Friday 21 April 2006

Charities fight bid for greater state control of lottery funds
Legislation that could give ministers greater control over the distribution of lottery funding will return to parliament next week in what promises to be a decisive showdown between the government and the charity sector.
Source:- The Times, Friday 21 April 2006, page 8

Little girl’s rapist was child porn user on probation
Kevin Hazelwood, a known paedophile who repeatedly raped a nine-year-old girl despite being on the sex offender’s register and under probation service supervision was jailed indefinitely yesterday.
Source:- The Times, Friday 21 April 2006, page 7

One page in six months: Whitehall’s world
A senior civil servant spent six months working on one page of a report on drugs, Lord Birt told a committee of MPs yesterday.
Source:- The Times, Friday 21 April 2006, page 18

Prisoner’s defeat
Human rights judges have backed the government’s refusal to allow a convicted murderer and his wife to have children by artificial insemination. Kirk and Lorraine Dickson were both in jail when they met through a prison penpal network and married in 2001. Mrs Dickson, 48, has since been released.
Source:- The Times, Friday 21 April 2006, page 35

Baby chokes to death at nursery
Police are investigating the death of a 10-month-old baby at a nursery where staff had previously been accused of child cruelty. The girl is thought to have choked on a piece of apple at the Just Learning Centre in Cambourne, Cambs.
Source:- The Daily Telegraph, Friday 21 April 2006, page 1

Miss Wilding’s hamlet of horrors
A retired businesswoman is such a troublemaker that she has single-handedly turned a peaceful rural community in Bottomley near Walsden, West Yorks, into a “hamlet of horror” a court was told yesterday. Jeanne Wilding, 57, faces an Asbo after allegedly tormenting her neighbours on 259 occasions in the past 16 months.
Source:- The Daily Telegraph, Friday 21 April 2006, page 6

200,000 migrants not checked for TB
Immigration services are failing to check 200,000 migrants a year for tuberculosis when they arrive in the country, a report by the Health Protection Agency reveals.
Source:- The Daily Telegraph, Friday 21 April 2006, page 6

Spare the chemical cosh
The over-prescribing of the drug Ritalin to children diagnosed with alleged behavioural problems is a growing scandal, leading scientist Baroness Greenfield said yesterday in a House of Lords debate.
Source:- The Daily Telegraph, Friday 21 April 2006, page 8

Pensioners offered rent-back home deal
Elderly people are being encouraged to sell their homes below value and then rent them back as the pension crisis deepens. A company called National Homebuyers said yesterday it has launched a “Sell and Rent Back plan” aimed at pensioners.
Source:- The Daily Telegraph, Friday 21 April 2006, page 15

Dignity nurse in every hospital
All hospitals are to have a dignity nurse to ensure elderly patients are cared for properly, minister announced yesterday.
Source:- Daily Mirror, Friday 21 April 2006, page 10

Britain’s best foster family
A 23-stone, jobless, tattooed biker has just been voted Britain’s best foster parent along with his wife Tracey by charity NCH.
Source:- Daily Mirror, Friday 21 April 2006, page 17

Scottish news

Help for drug users ‘would cut NHS costs’
Every pound spent on rehabilitating drug users would be repaid tenfold in
terms of NHS costs and the impact of crime on society at large, it has been
claimed.
The Scottish Socialists have published a consultation document to support their
proposed Drug Treatment and Rehabilitation (Scotland) Bill.
SNP figures show that almost 1000 users who wanted to get off drugs had to
wait more than six months for their first assessment, while more than 400
had to wait more than a year.
Source: The Herald, Friday 21 April

Guilty: the care workers who abused children
Two men were found guilty yesterday of physically and sexually abusing
troubled children they were supposed to be looking after at a residential
school.
Former art teacher Matthew George and former residential care worker John
Muldoon were employed at Kerelaw residential school in Stevenston, Ayrshire.They originally faced 85 charges relating to offences alleged to have been
committed between 1975 and 2003 at the school. George was found guilty of 18
charges and Muldoon was found guilty of four. Sentence was deferred for
reports.
Source: The Herald, Friday 21 April

Asylum family still held despite U-turn
Members of an Albanian family whose deportation was halted after a U-turn by
the Home Office were still in detention, amid wrangling over their release.
Merita Hazizi and her family were seized from their home in Glasgow on
Tuesday, after an application for asylum was rejected, but were told they
could stay after Strathclyde University offered to pay her accommodation and
living expenses so she could finish her studies.
However, the family are refusing to sign release papers prepared by the Home
Office as it asks them to “sign away their rights” by agreeing to return
voluntarily once Hazizi’s studies are complete.
Source: The Herald, Friday 21 April

50 held as city drug dealers targeted in dawn raids
The biggest series of drugs raids ever carried out in Scotland has seen 50
people arrested and large amounts of crack cocaine and heroin recovered in
Glasgow.
More than 200 plain clothes and uniformed officers, including specialist
financial investigators, carried out dawn raids at 36 homes across the south
side of the city over the past two days.
Operation Environ, police said, was the outcome of months of “painstaking
intelligence work” and careful and detailed evidence-gathering, targeting
specific individuals who police claim were involved in the supply of class A
controlled drugs.
Source: The Scotsman, Friday 21 April

Boost for health
A five-year programme to improve mental health care in Scotland has been
launched.
The programme includes better training of staff and increased numbers of
nurse consultants as part of a package to improve support to newly-qualified
nurses.
Scotland has 6,800 mental health nurses and training is provided at 9
universities.
Source: The Record, Friday 21 April

Welsh news

Man held after body found in park
The body of a 21-year-old man has been found in a park in Gwent.
A 46-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the death. The dead man is thought to be local. His body was found in Bargoed Park at around 10.30pm on Tuesday night.
Source:- Western Mail, Friday 20 April 2006