Monday 12 May 2003

By Amy Taylor, Clare Jerrom and Alex
Dobson.

I’ve let everyone down
Plucked from a tough estate and sent to a £15,000-a-year
school for a TV experiment Ryan Bell blew it all in a vodka binge.
Now he’s back on the mean streets, what is the future for the
Downside guinea pig?
Source:- Daily Mail Saturday 10 May page 8
I feel no guilt about rags-to-riches TV show, says race
chief
Trevor Phillips, the chairperson of the Commission for Racial
Equality, said he felt “no guilt” about sending a boy from a South
London council estate to private school as a part of a television
programme even though the boy has no been expelled.
Ryan Bell, aged 16, was ordered to leave Downside school last week
after heavy drinking which ended up putting him in hospital.
Phillips said that despite the expulsion that he was still a
“complete believer” in Bell the star of “Second Chance”, a
programme made by Phillips’ television company Pepper
Productions.
Source:- The Times Saturday 10 May page 15
Payback time for rich rappers
Record companies who produce gangster rap are to be called upon by
the chairperson of the Commission for Racial Equality and a
government health minister to donate some of their profits to
supporting black school children.
Trevor Phillips and David Lammy will make the appeal next
week.
Source:- The Observer Sunday 11 May page 3
Autism parent left to struggle alone
With four-year-old twin boys who both have autism and a
16-month-old baby to look after, even a trip to the supermarket is
hard work for Sarah Ziegel.
She and her husband have tried to get help from a social worker or
to organise respite care to give her a short break but both to no
avail. The couple have also successfully sued their council,
Richmond-upon-Thames in Surrey in order to receive funding for home
tutoring to help the twins with their speech.
This week the National Autistic Society is presenting a report on
how hardly any autistic people receive the support to which they
are entitled.
Source:- The Observer Sunday 11 May page 8
Refugee crackdown ‘doomed to fail’
Scaling down arms sales to aggressor countries would be more
effective in curbing the levels of refugees rather than the
crackdowns promised by the government, according to a new report
for a think tank.
The analysis, produced by a former home office researcher for the
Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), argued that the
government’s plans are doomed to fail with war and internal
repression being behind immigration rather than poverty.
Source:- The Observer Sunday 11 May page 9
Mythical refugees spearhead BNP election victory in white
suburb
The British National Party won its first election in the south
earlier this month.
The win came in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, and is thought to be the
result of the
asylum debate, with this being a key theme of their candidate,
Ramon Johns’
campaign.
Johns, a former treasurer for the National Front, has been
campaigning for a white
Britain for since the late seventies.
Source:- The Observer Sunday 11 May page 9

The new face of childcare
Are you tough enough?
Poor pay, long hours, gruelling work…the biggest job
challenge for men today is down at the nursery. Yvonne Roberts
reports on a new generation of male carers.
Source:- The Observer Sunday 11 May page 17

Who is to blame for Ryan’s fall?
It has all gone horribly wrong for Ryan Bell, the boy plucked off a
rough London estate by Channel 4 and given a place at a top public
school. So is it time to rein in reality TV?
Source:- The Observer Sunday 11 May page 19

NHS workers to escape criminal record
checks
Police checks will be waived for tens of thousands of people
working with children employed in the NHS in an attempt to ease the
pressure on the Criminal Records Bureau.
Ministers are also preparing a multi-million-pound rescue package
for the agency and the private sector contractor that runs it,
Capita.
Source:- The Observer Sunday 11 May page 3

The girl is 14. She lives like a prisoner. Her crime? To
be an asylum-seeker in Blunkett’s Britain
Beriwan Ay is one of more than 50 children currently being
held at detention centres for asylum seekers in Britain.
Thousands of children pass through detention centres every year and
some are held for months in a row.
Home secretary David Blunkett, argues that children such as Ay have
to be locked up otherwise they would escape and live illegally in
this country.
Source:- The Independent on Sunday 11 May page 1
Five children kept in room just 13ft square
Children locked up in Britain’s immigration centres are
deprived of proper schooling, allowed little exercise and living
and sleeping as many as five to a room only 13ft square.
The Refugee Children’s Consortium is demanding that David Blunkett,
the home secretary, ends detention for asylum seeker
children.
Source:- The Independent on Sunday 11 May page 15
Christian care workers forced out for opposing gay
adoptions
Two female social workers have been forced from their jobs because
of their objection to adoption by homosexual and lesbian couples on
the grounds of their Christian beliefs.
Norah Ellis and Dawn Jackson, were threatened with dismissal by
Sefton council unless they changed their opinion.
They were told their stance went against the council’s aim of
“promoting social inclusion, equality of action and
opportunity”.
When the social workers threatened legal action the council backed
down and said that they could be reinstated, but the two women said
this would be impossible considering the threats that had
previously been made against them by their employer.
Source:- The Sunday Telegraph 11 May page 5

Race chief declares war on schools that fail
blacks
New guidelines by which schools will be judged on their treatment
of black and ethnic minority pupils are being drawn up by the
Commission for Racial Equality and the Office for Standards in
Education Schools.
Chairperson of the CRE Trevor Phillips said he would be zealous in
enforcing the guidelines yesterday and added that those are not
seen as doing enough for black pupils will be “named and shamed”
and could face legal action if they don’t improve.
Source:- The Sunday Telegraph 11 May page 11
Juvenile detention centres fined £1m for poor
discipline
The three privately-run prisons for juvenile offenders have been
fined over £1 million for having slack discipline and allowing
the sexual intimidation of female staff and inmates, previously
undisclosed home office figures have shown.
The jails, which hold the most persistent criminals aged between 12
and 16, were also criticised for breaching health and safety
regulations.
The allegations come as the government is planning to build three
more similar institutions for young offenders.
Source:- The Sunday Telegraph 11 May page 13
UN puts forward ‘fairer’ alternative to Blunkett’s asylum
processing plan
Concerns that home secretary David Blunkett’s scheme for an off
shore asylum seeker processing centre located outside Europe will
result in refugees being off loaded onto poorer countries, has
prompted the United Nations to table an alternative plan.
Germany’s interior minister Otto Schily criticised the home
secretary’s plan at the weekend on a trip to London, saying that he
thinks it will increase rather than reduce the levels of asylum
seekers attempting to come to Europe.
The UN high commission for refugees’ alternative to Blunkett’s
proposal ensures that all asylum claims will be processed within
Europe and that every country remains open to claims for real
refugees.
Source:- The Guardian Monday 12 May page 5
Asylum: Now MPs Back Bogus Claims
The immigration minister has urged MPs to stop giving their support
to appeals by rejected asylum seekers.
Beverley Hughes said their last-minute interventions to stop
deportations were costing many thousands of pounds and slowing down
the system.
Hughes has written to every MP, including Labour backbenchers,
aiming to prevent money being wasted on unused flight tickets,
staff costs and extra time in detention.
Source:- The Mail Monday 12 May page 5

Poverty gap has widened under Labour
New figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the
gap between the rich and poor has widened under Labour, and is now
greater than it was when Margaret Thatcher was in power.
The statistics show that the gap measured on post-tax income is a
sixth higher than the equivalent average during the time of the
Thatcher government, and 10 per cent higher than the whole of the
Conservatives’ 18-year tenure, including the time of John
Major.
Source:- The Independent Monday 12 May page 1
Boy barred by school sues for £10,000
A 15-year-old boy is suing a school for £10,000 because he is
claiming he was excluded from the register illegally. His lawyers
are using the Human Rights Act to make the claim based on 10 months
he missed school.
School governors took the boy from Milton Keynes off the register
after he was accused of setting fire to the school building. The
Crown Prosecution Service dropped charges against the boy and two
other pupils, but the school failed to reinstate him.
Source:- Daily Telegraph Monday 12 May page 8
Pupil faces stabbing charge
Magistrates in Bury St Edmunds will hear the case of a 15-year-old
boy accused of stabbing another boy at school of the same
age.
The injured boy is seriously ill in hospital after being stabbed in
the stomach at the school in Stradbroke, Suffolk.
Source:- Daily Telegraph Monday 12 May page 2
Scottish newspapers
Staff’s sit down protest over porn probe worker
Blind and disabled workers at a council-run factory staged
a sit down protest yesterday and refused to work, after a staff
member at the centre of an internet porn investigation was
reinstated.
Police were called to investigate computer porn allegations at
Blindcraft factory in November, and two employees were suspended.
Police were alerted after social work officials carried out routine
checks which showed that staff had been using computers
‘inappropriately’.
One member of staff has left the company, but another has returned
to work. Seventy of the 100 staff at the Peffer Place premises
staged the protest on Thursday.
Source:- The Scotsman  Friday 9 May
Nurses feat for charity
One thousands pounds will be raised for Alzheimer’s Scotland
this week when nurses from an Edinburgh care home for older people
are to walk the 95-mile West Highland Way.
All four women work at the Westminster Strachan House, caring for
older people, some of who suffer from Alzheimer’s
disease.
Source:- The Scotsman  Saturday 10 May
Sheriff’s threat to cage girl bullies
A group of girls who bullied a 17-year-old girl, have been told
they face prison unless they end the hate campaign.
Sheriff Michael Fletcher granted powers of arrest against two girls
if they breach the terms of an anti-bullying interdict and continue
to harass Jenny Souter.
Source:- Daily Record  Saturday 10 May
Woman sues for lost childhood
A Scottish local authority is being sued by a woman, who was taken
into care as a child over unfounded sex abuse claims.
The woman from Ayrshire was one of hundreds of children wrongly
removed from their families in a series of sex abuse investigations
carried out across Britain in the late 1980s and early 1990s. She
is claiming compensation for her ‘lost
childhood’.
Social workers took the woman, now 23, from her family in Ayrshire
in June 1990 amid allegations of satanic sexual abuse.
Even though she insisted she was never sexually abused and there
was no medical evidence to suggest she was, she was kept in care
for five years.
The case is thought  to be the first of its kind.
Source:- The Scotsman  Sunday 11 May
How the dealers were run out of town
A clampdown on drugs in a Scottish town has led to it being
declared as drugs free.
The zero tolerance campaign codenamed Operation Emperor has swept
more than 70 dealers from the streets of Stranraer.
It is thought to be the first time Scottish police have
‘blitzed’ every known dealer in a community.
Source:- The Scotsman  Sunday 11 May
Couple face deportation deadline
The pregnant Scottish wife of an Algerian man who faces deportation
this week, spoke out last night of the dilemma she faces over
whether to go with him if last-ditch efforts to block the move
fail.
Ali Serir will be moved to a detention centre near Heathrow airport
on Thursday and flown to Algeria the following day unless protests
by Scottish Socialist MSPs at Greenock prison today or legal
intervention by his lawyer are successful.
His wife Karen Serir, who is six months pregnant, believes her
place is by her husband’s side, but her husband does not want
her to risk following him to his homeland as he believes he is in
mortal danger.
He has been in front page news in government-run newspapers as an
Islamic terror suspect following a raid on his Glasgow flat in
February as part of a UK wide sweep of addresses.
Source:- The Herald  Monday 12 May
Nursery nurses vote to walk out
Nursery nurses are to stage a series of one-day strikes following a
vote.
Around 66,000 children and their parents throughout Scotland are
expected to be hit by the action to begin next Tuesday.
The action comes 18 months after nurses put in a new pay claim.
They believe their pay lags behind other education professionals.
Their job has changed yet their pay structure does not reflect
their new responsibilities.
Source:- Daily Record  Monday 12 May page 1 and 9
1000 police on drugs
Up to 1,000 Scottish police officers could be addicted to alcohol
and drugs, according to the Association of Chief Police Officers in
Scotland.
Police chiefs said the number of officers turning to drugs such as
heroin and cocaine is rising due to work stress.
Random tests may be introduced to identify users.
Source:- Daily Record  Monday 12 May page 5
The Predator
Young boys were lured into a football coach’s bedroom after
they were taken to his house to change.
Norman Shaw then carried out sex attacks on the youngsters, groping
them and forcing them to touch him. His favourites were then
rewarded with a place in the team, said a former member of the
squad.
Perth sheriff court heard last week that Shaw, who was a caretaker
for the town’s Bells Sport Centre, carried out an 18-month
abuse campaign in the late 1980s.
Shaw admitted repeated attacks on a 14-year-old boy at his home and
other addresses in Perth.
Not guilty pleas to another charge involving the same boy and two
charges involving another boy were accepted by the crown.
Shaw, registered as a sex offender, was bailed and had sentence
deferred for background reports.
Source:- Daily Record  Monday 12 May page 15
Welsh newspapers
Esti’s mother ready to fly out to join
hunt
The mother of a four-year-old girl, who has been abducted by her
father, plans to travel to the continent this week in a bid to find
her daughter.
Estelle Clayton, known as ‘Esti’ went to stay with her
father over Easter, but has not been seen for more than a month and
police now believe that she has been taken out of the UK on a
permanent basis.
It is now known that her father, Simon visited child abduction
sites on the internet, and also examined websites dealing with
child kidnapping.
Source:- Western Mail Monday 12 May page 1
Charity attacks ‘punitive’ jailing of
truants’ mothers
A leading children’s charity in Wales has condemned
the government’s policy of jailing the parents of persistent
truants.
NCH Cymru, which runs 61 projects across Wales, said the policy
criminalises families that may already be facing crisis, and calls
for a more sophisticated approach to help young people remain in
school.
Source:- Western Mail Monday 12 May page 3