Eye on Britain
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Prince Charles: Eighteen months to stop climate change disaster
What a dummy! The guy lacks even basic caution. He will be a laughing stock in 18 months time. Canny doomsters don't put an exact date on anything -- not unless it is way in the future
In one of his most out-spoken interventions in the climate change debate, he said a 15 billion pound annual programme was required to halt deforestation or the world would have to live with the dire consequences. "We will end up seeing more drought and starvation on a grand scale. Weather patterns will become even more terrifying and there will be less and less rainfall," he said. "We are asking for something pretty dreadful unless we really understand the issues now and [the] urgency of them." The Prince said the rainforests, which provide the "air conditioning system for the entire planet", releasing water vapour and absorbing carbon, were being lost to poor farmers desperate to make a living.
He said that every year, 20 million hectares of forest - equivalent to the area of England, Wales and Scotland - were destroyed and called for a "gigantic partnership" of governments, businesses and consumers to slow it down. "What we have got to do is try to ensure that these forests are more valuable alive than dead. At the moment, there is more value in them being dead," he said.
He estimated that the cost would be about 15 billion a year but said that this should be viewed as an insurance policy for the whole world. "That is roughly just under one per cent of all the insurance premiums paid in the world in any one year. It is an insurance premium to ensure the world has some rainfall and reasonable weather patterns. It is a good deal."
Last month, the Prince had a meeting at St James's Palace with four state governors from Brazil to discuss the best way to allocate the money. One option would be for an organisation such as the World Bank to administer the fund. The Prince made clear yesterday that if nothing was done there was a "severe danger of losing a major part of the battle against climate change".
In an interview on Radio 4's Today programme, the Prince disclosed that he had raised his concerns with the White House, Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, and President Sarkozy, of France. He said he had pressed Barclays, Shell, Goldman Sachs and McDonald's to join his campaign. But he also said consumers had to play their part by choosing products that were environmentally sustainable and called for improvements in labelling.
He denied, however, that he was interfering in the political process. "All I am ever trying to do is to provide an enabling facility," he said. He conceded that at times he had been forced to keep his counsel when he would have liked to have spoken out. "You learn as you go along. I am going to be 60 this year. I would be a blinding idiot if I had not learnt a bit by now."
Source
England feels pinch as Poles depart
Renata Drag sells champagne at 20 pounds ($42) a glass in an upmarket cafe in London's ritzy Kensington but she has something in common with hundreds of thousands of other Poles working in building sites, farms and hotels across Britain. She is going home.
Just four years after Britain was caught by surprise by a massive influx of workers from Poland and elsewhere in eastern Europe, the mostly young immigrants are turning around in large numbers and leaving Britain. Tabloid newspaper headlines that once agonised about the flood of immigrants from the newly expanded European Union taking British jobs are now warning darkly that there will be nobody left to pick fruit, clear tables and build stadiums for the 2012 London Olympics.
"I really like London and I have improved my English working here but things are getting a lot better back in Poland now," said 24-year-old Drag, who plans to go home to Cracow and look for work in international tourism. "Wages are really going up in Poland and the pound is getting weaker so it is harder to save good money in London. "Lots of my friends have left and now they are getting good jobs at home because they have learned good English and got good experience here."
The Institute for Public Policy Research in the UK estimates that about a million workers from Poland and the seven other eastern and central European countries that joined the EU in 2004 shifted to Britain, the only large EU economy that kept its labour market open to the new entrants. That shift has been one of the world's largest and smoothest migrations of workers across any border [Which of course has NOTHING to do with the fact that they are Northern Europeans of Christian background -- like the native British themselves], and has been described by historians as the largest influx into Britain in 300 years. But now, according to the IPPR, about half those workers have gone home, with many more planning to follow soon.
Danny Sriskandarajah, one of the report's authors, says this massive wave of migration has been unique in British history because most of the arrivals in previous influxes stayed permanently. At this stage, Britain's experience with what are dubbed "the Polish plumbers", suggests the EU's flexible labour market has actually worked the way it is intended, providing extra labour when the British economy was booming, allowing more growth while keeping down inflation and interest rates. Now that Britain's economy is slowing, there are suddenly fewer workers looking for jobs.
Poland has benefited because many of its ambitious workers were able to find good jobs during a time of high unemployment at home and are now returning with the money and experience to start their own businesses or take on more highly paid jobs while stimulating economic demand. Poland's unemployment has halved since it joined the EU in 2004. Wages in some of its industries are up by 25 per cent this year, and the zloty has soared against the pound. In 2004, each pound saved by a Polish worker would buy 7.5 Polish zloty; today it buys only 4.5 zloty. Given the higher living costs in London, rising wages at home and the tug of family ties, there are weaker incentives to stay.
The arrival of the eastern workers in the UK strained government services in many regions but soon prompted visible changes in many aspects of British life. Supermarkets stocked hundreds of lines of Polish food and beers, street signs in some cities were duplicated in Polish, Catholic churches saw fuller pews and nightclubs introduced special Polish pop music nights. Local councils and even political parties translated their hand-outs into Polish, and dozens of medium-sized newspapers began printing regular Polish-language editions.
Even The Sun, which revels in British nationalism, is considering printing special 48-page Polish language editions during the Euro 2008 football tournament. With England failing to qualify, retailers and publicans hope to cash in on Polish fans by advertising Polish beers and snacks.
Wojciech Pisarski, a spokesman at the Polish embassy in London, told The Weekend Australian that his Government "is doing everything it can to encourage workers to come home because we need them now in Poland." "We are running a publicity campaign to convince them that they can use the expertise they have gained here to set up businesses or get good jobs back home," Mr Pisarski said. The Polish Government had offered cheap loans to returning workers hoping to set up new businesses, and a tax amnesty on remissions of cash so workers could shift their money home without worrying about being double-taxed on foreign earnings, he said.
"Gdansk council has also introduced its own incentives to get people to shift home. It is quite important because, just like London is getting ready for the Olympics, we are hosting the 2012 Euro (football championship) and a lot of work has to be done. "We need to build stadiums, hotels and infrastructure and we need to bring home people with the skills to do that," Mr Pisarski said. "At one point we had about 1000 Polish people a day coming to Britain but that has levelled off and now it seems to be flowing the other way."
Miles Quest, a spokesman for the British Hospitality Association, said hotels and other catering businesses would suffer if east Europeans kept returning home: "Around 80 per cent of workers in hospitality in London are from overseas and ... the eastern Europeans have been extremely valuable." The departure of Poles means many British employers are turning to Bulgarians and Romanians, who tend to have worse language and technical skills but are cheaper workers.
Source
The British spooks sure know how to screen their spies: "A bizarre sex scandal involving a top motor sports official and the prostitute wife of a British spy has raised urgent questions about the screening procedures employed by the MI5 security service. The Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph reported that an MI5 officer had been forced to resign after it emerged that his wife was one of five prostitutes who took part in an orgy with Max Mosley, president of Formula One's governing body, the FIA. A security source did not dispute the reports but said any suggestion the orgy had been an MI5 'sting' operation to entrap Mosley was "nonsense". The affair raises many questions, not least how MI5 could have failed to know that the wife of one of its operatives was working as a prostitute. Staff are subjected before joining the agency to what its website calls "the most comprehensive form of security vetting in the UK", aimed at establishing their reliability and suitability. The screening continues after a person has joined the service, and there is a responsibility on staff to inform MI5 of changes in their personal circumstances." [Even Kim Philby could probably get a job there these days]
Blame it all on fatties: "Obese people are contributing to the world food crisis and climate change, experts say. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine calculated the obese consume 18% more calories than average. They are also responsible for using more fuel, which has an environmental impact and drives up food prices as transport and agriculture both use oil. The result is that the poor struggle to afford food and greenhouse gas emissions rise, the Lancet reported."
What a dummy! The guy lacks even basic caution. He will be a laughing stock in 18 months time. Canny doomsters don't put an exact date on anything -- not unless it is way in the future
In one of his most out-spoken interventions in the climate change debate, he said a 15 billion pound annual programme was required to halt deforestation or the world would have to live with the dire consequences. "We will end up seeing more drought and starvation on a grand scale. Weather patterns will become even more terrifying and there will be less and less rainfall," he said. "We are asking for something pretty dreadful unless we really understand the issues now and [the] urgency of them." The Prince said the rainforests, which provide the "air conditioning system for the entire planet", releasing water vapour and absorbing carbon, were being lost to poor farmers desperate to make a living.
He said that every year, 20 million hectares of forest - equivalent to the area of England, Wales and Scotland - were destroyed and called for a "gigantic partnership" of governments, businesses and consumers to slow it down. "What we have got to do is try to ensure that these forests are more valuable alive than dead. At the moment, there is more value in them being dead," he said.
He estimated that the cost would be about 15 billion a year but said that this should be viewed as an insurance policy for the whole world. "That is roughly just under one per cent of all the insurance premiums paid in the world in any one year. It is an insurance premium to ensure the world has some rainfall and reasonable weather patterns. It is a good deal."
Last month, the Prince had a meeting at St James's Palace with four state governors from Brazil to discuss the best way to allocate the money. One option would be for an organisation such as the World Bank to administer the fund. The Prince made clear yesterday that if nothing was done there was a "severe danger of losing a major part of the battle against climate change".
In an interview on Radio 4's Today programme, the Prince disclosed that he had raised his concerns with the White House, Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, and President Sarkozy, of France. He said he had pressed Barclays, Shell, Goldman Sachs and McDonald's to join his campaign. But he also said consumers had to play their part by choosing products that were environmentally sustainable and called for improvements in labelling.
He denied, however, that he was interfering in the political process. "All I am ever trying to do is to provide an enabling facility," he said. He conceded that at times he had been forced to keep his counsel when he would have liked to have spoken out. "You learn as you go along. I am going to be 60 this year. I would be a blinding idiot if I had not learnt a bit by now."
Source
England feels pinch as Poles depart
Renata Drag sells champagne at 20 pounds ($42) a glass in an upmarket cafe in London's ritzy Kensington but she has something in common with hundreds of thousands of other Poles working in building sites, farms and hotels across Britain. She is going home.
Just four years after Britain was caught by surprise by a massive influx of workers from Poland and elsewhere in eastern Europe, the mostly young immigrants are turning around in large numbers and leaving Britain. Tabloid newspaper headlines that once agonised about the flood of immigrants from the newly expanded European Union taking British jobs are now warning darkly that there will be nobody left to pick fruit, clear tables and build stadiums for the 2012 London Olympics.
"I really like London and I have improved my English working here but things are getting a lot better back in Poland now," said 24-year-old Drag, who plans to go home to Cracow and look for work in international tourism. "Wages are really going up in Poland and the pound is getting weaker so it is harder to save good money in London. "Lots of my friends have left and now they are getting good jobs at home because they have learned good English and got good experience here."
The Institute for Public Policy Research in the UK estimates that about a million workers from Poland and the seven other eastern and central European countries that joined the EU in 2004 shifted to Britain, the only large EU economy that kept its labour market open to the new entrants. That shift has been one of the world's largest and smoothest migrations of workers across any border [Which of course has NOTHING to do with the fact that they are Northern Europeans of Christian background -- like the native British themselves], and has been described by historians as the largest influx into Britain in 300 years. But now, according to the IPPR, about half those workers have gone home, with many more planning to follow soon.
Danny Sriskandarajah, one of the report's authors, says this massive wave of migration has been unique in British history because most of the arrivals in previous influxes stayed permanently. At this stage, Britain's experience with what are dubbed "the Polish plumbers", suggests the EU's flexible labour market has actually worked the way it is intended, providing extra labour when the British economy was booming, allowing more growth while keeping down inflation and interest rates. Now that Britain's economy is slowing, there are suddenly fewer workers looking for jobs.
Poland has benefited because many of its ambitious workers were able to find good jobs during a time of high unemployment at home and are now returning with the money and experience to start their own businesses or take on more highly paid jobs while stimulating economic demand. Poland's unemployment has halved since it joined the EU in 2004. Wages in some of its industries are up by 25 per cent this year, and the zloty has soared against the pound. In 2004, each pound saved by a Polish worker would buy 7.5 Polish zloty; today it buys only 4.5 zloty. Given the higher living costs in London, rising wages at home and the tug of family ties, there are weaker incentives to stay.
The arrival of the eastern workers in the UK strained government services in many regions but soon prompted visible changes in many aspects of British life. Supermarkets stocked hundreds of lines of Polish food and beers, street signs in some cities were duplicated in Polish, Catholic churches saw fuller pews and nightclubs introduced special Polish pop music nights. Local councils and even political parties translated their hand-outs into Polish, and dozens of medium-sized newspapers began printing regular Polish-language editions.
Even The Sun, which revels in British nationalism, is considering printing special 48-page Polish language editions during the Euro 2008 football tournament. With England failing to qualify, retailers and publicans hope to cash in on Polish fans by advertising Polish beers and snacks.
Wojciech Pisarski, a spokesman at the Polish embassy in London, told The Weekend Australian that his Government "is doing everything it can to encourage workers to come home because we need them now in Poland." "We are running a publicity campaign to convince them that they can use the expertise they have gained here to set up businesses or get good jobs back home," Mr Pisarski said. The Polish Government had offered cheap loans to returning workers hoping to set up new businesses, and a tax amnesty on remissions of cash so workers could shift their money home without worrying about being double-taxed on foreign earnings, he said.
"Gdansk council has also introduced its own incentives to get people to shift home. It is quite important because, just like London is getting ready for the Olympics, we are hosting the 2012 Euro (football championship) and a lot of work has to be done. "We need to build stadiums, hotels and infrastructure and we need to bring home people with the skills to do that," Mr Pisarski said. "At one point we had about 1000 Polish people a day coming to Britain but that has levelled off and now it seems to be flowing the other way."
Miles Quest, a spokesman for the British Hospitality Association, said hotels and other catering businesses would suffer if east Europeans kept returning home: "Around 80 per cent of workers in hospitality in London are from overseas and ... the eastern Europeans have been extremely valuable." The departure of Poles means many British employers are turning to Bulgarians and Romanians, who tend to have worse language and technical skills but are cheaper workers.
Source
The British spooks sure know how to screen their spies: "A bizarre sex scandal involving a top motor sports official and the prostitute wife of a British spy has raised urgent questions about the screening procedures employed by the MI5 security service. The Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph reported that an MI5 officer had been forced to resign after it emerged that his wife was one of five prostitutes who took part in an orgy with Max Mosley, president of Formula One's governing body, the FIA. A security source did not dispute the reports but said any suggestion the orgy had been an MI5 'sting' operation to entrap Mosley was "nonsense". The affair raises many questions, not least how MI5 could have failed to know that the wife of one of its operatives was working as a prostitute. Staff are subjected before joining the agency to what its website calls "the most comprehensive form of security vetting in the UK", aimed at establishing their reliability and suitability. The screening continues after a person has joined the service, and there is a responsibility on staff to inform MI5 of changes in their personal circumstances." [Even Kim Philby could probably get a job there these days]
Blame it all on fatties: "Obese people are contributing to the world food crisis and climate change, experts say. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine calculated the obese consume 18% more calories than average. They are also responsible for using more fuel, which has an environmental impact and drives up food prices as transport and agriculture both use oil. The result is that the poor struggle to afford food and greenhouse gas emissions rise, the Lancet reported."
Monday, May 19, 2008
Socialist haters at work in Britain
The National Health Service has refused to pay for an operation to prevent a pensioner’s agonising migraines because the woman paid privately for earlier treatment. Maureen Alden, 74, from Bristol, spent her life savings on a £13,000 operation two years ago to implant wires into her brain which prevent migraines by stimulating the nerves. The operation was successful and cut her attacks by 80%. The battery which powers the medical device is about to run out, however, and the retired typist cannot obtain funding for a replacement.
Alden’s case will reignite the debate over the ban on NHS patients supplementing their care by paying for treatments that are not funded by the health service. Breast cancer sufferers have been told they will be denied NHS treatment if they pay privately for “top-up” drugs. Patients are taking legal action to fight the ban.
Alden is backed by her GP, Dr Sarah Vaughan, who said: “This seems appalling to me. Funding decisions should be made on medical grounds such as how badly the patient needs the treatment, not whether they have previously paid privately.”
Alden had the device, an occipital nerve stimulator, implanted in March 2006. The battery is expected to run out in the next six months. A permanent battery has since been developed, so if the NHS pays 8,500 pounds for a replacement then Alden should not require any further treatment.
Vaughan warns that if Alden is denied the treatment the NHS will end up spending as much on expensive medication. South Gloucestershire Primary Care Trust said: “If someone elects to privately fund a treatment that is not funded by the PCT and no exceptional grounds have been agreed in advance, the individual will remain responsible for funding any ongoing costs.”
A British Medical Association (BMA) spokeswoman said: "Ethically the BMA does not believe that if someone has treatment privately they should be prevented from accessing any NHS care related to this initial procedure."
Source
A lesson for Britain's obesity hysterics
New evidence from America suggests that intervening in schools and forcing kids to eat, think and learn healthily does not make them slimmer
One of the conceits of anti-obesity campaigners is that they `know' how to prevent children from becoming fat. But if the results of a much-awaited study on one of the central pillars of fighting childhood obesity - school interventions for healthy eating - are anything to go by, then such school-based programmes are expensive failures.
In its new obesity strategy, the UK government has placed considerable emphasis on school-based interventions which are designed to reduce childhood obesity through including lessons about healthy eating, serving only `healthy food', involving parents, and using social marketing strategies designed to apply social pressure to `encourage' children to eat healthily. All of these, according to both the prime minister Gordon Brown and the health minister Alan Johnson, represent the best in evidence-backed approaches to reducing childhood obesity.
Unfortunately, this appears not to be the case. The journal Pediatrics has recently published the results of the Student Nutrition Policy Initiative (1), a US programme which includes almost all of the government's initiatives for tackling obesity - and the results demonstrate that the government's plans to prevent obesity in Britain's children are almost certain to fail.
In the School Nutrition Policy Initiative, which was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Centers for Disease Control, 10 inner-city Philadelphia schools were targeted. Over 1,300 students were divided into intervention and control schools. In the intervention schools, staff were instructed in healthy eating and physical activity and how to integrate these themes into their teaching. Students were provided with 50 hours of healthy eating instruction each year. Children, for instance, were taught writing through essay assignments on nutrition. Every food sold or served in the schools had to meet strict healthy eating standards and all vending machines were taken out of the schools. Perhaps most controversially, children who failed to eat properly were denied rewards such as sitting by friends or extra recess.
And what were the results of such massive obesity-prevention efforts? From the spin in the press, one would think that the children in the schools with all of the focus on healthy food, along with the stigma of being overweight, ended up weighing less. After all, this was about reducing and preventing overweight and obesity. For example, the website Science Daily reported the study as showing that `school-based intervention, which reduced the incidence of overweight by 50 per cent, offers a potential means of preventing childhood weight gain and obesity on a large scale' (2).
But this puts a rather one-sided spin on the results. According to the study, the percentage of obese children in the intervention schools actually increased by 1.25 per cent compared with an increase of 1.37 per cent in the schools which didn't get all the obesity-prevention measures. In other words, there was no statistically significant difference between the schools. As the researchers themselves admitted: `After two years, there were no differences between intervention and control schools in the prevalence of obesity.' Even more shocking, they reported that `the intervention had no effect at the upper end of the BMI distribution. on the incidence, prevalence, or remission of obesity'.
And what about all that attention to healthy eating? After all, the point was that kids would not only have less chance of getting fat, but that they would eat better, too. In the intervention schools, at the end of the two-year programme, the number of children who were eating `healthily', that is, eating the required amounts of vegetables and fruits, declined. These kids were eating fewer servings of fruits and vegetables than the kids who had no nutritional instruction and who attended school where `unhealthy' foods were served.
So, whether success was measured by changes in body mass index, eating patterns, or the numbers of kids who were overweight or obese, this massive social-engineering project that is supposed to serve as a model for Britain was a failure.
The anti-obesity activists and the government have continually said that the so-called obesity epidemic is all about children. And they have had confidently told us that they knew best how to deal with overweight and obese children. But the evidence - as opposed to the faith - suggests otherwise. It suggests that when it comes to food, obesity and children, the food nannies and the government really know next to nothing about what works.
Source
Assessing British children can only improve their education
The whingeing [whining] about tests for 11-year-olds last week was predictable and depressing. To sum up what Chris Woodhead says below: The "experts" are offering little more than feelgood crap
Last week MPs on the education select committee jumped on what might well now be an unstoppable bandwagon and demanded an urgent rethink of the national curriculum tests in primary schools. Terrified by the prospect of a poor league table position, too many schools were, its members argued, force-feeding their pupils. Joy, spontaneity and creativity have been driven from the classroom. Something must be done, and now.
The fact that the problem might lie not with the tests, but with teachers who cannot accept the principle of accountability does not seem to have occurred to the committee. Neither did its members explain how problems in failing schools can be solved if we do not know which schools are failing.
At the moment, children are assessed by teachers in English and maths at seven and sit more formal tests in English, maths and science at 11. Two periods of testing in four years of primary education. What’s wrong, moreover, with some preparation for tests if the tests assess worthwhile skill and knowledge?
I have to confess to a dreadful sense of deja vu. Sixteen years ago the then Tory education secretary, Ken Clarke, horrified by the sloppiness he found in many of the primary schools he visited, asked Robin Alexander and Jim Rose to research what became known as the Three Wise Men report. I was the third wise man, parachuted in later to represent the interests of the fledgling national curriculum.
Now Professor Alexander is heading up a review of primary education, funded by a charitable foundation, and Sir Jim Rose has been asked by ministers, eager not to be upstaged, to mount his own investigation – though testing has been excluded from the terms of his report.
In retrospect, the Three Wise Men report was one of my more amusing professional experiences. At the time it was a nightmare. Jim Rose is a nice man, but he is not the Clint Eastwood of primary education. Consensus makes his day. I found that Robin Alexander bridled at any challenge to his opinions. He elevated preciousness into an art form. Working with him was marginally less stressful than being married to Heather Mills.
It was touch and go, but in the end we did it, and Robin even turned up for the press conference. The importance of subject knowledge; the need for teachers to teach the whole class and to stop trying to engage individual pupils; the vital role of assessment: the report emphasised commonsense educational truths that had been drowned by a tsunami of child-centred 1960s twaddle.
For all his prickliness, I never knew what Robin Alexander really thought. Now I think I do. Interim reports from his review show that he may well be part of the malaise Ken Clarke tried to cure. Reading a recent lecture he gave, I found just one reference to “teaching”, and that very much in passing. Instead he waxed lyrical about how children are “natural and active learners”; how learning takes place everywhere; how children learn from each other and not just adults; and how “we need to engage with and listen to children, and not just talk at them”.
There is a truth, of course, in each of these platitudes. What worries me is the sub text, which actually is not that sub. Throughout the lecture he cites evidence that his inquiry has uncovered – of “the loss of childhood”, of the “overcrowded” primary curriculum, of our “high stakes national testing regime” and of “teachers’ anxieties about league tables, inspection and the somewhat punitive character of school accountability”. Professor Alexander may, of course, choose to reject this evidence but the burden of much that has been said thus far suggests this is unlikely.
My prediction would be that this primary review will reject most, if not all, of the educational reforms that have taken place since 1990. I can understand why teachers who never accepted these reforms might applaud. But why are so many politicians and parents buying into a proposition that would kill off any hope that state education might improve?
Isn’t it obvious? The better a teacher teaches, the more a child will learn. The key to higher standards is better teaching. By which I mean: teachers who have real knowledge of and passion for the subjects they teach, the highest possible expectations of each and every child, and, obviously, the classroom teaching skills needed to keep order and inspire and enthuse their pupils. We do not need research and reviews into the nature of primary education. We need a remorseless determination to implement these commonsense truths.
Plus, of course, a system of national testing. Robin Alexander appears to be siding with those in the world of education who hate the fact that the tests shine the bright light of accountability into the murky corners of failing and complacent schools. Thus far the government is defending the tests. For once ministers are doing the right thing.
Source
The National Health Service has refused to pay for an operation to prevent a pensioner’s agonising migraines because the woman paid privately for earlier treatment. Maureen Alden, 74, from Bristol, spent her life savings on a £13,000 operation two years ago to implant wires into her brain which prevent migraines by stimulating the nerves. The operation was successful and cut her attacks by 80%. The battery which powers the medical device is about to run out, however, and the retired typist cannot obtain funding for a replacement.
Alden’s case will reignite the debate over the ban on NHS patients supplementing their care by paying for treatments that are not funded by the health service. Breast cancer sufferers have been told they will be denied NHS treatment if they pay privately for “top-up” drugs. Patients are taking legal action to fight the ban.
Alden is backed by her GP, Dr Sarah Vaughan, who said: “This seems appalling to me. Funding decisions should be made on medical grounds such as how badly the patient needs the treatment, not whether they have previously paid privately.”
Alden had the device, an occipital nerve stimulator, implanted in March 2006. The battery is expected to run out in the next six months. A permanent battery has since been developed, so if the NHS pays 8,500 pounds for a replacement then Alden should not require any further treatment.
Vaughan warns that if Alden is denied the treatment the NHS will end up spending as much on expensive medication. South Gloucestershire Primary Care Trust said: “If someone elects to privately fund a treatment that is not funded by the PCT and no exceptional grounds have been agreed in advance, the individual will remain responsible for funding any ongoing costs.”
A British Medical Association (BMA) spokeswoman said: "Ethically the BMA does not believe that if someone has treatment privately they should be prevented from accessing any NHS care related to this initial procedure."
Source
A lesson for Britain's obesity hysterics
New evidence from America suggests that intervening in schools and forcing kids to eat, think and learn healthily does not make them slimmer
One of the conceits of anti-obesity campaigners is that they `know' how to prevent children from becoming fat. But if the results of a much-awaited study on one of the central pillars of fighting childhood obesity - school interventions for healthy eating - are anything to go by, then such school-based programmes are expensive failures.
In its new obesity strategy, the UK government has placed considerable emphasis on school-based interventions which are designed to reduce childhood obesity through including lessons about healthy eating, serving only `healthy food', involving parents, and using social marketing strategies designed to apply social pressure to `encourage' children to eat healthily. All of these, according to both the prime minister Gordon Brown and the health minister Alan Johnson, represent the best in evidence-backed approaches to reducing childhood obesity.
Unfortunately, this appears not to be the case. The journal Pediatrics has recently published the results of the Student Nutrition Policy Initiative (1), a US programme which includes almost all of the government's initiatives for tackling obesity - and the results demonstrate that the government's plans to prevent obesity in Britain's children are almost certain to fail.
In the School Nutrition Policy Initiative, which was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Centers for Disease Control, 10 inner-city Philadelphia schools were targeted. Over 1,300 students were divided into intervention and control schools. In the intervention schools, staff were instructed in healthy eating and physical activity and how to integrate these themes into their teaching. Students were provided with 50 hours of healthy eating instruction each year. Children, for instance, were taught writing through essay assignments on nutrition. Every food sold or served in the schools had to meet strict healthy eating standards and all vending machines were taken out of the schools. Perhaps most controversially, children who failed to eat properly were denied rewards such as sitting by friends or extra recess.
And what were the results of such massive obesity-prevention efforts? From the spin in the press, one would think that the children in the schools with all of the focus on healthy food, along with the stigma of being overweight, ended up weighing less. After all, this was about reducing and preventing overweight and obesity. For example, the website Science Daily reported the study as showing that `school-based intervention, which reduced the incidence of overweight by 50 per cent, offers a potential means of preventing childhood weight gain and obesity on a large scale' (2).
But this puts a rather one-sided spin on the results. According to the study, the percentage of obese children in the intervention schools actually increased by 1.25 per cent compared with an increase of 1.37 per cent in the schools which didn't get all the obesity-prevention measures. In other words, there was no statistically significant difference between the schools. As the researchers themselves admitted: `After two years, there were no differences between intervention and control schools in the prevalence of obesity.' Even more shocking, they reported that `the intervention had no effect at the upper end of the BMI distribution. on the incidence, prevalence, or remission of obesity'.
And what about all that attention to healthy eating? After all, the point was that kids would not only have less chance of getting fat, but that they would eat better, too. In the intervention schools, at the end of the two-year programme, the number of children who were eating `healthily', that is, eating the required amounts of vegetables and fruits, declined. These kids were eating fewer servings of fruits and vegetables than the kids who had no nutritional instruction and who attended school where `unhealthy' foods were served.
So, whether success was measured by changes in body mass index, eating patterns, or the numbers of kids who were overweight or obese, this massive social-engineering project that is supposed to serve as a model for Britain was a failure.
The anti-obesity activists and the government have continually said that the so-called obesity epidemic is all about children. And they have had confidently told us that they knew best how to deal with overweight and obese children. But the evidence - as opposed to the faith - suggests otherwise. It suggests that when it comes to food, obesity and children, the food nannies and the government really know next to nothing about what works.
Source
Assessing British children can only improve their education
The whingeing [whining] about tests for 11-year-olds last week was predictable and depressing. To sum up what Chris Woodhead says below: The "experts" are offering little more than feelgood crap
Last week MPs on the education select committee jumped on what might well now be an unstoppable bandwagon and demanded an urgent rethink of the national curriculum tests in primary schools. Terrified by the prospect of a poor league table position, too many schools were, its members argued, force-feeding their pupils. Joy, spontaneity and creativity have been driven from the classroom. Something must be done, and now.
The fact that the problem might lie not with the tests, but with teachers who cannot accept the principle of accountability does not seem to have occurred to the committee. Neither did its members explain how problems in failing schools can be solved if we do not know which schools are failing.
At the moment, children are assessed by teachers in English and maths at seven and sit more formal tests in English, maths and science at 11. Two periods of testing in four years of primary education. What’s wrong, moreover, with some preparation for tests if the tests assess worthwhile skill and knowledge?
I have to confess to a dreadful sense of deja vu. Sixteen years ago the then Tory education secretary, Ken Clarke, horrified by the sloppiness he found in many of the primary schools he visited, asked Robin Alexander and Jim Rose to research what became known as the Three Wise Men report. I was the third wise man, parachuted in later to represent the interests of the fledgling national curriculum.
Now Professor Alexander is heading up a review of primary education, funded by a charitable foundation, and Sir Jim Rose has been asked by ministers, eager not to be upstaged, to mount his own investigation – though testing has been excluded from the terms of his report.
In retrospect, the Three Wise Men report was one of my more amusing professional experiences. At the time it was a nightmare. Jim Rose is a nice man, but he is not the Clint Eastwood of primary education. Consensus makes his day. I found that Robin Alexander bridled at any challenge to his opinions. He elevated preciousness into an art form. Working with him was marginally less stressful than being married to Heather Mills.
It was touch and go, but in the end we did it, and Robin even turned up for the press conference. The importance of subject knowledge; the need for teachers to teach the whole class and to stop trying to engage individual pupils; the vital role of assessment: the report emphasised commonsense educational truths that had been drowned by a tsunami of child-centred 1960s twaddle.
For all his prickliness, I never knew what Robin Alexander really thought. Now I think I do. Interim reports from his review show that he may well be part of the malaise Ken Clarke tried to cure. Reading a recent lecture he gave, I found just one reference to “teaching”, and that very much in passing. Instead he waxed lyrical about how children are “natural and active learners”; how learning takes place everywhere; how children learn from each other and not just adults; and how “we need to engage with and listen to children, and not just talk at them”.
There is a truth, of course, in each of these platitudes. What worries me is the sub text, which actually is not that sub. Throughout the lecture he cites evidence that his inquiry has uncovered – of “the loss of childhood”, of the “overcrowded” primary curriculum, of our “high stakes national testing regime” and of “teachers’ anxieties about league tables, inspection and the somewhat punitive character of school accountability”. Professor Alexander may, of course, choose to reject this evidence but the burden of much that has been said thus far suggests this is unlikely.
My prediction would be that this primary review will reject most, if not all, of the educational reforms that have taken place since 1990. I can understand why teachers who never accepted these reforms might applaud. But why are so many politicians and parents buying into a proposition that would kill off any hope that state education might improve?
Isn’t it obvious? The better a teacher teaches, the more a child will learn. The key to higher standards is better teaching. By which I mean: teachers who have real knowledge of and passion for the subjects they teach, the highest possible expectations of each and every child, and, obviously, the classroom teaching skills needed to keep order and inspire and enthuse their pupils. We do not need research and reviews into the nature of primary education. We need a remorseless determination to implement these commonsense truths.
Plus, of course, a system of national testing. Robin Alexander appears to be siding with those in the world of education who hate the fact that the tests shine the bright light of accountability into the murky corners of failing and complacent schools. Thus far the government is defending the tests. For once ministers are doing the right thing.
Source
Sunday, May 18, 2008
British grandmother overjoyed by go-ahead to sue over hospital superbug MRSA
A great-grandmother was "overjoyed" after being given the go-ahead to bring a test case against the National Health Service for allegedly infecting her with the MRSA superbug. Elizabeth Miller, 71, contracted MRSA while recovering from a heart operation at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary in 2001. Her legal team argues that a failure to implement the hospital's hand hygiene policy led to her infection.
Although patients have sued hospitals for failing to treat the superbug, no cases have been brought against the health service for giving it to patients. If successful, Mrs Miller's case could lead to scores of others.
Speaking after the Court of Session in Edinburgh ruled that a full hearing into the claim should be held, Mrs Miller said: "I really am overjoyed that we have won the first battle and I just feel it has taken a long, long time. The main thing is that the hospitals get cleaned up. It has ruined my life. I spend most of my life sitting in a chair, and depression is one of the worst things it has done. I just feel my life will never be the same again. But if the case can prevent it happening to someone else, that will be a bonus."
Mrs Miller, from Kilsyth, near Glasgow, is seeking damages of 30,000 pounds from NHS Greater Glasgow. She says that she can no longer play with her great-grandchildren because she is too unwell. Her legal team claims that she contracted the bug because of a series of errors that led to staff failing to wash their hands properly. The problems were understood to include faulty taps and sinks and a lack of soap and paper towels. According to court papers lodged on her behalf: "If the hospital's hand hygiene policy had been implemented, enforced and adhered to, Mrs Miller would not have become infected with MRSA."
Lawyers for the NHS board called for the legal action to be dismissed. They claim that the infection was identified and treated as early as possible and that a nasal swab taken from Mrs Miller did not rule out the possibility that she had MRSA before being admitted.
However, in a written ruling yesterday, Judge Lady Clark said that the case should proceed to a full hearing. She said that there were still some factual matters to be determined. A date has not been fixed yet for the full hearing.
Mrs Miller's solicitor, Cameron Fyfe, said that he had 160 other clients who intended to pursue similar claims if the case was successful. In some cases patients had died or lost limbs, and those claims could run into six figures, he suggested. Mr Fyfe added: "This is a big step forward. If at this final hearing we can prove that the hospital was to blame, Elizabeth will be compensated and it will open the door to hundreds of claims."
Source
Seasonal food only? Sod off, Gordon
Toilet-mouthed British celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay has suggested we should only eat food `in season'. That would mean letting Nature tell us what to do
`Chefs should be fined if they haven't got ingredients in season on their menu. I don't want to see asparagus in the middle of December, I don't want to see strawberries from Kenya in the middle of March.' Gordon Ramsay, the world's sweariest chef, believes we should be eating local, seasonal food. What the f*ck?
`I want to see it homegrown. There should be stringent laws, fines and licensing laws to make sure produce is only used in season. If we get this legislation pushed through parliament then the more unique this country will become', added Ramsay, suggesting that we should be concerned with creating a distinctive national food culture and cutting down on food miles (1).
There have been plenty of people lining up to point out the hypocrisy of Ramsay's position. Food critic Jay Rayner, writing in the Observer, was reduced to nausea: `His declaration. that chefs who use ingredients that are neither local nor seasonal ought to be fined did make the bile rise. This is a man who operates a restaurant in Dubai, for God's sake, where absolutely nothing is local or seasonal. Everything arrives there from somewhere else, according to whatever season happens to be in progress in whichever hemisphere happens to be the most convenient at the time.' (2)
Even in his London restaurants, there are plenty of ingredients on Ramsay's menus that are far from seasonal and local. TV chef Anthony Worrall Thompson told the Telegraph: `I trawled through his menus from Claridges and Maze and there were at least 15 items that would have warranted a fine.' (3)
Strangely, while there were plenty of people willing to point out Ramsay's hypocrisy or question the practicality of criminalising the importation of food when the UK cannot grow enough food to meet its needs, most commentators seemed to think Ramsay had a point. His co-presenter on Channel 4's The F-Word, and fellow member of the rent-a-gob union, Janet Street-Porter, was quick to defend Ramsay from his critics: `He has a point, only slightly undermined by his driving a gas-guzzling vehicle and spending most of his time jetting around the globe to oversee his rapidly expanding restaurant empire. Eating out should mean we have a chance to enjoy great food created with local produce, rather than fish, meat and exotic veg flown in from the other side of the planet.' (4)
The fact that such an approach to `strawberries from Kenya' might have a negative impact on producers in the developing world has been widely ignored. It took Duncan Green from the charity Oxfam - an organisation with a dubious attachment to `sustainable development' - to point this out: `I'm sure the million farmers in East Africa who rely on exporting their goods to scrape a living would see Gordon Ramsay's assertions as a recipe for disaster.' (5)
This latest furore is typical of the confused discussion of food today. This was made clear to me recently during a debate I took part in at London's Real Food Festival. Ecologist publisher and Conservative Party environment adviser, Zac Goldsmith, told the gathered audience that local food was crucial - perhaps even more important for green foodies than organic food. But when a member of the audience who lived in inner-city London asked the panel how she could eat `local' food, Goldsmith was a bit stuck. It depends, said the billionaire's son, offering that `local' might mean the Caribbean if you were talking about bananas. So, `local' means anywhere within 4,500 miles?
In truth, the Real Food Festival illustrated the importance of going beyond local food for the sake of the kind of small, quirky producers so beloved of foodies and greens. While pottering around the stalls before the debate, I tried three-year-matured parmesan cheese from Italy, fruit-flavoured wine from Scotland and ready-made stews and soups from Yorkshire. One Shropshire pig farmer - sick of selling to the supermarkets for little or no profit - was selling direct to customers in London, roughly 200 miles away. Good for him - but it's hardly local, is it?
As for seasonal food, why shouldn't we aim to have all foods available to us all-year-round? In this respect, we should follow what Ramsay practises, not what we preaches. Why should we only be able to enjoy strawberries in the summer and autumn, or asparagus during the narrow northern season? Ramsay does have one slight point: sometimes this out-of-season produce isn't quite as tasty as the domestic, in-season equivalent. But that is a minor point. Far better to make these things available and allow us to choose than bow down before Mother Nature and put up with what she deigns to give us.
If eating such food has negative consequences for the planet - and it is far from clear that it does - then surely the right approach is to figure out how to get the benefits of a global food market without the negative side effects. But this problem-solving approach doesn't fit into the moralising and often authoritarian approach to consumption so typical today, exemplified by Ramsay's demand to criminalise chefs.
Even worse was Ramsay's less-reported comment about TV food goddess Delia Smith's new book, How to Cheat at Cooking. Smith has endeavoured to get as much of the benefit of made-from-scratch cooking while finding ways to cut a few corners. Trying to find a halfway house between the slog of `proper' cooking and the takeaway should have received the approval of Ramsay, who has campaigned in the past to get people cooking more. No chance. `I would expect students struggling on 15 pounds a week to survive eating from a can but the nation's favourite, all-time icon reducing us down to using frozen, canned food - it's an insult', he said (6). As I can testify from personal experience, Smith's new recipes are, by and large, excellent. Of course, Ramsay isn't going to use tinned meat in his cooking (though it is surprising how many top restaurants buy their chips from McCain's). But to seek to impose his snobbery on the rest of us really is an insult.
In the past, Ramsay was the TV chef who stood for excellence and took little interest in politically-correct concerns about food miles and sustainability. But in recent times, perhaps because he's been spending too much time in the company of campaigning cooks like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver, he's started to come out with just the same junk ideas that they promote. As the vulgar-tongued Ramsay might put it, this more-ethical-than-thou approach to food is just f*cking sh*t.
Source
UK: Call for sell-off of Royal Mail: "The postal regulator has called for Royal Mail to be partly privatised to safeguard the quality of the UK's mail delivery service. Postcomm warned that Royal Mail's financial difficulties would worsen unless bold action was taken. Nigel Stapleton, Postcomm's chairman, told the BBC that without private sector involvement, Royal Mail may require a government subsidy." [Privatizing the post-office! An excellent idea!]
Oil in England's green and pleasant land? "More than 200 communities in the English countryside may be sitting on billions of pounds of undiscovered oil, according to prospectors. Scores of greenfield sites across southern and eastern England are being mapped for viability as world oil prices soar. The Government has received 60 applications from 54 companies to explore 182 plots, but is keeping the details confidential because they are commercially sensitive. Villages, hamlets or new estates will learn about a prospector's interest only if permission is sought to drill or extract oil. The Times has learnt that rural locations from the South Downs to the Lincolnshire Wolds have been designated potential oilfields. There is a 70-mile stretch of small oil deposits in limestone and sandstone from Poole in Dorset, through Hampshire to West Sussex, and pockets in Surrey, the East Midlands and South Wales".
A great-grandmother was "overjoyed" after being given the go-ahead to bring a test case against the National Health Service for allegedly infecting her with the MRSA superbug. Elizabeth Miller, 71, contracted MRSA while recovering from a heart operation at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary in 2001. Her legal team argues that a failure to implement the hospital's hand hygiene policy led to her infection.
Although patients have sued hospitals for failing to treat the superbug, no cases have been brought against the health service for giving it to patients. If successful, Mrs Miller's case could lead to scores of others.
Speaking after the Court of Session in Edinburgh ruled that a full hearing into the claim should be held, Mrs Miller said: "I really am overjoyed that we have won the first battle and I just feel it has taken a long, long time. The main thing is that the hospitals get cleaned up. It has ruined my life. I spend most of my life sitting in a chair, and depression is one of the worst things it has done. I just feel my life will never be the same again. But if the case can prevent it happening to someone else, that will be a bonus."
Mrs Miller, from Kilsyth, near Glasgow, is seeking damages of 30,000 pounds from NHS Greater Glasgow. She says that she can no longer play with her great-grandchildren because she is too unwell. Her legal team claims that she contracted the bug because of a series of errors that led to staff failing to wash their hands properly. The problems were understood to include faulty taps and sinks and a lack of soap and paper towels. According to court papers lodged on her behalf: "If the hospital's hand hygiene policy had been implemented, enforced and adhered to, Mrs Miller would not have become infected with MRSA."
Lawyers for the NHS board called for the legal action to be dismissed. They claim that the infection was identified and treated as early as possible and that a nasal swab taken from Mrs Miller did not rule out the possibility that she had MRSA before being admitted.
However, in a written ruling yesterday, Judge Lady Clark said that the case should proceed to a full hearing. She said that there were still some factual matters to be determined. A date has not been fixed yet for the full hearing.
Mrs Miller's solicitor, Cameron Fyfe, said that he had 160 other clients who intended to pursue similar claims if the case was successful. In some cases patients had died or lost limbs, and those claims could run into six figures, he suggested. Mr Fyfe added: "This is a big step forward. If at this final hearing we can prove that the hospital was to blame, Elizabeth will be compensated and it will open the door to hundreds of claims."
Source
Seasonal food only? Sod off, Gordon
Toilet-mouthed British celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay has suggested we should only eat food `in season'. That would mean letting Nature tell us what to do
`Chefs should be fined if they haven't got ingredients in season on their menu. I don't want to see asparagus in the middle of December, I don't want to see strawberries from Kenya in the middle of March.' Gordon Ramsay, the world's sweariest chef, believes we should be eating local, seasonal food. What the f*ck?
`I want to see it homegrown. There should be stringent laws, fines and licensing laws to make sure produce is only used in season. If we get this legislation pushed through parliament then the more unique this country will become', added Ramsay, suggesting that we should be concerned with creating a distinctive national food culture and cutting down on food miles (1).
There have been plenty of people lining up to point out the hypocrisy of Ramsay's position. Food critic Jay Rayner, writing in the Observer, was reduced to nausea: `His declaration. that chefs who use ingredients that are neither local nor seasonal ought to be fined did make the bile rise. This is a man who operates a restaurant in Dubai, for God's sake, where absolutely nothing is local or seasonal. Everything arrives there from somewhere else, according to whatever season happens to be in progress in whichever hemisphere happens to be the most convenient at the time.' (2)
Even in his London restaurants, there are plenty of ingredients on Ramsay's menus that are far from seasonal and local. TV chef Anthony Worrall Thompson told the Telegraph: `I trawled through his menus from Claridges and Maze and there were at least 15 items that would have warranted a fine.' (3)
Strangely, while there were plenty of people willing to point out Ramsay's hypocrisy or question the practicality of criminalising the importation of food when the UK cannot grow enough food to meet its needs, most commentators seemed to think Ramsay had a point. His co-presenter on Channel 4's The F-Word, and fellow member of the rent-a-gob union, Janet Street-Porter, was quick to defend Ramsay from his critics: `He has a point, only slightly undermined by his driving a gas-guzzling vehicle and spending most of his time jetting around the globe to oversee his rapidly expanding restaurant empire. Eating out should mean we have a chance to enjoy great food created with local produce, rather than fish, meat and exotic veg flown in from the other side of the planet.' (4)
The fact that such an approach to `strawberries from Kenya' might have a negative impact on producers in the developing world has been widely ignored. It took Duncan Green from the charity Oxfam - an organisation with a dubious attachment to `sustainable development' - to point this out: `I'm sure the million farmers in East Africa who rely on exporting their goods to scrape a living would see Gordon Ramsay's assertions as a recipe for disaster.' (5)
This latest furore is typical of the confused discussion of food today. This was made clear to me recently during a debate I took part in at London's Real Food Festival. Ecologist publisher and Conservative Party environment adviser, Zac Goldsmith, told the gathered audience that local food was crucial - perhaps even more important for green foodies than organic food. But when a member of the audience who lived in inner-city London asked the panel how she could eat `local' food, Goldsmith was a bit stuck. It depends, said the billionaire's son, offering that `local' might mean the Caribbean if you were talking about bananas. So, `local' means anywhere within 4,500 miles?
In truth, the Real Food Festival illustrated the importance of going beyond local food for the sake of the kind of small, quirky producers so beloved of foodies and greens. While pottering around the stalls before the debate, I tried three-year-matured parmesan cheese from Italy, fruit-flavoured wine from Scotland and ready-made stews and soups from Yorkshire. One Shropshire pig farmer - sick of selling to the supermarkets for little or no profit - was selling direct to customers in London, roughly 200 miles away. Good for him - but it's hardly local, is it?
As for seasonal food, why shouldn't we aim to have all foods available to us all-year-round? In this respect, we should follow what Ramsay practises, not what we preaches. Why should we only be able to enjoy strawberries in the summer and autumn, or asparagus during the narrow northern season? Ramsay does have one slight point: sometimes this out-of-season produce isn't quite as tasty as the domestic, in-season equivalent. But that is a minor point. Far better to make these things available and allow us to choose than bow down before Mother Nature and put up with what she deigns to give us.
If eating such food has negative consequences for the planet - and it is far from clear that it does - then surely the right approach is to figure out how to get the benefits of a global food market without the negative side effects. But this problem-solving approach doesn't fit into the moralising and often authoritarian approach to consumption so typical today, exemplified by Ramsay's demand to criminalise chefs.
Even worse was Ramsay's less-reported comment about TV food goddess Delia Smith's new book, How to Cheat at Cooking. Smith has endeavoured to get as much of the benefit of made-from-scratch cooking while finding ways to cut a few corners. Trying to find a halfway house between the slog of `proper' cooking and the takeaway should have received the approval of Ramsay, who has campaigned in the past to get people cooking more. No chance. `I would expect students struggling on 15 pounds a week to survive eating from a can but the nation's favourite, all-time icon reducing us down to using frozen, canned food - it's an insult', he said (6). As I can testify from personal experience, Smith's new recipes are, by and large, excellent. Of course, Ramsay isn't going to use tinned meat in his cooking (though it is surprising how many top restaurants buy their chips from McCain's). But to seek to impose his snobbery on the rest of us really is an insult.
In the past, Ramsay was the TV chef who stood for excellence and took little interest in politically-correct concerns about food miles and sustainability. But in recent times, perhaps because he's been spending too much time in the company of campaigning cooks like Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver, he's started to come out with just the same junk ideas that they promote. As the vulgar-tongued Ramsay might put it, this more-ethical-than-thou approach to food is just f*cking sh*t.
Source
UK: Call for sell-off of Royal Mail: "The postal regulator has called for Royal Mail to be partly privatised to safeguard the quality of the UK's mail delivery service. Postcomm warned that Royal Mail's financial difficulties would worsen unless bold action was taken. Nigel Stapleton, Postcomm's chairman, told the BBC that without private sector involvement, Royal Mail may require a government subsidy." [Privatizing the post-office! An excellent idea!]
Oil in England's green and pleasant land? "More than 200 communities in the English countryside may be sitting on billions of pounds of undiscovered oil, according to prospectors. Scores of greenfield sites across southern and eastern England are being mapped for viability as world oil prices soar. The Government has received 60 applications from 54 companies to explore 182 plots, but is keeping the details confidential because they are commercially sensitive. Villages, hamlets or new estates will learn about a prospector's interest only if permission is sought to drill or extract oil. The Times has learnt that rural locations from the South Downs to the Lincolnshire Wolds have been designated potential oilfields. There is a 70-mile stretch of small oil deposits in limestone and sandstone from Poole in Dorset, through Hampshire to West Sussex, and pockets in Surrey, the East Midlands and South Wales".
Saturday, May 17, 2008
POOR BRITANNIA: GREEN FOLLIES COMING HOME TO ROOST
Vast expenditures on Green fantasies that achieve nothing (such as huge expenditure on windmills with negligible output) plus extensive Greenie restrictions on activities that ARE productive (such as use of GM crops) have their inevitable outcome
The British economy faces the real risk of falling into recession, the Governor of the Bank of England has admitted. Mervyn King warned families to brace themselves for a further "squeeze" on household finances as rising energy bills and food prices continue to rise. Mr King said that inflation was set to increase sharply to about 3.7 per cent - almost double the official target. As a result most British people will feel poorer this year as pay rises fail to keep pace with rising costs.
The Governor - who said that "the nice decade is behind us" - also warned homeowners that property prices would fall further and that it was impossible to predict the scale of the decline.
He became the first senior public figure to openly discuss the possibility that the British economy may now be heading for recession. The economy was "travelling along a bumpy road" and that a sharp downturn could not be ruled out, he said. The comments are some of the most stark issued by the Bank and indicate growing concern within Government over the economic prospects for the country. The prospects for the British economy have worsened since the Bank's last inflation report in February.
Mr King made his comments as official figures revealed unemployment rose last month and Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, conceded that British families needed help to deal with rising fuel, food and energy costs. Mr King said: "There is going to be a sharp slowing in growth. It is quite possible that at some point we may get an odd quarter or two of negative growth, but recession is not the central projection...But clearly further shocks could push us in that direction." The technical definition of recession is two or more consecutive quarters of negative growth, a situation last seen in 1991.
The Governor added: "As price increases feed through to household bills, they will lead to a squeeze on real take-home pay, which will slow consumer spending and output growth, perhaps sharply." Mr King's mention of "the nice decade" is a reference to the acronym "non-inflationary consistent expansion" used by economists to describe the sort of growth since Labour came to power.
His intervention followed the disclosure that housing minister Caroline Flint backed independent forecasts suggesting prices will fall by between five and ten per cent this year. On Tuesday it was disclosed that inflation had seen its biggest increase in six years to three per cent. The average family was calculated to be 600 pounds worse off compared to a year ago as a result.
More here
Customer service in Britain: It's non-existent
I am putting this up because the reports below mirror my own experience of Britain. I think they are even worse than the Indian bureaucracy -- and that's private British firms as well as government that I am talking about. Maybe Zimbabwe is worse
Go abroad. That is the only sensible conclusion to draw from the huge online reaction to Weekend's article last month on customer service in Britain. Singapore does it better, so does Japan, so does Canada. Even the French, once fabled for their rudeness, get your approval. "In France, medical staff take pride in patient care," reported Geoff Miller. "In Britain, they are obtuse, bureaucratic, unhelpful."
India also gets the thumbs-up. "A good shopkeeper looks after his customer whether the customer buys anything or not," wrote Sridhar Rao, contrasting the care and attention shown by Indian shopkeepers selling saris with the "abominable" service at PC World.
Not that emigrating did the trick for Graham, a retired Barclays employee. To continue paying his pension, his erstwhile employer requires him to supply evidence every six months that he is still alive - an exercise that has involved him in an interminable round of ignored emails and emails that took three weeks to get a response. "Revolution!" mused Graham at his hideaway in the sun. "Now there's a thought..." Thank you for taking the trouble to name and shame the worst offenders. All the usual suspects were there, with BT and British Airways leading the field.
It was hard to know whether to feel more sorry for Dave Coomber, being shunted from one operator to another as BT tried to work out if he had a "fault" or a "technical problem" - he thought they were synonymous, poor sap - or for Nikki Brown, gearing herself up to tackle the BA customer service department about some missing luggage. When she was told that customer service would not be accepting any calls for the next four weeks because it was still clearing a backlog of complaints arising from a spell of bad weather nine months previously, her patience snapped. It would have taken "the resilience and determination of an Antarctic explorer" to beat the system.
Other organisations to incur your wrath were WH Smith in Cheshire ("the cashiers seemed to feel that acknowledging the customers except to take payment was forbidden"); Boots online, whose asinine emails reduced Sylvia Chapman to a screaming banshee; the Abbey bank ("worst ever customer service"); and a London branch of HSBC, where Emily Fleming suffered a double whammy of "rock music blaring from wall speakers" and "tellers who resembled a pair of zombies".
HSBC clearly needs to raise its game. Fred Wall, visiting his local branch, was spared the loud music, but was snookered by a super-polite branch manager who told him to "take a wee seat" while he sorted out his problem. Fred took his wee seat, while the manager, as far as he could see, did nothing.
It was the sense of "being given the runaround" - passed from unhelpful official A to unhelpful official B - that really irked Telegraph readers. Brian Simpson contacted Sterling Airlines to try to trace an item that his wife had lost on a flight from Gatwick to Stockholm. He ended up being referred to the Copenhagen police department. You have to laugh.
All Mark Roberts wanted from the Department for Work and Pensions was a simple calculation of an overpayment to his late father. That was the start of a surreal 10-month round of phone calls shuttling his inquiries from Salford to Gloucester to Dearne Valley to Stornoway to Corby and back to Stornoway.
You all had your bugbears, from automated answering systems to teenage cashiers chatting to their friends on mobile phones. For Andrew Parsons, the worst of the lot were medical receptionists - "trained by ex-KGB interrogators of General rank to look at you like you are in the gutter whilst trying to extract the information".
In fairness, even though most readers seemed to share my despair at the standard of customer service in Britain, a significant minority took the opposite view. Organisations that received bouquets for their service included Virgin Atlantic, school examination boards, the Arcade Bookshop in Chandler's Ford, Hampshire, and the staff at Sudbury Hill station.
Several of you argued that customers had to treat staff with respect, not just demand service as of feudal right. "Try working on the other side of the counter," advised Edward Westcott, "and see the snobbery, arrogance and downright rudeness that some customers display to shop workers. Think about when you are at the till on your mobile or talking to your companions behind you while you fling your credit card at the assistant. Civility works both ways." Touche. Norman, another shop worker, made a similar point. "I could write a book on the amount of abuse I have received over the years." His biggest gripe was the increasing tendency of customers to complain loud and long in the hope of getting compensation. One customer claimed that he missed his holiday flight because he had been sold a pint of milk that went off, then demanded hundreds of pounds' compensation.
One of the underlying themes of your emails, with their Kafkaesque tales of ordinary citizens entangled in red tape and bureaucracy, is the debilitating pace of modern life: too many people in too much of a hurry to find the time to smile.
Source
Incompetent British medical care kills young mother
Woman dies because nobody gave a stuff
A young mother who developed complications during a home birth died after a midwife lacked the confidence to inject her with fluids, an inquest was told. There was also a delay in giving Joanne Whale treatment that could have saved her life in hospital after another midwife failed to pass on information to the doctors there.
Dr Peter Dean, the Greater Suffolk Coroner, said that lessons must be learnt from her death and that women should be made more aware of the dangers of home births. He also demanded better communication between midwives and doctors.
Miss Whale, 23, gave birth to a healthy boy at home in Ipswich last September. But she died hours later after a severe haemorrhage. When Ms Whale began to lose blood she needed an injection of fluids. Julie Bates, a midwife, said that she had been trained in the process but had never had to use it. "I've got the theoretical knowledge but not the practical knowledge," she said. "I felt uncomfortable having to do that in this situation." She added: "Knowing the ambulance was only a few minutes away I thought it was better to leave it for the proper paramedics."
The inquest was also told that Miss Whale's arrival at hospital had been delayed because the paramedics had found it difficult to remove her from an upstairs bedroom. Martin Hambling, who was in the first of two ambulances to arrive after a 999 call, said: "Extraction was extremely difficult because of the layout of the house. We had to negotiate several sharp turns."
Miss Whale was taken to Ipswich Hospital but doctors were not told the exact nature of her condition, which led to a delay in getting her to the operating theatre. Sarah Hall, another midwife, admitted that she did not pass on information that Miss Whale had suffered an inverted uterus during labour. Marlar Raja, a specialist registrar in gynaecology at the hospital, said that the patient would have been taken straight to the theatre if she had been made aware.
Balroop Johal, a consultant gynaecologist, said: "The staff were expecting a retained placenta. If they had been told that it was a complete inversion of the uterus she would almost certainly have gone straight to theatre and I would have been ready for her."
Dr John Chapman, who carried out the postmortem examination, said that Miss Whale died as a result of the inverted uterus causing a uterine haemorrhage. Her body was in so much shock that her blood failed to clot, adding to extensive bleeding.
Dr Dean recorded a narrative verdict of death from complications after an obstetric home delivery. He said he was surprised that midwives would not be confident in injecting life-saving fluids. "It does worry me a lot that mothers are giving birth in the community and the first line of call is the midwife, who might not be able to get fluid into her in those crucial early moments. That needs to be addressed. "We can't be certain that, had these things been done, she would have survived. All we can say is the chances of survival would have been greater."
Source
NHS kills another young woman
No mention of clotting factors being used
A woman bled to death after her second child was born in hospital, an inquest was told yesterday. Samima Yasmin, 26, had placenta previa - which can lead to complications during birth such as haemorrhaging - diagnosed during the 24th week of her pregnancy. At 35 weeks Mrs Yasmin, from South Shields, Tyne and Wear, had an emergency Caesarean section at South Tyneside District Hospital after suffering complications, including excessive bleeding.
Severe bleeding continued after the delivery of her son, Muzzamil Ali, in 2005, the South Tyneside coroner was told before recording a narrative verdict on Mrs Yasmin, who also had an 18-month-old son.
Hami Fawzi, a consultant at the hospital, said: "The patient was losing a lot of blood and we were trying to pump as much blood and fluids back in as we could. We felt we were on top of replacing what needed to be replaced, but it is difficult to tell how much exactly was lost. In hindsight, there was an underestimation . . . We decided to let her pass peacefully." [Big of him! Sounds unethical] Doctors described it as one of the worst cases of uncontrollable blood loss they had ever seen.
Source
Vast expenditures on Green fantasies that achieve nothing (such as huge expenditure on windmills with negligible output) plus extensive Greenie restrictions on activities that ARE productive (such as use of GM crops) have their inevitable outcome
The British economy faces the real risk of falling into recession, the Governor of the Bank of England has admitted. Mervyn King warned families to brace themselves for a further "squeeze" on household finances as rising energy bills and food prices continue to rise. Mr King said that inflation was set to increase sharply to about 3.7 per cent - almost double the official target. As a result most British people will feel poorer this year as pay rises fail to keep pace with rising costs.
The Governor - who said that "the nice decade is behind us" - also warned homeowners that property prices would fall further and that it was impossible to predict the scale of the decline.
He became the first senior public figure to openly discuss the possibility that the British economy may now be heading for recession. The economy was "travelling along a bumpy road" and that a sharp downturn could not be ruled out, he said. The comments are some of the most stark issued by the Bank and indicate growing concern within Government over the economic prospects for the country. The prospects for the British economy have worsened since the Bank's last inflation report in February.
Mr King made his comments as official figures revealed unemployment rose last month and Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, conceded that British families needed help to deal with rising fuel, food and energy costs. Mr King said: "There is going to be a sharp slowing in growth. It is quite possible that at some point we may get an odd quarter or two of negative growth, but recession is not the central projection...But clearly further shocks could push us in that direction." The technical definition of recession is two or more consecutive quarters of negative growth, a situation last seen in 1991.
The Governor added: "As price increases feed through to household bills, they will lead to a squeeze on real take-home pay, which will slow consumer spending and output growth, perhaps sharply." Mr King's mention of "the nice decade" is a reference to the acronym "non-inflationary consistent expansion" used by economists to describe the sort of growth since Labour came to power.
His intervention followed the disclosure that housing minister Caroline Flint backed independent forecasts suggesting prices will fall by between five and ten per cent this year. On Tuesday it was disclosed that inflation had seen its biggest increase in six years to three per cent. The average family was calculated to be 600 pounds worse off compared to a year ago as a result.
More here
Customer service in Britain: It's non-existent
I am putting this up because the reports below mirror my own experience of Britain. I think they are even worse than the Indian bureaucracy -- and that's private British firms as well as government that I am talking about. Maybe Zimbabwe is worse
Go abroad. That is the only sensible conclusion to draw from the huge online reaction to Weekend's article last month on customer service in Britain. Singapore does it better, so does Japan, so does Canada. Even the French, once fabled for their rudeness, get your approval. "In France, medical staff take pride in patient care," reported Geoff Miller. "In Britain, they are obtuse, bureaucratic, unhelpful."
India also gets the thumbs-up. "A good shopkeeper looks after his customer whether the customer buys anything or not," wrote Sridhar Rao, contrasting the care and attention shown by Indian shopkeepers selling saris with the "abominable" service at PC World.
Not that emigrating did the trick for Graham, a retired Barclays employee. To continue paying his pension, his erstwhile employer requires him to supply evidence every six months that he is still alive - an exercise that has involved him in an interminable round of ignored emails and emails that took three weeks to get a response. "Revolution!" mused Graham at his hideaway in the sun. "Now there's a thought..." Thank you for taking the trouble to name and shame the worst offenders. All the usual suspects were there, with BT and British Airways leading the field.
It was hard to know whether to feel more sorry for Dave Coomber, being shunted from one operator to another as BT tried to work out if he had a "fault" or a "technical problem" - he thought they were synonymous, poor sap - or for Nikki Brown, gearing herself up to tackle the BA customer service department about some missing luggage. When she was told that customer service would not be accepting any calls for the next four weeks because it was still clearing a backlog of complaints arising from a spell of bad weather nine months previously, her patience snapped. It would have taken "the resilience and determination of an Antarctic explorer" to beat the system.
Other organisations to incur your wrath were WH Smith in Cheshire ("the cashiers seemed to feel that acknowledging the customers except to take payment was forbidden"); Boots online, whose asinine emails reduced Sylvia Chapman to a screaming banshee; the Abbey bank ("worst ever customer service"); and a London branch of HSBC, where Emily Fleming suffered a double whammy of "rock music blaring from wall speakers" and "tellers who resembled a pair of zombies".
HSBC clearly needs to raise its game. Fred Wall, visiting his local branch, was spared the loud music, but was snookered by a super-polite branch manager who told him to "take a wee seat" while he sorted out his problem. Fred took his wee seat, while the manager, as far as he could see, did nothing.
It was the sense of "being given the runaround" - passed from unhelpful official A to unhelpful official B - that really irked Telegraph readers. Brian Simpson contacted Sterling Airlines to try to trace an item that his wife had lost on a flight from Gatwick to Stockholm. He ended up being referred to the Copenhagen police department. You have to laugh.
All Mark Roberts wanted from the Department for Work and Pensions was a simple calculation of an overpayment to his late father. That was the start of a surreal 10-month round of phone calls shuttling his inquiries from Salford to Gloucester to Dearne Valley to Stornoway to Corby and back to Stornoway.
You all had your bugbears, from automated answering systems to teenage cashiers chatting to their friends on mobile phones. For Andrew Parsons, the worst of the lot were medical receptionists - "trained by ex-KGB interrogators of General rank to look at you like you are in the gutter whilst trying to extract the information".
In fairness, even though most readers seemed to share my despair at the standard of customer service in Britain, a significant minority took the opposite view. Organisations that received bouquets for their service included Virgin Atlantic, school examination boards, the Arcade Bookshop in Chandler's Ford, Hampshire, and the staff at Sudbury Hill station.
Several of you argued that customers had to treat staff with respect, not just demand service as of feudal right. "Try working on the other side of the counter," advised Edward Westcott, "and see the snobbery, arrogance and downright rudeness that some customers display to shop workers. Think about when you are at the till on your mobile or talking to your companions behind you while you fling your credit card at the assistant. Civility works both ways." Touche. Norman, another shop worker, made a similar point. "I could write a book on the amount of abuse I have received over the years." His biggest gripe was the increasing tendency of customers to complain loud and long in the hope of getting compensation. One customer claimed that he missed his holiday flight because he had been sold a pint of milk that went off, then demanded hundreds of pounds' compensation.
One of the underlying themes of your emails, with their Kafkaesque tales of ordinary citizens entangled in red tape and bureaucracy, is the debilitating pace of modern life: too many people in too much of a hurry to find the time to smile.
Source
Incompetent British medical care kills young mother
Woman dies because nobody gave a stuff
A young mother who developed complications during a home birth died after a midwife lacked the confidence to inject her with fluids, an inquest was told. There was also a delay in giving Joanne Whale treatment that could have saved her life in hospital after another midwife failed to pass on information to the doctors there.
Dr Peter Dean, the Greater Suffolk Coroner, said that lessons must be learnt from her death and that women should be made more aware of the dangers of home births. He also demanded better communication between midwives and doctors.
Miss Whale, 23, gave birth to a healthy boy at home in Ipswich last September. But she died hours later after a severe haemorrhage. When Ms Whale began to lose blood she needed an injection of fluids. Julie Bates, a midwife, said that she had been trained in the process but had never had to use it. "I've got the theoretical knowledge but not the practical knowledge," she said. "I felt uncomfortable having to do that in this situation." She added: "Knowing the ambulance was only a few minutes away I thought it was better to leave it for the proper paramedics."
The inquest was also told that Miss Whale's arrival at hospital had been delayed because the paramedics had found it difficult to remove her from an upstairs bedroom. Martin Hambling, who was in the first of two ambulances to arrive after a 999 call, said: "Extraction was extremely difficult because of the layout of the house. We had to negotiate several sharp turns."
Miss Whale was taken to Ipswich Hospital but doctors were not told the exact nature of her condition, which led to a delay in getting her to the operating theatre. Sarah Hall, another midwife, admitted that she did not pass on information that Miss Whale had suffered an inverted uterus during labour. Marlar Raja, a specialist registrar in gynaecology at the hospital, said that the patient would have been taken straight to the theatre if she had been made aware.
Balroop Johal, a consultant gynaecologist, said: "The staff were expecting a retained placenta. If they had been told that it was a complete inversion of the uterus she would almost certainly have gone straight to theatre and I would have been ready for her."
Dr John Chapman, who carried out the postmortem examination, said that Miss Whale died as a result of the inverted uterus causing a uterine haemorrhage. Her body was in so much shock that her blood failed to clot, adding to extensive bleeding.
Dr Dean recorded a narrative verdict of death from complications after an obstetric home delivery. He said he was surprised that midwives would not be confident in injecting life-saving fluids. "It does worry me a lot that mothers are giving birth in the community and the first line of call is the midwife, who might not be able to get fluid into her in those crucial early moments. That needs to be addressed. "We can't be certain that, had these things been done, she would have survived. All we can say is the chances of survival would have been greater."
Source
NHS kills another young woman
No mention of clotting factors being used
A woman bled to death after her second child was born in hospital, an inquest was told yesterday. Samima Yasmin, 26, had placenta previa - which can lead to complications during birth such as haemorrhaging - diagnosed during the 24th week of her pregnancy. At 35 weeks Mrs Yasmin, from South Shields, Tyne and Wear, had an emergency Caesarean section at South Tyneside District Hospital after suffering complications, including excessive bleeding.
Severe bleeding continued after the delivery of her son, Muzzamil Ali, in 2005, the South Tyneside coroner was told before recording a narrative verdict on Mrs Yasmin, who also had an 18-month-old son.
Hami Fawzi, a consultant at the hospital, said: "The patient was losing a lot of blood and we were trying to pump as much blood and fluids back in as we could. We felt we were on top of replacing what needed to be replaced, but it is difficult to tell how much exactly was lost. In hindsight, there was an underestimation . . . We decided to let her pass peacefully." [Big of him! Sounds unethical] Doctors described it as one of the worst cases of uncontrollable blood loss they had ever seen.
Source
Friday, May 16, 2008
Politicized British police apologise (and pay up) for calling mosque documentary "fake"
The Crown Prosecution Service and West Midlands Police will apologise in the High Court today for wrongly accusing a Channel 4 film of faking an expose of Islamic extremism. The producers of Undercover Mosque, a Dispatches investigation that showed preachers predicting jihad and calling for the murder of non-believers, have also accepted a six-figure libel settlement.
The programme, screened last January, showed footage gathered at a number of mosques in the West Midlands using hidden cameras. It included one preacher who praised the Taleban for killing British soldiers. Another, Abu Usamah, a preacher at the Green Lane mosque in Birmingham, was filmed saying: “If I were to call homosexuals perverted, dirty, filthy dogs who should be murdered, that is my freedom of speech isn't it?”
However, instead of pursuing a prosecution of the preachers, police and the CPS began an investigation into the producers, accusing them of selective editing and distortion. The film-makers were accused of undermining community relations. The police took the highly unusual step of referring Dispatches to Ofcom, the media watchdog.
Ofcom threw out the complaint. It found that the programme had “accurately represented the material it had gathered and dealt with the subject matter responsibly and in context”. It was a “legitimate investigation, uncovering matters of important public interest”. Each quote was “justified by the narrative of the programme and put fully in context”.
Hardcash Productions, which made the film, joined Channel 4 in a libel complaint against the police and CPS over the “distortion” claim. West Midlands Police and CPS will apologise unreservedly for comments that they accept were incorrect and unjustified. They said that there was “no evidence that the broadcaster or programme-makers had misled the audience or that the programme was likely to encourage or incite criminal activity”.
MPs criticised the police and the CPS, which dropped any prosecution of Channel 4 because of “insufficient evidence”, for trying to censor television producers. David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: “Police scrutiny of editorial decisions of a television producer is not only an inappropriate law enforcement function, it also risks deterring legitimate investigative journalism.” Don Foster, the Liberal Democrats' media spokesman, said: “What the police thought they were doing in the first place is beyond me.”
David Henshaw, the managing director of Hardcash Productions, said: “This was a detailed one-hour documentary, made over nine months and at personal risk to the undercover reporter. The abhorrent and extreme comments made by fundamentalist preachers in the film speak for themselves.” He added: “They [the preachers] later claimed they had been taken out of context — but no one has explained the correct context for arguing that women are 'born deficient', that homosexuals should be thrown off mountains, and that ten-year-old girls should be hit if they refuse to wear the hijab.”
Kevin Sutcliffe, deputy head of current affairs at Channel 4, said: “This is a total vindication of the programme team.” A spokesman for West Midlands Police said: “We have paid a sum agreed with the programme-makers into a charity of their choice.” The substantial damages will be donated to the Rory Peck Trust, which supports the families of journalists killed in the line of work. The CPS declined to comment.
Source
British police try to shoot the messenger
As you can see above, the politicized British police have just been forced to eat crow.
Some British documentary makers went around British mosques undercover and filmed various Mullahs inciting violence against unbelievers. The resulting film was shown on British TV.
So what did the police do? What the Mullahs said was clearly in breach of British law against preaching violence so the police went and rounded up all the Mullahs concerned -- right? In your dreams! The cops prosecuted the film-makers instead! They said the film stirred up hatred. It was a truly Orwellian inversion of what actually happened -- that it was the Mullahs who were stirring up hatred.
Anyway the wheels of justice eventually ground down the nonsense and the police were rightly sued over their perverse actions. They have now paid a big sum in compensation and apologized for their actions.
But, amid all the furore, the Muslim hate-speech has remained protected. It appears that none of the Muslim hate-speakers recorded in the film have been prosecuted or will be prosecuted. The main aim of the police exercise -- protecting Muslims from the standards that others have to obey -- has been achieved.
A convenient silence in Britain
Prof. Brignell writes:
Two years ago Number Watch drew attention to the phenomenon of Greenflation and its inevitable consequences. It is a remarkable tribute to the power of political and journalistic blinkering that the Governor of the Bank of England can now make a speech about the present, very real and very serious, problem of inflation, and the BBC can report it, without a single reference to the fact that this time it is the result of deliberate policy.
It is not, of course, these days a unique occurrence that the establishment media politely sweep under the carpet anything that is an inconvenient truth (to coin a phrase): you only have to look at the coverage of the destruction of British postal services or the garbage collection farce, without any mention of authorship by the EU, for glaring examples among the many.
Since that first mention of Greenflation there has been added a third string to the bow of the activists. Not only have they fostered draconian rises in taxation and systematically blocked the development of abundant energy resources, but they have now promoted an equally disastrous international programme of biofuels, heavily subsidised (of course) by taxpayers.
High food and fuel prices are now officially described as "external factors", when they are in fact foreseeable and unavoidable outcomes of policies embraced by governments themselves. Fuel, in particular, affects the price of everything.
Clearly, as with the DDT ban, it matters little that millions of people in the poorer parts of the world will suffer deprivation and death, but now ordinary people in the developed world are feeling the pain. The new factor is that they no longer have the power to vote out those responsible. Europeans are governed by an unelected and unsackable bureaucracy in
Brussels, while Americans are offered a choice between three green presidential candidates. That is the consequence of the rise of a new complacent political class, divorced from the laws of physics and economics.
There are times in human history when the only way is down. This is one of them. Up to now the human spirit has risen from the ashes, eventually and triumphantly to overcome such disasters, but it has never before had to face a universal political machine of such single-minded potency.
Source
The Crown Prosecution Service and West Midlands Police will apologise in the High Court today for wrongly accusing a Channel 4 film of faking an expose of Islamic extremism. The producers of Undercover Mosque, a Dispatches investigation that showed preachers predicting jihad and calling for the murder of non-believers, have also accepted a six-figure libel settlement.
The programme, screened last January, showed footage gathered at a number of mosques in the West Midlands using hidden cameras. It included one preacher who praised the Taleban for killing British soldiers. Another, Abu Usamah, a preacher at the Green Lane mosque in Birmingham, was filmed saying: “If I were to call homosexuals perverted, dirty, filthy dogs who should be murdered, that is my freedom of speech isn't it?”
However, instead of pursuing a prosecution of the preachers, police and the CPS began an investigation into the producers, accusing them of selective editing and distortion. The film-makers were accused of undermining community relations. The police took the highly unusual step of referring Dispatches to Ofcom, the media watchdog.
Ofcom threw out the complaint. It found that the programme had “accurately represented the material it had gathered and dealt with the subject matter responsibly and in context”. It was a “legitimate investigation, uncovering matters of important public interest”. Each quote was “justified by the narrative of the programme and put fully in context”.
Hardcash Productions, which made the film, joined Channel 4 in a libel complaint against the police and CPS over the “distortion” claim. West Midlands Police and CPS will apologise unreservedly for comments that they accept were incorrect and unjustified. They said that there was “no evidence that the broadcaster or programme-makers had misled the audience or that the programme was likely to encourage or incite criminal activity”.
MPs criticised the police and the CPS, which dropped any prosecution of Channel 4 because of “insufficient evidence”, for trying to censor television producers. David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: “Police scrutiny of editorial decisions of a television producer is not only an inappropriate law enforcement function, it also risks deterring legitimate investigative journalism.” Don Foster, the Liberal Democrats' media spokesman, said: “What the police thought they were doing in the first place is beyond me.”
David Henshaw, the managing director of Hardcash Productions, said: “This was a detailed one-hour documentary, made over nine months and at personal risk to the undercover reporter. The abhorrent and extreme comments made by fundamentalist preachers in the film speak for themselves.” He added: “They [the preachers] later claimed they had been taken out of context — but no one has explained the correct context for arguing that women are 'born deficient', that homosexuals should be thrown off mountains, and that ten-year-old girls should be hit if they refuse to wear the hijab.”
Kevin Sutcliffe, deputy head of current affairs at Channel 4, said: “This is a total vindication of the programme team.” A spokesman for West Midlands Police said: “We have paid a sum agreed with the programme-makers into a charity of their choice.” The substantial damages will be donated to the Rory Peck Trust, which supports the families of journalists killed in the line of work. The CPS declined to comment.
Source
British police try to shoot the messenger
As you can see above, the politicized British police have just been forced to eat crow.
Some British documentary makers went around British mosques undercover and filmed various Mullahs inciting violence against unbelievers. The resulting film was shown on British TV.
So what did the police do? What the Mullahs said was clearly in breach of British law against preaching violence so the police went and rounded up all the Mullahs concerned -- right? In your dreams! The cops prosecuted the film-makers instead! They said the film stirred up hatred. It was a truly Orwellian inversion of what actually happened -- that it was the Mullahs who were stirring up hatred.
Anyway the wheels of justice eventually ground down the nonsense and the police were rightly sued over their perverse actions. They have now paid a big sum in compensation and apologized for their actions.
But, amid all the furore, the Muslim hate-speech has remained protected. It appears that none of the Muslim hate-speakers recorded in the film have been prosecuted or will be prosecuted. The main aim of the police exercise -- protecting Muslims from the standards that others have to obey -- has been achieved.
A convenient silence in Britain
Prof. Brignell writes:
Two years ago Number Watch drew attention to the phenomenon of Greenflation and its inevitable consequences. It is a remarkable tribute to the power of political and journalistic blinkering that the Governor of the Bank of England can now make a speech about the present, very real and very serious, problem of inflation, and the BBC can report it, without a single reference to the fact that this time it is the result of deliberate policy.
It is not, of course, these days a unique occurrence that the establishment media politely sweep under the carpet anything that is an inconvenient truth (to coin a phrase): you only have to look at the coverage of the destruction of British postal services or the garbage collection farce, without any mention of authorship by the EU, for glaring examples among the many.
Since that first mention of Greenflation there has been added a third string to the bow of the activists. Not only have they fostered draconian rises in taxation and systematically blocked the development of abundant energy resources, but they have now promoted an equally disastrous international programme of biofuels, heavily subsidised (of course) by taxpayers.
High food and fuel prices are now officially described as "external factors", when they are in fact foreseeable and unavoidable outcomes of policies embraced by governments themselves. Fuel, in particular, affects the price of everything.
Clearly, as with the DDT ban, it matters little that millions of people in the poorer parts of the world will suffer deprivation and death, but now ordinary people in the developed world are feeling the pain. The new factor is that they no longer have the power to vote out those responsible. Europeans are governed by an unelected and unsackable bureaucracy in
Brussels, while Americans are offered a choice between three green presidential candidates. That is the consequence of the rise of a new complacent political class, divorced from the laws of physics and economics.
There are times in human history when the only way is down. This is one of them. Up to now the human spirit has risen from the ashes, eventually and triumphantly to overcome such disasters, but it has never before had to face a universal political machine of such single-minded potency.
Source
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Lazy NHS doctor nearly kills little girl
No diagnostic tests for peasants! Just take an aspirin. She's half blind now but the doctor will suffer no consequences. And what nobody is mentioning is WHY TB has resurfaced in Britain: "Refugees" from Africa bring it with them. Being kind to such refugees has sent a little British girl half blind
For three days, Katie Roberts lay unresponsive on a paediatric ward. The two-year-old's eyes were shut, her face sallow, and the drips taped to her arms only accentuated her wasted limbs. Katie had been ill for nearly a month with a high temperature, sickness and weight loss which her GP had repeatedly blamed on a virus. "It all started when Katie developed a slight temperature and came out in a rash,' says her mother Sarah, 27, from Grantham, Lincs. "The GP diagnosed mild chickenpox. But a week later, Katie had a high temperature and was vomiting. The weight fell off her. "The doctor's answer was always the same - it was a virus. I remember sitting in my car after yet another appointment, in floods of tears and so frustrated," recalls the auxiliary nurse. "My child was dying and no one cared. No one took her temperature, let alone did blood tests."
After three weeks, in desperation, Sarah and her husband Martin, 27, took Katie to A&E at Grantham Hospital. Katie was immediately transferred to a specialist paediatric ward in Lincoln where she had a brain scan, a lumbar puncture to check for meningitis and dozens of blood tests. "Doctors suggested she had everything from chickenpox to cancer, but all tests came back negative," says Sarah. Despite being on large doses of antibiotics, Katie was showing no signs of recovery.
Three days later, a doctor asked if she'dcome into contact with anyone who had TB. That question probably saved her life. She had indeed been exposed - through her aunt's boyfriend, James. He had been diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis, TB of the lungs, 18 months earlier - although he never found out how he had contracted it. Before the era of antibiotics and vaccinations, tuberculosis was responsible for thousands of deaths in the UK every year. But while many think the disease had been eradicated, around 8,000 cases of TB are still reported in the UK every year, mostly in major cities (just last month, 30 pupils at a secondary school in Birmingham were diagnosed with TB). Not all tuberculosis is infectious, but pulmonary TB is.
Two weeks after James started his antibiotic treatment, he was no longer infectious. But it had taken four months to diagnose him, meaning he'd had the potential to infect others during that time. Katie was moved into isolation.
Doctors explained she could have TB meningitis, a complication caused when the bacteria - mycobacterium tuberculosis - migrates to the lining of the brain and forms When these abscesses burst, they create inflammation which puts pressure on the brain. Without antibiotics to combat the bacteria, and steroids to reduce the swelling - the consequences would be catastrophic. There was a serious risk of brain damage, sight or hearing loss and septicaemia, leading to loss of limbs - and if the infection got out of control, organ failure and death.
Although doctors weren't certain, no time could be wasted. Katie was started on four antibiotics specifically for the disease via a gastric tube. She was also given steroids to reduce the inflammation in her brain and blood was sent off for analysis. It was then a waiting game. Gradually, after a few days, her fevers lessened and she stayed awake for longer - the results of the tests confirmed she did have the disease.
As their daughter recovered, Sarah and Martin foundthemselves increasingly angry about the needlessness of their ordeal - and how the doctors' lack of awareness could have killed Katie. Since James's diagnosis of TB 18 months earlier, Sarah had been anxious that Katie could catch the disease. But her GP had insisted there was no risk, because James saw Katie only once a week, for a few hours.
According to the UK charity TB Alert, the doctor's reaction was typical, demonstrating the general lack of awareness among healthcare professionals. "Because tuberculosis has been dealt with so effectively in the past 50 years, many GPs, particularly those away from the high-risk areas such as London, will never have seen the disease," says Melanie Matthews, of TB Alert. "But it's on the increase, and as people travel can spread to socalled unaffected areas. There is also a complacency that it can be easily treated with antibiotics and is no longer dangerous. "In fact, for those who have weak immune systems, such as infants or elderly people, left untreated it can be fatal."
Another problem is that Government guidelines for screening those in contact with a sufferer are open to interpretation. The Department of Health makes it clear that the decision is down to individual clinics, while The National Institute for Clinical Excellence guidelines state that people who are in close contact with the TB sufferer should be tested and given precautionary antibiotics. Screening can be in the form of a blood test, a skin test or a chest X-ray. Katie had been exposed to active tuberculosis and was showing classic symptoms. Yet no one put the clues together until it was almost too late.
After three weeks, she was discharged from hospital, but was so weak she needed physiotherapy to build up her muscles. Fighting the disease is a long journey - Katie will take antibiotics for a year, until at least November this year. The family initially thought Katie might have got away unscathed, but this wasn't the case. Two weeks later, Katie was bumping into things or reaching out for a toy and missing it.
"The consultant ophthalmologist agreed Katie's sight was deteriorating, but felt it might be a repairable side-effect from one of the antibiotics," remembers Sarah. "We stopped giving her the drug but her sight kept deteriorating and a few days later she couldn't even see her hands. A scan confirmed the worst. "A few TB abscesses had swollen up again and were pushing onto the optic nerve - she was virtually blind. She was given 30mg of steroids a day to reduce the swelling." For two weeks, the family watched desperately for any sign of improvement, but her eyesight didn't improve. They were then warned their daughter's sight was unlikely to recover. "We were basically told to start organising our home around the needs of a blind child," says Sarah. "It all seemed so unfair. The one person I didn't blame was James. He'd done nothing wrong except become ill."
Unbeknown to the family, the consultant tracked down a doctor in Newcastle who'd had some success with a similar case by giving the child a huge short-term dose of steroids. "She called and said she wanted to double the dose from 30mgs to 60mgs a day," says Sarah. "We knew there might be side-effects such as liver damage and growth retardation, but if it saved her sight it would be worth it." And after three days, Katie's sight began to return. "To our relief, by the end of the two weeks it was back to 50 per cent of normal," recalls Sarah. Despite this, no one knows if Katie will have any long-term neurological damage. She has also gained weight from the high doses of steroids.
But having regained 50 per cent of her sight, Katie - who is now three-and-a-half - will be able to attend mainstream school and live a relatively normal life. "I hope that everyone who reads this realises the danger of underestimating TB," says Sarah. "It's on the increase and is not just confined to the inner cities or high-risk groups. And, as this story shows, it can still wreck lives."
Source
No diagnostic tests for peasants! Just take an aspirin. She's half blind now but the doctor will suffer no consequences. And what nobody is mentioning is WHY TB has resurfaced in Britain: "Refugees" from Africa bring it with them. Being kind to such refugees has sent a little British girl half blind
For three days, Katie Roberts lay unresponsive on a paediatric ward. The two-year-old's eyes were shut, her face sallow, and the drips taped to her arms only accentuated her wasted limbs. Katie had been ill for nearly a month with a high temperature, sickness and weight loss which her GP had repeatedly blamed on a virus. "It all started when Katie developed a slight temperature and came out in a rash,' says her mother Sarah, 27, from Grantham, Lincs. "The GP diagnosed mild chickenpox. But a week later, Katie had a high temperature and was vomiting. The weight fell off her. "The doctor's answer was always the same - it was a virus. I remember sitting in my car after yet another appointment, in floods of tears and so frustrated," recalls the auxiliary nurse. "My child was dying and no one cared. No one took her temperature, let alone did blood tests."
After three weeks, in desperation, Sarah and her husband Martin, 27, took Katie to A&E at Grantham Hospital. Katie was immediately transferred to a specialist paediatric ward in Lincoln where she had a brain scan, a lumbar puncture to check for meningitis and dozens of blood tests. "Doctors suggested she had everything from chickenpox to cancer, but all tests came back negative," says Sarah. Despite being on large doses of antibiotics, Katie was showing no signs of recovery.
Three days later, a doctor asked if she'dcome into contact with anyone who had TB. That question probably saved her life. She had indeed been exposed - through her aunt's boyfriend, James. He had been diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis, TB of the lungs, 18 months earlier - although he never found out how he had contracted it. Before the era of antibiotics and vaccinations, tuberculosis was responsible for thousands of deaths in the UK every year. But while many think the disease had been eradicated, around 8,000 cases of TB are still reported in the UK every year, mostly in major cities (just last month, 30 pupils at a secondary school in Birmingham were diagnosed with TB). Not all tuberculosis is infectious, but pulmonary TB is.
Two weeks after James started his antibiotic treatment, he was no longer infectious. But it had taken four months to diagnose him, meaning he'd had the potential to infect others during that time. Katie was moved into isolation.
Doctors explained she could have TB meningitis, a complication caused when the bacteria - mycobacterium tuberculosis - migrates to the lining of the brain and forms When these abscesses burst, they create inflammation which puts pressure on the brain. Without antibiotics to combat the bacteria, and steroids to reduce the swelling - the consequences would be catastrophic. There was a serious risk of brain damage, sight or hearing loss and septicaemia, leading to loss of limbs - and if the infection got out of control, organ failure and death.
Although doctors weren't certain, no time could be wasted. Katie was started on four antibiotics specifically for the disease via a gastric tube. She was also given steroids to reduce the inflammation in her brain and blood was sent off for analysis. It was then a waiting game. Gradually, after a few days, her fevers lessened and she stayed awake for longer - the results of the tests confirmed she did have the disease.
As their daughter recovered, Sarah and Martin foundthemselves increasingly angry about the needlessness of their ordeal - and how the doctors' lack of awareness could have killed Katie. Since James's diagnosis of TB 18 months earlier, Sarah had been anxious that Katie could catch the disease. But her GP had insisted there was no risk, because James saw Katie only once a week, for a few hours.
According to the UK charity TB Alert, the doctor's reaction was typical, demonstrating the general lack of awareness among healthcare professionals. "Because tuberculosis has been dealt with so effectively in the past 50 years, many GPs, particularly those away from the high-risk areas such as London, will never have seen the disease," says Melanie Matthews, of TB Alert. "But it's on the increase, and as people travel can spread to socalled unaffected areas. There is also a complacency that it can be easily treated with antibiotics and is no longer dangerous. "In fact, for those who have weak immune systems, such as infants or elderly people, left untreated it can be fatal."
Another problem is that Government guidelines for screening those in contact with a sufferer are open to interpretation. The Department of Health makes it clear that the decision is down to individual clinics, while The National Institute for Clinical Excellence guidelines state that people who are in close contact with the TB sufferer should be tested and given precautionary antibiotics. Screening can be in the form of a blood test, a skin test or a chest X-ray. Katie had been exposed to active tuberculosis and was showing classic symptoms. Yet no one put the clues together until it was almost too late.
After three weeks, she was discharged from hospital, but was so weak she needed physiotherapy to build up her muscles. Fighting the disease is a long journey - Katie will take antibiotics for a year, until at least November this year. The family initially thought Katie might have got away unscathed, but this wasn't the case. Two weeks later, Katie was bumping into things or reaching out for a toy and missing it.
"The consultant ophthalmologist agreed Katie's sight was deteriorating, but felt it might be a repairable side-effect from one of the antibiotics," remembers Sarah. "We stopped giving her the drug but her sight kept deteriorating and a few days later she couldn't even see her hands. A scan confirmed the worst. "A few TB abscesses had swollen up again and were pushing onto the optic nerve - she was virtually blind. She was given 30mg of steroids a day to reduce the swelling." For two weeks, the family watched desperately for any sign of improvement, but her eyesight didn't improve. They were then warned their daughter's sight was unlikely to recover. "We were basically told to start organising our home around the needs of a blind child," says Sarah. "It all seemed so unfair. The one person I didn't blame was James. He'd done nothing wrong except become ill."
Unbeknown to the family, the consultant tracked down a doctor in Newcastle who'd had some success with a similar case by giving the child a huge short-term dose of steroids. "She called and said she wanted to double the dose from 30mgs to 60mgs a day," says Sarah. "We knew there might be side-effects such as liver damage and growth retardation, but if it saved her sight it would be worth it." And after three days, Katie's sight began to return. "To our relief, by the end of the two weeks it was back to 50 per cent of normal," recalls Sarah. Despite this, no one knows if Katie will have any long-term neurological damage. She has also gained weight from the high doses of steroids.
But having regained 50 per cent of her sight, Katie - who is now three-and-a-half - will be able to attend mainstream school and live a relatively normal life. "I hope that everyone who reads this realises the danger of underestimating TB," says Sarah. "It's on the increase and is not just confined to the inner cities or high-risk groups. And, as this story shows, it can still wreck lives."
Source
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
BIOFOOLS: GREEN CRAZE HITS BRITISH FAMILIES TOO
Millions of families are having to spend almost 1,000 pounds a year extra on food after more punishing price rises. The annual increase in the price of a basket of essentials surged to 19.1 per cent in May, according to the Daily Mail Cost of Living Index. The rate has jumped alarmingly from 15.5 per cent in April - a 3.6 per cent rise - and there is no sign of the pressure easing. There is now a worldwide crisis over supplies of key crops such as corn, wheat and rice. It has triggered food riots in some countries. And in the UK it has brought the biggest rises in bills in a generation.
A family which spent 100 pounds a week on food last year now has to find another 19.10 for the same products, equivalent to 993 a year. Once "must-pay" bills for petrol, mortgages, power and council tax are added, the extra cost is more like 2,200 pounds. Yet the official inflation rate is just 2.6per cent.
Experts say a worldwide drive to produce biofuels - made from corn, wheat and soya as an alternative to oil - is a major factor. Farmers have switched from food production to biofuel crops. Last month, the EU agreed the biofuel content of all petrol and diesel should be 2.5 per cent. This is set to rise to 10 per cent by 2020.
But the Government's two most senior scientists, Professor John Beddington and Professor Robert Watson, have called for a rethink on the rush to biofuels. Professor Beddington said: "It's very hard to imagine the world growing enough crops to produce renewable energy and at the same time meet the enormous demand for food." Gordon Brown is understood to be preparing to call on the EU to scrap the plan.
More here
Socialists decide not to destroy Britain's finance industry after all: "The Treasury has succumbed to sustained pressure from big business and agreed to water down controversial proposals to change the UK corporate tax regime. Several big multinational British companies had said that they were prepared to move their headquarters from the UK amid concerns that the Treasury was preparing to tax the profits they derived overseas. A Treasury spokesman confirmed yesterday that the department had drawn up a new set of tax plans after extensive consulation with UK companies. The move will be seen as another embarrassing government climbdown. The spokesman said that new proposals would be put out to consultation in mid-June, with a view to introducing legislative changes next year. Sir Martin Sorrell, the chief executive of WPP, threatened to move the advertising giant offshore, following a lead set by Shire, the pharmaceuticals business, and United Business Media, the publishing group. Other companies looking at moving their headquarters outside the UK for tax reasons include Aberdeen Asset Management, the fund manager, and Brit Insurance and Chaucer, the Lloyd's of London insurers. Smith & Nephew, the medical equipment firm, and Old Mutual, the insurance and fund management group, have both refused to rule out a departure.... Treasury sources said that the Government would move ahead with legislation only if it had secured the broad agreement of business and would not rule out abandoning the proposals."
Millions of families are having to spend almost 1,000 pounds a year extra on food after more punishing price rises. The annual increase in the price of a basket of essentials surged to 19.1 per cent in May, according to the Daily Mail Cost of Living Index. The rate has jumped alarmingly from 15.5 per cent in April - a 3.6 per cent rise - and there is no sign of the pressure easing. There is now a worldwide crisis over supplies of key crops such as corn, wheat and rice. It has triggered food riots in some countries. And in the UK it has brought the biggest rises in bills in a generation.
A family which spent 100 pounds a week on food last year now has to find another 19.10 for the same products, equivalent to 993 a year. Once "must-pay" bills for petrol, mortgages, power and council tax are added, the extra cost is more like 2,200 pounds. Yet the official inflation rate is just 2.6per cent.
Experts say a worldwide drive to produce biofuels - made from corn, wheat and soya as an alternative to oil - is a major factor. Farmers have switched from food production to biofuel crops. Last month, the EU agreed the biofuel content of all petrol and diesel should be 2.5 per cent. This is set to rise to 10 per cent by 2020.
But the Government's two most senior scientists, Professor John Beddington and Professor Robert Watson, have called for a rethink on the rush to biofuels. Professor Beddington said: "It's very hard to imagine the world growing enough crops to produce renewable energy and at the same time meet the enormous demand for food." Gordon Brown is understood to be preparing to call on the EU to scrap the plan.
More here
Socialists decide not to destroy Britain's finance industry after all: "The Treasury has succumbed to sustained pressure from big business and agreed to water down controversial proposals to change the UK corporate tax regime. Several big multinational British companies had said that they were prepared to move their headquarters from the UK amid concerns that the Treasury was preparing to tax the profits they derived overseas. A Treasury spokesman confirmed yesterday that the department had drawn up a new set of tax plans after extensive consulation with UK companies. The move will be seen as another embarrassing government climbdown. The spokesman said that new proposals would be put out to consultation in mid-June, with a view to introducing legislative changes next year. Sir Martin Sorrell, the chief executive of WPP, threatened to move the advertising giant offshore, following a lead set by Shire, the pharmaceuticals business, and United Business Media, the publishing group. Other companies looking at moving their headquarters outside the UK for tax reasons include Aberdeen Asset Management, the fund manager, and Brit Insurance and Chaucer, the Lloyd's of London insurers. Smith & Nephew, the medical equipment firm, and Old Mutual, the insurance and fund management group, have both refused to rule out a departure.... Treasury sources said that the Government would move ahead with legislation only if it had secured the broad agreement of business and would not rule out abandoning the proposals."
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Filipino whose wife died after blunder by British hospital to be deported
Governments justify their asylum policies for refugees on the grounds of compassion but there seems to be no compassion here
A man whose wife died as a result of an NHS blunder has lost his right to remain in Britain, in what a coroner described yesterday as an "extraordinary" decision.
Arnel Cabrera, 39, came to Britain from the Philippines in 2003 to join his wife, Mayra, a theatre nurse, who worked at the Great Western Hospital in Swindon. But a year later, Mrs Cabrera died at the same hospital after she was given an epidural during the birth of the couple's child which was mistakenly injected into her arm. The baby survived. An inquest returned a verdict of unlawful killing and found the NHS trust had been guilty of gross negligence. Now the Home Office has told Mr Cabrera he has failed in his bid to remain in the UK.
David Masters, the Wiltshire coroner who presided over the inquest, said yesterday: "This is extraordinary. In view of the verdict reached at the inquest I find it difficult to appreciate how the Home Office has reached this decision." In its letter of refusal, the Home Office said Mr Cabrera had "not established a family life with his son in the United Kingdom". It added: "As his son remains in the Philippines there are no insurmountable obstacles to his family life being continued overseas."
Alex Rook, the solicitor who handled Mr Cabrera's immigration case, said: "This is an absolutely dreadful decision. If Arnel's wife had not been killed, the family would be living happily here. I will be writing to the relevant Home Office ministers asking them to reconsider their decision." He added: "His wife is killed by one part of the Government [the NHS], then Arnel is told by another part of the Government that he has to leave." Mr Rook said Mr Cabrera had taken his son, Zac, to the Philippines to be looked after by family until the inquest and related legal proceedings had concluded in the UK, but it was always his intention to build a future in Britain.
Mr Cabrera's personal injury lawyer, Seamus Edney, also reacted with disgust. "I am staggered by this decision and embarrassed on behalf of our government," he said. "Arnel was permitted to reside in Britain on the basis that his wife was working - but when she is unlawfully killed by gross negligence by the NHS, he is told he is no longer welcome." In a statement issued before Mr Cabrera lost his right to remain in the UK, he said he hoped the Government would show him "compassion". He added: "I have been unable to return to the Philippines during this difficult period and I desperately miss my young son, Zachary." A spokesman for the Home Office said: "All applications for leave to enter or remain in the UK are carefully considered on their individual merits."
Source
Up to 5,000 beds facing axe in NHS cancer shake-up
The government plans to close up to 5,000 beds on cancer wards in a reorganisation of the way patients are treated, according to a report by experts in the disease. Government figures show the National Health Service aims to save up to 500m pounds a year from an “inpatient management programme” that it describes as preventing unnecessary hospital admissions and reducing the length of time patients spend in hospital. Cancer doctors and health economists say the changes could make better use of money for cancer treatment but accuse the government of hiding the extent of the bed closures from the public.
The report by Nick Bosanquet, professor of health policy at Imperial College School of Medicine, London, and Professor Karol Sikora, medical director of CancerPartnersUK, a private cancer treatment company, comes as a shake-up of NHS hospitals, led by Lord Darzi, the health minister, is expected to include widespread closures of maternity hospitals and accident and emergency units.
Bosanquet and Sikora have analysed figures published by the government as part of its Cancer Reform Strategy in December. They reveal the efficiency savings the NHS will need to make in order to pay for better radiotherapy and screening programmes. “My worry,” said Sikora, “is that the only way the Cancer Reform Strategy adds up financially is by massive bed closures to produce the funding for the huge deficits in both radiotherapy and cancer drugs. “Up to 5,000 beds will need to disappear in England to make the spreadsheet balance. How else will the money be saved? Interestingly, the financials are not in the strategy document but hidden in an obscure corner of the Department of Health website.”
The government said cancer services must change so that patients can receive chemotherapy and radiotherapy during day trips to local clinics without going to hospital. It is also centralising specialist cancer care in larger hospitals where there is the expertise to get the best results. The government has been forced to review NHS cancer treatment after studies showed that, despite spending comparable amounts on the disease as other European countries, Britain still has some of the worst survival rates.
Bosanquet, who was chairman of the Cancer Reform Strategy value for money group, said cutting beds could make better use of NHS funds but added the government should be more open about its plans. “The Department of Health has put forward aspirations that must inevitably be to lower bed use in cancer services by around 5,000,” he said. “To save 500m, which is urgently needed to build up these community centres, they will need to reduce bed use in cancer services and the best estimate is that it would be by about 5,000 beds. I would urge the Department of Health to be a lot more open about it.”
Sikora maintained that while cancer patients can receive chemotherapy and radiotherapy during daytime visits to local cancer clinics some patients will be so sick they will need to stay in hospital. He said these patients did not need high-tech beds in large hospitals, which cost about 400 pounds a day, but could be cared for by nurses in cottage hospitals.
The Department of Health denied beds on cancer wards will be closed. A spokeswoman said: “We are not planning to close beds, rather we are identifying efficiency gains by using new models of care and streamlining existing inpatient care.”
Source
Governments justify their asylum policies for refugees on the grounds of compassion but there seems to be no compassion here
A man whose wife died as a result of an NHS blunder has lost his right to remain in Britain, in what a coroner described yesterday as an "extraordinary" decision.
Arnel Cabrera, 39, came to Britain from the Philippines in 2003 to join his wife, Mayra, a theatre nurse, who worked at the Great Western Hospital in Swindon. But a year later, Mrs Cabrera died at the same hospital after she was given an epidural during the birth of the couple's child which was mistakenly injected into her arm. The baby survived. An inquest returned a verdict of unlawful killing and found the NHS trust had been guilty of gross negligence. Now the Home Office has told Mr Cabrera he has failed in his bid to remain in the UK.
David Masters, the Wiltshire coroner who presided over the inquest, said yesterday: "This is extraordinary. In view of the verdict reached at the inquest I find it difficult to appreciate how the Home Office has reached this decision." In its letter of refusal, the Home Office said Mr Cabrera had "not established a family life with his son in the United Kingdom". It added: "As his son remains in the Philippines there are no insurmountable obstacles to his family life being continued overseas."
Alex Rook, the solicitor who handled Mr Cabrera's immigration case, said: "This is an absolutely dreadful decision. If Arnel's wife had not been killed, the family would be living happily here. I will be writing to the relevant Home Office ministers asking them to reconsider their decision." He added: "His wife is killed by one part of the Government [the NHS], then Arnel is told by another part of the Government that he has to leave." Mr Rook said Mr Cabrera had taken his son, Zac, to the Philippines to be looked after by family until the inquest and related legal proceedings had concluded in the UK, but it was always his intention to build a future in Britain.
Mr Cabrera's personal injury lawyer, Seamus Edney, also reacted with disgust. "I am staggered by this decision and embarrassed on behalf of our government," he said. "Arnel was permitted to reside in Britain on the basis that his wife was working - but when she is unlawfully killed by gross negligence by the NHS, he is told he is no longer welcome." In a statement issued before Mr Cabrera lost his right to remain in the UK, he said he hoped the Government would show him "compassion". He added: "I have been unable to return to the Philippines during this difficult period and I desperately miss my young son, Zachary." A spokesman for the Home Office said: "All applications for leave to enter or remain in the UK are carefully considered on their individual merits."
Source
Up to 5,000 beds facing axe in NHS cancer shake-up
The government plans to close up to 5,000 beds on cancer wards in a reorganisation of the way patients are treated, according to a report by experts in the disease. Government figures show the National Health Service aims to save up to 500m pounds a year from an “inpatient management programme” that it describes as preventing unnecessary hospital admissions and reducing the length of time patients spend in hospital. Cancer doctors and health economists say the changes could make better use of money for cancer treatment but accuse the government of hiding the extent of the bed closures from the public.
The report by Nick Bosanquet, professor of health policy at Imperial College School of Medicine, London, and Professor Karol Sikora, medical director of CancerPartnersUK, a private cancer treatment company, comes as a shake-up of NHS hospitals, led by Lord Darzi, the health minister, is expected to include widespread closures of maternity hospitals and accident and emergency units.
Bosanquet and Sikora have analysed figures published by the government as part of its Cancer Reform Strategy in December. They reveal the efficiency savings the NHS will need to make in order to pay for better radiotherapy and screening programmes. “My worry,” said Sikora, “is that the only way the Cancer Reform Strategy adds up financially is by massive bed closures to produce the funding for the huge deficits in both radiotherapy and cancer drugs. “Up to 5,000 beds will need to disappear in England to make the spreadsheet balance. How else will the money be saved? Interestingly, the financials are not in the strategy document but hidden in an obscure corner of the Department of Health website.”
The government said cancer services must change so that patients can receive chemotherapy and radiotherapy during day trips to local clinics without going to hospital. It is also centralising specialist cancer care in larger hospitals where there is the expertise to get the best results. The government has been forced to review NHS cancer treatment after studies showed that, despite spending comparable amounts on the disease as other European countries, Britain still has some of the worst survival rates.
Bosanquet, who was chairman of the Cancer Reform Strategy value for money group, said cutting beds could make better use of NHS funds but added the government should be more open about its plans. “The Department of Health has put forward aspirations that must inevitably be to lower bed use in cancer services by around 5,000,” he said. “To save 500m, which is urgently needed to build up these community centres, they will need to reduce bed use in cancer services and the best estimate is that it would be by about 5,000 beds. I would urge the Department of Health to be a lot more open about it.”
Sikora maintained that while cancer patients can receive chemotherapy and radiotherapy during daytime visits to local cancer clinics some patients will be so sick they will need to stay in hospital. He said these patients did not need high-tech beds in large hospitals, which cost about 400 pounds a day, but could be cared for by nurses in cottage hospitals.
The Department of Health denied beds on cancer wards will be closed. A spokeswoman said: “We are not planning to close beds, rather we are identifying efficiency gains by using new models of care and streamlining existing inpatient care.”
Source
