How do we react when trust in our institutions is so low?
contribution by Julia Unwin
Wherever we look the institutions of our society look a little shaky. From Southern Cross to the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust Inquiry, the House of Commons to News International, there are tales of dodgy behaviour, unaccountable practices, sloppy thinking and downright criminality.
Our regulators, charged with protecting the public, seem to be letting us down, and newspapers and commentators gladly pour scorn on bodies such as the Care Quality Commission and the Press Complaints Commission, which seem to have failed in their task of preventing bad behaviour.
Even the arbiters of our justice system, the Police, are facing accusations of corruption and malpractice.
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Osborne’s projections keep going down
The Indy has this story this morning:
The head of the Government’s fiscal watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility, has all but admitted that the official growth target for this year, announced in George Osborne’s March Budget, will be missed, and that current growth could be “relatively weak”.
Robert Chote, chairman of the OBR, indicated in an interview with The Independent that the Chancellor will almost inevitably downgrade growth again when he makes his Autumn Statement – the fourth such cut since Alistair Darling delivered the last Budget of the Labour government in 2010
It is accompanied by this excellent graphic.
So much for the brave predictions that deep cuts would kick-start the economy huh?
Students – ‘sell your kidneys to cover debt’
A prominent academic has suggested students should be allowed to sell their kidneys to cover education debts.
Sue Rabbitt Roff writes in the British Medical Journal that the ban on selling organs should be over-turned.
One reservation that many people express about such a proposal is that it might exploit poor people in the same way the illegal market does now.
But if the standard payment were equivalent to the average annual income in the UK, currently about £28,000, it would be an incentive across most income levels for those who wanted to do a kind deed and make enough money to, for instance, pay off university loans.
Under the Human Tissue Act (2004), it is illegal to sell organs and tissues in the UK.
The academic from Dundee University told The Scotsman today:
We are allowing young people to undertake £20,000 to £30,000 of university fee payments.
We allow them to burden themselves with these debts. Why can’t we allow them to do a very kind and generous thing but also meet their own needs?
A spokesperson from NUSJ Scotland told the newspaper they thought her idea was “ludicrous”.
via @kettlesboiling
Cameron’s greatest weakness is his loyalty to friends
To those he knows personally, I imagine, David Cameron is probably quite a nice man. He’s a loving father; a loving husband; and, it’s increasingly obvious, someone who looks out for his friends.
But the personal isn’t always political, and Cameron’s loyalties could hurt him badly.
They could do so by tying his hands on the most important part of a government’s job – the management of the economy.
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Christian group caught giving crap abortion info
Women receiving advice from pregnancy counselling centres run by faith-based organisations are subjected to scaremongering, emotive language and inaccurate information about abortion, according to an undercover investigation by a pro-choice charity.
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A survey of 10 centres operated by Christian and anti-abortion organisations found evidence in most of them of poor practice and factually incorrect advice, while the quality of counselling differs widely. Advice ranged from scaremongering – linking abortion with breast cancer, for example – to actions apparently designed to steer women away from abortion, such as showing them baby clothes and talking about “the child”.
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Centres visited included those run by Life, recently appointed to a panel advising the government on sexual health. That appointment, as well as renewed pressure from socially conservative MPs to tighten abortion laws and strip abortion providers of their counselling role, has sparked alarm among pro-choice supporters.
At a Life centre in Covent Garden, London, the undercover researcher was given a leaflet entitled Abortions – How they’re Done, which said incorrectly that 85% of abortions are carried out using vacuum aspiration. It stated that “the unborn child is sucked down the tube” and that “the woman should wear some protection. She has to dispose of the corpse.”
The full report by Education for Choice is here.
How services for women are being destroyed in the charities carnage
contribution by Scarlet Harris
Trawling through the 2,200 charities and voluntary organisations facing Local Authority funding cuts listed on False Economy, widely reported in the press yesterday, makes for extremely bleak reading.
After school clubs for kids, Christmas lunches for old people, wheelchair loan services, sexual health advisory services, meals on wheels, support services for disabled children, all axed. Welcome to the Big Society.
I was particularly taken aback by the number of women’s sector organisations and violence against women and girls (VAWG) services that have faced cuts.
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Don’t flatter yourself Melanie Phillips – it’s called a political debate
We already know that Melanie Phillips inhabits a weird parallel universe. Now she thinks I’m “obsessed” by her, merely I’ve pointed out the glaring holes in her recent articles.
Don’t flatter yourself Melanie. How about we stick to the politics instead of indulging your paranoia? Let’s ignore the delusional attempt at calling this some ‘obsession’. If Phillips dpesn’t like people highlighting her contradictions – she should stop writing about politics.
She blogs today in response to my piece yesterday:
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Why we need a state investment bank to get out of this economic rut
Since we learned that GDP grew by only 0.2% in the second quarter of 2011, we’ve had a blizzard of further bad economic data. The CBI industrial and distributive trends surveys last week pointed to an economy slowing in August, the manufacturing PMI is pointing towards actual contraction, the construction sector is still weak whilst the money supply is falling.
The question becomes – what on earth is going on? Specifically does the UK have a demand problem or a supply one? The answer is a depressing one – both.
continue reading… »
Schools entice hacks with girls, on A-Levels
We are all aware that the newspapers feature happy, jumping, young girls as soon as A-Level results are announced.
There is even a blog that documents this phenomena.
But did you know that some schools try to entice journalists by pointing out how ‘beautiful’ their girls are?
The FT’s Christopher Cook writes today:
But what might shock you is the enthusiasm with which schools encourage the use of pictures of pulchritudinous blondes. Indeed, a little cadre of English private schools compete to supply attractive young women to the national press.
Last year, I received an unsolicited voicemail from the press liaison at Badminton School in Bristol: “Hi Chris, . . .Just wanting to give you some details of some absolutely beyootiful girls we’ve got here who are getting their A-level results tomorrow. Some lovely stories . . . They’re amazing girls.” Bedales School in Hampshire helpfully supplies photos to journalists, sending out pictures of some of its pupils celebrating GCSE results. Oddly, it seems to forget to send out any photos of its male students (or its dowdier girls).
Most alarmingly, another (very grand) private school invited the FT education correspondent to an end-of-year sports event. I was, alas, too busy. It was a shame, I was informed by a senior teacher. He said that watching the girls playing sports would have given me a unique opportunity to pick out promising candidates for A-level day pictures.
Isn’t that a bit…creepy?
Christian midwife sues hospital, says trousers against her religion
A devout Christian woman who works as a midwife is suing a hospital because she says they forced her to wear trousers against her beliefs.
During the tribunal, Hannah Adewole cited a command in the Bible that women should not wear men’s clothing.
Oh and this being the Daily Mail, there is obviously a Muslim angle.
She pointed out that Muslim midwives are allowed to vary official uniform with their own hijabs and tops.
As a midwife at City University London, Mrs Adewole was ordered to wear scrub trousers to prevent infection.
When she refused, she was moved from the labour ward to post-natal care until the end of her course.
She said: ‘I know that in many hospitals skirts and dresses are worn and this would not be so if there was any real risk of infection.
‘They would not listen and seemed angry at me. I was traumatised by the intolerance towards by religious needs.’
You can read the full story here (via @riazat_butt).
I have a strong feeling the case is being funded by the Christian Legal Centre – an offshoot of the hardline group Christian Concern for our Nation.
They’ve funded several legal cases such as this in the past.
Earlier this year the Observer reported on this outfit:
Questions have been asked about from where the centre – and its sister organisation, Christian Concern For Our Nation – obtain funding. Accounts show both organisations have little in the way of income.
Williams said all of the centre’s work was done on a pro bono basis by committed Christian lawyers and that what money it had came in small donations from more than 30,000 people who received its regular email updates.
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Close observers of the centre believe it is adopting the tactics of wealthy US evangelical groups, notably the powerful Alliance Defence Fund, which, through its Blackstone Legal Fellowship, trains an army of Christian lawyers to defend religious freedom “through strategy, training, funding and direct litigation”.
CCFON was also deeply involved in the campaign to reduce the legal abortion limit (they think abortion should be banned) and even ran a campaign against Aaqil Ahmed being head of religion at the BBC on the basis that he was a Muslim.
Update: It could also be the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship as @tonyhatfield ventured on Twitter. Rachel Danae Stalker thinks the case might be too conservative even for them.
Update 2: I’ve just spoken to the hospital in question, who said should be releasing a statement tomorrow once the case has been resolved.
They also added the Daily Mail story had a few inaccuracies but did not want to go into them yet.
Update 3rd August: This case was dismissed by the Industrial Tribunal.
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