TUESDAY 24 JANUARY 2006

1.5 million may strike
More than 1.5 million council workers are to be balloted over strike action about planned cuts to their pension scheme.
Source:- The Times, Tuesday 24 January 2006, page 2

Incapacity benefit reform unveiled today
Work and pensions secretary John Hutton will today unveil a new benefit, the empoyment and support allowance, and promise to take one million people off incapacity benefit in 10 years.
Source:- The Guardian, Tuesday 24 January 2006, page 10

Youths jailed for happy slap killing
A gang of teenagers who beat a man to death while recording the attack on a mobile phone were jailed for a total of 44 years yesterday at the Old Bailey.
Source:- The Guardian, Tuesday 24 January 2006, page 1

Workers have reading age of children
Up to 16 million adults – nearly half the workforce – are holding down jobs despite having the reading and writing skills expected of children leaving primary school, a report by the Commons Public Accounts Committee.
Source:- The Guardian, Tuesday 24 January 2006, page 1

Mother loses fight for legal right to be told of children’s abortions
Teenagers will continue to be allowed to get sexual health advice, contraception and abortions without their parents knowing after the high court yesterday rejected a mother’s attempts to give all parents a legal right to know.
Source:- The Guardian, Tuesday 24 January 2006, page 5

Media unfair to paediatrician, says judge
Media accusations that the paediatrician Sir Roy Meadow caused a miscarriage of justice in the case of Sally Clark were “manifestly unfair”, the judge hearing the doctor’s appeal against his erasure from the medical register heard yesterday.
Source:- The Guardian, Tuesday 24 January 2006, page 7

British girls among most violent in world, survey shows
British girls are among the most violent in the world, with nearly one in three Scottish and English adolescents admitting to having been involved in a fight in the past year, a World Health Organisation study finds.
Source:- The Guardian, Tuesday 24 January 2006, page 8

Doctors protest against ruling on Alzheimer’s drugs
Doctors may refuse to implement new guidelines on drugs for patients in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, leading psychiatrists said yesterday.
Source:- Daily Telegraph, Tuesday 24 January 2006, page 4

Thousands going blind needlessly, says RNIB
The eyesight of thousands of people is needlessly lost or damaged every year because of ignorance and failure to seek eye tests, the RNIB says.
Source:- Daily Telegraph, Tuesday 24 January 2006, page 7

Clarks ends scheme to help old-footed children
Parents of children with odd-sized feet face steep rises in footwear bils after Britain’s largest shoe retailer abolished the last remaining scheme to help them. Steps, a charity that supports children with club foot, yesterday criticised the decision.
Source:- Daily Telegraph, Tuesday 24 January 2006, page 9

Many factors killed cocklers, court hears
The deaths of 21 Chinese cockle pickers was a “tragic accident” rather than the result of one man’s criminal negligence, a defence barrister suggested yesterday.
John Bromley-Davenport QC told Preston Crown Court that the tragedy should not be blamed on gang master Lin Liang Ren but was in reality caused by many factors. The trial continues.
Source:- The Times, Tuesday 24 January 2006, page 2

Drug dealing in open at prison
Drug dealing openly takes place at Wandsworth prison according to a report by the prison’s monitoring board.
Source:-The Times,  Tuesday 24 January 2006, page 2

Parents fined over child tags
The parents of four teenagers who caused £12,000 of damage through vandalism have been ordered to pay £6,500 at Southampton Youth Court.
The parents will face jail if they fail to pay the fine.
Source:- The Times, Tuesday 24 January 2006, page 29

Scottish news

Can goats and cows help stop heroin?
Goats, sheep and cattle could be the key to winning the battle to stem the flow of heroin from Afghanistan, according to Scottish-based researchers.
A team of experts has been investigating alternative sources of income if Afghan farmers are forced to give up growing opium poppies.
The research, led by the Macaulay Institute of Aberdeen, looked at meat, wool, skin and hide production and determined that the price of meat in urban markets is sufficient for livestock production to provide an alternative source of income.
Source: The Herald, Tuesday 24 January 2006

Number of one-parent families up by 24%
The number of one-parent families in Scotland has risen by a quarter since Labour came to power, official figures show.
According to official data obtained by The Scotsman, there are now 174,000 single-parent families in Scotland, up from 140,000 in 1997. And families in Scotland are disintegrating faster than those in other parts of Britain: Scotland’s 24 per cent rise outstrips the UK-wide increase of 17 per cent.
Source: The Scotsman, Tuesday 24 January 2006

Family sues over alleged MMR link to autism
A Scottish family will launch a multi-million-pound lawsuit at the High Court in London, claiming the MMR vaccine was responsible for causing autism in their child. The test case is set to reignite the fierce debate over the safety of the mumps, measles and rubella jab. The family, from Glasgow, is among nine suing the government in a joint action. They cannot be identified for legal reasons.
Source: The Scotsman, Tuesday 24 January 2006

Welsh news

Mother speaks out on shaken baby
A mother whose baby son suffered brain damage when he was shaken by his father has called for her ex-husband to get a tougher sentence.
Mandy Palmer, from Glais in the Swansea Valley, said that the two and a half year prison sentence Peter Wilde received was not enough.
Source:- Western Mail, Tuesday 24 January 2006

Calls for more sex lessons in primary schools
A school inspection body has called for more lessons on sex education and substance misuse to be given in primary schools.
Chief inspector at Estyn, Susan Lewis, warned that despite schools trying to warn the children some girls were getting pregnant because they ignored advice about drink and drugs.
Source:- Western Mail, Tuesday 24 January 2006