Public sector must not collude in cuts | Cath Elliott
Public sector workers should fight to defend services, and resist coalition calls for them to act like turkeys voting for Christmas
There's little doubt that the spending cuts announced this week of 25% across most government departments are going to have a hugely detrimental effect on Britain's public services: it's obvious that such swingeing cuts cannot possibly be achieved without a direct impact on frontline services and on the public sector's ability to deliver those services.
And yet, in a bizarre twist, public sector workers themselves are now being asked to identifyWhere in their opinion, these reductions should come. It 's almost as though, like turkeys voting for Christmas, the Government expects those whose jobs are on the line suddenly turn around and offer their services to the hatchet man voluntarily.
The letters that David Cameron and Nick Clegg have sent out "asking staff to help find 'fair and responsible' cuts" are, of course, nothing more than a cynical ploy to try and ensure that public sector workers bear some of the brunt when the whole charade goes tits up â€" as it inevitably will. In a few years' time, when people start complaining about the loss of the welfare state, and about the fact that their local libraries, swimming pools and museums have closed down, Cleggeron will at least be able to say that they consulted with staff in the public sector, and that without the expert advice they took at the time the situation would invariably have been even worse.
Well, my message to public sector workers would be, don't do it. Do not collude with a government that is intent on destroying public services, and do not be fooled for one minute into thinking that if you can persuade them to focus cuts in an area far away from your own, they won't be coming for your department and your job next. Because trust me, they will.
Despite their protestations to the contrary, it was clear from the start that the coalition government had no intention of penalising the bankers for the state of the economy or, indeed, of ensuring that the cost of putting things right would be borne by those who could most afford to pay. This week's emergency budget has simply confirmed that the doom-mongers among us were right all along. So public sector workers are now to be punished for the profligacy of the private sector, and those who are most in need of support and services are going to end up being those least able to access them. Anyone who thought that the Lib Dems would prove to be a civilising influence on the Tories must now be wondering where on earth it all went so horribly wrong.
Of course, public sector workers know exactly where the waste is in their services: but they also know the futility of raising them as areas of concern. It's not frontline workers, after all, who are earning massive bonuses at the taxpayers' expense, and nor is it frontline workers who get to determine which ridiculously expensive consultancy firmsRequest to do "business reorganization process" or any other control without speculation of those who rule the production of his thinking blue. But the front of workers also know that they have re "will always be the first one in the firing line, where the reduction to start to bite, and that whatever happened, it certainly won 't be the managers and the like that made sense.
As a taxpayer as well as someone who's worked in public services, I'm well aware of how my local taxes have been squandered over the years. Like many people, I don't begrudge a penny that I've contributed towards public sector pension schemes, and I'm more than happy to help pay for much needed local services like schools, refuse collection or care schemes for the elderly or infirm.
However, I feel sorry for every penny that 's been spent on PFI projects outrageous as the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital that saw venture capitalists fleecing local taxpayers here out of tens of millions of pounds, and I also begrudge the amount of our money that's been wasted on Norwich's bid to become a unitary authority: a bid that £2m-plus down the line has now come to nothing. I also begrudge my local council losing millions in bad investments, and I begrudge every penny that has been spent on the outsourcing or market testing of any public service.
But I also know that these are the areas that Cameron and Clegg don't want to hear about. I know that these are not the type of cuts this government wants to make. So, rather than waste my time responding to the government's call for suggestions, I will instead be preparing to fight to defend our public services. And I'd urge everyone else to do the same.
Public sector must not collude in cuts | Cath Elliott
Public sector workers should fight to defend services, and resist coalition calls for them to act like turkeys voting for Christmas
There's little doubt that the spending cutsannounced this week, 25% on most government agencies have a very detrimental impact on the UK 's public services: It' s obvious that such strong contractions can not be achieved without a direct impact on frontline services and the public sector 'ability to provide such services.
And yet, in a strange twist, the public sector workers are now asked to identify themselves where they think these cuts should come. It's almost as though, much like turkeys voting for Christmas, the government expects those whose jobs are on the line to suddenly turn around and offer themselves up to the axe-man voluntarily.
The letters that David Cameron and Nick Clegg have sent out "asking staff to help find 'fair and responsible' cuts" are, of course, nothing more than a cynical ploy to try and ensure that public sector workers bear some of the brunt when the whole charade goes tits up â€" as it inevitably will. In a few years' time, when people start complaining about the loss of the welfare state, and about the fact that their local libraries, swimming pools and museums have closed down, Cleggeron will at least be able to say that they consulted with staff in the public sector, and that without the expert advice they took at the time the situation would invariably have been even worse.
Well, my message to public sector workers would be, don't do it. Do not collude with a government that is intent on destroying public services, and do not be fooled for one minute into thinking that if you can persuade them to focus cuts in an area far away from your own, they won't be coming for your department and your job next. Because trust me, they will.
Despite their protestations to the contrary, it was clear from the start that the coalition government had no intention of penalising the bankers for the state of the economy or, indeed, of ensuring that the cost of putting things right would be borne by those who could most afford to pay. This week's emergency budget has simply confirmed that the doom-mongers among us were right all along. So public sector workers are now to be punished for the profligacy of the private sector, and those who are most in need of support and services are going to end up being those least able to access them. Anyone who thought that the Lib Dems would prove to be a civilising influence on the Tories must now be wondering where on earth it all went so horribly wrong.
Of course, public sector employees to know exactly where the waste in their services, but they also know the futility of involving them as areas of concern. It 's not the front of the workers, in the end, those who earn massive bonuses at the taxpayers' expense, and nor is it frontline workers who get to determine which ridiculously expensive consultancy firms to commission to do "business process re-engineering" or whatever other management non-jobbery those at the top manufacture out of their blue-sky thinking. But frontline workers also know that they're always going to be the first ones in the firing line when the cuts start to bite, and that whatever happens, it certainly won't be the chief executives and their ilk who are made to feel the pinch.
As a taxpayer as well as someone who's worked in public services, I'm well aware of how my local taxes have been squandered over the years. Like many people, I don't begrudge a penny that I've contributed towards public sector pension schemes, and I'm more than happy to help pay for much needed local services like schools, refuse collection or care schemes for the elderly or infirm.
However, I feel sorry for every penny that 's been spent on PFI projects outrageous as the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital that saw venture capitalists fleecing local taxpayers here out of tens of millions of pounds, and I also begrudge the amount of our money that's been wasted on Norwich's bid to become a unitary authority: The rate of 2 million pounds plus on the line now to nothing . I also begrudge my local council losing millions in bad investments, and I begrudge every penny that has been spent on the outsourcing or market testing of any public service.
But I also know that these are the areas that Cameron and Clegg don't want to hear about. I know that these are not the type of cuts this government wants to make. So, rather than waste my time responding to the government's call for suggestions, I will instead be preparing to fight to defend our public services. And I'd urge everyone else to do the same.
Safety and security top agenda at African Union summit
News roundup: African Union agrees more troops for Somalia; arrests linked to Kampala bombings; summit moves on health; Buganda close to bankruptcy; national boost for fish farming
African Union (AU) leaders yesterday agreed to send a further 2,000 troops to boost the AU's 6,000-strong peace-keeping force in Somalia. This follows the July 11 bombing attacks in the Ugandan capital when 76 people died while watching football's world cup final at two separate venues.
The leaders were attending the African Union summit that ended yesterday in Kampala, Uganda. At the summit Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni reiterated his resolve to maintain Ugandan forces in Somalia, and was quoted in the Daily Nation as saying: "Let us now act in concert and sweep them [the terrorists] out of Africa."
Security measures have been tightened and a forthcoming international cricket match between Uganda and Namibia has been moved from Kampala to Windhoek (Namibia) by the International Cricket Council, reports AllAfrica.com.
Hard-pressed doctors in Kampala 's Mulago National Hospital, which treated dozens of patients injured by explosions in Mexico has been enhanced by the addition of 10 medical experts (mainly from Nairobi, Kenya) in neurosurgery, orthopedics, anesthesia, intensive therapy and psychology. Uganda 's Independent The newspaper said that they were sent to the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF), a partner with the Guardian "in the Katine project, in response to a request from the Government of Uganda.
Latest terror suspect arrest
Ugandan police have arrested the latest foreign suspect in the hunt for terrorists behind the July 11 bombings. According to the Daily Monitor, an Eritrean woman suspected of being the fiancee of one of the suicide bombers has been detained. At least 21 suspects being held are said to be directly linked to al-Shabaab.
Police chief Major General Kale Kayihura told the paper the police suspect the group brought at least six bombs into the country. "So far three went off, one was found and the other are two are yet to be found."Â
Health key issue at summit
African Union members at this week's summit have agreed to form a group to monitor and report on the progress of maternal, infant and child health - the key theme of the conference, said Jean Ping, chair of the AU Commission, at the end of the summit yesterday.
Cited in New-Vision , summit chairman President Bingu Wa Mutharika of Malawi added that leaders had agreed to prioritise the welfare of women and safe motherhood at the top of their development agendas this year. "If we improve the welfare of women, access to food and health care, maternal mortality will significantly reduce," he said.
The summit also launched a programme for infrastructural development in Africa and adopted the African charter on maritime transport, elected human rights commissioners, and set up a chiild health committee.
Malaria was the subject of a special summit session of the African Leaders Malaria Alliance to assess progress in sustainable malaria control and in removing tariffs and taxes on anti-malarial imports, according to Vanguard.
In the same week as the summit, East African Business Week reports an expansion of the United Against Malaria (UAM) campaign to Uganda's under-13s in a series of football tournaments across the country over the next two months. One of the goals of the drive is to educate the public about malaria through use of football, says the UAM coordinator Kenneth Malumbo.
\\ "How do they play soccer, we will constantly remind them about HIV prevention, treatment education of their parents and well-wishers who will attend the matches."
Uganda has one of the highest incidences of childhood mortality caused by malaria. In April this year the Daily Monitor reported that around 300 Ugandans mostly pregnant women and young children were dying every day from malaria.
The Ministry of Health statesmen annual economic cost of treatment and absence from work for more than USS600m year. Daily Monitor says at least one in four households in Uganda spend their annual income on just treatment for malaria - a major cause of poverty across the country.
Buganda close to bankruptcy
Uganda 's largely autonomous kingdom of Buganda is broke, according to observers.
Treasurer Nagawa Mukasa said last week that continued closure of the realm of 's independent-minded radio station CBS by the central government crackdown media costs Buganda, SHS 31m in lost wages every day.
Nagawa said the Ugandan government still owed Buganda a promised Sshs 9bn from the last financial year and a further Sshs 21bn for 16 years of prison rent arrears incurred by Uganda's ministry of defence for use of ??? prison in??. With no broadcasting channel - CBS was forced off air last year - she said the kingdom was also unable to advertise the sale of Bugandan certificates - another major income stream. Â
Moves to get the radio station back on air have failed so far. The Observer has learned that the risk of CBS providing airtime to a new Buganda-based political pressure group, Ssuubi 2011 - whose aim is regime change, according to the newspaper - was felt to be too great by Uganda's National Resistance Movement government and likely to "confuse" its voters in Buganda. Â
Fishing farming given government boost
Plans to reduce poverty by promoting large-scale fish farming across eastern Uganda were spelled out last week by the country's fisheries minister, Fred Mukisa, reports New Vision. Mukisa was speaking at the commissioning of the Last Chance Fish Farm project, a community-based group of 300 fish farmers in Mayuge district.
Uganda's eastern districts are rich in water resources, near to or bordering the shores of Lake Victoria and also containing large underground water reserves. To offset a reduction in traditional fish stocks, the minister said the government would be supplying farmers with pond excavation equipment, training and a stock of fingerlings for a programme starting early in 2011. He said training would be provided to farmers either locally or in Egypt, the country seen as a role model for fish farming in Africa. Initial districts affected would be Bugiri, Butaleja, Iganga, Manafwa, Mayuge and Sironko.
The minister added that a third of the 30 planned cold rooms were built, each capable of handling over 5.5 tonnes daily. The fish industry is a large employer in Uganda, with over 500,000 people working directly in the sector.
Â
The Fiver: Over 500 Words About Nothing Happening | Paul Doyle
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BAD TIMES FOR BOTTOM FEEDERS
Constipation can be caused by many things: illness, pregnancy, a low-fibre diet, out-of-date Purple Tin or poisoning by heavy metals (as in silicon and polonium, not Slayer and Black Sabbath, who, on the contrary, have caused many prudes to poop their pants over the years).
It can also be caused, of course, by money-knack and stubbornness. Those are certainly major factors in the lack of movement in the transfer market this summer. Many clubs are trying to discharge their waste but can't â€" Hull, for example, are finding it increasingly hard to stomach Jimmy Bullard, to whom they must continue to pay £45,000-per-week because no one else will and he doesn't fancy a wage-cut. Manchester City are likely to encounter similar problems very soon as Eastlands starts to resemble an unsuccessful furniture
shop, full of unshiftable stools.
It seems that two of the other big mooted moves will not come to pass either. Manchester City's attempt to buy James Milner appears to have foundered on a hitherto unseen rock of good sense, as the club refuses to meet Aston Villa's laughable £30m price. City and Chelsea also look like missing out on Fernando Torres, who has become so entranced by Roy Hodgson's "lovable old-fashioned vowel-mangling honourable bank robber voice" (as celebrated Fiver hack Barney Ronay memorably put it) that he can't pull himself away from it. "Fernando Torres has told us he wants to come back," spake Hodgson mesmerically as he slowly swung a pendulum from side to side and added: "He's told us he's looking forward to Monday and getting back to work and playing for us next season. That's what we know and as far as I'm concerned,
all others reports are erroneous."
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"[Javier] Hernandez was paired with Dimitar Berbatov in the intrasquad scrimmage on Tuesday" - the MLS website reports on Manchester United's training session ahead of tonight's big ball game against the Landycakes Donovan Major League Soccerball Superstar All Stars.
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Inside the Parole Board: how freedom is granted or denied for prisoners
Unprecedented access opens the door often publicly criticized, but few understand the working of the Parole board
The Parole Board is the court that decides whether to let paedophiles, murderers and other dangerous offenders back into the community. Press and public opprobrium over early release of notorious prisoners is reflected by members. "These could be life or death decisions we're making," one said. While agonising whether to free a man who kidnapped a woman, drove her to a wood and shot her in the legs, she added: "We are potentially letting people out who could go on to commit some terrible act or keeping someone in custody when they're safe to release."
The board is at the heart of the criminal justice system. Its remit in the most high-profile cases where sentence is indeterminate is to judge at oral hearings, usually held in jails, on a single point: whether prisoners guilty of the most serious offences involving sex and violence still pose a risk to society to justify imprisonment after the expiration of their tariff - the minimum time the trial judge ruled they must serve. For determinate, or fixed term, prisoners, the "hearings" are on paper.
The Guardian gained a week of unprecedented access to the board. We were allowed to sit in on panels' deliberations and read their reports. Acutely sensitive to public reaction to their role in releasing criminals, few members were willing to be identified, although they voiced their opinions freely.
'Ultimately imponderable'
\\ "Each case, as a detective to investigate - but took a wrong contrast," said one member. "We have to predict the risk of crime occurs when someone is released. However, that risk is not something that we can calculate accurately - that means that we 're-evaluation of life and death risks, which ultimately , imponderable.
\\ "Another truth is that we sometimes get it wrong: there will always be the proportion of offenders, we are releasing that will reoffend. The only safe solution is not to release anyone, except in this case, you may also have early conditional Free Board at all. "
In a normal day of "paper hearings" panels of up to three members will hear cases that are gruesome, baffling, or in which miscarriages of justice seem to have taken place. For example, the 50-year-old mother given a five-year sentence for cruelty towards a person under 16 after she failed to stop her husband sexually abusing her daughter.
It was, said one member, a breathtakingly severe sentence. "This poor woman must have met an unsympathetic judge on a bad day," he said. "She had been utterly under the control of her violent husband but had not taken any part in the abuse herself."
The rarity of the sentence leaves the panel powerless to release her. "Because it is so unusual for a woman to be imprisoned for this crime, there are no prison courses that exist to help her address what the judge said was her offending behaviour," the member said.
"Now it's difficult for us to release her because she hasn't shown she no longer presents the risk the judge found her guilty of. She should have appealed at the time of sentence but people sometimes don't get the right legal advice. All we can do is refer the case back to her case worker with our guidance and advice, and hope that her appeal will be successful next time."
Equally upsetting was the case of an offender recalled from parole because he had threatened to hurt someone and who had lost his housing tenancy. "This is one of the main difficulties that you come across," said Matthew, a member since 2005. "This man was recalled because he got stressed during his last release and wasn't able to get help from his social worker or any other source."
All fixed-term prisoners found guilty of crimes involving sex or violence, as well as those serving life or indeterminate sentences, need the board's blessing before they can be released. Such decision-making is rarely straightforward, with members frequently struggling with their responsibility.
"I keep find myself swinging one way, then the other," said one member considering the release of a 26-year-old man who held up a garage with a machete, cosh and chainsaw. "I started by thinking we should release him but now my instincts are saying not to."
Despite their desire to be liberal and pro-release, Matthew said the statistics prove that panel members unconsciously reflect increasingly risk-adverse public attitudes. He wishes he had more powers. "If we were able to consider the long-term risk for determinate sentence prisoners and not just the parole window during which they would otherwise be detained, our decisions might from time to time be different," he said.
The board has substantial authority. Members may, for example, refuse to release someone on the basis of a discount trial judge or the crimes for which the offender was acquitted. Information that would be inadmissible in court - for example, rumors - often the key to the panel 's decision.
"We can and do take any and every evidence that presents itself into account when we assess the risk presented by an offender," said Terry McCarthy, head of casework at the board and administrator for the panel that released Jon Venables on lifelong licence in June 2001. "That someone is acquitted of a crime doesn't mean that we ignore it because we're not looking at whether they have committed an offence beyond reasonable doubt but whether their behaviour suggests risk - of any offence at all."
It is with sex offenders that panels admit their hardest work is done. The appeal for parole, for example, from the 77-year-old in a wheelchair with a 40-year history of incest â€" the last instance being shortly before conviction, when he was 71.
Unremitting misery
When the table is finally clear of reports, the panel sag in their Formica chairs, drained by the airless room and the unremitting misery of the lives they have spent their day delving into.
"The problem is that if we release someone and something goes wrong â€" if an offender we release kills someone â€" the buck stops with us. It was our decision. It was our call," she said. "Having said that …" she added, standing up and putting on her coat, " I have never enjoyed my work more."
What does the Parole Board do?
Established in 1968, the Parole Board is an independent body that makes risk assessments about whether prisoners serving specific and indeterminate sentences may safely be released.
Indeterminate sentences cover prisoners serving both life terms and those incarcerated for public protection.
Determinate sentences include discretionary conditional release prisoners serving more than 4 years whose offence was committed before 4 April 2005 and prisoners given extended sentences for public protection for offences which were committed on or after 4 April 2005.
The board also decides whether the justice secretary has been justified in recalling prisoners accused of breaching their licence condition â€" the rules that they must observe upon release â€" and whether they are safe to re-release if they have been recalled.
Inside the Parole Board
Unprecedented access opens the door often publicly criticized, but few understand the working of the Parole board
A Parole Board hearing starts early and with little fanfare. There are no grand, oak-lined courtrooms or spacious chambers. Instead, in a cramped room in the bowels of a modern, unprepossessing building just beyond the shadow of parliament, panel members grab paper cups of powdered coffee and converse about the comparative quality of the beverages served in prisons. Then, firmly shutting the door on the outside world, the panel squeeze around a table dominated by teetering piles of prison, probation and psychiatric reports and victim statements, and begin their work.
The Parole Board is the court that decides whether to let paedophiles, murderers and other dangerous offenders back into the community. Press and public opprobrium over early release of notorious prisoners is reflected by members. "These could be life or death decisions we're making," one said. While agonising whether to free a man who kidnapped a woman, drove her to a wood and shot her in the legs, she added: "We are potentially letting people out who could go on to commit some terrible act or keeping someone in custody when they're safe to release."
The board is at the heart of the criminal justice system. Its remit in the most high-profile cases where sentence is indeterminate is to judge at oral hearings, usually held in jails, on a single point: whether prisoners guilty of the most serious offences involving sex and violence still pose a risk to society to justify imprisonment after the expiration of their tariff - the minimum time the trial judge ruled they must serve. For determinate, or fixed term, prisoners, the "hearings" are on paper.
The Guardian gained a week of unprecedented access to the board. We were allowed to sit in on panels' deliberations and read their reports. Acutely sensitive to public reaction to their role in releasing criminals, few members were willing to be identified, although they voiced their opinions freely.
'Ultimately imponderable'
"Each case is like a detective investigation â€" but done the wrong way round," said one member. "We have to predict the risk of a crime taking place if we release someone. The truth is that that risk is not something we can calculate accurately - which means we're assessing life and death risks that are ultimately imponderable.
\\ "Another truth is that we sometimes get it wrong: there will always be the proportion of offenders, we are releasing that will reoffend. The only safe solution is not to release anyone, except in this case, you may also have early conditional Free Board at all. "
In a normal day of "paper hearings" panels of up to three members will hear cases that are gruesome, baffling, or in which miscarriages of justice seem to have taken place. For example, the 50-year-old mother given a five-year sentence for cruelty towards a person under 16 after she failed to stop her husband sexually abusing her daughter.
It was, said one member, a breathtakingly severe sentence. "This poor woman must have met an unsympathetic judge on a bad day," he said. "She had been utterly under the control of her violent husband but had not taken any part in the abuse herself."
The rarity of the sentence leaves the panel powerless to release her. "Because it is so unusual for a woman to be imprisoned for this crime, there are no prison courses that exist to help her address what the judge said was her offending behaviour," the member said.
"Now it's difficult for us to release her because she hasn't shown she no longer presents the risk the judge found her guilty of. She should have appealed at the time of sentence but people sometimes don't get the right legal advice. All we can do is refer the case back to her case worker with our guidance and advice, and hope that her appeal will be successful next time."
Matthew said that, with accommodation, he would have "reasonable faith" this man could be managed in the community. "Without it, he will become stressed again and his risk to society will increase," he said. "Prison is often the wrong place for people in terms of their support needs but once they're there, the risk of them reoffending is too high to let them out."
All term prisoners convicted of crimes related to sex and violence, as well as those serving life or indeterminate sentences should board 's blessing before they can be released. Such decisions are rarely simple, with members often struggle with their responsibilities.
"I keep find myself swinging one way, then the other," said one member considering the release of a 26-year-old man who held up a garage with a machete, cosh and chainsaw. "I started by thinking we should release him but now my instincts are saying not to."
Despite their desire to be liberal and pro-release, Matthew said the statistics prove that panel members unconsciously reflect increasingly risk-adverse public attitudes. He wishes he had more powers. "If we were able to consider the long-term risk for determinate sentence prisoners and not just the parole window during which they would otherwise be detained, our decisions might from time to time be different," he said.
The board has substantial powers. Members can, for example, refuse to release someone on the basis of evidence discounted by the trial judge or of crimes for which the offender was acquitted. Information that would be inadmissible in court â€" such as hearsay â€" is often key to a panel's decision.
"We can and do take any and every evidence that presents itself into account when we assess the risk presented by an offender," said Terry McCarthy, head of casework at the board and administrator for the panel that released Jon Venables on lifelong licence in June 2001. "That someone is acquitted of a crime doesn't mean that we ignore it because we're not looking at whether they have committed an offence beyond reasonable doubt but whether their behaviour suggests risk - of any offence at all."
It is with sex offenders that panels admit their hardest work is done. The appeal for parole, for example, from the 77-year-old in a wheelchair with a 40-year history of incest â€" the last instance being shortly before conviction, when he was 71.
Unremitting misery
When the table is finally clear of reports, the panel sag in their Formica chairs, drained by the airless room and the unremitting misery of the lives they have spent their day delving into.
"I find it more demoralising than I had expected because of the few people that we are able to release," said one member. "I joined the Parole Board with the belief that people can change. But they don't. Prison rarely helps offenders. More often than not, it seems to make them worse. They offend and offend again, and we as Parole Board members become more and more cautious about releasing them.
"The problem is that if we release someone and something goes wrong â€" if an offender we release kills someone â€" the buck stops with us. It was our decision. It was our call," she said. "Having said that …" she added, standing up and putting on her coat, " I have never enjoyed my work more."
What does the Parole Board do?
Established in 1968, the Parole Board is an independent body that makes risk assessments about whether prisoners serving specific and indeterminate sentences may safely be released.
Uncertainty of supply cover prisoners serving life sentences, and how persons deprived of liberty to protect the population.
Determinate sentences include discretionary conditional release prisoners serving more than 4 years whose offence was committed before 4 April 2005 and prisoners given extended sentences for public protection for offences which were committed on or after 4 April 2005.
Council also decided, Justice Minister was acquitted, remembering prisoners accused of violating their license condition - the rules they must follow after the liberation - and whether they would be safe to re-release, if they were withdrawn.
Today in Sport - have your say on the day's issues
• Discuss the day's big issues and send us your favourite links
• Liverpool relief after Torres reveals he wants to stay
• Maradona departs as Argentina manager
• Farah leads home 10,000m British one-two
• Follow Guardian Sport's latest updates on Twitter
4.28pm:But I want more for today 's no-1' s for actually happens everywhere transfer stories? Then there 's another 500 words for your reading pleasure, courtesy of Fever .
4.06pm: "He's not for sale" story No55 of the day: this time from Chelsea. Responding to the rumours linking Didier Drogba with Manchester City, Chelsea chief executive Ron Gourlay said: "Didier will be a Chelsea player next year. Didier is under contract. The thing about this time of year is we always get [this]. For our players to be in the news â€" it's normal. But Didier Drogba will be a Chelsea player next year." KM
3.40pm: Canford Cliffs has won the big race of the day at Goodwood, the Sussex Stakes, running down last year's winner Rip Van Winkle. There's more from our racing team in Talking Horses. KM
3.30pm:KM
2.53pm: We've got a nice blog post on how the Guardian has archived its World Cup content down the years, especially interesting for those who lean towards a spot of tech.
2.35pm: Sachin Tendulkar's doing his best to salvage something from the second Test in Colombo. He's finished day three unbeaten on 108, with India closing on 382-4 in reply to Sri Lanka's first innings of 642-4 declared. Debutant Suresh Raina was 66 not out.
And here's a gallery of yesterday's action at the European Championships. Better late than never, eh? KM
1.57pm: Darren Clarke's hopes of playing his way back into the Ryder Cup team, and forcing captain Colin Montgomerie into finding another assistant, have received a huge boost as he has been invited to take part in the US PGA Championship for the second year running. He's been a solid performer down the years against the US but has he got the form this year to make him a competitive selection? TL
1.34pm: Bad news for fans of central Asian wheel-based sports: Tour de France champion Alberto Contador will leave Astana at the end of this season. Rumour has it he may join a new team founded by Fernando Alonso, who's no stranger to team orders etc and so forth. TL
1.24pm: Birmingham City's new signing, Nikola Zigic, has been looking forward to the new season. In terms, of rallying cries it's not the best we've ever heard. "La Liga is quite physical too. It may not be as fast as the Premier League but I will certainly do my best to adapt. I'm pretty sure I will be able to do that. I do have to adapt a bit physically but I am working very hard on that in training to step up the pace." On paper, he looks like a decent signing but I was underwhelmed by his performances at the World Cup. TL
12.57pm: There's nothing like honesty. Peter Ebdon has today released a statement â€" to play down his chances of winning a match. The former world champion is getting married this weekend and is then due to play in qualifying for the Shanghai Masters. Here's the statement, which surely must be influenced by the recent match-fixing allegations to have hit snooker:
I would like to make it known that I believe will not be able to play in the best of its abilities in my Roewe Shanghai Masters qualifying match in Sheffield next week.This is down to personal circumstances, including the fact that I am getting re-married in Hungary this weekend. Since playing in a recent tournament in Thailand I have not been able to practise, and by the time the qualifiers come around I will not have played for 10 days or more.
I know just how bad I can be when I don't feel properly prepared as I am the type of player who needs to practise hard in order to play to a reasonable standard. As always, I will be doing my utmost to win what is a very important match for me but in truth, my levels of expectation will not be very high."
KM
12.33pm: For the racing fans among you here's today's Talking HorsesThanks to our tips for the second day of Glorious Goodwood and, as usual, a chance to win a £ 25 bet. KM
11.58am: Spain's Under-19s weren't the only ones involved in a bit of set-piece trickery yesterday. Here's Danilo Rios scoring an almost identical goal for Duque de Caxias in Brazil's second division last night. KM
11:18 am: A couple of lines out of the Arsenal: Arsene Wenger has confirmed that Nicklas Bendtner will miss the start of the season because of his groin injury, while Wenger's also had a few words to say about the Cesc Fábregas saga. "He is a very important player for us, he is our captain and we have worked very hard [for him] to be the future of our team and that is why we are always adamant about [not] letting him go," he said. "It is only noise. In our job we have to deal with what we can master. What we cannot influence is not to worry about."
Meanwhile, Raúl's move to Schalke is now a done deal. There's more here. KM
11:08 am: Tim Bresnan has been called into the England squad for the first Test against Pakistan. Ajmal Shahzad has been ruled out due to an ankle injury. TL
11.05am: Just in case you have a hankering for non-fatal lorry crash videos. I always find these near-death videos a little creepy. Mainly because of the fact that if there are loads of these videos of people narrowly escaping death, there are loads more of people not escaping death. TL
10.47am: Newcastle have confirmed the signing of Sol Campbell on a one-year deal. We'll have more on the site shortly. KM
10.39am: A quick update on what's coming up today:
• Football-wise, we'll have a blog on Diego Maradona up later. Roy Hodgson's giving a press conference at 5pm ahead of Liverpool's Europa League qualifier tomorrow, while tonight Celtic are in Champions League qualifying action against Braga.
And if you haven't found it already, here's this week's Knowledge, featuring players who have won with their country but not with their clubs.
• The European Athletics Championships continue. From a British perspective, the pick of the action should be Dwain Chambers in the 100m final at 8.45pm. The semis take place at 6.50pm.
• We'll be keeping an eye on the England v Pakistan build-up, with both teams giving holding conferences at Trent Bridge.
• And there's a Felipe Massa presser too, ahead of the Hungarian GP, the scene of his serious crash last year. No doubt he'll also be asked about last weekend's events in Germany too. KM
10.12am: I thoroughly enjoyed the 10,000m at the European Athletics Championships last night, although I may have turned over for three minutes to watch Piers Morgan boasting about how he's made it in Hollywood. What did you think of Mo Farah's decision to encourage Ayad Lamdassem to overtake him as the race reached its conclusion. Was it a canny psychological ploy or a needless piece of showboating? I'd go with the former, Lamdassem fell for the bait and Farah went on to power past him. TL
9.57am: Another blow for 'Arry: Raúl has opted for a move to the Bundesliga instead of England. Schalke have confirmed the former Real Madrid forward has agreed a two-year deal to join them â€" subject to a medical today. KM
9.45am: Some interesting transfer news coming in: West Ham have confirmed they've rejected a bid from Tottenham for Scott Parker. This is the (fairly lengthy) statement on their website:
The club would like to state that, regardless of the size of the bet, nothing would violate the promise that the chairman David Sullivan has made to our supporters. As repeatedly stated, Scott Parker is not for sale there and not under any circumstances and no amount of money that will cause us to break that pledge to the fans.The club informed Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy prior to him making the offer that we would not welcome any approach to unsettle the player. Scott Parker has three years left on his contract and the club has opened talks with his agent over a new five-year deal.
David Sullivan said: "I made a promise that I would not sell Scott and I will not, for any amount of money, break that promise to the West Ham supporters. Scott is not for sale at any price, to anyone. West Ham supporters, for far too long, have had owners that sell their best players and promise one thing and do another.
This is a new era. We are building a bigger, better West Ham and when we make a promise, we honour it."
KM
9.38am:Good morning and welcome to our daily news sports blog. During the day we LL 'to refresh the page history, links, and that' s expected to happen within a few hours ahead.
Time permitting, we'll try to post below the line, answering your questions and comments.
But first, you can post your thoughts on the morning of 's major stories: the decision of Fernando Torres' to stay at Anfield (for now), Diego Maradona's departureArgentina, as a manager, the UK '1 -2 in Barcelona and Andy Murray's decision to split with coach Miles Maclagan. KM
How -50C freeze devastated nomads' way of life
Herders leave the steppe after losing a fifth of their livestock. Now foreign firms are to exploit Mongolia's vast resources
Life experience, years of training and sleepless nights of preparation - even with the stallion Tsedendamba ", in the fifth year and the prime of his racing career, trailing the finish line in 12 th place.
\\ "Last year he took second place. At this time we have dzud , bitter winter conditions, and that's why I didn't push it harder in training. The horse is too thin," said the 61-year-old herder.
Mongolia's national festival of Naadam, which saw contests in the "manly sports" of archery, racing and wrestling across the country last week, dates from before Genghis Khan's time and celebrates the country's fabled nomadic spirit. Almost a third of the population are herders.
But the catastrophic winter has killed millions of animals and left thousands of rural families struggling to survive. It has also exacerbated the country's financial woes, increasing the pressure to exploit its vast but largely untapped mineral resources. Two decades after the collapse of communism, Mongolia may be at another turning point.
Tsedendamba, who like many Mongolians uses only his given name, was experienced enough to foresee the dzud, or "white death". He roamed far across central Övorkhangai province to ensure his livestock fed well despite the summer drought. He prepared fodder for the coming winter and built up their shelter. Others slaughtered the weakest animals to ensure more food for the strongest.
None of it was enough. Temperatures fell to -50C and thick snow buried the grass. By the time it finally melted in May, nearly 9,000 families had seen their entire herds freeze or starve to death. Another 33,000, including Tsedendamba's, lost half their livestock. Almost 10m cattle, sheep, goats, horses, yaks and camels have died, a fifth of the country's total, at a cost of 520bn tögrögs (£250m).
Pregnant animals miscarried and weakened ones are still succumbing to illness. Only the ravens are fat here, gorged on carrion. For many households, their only recent income has been UN payments for burying carcasses.
But beneath the soil could lie a fresh start for the country: gold, copper, uranium, lead, fluorspar and coal.
Poverty and rationing
After years of political wrangling, Mongolia agreed a deal last October for the Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold seams, which should bring $5bn (£3.3bn) of foreign investment â€" a little more than the country's GDP last year. Analysts at one investment bank have predicted it could unleash an unstoppable transformation and create a "Mongolian wolf" economy.
For its citizens, such prospects are long overdue. The former Soviet satellite has been hailed as a success story of post-communist political transition, moving with relative smoothness to democracy. But its economy has taken it close to disaster in the last two decades. The country lost almost its sole source of aid and trade. Poverty rates soared in the 90s and rationing was in place during the early years of capitalism.
Even after recent annual growth rates of around 8%, the proportion living below the poverty line â€" 101,600 tögrögs (about £50) a month â€" appears stubbornly unchanged at more than a third.
dzud, before realising there was no work and drifting towards the capital.
Some have arrived already. It took 14 days for Erdenebileg's family to drive what remained of their flock the 300 miles from southern Dundgovi province to a bleak hillside in Töv province, close to the city. Once, they enjoyed "a pretty decent life", selling cashmere and spare animals for cash to supplement the meat and milk from their 600-strong herd. Then came the winter.
"Every day we saw our animals dying in front of us. I was devastated," said the 32-year-old, her face etched deep by the wind and worry.
80 surviving animals graze close to the family 's tent, overlooking the abandoned concrete plant and the garbage. Her husband was happy, having found the factory through their relatives. But the couple and their four children, barely scraping by its tugriks 150000 (?? 1975) per month. The Russian government has recently released significant benefits to children.
\\ "We had hoped that things might be easier closer to the city, but it 's not what I expected. It' far worse," said Erdenebileg. "Our future is uncertain, but we know that 's not coming back."
Most longer-term migrants are stuck in the crowded ger (yurt) settlements around the capital, where 46% live in poverty. Stray goats pick their way through the mud and children kick at corrugated steel fences separating each plot. Sanitation and services are poor. Many lack the documents to claim benefits â€" though a registration drive should help â€" and the skills to find work. Some scrabble over rubbish dumps for plastic or glass to sell to recyclers.
With the support of the move to exploit the country 's natural resources, I think we can deal with such chronic poverty, create jobs and economic growth.
Robert Friedland, executive chairman of Ivanhoe, Oyu Tolgoi's Canadian co-developer, boasted recently: "When production begins, Mongolian GDP could rise by 30% and employment by 10% per year for 30 years."
Nomads of the 21st century
Oyu Tolgoi will create 3,000 jobs, but the real question is how the government spends the revenues and whether the mine will kickstart the wider economy. The deal was stalled for years by concerns that foreign firms would not give Mongolia a fair deal and anxiety about the geopolitical implications. Negotiations on the development of Tavan Tolgoi, a massive coal seam, are mired in similar debates.
"[Oyu Tolgoi] may not be the best agreement but I don't think it's the worst either," said Sanjaasuren Oyun, a trained geologist, former foreign minister and one of only three opposition MPs, thanks to Mongolia's grand coalition. "Time is also of the essence. After 20 years of transition, many people's lives are economically no better off than under communism."
Boost health and education spending and Mongolia can diversify its economy and see real development, she said. That is all the more necessary because the winter blizzards precipitated a rural crisis that has been long in the making.
"Forty-four million animals was far beyond [Mongolia's] natural capacity," said Tungalag Ulambayar of the UN development programme, who believes even the surviving livestock population pushes the limits of sustainability.
Tens of thousands of families moved to the countryside in the 90s, when the economic crisis led to food shortages in cities. Some say that contributed to the increase in herd sizes, with new herders unaware of the dangers of overgrazing.
But challenging herders is "very political," Tungalag added, not only because they form a powerful constituency, but because nomadism is identified with the country's very spirit. You can drive for hours across Mongolia without seeing a fence, and permanent buildings are few and far between. On the horizon, dotted about, are the gers, the traditional white, circular, felt tents of herders.
Scene appears out of time. But its people were suffering not only weather, but man-made forces that arise beyond the steppe: desertification, partly caused by global warming, bad loans and rising interest rates and volatile commodity prices.
When cashmere prices soared, they bought more goats, which damaged more pastures. Then the financial crisis hit. Wealthy westerners reined in their spending, cashmere prices halved and incomes plummeted.
"Of course you [may be] a nomad â€" but you are a nomad in the 21st century, and you have to adapt to the market to survive," said Tungalag, who believes herders need training in risk management and new livestock practices.
Yet many are undeterred by the turbulence of the last few years. Lkhagvasuren moved to Ulan Bator when a cruel winter wiped out his livestock three years ago, rebuilding his herd only to see it destroyed again this winter. Now he plans to find labouring work.
"But if I make some money I'll use it to buy more animals," he said as he crouched in his leaking ger . "Mongolia without herders is unimaginable."
David Baddiel: from stand-up to Saul Bellow
It 's sold 1-liners for the novels and scripts, but until he can' t stop the jokes - that a Jew or a guy - record helped him find peace
Say what you like about David Baddiel but you can't say he's lacking in ambition. Take the novel to which he's currently putting the finishing touches. "It was sort of inspired, a bit, by the death of Saul Bellow. And the character is a kind of slightly deliberately absurd, um …" â€" a pause, a testing of the water to see if he can get away with such a long word and not sound too pretentious â€" "concatenation of Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, John Updike, Norman Mailer, Arthur Koestler."
The Death of Eli Gold is "about the idea of the Great Man, and how I think that is dying. That notion of men who could live their lives in the most brutal way possible, especially towards women â€" also children, to some extent â€" because their greatness excused everything. A way of living life, in which, essentially, greatness allows your dick to do what it likes"; a way of living in which being able to have sex with whoever you want becomes, he says, paraphrasing a line from a review of Updike by David Foster Wallace, the cure for existential despair. "Men now can't live like that, which I think is a good thing, but the cost of it is that I think unalloyed greatness is gone in our culture. So the book is about those blokes, and that type of masculinity."
But Baddiel grew up lower-middle-class in Dollis Hill, north London, the second of three sons of a father who was a chemist for Unilever and became a dealer in Dinky toys when he was made redundant, and a mother who dealt in golf memorabilia. Before Cambridge, and most of a PhD (hence the idea of him as an intellectual) he went to an Orthodox Jewish school, learnt Hebrew, went to a Jewish youth group â€" "this is making me sound like more of an über-Jew than I feel. But when I was young I probably didn't realise it was, for want of a better word, abnormal, or â€" certainly I didn't realise I was in a minority."
my life, in my 1970s north London life â€""
Do you think he shouldn't have said that? "I don't know â€" I now can't remember whether or not it was more upsetting to hear that from Mr Cohen, or to then discover it at the school, that there was racism and antisemitism" â€" for example, when someone daubed "Baddiel is a Paki" on the wall. "I didn't quite know how to take that â€" obviously it's not nice â€" but it's also kind of wrong, you know?" As for Mr Cohen, "he probably shouldn't have said it, because every time I think about that thing, I think well, the trouble with it is that right though it might be, it perpetuates an idea of the Jewish community as quite defensive and telling their children from a very early age you've got watch out for it."
Thirty-odd years later the dilemma was just one of the many aspects of his background he used as grist to the comic mill of The Infidel, which stars Omid Djalili as a hapless, lovable, football-mad Muslim minicab driver who discovers, when his mum dies, that he was born a Jew. There are some good jokes, mostly based on the shock of taking stereotypes head-on, thus neutralising, complicating, and mocking them, but the film is in the end unconvincingly cuddly and quite sentimental, dodging the aspects of both religions that aren't easily subsumed into a liberal upper-middle-class, can't-everyone-just-get-along view of the world. But Baddiel, a tad defensive that it didn't live up to its billing as potentially fatwa-inducing, insists that that's how he meant it to come across all along. "I actually thought it was more radical and more subversive to take this subject and notdifficult to make a dark satire, but also to try to do something, inclusive, and good. "
not making jokes about something is a type â€" and this sounds very pretentious â€" of apartheid. It's saying, 'You're not allowed into the comedy community,' and actually, most people want to have jokes made about them, and want to make jokes about themselves, and want to be involved in the process of comedy â€" and so it's a very alienation thing, I think, to say, 'Oh, we can't make jokes about them.'"
That seems to have been the reaction in most of the Middle East, although the Dubai censorship board is having second thoughts. Israeli distributors, on the other hand, have shown no interest whatsoever. Perhaps it has something to do with its joke about Israeli Jews â€" "you know, Jews without angst, without guilt. They're really not Jews at all"; perhaps not.
At one point in the run-up to the film's release Baddiel noted that he had written it the way he did â€" Muslim finds out he's a Jew, rather than Jew finds out he's a Muslim â€" because he felt more comfortable making jokes about his own background than about Muslims; he has also said, interestingly, that his generation have access to a particular kind of irony about their Jewishness that his children's generation will not.
Baddiel's maternal grandparents fled Germany just before the war, during which his grandfather was interned on the Isle of Man (a box of letters he sent home provided a basis for Baddiel's third novel, The Secret Purposes), and so that great seriousness, of possible annihilation, was always present. Such seriousness, thinks Baddiel, coming from first-hand knowledge of persecution, and in his grandparents' case, from immersion in religion (both Baddiel and his father are atheists) â€" allows a certain kind of undercutting, a necessary subversiveness, which his privileged, protected, non-Jewish children (because their mother, Morwenna Banks, isn't) cannot have.
But there are all sorts of other spurs to being funny, or at least finding funny to be necessary, and although Baddiel is uncomfortable about looking at it too closely, he gives it a go. "We had a strange upbringing. My parents are very unusual characters, both of them â€" they're both only children, and they're great, but neither of them are the sort of standard idea of a parent, and not of Jewish parents. They've both got a lot of their own stuff. And actually I've always felt parented, to a certain extent â€" which is no disrespect to my parents who I love very dearly â€" by my older brother". His brother, also a comedy writer, played him Derek and Clive at a tender age ("It was an absolute epiphany for me, that something could be that funny, and that unrestrained"). But his father was funny, too, if also "very swear-y. He was very unlike most dads I knew â€" he was always swearing and always angry. He was kind of frightening, but at the same time it was funny."
Although he will be doing some gigs in the autumn (headlining an event called Laughter Lounge, part of O2, for example), Baddiel doesn't perform much any more. Partly it's because he got less interested in writing stand-up â€" "it's quite a staccato experience â€" you write one gag, and then another gag â€" and I wanted to write something more narrative and organic, for want of a better word. When I do stand-up in the autumn there will be gags, but it'll mainly be mainly be true stories from my life, which I quite like telling."
But also it was because it wasn't making him happy. Baddiel has suffered from periods of severe depression for which he was prescribed drugs. "And then I discovered that they were horrible, and they were destroying me both physically and mentally", so he gave them up, in favour of several years of therapy. These days, although he knows the illness could recur, he feels on a more even keel â€" which "does seem to have coincided with giving up performing, which I just think is psychologically very stressful. I don't think performing was making me depressed, I think that other things were making me depressed â€" and then I'd have to go on stage and be funny each night, and I think that those two things don't work together very well. And it is true that at 46 I'm more interested in being happy â€" actually, it's more like being at peace."
Unfaithful DVD released on August 9. Death of Eli Gold (4 Estate) published in the next year
Facing the challenge of Kent
It's a huge step â€" so how do children feel about going to 'big school'? Janet Murray talks to year 6 pupils in Kent who have faced the 11-plus and are on the brink of change
Going to "big school" is a daunting prospect for all 11-year-olds. But for children in the 36 areas that still have selective education, there is also the 11-plus examination to contend with, and the division between those who will go on to grammar school and those who will not. Here, year 6 children who are just leaving St Saviour's primary in Westgate-on-Sea, Kent, and their parents talk about their hopes and fears.
Gabriel
Gabriel, 11, Dane is going to court gymnasium Broadstairs
Over the summer holidays, my mum made me do 40 practice papers for the 11-plus exam. It was torture, but I'm glad I did it, as otherwise I wouldn't have had a clue what to do. Plus my parents bought me a mobile phone for doing them.
I did feel a bit of pressu
re from my family to pass the 11-plus. My mum and dad both went to grammar schools and my dad went to Dane Court. I didn't want to let them down. I'd got it into my head I wouldn't pass, so I tried to get enthusiastic about my second-choice school, King Ethelbert, just in case.
It took me ages could not sleep the night before the exam. The next day, I felt ill and was dizzy head, and I was afraid I would not 't be able to concentrate. My mom cried when she learned that I 'D passed. I received many congratulations and my bedroom was full again as a reward.
I was nervous about starting in September, but I spent a day at the school recently and met a boy called Tim from Upton school who is going to be in my class. We got along well, so I'm not so worried now. The school does lots of musical theatre, and has a climbing wall, so I'm quite excited really.
What I am a bit worried about is homework. In my induction booklet, it says you get a detention if you don't finish your homework. I get distracted easily, and never seem to finish anything, so I'm going to have to work on that. If I get a detention, my parents will kill me.
Alex Hampton-Sen, Father Gabriel '
Things have definitely changed since my wife Rachel and I did the 11-plus. I certainly don't remember doing much preparation. I just sat the test and thought no more of it until the letter arrived saying I'd passed.
These days, because many parents pay for private tuition, it is quite high-pressured. We've been mindful not to put too much pressure on Gabriel, but we did pay for a tutor and got him to do a little bit of work every day in the summer holidays.
While we 've both done so, we believe that if' d apply themselves in school, we could be more successful earlier in our careers. We just want to give Gabriel all opportunities to achieve success.
Ellie
Ellie, 11 is going to King Ethelbert high school, in Birchington
When you see secondary schools on TV programmes, there is always bullying, people taking other people's lunch money, teachers shouting and lots of chaos. I'm hoping it won't be like that.
I don't feel too nervous though, because I've been to King Ethelbert lots of times now. In the term before you go up to secondary school, they run a sort of after-school club every week for new pupils, where you can do different activities and get to know the school. I did cooking and badge-making, but you could do lots of things, including sport.
I took the 11-plus, but I didn't get it. Most of our year group took it, but only 11 passed. We didn't really get much help from the school to prepare, but some people had extra tuition outside school.
My parents would have been proud if I had passed, but I didn't feel under any pressure. If I'd passed by just a few marks, I probably wouldn't have gone there anyway, because I find difficult work quite confusing. I'd rather be top of King Ethelbert than bottom of a grammar school.
My parents are not 't buy me to go through 11-plus, but some parents. One man has offered £ 150.
Angela Perry-Taylor, Ellie's mother
We looked at five local schools for Ellie, but we just got a good gut feeling about King Ethelbert. As older parents, in our late forties, we wanted a school that felt like school as we remembered it. King Ethelbert school felt like home.
We weren't really guided on which children were likely to pass the 11-plus, so we were open-minded. Ellie gave it a go, but we made it clear beforehand that she was under no pressure from us.
So far, I'm really impressed with Ellie's new school. We were invited along to after-school taster sessions over a six-week period, which has given Ellie the chance to get used to her new surroundings, teachers and classmates. Parents could join in with the activities, but there were also information sessions on helping your child settle into the new school. That was very reassuring.
Of course you can't help but worry about things like bullying. I know it happens at every school. The important thing is how it is dealt with.
Cameron
Cameron, 11, goes to school King Ethelbert
I'm feeling quite nervous, because it's quite a big step to move to a much bigger school where I'll have at least seven teachers for different subjects. I'm worried about moving around the school for different lessons and whether I'll remember to put the right books in my bag on the right days.
I made a 11-plus, but I Wasn 't upset when I did not shy away ", because I think it is a great King Ethelbert School, and I am happy there. I' ve got two younger brothers, so I 'm the first to go to secondary school, which makes me feel very proud.
The boy, whom I know, in the year 1911 told me that this is a ghost in the school, in the toilet, but I 't think I believe him. I do not t 'really believe in ghosts.
Barry Millen, Cameron's father
Cameron has always struggled with social skills and we've recently found out he may have traits of autism, so we're quite apprehensive on his behalf. He likes routine and can get quite anxious if he doesn't know what is coming up next. The whole concept of moving classes every hour or so will be a big change for him.
So there will definitely be a few sleepless nights for us, but we hope that after the first weeks, he will start to adjust.
Tayla
Tayla, 11, is going to Dane Court grammar school
In the week leading up to the 11-plus exam, I was quite stressed and had a funny feeling in my tummy all the time. We had to take three or four exams over a whole week. I had a tutor who came to my house every Saturday and did practice papers with me for about a year. I don't think I'd have passed without that, because the tests weren't like anything we did in class. They were more like intelligence tests, finding the link between different shapes, things like that.
One of my biggest worries is having to start again, going from being at the top of the school to being at the bottom. There are over 300 children here, so it is a big junior school, but there are over 1,500 pupils are Dane Court, so I am worried I might get lost.
When I went for a visit a few weeks ago, we met our form teachers and found out who was going to be in our class. My teacher seemed really friendly and I found out I was with Millie, one of my friends from this school, which I'm really pleased about.
As we were walking round the school, the older pupils kept looking at us, saying we looked really sweet, so I'm not too worried about being picked on. Children in the older years come and look after the year 7s in the first few weeks, so if you're worried about something, and don't want to see a teacher, you can go and see one of the sixth-formers.
Nicola Gaspa, Tayla's mother
I think I was more stressed about the 11-plus than Tayla was. She seemed so young to be taking such a big, important exam. She is ever so bright, so I would have been really disappointed if she hadn't passed. Although there are some good schools in the area, I don't think any of them could have brought out her full potential. She is a quiet, studious sort, so I guess I'd also have worried that another school might have been too rough.
Theil is very happy since Dane Court, but nervous too. She 's never traveled by bus from her, so I LL' take it in practice during the school holidays. I 'm also planned to release it into the shopping center on his own with his friends for a few hours. It 's growing, and I need to start to let her go.
Lewis
Lewis, 11, is going to King Ethelbert school
I didn't take the 11-plus because I thought it would be too hard for me, but some of my friends are going to grammar school. Luckily quite a few are going to King Ethelbert, including one of my closest friends, Josh, who I've known since I was in year 1, but I don't think we'll be in the same class.
My biggest worry is bullying, because you hear lots of stories, like if you talk back to one of the older kids, you might get punched. But I've got an older sister who went to the school and she says it's fine.
It's about half an hour's walk to my new school, so my mum is going to get me a bus pass, but I'm a bit scared, because I've never been on a bus on my own. I might get off at the wrong stop or the older kids might say bad things or swear.
The school is really cool, because they've just made some new buildings and the head, Mrs Greig, seems quite nice and fun. I went to an open evening for new pupils and she said they keep getting "outstanding" from the inspectors, so I guess it must be a good school.
Joe Baker, the mother of Lewis '
I've got four children, so I've got some experience in sending children up to secondary school, but it's still a worry. I used to be a believer in throwing children in at the deep end, but having attended the taster sessions with Lewis at King Ethelbert, I can see how breaking them in gently really works. Now, rather than being worried about starting secondary school, Lewis is really excited.
Lewis is more of a "hands-on" sort and sometimes struggles with academic work, so we didn't put him in for the 11-plus. Although he might have done OK, we thought he would be crushed if he didn't pass.
We looked round a few schools, but we chose King Ethelbert because Lewis was comfortable there. His older sister has just left the school, so everything was quite familiar to him. When my daughter, who is now 16, started, it was just about satisfactory, but under the new headteacher, Mrs Greig, the school is almost unrecognisable. I can't think of a bad word to say about it.
Stranglehold
[[[Stranglehold]]]
Description: Honor is his code. Vengeance is his mission. Bloodshed is his only option... Experience the excitement of the true next-gen action while continuing the story of John Woo's influential action film, "Hard Boiled" starring Chow Yun-Fat. Ensnared by a crime boss with a gripping secret, Inspector Tequila is forced to cross the line from sworn duty to bloody revenge. Engage your enemies with intense cinematic gun battles and cause massive environmental damage in real-time or revolutionary slow-motion Tequila Time.
More review coming soon.
What you have here is an amazing game that never gets any fanfare. In stranglehold, you are tossed into the shoes of Chow yun Fat and then you use those shoes to kick all sorts of ass. Many games have tried to mimic John woo's style but none of them really bring you into his signature stylish gunplay quite like this. The action in this game is constant and designed in such a way that you rarely ever get a moment to settle down and that's the point.
So how is this game different than all the rest? Well, for one, you have tequila bombs which act like little power boosts when your meter fills up. You have one that's similar to a health pack, the second is precision aiming which follows the bullet right to the bad guys, barrage which is about twenty seconds of invulnerability, and the final ability lets you spin in a circle shooting everything in sight while doves soar above you. All of these powers are useful in different situations and are essential to finishing the game.
Well, that 's not all. Most of the environment is interactive, you can slide down the railing and glide across the table during the bombing everything in its path. Believe me, everything in this game either destroyed or useful, and once you get the hang of relativley simple controls,, LL 'I swear is the closest you' ve ever again not in the blockbuster.
If you've never heard of this or you really want to get your adrenaline pumping, give this a shot. The cinematic shoot outs are awesome to behold and this thing is lying around in just about any bargain bin. My only complaint is that this game is pretty short and some of the graphics seem kinda plain, but don't let these qualms keep you from missing this trip through Tokyo.
I love this game. Shipping was SUPER FAST (3 days). GREAT PRODUCTS AND GREAT GAME.
This game was just the best shooting and action games, I 've ever played. This game is full of continuous action from start to finish. I could not 't stop this game cause of it was so Awsome, and I was drawn into this game all invited. Wow, this game was amazing. This game was the best.
Buy Here (for discount) Stranglehold
'Feminism is not finished'
After years of derision, feminism is finding its voice again, from grassroots protests to a flurry of books, websites and even a summer school. But will it lead to real change?
If you want to gauge the energy in the current British feminist movement, you have to speak to the young campaigners. Alex Corwin has defined herself as a feminist since she started reading avidly about women's issues a few years ago, aged 19. It made her "SO ANGRY", she had to become an activist.
Corwin joined a local grassroots group â€" Sheffield Femsâ€" and since then she has taken part in campaigns that run the gamut: local, international, political, cultural. She could recently be found in a high-street newsagent, armed with Post-it notes to stick on the half-clad women in men's magazines, inscribed with the words "What if she was your daughter?" Once a month she and the group set up a stall in their local shopping centre, campaigning on issues including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, and how climate change affects women worldwide. Last year the group helped organise a well-attended conference; in 2008, they ran a campaign to stop a branch of US restaurant chain Hooters (where lightly clothed women serve up the burgers) opening in Sheffield. They're also working on a Feminist Survival Guide, to answer questions including "Do you burn your bra?" and "What can I do about lads' mags?" If she could achieve one lasting change, what would it be? "A total overhaul of the way society sees women," she says.
She is exactly the type of feminist who Catherine Redfern and Kristin Aune are celebrating in Reclaiming the F Word: The New Feminist Movement. The book's title isn't supposed to suggest feminism ever went away â€" groups as disparate as Justice for Women, The Fawcett Society, Southall Black Sisters and Karma Nirvana have been working for women's rights for decades now. But when Redfern started feminist website The F Word, in 2001, she felt there was a general perception that young women weren't interested, and that the movement was therefore gasping its last. "People in the media kept saying that feminism was dead," says Redfern, "and deriding it year after year". As a young lecturer, Aune noticed the same problem in academia.she met plenty of young feminist students, "but a lot of older academic feminists didn't seem to believe it". The idea of the book, says Redfern, was to "try and present a snapshot of the movement, and bring it into the mainstream". The reader they had in mind, Aune continues, was "someone who's vaguely interested in gender issues, but hasn't had something that really makes the connections for them". Each chapter focuses on a different area of current feminist thought and action, including arguments around violence against women, equality in the home and workplace, and sexism in popular culture.
The book ends with the results of an extensive survey. Redfern and Aune aimed at feminist groups that was started in 2000. Initially they sent it to 50 organisations, but the long, complicated questionnaire was eventually passed around 80 to 100 groups. 1,265 newly committed, newly inspired feminist campaigners responded, and Aune says they could easily have tripled that number if necessary. Three-quarters of the respondents were under 35.
It's just one of many signs that we seem to be entering a new heyday for British feminism. Another is the sudden burst of British feminist publishing, after an extensive drought. Along with Redfern and Aune's book, the past 12 months has seen the publication of Ellie Levenson's The Noughtie Girl's Guide to Feminism, Nina Power's One Dimensional Woman, Natasha Walter's Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism, Sheila Rowbotham's Dreamers of a New Day, and Kat Banyard's The Equality Illusion: The Truth About Men and Women Today. There are more books in the pipeline â€" Caitlin Moran, the Times journalist, who won Columnist of the Year at the British Press Awards is apparently hard at work on a book about the future of feminism, and the young feminist writer, Laurie Penny, has her own take coming out soon. And published next month in the UK, after achieving bestseller status and causing quite a stir in the US, is Half the Sky,: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by husband and wife Pulitzer-prizewinning journalists Nicholas D Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, which reports on the plight of women in the developing world.
Walter has been speaking at events around the country, and says the feedback has been phenomenal. Her talk at the Brighton Festival completely sold out, in quite a big venue: "I think there's a real hunger to talk about feminism". The mood is very different, she says, to 10 years ago, when she published The New Feminism, and was met with a bruising response from many female journalists. "People are ready to debate this seriously again."
Kat Banyard agrees. Earlier this year she set up social networking website, UK Feminista, where local grassroots groups can meet, debate and build strong, supportive ties. Banyard, who is in her late 20s, has been running successful annual feminist conferences for the past six years and has also decided to run a UK Feminista summer school, taking place next weekend, where activists will learn how to campaign more effectively. She has been stunned by the response. "In the first 24 hours 100 people registered," she says, "and three days on we had a couple of hundred. I've never seen anything like it. I'm used to spending six to nine months building up that kind of attendance at feminist events."
When I ask what explains this surge of interest, Banyard says that significant triggers arise almost every week. "Over the last few months, we've had the actor Danny Dyer inciting readers [of Zoo magazine] to cut their ex's face, we've had news of padded bras for seven-year-olds, we've had an absence of women on the election campaign trail, the announcement of anonymity for rape defendants. With headline after headline we're seeing a continuing need for feminism. And with each new incident, people are getting involved."
The movement is well-represented across the country. Aune says she was surprised by the huge amount of activity in Scotland, and Banyard points out that new groups include the Belfast Feminist Network, Newcastle Feminist Book Group, Fawcett Essex group, and Cardiff Feminist Network. This last group was set up by Hannah Austin earlier this year â€" within a week, she says, there were around 300 members.
, which many of the feminists I speak to describe as the most inspiring campaign around. Object has been challenging the sexual objectification of women since forming in 2003, and they scored their two biggest successes last year, securing changes in the laws surrounding lapdancing clubs and prostitution.
The young feminists who are spearheading this new activism clearly have enormous energy, ambition and idealism, and in many cases are doing brilliant work. But the question of where the movement goes next, of what its prime focus should be, remains to be answered.The current burst of feminist publishing is promising, but much of it repackages longstanding arguments. The Noughtie Girl's Guide to Feminism is, as its title suggests, a lighthearted look at the topic; Reclaiming the F Word is a useful book for its expected audience - women discovering feminism for the first time - but doesn't set out to present unexpected new arguments. Dreamers of a New Day is a fascinating look at the women who were fighting for social justice in the late 19th and early 20th century, but its context is historical. Nina Power's book, One Dimensional Woman, lays claim to new ground but, at 20,000 words, is an opening gambit in a bigger battle.
There's a need for new thinking and more publishing then - as well as more focus.If, as Corwin suggests, the aim of today's activists is to completely change society, then questions remain about where to channel their energy. Should the focus be on getting more women into parliament? Getting more women out of prostitution? Does having more women at the top help all the women further down the ladder? Should activists focus on the sex industry, equal pay, violence against women, international issues â€" and if individuals and groups choose to tackle all of these, how much change can they achieve? If inequality between men and women is structural, a web of discrimination in which the dearth of women in politics intersects with the portrayal of women in pornography, which intersects with the tendency for women to be paid less than men, the depiction of women as obsessed with shoes, the likelihood that female plaintiffs will be disbelieved in rape cases, the attempts to undermine women's abortion rights; if the situation of women in Britain has an impact on women in France, the US, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, then which threads do we pull to make the most impact in bringing the whole web down?
"It feels as though there's so much interest," says Walter, "from so many different areas, that something positive has to happen, but whether it will, it's hard to know. "I'm heartened by the rise in activism," says Walter, "but the questions we'll all be asking ourselves over the next year are: how wide is this new wave? Will it touch people beyond the usual suspects? Will it galvanise energy more widely in the grassroots â€" bring in other classes, women of other backgrounds? And will it also touch women who have the power and influence to change things? I'm not saying that women aren't asking these questions. So it's not a criticism of what's going on, but it's the challenge. I feel that we're beginning to see more happening, but at the moment it's still quite focused in narrow areas. We need to see it spread".
Banyard is equally aware of the challenges. "At the moment, while feminist organising is growing and really exciting, it's quite disparate and unconnected," she says. UK Feminista is an attempt to address that issue. "For me, what's absolutely crucial," she continues, "is that we translate this excitement, this energy, into real gains for women's rights - because it's not an automatic translation. We need fundamental shifts in our culture, in our laws, in business practices. It's not a simple process. We're very much at the stage now of creating a mass base of people. What's crucial is that we then use that".
Choudry is also involved with the Million Women Rise marches â€" protests against violence against women â€" which have been taking place in London around International Women's Day for the past three years and are among the most successful of all the current feminist campaigns. An estimated 8,000 women turned out this year. "It was absolutely amazing," says Choudry, "the feeling of marching through the streets, shoulder to shoulder. It really shows that there are women who want to speak out".
UK Feminista summer school runs from 31 July to 1 August. For details, go to ukfeminista.org.uk