What utter crap! Why could these pathetic individuals not do some REAL research? Why not examine disease incidence or symptom incidence? All they have shown is that people who are less exposed to smoking show signs of being less exposed to smoking! D'oh!
Bar staff have seen huge health benefits from the ban on smoking in public places, a study by the Tobacco Control Collaborating Centre in Warwick - funded by Cancer Research UK - has found. Researchers tested the air quality in 40 pubs, bars and restaurants across the country and measured the level of cotinine - the metabolic byproduct of nicotine - in the blood of those who worked there.
Today they will tell the National Cancer Research Institute Conference in Birmingham that staff have four times less cotinine in their blood than they did in June and thatair quality, measured by the number of particles in the air from cigarette smoke, dropped from near hazardous levels in June to levels that are similar to the outside air in August.
Hilary Wareing, co-director of the Tobacco Control Collaborating Centre, said: "This study proves beyond doubt that smokefree workplaces are helping to improve the health of the nation's hospitality workers."
Source
Britain: Israel boycott collapses
UCU announced today that, after seeking legal advice, an academic boycott of Israel would be unlawful and cannot be implemented. Members of the union's strategy and finance committee unanimously accepted a recommendation from UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, that the union should immediately inform branches and members that:
* A boycott call would be unlawful and cannot be implemented
* UCU members' opinions cannot be tested at local meetings
* The proposed regional tour cannot go ahead under current arrangements and is therefore suspended.
The union had passed a motion at its congress in May calling for the circulation and debate of a call to boycott. Since then UCU has sought extensive legal advice in order to try to implement congress policy while protecting the position of members and of the union itself. The legal advice makes it clear that making a call to boycott Israeli institutions would run a serious risk of infringing discrimination legislation. The call to boycott is also considered to be outside the aims and objects of the UCU.
The union has been told that while UCU is at liberty to debate the pros and cons of Israeli policies, it cannot spend members' resources on seeking to test opinion on something which is in itself unlawful and cannot be implemented. The union will now explore the best ways to implement the non-boycott elements of the motion passed at congress.
The legal advice states: 'It would be beyond the union's powers and unlawful for the union, directly or indirectly, to call for, or to implement, a boycott by the union and its members of any kind of Israeli universities and other academic institutions; and that the use of union funds directly or indirectly to further such a boycott would also be unlawful.' The advice also says that 'to ensure that the union acts lawfully, meetings should not be used to ascertain the level of support for such a boycott.'
UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, said: 'Since congress our first priority has always been to keep the union, and its members, safe during what has been a very difficult time. I hope this decision will allow all to move forwards and focus on what is our primary objective, the representation of our members. 'I believe if we do this we may also, where possible, play a positive role in supporting Palestinian and Israeli educators and in promoting a just peace in the Middle East.'
Source
Absurd pandering to Muslim attention-seekers in Britain
MUSLIM supermarket checkout staff who refuse to sell alcohol are being allowed to opt out of handling customers' bottles and cans of drink. Islamic workers at Sainsbury's who object to alcohol on religious grounds are told to raise their hands when encountering any drink at their till so that a colleague can temporarily take their place or scan items for them. [What a useless employee!] Other staff have refused to work stacking shelves with wine, beer and spirits and have been found alternative roles in the company.
Sainsbury's said this weekend it was keen to accommodate the religious beliefs of all staff but some Islamic scholars condemned the practice, saying Muslims who refused to sell alcohol were reneging on their agreements with the store. Islam states that Muslims should not consume alcohol, but opinion is divided on whether it is permissible to be involved in the sale of it. Mustapha, a Muslim checkout worker at the company's store in Swiss Cottage, northwest London, interrupts his work to ensure that he does not have to sell or handle alcohol. Each time a bottle or can of alcohol comes along the conveyor belt in front of him, Mustapha either swaps places discreetly with a neighbouring attendant or raises his hand so that another member of staff can come over and pass the offending items in front of the scanner before he resumes work.
Some of the staff delegated to handle the drink for Mustapha are themselves obviously Muslim, including women in hijab head coverings. However, a staff member at the store told a reporter that two other employees had asked to be given alternative duties after objecting to stacking drinks shelves. Mustapha told one customer: "I can't sell the alcohol because of my religion. It is Ramadan at the moment."
His customers did not appear to have any objection to his polite refusal to work with alcohol. One said: "I have no issues with it at all, it really doesn't bother me."
However, some senior Muslims were less approving. Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, director of the Muslim Institute and leader of the Muslim parliament, said: "This is some kind of overenthusiasm. One expects professional behaviour from people working in a professional capacity and this shows a lack of maturity. "Sainsbury's is being very good, they are trying to accommodate the wishes of their employees and we commend that. The fault lies with the employee who is exploiting and misusing their goodwill. It makes no difference if it is only happening over Ramadan."
Ibrahim Mogra, chairman of the inter-faith committee of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), said: "Muslim employees should look at the allowances within Muslim law to enable them to be better operating employees and not be seen as rather difficult to cater for."
A spokeswoman for Sainsbury's, confirming Mustapha's stance, said: "At the application stage we ask the relevant questions regarding any issues about handling different products and where we can we will try and accommodate any requirements people have, but it depends on the needs of the particular store."
Source
WHY IS INTERVENTION GOOD FOR DARFUR BUT BAD FOR IRAQ?
Spotted on the London Underground: an Amnesty sticker demanding "Stop raping Darfur". Who was that aimed at: commuting Sudanese militiamen? Or was it just there to turn our work journey into another guilt trip?
Some of those on Sunday's London march for action on Darfur wore blindfolds, supposedly to symbolise the West's refusal to face the truth. To me it rather symbolised the blind ignorance of the pro-intervention lobby. Why are those who protest against the disastrous intervention in Iraq demanding more of the same for Sudan? Do they really think it will be all right if Brown and Sarkozy lead the charge instead of Bush and Blair? Duhh-fur!
The crusaders won't learn the lesson that such interventions do not work. They perpetuate conflicts, turn civil wars into international theatres where local actors compete to win outside support, and impose hopeless states. Never mind Iraq, look at "success stories" such as Kosovo or East Timor.
The pro-interventionists drown out these inconvenient truths with pop videos and atrocity stories. As Professor Mahmood Mamdani, of Columbia University, points out, their presentation of the Darfur conflict looks more like a voyeuristic "pornography of violence", spiced up with promiscuous claims of deaths - now 120,000, now a quarter of million, now 400,000.
But then, the liberal crusaders for Darfur are really driven more by events over here, seeking a foreign cause to provide a sense of outraged moral righteousness. They are drawn to Africa as a stage on which to strike dramatic poses and draw the clear line between Good and Evil that seems elusive at home. So the interventionist script reduces the historical and political complexities of the Darfur conflict to a fairytale.
As George Clooney informs us: "It's not a political issue. There is only right and wrong." Or as a bloke from the British pop group Travis, who went to Darfur for Save the Children, writes: "Africa is a very complex place, but the Darfur crisis is quite simple." Thanks for the analysis - send in the troops!
I have been among those few on the Left who opposed such self-serving moral crusades, from Bosnia to Darfur, because turning these crises into moral melodramas can only make matters worse for those on the receiving end of compassionate militarism. It is not so easy to get a bandwagon rolling after Iraq. Mr Brown will support the UNAfrican Union forces, but won't be Gordon of Khartoum. Yet the crusaders maintain the imperial illusion that is "our" job to save Africa from itself. "Don't look away now" is their campaign slogan. For once, they have a point. Let's not look away, but face up to the hard truth about interventions and conclude, as they say: never again.
Source
Some sense on immigration in the British Conservative party
Glance at the agenda for this week's Tory conference and debates on the environment, the broken society and public services are advertised in bold. But where is immigration, the issue that once defined the Conservative Party? The answer: nowhere to be seen. Dogged by accusations that Tories have been obsessed for decades with the arrival of foreigners on our shores, David Cameron has tried his best to keep quiet on the topic in his quest to remould the Tories as the embraceable, "nice" party....
The first skirmishes in the war between modernisers and traditionalists for the soul of the Tory party will take place on the fringes of this week's Tory conference. In a sign that a shift back to core Tory values is in the offing and that the omerta on discussing immigration may be on the verge of crumbling, one of Mr Cameron's most trusted lieutenants has broken her silence - in a spectacular fashion.
Sayeeda Warsi, given a peerage by David Cameron to enable her to join his front bench as spokesman on cohesion, has taken on the issue head on, volunteering her view that immigration has been "out of control" and that people feel "uneasy" about the pace of immigration into Britain. Her intervention has outraged black groups who say she is using the language of the BNP. It also threatens to derail Mr Cameron's attempts to shake off the Conservatives' "nasty-party" image, while exposing divisions between left and right.
"What this country has a problem with is not people of different kinds coming into this country and making a contribution, but the problem that nobody knows who is coming in, who is going out - the fact that we don't have a border police; we don't have proper checks; we don't have any idea how many people are here, who are unaccounted for," she says. "It's that lack of control and not knowing that makes people feel uneasy, not the fact that somebody of a different colour or a different religion or a different origin is coming into our country." As her press officer squirms in his chair, she continues: "The control of immigration impacts upon a cohesive Britain."
Warming to her theme, she declares that the decision to house large groups of migrants on estates in the north of England "overnight" has led to tension in local communities. Similar tensions have been found in the London in Barking and Dagenham, where the far right has been making political in-roads. "The pace of change unsettles communities," she says.
Lady Warsi's outspoken intervention is somewhat surprising as she is the daughter of immigrants herself. Her father is a former Labour-supporting mill-worker from Pakistan who, after making a fortune in the bed and mattress trade, switched his allegiance to the Tories. The lawyer, 36, who is married with a nine-year-old daughter, devoted her early career to improving race relations, helping to launch Operation Black Vote in Yorkshire and sitting on various racial justice committees. So her analysis of race relations on the eve of the Tory conference cannot be dismissed as a right-wing rant.
In an interview with The Independent on Sunday, Lady Warsi claims that the conspiracy of silence on the subject of immigration plays into the hands of the far-right British National Party. "The BNP will look at what issue it is locally that they can exploit and the other political parties are not seen to be dealing with and they will play to that," she says. Far from ignoring the issue of immigration, she thinks it should be confronted head on. "I think we need to have the debate. One of the problems why the BNP has been allowed to grow is sometimes certainly the Labour Party took the view that if we ignore them they will just go away," she says.
But while BNP supporters, including the English National Ballet dancer Simone Clarke, have been sharply criticised for backing a racist party, Lady Warsi says that BNP voters should be listened to. "The BNP and what they represent, they clearly have a race agenda; they clearly have a hate agenda. But there are a lot of people out there who are voting for the British National Party and it's those people that we mustn't just write off and say 'well, we won't bother because they are voting BNP or we won't engage with them'," she says. Indeed, she says, people who back the extreme-right party, criticised for its racist and homophobic agenda, may even have a point. "They have some very legitimate views. People who say 'we are concerned about crime and justice in our communities - we are concerned about immigration in our communities'," she said.
Lady Warsi's remarks are bound to embarrass David Cameron and to open up old wounds over race in the Conservative Party that her leader has worked hard to heal. Mr Cameron has been outspoken in his support for a multi-ethnic Britain and has been uncompromising with MPs who have made racially inflammatory comments. He forced Patrick Mercer, a frontbench MP, to resign after he said he had met "a lot" of "idle and useless" ethnic-minority soldiers.
Last night black groups accused her of making a major misjudgement and of using "BNP language" and pandering to far-right views. Operation Black Vote, with whom Lady Warsi used to work, said it was "grotesque" to give credence to the views of people who vote BNP. "Pandering to racist views peddled by the BNP and bought by BNP voters is grotesque," said Simon Woolley, head of OBV. "The fact of the matter is that this country would collapse if it wasn't for migrant workers. This is BNP language she is using."
Lady Warsi's challenge to engage with BNP supporters will be considered all the more surprising because, as a practising Muslim, she became a BNP hate figure when she stood in the Yorkshire target seat of Dewsbury at the last election. Far-right extremists are not the only reactionaries she has done battle with. She was told to put on her headscarf by a radical Islamist during a Newsnight interview. And in her speech to conference she will unveil an uncompromising message for hard-line preachers who want to subvert British values. "We can't allow people to come into our country which will actually divide our country," she says. She also thinks imams should speak in English and not use a "language which is from the Indian subcontinent" that British children may not be able to understand.
But it is her outspoken message on immigration that will prove most resonant. It will chime with many rank-and-file Tories who believe Mr Cameron has been spending too much time with the ueber-modernisers....
More here
Another triumph of British bureaucracy: "The government has paid out a record 450,000 pounds for an end-of-terrace house in one of the Victorian streets being bulldozed across northern England to make way for modern housing developments. A Cheshire-based property investor picked up the payout, which is more than double the price that any other property has fetched on the same road in the last two years. Property experts said it could be completely refurbished for less than 100,000 pounds. [Governments have always done housing badly]
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