Category Archives: Society

Clear political commitment by the G8 can benefit rich and poor countries

Posted on June 15, 2013 by World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk

By putting their own house in order on taxation and transparency the G8 countries can deliver change

Although the G8 has often been used for gestures, it affords a rare opportunity for common action by the governments of major countries. Manifestly, there have been serious deficiencies in global economic governance. By addressing them, the G8 can help not only ourselves, but the people struggling in the world’s poorest countries. This has been Britain’s agenda as host of this year’s G8.

At the top of the agenda has been taxation. Tax co-operation has not kept pace with the internationalisation of business and the innovations of corporate lawyers and accountants. Treaties designed to avoid double taxation now deliver double non-taxation. The resulting tax avoidance reduces fiscal revenues and provides an unlevel playing field for business. At a time of national austerity, it is essential for us to address this problem.

But our problem has been experienced even more acutely by poor countries, where there is a gulf between the capacities of companies and of tax authorities. If all the companies operating in Africa paid reasonable taxes, most countries would no longer need our aid. Closing all the loopholes cannot be done overnight. But this G8 aspires to deliver clear political commitment from heads of government, linked to sustained technical co-operation. The UK is not just holding a meeting; it is launching a revolution in corporate transparency. Governments are being asked to do what it takes to achieve workable common standards.

As countries rise out of poverty, there are better opportunities for business, and many British companies are market leaders. But widespread corruption has plundered poor countries and disadvantaged decent companies. Last month a report by Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general, highlighted the scale of the problem. It estimated that corporate tax avoidance and money laundering were, in combination, costing Africa more than double its aid inflow. Money laundering has been the getaway car for bribery: this year’s G8 aims to do something about it. It has started the process of cracking open the opaque international corporate labyrinth within which the true – “beneficial” – ownership of crooked money has been concealed. As with tax, it will need the combination of political commitment and sustained technical action fully to crack the problem. But the shock wave of G8 attention has already triggered a chain of conversions to transparency in jurisdictions that until now have been havens of secrecy. If you are inclined to dismiss G8 meetings as mere theatre, check the recent commitments to automatic information exchange in Luxembourg, the Caribbean and east Asia.

The commodity booms ushered in a decade of discovery: Britain now has previously unknown potential for gas. But most of the new discoveries are in the poorest countries. This is a huge opportunity, but it carries commensurate risks. The history of resource extraction in poor countries is predominantly one of plunder. Resource extraction companies are not just producers; they are custodians of the natural assets that belong to citizens. Being responsible for other people’s assets, they are analogous to banks. We have learned that banks must be regulated to higher standards than ordinary companies, and the same applies to resource extraction.

The global regulation of resource extraction is in its infancy – 50 years behind banks. The G8 is driving catch-up. The key objective of regulation is transparency. In the typical poor country citizens do not trust their governments to handle money, governments do not trust companies to behave honestly, and companies do not trust governments to keep their word. Such pervasive distrust is debilitating: confidence is an essential underpinning of prosperity. Transparency is crucial because it is the basis of building trust: people learn whether their suspicions are warranted.

Yet the G8 countries can only hope to encourage transparency by others if they practise it themselves. Britain, France and the US have now signed up to the standards of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative. For the first time by law, companies across Europe, the US and, as of last week, Canada, must report publicly all their payments to governments.

There is also scope for more transparency not just in resource extraction but across government, and not just in poor countries but in the G8. If governments need to know more about citizens, then citizens must know more about government. Information technology is radically lowering the cost of opening government to scrutiny. The G8 can showcase the new opportunities and launch partnerships between rich and poor countries that put them into practice.

Trade is the archetypal process of mutual benefit. But the arteries of trade depend upon infrastructure that in poor countries is utterly inadequate. Western investors have judged it too risky. Meanwhile, China has occupied this space uncontested. Yet through more strategic co-operation between existing organisations, the G8, the African Development Bank and the World Bank can substantially reduce the risks, enabling African infrastructure to be market-financed. Africa can get the electricity and ports that it needs, while savers in developed countries could get a better deal than the paltry returns currently available in the mature economies.

The agenda for this G8 is not glamorous. Nor can any of these issues be fixed overnight: the intention is to launch an unstoppable process of change. But, by putting our house in order, the G8 will make a material difference to the lives of the poor while also benefiting its own citizens.

Paul Collier is professor of economics and public policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University. He has been advising the prime minister on the G8 agenda

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Posted in Comment, Comment is free, G8, Global development, Society, The Observer, Trade and development, World news | Comments Off

Cameron: tax and transparency vital to make poverty history – video

Posted on June 15, 2013 by News - latest UK news and comment | guardian.co.uk

David Cameron discusses tax and transparency in his speech at the Open for Growth conference at Lancaster House in central London on Saturday
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Posted in Africa, Aid, David Cameron, Editorial, G8, Global development, Governance, guardian.co.uk, Politics, Poverty, Society, UK news, World news | Comments Off

Whatever you do on Father’s Day, don’t buy into the fear of ‘men deserts’ | Sarah Ditum

Posted on June 15, 2013 by Sarah Ditum

If you examine the figures, this report about children growing up without male role models just doesn’t add up

We live in an era of “men deserts”, says the Centre for Social Justice. One day my children will look on me with worshipful eyes and say: “Mother, how did we survive the man drought of the early 21st century?” as if I’m some Mad Max of the spunkless years. This Sunday is Father’s Day, the traditional time to pay tribute to any man you haven’t driven screaming from your fanny ghetto after mating. But what to buy?

Luckily, everyone’s got something to sell you for father’s day, and some organisations aren’t just hawking cufflinks and crap aftershave – they’re selling a whole ethos. For example, the Centre for Social Justice is flogging the idea that we have become a nation unmanned. In a press release at the beginning of this week, the CSJ told us: “Lone parents tally heads for two million […] Around one million children grow up with no contact with their father […]some of the poorest parts of the country have become ‘men deserts’ because so few primary schools have male teachers”.

Scary stuff. And fear must be a popular Father’s Day gift, because people have been buying it and buying it and buying it. The Today programme bought it. The Telegraph bought it. The Times bought it. Newsnight bought it, in a Monday night report that opened with Paxman accepting the validity of all the CSJ’s claims before asking: “Does it matter anyway?” But whoa there, Paxo! Before we assume it’s a problem – let’s find out if it’s even true.

Checking the CSJ’s claims was quite tricky at the beginning of the week, because the thinktank didn’t release its report until Thursday. But it’s here now, so let’s do what Paxman didn’t and see how those claims stack up. “Lone parents tally heads for 2 million” isn’t bad: the Office for National Statistics says there were 1.7 million lone-parent households with dependent children in England and Wales in 2011, an increase from 1.4 million in 2001.

But what about the sad 1 million children who have no contact with their father? That comes from the Fatherhood Institute, which reckons the number is “between 1 and 2 million”. The Fatherhood Institute may be a very fine and well-intentioned institute, but since it doesn’t show its working, it may also be completely wrong. You can get a rough figure of 1 million using data from the ONS – but only if you take the highest possible figures and discount indirect contact like phone calls and email. It look as if the CSJ has just hoiked out the biggest plausible number and moved on.

Then there’s the issue of male primary school teachers. It’s true that men are a minority in primary teaching, and 27% of primary schools indeed have no male teachers. You may however notice that therefore 73% of primary schools do have at least one male teacher – and that proportion is increasing as more men join the profession. You might wish that there were more male primary teachers overall, but you can’t really say that “so few” schools have them when actually the vast majority do.

And then we come to those vexatious “deserts”, which the CSJ seems to have summoned into being by taking the smallest areas in the census (called “Lower Super Output Areas”, and no I didn’t have a clue what an LSOA was before this week) and conflating the LSOA with the electoral ward it’s in. So the LSOA Sheffield 075G (population: 2,373) is presented as representative of the Manor Castle ward (population 21,768).

Then the CSJ excludes households without dependent children (which of course include many men living adjacent to the single mother households), then it gives the percentage of single parents as a proportion of the remainder, and then the reader is supposed to be shocked into reintroducing the married couple’s tax allowance or something. Manor Castle has a bunch of issues, but it’s not unusually short of men: in fact, 52% of the population is male, putting it slightly up on the Sheffield average and making it a well-irrigated man delta.

And if you find the image of a well-irrigated man delta unpleasant, consider how crude and nasty the CSJ’s work is in the press release and report. Of the three headline contentions, only one is true, and the report’s underlying claims are more dubious still. The CSJ assumes a direct causal link between single mothers and numerous undesirable social effects, and its proposed fix is that people should marry before they have children. Its solution is as crass as its concept of causation.

Children need more than that one caregiver – hell, they need a whole network, which is one reason why CSJ founder Iain Duncan Smith’s suggestion that people just travel around chasing jobs is such a stupid answer to poverty. But those caregivers don’t necessarily have to be in a sexual relationship, and fixating on marriage seems to have left the CSJ with some genuinely frightening spots of ignorance.

The report criticises agencies that intervene in cases of domestic abuse for failing to recognise fathers as caregivers, on the grounds that “many perpetrators desire a more positive relationship with their children, and this can be a powerful motivator for change.” Here, the CSJ is subordinating the safety of children to the potential self-improvement of abusers. Because this report, with its wobbly stats and its exaggerated claims, isn’t actually about what’s best for children: it’s about the fear that some women and children might be perfectly OK without a masculine hand hanging over the household.

Sarah Ditum

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Posted in Children, Comment, Comment is free, Family, Father's Day, Gender, guardian.co.uk, Life and style, Money, Parents and parenting, Politics, Social exclusion, Society, Thinktanks, UK news, World news | Comments Off

Norman Tebbit interview: ‘No, I’m not a homophobe’

Posted on June 15, 2013 by Decca Aitkenhead

These must be troubling times for Norman Tebbit. He’s clearly not a fan of gay marriage; or of David Cameron. In fact, almost the only person to get a good word from him is Jimmy Savile

Lord Tebbit is about to explain why we will have to legalise polygamy if gay people are allowed to marry when a plaintive voice sounds at the door. “Can I come in?” his wife, Margaret, calls softly from her wheelchair. “I’m bored.”

The deep tenderness between the octogenarian couple is quite something. They live in a beautiful old townhouse in Bury St Edmunds, and in the course of our afternoon, it’s often easy to forget that this frail, genial, doting husband, smartly dressed but shrunken and slightly stooped, was once the Thatcherite bogeyman. He talks haltingly, the reedy voice punctuated by lengthy pauses – but he doesn’t flag for three hours, and flashes of the old hardcore rightwinger are never far away. When he says he hopes he would have supported women’s right to vote 100 years ago, and I suggest there’s little evidence of him ever having been at the progressive vanguard, Margaret muffles a giggle and snorts: “Oh, I’m enjoying this!” Tebbit happily agrees, “Up here, we wear the title turnip Taliban with pride.”

When I observe that Tebbit caused quite a splash with his recent Big Issue interview, in which he linked gay marriage to incest and said David Cameron had “fucked things up”, he enjoys a silent cackle. “I’m afraid the facetious side of my nature came out.” Tebbit thinks his comments made such a splash because the public could see he was right – just as his infamous “cricket test” for immigrants still resonates today “because everyone knew it was true”. His even more memorable injunction to the unemployed, to “get on yer bike” remains, he thinks, truer today than ever before. “Some people think 40 miles is a long way to go for a job.” He pauses for dramatic effect. “Other people come from Prague.”

The former Tory minister will always be associated with the 1980s, but it becomes clear that the defining era for Tebbit was the 40s and 50s. Asked how far would be too far to have to get on one’s bike today to find work, he offers: “When I joined BA [his first job was as a pilot], I roomed in digs with a family in Hounslow.” But did he have a family of his own with him? “Oh no, I wasn’t married, so I was independent. But these days, people don’t live in digs in that way. To me that’s normal, that’s what you had to do. Yet I find that people are resistant to that sort of way of thinking now.”

One group that do get on their bikes and rent digs are the people he wants to banish from Britain. Quite right, he agrees; the overwhelming majority of applicants to care for Lady Tebbit (who was injured in the IRA attack on the Grand Hotel in Brighton in 1984) have been immigrants from central and eastern Europe, while the few British applicants never even show up for interview. “In other words, they only apply to tell the guys at the benefit office that they’re seeking work.” So why isn’t he thrilled to see these hardworking immigrants boosting our economy? “Hold on. I’m very fond of a lot of these central Europeans. People of my age don’t forget that without the Poles we would probably have lost the Battle of Britain. But, of course, there’s a downside to it. They’re working here and mostly taking their money home.” But paying tax here, too? Tebbit looks thoughtful. “It wouldn’t be so bad if there were some way that the British people who could be doing the jobs, but aren’t, would disappear,” he muses glumly. “But they’re still there, as an expenditure to the public purse.”

How would sending immigrants home make people want to work? “We might realise that we’ve got to change our ways.” But if laziness is the problem, it’s not clear why Britons would suddenly want to care for his wife just because continental Europeans no longer could. “Well, we’d have to go for ‘IDS-Plus’. We should require of them perhaps to contribute something [in return for unemployment benefit]. Clearing out canals, repairing footpaths, restoring civic gardens. That sort of thing.”

He wishes the Thatcher government had reformed welfare properly – indeed, his only regrets are things they didn’t do – but explains that in any cabinet, “You’ve really only got half a dozen people who make things happen. You put them where the need is greatest. So we didn’t get to grips with welfare, or education.” Neither Keith Joseph nor Kenneth Baker were education secretaries who knew how to ”make things happen”.

Lord Baker would take exception to that. “I can understand him feeling that, but it’s not so. When I went to get my navigator’s licence, part of the theory involved spherical trig. How many 16-year-old school leavers now would be able to cope with spherical trig?” Not many. “But why? I’d left school at 16.”

More than most of us, Tebbit seems unable to imagine any life other than his own. He will concede that it might have been easier to be a youngster in his day, but goes on: “When I left school I didn’t know anyone who had been mugged. I’ve long sat and wondered why there are so many more acute problems in society than perhaps there were 50 years ago.” And apart from welfare, he can see only one obvious culprit.

“It seems to me that ever since the day that Roy Jenkins said the permissive society is the civilized society, society has got less civilized. Most of what has happened in becoming a more permissive society has featured alongside a society which has become much less agreeable.” Probably not if you are black, or in a mixed-race relationship, I suggest – and it certainly wasn’t safer back then if you were gay. “Well, particularly if they flaunted themselves as such,” Tebbit mutters coldly. But heterosexuals can flaunt their sexuality without being beaten up – and what is marriage, if not a public flaunting of one’s sexual identity? And so, inevitably, we come to gay marriage.

He contends that because a same-sex marriage can’t biologically produce children, it would be illogical for it to exclude incestuous couples. “I think that you have to say, ‘Look, we’re going to deal with this on the basis of looking at where the law is discriminatory, and we’re going to eliminate discrimination.’ Be very careful of that argument, is all I’m saying. If you start basing your argument on non-discrimination, you land in some funny places.

“How about polygamy? Should we legislate to legalise it? What’s the argument against it? I’m a polygamist, you see, and I’m discriminated against because I’m not allowed to marry several women. Don’t I have a case to say that’s discriminatory?” But what is the parallel with homosexuality? “Well, the argument is that we are discriminating against homosexuals by excluding them from marriage. We are discriminating, therefore against a polygamist.”

Tebbit can’t see why gay people are being discriminated against anyway. “I simply take the view that there is at the moment no difference between my rights and a homosexual man’s. It’s just that he wants to do something which I don’t want to do.” But he wants to be married to the person he loves, and cannot, whereas Tebbit can. “OK, he doesn’t want to marry a woman, that’s fine. I don’t want to marry a man, and I can’t. It is precisely the same position. I mean, some people want to drive at 120mph on the motorway, but we don’t let them.” Yes, because it’s dangerous. “Well, perhaps deconstructing marriage would be a dangerous and harmful thing to society.” Why would allowing more people to marry weaken the institution of marriage? “I just think, why don’t they go and do something else?”

He opposed civil partnerships. “I confess I was probably wrong about that.” But he can’t accept calling a gay relationship a marriage, and quotes from the same-sex marriage bill’s guidance notes, which state that a man married to a man could be called a wife.

“I’m a wordsmith by profession. I love words. I pick up words from a big pile and put them into a pattern that is pleasing. But when I pick up the word ‘wife’ and find it can include a man married to a man, I say, ‘Hey! Who’s doing this to our language?’” But language is evolving all the time. “Yes, but come, come! This is a bit extreme!”

“But do you remember,” his wife intervenes, “the two men who were obviously – I mean they were terribly nice … ” “Oh, you mean from whom we bought the house in Islington?”

“Yes. I mean, he was definitely, you just knew, the wife.” Well, there we are, I say – they felt that the word accurately described the man’s family position. Tebbit looks unimpressed. “Do you think it’s time for a cup of tea?” asks Margaret.

I ask if he would consider himself a homophobe. “Well, it’s interesting that it’s allowed for one group of people to insult and shout names at another group without any restriction, but if I were to shout names at that group they would immediately say I was committing a hate crime. No, I’m not a homophobe.”

Most people today would say that if you don’t want gay people to “flaunt” their sexuality, or express their love in public, you are probably homophobic. “Well, it doesn’t mean you hate them. It doesn’t mean you’re in fear of them. It means you’d rather they didn’t do that.” But why? He pauses. “Because that’s not the way human beings are constructed.”

I ask if he is familiar with psychological studies that have tested heterosexual men’s response to gay pornography. As I explain to him that electrodes attached to the penis measure sexual arousal, the temperature in the room plummets. The funny thing is, I go on, heterosexual men with relaxed attitudes to homosexuals are unmoved by gay porn – whereas those hostile to homosexuals exhibit sexual arousal. Why does he think that might be? By now Tebbit is looking ill, and his wife has turned white.

“I think there’s something weird about people who want to go and have electrodes attached to their penises and watch pornography,” he says brusquely, getting to his feet. “I don’t think they’re a representative group. Margaret, would you like your tea?”

Tebbit has had only one direct conversation with David Cameron since he became party leader, just before the 2010 election, and it didn’t go well. “He got very cross. Thoroughly uncommunicative. And then the meeting was over.” But while he thinks Cameron has allowed Ukip to seize traditional Tory territory – “I joined the Conservative Party in 1946, and I’m not going to be pushed out by newcomers” – I suspect another reason is the knowledge that he can cause greater embarrassment to the leadership from his own party benches. And although he shudders when I mention Nadine Dorries, he adds: “It’s not so much that Cameron and [George] Osborne didn’t know the price of milk, but that they didn’t know emotionally that the price of milk was important to people. That’s the difference.”

Oddly enough, almost the only person to get a good word from Tebbit (apart from Boris Johnson, who he loves, but doesn’t see as PM material) is Jimmy Savile, with whom the couple became friends through charitable work at Stoke Mandeville hospital.

“I’ve got no doubt Jimmy Savile was a very odd fellow, and I’m pretty sure he was in breach of the law on a number of matters. But I do not know that it’s possible, 40 years on, to do justice in the sense of knowing just how many of those allegations are complete and true.”

His wife is nodding as he goes on: “Jimmy did a great deal of good, as well as wrong. And in anybody’s life, you have to look at both sides of the ledger.”

I ask if the revelations have changed his feelings towards Savile. “Well, I always had my worries about Jimmy, because he was a very odd fellow.” What did he fear he might be up to? “I would not have been surprised to find he was having homosexual relationships with young people.” But he wasn’t homosexual, was he? “Not in general, no, as I understand it.”

“But he had,” offers Lady Tebbit, “a homosexual air about him.”

Decca Aitkenhead

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Posted in Conservatives, David Cameron, Features, Gay marriage, Gay rights, Interviews, Life and style, Marriage, Norman Tebbit, Politics, Sexuality, Society, The Guardian, World news | Comments Off

Eric Pickles to councils – let the people film and tweet your meetings

Posted on June 14, 2013 by Roy Greenslade

The local government secretary has underlined the right of journalists and citizens to film council meetings

Local government secretary Eric Pickles has underlined the right of journalists and citizens to film council meetings.

He has issued a guide today* which explicitly states that local authorities should allow the public to film and record their meetings and it corrects misconceptions that such filming is prohibited by the Data Protection Act.

The Pickles guide also gives people practical information on how to obtain council documents.

It reminds councillors and officers who continue to bar filming that the government has changed the law to allow members of the public to report, blog, tweet and film council meetings in England see here and here).

The Health and Safety Executive has also shot down the suggestion that its regulations bar filming – a claim made by Wirral council to justify a filming ban last year. (The HSE view can be seen here).

Pickles said: “I want to stand up for the rights of journalists and taxpayers to scrutinise and challenge decisions of the state.” He continued:

“Data protection rules or health and safety should not be used to suppress reporting or a healthy dose of criticism.

Modern technology has created a new cadre of bloggers and hyper-local journalists, and councils should open their digital doors and not cling to analogue interpretations of council rules.

Councillors shouldn’t be shy about the public seeing the good work they do in championing local communities and local interests.”

The new rules do not apply to Wales, because it is a devolved matter. But Pickles has called on the Welsh Assembly to follow his lead.

It follows a blogger being arrested and handcuffed by the police for filming a council meeting in Carmarthenshire, and a tweeting ban by Wrexham council.

The Electoral Reform Society has accused Welsh councils of “conducting business like it was the last century”.

* Your council’s cabinet – going to its meetings, seeing how it works: A guide for local people

Roy Greenslade

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Traffic fines: council has revenue-raising culture, emails appear to show

Posted in Blogposts, guardian.co.uk, Local government, Media, News, Newspapers, Newspapers & magazines, Politics, Regional & local newspapers, Society, Television industry, UK news, World news | Comments Off

Alcohol-related liver disease patients deserve better care, says report

Posted on June 13, 2013 by James Meikle

Review of deaths cites shortage of specialist doctors, and failures to try to change drinking habits and manage acutely ill patients

Hospital staff are taking a dismissive attitude towards patients who have alcohol-related liver disease and lives could be needlessly lost, a review of patient deaths has reported.

The review, the National Confidential Enquiry Into Patient Outcome and Death (NCEPOD), warns of unacceptable levels of care in the health service, a shortage of specialist doctors, and failures to properly screen and act upon drinking habits and manage acutely ill patients.

In some cases, the deaths might have been avoided, according to the review. Even when doctors were uncertain of cause of death they sometimes did not recommend an autopsy or report deaths to coroners, according to the analysis of hundreds of NHS cases.

Bertie Leigh, chairman of NCEPOD, a charitable body to improve professional standards, which is funded largely by the government, said: “We all know this is a group of people who are difficult to help. But they are still entitled to be treated on their clinical merits and the care that would bring benefit.

“I fear there is a more than a hint of dismissive attitudes in many of these cases … no decent healthcare system should write people off or deem them less worthy of the best care available to them.”

Leigh, who is a medical lawyer and the first person to chair the organisation who is not a doctor, expressed surprise that “such extremely ill people were admitted under doctors who claimed no specialist knowledge of their disease, and [were] not transferred to doctors who did”.

He added: “There cannot be any other area of medicine where our hospitals would make such a candid admission. It is hard to avoid a feeling that these people are failed all the way through their care pathway, and that there were too many missed opportunities where the NHS could have intervened.”

Leigh said most of the deaths studied were of people under 60.

“Since it is reasonable to anticipate that the survivors will continue to drink excessively and carry an increasing burden of physical harm, there may be some truth in the suggestion that a vulnerability to cirrhosis is in part genetic, because the rate of death does not continue to increase with age.”

The review, carried out by doctors and entitled Measuring the Units, was established to see how a national liver plan published by the British Society of Gastroenterology in 2009 was being followed. Although there were “green shoots here and there”, there were “few positive buds”, said Leigh.

The criticism has come a fortnight after NHS figures showed that, in 2011-12, an estimated 1.22m hospital admissions in England were linked to drinking too much alcohol, more than 40% up on 2002-03.

NHS investigators and advisers studied hundreds of the 8,748 alcohol-related deaths recorded in the UK in 2011.

The organisation recommends better screening for alcohol misuse of all patients using hospital services, even for those not admitted, so that people with harmful drinking habits can be referred quickly to alcohol support services.

Each hospital should have a seven-day specialist nurse service to ensure access to such help within 24 hours of admission; every acute hospital should also have a multidisciplinary alcohol care team led by a consultant, it says.

All patients with acute alcohol-related liver disease should see a gastroenterologist or hepatologist soon after admission, adds the review.

The review, covering NHS hospitals in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as public hospitals in the Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey, looked at the clinical care of 512 patients but focused in detail on 385 of those.

Of these, 32 deaths might have been avoided with better care, and the care of less than half the patients reviewed was considered good.

A quarter of patients were not seen by a gastroenterologist or hepatologist during their admission. Consultant hepatologists were only present in 28% of hospitals.

Mark Juniper, NCEPOD’s clinical co-ordinator for medicine and an author of the report, said: “Many people with alcohol-related liver disease have multiple admissions with this condition. This gives clinicians an ideal opportunity to offer appropriate treatment and advice to patients to help them stop drinking and improve their future health.

“Unfortunately, this isn’t happening, and in over a third of patients reviewed in this study, referral for support to stop drinking was not made, despite most hospitals reporting to have alcohol liaison services. This is partly because the services are not available at all times that they are needed.”

Juniper, who is a consultant physician, working at the Great Western hospitals NHS foundation trust, Swindon, added: “Similarly, patients were not always seen by a specialist in liver disease, and when they [were] this was often not for several days after admission.

“We know that abstinence works, and that when simple advice is offered to patients, one in eight will reduce their harmful drinking levels – that’s better than the results from ‘stop smoking’ support services.”

He said of medical attitudes to such patients: “There are misunderstandings. It is quite difficult to predict the patients who will do well and who will do badly once they get into hospital and are very sick … there are patients who are being denied intensive care and aggressive treatment who do have the potential to survive.”

James Meikle

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Posted in alcohol, Alcoholism, Health, Health policy, Hospitals, News, NHS, Politics, Society, The Guardian, UK news, World news | Comments Off

UK to unveil £50m fund for life-saving innovations

Posted on June 13, 2013 by Larry Elliott, Heather Stewart

Britain to invest £50m over five years in Global Development Innovation Ventures, David Cameron reveals ahead of G8

The government is to provide a £50m fund for innovations that can save lives in the world’s poorest countries.

Speaking on Friday ahead of next week’s UK-hosted G8 summit in Northern Ireland, David Cameron will say the fund would enable entrepreneurs, academics and NGOs to secure financial backing for solutions to the most pressing problems facing the developing world.

Britain will invest £50m over five years in Global Development Innovation Ventures, which is expected to unlock further investment from the private sector and other governments.

Justine Greening, the international development secretary, said: “Britain has already supported groundbreaking technology around the world, from mobile banking in Kenya to GPS weather-warning systems in Bangladesh. We need a model that can build on these successes and make sure great ideas that can change the lives of the world’s poorest people get the investment they need.”

The government believes that the UK aid budget, which will hit the UN target of 0.7% of national income this year, should be used to promote private sector advances in developing countries. Greening, who is looking at ways of giving her department a sharper entrepreneurial focus, said: “This new organisation means that the UK will play a key role in ushering in a new era of innovative, cost-effective development which can help deliver a safer, more prosperous world.”

Cameron’s announcement comes as the International Monetary Fund said it has struck an agreement with Zimbabwe – the first in 10 years – that could pave the way for international debt relief. The IMF has approved a “staff monitored programme” for April to December this year, which the Harare government has signed up to. It includes a range of reforms, including restructuring the central bank and increasing the transparency of revenues from diamond mining.

Successful completion of the programme would be “an important stepping stone toward helping Zimbabwe re-engage with the international community”, the IMF said. It is also recognised as the first step towards a country being granted debt relief under the multilateral Heavily Indebted Poor Country initiative, overseen by the IMF and World Bank. Zimbabwe is deep in arrears on its $7bn (£4.5bn) of international debt.

Tim Jones of the Jubilee Debt Campaign said: “Zimbabweans need a debt audit to examine where the debt came from and how to prevent a debt crisis arising again. The IMF has no legitimacy to force economic policies on Zimbabwe.”

Larry Elliott

Heather Stewart

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Dale Cregan gets life sentence for worst police killing in a generation

Posted in Aid, G8, Global development, News, Society, The Guardian, UK news, World news | Comments Off

‘Cradle snatchers’ cause menopause, says biologist

Posted on June 13, 2013 by News - latest UK news and comment | guardian.co.uk

Prof Rama Singh warns that Michael Douglas and Rod Stewart wannabes have stacked the Darwinian deck of cards against older women remaining fertile

Men who behave like Michael Douglas, Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood are to blame for women ending their reproductive life early, according to a new theory. All three celebrities are famous for wooing much younger partners. And it is the male preference for young mates that has led to the menopause, researchers have said.

Through the forces of natural selection, men have unwittingly stacked the Darwinian deck of cards against older women remaining fertile, it is claimed.

“In a sense it is like ageing, but it is different because it is an all-or-nothing process that has been accelerated because of preferential mating,” evolutionary biologist Professor Rama Singh, from McMaster University in Canada, said.

The average woman hits the menopause at 51, but for some the “change” can come in their 40s. But quite why human women become infertile in middle age is an unsolved mystery. Only two other species, pilot and killer whales, are known to experience a menopause in a similar way to humans. Female chimpanzees, our closest animal cousins, only stop being fertile near the end of their lives, typically around the age of 45.

The new theory turns the conventional view that the menopause prevents older women from continuing to reproduce on its head. Instead, it holds that lack of reproduction has given rise to the menopause.

Another idea called the “grandmother theory” suggests that women evolved to become infertile after a certain age to free them up to assist with rearing grandchildren. This in turn improves the survival of kin, and so is an example of positive selection.

Evolutionary biologist Professor Rama Singh, whose theory is published in the online journal Public Library of Science Computational Biology, argues that this makes no evolutionary sense. “How do you evolve infertility?” he said. “It is contrary to the whole notion of natural selection.

Natural selection selects for fertility, for reproduction – not for stopping it. This theory says if women were reproducing all along, and there were no preference against older women, women would be reproducing, like men are, for their whole lives.”

He said argues that the menopause did not emerge to benefit the species, but simply because fertility served no purpose beyond a certain age. Natural selection, which favours the survival of the fittest, protected fertility in women while they were most likely to reproduce.

Inherited genetic mutations that cause infertility at younger ages are weeded out, because young women carrying them cannot have babies. But the same reproductive check is not there to quell the accumulation of mutations interfering with fertility in middle age. Over many generations this has led to the menopause, the theory states.

If women had a history of choosing younger “toy boy” mates, the situation would be reversed, with men losing their fertility in their 50s, Dr Singh argues.

He and two colleagues developed computer simulations showing natural selection at work to back their theory.

But British expert Dr Maxwell Burton-Chellew, an evolutionary biologist from Oxford University, strongly rejects the hypothesis. He pointed to the evolution of sterile worker bees – which are all female – as proof that natural selection can favour infertility.

“Having offspring is not the only way to pass on your genes – you can also pass them on by helping your relatives, which is what good grandmothers do,” Dr Burton-Chellew said. “The authors argue that the menopause exists in humans because males have a strong preference for younger females.

“However, this is probably the wrong way round – the human male preference for younger females is likely to be because older females are less fertile. The authors’ paper offers no reason for why males prefer younger females – they just take it as a given, which is surprising.”

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Doing social good with the help of digital entrepreneurs | Martha Lane Fox and Jonathan Goodwin

Posted on June 13, 2013 by Martha Lane Fox, Jonathan Goodwin

Our thriving technology sector should be tapped in the fight against inequality, so we’re launching Founders Forum for Good

Both here in the UK and internationally, governments and charities are facing increasing demand for their services at the exact moment austerity forces them to look for efficiencies. In Britain, public and social organisations from our health service to youth clubs deliver important, often market-leading work, day in day out, and are vital lifelines for people in often desperate need. We can only applaud their vital work.

However, we need to help accelerate the pace of solutions to challenges such as social care or the provision of high quality education to every single young person. How? There is one especially vigorous sector that is yet to be tapped in the fight against health, income or employment inequality: technology. Social organisations in the UK have a combined income of £35bn, and employ more than a million Britons: a sizeable sector, but one which, by its own admission, has often failed to make use of technology to make themselves more efficient and productive.

There are plenty of incredible examples that show what’s possible, here and around the world: Kiva Microfunds has crowdsourced over $400m from nearly a million lenders for those in need. Ni Kadek Juli Asih is one recipient, a young woman from Indonesia who took out, and repaid, her loan as she expanded her farm. Another is Griselda from Bolivia, who used her loan to expand a small clothing business and is saving her profits for college. And through Samasource nearly $3m in wages has gone to poor women and young people, giving them a chance to train in the digital economy, impacting over 15,000 people.

In the UK, Pennies, which lets you make micro-donations of a few pennies when you’re paying for goods or services by card, has raised £1.3m for charities since it launched in November 2010 and Big White Wall is pioneering a tech-enabled approach to mental health.

We need many thousands more like these. This is why we are launching an organisation and challenge fund to encourage more entrepreneurs to innovate in this area. We believe harnessing the extraordinary collective brainpower we have within our thriving technology community could lead to dramatic changes in how we confront inequalities in education, health, employment and income.

This body, Founders Forum for Good, will leverage the Founders Forum community, which since 2005 has hosted in London some of the world’s most dynamic digital entrepreneurs. Founders Forum For Good will connect this pool of talent with people who need their help in enacting social change.

Together, we will work to tackle the three obstacles to greater progress. First, we know young technology entrepreneurs aren’t connected as well with those leading social change as they could be, and vice versa – so neither knows who to speak to in each other’s industries to develop appropriate technology ventures. That’s something we have to change quickly.

Second, too few digital leaders know the profound impact their advice could have in helping their counterparts in the non-profit sector thrive. Today the leaders of organisations such as Médecins Sans Frontières, Save the Children International and Flora and Fauna International will come to the Founders Forum for Good to see what more technology could do to help them in their work.

Third, there is a big business opportunity here – the social care sector in the UK alone is worth £87bn. If technology could make a fraction of the difference to this market that it has made on the way we consume music, for example, then the financial returns are obvious. The digital transformation that has happened in every part of our economy can bring the same benefits to current social and environmental issues.

All this takes funding, of course, and there isn’t yet enough to encourage the volume of projects we need. So the Founders Forum for Good and the Nominet Trust are launching a £1m fund to provide seed capital to entrepreneurs who want to take up this challenge. It’s a start but we hope it will stimulate the next Kiva or Samasource.

Inspiring more entrepreneurs to develop new ventures to do social good at scale has never felt more timely or more needed. Supporting them with the tremendous human capital of our successful technology entrepreneurs will ensure they succeed.

Social care

Martha Lane Fox

Jonathan Goodwin

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