News round up: 600,000 public sector workers threaten to strike

By Mithran Samuel on June 24, 2008 in Family support, Mental Health, Pay and conditions, Workforce

600,000 public sector workers threaten to strike

Gordon Brown was facing his most serious strike threat from the public sector last night when 600,000 local government workers voted to take industrial action and reject a 2.45% pay offer.

Unison, the country’s second biggest union and normally one of the most loyal of Labour affiliates, will meet today to decide on a programme of disruption.

A two-day strike in July is expected to be called followed by further action if the dispute persists.
Read more on this story in The Guardian

Nanny’s shaking of baby led to fatal brain damage, court told

An experienced children’s nanny shook the baby son of two police officers, causing brain injuries which led to his death 10 months later, Liverpool crown court heard yesterday.

Linda Wise, 47, from Anglesey, north Wales, caused brain damage to Isaac Rowlinson, who was three months old when she was caring for him, which led to his death last July from an epileptic fit, the jury was told. She denies manslaughter
Read more on this story in The Guardian

Local inequalities mark map of wellbeing

Big disparities in the health and behaviour of people in different parts of England are revealed for the first time today in research from the Association of Public Health Observatories.

The research reveals some remarkable findings, among them the fact that women in Blackpool are eight times more likely to smoke during pregnancy than their counterparts in Richmond upon Thames, west London, while the average five-year-old in Blackburn arrives at school with more than seven times as much tooth decay as contemporaries in Lichfield, Staffordshire. The teenage pregnancy rate in Lambeth, south London, is more than six times that in Rutland. And the obesity rate among children starting school in Hackney, east London, is three times the rate in Teesdale.

Cameron would scrap NHS targets in power

A Tory government would aim to save more than 100,000 lives a year by scrapping all central NHS targets in favour of a system to measure “health outcomes”, David Cameron will say today.

Prisoners charged ‘extortionate’ rates to call their families

Prisoners are being charged up to eight times the normal price to telephone their families, a consumer watchdogs will disclose today in a scathing attack on British Telecom and prison chiefs.

Inmates trying to stay in touch with the outside world are being “ripped off” by BT, which has a monopoly over telephone services in English and Welsh jails, according to the National Consumer Council (NCC).

Working mothers who earn less than husbands get £40 a week

Mothers will be offered £40 a week to go back to work under plans unveiled by Gordon Brown.
Aimed at the poorest households, the measure is part of a package set out by the Prime Minister to tackle child poverty, including £200 ‘child development grants’ for parents on low incomes with under-fives, if they agree to improve their children’s lives in ways such as giving them a healthy diet.