During June 2009 Cambridgeshire Police Monitored Speeding Through the Speed Cushions on Water Street, Chesterton.

I attended Cambridge City Council's North Area Committee on the 2nd of July 2009. Sgt. Wragg of Cambridgeshire Police gave an update on policing North Cambridge as an introduction to the agenda item during which policing is discussed by councillors and members of the public. Following the discussion councillors vote on the local police priorities for the forthcoming period.

Prior to the meeting I had written to the City Council's officer responsible for liaison with the police saying that I had noticed what I thought was a police RADAR speed monitoring device on a lamp-post on Water Street in Chesterton. I asked that, if that was in fact a police speeding monitor, if statistics on what had been found could be reported to the North Area Committee. Having discussed the presence of the object with Cllr Neale Upstone I copied him in on my correspondence and he added his support to my calls for an update to be given to the meeting. On Tuesday the 30th of June 2009 the council officer responsible wrote to me and Cllr Upstone to say:

Officers from the police will provide an update to the Committee on the piece of speed surveying equipment in Water Street as part of the presentation on Thursday evening.

Given that clear statement I was rather shocked then when the police presentation finished with the question of speeding on Water Street not having been addressed. Luckily I had submitted notice of a public question on speeding in case the element was omitted or I wanted to ask for clarification. I used my question to ask for a report on what the police had found, and specifically requested the number of vehicles travelling at a speed, such that they would have been prosecuted if caught. Cllr Blair, an East Chesterton Councillor, appeared annoyed by my questioning of the police and suggested I was wasting time. Despite being the ward councillor for the area where the speed monitoring had taken place, she decided not to listen to the answer. Instead Cllr Blair chatted to her newly elected colleague, and fellow East Chesterton Councillor, Susannah Kerr while John Fuller, a Community Engagement Officer with Cambridgeshire Police outlined some of the findings.

The meeting was told that the survey had been run from the 2nd to the 9th of June, for 24 hours a day. There had been 16,000 cars recorded travelling in a North Easterly direction, and only 15,000 travelling South Westerly. Only about 1% of cars had been found speeding to an extent that would have prompted police action - 195 over the week. The average speed recorded was twenty miles an hour. Mr Fuller announced that the data was accurate and there was no speeding problem in Water Street.

Clearly aware that the public perception is somewhat at odds with the data collected, Sgt. Wragg tried to offer an explanation saying that the driving looks bad as people swerve to go through the middle of the speed cushions.

At this point Cllrs Blair and Kerr had finished their conversation and Cllr Blair grandly announced that she had been aware of the monitoring because it had been announced via E-cops. She spoke about how she can drive through the speed cushions without feeling them, and asked Mr Fuller for the information on the results of the survey which he had just given the meeting (she specifically asked for the number of vehicles and the timing both of which had been given). Cllr Blair admitted she had been chatting to Cllr Kerr about something else. Mr Fuller quite reasonably did not entertain her request.

Cllr Upstone asked for clarification on what point in the road speeds had been monitored. [The box I saw was positioned on the lamp post visible in the above photograph, it was monitoring cars just after, or just before they passed over the speed cushions - which might explain the slow speeds recorded]. Sgt. Wragg confirmed this, saying speeds were monitored on the "dog leg" of Water Street. Mr Fuller though told the meeting that speeds had been measured at various points down Fen Road as well. Cllr Upstone said that perhaps thirty cars speeding per day was sufficient to be causing residents concern and therefore warranted action, with respect to fixing the speed cushions.

Mr Bond of the Old Chesterton Residents Association spoke to complain about the fact you can drive between the speed cushions; he mused on the idea of a central reservation or "central refuge" as he called it before concluding himself there was not enough room for one (the road is fantastically wide!). Mr Bond also queried the fen's capacity to swallow-up a thousand cars a week as indicated by the police's statistics, he said this threw doubt on the statistics and suggested the police ought look into it.

Cllr Blair, who was now paying attention, asked the County Council liaison officer who was present to chase up the county council to get their officers to check the cushions had been properly installed. Back in 2008 Cllr Upstone used the freedom of information website WhatDoTheyKnow.com to ask if the cushions had been properly installed, he was told they had been installed as specified, but that the exact location of each cushion had not been specified.

The new County Councillor for Kings Hedges, Andy Pellew asked about requests for streets to be surveyed could be sumbitted. He suggested Kings' Hedges Road and Northfields Avenue as locations where he would like to see such monitoring. Mr Fuller reported that there were 12 boxes in the county, and that new requests were easy to add to the list and were got round to fairly rapidly. The committee agreed that they would like to see speed monitoring in these locations, and following that decision Mr Fuller asked for more details of where on these roads. The Kings Hedges City Councillors McGovern, Pitt and Upstone requested monitoring of Kings Hedges Road at both the Cambridge Regional College / Arbury Road end, and at the other end towards Milton Road. On Northfields Avenue they requested monitoring on the bend before and after the underpass.

I had asked that the results of any speeding surveys be routinely added to presentations given at area committees and/or included in the neighbourhood profiles. Mr Fuller stated that the results of all surveys "were available", quite where he thinks they are available I do not know. I would certainly be interested in receiving a copy of any written report on the data collected; it would be interesting to see if there really was a second location on Fen Road surveyed - perhaps they picked the spot as traffic slows to cross the level crossing?

Cllr Blair complained that Sgt. Wragg had used the name "Arbury Park" and not "Orchard Park". Cllr Blair has embarked on a one-woman campaign to reverse two thousand years of history and remove the name "Arbury" from the site of the Roman Arbury Camp in North Cambridge. (Sgt. Wragg also often refers to "The Arbury" too, presumably when he says that he means Arbury ward as a whole; I'm sure the name isn't going away).

Overall I think it was a very useful public question; it has resulted in councillors being able to ask for, and receive an assurance they will get, speed monitoring on other roads in the area. Experience at the other area committees has shown that once speeding problems have been identified councillors can use that to make dealing with speeding a police priority, or use it to request changes to the road environment. The question of if the speed cushions on Water Street have been correctly installed has also been re-opened.

Before leaving the issue of speeding Cllr Blair and Mr Bond discussed the problem of speeding down Green End Road, and round the corner where it meets Scotland Road. The priority is not continuously with traffic on Green End Road but with traffic from Scotland Road, Mr Bond explained that too often people don't stop.

I hope my detailed reporting of this exchange, and others, will inform Liberal Democrat voters in East Chesterton how their representatives are behaving.

Believe it or not it’s ICC Intercontinental Cup time again!  Ireland’s cricketers must prove themselves against the best of the rest starting with Kenya at Eglinton this morning.  No Rankin, Porterfield or Niall O’Brien (on county duty or injured) available so Gary Wilson keeps wicket plus a new cap for paceman Andrew Britton of Fox Lodge.  Hero of Trent Bridge Keith O'Brien is available (cheers Notts) along with returnees Bray, Johnston, White et al.  Ireland are the the three time reigning champions of the most taxing form of the game below Test level.  Belfast PE Teacher and record Ireland cap holder Kyle McCallen captains the side as the boys in green endeavour to keep their title and reputation as the only side capable of challenging the big boys in the purest form of the game.

I have been resisting the temptation to post anything about so-called posh squats up until now. They appear to be getting plenty of publicity without my help. Today, however, I have spoken to six journalists about them, including, if she will forgive me for bracketing her in such company, Vanessa Feltz. There is no doubt that this has become a big story.

It started in Brighton, then Upper Grovesnor Street, then Green Park and now Park Lane. Some of the poshest addresses in the UK have become squatted by what appears to be a new breed of lifestyle squatters. In total their number is tiny but the fact that they have infiltrated such prestigious neighbourhoods gives them access to the media in a quite phenomenal way. What amazes me is the uncritical way they have been reported. Both the Telegraph and the Mail managed to print articles on squatting without uttering the words scrounger, freeloader or sponger - unthinkable just a few weeks ago. The recession moves in mysterious ways!

Friends and comrades of Anthony are invited to gather at Freedom Books in Whitechapel on Saturday afternoon, from 2pm. 

Men and women are to be paid to lose weight in the first scheme of its kind in the UK.

They will be given a £1 shopping voucher for every pound they shed in the pilot project for some 100 volunteers.

Participants must be significantly overweight, and 'before and after' photo sessions will highlight the benefits of their efforts.

If the pilot due to begin in September is successful, the idea could be rolled out across the UK.

However, experts warned that financial incentives could promote dangerous binge-dieting to gain the rewards but would not encourage long-term changes in eating habits and exercise.

Lt Col Rupert Thorneloe, 40, the commanding officer of the Welsh Guards, died after his Viking armoured vehicle was blown up by a substantial roadside bomb that killed another British soldier and wounded six others.

o Home secretary admits 'degree of complacency'
o Measures to cut two-year delay in issuing asbos

Alan Johnson, the new home secretary, today announced a package of measures designed to revive the use of antisocial behaviour orders to tackle the most extreme cases of intimidation and harassment.

In his first major speech on crime, Johnson admitted that a period of intense activity by the government on antisocial behaviour had been followed by "a certain degree of complacency on this issue".

The package includes measures to cut delays of up to two years in getting the courts to issue an asbo, making it much easier for problems to be reported and to provide more counselling support for victims.

The renewed official interest in asbos follows two years which saw their popularity dwindle. The number of new orders issued was down by 30% and the children's secretary, Ed Balls, said he hoped to live in "the kind of society that puts asbos behind us".

Johnson said that it can sometimes take up to two years to secure an asbo, during which time there is no hope of respite for victims of crime, with many victims reporting further persistent harassment, defacement of property and intimidation.

The home secretary said he was working with the justice secretary, Jack Straw, to take action in three areas:

o Cutting delays by setting maximum waiting times and limiting the number of times cases can be adjourned. Speeding up the process in the worst cases of intimidation by training local authority staff so they can present cases themselves where possible.

o Introducing local antisocial behaviour "action squads" to support frontline professionals dealing with severe problems such as underage drinking on an estate or a family that's causing widespread chaos.

o Ensuring that victims don't get trapped in a "never-ending circle of phone calls" when they try to report problems by providing website access to local contacts and information. More counselling support for the victims of antisocial behaviour.

Figures for asbo numbers have not been published since December 2006, when the number of new orders being issued had dropped by 34% on the year before and breach rates soared to 61% amongst teenagers.

A Whitehall evaluation dealt asbos a massive blow when it revealed that they were widely seen as a "badge of honour" by teenagers and even some criminal justice professionals.

While Johnson made clear his personal interest in a new drive to tackle antisocial behaviour he said in terms of his general approach to law and order the long term fall in the crime rate did not suggest that "a scattergun of new initiatives" or a new 'radical restructuring' of the criminal justice system would now be justified.

This implies that the new home secretary is not particularly interested in adding to the long line of major criminal justice bills that have poured out of the Home Office in the past 15 years.

"The focus must be on listening to the public, looking at what practical steps need to be taken to make the current system, with all the powers and responsibilities that this government has introduced, respond to their concerns," said the home secretary.

He said the encouraging national crime picture however offered little reassurance to those who live in neighbourhoods where threatening behaviour, harassment and intimidation were part of everyday life. "Worry about crime is seriously debilitating. If on some streets or estates, there are people who feel they can't step out after dark to buy a bottle of lemonade because they are fearful of the people they might find hanging around the stairwell or outside the off-licence, it has a profound impact on their life," he said arguing that tackling this fear of crime was as important as dealing with the reality of crime.

He also careful to stress his personal interest in reviving the drive the tackle the causes of crime, quoting Tony Blair's famous promise to be 'tough on crime, and tough on the causes of crime'. In his speech at Battersea arts centre, south London, he cited the "startling fact" that while children in care make up only 0.5% of the child population, when they get older, they are 25% of the prison population.

He signalled a renewed interest in expanding family intervention projects and alcohol treatment schemes arguing that "being tough on the causes of crime has been in many senses, the raison d'etre of this government over the last 12 years."

He argued that the increased investment in the child welfare programme Sure Start, education, housing, health and youth services together with the measures on child poverty had undoubtedly helped to reduce crime and antisocial behaviour. Johnson said in a revival of Tony Blair's early law and rhetoric that protecting people from crime was fundamental to "the things that any progressive government wants to achieve".

Points of order

o Maximum waiting times and limits on case adjournments to cut delays in issuing asbos

o Local action squads to tackle underage drinking and families from hell

o Extra counselling support for victims and easier reporting

o Expand family intervention projects to tackle causes of antisocial behaviour

Parliamentary commissioner for standards confirms he is looking into allowances of shadow chancellor

George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, is being investigated by parliament's standards watchdog over his expenses, it emerged today.

John Lyon, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, confirmed that he is investigating a complaint relating to the way Osborne claimed for a mortgage worth £450,000, which he used to fund a house that cost £445,000.

A spokesman for the commissioner would not discuss details of the complaint, which was submitted by a Labour activist.

But, in a letter to Laurie Burton, the chair of the local Labour party in Osborne's Tatton constituency, Lyon said: "I have accepted your complaint and am inviting [Osborne's] comments."

In his letter, Lyon said he would look into a claim that "Mr Osborne claimed for mortgage payments that were not necessarily incurred, contrary to the rules of the house."

Osborne took out a mortgage of nearly £5,000 more than the reported price of his house and claimed Commons allowances to cover interest payments on the whole debt, rather than just the cost of buying the house.

"Since your complaint involves allegations relating to events of over seven years ago, I have consulted the House of Commons committee on standards and privileges and they have agreed to me initiating an inquiry into this part of your complaint," Lyon said.

He said he put the claims to Osborne, adding: "When I have received his response, I will consider best how to proceed."

The commissioner said he would not launch an inquiry into Burton's other complaint - that the shadow chancellor had "flipped" his second home and avoided paying capital gains tax.

"This is a matter for HMRC [HM Revenue and Customs]," he told him.

Osborne has strongly denied any wrongdoing and has always insisted that he acted within the rules.

He has defended the decision to take out a mortgage worth £450,000 on the grounds that he needed the extra money to pay for repairs and removal costs. These took the total cost to more than £480,000, he has said.

Osborne has also said that his claim was approved by the Commons authorities.

In a statement issued in response to the news that he was being investigated, a spokesman for Osborne said: "This is a political complaint by the local Labour party. We note that one has been made against Alistair Darling as well. George is relaxed about it and has always been very open in answering questions about his expenses."

The spokesman also said that the cost of moving into the Cheshire home and doing essential repairs was more than £480,000 and that "thanks to the tracker mortgage deal he is currently on, the monthly interest costs on his Cheshire home charged to the parliamentary allowance are now close to zero".

In regards to the allegation that he "flipped" his second home, the spokesman said: "When George Osborne became an MP in 2001 he sat down with a representative from the fees office. He explained that Harrop Fold Farm in Cheshire was his second home but that he had increased the interest-only mortgage on his existing home in London to cover the cost of purchasing and moving into it.

"The representative of the fees office advised him to claim ACA [the additional costs allowance] against that mortgage until he could change the mortgage arrangements. In 2003, when he was able to change the mortgage arrangement without incurring penalty charges, he secured a mortgage against Harrop Fold Farm - and from then on claimed ACA against it.

"Since he became an MP, George Osborne has always made it clear to the House of Commons authorities and the Inland Revenue that he regarded his home in Cheshire as his second home."

Burton said he believed Osborne had breached the MPs' code of conduct and brought the Commons "into disrepute".

And he denied his complaint was politically motivated, insisting he was acting as an ordinary voter feeling "outrage and disgust" over widespread abuses of the system.

"When they [expenses details] were published I was extremely concerned at the way he flipped his mortgages on his first and second homes in order to claim the maximum amount possible on mortgages and also to avoid paying capital gains tax," he told Sky News.

"He bought a house outside his constituency of Tatton about a year before he was elected and he bought it for cash. Then he took a mortgage on it two years later after he was elected and he just went on from there.

"He first called it his main home and then he called it his second home and he is just a prime example of the way some politicians have been bending the rules to get most benefit."

The commissioner is investigating complaints against several MPs relating to expenses, including the former ministers Jacqui Smith and Tony McNulty, but Osborne is the most senior Tory to come under his spotlight.

The commissioner's office also said today that he would not be taking any further a complaint about the Alistair Darling.

One of Darling's constituents was understood to have lodged a complaint that he "flipped" second home designations four times in four years to maximise expenses.

That was lodged on the same day as the complaint against Osborne amid signs of a tit-for-tat row.

A spokeswoman for the commissioner's office said the correspondence concerning Darling was not being acted upon.

More than 100,000 people could be diagnosed with swine flu every day by the end of August, the government said, announcing that the disease can no longer be contained in the UK.

A Commons statement by the health secretary, Andy Burnham, marks a watershed in the spread of the flu. No more schools will be closed, unless forced to by the lack of staff or if the pupils are especially vulnerable. Families and people in contact with those with flu will not be given preventative antiviral drugs.

The new policy of treatment for those with diagnosed illness, rather than containment, has already begun in the hotspots - chiefly London, Birmingham and Scotland.

The change of tactic is the predicted response to the swelling number of people infected. There are now 7,447 diagnosed cases in the UK, but the number is doubling every week. If they continue in this way, said Burnham in his statement, "we could see over 100,000 cases per day by the end of August". He later stressed that the figure "is a projection. It is not a fact. This is how the disease could develop and we don't know."

Those sorts of numbers would put a heavy burden on the NHS, which is already feeling the strain in some areas. The new strategy will help keep those with possible symptoms out of GP surgeries.

People who think they may have flu are now being advised to go online and check their symptoms on the NHS website or call the swine flu information line, on 0800 1 513 513. Anyone still concerned after that should phone their GP, who can provide a diagnosis over the phone. If swine flu is confirmed, they will be issued with an authorisation voucher, which a "flu friend" can take to an antiviral drug collection point, which may be a pharmacy or a health centre.

But health officials in Scotland doubt the virus will spread dramatically across the UK, as it seems to have peaked in Scotland, which saw the first big outbreaks, and the first two deaths in Europe.

The rapid spread of the virus has slowed down in Paisley, which suffered the second largest outbreak, and it has disappeared in Dunoon, where a coachload of football fans were infected. In Glasgow, until recently the worst affected area of the UK, infection rates have stabilised. After infection rates peaked at 111 confirmed cases on 25 June, the rate in Scotland has remained steady at an average of about 60 new cases a day over the last week. There is no evidence that infection rates in Scotland, where the virus first arrived in late April, were doubling.

Dr Harry Burns, Scotland's chief medical officer, said he was "now optimistic that sometime over the next few weeks, the rate of transmission will begin to slow down" [in Scotland].

It was entirely possible, he added, that the outbreaks elsewhere in the UK would also slow down in a matter of weeks.

The fatality rate also appears to be low. In the UK, only three people - all with significant underlying health problems - have died out of 7,447 confirmed cases. Health experts believe more people have caught swine flu but shown no symptoms.

In the United States, the official figures show 27,725 Americans have contracted H1N1, with 127 deaths. The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta, estimates that a million Americans may have caught swine flu but not been to a doctor, suggesting that fatality rates are as low as 0.012%, Burns said.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control reported on Thursday that of 69,177 cases which had been detected worldwide, only 328 people had died - a fatality rate of 0.47%.

However, Sir Liam Donaldson, the chief medical officer, said that it was not yet possible to work out the death rate from the virus, "given the unreliability of the data", but that it would become clearer in the coming months.

The first batches of vaccine will arrive in August.

Although the UK has ordered enough for the entire population, it will arrive in batches. At-risk groups would get it first, said Donaldson: those especially vulnerable because of diseases which have compromised their immune systems or affect their breathing, such as asthma.

New flu strains cannot be eradicated. They simply become part of the seasonal flu mix. Donaldson said that swine flu could continue to cause extra deaths for five years. "We will need the vaccine in years to come," he said.

o Two investigations into professional conduct
o Met police alerted officials about Patel in 2004

The pathologist who said Ian Tomlinson died of natural causes at the G20 protests has been suspended from an official government register and is under two separate investigations into his professional conduct, it emerged today.

Freddy Patel, who conducted the first postmortem into Tomlinson which found he died of a heart attack, has been removed from the Home Office register of accredited forensic pathologists pending an inquiry, amid concern into whether he has breached regulations.

His suspension means he is barred from undertaking any further postmortems in "suspicious death" cases.

It also emerged last night that the Metropolitan police alerted the Home Office to concerns about Patel's performance in four suspicious death cases in 2004.

A standards committee ruled he had failed to maintain professional standards in three of the cases.

Patel was asked to conduct the postmortem into Tomlinson two days after he collapsed and died near the Bank of England on 1 April, shortly after being struck with a baton and pushed to the ground by a constable from the Metropolitan police's Territorial Support Group.

Patel found a number of injuries on his body but concluded he died of a heart attack. City of London coroner Paul Matthews has refused to explain why he chose Patel to conduct the postmortem.

A second postmortem found Tomlinson died of internal bleeding in the stomach.

Results of a third postmortem, requested by a Met officer now under investigation over Tomlinson's death, have not been released.

The controversy over Patel's involvement in the Tomlinson case prompted a review of his work by the Pathology Delivery Board, which monitors the Home Office register for the National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA). Sources said the board has received two formal complaints. The first involves the suggestion Patel is not a member of a group practice - a team of three or more forensic pathologists who, under Home Office regulations, professionally review each other's work.

The second complaint relates to Patel's postmortem in 2002 on the body of Sally White, who was found with a bite mark to the thigh locked in a bedroom in a north London flat of Anthony Hardy, a psychiatrically- disturbed alcoholic.

Detectives treated White's death as suspicious until Patel detailed the cause of her death as a heart attack. Hardy went on to kill two more women.

NPIA investigators are also considering why Patel carried out the Tomlinson postmortem and will relay their findings to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which is investigating his death.

Patel has not held a contract with any police force for several years.

The Met decided not to renew his contract, after the force alerted the Home Office policy advisory board for forensic pathology about concerns it has about his performance in four cases.

Its committee determined he had "not maintained the standards expected" in three of the cases butallowed him to continue on the register.

Patel was remprimanded by the General Medical Council (GMC) in 1999 after he discussed the medical history of Roger Sylvester, who died in police custody, outside his inquest.

Contacted last night Patel, who was registered at the GMC under the name Mohmed Saeed Sulema Patel in 1988, refused to respond.

An NPIA spokesman said: "Dr Freddy Patel was suspended and removed from the forensic pathology list on June 2 2009. As part of our investigation we're investigating a number of issues in relation to Dr Patel, including what forensic postmortems he conducted outside of the Metropolitan police and how many were performed whilst he wasn't part of a group practice."

Job prospects for this year's graduates are the same as, if not worse, than in the darkest years of the 1990s recession

Those leaving university this summer face the toughest jobs market in more than a decade, with up to 22,000 more graduates likely to be unemployed this year compared with last, figures published today show.

At least one in 10 of this summer's graduates will fail to find a job six months after they leave university, the Higher Education Careers Services Unit (Hecsu) has calculated. This is the equivalent of between 35,000 and 40,000 graduates, out of the 350,000 leaving UK universities after first degrees this year.

This is a dramatic rise on last year's numbers, figures released today by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa) reveal.

Some 17,990 of last summer's graduates - just over 8% - were still looking for a job six months after they had left university, the data shows. The previous year, 6% of graduates were unemployed six months after leaving university.

The figures include only students who are looking for jobs, rather than those who opted to continue their studies or travel.

Graduate salaries are still on the rise, the figures show. Last summer, despite the economy starting to falter, the mean graduate salary rose to £20,500, from £20,000 the year before.

Some 8% of male graduates were unemployed last year, compared with 5% of female graduates, the Hesa figures show. This compares with 6% and 4%, respectively, the year before.

Graduates in computer science were among the most likely to be unemployed last year, with 14% failing to secure a job six months after graduation.

But just 3% of those who had completed dentistry degrees were out of work.

Four per cent of students who completed postgraduate courses last summer were unemployed, compared with 3% the previous year.

Charlie Ball, deputy director of research at Hecsu, predicted that this year's graduates face the same, if not worse, job prospects as those who left university in the worst years of the last recession in the 1990s.

Vacancies for this summer's graduates have been cut by 28% since last year, and of the 20,000 graduates that top employers planned to recruit this year, 5,500 posts have been cancelled or left unfilled.

The City has been worst hit, with 56% fewer entry-level jobs in investment banks this year.

However, the accountancy and management consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers said today it still had vacancies for almost 100 graduates this year.

Wes Streeting, president of the National Union of Students, said: "These figures foretell the crisis awaiting graduates this summer as a result of the recession. Students are racking up thousands of pounds of debt because of fees, and many will be extremely worried at the lack of job prospects when they leave university."

David Lammy, the universities minister, said: "Today's figures show that even in tough times a degree is a strong investment which stands graduates in good stead for a long and successful career.

"Employment rates for graduates continue to be higher than for those with lower qualifications, and with research showing that there are jobs available with growth in some areas, graduates should remain positive about their prospects."

David Willetts, the shadow universities secretary, said: "These figures show yet again that young people are the biggest victims of the recession. The employment rate of graduates was falling even before the recession took hold. We now have record levels of young people not in education, employment or training. Ministers are letting our young people down."

A Guardian survey last month of 55 of Britain's top universities revealed an avalanche of demand for careers services from jobless students and a big rise in the numbers applying to do postgraduate courses.

Howard League for Penal Reform urges closures and community sentencing to tackle 'bloated and dysfunctional' system

Cherie Booth QC has endorsed a call to close some prisons and hand the management of the rest of the prison system in England and Wales over to local communities.

The final report from the two-year Commission on English Prisons Today says that a significant cut is needed in the 84,000 prison population, with community-based punishments replacing short-term prison sentences.

Booth, who served on the commission set up by the Howard League for Penal Reform, said she hoped the report would provide "a road-map" for long-term and fundamental reform: "The commission proposes that justice is more local. Crucially, more widespread use of effective community sentences would both allow us to reduce the use of prison and allow for reinvestment of resources into local communities to cut offending."

She said that the "unrestrained and irresponsible penal excess" over the past 15 years, during which prison numbers have nearly doubled from 45,000, was no longer sustainable in the face of the current public spending squeeze.

"This is a significant moment to consider what should happen in prison policy when vital choices have to be made about future public spending against a background where money is woefully short." The report says over the past decade the prison system has become "bloated and dysfunctional over a prolonged period of economic growth".

The commission comprised leading criminologists, prison and probation professionals, and it reported that spending on the criminal justice system as a whole was £22.7bn in 2008, more than one-third higher than 1998.

It says that it is now highly questionable that the system can carry on this "restless expansion" and that even using "technocratic fixes" such as early-release schemes will no longer prove affordable.

The report acknowledges that such localism could prove a vehicle for some of the nastiest forms of punitive populism but says that tendencies, such as an enthusiasm for asbos, are often driven by Whitehall policies. The commission believes that with local councils in the lead local criminal justice, health and education staff would co-operate to ensure that far more effective community-based justice initiatives were used to cut crime.

The prisons minister, Maria Eagle, welcomed the report, saying it would provide the basis of a lively, ongoing debate, but reminded its authors that the government must provide sufficient prison places to accommodate all those sent to prison by the courts.

I don't suppose the countryside was ever really idyllic, but it must once have been a more agreeable place than it is now. Every month Commons questions about agriculture bring us a world of misery in which farmers battle with falling prices, rising costs, rapacious supermarkets, EU bureaucracy, bizarre livestock diseases, and to cap it all, Defra, which is up there with the Home Office and transport as one of the most hopeless government departments.

I wonder sometimes how a memoir of a country childhood, written perhaps in 2050 but describing the present day, might go. All the jargon could be heard in yesterday's exchanges.

"It was the year of our lord 2009, and my carefree days seemed to be filled with endless sunshine. I was a merry lad, on a train-to-gain apprenticeship at the old call centre in Farmer Pettigrew's converted barn. My girl was the lovely Kelly Braithwaite, and at weekends she and I would roam over the hill sheep farming sector, seeking out nitrate vulnerable zones, for with all our kissing and canoodling we were usually too late for the day-rate vulnerable zones.

"Sometimes we would take a can of extra-strength Irish cider and sit under a black plastic-covered hayrick as the sun went down. Afterwards I would throw the can into a copse, and Kelly would give me a tongue-lashing to remember. 'Don't be a silly ha'porth, my girl,' I would tell her. 'I am merely participating in the "recycling-on-the-go infrastructure" as outlined by the new under-secretary of state, Dan Norris!'

"Soon we were on our way home and paused by Farmer Catchpole's set-aside. We would play a simple game, spotting indicator species - birds, insects and invertebrates. As country folk said round our way: 'Find a ladybird before your tea / You'll have a measure of increased biodiversity.'

"One night Kelly and I were walking hand in hand through the gathering dusk. I nipped off to empty my bladder of cider and to light up a fag, defying the government's stated opposition to 'slash and burn' policies. Then out of the dark we saw emerge an eerie figure clad all in white. Kelly grabbed my arm. 'It must be the ghost of old Nat Sowerbutts, who was ruined by the collapse of the Dairy Farmers of Britain, with the consequent reduction of milk prices to 10p a litre, and who fell in his drunken state into a vat full of slurry, forgetting that new regulations on slurry storage do not apply until 2012,' she said, trembling and shaking in my arms.

"'Lord bless you,' I told her. 'That is no ghost! That is Ned Flowerdew, the government-appointed trial badger culler. He means no harm, except to badgers, though if he offers you a whiff of what he has in that spray can, you would be wise to refuse.'"

o MPs condemn obsession with performance targets
o Up to 10% of admissions to hospital may suffer harm

Patient safety has been put at risk through "disastrously unsafe care" in a handful of NHS trusts, and insufficient progress is being made in improving services, a critical parliamentary study warns today.

As many as one in 10 patients who enter hospital may suffer harm, the Commons health select committee reports, while annual payouts for NHS medical negligence have climbed to more than £630m.

Health service managers have become obsessed by government-imposed performance targets, the MPs note, resulting in major lapses where "safety was pushed aside ... by other priorities - particularly waiting time targets, the need to achieve financial balance and the achievement of foundation status".

This "undoubtedly ... has been a contributory factor in making services unsafe", the Patient Safety report maintains. The three "notorious" examples it cites are Mid Staffordshire NHS trust, Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS trust in Kent, and Stoke Mandeville hospital.

Ninety people died as a result of two Clostridium difficile outbreaks at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells during 2006 and 2007. A further 33 patients died of C difficile acquired within Stoke Mandeville hospital in 2003 and 2005. The outbreaks grew, it later emerged, when patients were moved from accident and emergency into ordinary wards - spreading the infection - in order to meet a four-hour A&E target.

At Mid Staffordshire, between 400 and 1,200 extra deaths occurred over a three-year period owing to frontline services being reduced to cut back on the trust's debt levels -- a precondition to it achieving foundation trust status.

The Commons' study expresses alarm that none of these scandals was picked up. The Healthcare Commission's annual health check and Monitor, the statutory body that authorises trusts to become foundation trusts, are criticised.

"Not only did Monitor fail to detect unsafe care, it effectively allowed the trust to compromise patient safety in premature pursuit of foundation status," says the committee.

The "significant under-reporting" of incidents was due in part to "the persistent failure to eliminate the blame culture". Staff, the MPs say, should be encouraged to report concerns or incidents without fear. They propose a complaints system such as the one in New Zealand, where staff are encouraged to raise concerns, and the creation of a body similar to the Department of Transport's Air Accident Investigation Branch to improve checks.

Patients who have suffered are currently forced to endure "lengthy and distressing litigation to obtain justice and compensation", the report says, while NHS organisations are "encouraged to be defensive", and spend large sums on legal costs.

The committee says it is "appalling" that the Department of Health has not implemented the NHS redress scheme, which aims to resolve complaints quickly and consistently without the need for court action, despite the necessary legislation being passed three years ago.

The figure that 10% of patients may be harmed by the NHS derives from a study by Richard Thomson, professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Newcastle.

BMA conference urges a minimum unit price for all drinks to curb alcohol-related illnesses

Doctors called today for a complete ban on alcohol advertising, and a minimum unit price to combat the soaring cost of drink-related illnesses.

The resolution at the British Medical Association's annual conference will add to political pressure on the government to take more effective action to reduce rates of chronic alcoholism and teenage binge-drinking.

Earlier this year. the chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, urged the government to adopt a minimum price of 50p for each unit of alcohol. Flinching from the prospect of raising the price of an average six pack of lager to £6, the prime minister, Gordon Brown, said he did not want "the responsible, sensible majority of moderate drinkers to have to pay more or suffer as a result of the excesses of a minority".

The SNP-led government in Scotland, however, is pioneering a minimum unit price - though it is likely to be lower than Donaldson's suggestion. If enforced, it would be the first such law in Europe.

Presenting the motion at the BMA conference in Liverpool, Dr Chandra Mohank, from London, said that alcohol-related hospital admissions had doubled in the past decade and a recent survey had shown that 360,000 children aged between 11 and 15 "get drunk every week".

Clearer labelling of alcoholic strengths was needed, he urged. "We need a total ban on alcohol advertising in the media and to follow the example of Scotland by introducing a minimum unit price."

A 50p unit price would reduce hospital admissions due to drink by 100,000 a year and, over a decade, save £1.37bn. "It's time to say enough is enough. Alcoholic excess affects every part of out society: young professionals, harassed parents and isolated elderly people."

Dr Keith Brent held up a clutch of supermarket-purchased cans and bottles and asked his medical colleagues to guess the price: the lager, he revealed, cost only 31p a unit, the wine 47p a unit.

Dr Charles Daniels, from the GPs committee, condemned the proposal, describing it as "nanny-state politics" that would "punish the majority for the sins of the minority".

But the BMA, endorsing Donaldson's position, passed the motion, deploring "the increasing burden of alcohol-related diseases and complications on our nation's health". It demanded that any revenue from unit price taxes be spent on prevention and rehabilitation of alcohol abusers.

Figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats and released today show that a child under 12 is admitted to accident and emergency wards due to alcohol every 48 hours.

The information, contained in a parliamentary answer, showed that last year there were 181 admissions for children under 12 and a total of 1,426 since 2002. For youngsters aged 12-15 there were 4,441 admissions for alcohol, a 12% increase over the same period; for 16-17 year olds, there were 7,766 admissions, a 66% increase.

The Liberal Democrat shadow health secretary, Norman Lamb, said: "This is shocking new evidence of the scale of the alcohol crisis facing this country. Unless we invest in treatment services, put an end to alcohol being sold at pocket-money prices, and start educating our children, then these figures are set to get worse."

Corinthian integrity may have long left our games, but they still manage to construct strange ethical codes of their own

Although we accept that language changes over time, it still seems startling that quite so many English phrases - "sporting behaviour", "it's not cricket", "captain of the First XI" - once identified athleticism with integrity. But - even in a world in which we accept that champion sprinters and cyclists have medicine cabinets that make Michael Jackson's look like a homeopathy shop - a struggle still goes on to referee what's right.

This week, the court of sporting opinion has taken on three fascinating moral questions. Should the blinding of an opponent be a legitimate tactic in rugby? Is it the done thing for a cricketer to get so have such trouble waking from the night before that he almost misses a motivational visit to the graves of slain soldiers? And are tennis players taking advantage by having their thighs rubbed during change of ends?

In each of these cases, a professionalised, monetised and televised game clashes with the residual belief of some fans and journalists that sport is not war by other means, but friendship.

The introduction to international rugby of a gameplay previously associated with Gloucester in King Lear is the most extreme of these debates. All of us who favour the round-ball version of the sport have had to endure the smug lectures about the greater decency of the recreation that began when some public schoolboy ignored the handball rules. On the fields with the H-shaped goalposts, we were relentlessly told, rivals and supporters sat side by side in the stands in friendly solidarity and everyone called the referee Sir.

This pastoral idyll has often seemed compromised by the number of matches which lead to all leave being cancelled in A&E departments. But the image of rugby as a sort of tea party with more mud was decisively shattered, during Saturday's test match between the British Lions and South Africa, when the warmly mutually supportive fans watched "Sir!" treat as a minor disciplinary offence an action which, if attempted on the high street, would bring a trial for criminal assault.

Improbably, there then followed a serious debate over whether Schalk Burger's eye-gouging manoeuvre should be a yellow or red card offence. His speciality was initially defended by his coach, although he later claimed that these remarks had, like Luke Fitzgerald's eyes, been taken out of their proper context. However, we football hooligans will now feel entitled to say, as politicians do, that we're not taking any more lectures from that lot.

Even John McEnroe at his most competitive never interfered directly with an opponent's ability to see line calls and, in tennis, the current scandal is not over injuries but their treatment. Andy Murray was accused of exaggerating a sore thumb to buy time during a warm-up tournament and his fourth-round opponent, Stanislav Wawrinka, raised eyebrows by receiving, from a trainer between games, a thigh massage so lengthy and intense that the cameras eventually cut away, presumably mindful of Ofcom guidelines on family viewing. Other players this week have delayed matches by up to 10 minutes as their signs of vitality and hydration were checked by a courtside doctor.

What has happened here is that civil law - the All England Club's fear of litigation under health and safety legislation if a player swoons or dies from exhaustion - has introduced a chink in the laws of the game, allowing the possibility (although this has never been proven) of building into tennis an ice hockey-style time-out.

And, because all new sporting tactics are extended and perfected, the risk is that tiring Wimbledon contenders will soon attempt a Schalk Burger on themselves or an opponent in order to gain an hour's down time while opticians and eye surgeons attend.

Tennis, incidentally, offers the most elegant example of rule-bending. After unforced errors, Andy Murray screams "Focus!", a word which brings the same plosive satisfaction as a near-alternative, without risking disciplinary action.

Euphemistic expression also figures in this week's cricketing controversy. England captain Andrew Strauss acknowledged that Andrew "Freddie" Flintoff "stuffed up" by almost missing, after what seems to have been a strenuous night, a visit to the military cemeteries at Ypres, a pre-Ashes motivational trip borrowed from a similar exercise by the Australians four years ago.

There are many oddities here. The idea that men might be persuaded to bowl or bat better by the reminder that blokes their age died for the nation is already peculiar and becomes more so when we remember that, after stopping to acknowledge the Anzac heroes, the Aussies suffered a rare series defeat. At a time when football is trying to play down any association between sport and war - especially around England v Germany fixtures - it seems unwise for another game to be exploring the metaphor. It's probably a good thing that Germany doesn't play top-level cricket.

We should also probably hope that neither the Lions nor the Springboks visit Boer war sites before tomorrow's Test. If they get any more pumped up, it might be the last thing they see before their eyes are gouged out.

The prime minister should not be boasting about his gay-friendly credentials when he supports the ban on same-sex marriage

I am not surprised that Gordon Brown has turned down an invitation to march on Saturday's Pride London gay parade. Downing Street is claiming that "security considerations" prevent the prime minister from attending. This is a poor excuse. Doesn't he have bodyguards and a flak jacket?

More likely, he is not marching because he fears he would be booed and jeered, like he was at the D-day commemorations. His government is not as pro-gay rights as it claims. He has angered many people in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community by blocking full equality on issues such as civil marriage and protection against homophobic harassment, which is explicitly excluded from the current equality bill.

Nevertheless, Brown is sending to the parade, in his place, his delightful wife, Sarah.

She will be marching with us. Presumably the Downing Street security people have deemed that, compared to her husband, she is less of a protest target and less likely to be the victim of an assassination attempt. I see. Put the woman in the frontline. Hmm! Isn't this a wee bit sexist and cowardly?

Never mind, I look forward to marching with Sarah. Her participation and support - even as a substitute for the PM - is much appreciated.

I won't embarrass her. I will be on my best behaviour. But I do plan to remind Sarah that she and Gordon were able to get married, whereas gay couples cannot. Her husband supports the ban on same-sex marriage. He won't give lesbian and gay partners the same right to marry as he and his wife have enjoyed.

I hope Sarah will be persuaded that the time has come for marriage equality, and that she'll have a word in Gordon's ear, urging him to legislate equal marriage rights, when she gets back to Downing Street after the parade. Perhaps she can influence Gordon is a progressive direction just like Carla Bruni has allegedly persuaded her husband, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, to temper some of his more rightwing policies.

What's all the fuss about gay marriage, some people cry. Don't we already have it? No, civil partnerships are not marriage or equality. They are a form of sexual apartheid: gay couples cannot have a civil marriage and heterosexual couples cannot have a civil partnership. Call me ungrateful, but I think it is wrong to have different laws for gay people and those who are straight. In a democracy, the law is supposed to apply equally to everyone. This means marriage equality for all.

I argue for legalising same-sex marriage, even though I don't much like the institution of marriage and its often less-than-noble history of subjugating women. Although I would not want to get married myself, I oppose marriage discrimination and defend the right of other same-sex couples to get married if they wish.

In March this year, at a Downing Street reception for gay community leaders, from which I was excluded, Gordon Brown condemned the way Proposition 8 in California outlaws gay marriage. Isn't this a tad hypocritical, given that his government also outlaws same-sex marriage?

According to an anonymous tip-off I received on Monday this week, Brown has ensured that I am not on the invite list for this Saturday's gay pride reception at Downing Street, which he will host. The reception is being held for "prominent gay campaigners". The official excuse for not inviting me, according my tip-off, is that I am "not prominent enough". Well, yes, I am not exactly a household name. But are any of the other invitees?

Does my exclusion have anything to do with the fact that I have criticised the government's ban on same-sex marriage and gay blood donors, and its refusal to give asylum to gay refugees who have fled homophobic persecution in countries such as Uganda, Iran, Nigeria, Iraq and Belarus?

I also understand that Brown is still angry that I heckled him over his government's "war on terror" and its erosion of civil liberties, when he opened the Taking Liberties exhibition at the British Library late last year. Perhaps he fears a repeat embarrassment?

I have been campaigning for LGBT human rights for 40 years, starting after the Stonewall riots in 1969. I was one of the group of people who helped organise Britain's first gay pride parade in 1972.

I don't do my human rights work to win awards, titles, honours or invites. It doesn't matter to me that I haven't been invited to Downing Street. What angers me is the principle - the way the prime minister invites and fetes mostly pro-Labour loyalists in the LGBT community; ignoring all other campaigners. It is a manipulative divide and rule tactic by an insecure government that knows its record on lesbian and gay human rights is not as glorious as it claims.

Instead of remedying the remaining aspects of homophobic discrimination, Brown seems more interested in isolating and excluding gay voices who continue to insist on full LGBT equality.

The Labour government's many commendable gay law reforms over the last decade are no excuse for its stonewalling on the abolition of these lingering aspects of homophobic inequality. Perhaps the prime minister should concentrate less on boasting about his gay-friendly credentials and spend a bit more time delivering the polices that will complete the quest for LGBT human rights.

With National Express abandoning a franchise, the system is bankrupt. Railway nationalisation is the only rational solution

The temporary nationalisation of the east coast mainline service should be another nail in the coffin of the privatisation of the railways. It shows once again what a bad deal for taxpayers the privatisation of the railways has turned out to be.

The government says it plans to return the franchise as quickly as possible to a private contractor, but it should instead take the opportunity to retain the line in public hands. Following, as it does, the fiasco of Railtrack, which brought the national rail network to the brink of collapse in 2002, and the collapse of Metronet, in charge of two thirds of the misguided public private partnership (PPP) on the tube, this is the right time to plan returning the entire national rail network to public ownership. If the government tossed aside the ideological blinkers of the Treasury and got that message, they would do themselves a great deal of good among passengers and taxpayers alike.

It is a complete con for the National Express group to walk away from the contract, leaving a gap in the national rail budget, forcing the state to bear the cost while the service is re-franchised - possibly at a lower value than the National Express contract - but insisting on its right to continue to operate other franchises unscathed. National Express says it has received "clear and detailed" legal advice that it does not have to hand back its London to Essex franchise and East Anglia routes. So it wants to run away from a problem on one line and let the rest of us pick up the pieces, while continuing to make profits from other lines.

The attempt of National Express to avoid any consequences for their other franchises from their abandonment of the east coast service is just another example of the privateers trying to take the public sector for a ride. As Lord Adonis says, "It is simply unacceptable to reap the benefits of contracts when times are good, only to walk away from them when times become more challenging."

Time and again, we have seen the nationalisation of losses and the privatisation of profits. It's also the latest demonstration that it is a fairy tale that privatisation means the private sector takes the risk as well as taking its profit. In truth, every time a privatisation of a vital public service fails, the public sector picks up the tab. This culture of parts of the private sector fleecing the taxpayer has to stop.

Part of the problem is that civil servants are taken to the cleaners in the construction of the privatisation contracts by the private companies' sharper legal teams. One of the rationales for the tube's PPP was that it made no sense to hand billions of pounds of public money for tube upgrades over to London Underground management and civil servants who had such a poor record of delivering. Yet, these same civil servants were left to draw up the detail of the PPP contracts. They were completely turned over by the private sector.

But the real issue is that it is inherently wasteful to run these services on privatised lines. The nature of the privatising companies is that a significant proportion of the profits of their activities have to be paid in dividends to shareholders rather than reinvested in the service. This is money wasted. A publicly-owned company would be obliged to reinvest any revenues back into the transport system.

Furthermore, privatisation is justified on the grounds that the private sector is driven, through the rigour of competition, to be more efficient and more responsive to passengers' needs. This is a fiction in the case of a natural monopoly like a railway. Apart from the brief period of competition among bidders for contracts, there is no day-to-day competition at all - no one is going to build a rival railway line and poach passengers from the private franchisee. They are under no pressure from any competition at all. In such circumstances, it is more rational, and makes more sense in terms of sustaining investment, for rail services to be publicly-owned.

Nor is it the case that public ownership of the rail network naturally has to involve poorer management than the private sector. There are many publicly-owned rail companies all over the world that provide services that British transport users can only envy. The task is to build up good quality management, including the best management from around the world, overseeing real investment that meets the needs of rail travellers.

It shouldn't just be the east coast service that's nationalised and it shouldn't just be temporary. Ultimately, the rail network would be more rationally run in the public sector.

Ken Livingstone will be one of the speakers at the Progressive London conference on the global economic crisis, Saturday 11 July

In a bid to please the red-top press, prisons have become dumping grounds for people with problems. It is time to take stock

In case you haven't noticed, our prisons are in crisis. The jail population soared to an all-time high of almost 84,000 in 2008 - more than doubling since 1992 - and overcrowding continues to reach record levels. We lock up a greater proportion of our population than the French, the Germans, the Italians, the Turks, Greeks, Poles, Hungarians and just about every other European nation - even though British society is no more criminogenic than the continent.

Why should we worry? Because penal expansionism is corrosive to society. Prisons are not tools to be deployed lightly. In England and Wales they have become a surrogate for a health and welfare system that fails the most vulnerable. Prisons are becoming little more than warehouses for dumping people with problems society has failed to deal with - those with mental health needs, with histories of neglect and abuse, with drug and alcohol addictions.

And despite all this, the dramatic increase in our use of imprisonment has only encouraged a more fearful and insecure population, and has raised unrealistic expectations about the role prison can play in securing a safer society. It certainly doesn't seem to be winning the government any votes.

What has caused this crisis? Given the long-term trends of falling crime, it is penal policy (pdf) and the criminal justice system that have driven up numbers rather than any upsurge in crime. Sentences have got steadily longer, while more and more individuals have been recalled to prison for breach of licence. The crisis has also been fuelled by legislation. Consider this: in the 1980s, there were seven law and order-related acts for the entire decade. In the 1990s, there were 11. Since 2000, there have been an astonishing 31 pieces of legislation related to law and order passing through parliament.

In 2007, the Howard League for Penal Reform set up the Commission on English Prisons Today to investigate the crisis in our prisons and to come up with a blueprint for a penal system fit for the 21st century. I was asked to chair the commission, and we spent the last two years speaking to leading experts and visiting other countries to gather any lessons we could. Chief among our findings is that it is perfectly possible to have less crime, safer communities and fewer people in prison.

Early on, we decided that a key theme of our report would be that of "excess" and its counter, that of "moderation". We saw excess in the ever-soaring prison population, excess in terms of law and order spending, excess in terms of legislative hyperactivity. As the commission conducted its inquiries, we then saw another crisis of excess-hit society in the form of the credit crunch and the downfall of the banks. There are very clear parallels between the financial crisis and the crisis facing the country's penal policy and practice. Just as the banking sector has squandered and gambled with the finances of investors in pursuit of short-term gain, so too has penal policy been driven by unregulated expansion and initiatives designed to win headlines in the red tops rather than any lasting public good.

It is time to take stock. Expansionism was driven in a period of economic affluence, and many mistakes were made simply because we could afford them. Other mistakes were made out of electoral cynicism, although pandering to public fears and stoking an obsession with crime is ultimately self-defeating - an unregulated appetite for punishment will always outstrip a government's capacity to legislate or ability to fund yet more prison cells. Ultimately, the criminal justice system is a blunt tool that cannot hope to solve the underlying causes of crime, which are rooted in social exclusion and inequality.

For this reason we are advocating a new approach: one rooted in localism not bureaucratic and complex centralism. One that engages communities and gives them the tools to address their problems. We believe that local government should have a far greater role in the criminal justice system, and that actors outside the criminal justice sector - the health and education sectors for starters - should be far more engaged in tackling such issues as the crisis of mental health in our jails, and the fact that the average reading age of an adult male prisoner is 11.

Our report found that countries with high levels of social and institutional trust, as well as more equal societies, have low prison populations. We live in an unequal society, and one where trust in institutions, in politicians, in judges - and even in each other - is at an all-time low. So our prison population is at an all-time high. It doesn't have to be this way. With the new realities on public spending we must make important choices, and will need to take more care with those choices. There are broader political points here, and our commission has started a debate in criminal justice that should spill out into all aspects of social policy.

Grass doesn't grow under the heavy roller. In characteristic cricketing terms, Clem Attlee described the lot of Anthony Eden in serving under Churchill. It is not just big personalities but also the grind of governing itself which can crush green political shoots. Long-in-the-tooth ministers acquire defensive instincts, fearing that anything admitted to be wrong with the world will turn out to have been their fault, and terrified that every fresh thought they have will be damned as a humiliating retreat.

Labour has executed an extraordinary series of body swerves this week, most of them potentially popular moves. But it has described its manoeuvres so meekly that, instead of appearing fresh, it emerges looking like it swings with the wind. National educational strategies - supplied by a private monopoly - have bitten the dust. The illiberal prospect of compulsory ID cards for absolutely everyone, as opposed to all those applying for passports, finally vanished on Tuesday, with the cancellation of the experimental plan to force airport staff to enrol for the scheme. The nationalisation of the east coast mainline may have been forced by circumstances, but still marked a fresh departure from John Major's ruinous model of rail privatisation. Dumping the Royal Mail sell-off suggests the government is no longer willing to injure itself further for the sake of a privatisation of its own. Last but not least, the new housing minister, John Healey, announced some easing of the strictures the Treasury has used for decades to block councils building new homes.

All of this will be welcome to Labour's natural supporters, and to many others besides. At a push, the moves on rail and mail could have been presented as part of a post-credit-crunch re-evaluation of the neoliberal presumption - private good, public bad. Instead, the official account was that nothing much had changed. Postal privatisation was not happening, Peter Mandelson insisted, because of mere "jostling" in the parliamentary timetable and turbulent market conditions. The part-nationalisation of rail, meanwhile, was branded a temporary expediency; and the continuity in the ID cards scheme was emphasised over the change.

The irony is that a few weeks after Gordon Brown promised near-mutinous MPs a change in his style, his government appears to be shifting ground on much of substance while remaining doggedly consistent in presentation.

There are obvious difficulties in claiming that screeching U-turns have been carefully planned. Everyone knows, for instance, that there was a fear of mass parliamentary rebellion over Royal Mail, so it is tough now to claim a change of heart with any credibility. But other initiatives this week cannot be dismissed as capitulations. Tuesday's proposal to license teachers is one example. Another was yesterday's speech from the new home secretary, Alan Johnson, which put a new emphasis on the causes of crime and antisocial behaviour, as opposed to the stress on terrorism above all else, which has defined policy since 9/11. A third was the extra money for social housing - never a priority in the Blair years - which Mr Brown earmarked on Monday.

The last move, in particular, is evidence of a recognition that the rebuilding of Labour's battered base must now take priority over the courting of middle England. After notching up its worst performance since it first became a national party, safeguarding the heartlands is suddenly a priority, although the usual wisdom is that it will come at a price in more marginal seats. But things could play out rather differently in circumstances where - in marginal and heartland seats alike - voters are crying out for change because they have grown disillusioned with a government they no longer believe stands for anything at all. Cultivating green shoots under the weight of a dozen years in power will not be easy, but it is now the government's only viable option.

The tax rise on bingo threatens a mainly working-class leisure pursuit - and the social clubs where it is played

Thirty years ago I was on the committee of my local workingmen's club in a town outside Leeds. One of the duties of committee members was to take a regular turn at calling bingo on a Sunday night. It was a serious commitment. I remember once rushing back from a meeting in London in time for my session on the rota, complete with its "two little ducks -22, two fat ladies - 88, and on its own - number one", and all the rest.

Bingo was a feature of the life of such social clubs in Britain, and at the time there were 4,000 of them, with four million members, affiliated to the Club and Institute Union.

The main bingo night at Guiseley Workingmen's Club - a name we liberated men succeeded in changing to Hawkhill Social Club in the heady days of 1970s Labour equality legislation - was on a Sunday. It was usually attended by about 30 people, the vast majority of whom were women, mainly towards the older end, though by no means exclusively so.

For some it was their one social activity; the highlight of their week.

Bingo thrived not only in social clubs such as Guiseley WMC, but in hundreds of former cinemas that closed down when the spread of television in the 1950s saw the cinema industry decline rapidly. Bingo halls are still in use today, though in fewer numbers.

The chancellor, Alistair Darling, has decided to increase the tax on the game from 15% to 22%. Social clubs and bingo halls say the increase is putting them under threat. Many social clubs, like local pubs, are already struggling to survive because leisure habits have changed. At least 1,000 have already gone out of business - club affiliations to the Club and Institute Union are down by a quarter to 3,000.

Like bingo, the clubs are very much institutions of the working class. They were established as co-operatives, owned and run by their members. Profits were sunk back into the clubs, instead of into the pockets of pub landlords. They used their collective strength to negotiate deals with breweries for cheap beer. They even established their own brewery in the north-east. They were partly democratic, although shamefully many allowed full membership and voting rights only to men. That has now changed.

As they are working-class institutions, so bingo is a working-class leisure pursuit. The increased tax on the game could finish many off, bringing a new wave of closures that would deprive many working-class people not only of one of their pleasures, but their clubs as well.

Demonstrators staged a protest outside parliament against the increase in tax. They hope the chancellor listened to them and will act accordingly.

Nottinghamshire police say handler could be prosecuted as it is revealed force spent £300,000 on new kennels

Nottinghamshire police force is being investigated by the RSPCA after two alsatian police dogs died when they were left in a car by their handler during the heatwave.

The force, which reported the animals' death to the organisation, had recently spent £300,000 on new kennels, it was revealed today.

The dogs were found dead in a private car which had been left in the car park at Nottinghamshire police headquarters in Arnold on Tuesday afternoon. Their handler, who was on duty, had gone inside some time before the dogs were found dead. The handler, who has not been suspended and is now at home on leave, could be prosecuted, the force confirmed. The maximum sentence for causing unnecessary suffering to an animal is six months in prison and a £20,000 fine.

The car park is close to the force's new kennels. The force has its own dog breeding programme but it is thought the alsatians had been donated by a breeder for public service.

Councillor John Clarke, the chairman of the Nottinghamshire Police Authority, said: "I think there will be some retribution for this at some point in the future. But I know the team will be mortified. It's a very close-knit team. It's tragic when you consider we have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on kennels. Unfortunately tragedies do happen."

Peter Davies, the assistant chief constable, said: "This is a tragic incident and we value the important work our police dogs carry out on a daily basis. That is why we swiftly reported this incident to the RSPCA and we will be working with them very closely."

A spokesman for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said: "It was reported to us yesterday by Nottinghamshire police. We are investigating and they are co-operating with us. I am sure this isn't the first incident and it won't be the last."

Police - who laid a bunch of white lilies, chrysanthemums and gypsophila outside their headquarters today - confirmed they had received complaints from angry members of the public.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission said it had received a referral from the force and was deciding whether to investigate.

The Dogs Trust, the UK's largest dog welfare charity, said it was "saddened" by the news. A spokeswoman said: "Whilst the cause of death is still to be determined, the charity would like to remind dog owners and police dog handlers that leaving your dog locked in a car can prove fatal, particularly during a heatwave. It can take just 20 minutes for a dog to die and temperatures reach over 40 degrees in some vehicles."

The government faces an extraordinary challenge in the future because it has failed to save the future of Royal Mail today (Mandelson abandons plan for part-privatisation of Royal Mail, 2 July). Small businesses depend on a well-functioning postal service. Delaying the modernisation of Royal Mail is not going to make it more efficient, nor is leaving the huge pensions deficit to grow bigger.

Although post offices are not part of the postal services bill, the 2,500 post office closures over the past year have had a detrimental effect on Britain's small firms - any more closures would be a disaster. Our research shows that 88% of small businesses rely on the post office network to send their mail, yet 20% said post handling takes longer because of increased queueing and because they have to travel further as their local branch has closed.

Small businesses need a fully operational postal service. The Post Office takes 30% of its revenue from Royal Mail services and products. A strong and profitable Royal Mail is essential for a strong and profitable post office network. The government must act now to ensure we have an efficient and effective postal system to meet the demands of the country's 4.7m small firms.
Clive Davenport
Federation of Small Businesses

Shock horror: National Express has given up the prestigious east coast mainline because it's losing money, but the public and media seem incapable of seeing the real story - or rather they are just beginning to. The public think these main rail routes are subsidised by the government. In fact it's the other way round: the greedy Treasury wanted more than £1bn from this operator for the privilege of running this route. Gordon Brown was inflexible in the face of a recession which has severely hit the more expensive fare grades. Result: first GNER (the previous very good operator) and now National Express were driven to the wall.

New Labour wants for its own reasons to be seen to be punishing these train operating companies; talk of corporate greed pleases their supporters. Odd when it is Brown's greed that has caused the crisis and he flung countless billions at banks etc. The other factor is overcrowding. British Rail would have simply rolled spare stock our of the sidings for summer Saturdays and other peaks. The companies are charged a fortune by rolling stock companies for rolling one yard. That's why people are standing from Durham to Southampton while lines of perfectly good stock lie hidden in old airfields and military bases round the country. It's the logical outcome of an illogical system.

Now the government has got what it wants, a temporary nationalisation, a deal will eventually be struck that could have saved either company. Playing politics with our railways, again. Bad enough when the Tories created the useless Railtrack in the first botched privatisation.

The good news is that this superb railway will keep running whatever deals are done. The reason it is so reliable, fast, environmentally friendly etc is entirely down to British Rail - the track, electrification and trains were BR's last great fling of modernisation. The privatised firms have added diddly squat, apart from some style, in the case of GNER. So take the east coast line for the loveliest mainline in Britain. Book well in advance and reserve a seat and you will have a joy, a bargain and a scenic experience you will recall with pleasure for years to come. And forget who the operator is or isn't, nationalised or not. The real shock is that it doesn't make any difference.
Benedict le Vay
Author, Britain from the Rails

One largely overlooked factor in the east coast mainline mess is that the convoluted system of regulation has delayed the introduction of additional services by the franchised operator while promoting "competition", not on a level playing field but on an uneven and very muddy one. The franchisee's cash flows have suffered in consequence. Moreover, the legal framework controlling access to the tracks has become so rigid that significant revision of the timetable is a slow and compromise-riddled process. The railway's own forecasting tools suggest that an integrated timetable based on good European practice would yield millions of extra revenue and benefit passengers and the environment. Is not this more evidence that the present franchising model is too discredited for the department simply to go round the course yet again and that a model more obviously in the public interest should be considered?
Jonathan Tyler
Principal, Passenger Transport Networks

A few years ago my wife and I relocated from Newcastle to Brussels. At the time she was worried because much of her work involves frequent travel to London and the south-east. As it has turned out, not only is it significantly faster to travel from here instead of Newcastle, it is also on average much cheaper and takes place on trains which are not overcrowded and where a seat is guaranteed. Unless there is significant investment in rail infrastructure in the UK, the only thing that will encourage people to use trains instead of cars is overcrowding on the roads
Alan Craig
Brussels

These franchise fiascos will be avoided when the EU railway directives are finally adopted for passenger services, as for freight. We would then get away from the byzantine funding arrangements. Network rail should be responsible just for intercity routes. The rest of the rail system could be put under local control, to meet local needs.
Professor Lewis Lesley
Liverpool

Would-be teachers will need to be better qualified to be accepted for training under Tory plans

Would-be teachers will need to be better qualified to be accepted for training under Conservative plans to raise school standards announced today.

The shadow schools secretary, Michael Gove, said trainee teachers with lower than B-grade GCSEs in English and maths and a 2:2 degree would not receive funding to train under a Tory government.

At present, teacher trainees are accepted with C-grade GCSEs in English and maths and third-class degrees.

In a speech to the Institute of Physics today, Gove said the Tories would raise the grades needed to train and abolish the right of trainee teachers to take "infinite resits" in literacy and numeracy tests.

"We want a new generation of maths and science teachers in primary and secondary school. Good as our teachers are, they must be better," he said.

"At the moment, trainee teachers can resit the basic literacy and numeracy tests, which are the gateway to the profession, an infinite number of times - 13% had to take the the numeracy test three or more times before passing.

"We need to have the highest-quality graduates in the classroom, so the practice of multiple resits will end and the tests will be upgraded."

Teachers entering the profession, particuarly in primary schools, need to have the "level of knowledge required to really stretch" pupils, Gove said.

"Under a Conservative government, we will raise the bar for primary teachers, so they will need to have B grades at GCSE in English and maths," he said. "The taxpayer will only fund teacher training for those who meet this level."

He said taxpayers should not fund the 1,200 postgraduate trainees each year who have third-class degrees or worse. "We will make a 2:2 the minimum acceptable degree for a taxpayer-funded PGCE," he said.

Gove said it was a disgrace that there were no specialist courses for primary teachers in maths, and said the focus of the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) would change radically.

Every publicly funded primary teacher-training institution would have to teach primary teachers specialist courses in phonics and in maths, he said. "It is essential that primary teachers have up-to-date skills in these two fields. This will encourage the growth of specialist primary teachers in English, maths and science, which is exactly what we need to happen and what already happens in expensive prep schools."

A spokesman for Gove said the moves would cause ructions, but the change was necessary to improve the "calibre and training" of people going into the profession.

But teaching unions criticised the "arbitrary levels" suggested by Gove. Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: "Teachers need all-round subject knowledge and pedagogical skills. A focus on one subject in the curriculum would distort children's experience and cut down on the time given to explore all the various aspects of teaching in a primary class.

"Of course we want to attract people with good degrees, but defining a degree requirement of 2:2 is arbitrary and would potentially exclude many very good teachers."

Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: "Of course it is important that all teachers have a good understanding of maths and English - we would not quarrel with this. But being a maths genius does not mean you will be any good at teaching children, particularly primary children.

"There's more to English and maths than phonics and numeracy. Unless primary teachers understand the different ways children learn and develop, so that they know how best to teach each child in their class, any mathematical expertise will be irrelevant."

She added that there is not time in a typical PCGE course for teachers to become specialists in all the topics they need, so colleges would have to drop a subject to give more time to maths.

The schools minister, Vernon Coaker, said: "If Michael Gove is serious about raising the quality and status of the teaching profession he would not be opposing our 'licence to teach', which will boost public confidence by matching what happens with other high status professions like doctors and lawyers, and give teachers an entitlement to continuous professional development.

"The teaching profession has been transformed over the last decade and Ofsted tell us we have the best generation of teachers ever. But we are determined to go further, which is why we are making teaching a master's-level profession.

"All new teachers are university graduates and we are focusing on making sure all teachers have the skills necessary to be effective in the classroom.

"With George Osborne confirming this week that the Tories would cut investment in our schools from next year if they win the election, the Tories should explain how many teachers and teaching assistants would be sacked under their planned cuts. They should come clean and tell us that 10% cuts to schools is the equivalent of losing 44,130 teachers, and 34,490 teaching assistants and school support staff."

According to the TDA, 89% of trainees in 2007-08 had a 2:2 or higher degree. A spokesman said: "Academic qualifications are not the only measure of a good teacher. Someone with a first in physics from Oxford University wouldn't necessarily be the best teacher."

o Cost of year's operations in Iraq estimated at £877m
o Study warns of 'inevitable' MoD cutbacks after recession

The cost of Britain's military operations in Afghanistan this financial year will reach almost £3.5bn, an increase of more than 30%, according to the latest official estimates.

The Commons defence committee expressed concern that the cost of operations in Iraq, where British troops no longer have a combat role, was estimated to be as high as £877m. It said the Ministry of Defence needed to explain the figure, given that for most of the year only 400 British troops would remain in the country, predominantly in a training role.

The panel also voiced alarm that the MoD was having to bear the full cost of some urgent operational requirements for troops in Afghanistan. Previously the costs were split 50-50 between the MoD and the Treasury.

James Arbuthnot, the Conservative chairman of the committee, said: "Clearly, there is no likelihood that the cost for operations in Afghanistan will fall over the short to medium term."

The committee's findings came as a report said the MoD would be required to cut the defence budget over the next five years by around 10-15% in real terms, or £4bn-£6bn.

According to the study, by the Royal United Services Institute, even if the economy recovers quickly "a prolonged period of austerity in public expenditure - including defence - is inevitable".

The US surge in Helmand could reduce the cost of British military operations in Afghanistan, said the report's author, Prof Malcolm Chalmers, a fellow of the institute. But he warned: "For serious savings to be made, the government would have to order a radical scaling-down of the UK presence. The conditions for this do not exist at present, and a unilateral UK drawdown would have considerable costs for relations with the US."

Contractual obligations - notably in relation to the Eurofighter-Typhoon project - limit the scope for short-term savings in the defence budget, Chalmers said. Other projects were less well advanced or had less restrictive contracts.

"Programmes for new aircraft carriers and their associated F-35 aircraft, new ballistic missile submarines ... could all [in principle] be postponed or curtailed," the report said. "Postponement of the Vanguard-replacement [Trident] submarine programme could be particularly tempting, given that it is due to be the MoD's largest procurement project from 2016-17 onwards."

3 July 1850

It is useless to conceal from ourselves the fact, though sad in itself and serious in its consequences, that the life of Sir Robert Peel hangs by the most precarious tenure. The accident which the unfortunate gentleman met with on Saturday afternoon, has produced symptoms of the most alarming character; and, for ourselves, we see too much reason to fear that, even while we write, hope of his recovery may have been abandoned by his family and friends. It may seem premature to speculate on the consequences of an event which none have power to foresee, and all desire to avert; but reflections on the political importance of Sir Robert Peel's death thrust themselves upon every mind in contemplating his uncertain condition; and, as such reflections are all of a kind to reflect honour on him, it seems a false delicacy only that would hinder their utterance, while the fate of the sufferer yet hangs in the balance.

We cannot think, - supposing the affairs of this country to progress as tranquilly and prosperously as may be expected, - that the probability of Sir Robert Peel's again taking office has been other than a small one. It is not the chance of that event, which gave him his chief value to the country; it was his weight and authority as a member of the legislature.

In the present day, when all our reforms are certainly not accomplished, the loss of a man of this historical character is like that of the key-stone from the arch. There are instances of mental power, and of some practical experience, among the ultra men who have revolted from his lead; but, on the whole, they represent only the stubbornness of conservatism. These politicians, whose line of conduct is of the utmost importance in determining whether we are to progress peacefully or to retrograde dangerously, have hitherto been guided by the legitimate influence of their respected chief. That check being suddenly withdrawn, who is to answer for their perseverance in the path which he has chalked out? Their representatives in parliament are neither very scrupulous nor very well assured of their own position; and it seems just as likely that they would, in their new freedom, carry over their strength to the camp of high toryism. We do not suppose that any conduct could deprive us of the fruits of reforms which have been gained; but it might impede their successful working, and so far check the course of legislation on which we have entered, so as to be pregnant with danger. There is, therefore, no man whom we can so little afford to lose as the eminent statesman whose calamity we have now to deplore.

Simon Jenkins (As soldiers die, the MOD is stockpiling for the cold war, 1 July) condemns the new aircraft carriers as relics of the cold war and instead suggests making exclusive preparation for Afghanistan-type operations the principal driver of British defence acquisitions. Given his previous opposition to open-ended, costly and messy campaigns of this sort, this seems bizarre. Simon should be supporting aircraft carriers, since the task of these versatile ships is to help prevent such awful conflicts happening again; they also provide the conditions in which smaller ships can maintain order at and from the sea, engage where necessary in less ambitious, more realistic Sierra Leone/tsunami relief operations and have a role in deterring the recurrence of inter-state conflict up to 2070. It is because carriers are such cost-effective vessels that the Americans, Russians, Chinese, French, Spanish, Italians, Japanese and others have them too.
Professor Geoffrey Till
King's College London

The IPPR report Simon Jenkins mentions has a serious problem when it mentions more co-operation with Europe as an alternative to Nato and the US. Most EU countries' armed forces are paper forces, unable to operate outside of Europe and without US support - even if EU members can all agree to their use. We must be careful that we do not make decisions that have long-term consequences for our security based on short-term economic problems.
Alan Hobbins
Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire

If it is vital for Britain to have a nuclear deterrent because of rogue states, unforeseeable threats in the future etc, why do Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada, Scandinavia and other developed states not feel the same need? What argument can be advanced against other countries acquiring nuclear weapons for their security?

Until those who support renewing Trident can answer these questions, their case remains utterly unconvincing.
Professor Malyn Newitt
Romsey, Hampshire

Armed Forces Day may be the government's "brazen attempt ... to shore up support for its unpopular war in Afghanistan" (Letters, 27 June). But there has been a host of less brazen initiatives to remodel militarism in British society, raising deeper questions about democratic decision-making. Military representatives' PR missions to schools and universities preceded the campaign for Armed Forces Day. Military-friendly events, without direct news salience, appear in the media, including on the BBC. The top brass now propound overtly political justifications for Iraqi and Afghanistan operations. These are the hallmarks of a tacit, but sustained, political operation, prompted at the highest levels. But in what democratic forums were the merits of this campaign debated and agreed?
Bryn Jones
Bath

He fought the law and the law won. Maybe he needs another lawyer

So without the salvation of a successful appeal, Ronnie Biggs will die in jail, having never fully expressed remorse for the Great Train Robbery. He said in his autobiography that the violence was "regrettable". Was that not enough? This is a travesty. What we know is that the old villain had admirable legal representation, for he took as his advisor, Giovanni di Stefano, friend to Saddam Hussein, adviser to Slobodan Milosevic, admirer of Osama bin Laden, trusted advocate for Nicholas van Hoogstraten. That Jack Straw chose not to listen to such a man sails pretty close to outrage, but it's no surprise in itself. Shows they're not listening to anybody.

o The vital thing, with swine flu taking a grip around the country, is to stay calm. Keep it in proportion. We will all get through this. The risks, as we know them, seem small. Each of us must take the lead, and so we cannot commend the approach of Lord Redesdale who spent much of yesterday wandering the corridors of the House of Lords informing anyone who might listen that someone at his son's school has the virus and that he might have it too. This sort of thing will cause panic. Take a Lemsip, my noble lord. Stay warm. Drink fluids. Chill out.

o With so many threats to free speech, we thought we should side with the angels and so the Guardian published a map enabling people to track the spread of censorship on the internet around the world. And well received it was too. Except perhaps at the Welsh assembly, where we learn from assembly member Leighton Andrews that the filtering system was calibrated so it censored our map of internet repression. Freedom's enemies are everywhere; Iran, China ... er, Wales.

o As we said yesterday, jobs will be hard to come by in the future. Some say they do not wish to work as Boris Johnson lookalikes - the job we flagged up yesterday. Beggars reborn as choosers. Shona McIsaac, MP for Cleethorpes, is looking for someone to do "dull but essential day-to-day stuff". There is some constituency casework, she says in the job ad, "but not a lot - unless all the constituency staff are struck down with swine flu". A bit of writing, but be warned: "I'm very fond of punctuation." Desirable but not essential that the candidate should have some interest in Labour, but what would help is "an ability to express endless enthusiasm for Humber Bridge tolls, the A180, saltmarsh invasion, strikes at oil refineries". And let's face it, you get to work for Shona. Money too.

o We end with thought for the day, and it concerns the Very Rev Colin Slee, dean of Southwark Cathedral, who purchased, during a trip to Woolworths in South Africa, a biscuit recipe. How much does it cost, he asked the assistant. "Two fifty," she told him. "Two rand fifty, he thought. That's reasonable. Twenty pence. And these biscuits, they are delicious." And they were. But the Lord works in mysterious ways - rivalled only in this respect by Woolworths in Johannesburg; and so it was that on inspecting his credit card bill back home in London, Rev Slee found the upmarket store had charged him 250 rand for the recipe. About £20. That's ridiculous, give it back, he thundered down the phone at them. No chance, "you have already seen the recipe," the store said. "We absolutely will not refund your money." OK then, said the Rev, for he is a man of righteous anger, why don't I just stick your recipe on the internet so everyone can have it for nothing. "I wish you wouldn't do that," said the lady from Woolworths. But by then it was too late. And so it is that the Rev sent the Woolies cookie recipe far and wide with the instruction that each recipient "pass it on to everyone you can possibly think of". He baked them, in a batch of 112, and reflected that these people will think twice in future before they mess with a man of the cloth.

Just another friendly reminder that as well as this website, you can also follow me on Twitter - @cllrilindley.

For those readers who are new to Twitter, here are a few Salford- or Conservative-related Twitter feeds worth following:

• @jfostermep - newly-elected Conservative MEP Jacqui Foster has just joined Twitter
• @andycrane64 – Channel M news anchor, BBC Radio Manchester host, and (for those of a certain age, like me) Children's Television legend.
• @SalfordOnline and @tom_manchester - Tom Rodgers from SalfordOnline.com
• @davidottewell - Chief Reporter, Manchester Evening News
• @PamelaWelsh – Salford Advertiser reporter
• @Conservatives - Conservative Party twitter feed

Seems our local media are very proactive in embracing new media, then!

I hope Daniel Hannan MEP can tell the difference between Sunder Katwala and I this time, as I'll be debating him next week.

——————-
The world of the media is changing as fast as everything else. A politician makes a speech ignored by the conventional media and it gets 1 million hits on utube. The world of Blogs forces a resignation of a chief government adviser before the daily newspapers know what is going on! The new social media is challenging the conventional news elites as never before.

Politicians and their established lobbies are running scared. The new social media has blown a hole through the existing elites. What does this mean for the future? Speakers include:
Daniel Hannan MEP
Carol Haslam – producer
Professor Barrie Axford is the author of the book "New Media and Politics"
Sunny Hundal (some blogger)

More about the event on this page. It looks pretty full but I think they still have a few spaces left (free).

REcc

I posted a few months ago about sombody

... Even though bonus season is December onwards....

So do they know something that the rest of us don't know?

Bonuses paid in July?

o Home secretary admits 'degree of complacency'
o Measures to cut two-year delay in issuing asbos

Alan Johnson, the new home secretary, today announced a package of measures designed to revive the use of antisocial behaviour orders to tackle the most extreme cases of intimidation and harassment.

In his first major speech on crime, Johnson admitted that a period of intense activity by the government on antisocial behaviour had been followed by "a certain degree of complacency on this issue".

The package includes measures to cut delays of up to two years in getting the courts to issue an asbo, making it much easier for problems to be reported and to provide more counselling support for victims.

The renewed official interest in asbos follows two years which saw their popularity dwindle. The number of new orders issued was down by 30% and the children's secretary, Ed Balls, said he hoped to live in "the kind of society that puts asbos behind us".

Johnson said that it can sometimes take up to two years to secure an asbo, during which time there is no hope of respite for victims of crime, with many victims reporting further persistent harassment, defacement of property and intimidation.

The home secretary said he was working with the justice secretary, Jack Straw, to take action in three areas:

o Cutting delays by setting maximum waiting times and limiting the number of times cases can be adjourned. Speeding up the process in the worst cases of intimidation by training local authority staff so they can present cases themselves where possible.

o Introducing local antisocial behaviour "action squads" to support frontline professionals dealing with severe problems such as underage drinking on an estate or a family that's causing widespread chaos.

o Ensuring that victims don't get trapped in a "never-ending circle of phone calls" when they try to report problems by providing website access to local contacts and information. More counselling support for the victims of antisocial behaviour.

Figures for asbo numbers have not been published since December 2006, when the number of new orders being issued had dropped by 34% on the year before and breach rates soared to 61% amongst teenagers.

A Whitehall evaluation dealt asbos a massive blow when it revealed that they were widely seen as a "badge of honour" by teenagers and even some criminal justice professionals.

While Johnson made clear his personal interest in a new drive to tackle antisocial behaviour he said in terms of his general approach to law and order the long term fall in the crime rate did not suggest that "a scattergun of new initiatives" or a new 'radical restructuring' of the criminal justice system would now be justified.

This implies that the new home secretary is not particularly interested in adding to the long line of major criminal justice bills that have poured out of the Home Office in the past 15 years.

"The focus must be on listening to the public, looking at what practical steps need to be taken to make the current system, with all the powers and responsibilities that this government has introduced, respond to their concerns," said the home secretary.

He said the encouraging national crime picture however offered little reassurance to those who live in neighbourhoods where threatening behaviour, harassment and intimidation were part of everyday life. "Worry about crime is seriously debilitating. If on some streets or estates, there are people who feel they can't step out after dark to buy a bottle of lemonade because they are fearful of the people they might find hanging around the stairwell or outside the off-licence, it has a profound impact on their life," he said arguing that tackling this fear of crime was as important as dealing with the reality of crime.

He also careful to stress his personal interest in reviving the drive the tackle the causes of crime, quoting Tony Blair's famous promise to be 'tough on crime, and tough on the causes of crime'. In his speech at Battersea arts centre, south London, he cited the "startling fact" that while children in care make up only 0.5% of the child population, when they get older, they are 25% of the prison population.

He signalled a renewed interest in expanding family intervention projects and alcohol treatment schemes arguing that "being tough on the causes of crime has been in many senses, the raison d'etre of this government over the last 12 years."

He argued that the increased investment in the child welfare programme Sure Start, education, housing, health and youth services together with the measures on child poverty had undoubtedly helped to reduce crime and antisocial behaviour. Johnson said in a revival of Tony Blair's early law and rhetoric that protecting people from crime was fundamental to "the things that any progressive government wants to achieve".

Points of order

o Maximum waiting times and limits on case adjournments to cut delays in issuing asbos

o Local action squads to tackle underage drinking and families from hell

o Extra counselling support for victims and easier reporting

o Expand family intervention projects to tackle causes of antisocial behaviour