LED Lighting News

The parents of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler and the former landlord of Joanna Yeates have warned that plans to reform no win-no fee agreements will prevent people of “ordinary means” from obtaining justice or defending themselves in court.

They are among signatories of a letter released to the Guardian as the legal aid, sentencing and punishment of offenders bill – which the justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke, believes will do away with the “compensation culture” – returns to the Commons this week for its report stage.

The letter says: “We are all ordinary citizens who found ourselves in a position of needing to obtain justice by taking or defending civil claims against powerful corporations or wealthy individuals.

“We would not have been in a position to do this without recourse to a ‘no win, no fee’ agreement with a lawyer willing to represent us on that basis. As was made clear to each of us at the beginning of our cases, we were liable for tens if not hundreds of thousands of pounds if we lost.

“Without access to a conditional fee agreement (CFA), which protected us from this risk, we would not have been able even to embark on the legal journey.”

Signatories to the letter, which has been co-ordinated by the media campaign Hacked Off, include Christopher Jefferies, the retired Bristol teacher defamed by the tabloids during the Yeates murder inquiry, and Bob and Sally Dowler, whose daughter’s voicemail was hacked into by the News of the World. Others who have added their name are Peter Wilmshurst, a cardiologist sued for criticising research at a US medical conference; Robert Murat, who lived near the scene of Madeleine McCann‘s disappearance in Portugal and who sued British TV stations and newspapers for libel; and Mary-Ellen Field, Zoe Margolis, Nigel Short and Hardeep Singh.

All of them have had to resort to CFAs to seek justice.

The Ministry of Justice proposals will remove the ability of claimants to recover their costly insurance premiums and their own lawyers’ success fees from losing defendants.

Instead, the costs will have to be paid out of any final award for damages. Opponents of the change, such as Hacked Off, warn that it will render the cost of seeking redress through the courts no longer financially viable and restrict access to justice.

Sally Dowler said: “At the outset we made clear that if we had to pay the lawyers, we could not afford to bring a claim; or if we had any risk of having to pay the other side’s costs, we couldn’t take the chance. If the proposed changes had been in place at that time we would not have made a claim. Simple as that, the News of the World would have won, because we could not afford to take them on.”

The letter calls on MPs to support an amendment to the bill tabled by the Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake, which would exclude privacy and defamation cases from the reform of CFAs.

Supporters point out that damages in privacy cases, for example, can be small and would rarely cover the cost of what might be a protracted legal case. Hacked Off is a campaign calling for a full public inquiry into phone hacking. Mary-Ellen Field used to work for the model Elle Macpherson; her phone was hacked. The writer Zoe Margolis sued a Sunday newspaper after it libelled her.

Dr Evan Harris, from the Hacked Off campaign which is working with the signatories to save CFAs in libel and privacy cases, said: “If these reforms go ahead in their current form the government will be making justice impossible for all but the rich. That may suit the tabloid interests and libel bullies but it’s not fair.”

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/oct/31/milly-dowler-legal-aid-cuts

Up to 50 jobs are to be created at Sheffield Forgemasters in Nick Clegg‘s Sheffield Hallam constituency after the company received £36m to replace the £80m loan cancelled 16 months ago in the government’s first spending cuts.

The loan was among investments announced by ministers as the government named 119 successful bidders for the second round of the £1.4bn regional growth fund. The deputy prime minister, has been the target of intense criticism in Sheffield over the original loan cancellation.

The money will be used to purchase machinery and equipment to expand the business, the steel firm said. Clegg denied the policy represented a U-turn, saying: “Last year we came into Government and the outgoing Labour government wrote a little note – the Chief Secretary to the Treasury – saying there is no money.” The original £80m loan had been intended to build large parts for nuclear power stations.

The Liberal Democrat leader said: “For every £1 that will be invested from the regional growth fund, we estimate £6 will be matched from the private sector.”

It emerged that one reason for the slow progress towards handing out cash for the first round bids was because companies have to hire and pay for private consultants to undertake due dilligence on their bids. Previously, the government’s regional development agencies, now abolished, undertook due diligence at taxpayers’ expense.

In a written statement, business secretary Vince Cable said there had been 492 bids for £3.3bn funding. A panel chaired by Lord Heseltine helped decide on the 119 successful bids for the £950m available.

Chuka Umunna, the shadow business secretary, accused the prime minister of being “out of touch” and said the government was failing to address a lack of economic growth. He said the “long-delayed funding” represented a two-thirds cut, with one year’s budget of the scrapped regional development agencies being paid out over three years.

“Power stations already in the pipeline are finally being given the green light, but no investment is actually being brought forward,” he said.

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/oct/31/sheffield-forgemasters-nick-clegg-jobs

A former president of one of the UK’s largest tax bodies has been charged with a £5m tax fraud.

Andrew Meeson, until last week the president of the Association of Taxation Technicians (ATT), was among four people charged yesterday with conspiracy to cheat the Inland Revenue.

It is as yet unclear exactly what HMRC is accusing the four of doing. Meeson, 50, from Wolverhampton, and his colleagues Peter Bradley, Alison Bradley and Steven Price all ran a company which provided administration services for pension schemes. Tax advisers pointed out that tax benefits relating to pension schemes are very heavily regulated by the tax authorities.

Simon De Kayne, assistant director of criminal investigation for HMRC, said: “Today four people have been charged linked to what we believe is a fraud resulting in over £5m being stolen from public funds. We are committed to bringing such cases to the courts and depriving those involved of the proceeds of their crime.” Meeson resigned from his role at the ATT last week, saying he was standing down “for personal reasons relating to an HMRC investigation of a pension scheme administered by my company, Tudor Capital Management [TCM].

“HMRC believe that the trustees of that scheme have acted fraudulently, and that TCM is also involved. I and my colleagues at TCM reject these allegations in their entirety and we will be fighting hard to clear our name. Nevertheless the case now looks likely to come to court in the second half of 2012. Given this, it is proper that I stand down from the presidency and trusteeship of the ATT.”

The four were arrested last year in dawn raids at both residential and business premises in the West Midlands, Derby and Leicester, HMRC said. They will all appear before Birmingham crown court next week.

The ATT, founded in 1989, has 7,000 members and 4,000 students, and provides what is regarded as a junior tax qualification.

The association describes itself on its website as “the leading professional body for those providing tax compliance services and related activities in the UK”. ATT members will often go on to take the senior tax qualification, the CTA, through the Chartered Institute of Taxation.

There are around 80,000 firms and advisers registered with HMRC able to file tax returns on behalf of clients.

ATT deputy president Stuart McKinnon is currently carrying out Meeson’s role as president, and the ATT’s advisory committee has recommended to the body’s council that McKinnon should take over – it will vote on this appointment in December.

The pensions regulator suspended Tudor Capital Management Ltd from acting as trustees from pension trust schemes at the time of the arrests last year.

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/oct/31/tax-boss-charged-hmrc-fraud

At Maiden Bradley the road from Frome and Bath in the north, to Mere and Blandford in the south, crosses an ancient route that went from Salisbury to what was once the thriving western port of Bridgwater, gateway to the Bristol Channel. The intersection at Bradley Cross was the scene of bustling activity, with wheelwrights and fodder merchants on hand and coaching inns nearby. The picture of how things were in 1773 has recently been brought to life by the discovery of a meticulous survey of the Maiden Bradley estates of the ninth Duke of Somerset carried out by one Richard Baker and now revived by Chris Oliver, the former chief forester of the present duke. Oliver has painstakingly retraced every step of Baker’s way, and showed us the town well, once in the public space, but now hidden in a private garden. It is 120 feet deep, and said to go down to a cavern with room enough to turn a coach and four.

We walked westwards, with a terrace of cottages – “the Rank” – on our right; the front doors of their 18th-century originals would have opened directly on to the public thoroughfare. A few yards on was the site of the stocks, at a busy point where people were on their way to dispose of rubbish at the tip. Then we passed the former White Hart Inn, its building altered in the 19th century to become workshops for silk spinners.

The roadway climbed to Bigg’s Knapp, and then we saw the point where the original track curved leftwards and away from the modern, metalled road to become a tree-lined lane through the fields. Thousands of years of human traffic on foot or horseback, and of freight in wheeled vehicles drawn by horse or oxen, as well as the passage of herds and flocks of livestock marshalled by drovers, have hollowed out the narrower places on the tracks, carving deep tunnels through this greensand terrain.

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/31/country-diary-maiden-bradley-wiltshire

Your article (Existing jobs are rebranded as apprenticeships, report warns, 28 October) highlights a long-standing problem. The practice of “converting” existing employees to apprentices has been known about for several years and predates the coalition government. We brought it to light in 2008 when we acted as special advisers for the innovation, universities, science and skills select committee’s scrutiny of the draft apprenticeships bill. Witnesses from the Learning and Skills Council confirmed that the majority of apprentices aged 19 and over were “conversions”. The committee called on government to clarify the proportion of entrants falling into this category and say how it would ensure the quality of their experience.

Converting existing employees to apprentices is a means by which governments can boost the numbers of qualifications in the adult workforce to lift the UK up the international league tables. Competence-based qualifications, introduced in the late 1980s, allow individuals to gain qualifications for skills they already possess, rather than attending training courses to retrain or upskill. This explains why the figures released last week show that customer service, health and social care, and retail, are now the sectors with the most apprentices.

We hope that this leaked report will cause the current government to pause and genuinely reflect on what and who publicly funded apprenticeships are for, and what more can be done to raise the quality of provision for all apprentices.
Professor Alison Fuller University of Southampton, Professor Lorna Unwin Institute of Education, London

• I regard the growth in apprenticeships as one of the government’s most notable successes – and with every apprenticeship delivering a return of some £40 for the wider economy, it is good news for the public purse too. Unprecedented investment is now creating career opportunities for record numbers of trainees and I am proud that people of all ages are benefiting from the opportunity to learn the skills they need to progress in work.

Thanks to stringent new standards, introduced by this government, every apprenticeship offers high-quality on-the-job training directly relevant to the needs of employers. An increasing number of apprentices now progress to higher levels of learning: last week’s statistics revealed an 82% increase in advanced apprenticeships since 2009 to 150,000. By helping firms improve the skills of their workforce, we are helping them to improve their productivity and competitiveness. Vital sectors like construction, manufacturing and engineering have responded by continuing to back apprenticeships, despite tough economic times.

There is more to do. We’ll continue to drive up standards, cut bureaucracy for smaller firms and work with businesses to support more high-level training, including up to degree equivalent level. And we’ll continue to target additional support on young people who need extra training and work experience to make the grade for an apprenticeship. For too long this country has been held back by the outdated notion that the vocational route is inferior to the academic one. Cynical interpretations of the real progress we are making only helps entrench such views.
Vince Cable MP
Business secretary

• John Kampfner’s comments (Cameron’s Little Englanders need some German lessons, 26 October) are correct. Apprenticeships are the backbone of German, Swiss and Austrian industry, and there are more than 350 technical and commercial apprenticeships registered at chambers of commerce in Germany. Most school leavers go either straight to college or serve an apprenticeship.

Just look at the London School of Economics report The State of the Apprenticeship in 2010, and compare the industrial performance of the countries with the highest productivity to that of the UK, and the number of apprentices being trained as a comparison. I worked in a German business for over 30 years, selling UK machines, materials and knowhow. German employers try to give the shop-floor-oriented employees the same facilities as those working in offices. And since the wage rates are regulated, nationally and jointly, by the unions and employers, there is little mismatch in levels of pay.
Ron Simmonds
Korschenbroich, Germany

• John Kampfner notes that Germany’s superior industrial performance owes something to “Works councils with unions represented by statute”, and the education and training of staff.

He might like to look up the 1947 and 1957 Electricity Acts, which imposed various duties on the nationalised industry. They included items on the establishment and maintenance of machinery for “the settlement by negotiation with appropriate organisations of terms and conditions of employment”; “the promotion, improvement and encouragement of measures affecting the safety, health, welfare, education and training of persons employed”; “providing pensions to or in respect of persons who are or have been in [their] employment”; “the establishment of pension funds”. Plus “advancing the skills of persons employed”.

Further, they must, “promote the simplification and standardisation of methods of charge”.

But the Tories replaced all that with shareholder return and the CEO’s bonus, and threatening blackouts.
Bill Hyde
Offham, Kent

• John Kampfner’s mockery of Michael Gove’s blindness about Germany is spot-on. As an educated man, Mr Gove should read Peter Watson’s German Genius, a readable and scholarly book about the brilliance of German achievements in philosophy, theology, mathematics, science, music and art since 1750. While most countries can muster no more than 20 Nobel prizewinners, Germany has more than 100, almost half of them awarded before 1945.
Sebastian Kraemer
London

• If the government is serious about rebalancing the economy towards manufacturing, then focus needs to be provided to ensure apprenticeship funding is targeted on this sector (Existing jobs are rebranded as apprenticeships, report warns, 28 October). A 24% increase in engineering and manufacturing apprenticeships against a backdrop of a 50% increase across all sectors should be cause for concern.
Stephanie Fernandes
Principal policy adviser, Institution of Engineering and Technology

• The huge upsurge of apprentices from 163,000 to 442,700 deserves recognition and applause. Apprenticeships are a way of enhancing skills and improving career prospects. While there is speculation about the impact of the increase on employment opportunities for young people, the overriding message is an important and positive one. Apprenticeships get businesses to commit to training and developing people, which contributes to economic growth. Youth unemployment is a complex problem and to address it we need to change mindsets so that young people and employers do not see apprenticeships as second best to degree qualifications. With time and the huge hike in university tuition fees, I am confident that apprenticeship opportunities will continue to grow, and will entice more and more younger people and employers seeking to broaden their recruitment policies.
Jane Scott Paul
Chief executive, Association of Accounting Technicians

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/oct/31/real-progress-on-apprenticeships-germany

It’s the dark heart of Britain, the place where democracy goes to die, immensely powerful, equally unaccountable. But I doubt that one in 10 British people has any idea of what the Corporation of the City of London is and how it works. This could be about to change. Alongside the Church of England, the Corporation is seeking to evict the protesters camped outside St Paul’s cathedral. The protesters, in turn, have demanded that it submit to national oversight and control.

What is this thing? Ostensibly it’s the equivalent of a local council, responsible for a small area of London known as the Square Mile. But, as its website boasts, “among local authorities the City of London is unique”. You bet it is. There are 25 electoral wards in the Square Mile. In four of them, the 9,000 people who live within its boundaries are permitted to vote. In the remaining 21, the votes are controlled by corporations, mostly banks and other financial companies. The bigger the business, the bigger the vote: a company with 10 workers gets two votes, the biggest employers, 79. It’s not the workers who decide how the votes are cast, but the bosses, who “appoint” the voters. Plutocracy, pure and simple.

There are four layers of elected representatives in the Corporation: common councilmen, aldermen, sheriffs and the Lord Mayor. To qualify for any of these offices, you must be a freeman of the City of London. To become a freeman you must be approved by the aldermen. You’re most likely to qualify if you belong to one of the City livery companies: medieval guilds such as the worshipful company of costermongers, cutpurses and safecrackers. To become a sheriff, you must be elected from among the aldermen by the Livery. How do you join a livery company? Don’t even ask.

To become Lord Mayor you must first have served as an alderman and sheriff, and you “must command the support of, and have the endorsement of, the Court of Aldermen and the Livery”. You should also be stinking rich, as the Lord Mayor is expected to make a “contribution from his/her private resources towards the costs of the mayoral year.” This is, in other words, an official old boys’ network. Think of all that Tory huffing and puffing about democratic failings within the trade unions. Then think of their resounding silence about democracy within the City of London.

The current Lord Mayor, Michael Bear, came to prominence within the City as chief executive of the Spitalfields development group, which oversaw a controversial business venture in which the Corporation had a major stake, even though the project lies outside the boundaries of its authority. This illustrates another of the Corporation’s unique features. It possesses a vast pool of cash, which it can spend as it wishes, without democratic oversight. As well as expanding its enormous property portfolio, it uses this money to lobby on behalf of the banks.

The Lord Mayor’s role, the Corporation’s website tells us, is to “open doors at the highest levels” for business, in the course of which he ”expounds the values of liberalisation”. Liberalisation is what bankers call deregulation: the process that caused the financial crash. The Corporation boasts that it “handle[s] issues in Parliament of specific interest to the City”, such as banking reform and financial services regulation. It also conducts “extensive partnership work with think tanks … vigorously promoting the views and needs of financial services.” But this isn’t the half of it.

As Nicholas Shaxson explains in his fascinating book Treasure Islands, the Corporation exists outside many of the laws and democratic controls which govern the rest of the United Kingdom. The City of London is the only part of Britain over which parliament has no authority. In one respect at least the Corporation acts as the superior body: it imposes on the House of Commons a figure called the remembrancer: an official lobbyist who sits behind the Speaker’s chair and ensures that, whatever our elected representatives might think, the City’s rights and privileges are protected. The mayor of London’s mandate stops at the boundaries of the Square Mile. There are, as if in a novel by China Miéville, two cities, one of which must unsee the other.

Several governments have tried to democratise the City of London but all, threatened by its financial might, have failed. As Clement Attlee lamented, “over and over again we have seen that there is in this country another power than that which has its seat at Westminster.” The City has exploited this remarkable position to establish itself as a kind of offshore state, a secrecy jurisdiction which controls the network of tax havens housed in the UK’s crown dependencies and overseas territories. This autonomous state within our borders is in a position to launder the ill-gotten cash of oligarchs, kleptocrats, gangsters and drug barons. As the French investigating magistrate Eva Joly remarked, it “has never transmitted even the smallest piece of usable evidence to a foreign magistrate”. It deprives the United Kingdom and other nations of their rightful tax receipts.

It has also made the effective regulation of global finance almost impossible. Shaxson shows how the absence of proper regulation in London allowed American banks to evade the rules set by their own government. AIG’s wild trading might have taken place in the US, but the unit responsible was regulated in the City. Lehman Brothers couldn’t get legal approval for its off-balance sheet transactions in Wall Street, so it used a London law firm instead. No wonder priests are resigning over the plans to evict the campers. The Church of England is not just working with Mammon; it’s colluding with Babylon.

If you’ve ever dithered over the question of whether the UK needs a written constitution, dither no longer. Imagine the clauses required to preserve the status of the Corporation. “The City of London will remain outside the authority of parliament. Domestic and foreign banks will be permitted to vote as if they were human beings, and their votes will outnumber those cast by real people. Its elected officials will be chosen from people deemed acceptable by a group of medieval guilds …”.

The Corporation’s privileges could not withstand such public scrutiny. This, perhaps, is one of the reasons why a written constitution in the United Kingdom remains a distant dream. Its power also helps to explain why regulation of the banks is scarcely better than it was before the crash, why there are no effective curbs on executive pay and bonuses and why successive governments fail to act against the UK’s dependent tax havens.

But now at last we begin to see it. It happens that the Lord Mayor’s Show, in which the Corporation flaunts its ancient wealth and power, takes place on 12 November. If ever there were a pageant that cries out for peaceful protest and dissent, here it is. Expect fireworks – and not just those laid on by the Lord Mayor.

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/31/corporation-london-city-medieval

Deborah Orr (Read all about it: Britain’s shameful literacy crisis, G2, 27 October) makes some extraordinary deductions from a paucity of relevant data. She generalises that the rioters at Clapham Junction probably didn’t even see Waterstones, which remained untouched. Did she consider that books are much less valuable on the black market than electronic goods, clothes and other consumer durables?

She says more than two-thirds of the young people arrested were classed as having special educational needs. According to the DfE website, in January 2011 2.8% of pupils across all schools in England had SEN statements. This proportion has remained constant for a number of years. SEN is rarely the result of the educational system itself.

She suggests that a school whose boast was that “47% of pupils passed five GCSEs at A* to C” could be more accurately described as churning out 53% of pupils who were “functionally illiterate”. Not so. The correct measure is passes at grades A* to C including English language and mathematics. It is likely that the 53% will include many who obtained a good grade in English language, some even at the highest A* grade. We must not be complacent, but the current figures are far less bleak than Orr would have us believe.
Gerald Sandison
Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire

• It seems two-thirds of youngsters in the summer riots were classed as having special educational needs. Yet those who identify illiteracy as the critical associated factor for both rioters and the prison population are missing a crucial point. Not being able to read and write is less of a problem for those who can use their existing language and communication skills to get round it – by explaining, by seeking advice and information and by relying on information delivered verbally. As was made clear by both Bercow (2008) and Lamb (2009) in their reports to government, the underlying causes of illiteracy frequently lie with speech, language and communication difficulties, affecting 50% of children from socially deprived backgrounds, and 7% of children entering school, the most common special need at that point (42% of children with SENs). By secondary age, emotional and behavioural difficulties are the most common special need (38% of children with SENs).

Unmet language needs seem to have a knock-on effect; poor behaviour often results from the child’s difficulty in understanding what is going on. Despite the best efforts of the National Oracy Project and its successors, speech and language therapists, and teachers, UK governments have failed consistently to give primacy to establishing good levels of language development as the foundation for literacy. How I wish Orr had devoted some of her article to this critical relationship.
Nicola Grove
Retired speech and language therapist; chair of Openstorytellers Limited

• Another “telling detail” of the summer disturbances: the rioters solved a tricky problem in not raiding Waterstones; books are bulky, low-value items difficult to sell on, surely a triumph for country’s maths teachers. Ridiculous? Equally absurd was Deborah Orr’s implication that the whole of the primary school system finds the lack of motivation to read in boys “unremarkable and untroubling”.

Literacy has steadily improved over the past two decades following initiatives under Labour and Conservative governments and, more importantly, the hard work of teachers who translated these often ill-thought-out projects into good outcomes for children.

As of 2011 less than 20% of children leave primary school with poor reading skills, not the 53% implied by Ms Orr. Of these, less than 10% achieve below level 3, which approximates to the reading skills of an average nine-year-old.

Primary teachers desperately want to help this stubborn fifth of children learn to read but, like those complex and difficult cases in the NHS, these children need significant investment. Recent one-to-one tuition initiatives such as “Every Child A Reader” have been canned by the current government and the highly effective “Reading Recovery” programme was abandoned many years ago due to its high cost.

Low achievement in reading is almost always accompanied by serious impoverishment at home. Schools have wholeheartedly involved themselves in supporting families through “Every Child Matters”, “Extended Schools” and multi-agency working; policies which have been ended by the coalition or so denuded by the cuts as to leave schools as the only “agency” sitting at the table.

The “shameful crisis” is not just in literacy. It is that a substantial fraction of society has miserable, unfulfilling and impoverished lives. Primary schools are slowly, steadily and successfully chipping away at this problem along with the rest of the public sector. There is no magic wand we can wave, Ms Orr, but some more money and more support from the likes of you would help.
John Eglin
Oswestry, Shropshire

• Deborah Orr accurately highlights a serious problem that does not get the attention it should. She rightly states that the problem is exarcerbated because schools are judged mainly on their A-C GCSE results.

As a retired comprehensive head I plead guilty. It was only the last class I taught that gave me a full realisation of the problem. They were 15 years old and could hardly read and write. Yet they spoke with great intelligence and sensitivity on a wide range of topics and, when once asked to undertake an urgent task as a team, they displayed the ability to work brilliantly together as a team.

I completed a year’s course recently for a qualification to teach dyslexic students. We were told in no uncertain terms that the chief cause of academic failure is lack of self-confidence. It should be a main task of schools to seek ways of fostering self-confidence, especially by searching for talents in each child even if these do not relate to the curriculum.

Some funds were put in the system to give some pupils 10 sessions of one- to-one tutoring but, as Orr points out, these funds are drying up. To help deal with this serious problem urgently, schools should be enabled to hire far, far more teaching assistants to give more pupils the chance to receive attention individually or in small groups. Give our skilled and dedicated teachers a fair chance to deal with this problem.
John Werner
Brighton

• Deborah Orr’s article raises important points about our society and political landscape. When I saw the headline I was sure Deborah would mention the Cambridge report, which was commissioned by the government and said that putting children into reading and writing too early was destructive. Social skills, memory, music and games are essential in the early years; intellect needs to come later. No wonder other countries are doing better than us if they have proper child-centred education and pre-school. If our education is structured to emphasise failure to the very young, how are they going to have the confidence to engage with society later? There is also the advertising that many babies and pre-school infants are subject to; in their wisdom our government voted against the European initiative to ban it. If a child’s subconscious is full of the message that happiness is dependent on consumer goods, what kind of a youth will they be?
David Barton
Carnforth, Lancashire

• Deborah Orr needs to recognise that the Tottenham rioters were a small minority of the population as a whole, but there is, I believe, a connection between their behaviour and how they have been treated in school. Every government since the early 1990s and the operation of the national curriculum has required school league tables based on reading and other tests of all children as they move through primary and secondary schools. Of course, some children find learning to become literate difficult. The results of the tests are presented to them and their parents in a form that tells them that they are no good at reading and writing and not as indicators of what they can do and what now needs to be done to enable them to make further progress. Why should anyone think that such an approach will make them eager readers? It is not the schools that have insisted on this negative process; it has been and continues to be the government.
Professor Norman Thomas
St Albans, Hertfordshire

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/oct/31/educational-standards-causes-of-illiteracy

Doing yoga is a more effective way for people with lower back pain to become more mobile than the treatments currently offered by GPs, according to new research.

The study found that back pain sufferers recorded greater improvements in everyday physical tasks such as walking, bending down and getting dressed if they did weekly yoga sessions.

Participants who had practised yoga reported enhanced function compared with those receiving standard care, even nine months after the yoga classes had finished.

Previous, smaller studies have suggested yoga could be beneficial to back pain sufferers. However, these have often involved just one teacher and have not included long-term follow-up.

Back pain is estimated to affect 80% of adults at some point in their lives, and one in five people visits their GP in any given year because of it.

The condition, defined as chronic if it lasts longer than six weeks, is the second most common cause of long-term disability after arthritis and second only to stress as a cause of absence from work. It costs the NHS around £1bn per year and the annual cost to the economy has been estimated at £20bn.

Existing treatment options include painkillers, spinal manipulation, acupuncture, exercise classes and cognitive behavioural therapy.

“In the past when you had back pain, you were told to lie down until it passed,” said Prof David Torgerson, director of the York Trial Unit at the University of York, who led the study.

“These days the main advice is to keep your back active. It seems yoga has more beneficial effects than usual care including other forms of exercise, although we have not carried out a direct comparison.

“We are still carrying out the economic analysis but it is likely yoga could reduce the costs of back pain both for patients and for the NHS.”

Twenty experienced yoga teachers from the British Wheel of Yoga and Iyengar Yoga were trained to deliver a beginner level course of 12 yoga sessions specially designed to be safe and beneficial to those with lower back pain.

A group of 156 patients with chronic lower back pain were assigned to have the 75-minute yoga classes in north and west London, Manchester, York and Truro, in addition to normal GP care, while a control group of 157 just saw their GPs.

Participants filled in a 24-point questionnaire on whether their condition prevented them from doing everyday tasks. Lower scores equated to better function.

Those who did the yoga scored on average 2.17 points lower than those who did not. Three and nine months later, their scores were still 1.48 and 1.57 points lower respectively.

Participants also reported lower overall pain levels on average. However, this effect did not reach statistical significance. Around 60% of those in the yoga group continued with their practice after the classes.

The study is published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Rates of reported cases of back pain have doubled in the past 40 years in England, a trend seen in other Western countries. Some believe this is a result of higher levels of obesity, stress and depression, while others suggest people are more willing to report the condition.

When the UK’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence – which draws up guidelines on the best treatments – last reviewed treatments for lower back pain in May 2009, it ruled that exercise, spinal manipulation and acupuncture were cost-effective treatments.

“Yoga is one of a number of treatments that have now been shown to be effective for back pain,” said Martin Underwood, professor of primary care research at Warwick Medical School.

“The study shows it having a small to moderate average effect for patients, meaning there will be some people who experience little or no effect and other people for whom it has substantial benefit. Unfortunately we don’t yet know which patients respond to which treatments.”

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/oct/31/yoga-lower-back-pain-treatments

The perceived dithering and divisions of church officials over the protest camp outside St Paul’s in London have claimed a second major scalp with the resignation of the cathedral’s dean, the Right Rev Graham Knowles.

The dean – whose job is sufficiently senior that a replacement must be approved by the Queen – announced that mounting criticism over the cathedral’s handling of the situation made his position “untenable”.

In a statement read on his behalf to the media at the Chapter House, opposite St Paul’s, Knowles said: “In recent days, since the arrival of the protesters’ camp outside the cathedral, we have all been put under a great deal of strain and have faced what would appear to be some insurmountable issues.

“I hope and pray that under new leadership these issues might continue to be addressed and that there might be a swift and peaceful resolution.”

Last week the St Paul’s canon chancellor, Giles Fraser, stepped down after the cathedral’s governing chapter voted to begin possible legal action against the Occupy the London Stock Exchange camp, in place now for 16 days. A part-time cleric also resigned.

Cathedral elders have faced criticism not just over the possibility that force and violence will be used to evict the camp, but for the decision to close the cathedral for a week over health and safety concerns that remain unclear. The church has also experienced wider condemnation for failing to properly and publicly agitate on the excesses of finance and global banking until prompted to by the camp, part of a burgeoning global movement.

Occupy London, a street level view: ‘How clear are we all on what consensus actually is?’ Link to this video

The bishop of London, Dr Richard Chartres, who spoke to activists at the camp on Sunday, told the briefing he had been asked by the chapter to assist the cathedral until Knowles’s replacement was found.

Chartres said he wanted St Paul’s to find a place in modern public life as pivotal as that it had during bombing of London in the second world war, when it was a symbol of Blitz defiance.

The chapter had said they “would not condone the use of violence in effecting any expulsion” of campers, he said. However, he added, the legal action would continue and the position could change: “Who knows what is going to happen?”

The first step in what is likely to be a lengthy legal battle to remove the anti-capitalist camp from outside St Paul’s was beginning later on Monday afternoon when officials were due to formally hand activists a letter requesting that they pack up their tents and other belongings.

A Corporation of London spokesman said the letter, which was still being drafted, was likely to ask that the Occupy the London Stock Exchange protesters move within 24 or 48 hours. Activists have been camping outside St Paul’s for several weeks in protest at the perceived excesses of bankers and the global finance system.

Legal officials from the corporation, which owns some of the land around St Paul’s, said they would distribute several copies of the letter in the camp.

If the activists do not comply, which appears almost inevitable, then the corporation’s lawyers will most likely start court proceedings on Wednesday under the Highways Act, seeking an eviction. This process could take several months, lawyers have warned.

The letter will point out that there is no objection to a 24-hour protest at the site, on the western edge of the cathedral, but that the presence of more than 200 tents plus assorted marquees providing food, information and other facilities means the thoroughfare was blocked.

Announcing the plan to take court action after a meeting on Friday, Michael Welbank, the councillor who chaired the meeting, said: “Protest is an essential right in a democracy – but camping on the highway is not.”

The Occupy camp ended up on the site, which is part owned by St Paul’s, on 16 October after an initial plan to base itself at nearby Paternoster Square, the private business and retail development housing the London Stock Exchange, was thwarted by police action.

The cathedral has backed many of the camp’s aims, but on Friday said it supported legal action.

A protester at the camp, Spyro van Leemnen, said any response to the letter would be decided at a general assembly later in the day. The movement makes decisions democratically, through mass meetings.

The group has promised to remain at St Paul’s in the long term and spread to other areas in the City. A “spillover” camp at Finsbury Square, further east, set up a week ago, is now thought to be near capacity. It is believed that protesters will target a third site later this week.

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/oct/31/dean-st-pauls-resigns-occupy

Occupy London: a street-level view Link to this video

The first step in what is likely to be a lengthy legal battle to remove the anti-capitalist protest camp from outside St Paul’s cathedral in London will begin on Monday afternoon when officials formally hand activists a letter requesting that they pack up their tents and other belongings.

A Corporation of London spokesman said the letter, which was still being drafted, was likely to ask that the Occupy the London Stock Exchange protesters move within 24 or 48 hours. Activists have been camping outside St Paul’s for a fortnight in protest at the perceived excesses of bankers and the global finance system.

Legal officials from the corporation, which owns some of the land around St Paul’s, said they would distribute several copies of the letter in the camp.

If the activists do not comply, which appears almost inevitable, then the corporation’s lawyers will most likely start court proceedings on Wednesday under the Highways Act, seeking an eviction. This process could take several months, lawyers have warned.

The letter will point out that there is no objection to a 24-hour protest at the site, on the western edge of the cathedral, but that the presence of more than 200 tents plus assorted marquees providing food, information and other facilities meant the thoroughfare was blocked.

Announcing the plan to take court action after a meeting on Friday, Michael Welbank, the councillor who chaired the meeting, said: “Protest is an essential right in a democracy – but camping on the highway is not.”

The Occupy camp ended up on the site, which is part owned by St Paul’s, on 16 October after an initial plan to base itself at nearby Paternoster Square, the private business and retail development housing the London Stock Exchange, was thwarted by police action.

The cathedral has backed many of the camp’s aims, but on Friday said it supported legal action. The decision prompted the canon chancellor, Giles Fraser, to step down, a move mirrored later by a part-time chaplain. St Paul’s was closed for a week due to what officials said were health and safety issues with the camp’s size and proximity.

A protester at the camp, Spyro van Leemnen, said any response to the letter would be decided at a general assembly later in the day. The movement makes decisions democratically, through mass meetings.

The group has promised to remain at St Paul’s in the long term and spread to other areas in the City. A “spillover” camp at Finsbury Square, further east, set up a week ago, is now thought to be near capacity. It is believed that protesters will target a third site later this week.

Article source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/oct/31/occupy-london-st-pauls-cathedral