Manchester councillors debate future of early years provision - Fri, 03 Feb 2012
Manchester councillors are set to debate proposals for the city's early years service, which will keep all children's centres open and increase the outreach service, but gradually close council-run daycare services.
Government urged to address disparate uptake of free childcare - Fri, 03 Feb 2012
There is wide variation in the take-up of the free entitlement to early education for three- and four-year-olds across England, with children from the most disadvantaged families less likely to use their allowance, the National Audit Office (NAO) has found.
Young people in Derbyshire stage protest against youth cuts - Fri, 03 Feb 2012
Protests against cuts to youth services are gathering pace after young people marched in Derbyshire and an online petition calling on government to ringfence funding passed 1,000 signatures.
BBC social work film prompts calls for early police support - Fri, 03 Feb 2012
Strong partnerships between social workers and other agencies are integral throughout any child protection case, two experts have warned following a BBC documentary about a social work team in Bristol.
YMCA hostel closure to leave 250 young people without housing - Fri, 03 Feb 2012
Plans to close City YMCA's largest hostel will leave 250 young people in need of rehousing, the London-based charity has warned.
Adoption service inspections not tough enough, Ofsted concedes - Thu, 02 Feb 2012
Inspections of adoption services have been too lenient in the past, the deputy chief inspector of Ofsted has admitted.
Social workers lack time to work with children - Thu, 02 Feb 2012
Nearly four in 10 social workers do not feel they have sufficient time to work effectively with children and young people, a survey by Ofsted has found.
Young people laud benefits of mentor experience - Thu, 02 Feb 2012
More young people believed they could get into university after spending six months on a mentoring programme, a study has found.
Five NHS commissioning board directors confirmed - Fri, 3 Feb 2012
The appointment of five NHS Commissioning Board executive directors has been announced, including Ian Dalton in the key role of chief operating officer.
Private providers attack Monitor failure regime - Wed, 1 Feb 2012
Private mental health firms are lobbying for deep changes to Monitor’s proposed failure regime, claiming rules putting “patients ahead of creditors” will prevent them from borrowing.
Revealed: all but six of London's non-FT hospital trusts unviable by 2014-15 - Fri, 3 Feb 2012
Only six of London’s 18 non-foundation hospital trusts will be viable in their current form in 2014-15, HSJ can reveal.
Royal Gollege of GPs joins calls for Health Bill to be scrapped - Fri, 3 Feb 2012
The UK’s largest medical royal college has called for the prime minister to scrap the Health and Social Care Bill, branding it “damaging, unnecessary and expensive”.
CQUIN and CQC quality results don't match, report finds - Fri, 3 Feb 2012
The results of a financial incentive scheme to improve quality do not match up with other quality measures in hospital care, a study has found.
Commissioning board restricted by Health Bill 'turbulence' - Fri, 3 Feb 2012
The NHS Commissioning Board is working under “strict limits” on what it can do as the government’s Health Bill battles “turbulence” in Parliament, its chair has said.
Personalisation 'wrongly used to devalue social workers' - Fri, 03 Feb 2012
Adult social work is being 'devalued' by cuts and mistaken ideas about personalisation, The College of Social Work warned today as it launched a campaign to champion adults' professionals.
Improving access to social care for adults with autism - Thu, 02 Feb 2012
New support from the Social Care Institute for Excellence
Burstow: Social work to be at heart of care White Paper - Wed, 01 Feb 2012
Social work will be at the heart of the government's forthcoming adult care White Paper, with the profession's role expected to switch from rationing care to community development, Paul Burstow has said.
Social workers need better Mental Capacity Act training - Tue, 31 Jan 2012
Social workers need more effective training and guidance in applying the Mental Capacity Act 2005 to take decisions on behalf of service users and support them to make decisions for themselves.
Call for national inquiry following second child custody death - Fri, 27 Jan 2012
Two teenagers who were serving time at young offender institutions in England have died in the space of a week.
Social work tools for direct work with children – Observation - Tue, 24 Jan 2012
Observation What is the technique? When would I use this? What resources do I need? What do I do? What am I looking for? Warnings
Social work tools for direct work with children – Drawing - Tue, 24 Jan 2012
Drawing What is the technique? There are a number of techniques to try with children that can be facilitated with just some coloured pencils...
Social work tools for direct work with children – Dolls - Tue, 24 Jan 2012
What is the technique? Using dolls or animals to represent people in the child's life, you begin a story and then ask the child to "show...
Terms of nursing regulator review to be set amid concern over quality of care - Sun, 05 Feb 2012
Checks found 'significant weaknesses' in the work of the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) as complaints rose 41% in a year
Terms of an inquiry into the way nurses and midwives are regulated will be announced this week after checks found "significant weaknesses" in the handling of complaints about nursing and risks to the protection of the public.
The profession's chief regulator, Roger Thompson - himself a nurse - has resigned from his post at the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), and the inquiry is expected to consider whether it is competent to run its own affairs.
There is mounting public concern over the quality of nursing, especially of elderly people. Last month, the prime minister took the highly unusual step of ordering hospital nurses to make ward rounds at least every hour.
Although nurses are due to play a leading role in the opening ceremony of the Olympics, symbolising essential British values, the profession's leaders admit it may be undergoing a crisis of confidence.
Howard Catton, the head of policy at the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), said: "It's quite extraordinary. There's something about the profession maturing, and these could be the growing pains it is going through, but something big is certainly going on."
The inquiry into professional regulation has been ordered by Anne Milton, the junior health minister responsible for nursing, who was also a nurse before entering politics.
The NMC, which registers 667,000 professionals across the UK, was restructured only three years ago after previous concern about its performance and allegations of mismanagement and bullying.
Last summer, the Commons health select committee welcomed signs of improvement in the NMC's performance, but expressed surprise that it was unable to offer any explanation for the 41% increase in the number of complaints against nursing staff to more than 4,200 in the previous 12 months. The committee also said it was "very concerned about the existence of low standards of basic nursing care in our acute hospitals and care homes, which appear to be in breach of the code of conduct for nurses and midwives".
In November, a report by the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence (CHRE), which monitors the NMC, confirmed an improved performance in the tackling of a backlog of complaints. But it said there remained significant weaknesses and risks to the public, having found delays of as long as 27 months in preventing nurses working after serious allegations were made against them.
Milton called NMC leaders to a meeting before Christmas, shortly after which the organisation's chief executive and registrar, Dickon Weir-Hughes, was suspended. He has since resigned.
Weir-Hughes, who was appointed in 2009, was paid £140,000 last year and was on six months' notice. The NMC is refusing to say if he has received a pay-off. His predecessor, Sarah Thewlis, received a settlement of more than £120,000 when she left.
Milton said she was ordering a wide-ranging review because the rate of improvement in performance "falls below the standard that the public and registrants have the right to expect".
One of the issues expected to be scrutinised is whether the NMC, which has an annual income of £52m through nurses' registration fees of £76 a year, has focused too much on education and training policy at the expense of its core fitness-to-practise role.
Weir-Hughes was an outspoken advocate of extending registration to healthcare assistants, but ministers have set their face against any such extension, both in health and social care.
A second issue is likely to be whether the NMC should be led by non-professionals. Since 2009, its governing council has comprised seven professional and seven lay members including a lay chair, Tony Hazell. Milton has said she intends to consult on reducing its size, irrespective of the review's findings.
Catton said the RCN would be concerned at any move to dilute the influence of registrant nurses and midwives on the governing council.
"If you were to say that registrant numbers dropped below 50%, I am pretty sure that you would get a reaction from the profession who would be concerned about whether the balance was in the right place."
There would be anxiety also if the chief executive and registrar were not a nurse. "Purely from the registrant's point of view, facing potentially career-ending decisions, not to have either a registrant in that role or top-level advice from registrants to inform those decisions would be a worry and a concern," Catton said.
The NMC has welcomed the review as "an important opportunity to achieve clarity and consistency in the delivery of its regulatory functions".
Hazell said: "An internal review of our activities has been under way for some time and has already prompted some important questions abut the wide-ranging nature of some of our work streams and the contribution they make to our core business. We look forward to continuing these discussions with the review team."
Charles Steer obituary - Sun, 05 Feb 2012
My father, Charles Steer, who has died aged 91, was a much-loved doctor in Kingston, Surrey, from 1952 to 1997. In 1959 he resigned from the NHS and became a private GP. Although there were attempts in the 1970s and 80s to turn him into a political figurehead for his assaults on the NHS, he insisted that his only motivation was to offer patients the quality of care and attention which he felt the resourcing of the NHS made impossible. Charles never profited greatly from medicine, and maintained a policy of treating people according to their needs rather than their means.
Born in Hornchurch, Essex, and educated at Uppingham school, Rutland, he abandoned medical studies in 1939 to join the Rifle Brigade, and fought in the 8th Army with the Desert Rats, attaining the rank of captain. He collected a fascinating scrapbook of ephemera such as photos, regimental battle orders, Nazi propaganda and his own wickedly accurate cartoons.
Afterwards, Charles returned to Guy's hospital, London, whose gazette featured his whimsical cartoons of hospital worthies. Once qualified, and newly married to my mother, Elizabeth Maxwell Stephens, he entered a GP partnership in Kingston. But with a growing family he became dissatisfied with the role of junior partner and decided to become an independent GP. He struggled at first, but his pleasant manner and willingness to take time listening to patients yielded increasing success. This approach undoubtedly rubbed off on his children, three of whom followed him into medicine, with my brother joining his practice in 1980.
My father's skill in treating a rare condition in a young patient, involving the co-ordination of European specialists, greatly enhanced his reputation; in 1985 he published a paper on diverticular disease based on his own research data.
In 1967, his first marriage ended. He passed the last 32 years of his life with Trudy Kuit, whom he married in 1989. In 1997 they retired to the Isle of Man, where she cared for him devotedly.
He is survived by Trudy and his children, Gabriel, Deborah, Katie and me; five grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
Two glasses of wine a day 'triples mouth cancer risk' - Sun, 05 Feb 2012
Government campaign to warn that drinking just over recommended limit increases risk of serious health problems
Regularly drinking two large glasses of wine or two strong pints of beer a day triples the risk of developing mouth cancer, a government campaign will warn.
Television adverts will aim to show that drinking just over the recommended daily limit for alcohol increases the risk of serious health problems.
NHS recommendations are that men should not regularly drink more than three to four units a day, while women should not regularly drink more than two to three.
The adverts will run under the Change4Life banner and people will be able to access a new online calculator to work out how much they are drinking. Two million leaflets will also be made available to Change4Life supporters and health professionals across England.
Drinkers will be encouraged to cut down through measures such as having alcohol-free days, not drinking at home before going out, swapping to low or alcohol-free drinks and using smaller glasses.
The campaign follows a survey of more than 2,000 people which found 85% do not realise that drinking over recommended limits increases the risk of developing breast cancer.
Some 65% were unaware it increases the risk of bowel cancer, 63% did not know about a raised risk of pancreatitis and 59% did not realise excess drinking increases the risk of mouth, throat and neck cancer. Some 30% did not realise that drinking just over the limits increases the risk of high blood pressure and 37% did not realise it could impact on fertility.
The health secretary, Andrew Lansley, said: "It's crucial we support people to know about how drinking too much poses risks to their health and how they can take control of their drinking. It can be easy to slip into the habit of having a few extra drinks each day, especially when drinking at home. But there can be serious health risks. Don't let drinking sneak up on you.
"Change4Life is a fantastic, well-known campaign that has already helped a million families around the country. I want to expand it beyond eating well and moving more, so people look after themselves and really do live longer."
The issue of how to tackle alcohol abuse has proved controversial for the government. Last year, six major health organisations refused to back the public health responsibility deal, saying the government was allowing the drinks industry to dictate health policy.
Under the deal, drink producers and retailers, including Diageo, Carlsberg and Majestic Wine, have pledged to provide clear unit labelling, support awareness campaigns and develop a new sponsorship code on responsible drinking.
But Alcohol Concern, the British Medical Association (BMA), the Royal College of Physicians, the British Association for the Study of the Liver, the British Liver Trust and the Institute of Alcohol Studies refused to support the deal.
Don Shenker, chief executive of Alcohol Concern, said it represented "the worst possible deal for everyone who wants to see alcohol harm reduced", with no sanctions if industry failed to meet the pledges, while the BMA said the government had "chosen to rely on the alcohol industry to develop policies".
Alcohol Concern welcomed the new campaign on Sunday but said "to a great extent this is the easy bit."
Emily Robinson, the group's director of campaigns, said: "It's great to see the government tackling the problem of alcohol and investing in a campaign to warn people of the dangers of drinking too much. But telling people they could be drinking too much can't be our only solution to the country's alcohol problem.
"We also need to see minimum alcohol pricing brought in as soon as possible, as well as making sure high quality services are available for people who may have developed a serious alcohol problem."
Dr Mike Knapton, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said: "An estimated 10 million Brits drink more than the recommended limits for alcohol, which puts one in five of us at increased risk of heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure and weight gain.
"There's absolutely no reason why we can't all enjoy our favourite tipple in moderation, but don't underestimate the health risks when one glass becomes two or three on a regular basis."
Sarah Lyness, executive director of policy and information at Cancer Research UK, said: "Alcohol can increase the risk of seven types of cancer, including two of the commonest kinds – breast and bowel cancers. And a recent study showed that nearly 12,500 cancers in the UK each year are caused by alcohol.
"The risk of cancer starts to go up even at quite low levels of drinking, but the more people cut back on alcohol, the more they can reduce the risk."
The shadow public health minister, Diane Abbott, said the campaign "has an important message", but added: "Under this government, hospital admissions linked to alcohol problems have reached a record high so we need radical action to divert the crisis the government is driving us towards.
"It is clear that for Andrew Lansley, all that matters is whether his friends in big business are happy, and, unfortunately, it is costing our NHS and British families an absolute fortune. A recent report predicted that binge drinking will cost the NHS £3.8bn by 2015, with 1.5m A&E admissions a year."
Chris Sorek, chief executive of the industry-funded Drinkaware, said: "The damage caused by drinking heavily can be grim. Shockingly, most people are unaware that it's actually happening – liver disease, for example, has no warning signs."
It's older people's attitude to drugs that is a killer | Barbara Ellen - Sun, 05 Feb 2012
The complacency of those who think their own drug-taking experiences have anything to do with today's drugs is desperately misguided
Tom Simons, a deputy head, has spoken about his 16-year-old son, Joe, who died of an MDMA overdose in a Bristol nightclub last year, saying that his son was the victim of a widespread "complacency" regarding drugs, that is "spreading like a cancer" through culture.
These are heartfelt words, but whose complacency is Mr Simons talking about?
If we're talking about young people's complacency towards drugs then this would be a short and brutal conversation.
Sorry, parents, if your children are going to take drugs, they'll take them, from herbal powders bought from the internet, to class-As. For the most part, their complacency is tied up with being young and reckless, with delusions of invincibility.
But what of the complacency of older generations: the worldly-wise who've "been there, done that" with drugs (or think they have). People who can't resist opining on a drug culture, which the vast majority of them probably haven't participated in for years? How much damage is being wrought by their complacency – or, more precisely, their ill-informed outdated pseudo-liberal posturing?
It often seems that the "mature" liberal attitude to drugs is naive and out of touch, with an overriding attitude of: "I don't want to be a hypocrite, or an hysteric. We did pretty much the same, and we survived, didn't we?"
Do these people truly believe that what was true for them, regarding their youthful recreational drug use, remains hard fact today?
I am thinking of the cheerleaders for cannabis who think that a past of wafting through college grounds, smoking a few fragrant leaves, gives them a unique insight into the industrial-strength skunk that's now the norm.
Or those who believe that some sweaty bopping in a Smiley T-shirt to "Ebeneezer Goode" in the 1990s makes them an oracle on the current bewildering array of MDMA-derivatives, hallucinogens, and unregulated legal highs.
With, say, music, people accept that it constantly moves forward, and at such a pace that one finally has to admit the terrible truth – you're old, out of touch, and don't know what you're talking about (if you ever did).
By contrast, with drugs, it's as if people presume that once they've taken a drug, they're experts forever – sometimes to the point where they add their voice to calls for that drug to be legalised, and dismiss genuine concerns about toxicity, as hysterical, rightwing, or both.
Yet unless the older complacent hordes are actively taking drugs, or are closely involved with those who do, then what do they know?
Using the analogy of music, viewing current drug culture in the context of your own past drug use seems about as logical as playing "Que Sera, Sera" to better understand grime.
Is this the kind of complacency that Joe Simons's father was talking about – not just from the young, but also older people? Those quick to counsel against hysteria, but who won't accept that drug culture can't possibly be the same as it was 30, 20, or even 10 years ago.
All those people fretting about hypocrisy when, to me, it seems the height of hypocrisy to give younger generations "permission" to experiment with substances that may be much more potent and dangerous than they personally took risks with.
Like everything else on the planet, drug culture changes all the time, and most of us don't bother to keep up.
Maybe it's time to admit this, instead of using past experience of recreational drugs as some kind of magic shield against old age and irrelevancy, or pathetic proof that we're still "with it".
Indeed, perhaps it's time to stop posturing and accept that, however many spliffs we once puffed, how many powders we snorted or pills we chomped, in the end we all become as clueless, out of touch, and, yes, complacent, as previous older generations.
David, keep your tackle for the pitch
Why do I spend my life with David Beckham's groin stuck in my face? First for Armani, now for H&M, he's never out of his underpants. And while we supposedly shriek and crash cars when there's a billboard of a pretty girl in a bra, purring: "Hello, boys!", it's somehow become acceptable to have billboards of men bulging about in their keks.
I don't mind Beckham earning some extra pocket money by posing in his scanties, for the ladies, and doubtless for certain gentleman fans. What's interesting is that, while famous women, especially mothers, are berated for stripping (Katie Price, Kate Moss), dads such as Beckham never get criticised, even though he has just admitted that his sons find the whole dad-in-pants thing embarrassing.
Somehow, while standing about in underwear is still deemed tragic and slutty for females, a guy in his pants can be perceived as arty, sporty; it can even be "about health". Pull the other one. (No, not that one!)
Beckham also made a point of saying that he's never padded out for the shots: "I've been told I don't need much help in that department."
With that bombshell, the world now needs to know who told him this? Was it Victoria or did the information come via an official H&M memo?
Was a fluffer standing by in case this, erm, "help" was needed? There is also the issue of: why mention it at all? It seems that a man's crotch can be blown up to about 10ft long on a billboard, and all those dark insecurities will still surface.
On a wider level, maybe it's time for a little gender parity with the undies-modelling.
Beckham's sons prove that having a himbo for a daddy can be just as mortifying as having a supposed bimbo for a mummy.
Come on, Billy. Stand up and take it like a man
Is it time to stop calling Billy Connolly the Big Yin and start calling him the Big Jessie?
The comedian cut short two gigs during his tour, after being heckled, and has criticised heckling, saying it's unfair to the audience.
Granted, no one pays to watch a potty-mouthed drunk from Row C shout: "You're shite!" at the stage. Then again, surely part of a seasoned comedian's skill is how well he handles hecklers.
Connolly should also realise that heckling is no longer unique to live comedy. These days, online forums mean that anybody who does anything at all – from entertainment, politics or media, even just dancing with their cat on YouTube – can get heckled by millions within the time it takes to type: "Rubbish!". This is the age of the silent but deadly online heckle. Look at how Whitney Houston was viciously heckled while on tour.
Maybe comedy hecklers should be given their old school due – at least they "own" their heckles and deliver them in person, not anonymously. Where modern heckling mores are concerned, Connolly should realise that it's a rare treat to see the whites of your tormentors' eyes.
Why economic inequality leads to collapse - Sun, 05 Feb 2012
The lesson of the Great Crash was that unequal enrichment provokes asset bubbles, excessive demand for debt and, finally, economic failure. Now we are painfully learning that again
During the past 30 years, a growing share of the global economic pie has been taken by the world's wealthiest people. In the UK and the US, the share of national income going to the top 1% has doubled, setting workforces adrift from economic progress. Today, the world's 1,200 billionaires hold economic firepower that is equivalent to a third of the size of the American economy.
It is this concentration of income – at levels not seen since the 1920s – that is the real cause of the present crisis.
In the UK, the upward transfer of income from wage earners to business and the mega-wealthy amounts to the equivalent of 7% of the economy. UK wage-earners have around £100bn – roughly equivalent to the size of the nation's health budget – less in their pockets today than if the cake were shared as it was in the late 1970s.
In the US, the sum stands at £500bn. There a typical worker would be more than £3,000 better off if the distribution of output between wages and profits had been held at its 1979 level. In the UK, they would earn almost £2,000 more.
The effect of this consolidation of economic power is that the two most effective routes out of the crisis have been closed. First, consumer demand – the oxygen that makes economies work – has been choked off. Rich economies have lost billions of pounds of spending power. Secondly, the slump in demand might be less damaging if the winners from the process of upward redistribution – big business and the top 1% – were playing a more productive role in helping recovery. They are not.
Britain's richest 1,000 have accumulated fortunes that are collectively worth £250bn more than a decade ago. The biggest global corporations are also sitting on near-record levels of cash. In the UK, such corporate surpluses stand at over £60bn, around 5% of the size of the economy. This money could be used to kickstart growth. Yet it is mostly standing idle. The result is paralysis.
The economic orthodoxy of the past 30 years holds that a stiff dose of inequality brings more efficient and faster-growing economies. It was a theory that captured the New Labour leadership – as long as tackling poverty was made a priority, then the rich should be allowed to flourish.
So have the architects of market capitalism been proved right? The evidence says no. The wealth gap has soared, but without wider economic progress. Since 1980, UK growth and productivity rates have been a third lower and unemployment five times higher than in the postwar era of "regulated capitalism". The three post-1980 recessions have been deeper and longer than those of the 1950s and 1960s, culminating in the crisis of the last four years.
The main outcome of the post-1980 experiment has been an economy that is much more polarised and much more prone to crisis. History shows a clear link between inequality and instability. The two most damaging crises of the last century – the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Great Crash of 2008 – were both preceded by sharp rises in inequality.
The factor linking excessive levels of inequality and economic crisis is to be found in the relationship between wages and productivity. For the two-and-a-half decades from 1945, wages and productivity moved broadly in line across richer nations, with the proceeds of rising prosperity evenly shared. This was also a period of sustained economic stability.
Then there have been two periods when wages have seriously lagged behind productivity – in the 1920s and the post-1980s. Both of them culminating in prolonged slumps. Between 1990 and 2007, real wages in the UK rose more slowly than productivity, and at a worsening rate. In the US, the decoupling started earlier and has led to an even larger gap.
The significance of a growing "wage-productivity gap" is that it upsets the natural mechanisms necessary to achieve economic balance. Purchasing power shrinks and consumer societies suddenly lack the capacity to consume.
In both the 1920s and the post-1980s, to prevent economies seizing up, the demand gap was filled by an explosion of private debt. But pumping in debt didn't prevent recession: it merely delayed it.
Concentrating the proceeds of growth in the hands of a small global financial elite not only brings mass deflation – it also leads to asset bubbles. In 1920s America, a rapid process of enrichment at the top merely fed years of speculative activity in property and the stock market. In the build-up to 2008, rising corporate surpluses and burgeoning personal wealth led to a giant mountain of footloose global capital. The cash sums held by the world's rich (those with cash of more than $1m) doubled in the decade to 2008 to a massive $39 trillion.
Only a tiny proportion of this sum ended up in productive investment. In the decade to 2007, bank lending for property development and takeover activity surged while the share going to UK manufacturing shrank. While the contribution to the economy made by financial services more than doubled over this period, manufacturing fell by a quarter.
Far from creating new wealth, a tsunami of "hot money" raced around the world in search of faster and faster returns, creating bubbles – in property, commodities and business – lowering economic resilience and amplifying the risk of financial breakdown.
New Labour's leaders were right in arguing that the left needed to have a more coherent policy for wealth creation. That is the route to wider prosperity for all. But the central lesson of the last 30 years is that a widening income gap and a more productive economy do not go hand in hand.
An economic model that allows the richest members of society to accumulate a larger and larger share of the cake will eventually self-destruct. It is a lesson that is yet to be learned.
Stewart Lansley is the author of The Cost of Inequality: Three Decades of the Super-Rich and the Economy, published by Gibson Square
Rewind TV: Coppers; Bouncers; Party Paramedics; My Child the Rioter; Protecting Our Children; God Bless Ozzy Osbourne – review - Sun, 05 Feb 2012
In a week where crime and social dysfunction filled our screens, a close study of social workers provided a much-needed glimmer of light
Coppers (C4) | 4oD
Bouncers (C4) | 4oD
Party Paramedics (C4) | 4oD
My Child the Rioter (BBC2) | iPlayer
Protecting Our Children (BBC2) | iPlayer
God Bless Ozzy Osbourne (BBC2) | iPlayer
Perhaps it's the dispiriting effects of midwinter and the economic gloom, but there does seem to be a lot of television at the moment devoted to crime and social dysfunction. Especially on Channel 4. Since offloading the burden of Big Brother, the broadcaster has taken on the onerous task of showing us that side of British life – punching, vomiting, urinating and flashing – that was once the preserve of Police Camera Action!.
Last week it was possible to watch drunk and abusive people in Tayside in Coppers and drunk and abusive people in Newport in Bouncers. There was not much to choose between them. They were all pink-faced, tattooed, bloated and violent – and, to resort to the old joke, that really was just the women.
With due respect to the Scots offender who relieved himself in the back of a police van, it was the Welsh who edged this unofficial UK gross-out competition. A Newport doorman recalled the time he had kicked his way into a male lavatory to find a woman in mid-bowel movement simultaneously performing a sex act on her boyfriend or, at least, the man she happened to be sharing the cubicle with.
I'm not sure that I needed to hear that anecdote. Still, I feel critically obliged to share it, not because that's what passes for entertainment in the pubs and clubs of Great Britain, but because that's what passes for entertainment on British TV.
"Drunk Camera Action!" has become the rallying cry of countless observational documentaries, all put together with the same dramatic division between the forces of chaos and order, the same half-ironic narration, and the same gloating appetite for corporeal excess.
Coppers is the best of the bunch, because it's the least exploitative and the most informative. But it's undermined by the ubiquity of its techniques. The almost identical approach was adopted by yet another Channel 4 offering, Party Paramedics, which, for variation's sake, showed us drunk and abusive people in Kavos.
Never heard of Kavos? It's a hangout in Corfu for British youngsters who want to screw each other, and, as such, should not be confused with Davos, the global gathering in Switzerland for oldsters who have screwed us all.
This time the head-shaking guardians of society were not Scottish cops or Welsh bouncers but Greek physicians manning a clinic in the middle of Kavos's nightclub strip, like some outpost of civilisation in the darkest heart of debauchery. Say what you like about the Greeks' inability to control their spending (and who are we to speak?), but at least they can control their drinking.
"I wanna get wankered," spluttered one Englishman, already making a good fist of the job. Others professed a more traditional desire to get "paralytic every night".
Good on us, it might be said, for bringing Greek tourism and medicine such lucrative business in their hour of need. But, really, what is it with Britons? Why are we on such intimate terms with alcoholic oblivion? And whatever happened to embarrassment?
Drunkenness may be as old as history, but its brazen parade for the camera is a much more recent phenomenon. It's also one that Channel4 appears dedicated not just to enabling but celebrating.
My Child the Rioter was a superior but no more inspiring film. Several young people were interviewed, alongside their parents or parent, about why they took part in last summer's riots. The reasons given were, with one exception, for fun, for free goods or because everyone else was doing it.
Those who insist on seeing the flame of political rebellion in England's burning cities last year had their work cut out casting these dim-witted kids and their docile parents as the revolutionary vanguard. But Liam, the father of a student rioter called Ryan, was on hand to rouse disappointed sofa insurgents. "Robbing trainers isn't political," he explained. "The reasons for robbing trainers are political."
His son, of whose actions he firmly approved, said that he "wanted to see policeman being attacked, being injured". Ryan could have stayed in and watched Coppers, but then he wouldn't have witnessed what he characterised as "a redistribution of wealth" and an attack on "government institutions".
Liam also cited another motivation for the masses laying siege to Foot Locker – the £20,000 it costs to "get educated". You could see his point. His son was studying culture, power and identity at Salford University. He certainly has a strong case for a refund.
The best documentary of the week was Protecting Our Children, a close study of the much maligned duties of social workers. The film followed a trainee social worker, Susanne, as she advised and evaluated a couple – Mike and Tiffany – with a three-year-old son, Toby, who couldn't speak, was still wearing a nappy and had suspicious bruising on his body.
Mike was an aggressively defensive type who couldn't see the need for his son to have a toothbrush as he himself never brushed his teeth as a child. All you need to know about Mike's parenting skills and ability to make rational decisions is that he only had one front tooth remaining.
The family's flat was covered in dog faeces and Toby didn't have a mattress to sleep on. "Would you leave a dog there?" one senior social worker asked after a visit. "So why would you leave a child there?"
But removing a child from parental care is a complex moral and legal process. When to intervene? Can the parents be helped? Is the state too invasive? What complicates the issue further is that, to have a good chance of being able to recover from the effects of neglect and abuse, a child needs to be placed for adoption as young as possible.
Navigating this impossible path is an embattled group of professionals who know that with one false move they might be starring in a tabloid vilification campaign. There are plenty of strapping men who wouldn't relish going up against the likes of Mike when, in his own words, he's "irated". Susanne kept her cool and was impressive throughout, although she could possibly have done without the face jewellery. Some parents might not appreciate being judged by someone with a ring in her lip and stud in her cheek.
Tiffany became pregnant and gave birth prematurely. Mike hit her, she said, and they split up. Then she decided to put both children up for adoption. In the circumstances, it was a happy end. Or what passes for it in social work.
According to God Bless Ozzy Osbourne, all the most unappealing behaviours discussed above, including the scatalogical indiscretions, were for 35 years part and parcel of the former Black Sabbath singer's life. He was a mindless rebel, alcoholic, drug addict, wife abuser, neglectful parent and all-round obnoxious idiot. And a hero to millions.
Perhaps sensing that his drunken pranks, such as biting the heads off doves and smearing his excrement on hotel walls, had become the stuff of teenage holidays, Osbourne gave up booze several years ago. If only sobriety could do for his voice what it's done for his liver. To hear him caterwauling during a sound check was to wonder at the meaning of his claim that he suffered from "terminal perfectionism". Had the perfectionism reached its end?
Much of the documentary was spent recalling his wild years when he looked like Gazza in a fright wig and platform heels, a riot of mad mugging and destructive compulsions. Osbourne earned his reputation. He put the hours in drinking vodka and snorting coke. He never shirked responsibility when it came to being irresponsible. And, let it be said, he's not without a certain inarticulate Brummy charm.
But the whole genre of rock reminiscences is inescapably self-parodic. Not for the first time, as the battle stories of vomit-choking, guitar solos and tour deaths were retold, the ghost of Spinal Tap hovered mockingly over the proceedings. What's sometimes forgotten is that the joke in that masterpiece wasn't just on heavy-rock musicians but the very idea of rockumentaries.
If this film largely endorsed the Ozzy myth, it also left the impression that the only truly remarkable thing about Sharon Osbourne's husband is that he's not dead. So let that be a warning to the truculent hordes in Newport and Kavos. Carry on acting like you are and in 35 years, when you're a multimillionaire, you might have to stop. That should give them pause forthought.
This much I know: Marjorie Wallace - Sun, 05 Feb 2012
The mental-health campaigner, 67, on founding Sane, being solitary and why she loves parties
To have done what I've done I've had to use a lot of Scottish grit. I've always had quite a sense of mischief, which has kept me going. My excellent staff at Sane quite often say: "Hang on, Marjorie, have you taken your seriousness pill?"
I'd always wanted to be a war reporter, but Harold Evans, my editor at the Sunday Times, never allowed me to go out on the frontline. Then I asked to go and campaign about mental health and I really did become like a war reporter – but it was in ordinary people's homes, behind the net curtains in towns and villages all over the country, where mentally ill people were being neglected.
The difficult decision I had to make wasn't about founding Sane [in 1986], it was about continuing and becoming chief executive. Being so absorbed in other people's tragedies, and all their emotional scars laid over my own, has had some impact, not just on me but on my family, too. I have four children and the price was quite high. They often joke that their Sunday afternoon treat would be a visit to Broadmoor.
I am quite a solitary and melancholy person. But I was never reconciled to being alone, so if there's one thing I do fear it's growing old and being alone. And it's one of the reasons I admire the people I've written about much of my life, who by the very nature of mental illness and depression are often isolated.
My mother was a pianist and she used to have her piano carried around with us as we followed my father [a civil engineer] all over Africa. I still remember the African sunset, and at six o'clock every night she would practise, and we would all sit and listen.
I had a diagnosis of breast cancer on Christmas Eve 1993. It was an advanced tumour. And I've never forgotten them all looking over me after they'd done the biopsy, saying: "I'm afraid you've got cancer. Is there anything you'd like to know about the treatment?" I could only say: "Can I still drink champagne?"
My partner, Tom Margerison, bought me a plot in Highgate cemetery about 10 years ago. I'd probably put on my gravestone: "Where's the party?" And then in very big letters: "RSVP". Because my fear that I wasn't going to a party, or somebody wasn't coming to mine, would mortify me. I love parties. RSVP rather than RIP.
What advice would I give the younger generation? Don't do what I have done. Don't force yourself to try to be too strong, too independent, to focus too much on success, but learn to accept your fragility.
Each time a new story comes, I become impassioned all over again. I don't mean that in a do-goody way at all. I just feel that if suffering is meaningless, and if people are enduring pain, they need to know that they're playing a role in their own drama and they have, quite often, a heroic role to play.
I don't like to be shown as a saint. I'm not a saint. I'm not a do-gooder. And the one thing I never want anyone to write is: "Tireless campaigner". If it's ever written I shall come like a thunderbolt! I've put it in my will.
Sane's Year of the Black Dog campaign raises awareness of the impact of depression, with black dog sculptures appearing in major UK cities. For more information or to seek help, go to sane.org.uk
Peter Seeberger: we can treat malaria for less - Sun, 05 Feb 2012
Artemisinin is the most effective malaria treatment yet discovered. Peter Seeberger has found a way to to make it from the waste products of its current manufacture
Artemisinin, a drug extracted from the sweet wormwood plant, is the most effective treatment for malaria ever discovered. Every year, millions of doses of artemisinin combination therapies (ACTs) are donated to Africa and Asia, greatly reducing the worldwide burden of the parasitical disease. But extracting artemisinin is expensive and because it takes time to cultivate the plant there are often bottlenecks in supply.
But Peter H Seeberger, the director of the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, Germany, has just announced that he and colleague François Lévesque have discovered a simple and cost-effective way of synthesising artemisinin from the waste products of the plant. Their discovery has the potential to make the drug more affordable for the 225 million people affected by malaria every year.
Artemisinin belongs to the endoperoxide class of anti-malarial drugs and has been called a beautiful molecule, but why is it such bad news for the malaria parasite?
Artemisinin consists of four rings closely tied together. One of the rings is bridged via two oxygen atoms that sit next to each other, but the bond is not very stable and likes to break down. Artemisinin acts on the blood stage of the malaria parasite. Although the exact mechanism is not known, it is thought the endoperoxide ring reacts with the heme or the iron-bearing part of the red blood cell, destroying the parasite in the process. There are no other compounds like this in nature and it is this feature that is responsible for the extraordinary biological activity of artemisinin.
What were the challenges you faced trying to make artemisinin synthetically?
Although it was first synthesised in 1982, in practice it has been very difficult to scale up the process, hence our continued dependence on the plant product. However, we knew from the work of other researchers that two of the byproducts of the plant – artemisinic acid and dihydroartemisinic acid – were good starting points for synthesis. At present, these compounds are thrown away. Our idea was to see if we could make artemisinin from artemisinic acid using reactive molecules called singlet oxygen and the process of flow chemistry.
Singlet oxygen? Flow chemistry?
Singlet oxygen is produced by shining ultraviolet light on oxygen molecules and acts as a bridge between artemisinic acid and artemisinin. However, scaling up the procedure to industrial level is difficult because the larger the reaction vessel, the less light it lets in and the less reactive oxygen is produced. The idea of flow chemistry is to perform the chemical reactions in a narrow pipe rather than a large pot, thereby greatly increasing the volume of the mixture that is exposed to light. In this way, the reaction conditions stay the same and increasing amounts are made by running the reaction continuously. In the first stage, artemisinic acid is reduced to dihydroartemisinic acid. This product and the oxygen are then pumped into the flow reactor, a flexible 2mm-5mm pipe wrapped around the light source. The light activates the oxygen, which reacts with the acid. All it takes is the addition of one further acid to produce the artemisinin. The beauty of this process is its simplicity and the fact that we don't have to clean up between each step.
Your solution is certainly ingenious, but when do you expect it to become commercially viable?
The reactor we used in the original study cost €50,000. We have further refined the process so that the new reactor now costs about €10,000 and requires a lot less energy and space. One such reactor can make about 800g of artemisinin per day. In theory, by running 400 such reactors continuously for a year we could make the entire world supply of the drug for a one-time investment of around €4m. We are looking at working with people who are isolating artemisinin from plants and who have plenty of waste product, or companies like Amyris and Sanofi who are experimenting with engineering yeast to produce artemisinic acid directly. The key here is to make as much artemisinin as the world needs at the lowest possible price. With the right partner, we could have commercial production up and running in six months.
It all sounds very complicated. Aren't there simpler, less technology-dependent ways of helping people with malaria?
Malaria is a complicated disease and we need to fight it with all the means at our disposal. Insecticide-treated bed nets are very effective, but nets are often expensive or of poor quality. That is why a few years ago I set up the Tesfa-Ilg "Hope for Africa" Foundation with some like-minded individuals in Switzerland. As we had limited resources, we focused on Ethiopia, the home country of my friend Dawit Tesfaye, an Ethiopian-born Swiss. Together with some NGOs, the foundation brought two Ethiopian state-run enterprises and built a factory that now employs more than 200 workers, mainly women, who sew the nets and apply the insecticides. Prevention is a wonderful thing – if you don't get bitten, you don't get sick. Plus we are providing jobs for local people.
Much of your research is on the synthesis of oligosaccharides. What fascinates you about this type of molecule?
Oligosaccharides are key components of information transfer in our bodies, but while DNA and proteins are well understood, oligosaccharides are not. A big reason is the fact that access to pure oligosaccharides from natural sources is really difficult, so chemists can make a real difference if they can come up with straightforward and automated means to make these complex molecules. The automated synthesis of DNA enabled entire industries; I want to do the same thing for oligosaccharides.
I understand that one of the applications may be for the design of malaria vaccines?
Yes, oligosaccharides are chains of sugars that make up complex glycans. These glycans are found attached to proteins or lipids on the surface of living cells. My idea is to develop an anti-toxin vaccine that can recognise a complex glycan on the surface of the malaria parasite. Antibodies against these have been detected in children above the age of two in malaria-endemic areas of Africa. The problem is children below two cannot make such antibodies, which is why malaria often proves so deadly to young infants. But if you can give them a combination of a glycan and a protein, their bodies can be trained to mount an antibody response against the parasite. The preliminary results of our research in animal models is looking great but it's been a challenge pushing forward. ButHowever I'm determined to continue with it. Working on a malaria vaccine is probably the least likely to make me any money but it's most likely to have a really large impact on humanity.
What would you say to a person thinking of pursuing a career in organic chemistry?
My chemistry teacher in high school told us that as organic chemists we could make things that nobody had ever made before. He called it, "playing God". I am not sure that is the right way to look at it, but to make totally new molecules or ones we previously got from nature is a wonderful feeling.
