, the NHS’s regulatory body. She added: ‘They will help us target families at risk of obesity. We can then encourage parents to attend sessions with social services or GPs.’

Other questions for five-year-olds include whether they eat breakfast, how much water they drink and how they get to school. They are also asked ‘how much to do like yourself?’ – and told to tick a thumbs-up or thumbs- down sign that matches how they feel.

Seven-year-olds are being given an even more detailed quiz in which they say exactly how many hours they spend with their family, watching television and playing computer games. Civil liberties campaigner Josie Appleton, of the Manifesto Club, said: ‘Councils and schools should concentrate on providing everyone with a good education. ‘But they should keep their noses out of children’s lunchboxes and away from the family dinner table.’

SOURCE

A Savage attack on free speech in Britain

The UK government’s border ban on an American shock jock reveals its utter disdain for freedom of speech and its fear of a volatile public

Imagine this: a man is banned from entering the UK. Not because he intends to hurt someone, or because he is fleeing a crime committed some place else. No, he is prevented from ever putting a foot on British soil because of the things he says. That’s it. No other reason.

This is the situation in which the American ‘shock jock’ Michael Savage currently finds himself. More shocking, however, is that barely anyone in Britain has batted an eyelid on his behalf. That freedom of speech can be so flagrantly disregarded and merit barely a murmur of comment in response reveals just how normal we consider restrictions on free speech today.

Perhaps the indifference to Savage’s plight owes more than a bit to the nature of the protagonist, a rent-a-chauvinist dj with a not-so-nice line in liberal-baiting. Here’s a sample: ‘Only a devastating military blow against the hearts of Islamic terror coupled with an outright ban on Muslim immigration, laws making the dissemination of enemy propaganda illegal, and the uncoupling of the liberal ACLU can save the United States. I would also make the construction of mosques illegal in America and the speaking of English only in the streets of the United States the law.’

When Savage is not labelling the Koran a ‘book of hate’, he’s having a pop at the ‘gay and lesbian mafia’ for wanting to ‘homosexualise the whole country’ – an unprecedented feat of seduction by any standards. Savage by name, a bit ridiculous by nature. Abortion, Mexican immigrants, Barack Obama: there are few things the potty-mouthed dj hasn’t built a politically incorrect tirade around. No liberal causes, sentiments, or, as Savage portrays them, sacred cows, are out of bounds.

It’s probably fair to say that he’s not exactly the most progressive of guys. In fact, a lot of the stuff he spouts is undoubtedly offensive. But then again, as his ‘shock jock’ appellation suggests, he’s meant to be offensive. One thing he probably never meant to be, however, was a threat to UK national security. Yet, as the latest attempt to overturn his ban from entering the UK was defeated in the House of Lords, this, it seems, is exactly how the Home Office views him: a man who, with a few illiberal rants, might shock the British public into a gay- or Muslim-bashing frenzy.

The Savage case first came to light in May last year, when the then-home secretary Jacqui Smith announced that this polar opposite of Simon Mayo was banned from entering the UK. ‘He is someone’, she said, ‘who has fallen into the category of fomenting hatred, of such extreme views and expressing them in such a way that it is actually likely to cause inter-community tension or even violence if that person were allowed into the country’. Savage isn’t alone. Since 2005, 21 other people have also been barred from the UK on the grounds of inciting hatred and violence, including a motley crew of neo-Nazis like Erich Gliebe and former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard Stephen Donald Black, a few ‘hate preachers’ such as Amir Siddique, and a couple of Russian skinheads convicted of 20 racially motivated murders. Given the last two are currently serving 20-year prison sentences, one suspects that their freedom of movement might already be limited.

Last week, following the failed attempt of UK Independence Party leader Lord Pearson to have Savage’s ban overturned, security minister Lord West reiterated Jacqui Smith’s original position: ‘Mr Savage was banned for… unacceptable behaviour and making clear comments that might lead to civil violence [and] community violence.’ In other words, he was banned because he says things – really, really rude things. In fact, the things he says are so rude, and yet so magically persuasive, that Lord West wasn’t prepared to give any examples. Presumably in case the Lords and Ladies of the UK’s upper house were spurred to ‘civil and community violence’.

One of the absurdities of this, the UK’s list of banned people, is that quite a few of those on the list, including Savage himself, had neither tried, nor intended, to enter the UK. This was because the list, compiled by Whitehall types using Google and a little help from the intelligence services, was never really a practical measure. It was, as Smith herself said at the time, a way to showcase ‘the sorts of values and sorts of standards that we have here’. ‘It’s a privilege to come to this country’, she continued: ‘There are certain behaviours that mean you forfeit that privilege.’

And, in a way, Smith was right. This list of people exemplifying ‘unacceptable behaviours’, whether a shocking dj or a maverick cleric, did represent something about contemporary Britain: it showed just how low is the esteem in which the government holds its citizens. All it takes, apparently, is for someone to say something, in this case an invective-filled rant by Savage, and hundreds of people will automatically, unthinkingly act upon it. If that is all that is necessary for a race riot or a spate of homophobic violence, then far from showing ‘the sorts of values and sorts of standards’ we hold in the UK, it reveals their absence. We are barbarians in the making, a powder keg of bigotry just waiting for the shock jock’s spark. If we’re not racist homophobes, then we’re potential victims of racist or homophobic words, wallflowers in need of the state’s protection. Either way, as censor or protector, the state cannot trust the people.

This shouldn’t be a surprise. A ban on unacceptable behaviour, on offensive speakers, is never a testament to the strength of a society’s norms and values. It is always its opposite, a sign of weakness. Indeed, how weak must the British establishment be that it fears that a few utterances from a really rude dj might cause ‘inter-community tension or even violence’. If the government really believes in the strength of the values and standards it would like Britain to hold dear, why are a few people with dissenting, sometimes offensive views deemed such a problem?

It is precisely when speech is offensive that its freedom needs to be defended. This is not to give the okay to violent attacks on Muslims, homosexuals, or any other constituency the Home Office deems is at risk. And that’s because actions – actions which, in the case of killing or beating people up, have long been illegal – are not the same as words and thought. The fact that the government and its cronies in the House of Lords are happy to elide this distinction reveals the disdain with which they view the reasoning abilities of the British public. And that, not the un-PC shtick of Savage, is really shocking.

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Free speech on campus? Yes. A free ride? No

There should be full freedom of speech for ‘extremists’ in British universities – and also for those who want to slate or ridicule them

In our era of dumbing down, where the academy risks turning from a hotbed of Platonic debate and Truth-seeking into a conveyor belt that churns out jobsworths, it isn’t often one can agree with the words uttered by a university provost. But yesterday Malcolm Grant of University College London (UCL) made a statement that spiked can get behind. In response to claims that the ‘Pants bomber’, Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, was radicalised during his spell as a student at UCL, and therefore that ‘extremist speech’ on campus should be curtailed, Grant said it is not a university’s job to ‘police’ its students’ beliefs or speech.

‘We must continue to regard students as adults’, he said. ‘Campuses should be safe homes for controversy, argument and debate.’ Hear hear. In defending the free exchange of ideas on campus, Grant is taking a stand for rigour and honesty in university life against the anti-extremist camp that wants students to be protected from ideas judged to be too ‘toxic’. One of the academics concerned about extremism says that when universities ‘tolerate on their campuses organisations which seek to radicalise, they hammer another nail in the coffin of the idea of higher education’. In fact, banning organisations on the basis that their ideas are dangerous and that students are easily brainwashed would be the real funeral pyre of higher education, turning universities into thought-policing institutions and redefining students as overgrown children.

Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian-born rich boy who allegedly tried to blow up a jet flying from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day with explosives hidden in his underpants, studied at UCL from 2005 to 2008. He was president of UCL’s Islamic Society which often held meetings to discuss (and denounce) the ‘war on terror’. He helped to organise a ‘War on Terror Week’ which included debates such as ‘Jihad or Terrorism?’. Radical Islamist preachers and members of the controversial Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir spoke at UCL while Abdulmutallab was there, and this has led some to argue that UCL, by tolerating such discussions, was ‘complicit’ in the failed Christmas Day bombing and that there should now be tighter controls on who can speak in universities.

There are many problems with the demand to curtail so-called inflammatory speech. First, it transforms the university from a place where asking questions (yes, even off-the-wall questions) is positively encouraged, where students are provided with access to Knowledge and the space in which to interrogate and doubt such Knowledge, into a place where only certain, non-extreme, vetted ideas are allowed to leak on to campus and into students’ heads. And that can, and already has, led to the exclusion not only of Isalmist rants but also of other ideas considered dangerous these days: climate change ‘denial’, alternative views of history, lecturers who are too right-wing or too left-wing. Erecting an intellectual forcefield around universities changes the whole nature of university life, turning it into a place where students are provided with nuggets of wisdom, the correct ideas and thoughts, rather than a place that nurtures a way of thinking, independent thought, the sharing of Knowledge through expertise but also through debate and interaction.

Second, filtering out ‘extremism’ infantilises students. University is meant to be an arena where boys become men and girls become women, demonstrating an ability to think, work and act independently as well as with professors and other students. The academy is built on the idea not only that its students are thirsty for Knowledge but that they are also capable of weighing it up and understanding it; that is, their minds are healthy and robust. The expulsion of ‘extremism’, by contrast, sends the message that students are fragile creatures, with minds like sponges, who might be easily swayed by some loony cleric or Holocaust denier. One reporter said of Abdulmutallab’s ‘War on Terror Week’, ‘It was brainwashing’. This is a judgement not so much on the nonsense that Abdulmutallab’s speakers were no doubt spouting but more fundamentally on students’ own ability to decipher right from wrong, Knowledge from gibberish. The censorship of so-called extremism would denigrate the very idea of the student.

And third, trying to shut up hotheaded Islamists is an extraordinary displacement activity. It is true, as spiked has argued many times, that al-Qaeda-style terrorists are more likely to be radicalised in the West than in Kabul, Kandahar or Baghdad, where the disastrous ‘war on terror’ is still focused. The evidence shows that most wannabe Muslim martyrs are middle-class, well-educated and tend to be either from Western cities or to have lived and studied in them. Often they seem more influenced by the woe-is-me politics of victimhood and identity than by Taliban-style traditionalism. Yet chasing the preachers who might possibly exacerbate such feelings is about avoidance: instead of getting to grips with what is missing in, or wrong with, Western society, to the extent that some young people are drawn towards shallow anti-Westernism and reject the ‘evils of integration’, such censorship pins the blame for social problems on a handful of men in frocks. It discourages open, honest debate; it leaves burning political issues unresolved.

For these reasons, Malcolm Grant’s comments are welcome. However, while it is sweet relief to hear a provost defend freedom of thought and speech, it is also worth asking what lies behind the idea today that ‘Colleges must let extremists speak’, as the front page of the London Evening Standard declared yesterday, reporting Grant’s comments as if they were shocking and disturbing. Because often, I fear, the ‘let the extremists speak’ argument springs not from an unflinching commitment to freedom of speech but rather from a deep-seated crisis of authority in the modern academy. It seems to me that it is not so much universities’ love of openness and rigour that leads them sometimes to tolerate extremists but rather their doubt about what is True, what is Right, what is Good, so that they provide platforms to all-comers who might have something ‘valid’ to say. It is relativism that underpins the tolerance of ‘extremists’, rather than freedom. And we should insist that having free speech on campus does not mean giving everyone a free ride. In fact it means the opposite.

That relativism has been elevated over liberty can be seen in the fact that at the same time that more ‘extremists’ are allegedly running riot on campus, there are more and more codes of speech governing the extent to which other people can question, ridicule or mock these ‘extremists’, or even moderate religious and political speakers. At the end of last year I was invited to debate the head of the UK wing of Hizb ut-Tahrir at Queen Mary Westfield College in London. But under pressure from censorious student groups and the university’s administration, the debate was banned. It was moved to the University of Westminster a couple of weeks later, and there, both me and the representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir were informed about what we could and could not say. The university’s religious affairs liaison – a white convert to Islam – told us that before being allowed to speak we would have to read a document telling us not to insult or ridicule anyone else’s religious beliefs, political affiliations, sexual preferences and so on.

I read it, and ignored it, and later got booed for saying ‘Sharia law is inferior to Enlightenment-derived laws’. Yet this experience reveals much about the crisis of freedom in British universities. In one serious London university a debate is banned outright because the ‘extremist’ might corrupt the pathetic students, and in another serious London university the debate is allowed to go ahead but is severely governed by informal codes designed to preserve ‘respect for identities’. Such codes now exist on campuses across the UK. The extremist is allowed to speak, but no one is really allowed to say to him: ‘You’re talking bollocks, mate, and here’s why…’ Such informal rules protecting all belief systems and granting equal weight to all lifestyle choices really demonstrate what lies behind the ‘let the extremists speak’ argument: a relativistic climate in which universities doubt whether it is their job to assert Truth with a capital T over madder, weirder small-t ‘truths’, and where what looks like free speech is actually something very different.

If a student at a British university starts believing that some radical form of Islam is ‘the Truth’, it is most likely as a result of this intellectual cowardice rather than the strength of conviction of some visiting preacher. It is the climate of non-debate, of listening and nodding along to everyone, that can make things seem like the Truth by default. This creation of a relativistic mishmash of equally valid views sells students short as surely as does the outright censorship of ‘extremists’: it, too, creates a climate of conformism and question-avoidance, where the extremists are allowed to speak but only because ‘everyone must be heard and treated with respect’.

John Stuart Mill said the Truth can only be worked out through free and open debate, and ‘on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right’ (6). Absolutely. That remains the essence of freedom of thought and freedom of speech. But Mill didn’t mean creating an unsightly, unchallengeable public parade of ‘many truths’ showing us their wares – he meant a rigorous arena in which everything is sayable and in which some ideas will inevitably be defeated and sidelined by other, better ones. Just such an atmosphere should prevail in British universities, rather than the dire choice between outright censorship or a relativistic pseudo-free-for-all that they are faced with today.

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Ridiculing the obese is the new gay bashing

British society has become far more enlightened over sexuality and race. Now we reserve our contempt for the underclass

My son begged me to switch the show off. “It’s too cruel,” he said. But that seemed to be the point of Fat Families. “You make me feel sick,” said the smug presenter as the obese couple looked forlornly at their takeaway supper. Later they were stripped naked — she weeping, he head bowed — while the camera boggled obscenely at their bodies. I hope they were well paid, this good-hearted pair, who clearly loved their kids and each other. What price to be paraded as an object of hatred and disgust.

A public health message? No, this was the All-New Fat & White Minstrel Show. The obese are the last group — should you feel enraged today by a parking penalty or Blair — at which you can vent your fury with legal and social impunity. A friend mentioned, en passant, chastising a man for letting his dog pee copiously over her doorstep. “P*** off, you fat bitch,” was his automatic response. I was aghast, she was nonplussed: as a largish lady she dealt with this (and worse) every day.

This week the British Social Attitudes survey revealed our greater toleration of homosexuality: only a third of us now think gay love is wrong. Which still seems mighty high to me, yet only 20 years ago this figure was double. Gay men are still violently assaulted, name-calling is too infrequently challenged in schools, but these days homophobia is rarely given full vent in the national media. And if it is — as with Jan Moir’s article — a powerful and righteous lobby will unleash all hell.

But sometimes it feels as if the anger and intolerance upon our angry, always up-for-a-fight island, is just being funnelled to other targets: the fat, the poor, the white trash, the chavs and pikeys, the underclass on the fringes of society who we loathe almost as much as we fear.

Outsiders are always easiest to hate. When gay culture was confined to the margins, it was simple to caricature and condemn. After all, it was unlikely you’d meet anyone to disprove your view. The great progress of the past decade was gay relationships ceasing to be subject to saucy speculation but becoming normal, banal even. The once-separate straight and gay worlds have meshed. When my lovely lesbian sister-in-law had a baby with a gay man, I’d wondered how to explain this scenario to my elderly northern parents, so sheltered were their lives. I was stupid to worry.

Love and babies, the warmth of real human contact, breaks down suspicion of The Other. After one hilarious Christmas karaoke night my eightysomething mother reflected simply: “Well, I’d never met any gays before. But they all seem very nice.” And when I was interviewing the American writer David Sedaris recently he marvelled at how parents bring 14-year-old sons along to his book signings: “Meet Doug,” they might say. “He’s gay.” Sedaris’s own tortured, confused and utterly closeted teenage self would have marvelled at this casually acknowledged truth.

At this time when our respect for the political process has never been lower, few will acknowledge the wonder when government does something right. The creation of civil partnerships in 2005 not only dignified and formalised gay relationships but acted as a catalyst for further change. Moreover, it signalled that the British culture war was over. Run up the flag: the forces of tolerance had won.

It was a long, bitter conflict, fought all through the Thatcher years, when it was the ugly, snarling, bullying tap-room bigotry more than any economic policies that made many loathe our Government. This was not so much a clash of policies, but about what constitutes full humanity. Peter Lilley was getting belly laughs with his conference ditty against single mums; disgust against homosexuality led to the creation of Clause 28, banning discussion of same sex relationships in school for fear that predatory gays would stalk our kids.

That the Tory party is run now by social liberals sometimes boggles the mind. Can people change that easily? Only seven years ago David Cameron voted to keep Clause 28, but now he has apologised, declared his intent to reward not only marriage in the tax system but civil partnerships too.

And Baroness Warsi who, when I asked her why she sent out anti-gay literature when she was standing in Dewsbury in the 2005 election, said: “I have learnt, read more; my views have matured since then.” Maybe they have. Even Elton John’s arch tormentor, the former Sun Editor Kelvin MacKenzie, claims these days to be a friend of the gays.

Or maybe Cameron realises that laissez faire morality is so deeply entrenched that there is no point in fighting it. And besides, why go against the grain when you can go with the flow? While our social attitudes have grown more liberal, our economic views have hardened into conservatism: only a bare majority now believe it is the Government’s job to secure employment for all or to ensure the unemployed have a decent standard of living.

Indeed, as racism and homophobia have become ever more verboten, there has been a corresponding growth in intolerance for the poor, a disgust at their lifestyle, an ugly, lazy disdain for those who live in council estates, who have scary dogs and babies too young, a licensed mocking of their yeah-but-no-but speech and culture. I grow tired of arguing with well-brought-up children of liberal parents that “chav” is a disgusting, reductive label, that the kids who live in the flats behind our house are not — apart from the amount of stuff they own — so different from them. How depressing that even 12-year-olds see society set into two separately entrenched tribes.

But it is fine now to believe that the underclass only has itself to blame for its educational failures, and laziness keeps families on the dole. And there they are, paraded on those circuses of disgust: Big Brother and Jeremy Kyle. Or on that whole new TV genre, the obesity freak show: Fat Families, The World’s Fattest Man, Too Fat Too Young … All feign concern when their only object is to poke ridicule at the stupid chavs unable to stop shoving kebabs into their face even when it’s killing them.

Obesity is, above all, a mark of poverty: a handy melding of our social and bodily disgust, No, these days we may not bash so many poofs. But there is still plenty of sport to be had watching a 20st woman in a wedding dress that will never fit, weeping her heart out with shame.

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