Critics round on writer and BBC for promoting assisted dying in film that included footage of man’s death at Dignitas clinic Sir Terry Pratchett has defended his BBC2 documentary, which showed the death of a millionaire hotelier suffering from motor neurone disease, against criticism from groups opposed to assisted dying. In Choosing to Die , screened on Monday night, the 63-year-old writer, who has Alzheimer’s disease, went to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland to see Peter Smedley take a lethal dose of barbiturates. Michael Nazir-Ali, the retired Bishop of Rochester condemned the programme as “science fiction”, while Care not Killing (CNK) described it as “a recipe for elder abuse and also a threat to vulnerable people”. Asked why he wanted to make the film, Pratchett told BBC Breakfast: “Because I was appalled at the current situation. I know that assisted dying is practised in at least three places in Europe and also in the United States. The government here has always turned its back on it and I was ashamed that British people had to drag themselves to Switzerland, at considerable cost, in order to get the services that they were hoping for.” Smedley, 71, travelled from his mansion in Guernsey to the clinic, which over the last 12 years has helped 1,100 people to die. Pratchett said: “Peter wanted to show the world what was happening and why he was doing it.” He added: “You can tell in the film that I’m moved. The incongruity of the situation overtakes you. A man has died, that’s a bad thing. But he wanted to die, that’s a good thing.” Campaigners accused the BBC of helping to promote assisted dying and of consistently portraying the practice favourably. Writing on the Christian Concern website , Nazir-Ali said: “Real life is quite different from Sir Terry’s science fiction … The Judaeo-Christian tradition is a surer guide. ‘Thou shalt not kill’ is about acknowledging the gift and dignity of human life which, whether ours or another’s, we do not have the competence to take.” CNK’s campaign director, Dr Peter Saunders said: “This latest move by the BBC is a disgraceful use of licence-payers’ money and further evidence of a blatant campaigning stance. The corporation has now produced five documentaries or docudramas since 2008 portraying assisted suicide in a positive light. Where are the balancing programmes showing the benefits of palliative care, promoting investment on social support for vulnerable people or highlighting the great dangers of legalisation which have convinced parliaments in Australia, France, Canada, Scotland and the US to resist any change in the law in the last 12 months alone?” Pratchett is a patron of Dignity in Dying, which campaigns for a change in the law to allow assisted dying. The organisation’s chief executive, Sarah Wootton, said: “At the heart of the assisted dying debate, and Choosing to Die, is choice and protection. People suffer at the end of life, and therefore people take difficult decisions about their own deaths. As uncomfortable as it may be we need to face up to the reality of what is going on, both at home and abroad.” Assisted suicide Terry Pratchett Television Haroon Siddique guardian.co.uk
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Theresa May says proposals represent minimum compliance with supreme court ruling on sex offenders’ human rights A maximum of 1,200 convicted sex offenders a year will be eligible to challenge their inclusion on the sex offender register for life, under Home Office proposals likely to come into force from early next year. The decision by the home secretary, Theresa May, to give registered sex offenders a chance to be removed from the register follows a supreme court ruling that indefinite registration without any right to a review amounts to a breach of human rights. May’s decision to comply with the ruling comes despite David Cameron describing it as “completely offensive” during a Commons row over human rights legislation in February. May pledged she would do the “minimum possible” to comply with the ruling, which she said placed the “rights of sex offenders above the right of the public to be protected”. The “non-urgent” remedial order published by the Home Office proposes that sex offenders who are currently required to register with the police for life will have to wait 15 years after their release from prison to apply to be considered for removal from the register. Convicted juvenile sex offenders will have to wait eight years after their release. A sex offender who fails to get their name taken off the register would have to wait a further eight years before they can apply again. The Home Office says that there are currently 44,159 people on the sex offender register in England and Wales, of whom 23,310 are on it for life. Every sex offender sentenced to 30 months or more is currently automatically placed on the register for life. Any applications for removal from the register will be reviewed by the police with the local multi-agency public protection panel, which includes prison and probation staff. The sex offenders will have to demonstrate they have reformed and no longer pose a risk to the public. The Home Office assessment says that a maximum of 1,200 offenders will be eligible to apply each year to be taken off the register, but adds: “It is not possible to predict what proportion of those eligible … would apply for a review.” It says it is similarly not possible to predict success rates from reviews. Harry Fletcher of Napo, the probation union, said the supreme court ruling had forced May to make the concession but predicted that very few offenders would actually succeed in being removed from the register. “There will be no shortage of applications because they will want the embarrassment and stigma of being on the sex offender register removed,” he said. “I think that the number who will succeed will be very small because they have to prove they are no longer a danger to the public which will be extremely difficult.” In his supreme court ruling, Lord Phillips said there had to be circumstances in which “an appropriate tribunal could reliably conclude that the risk of an individual carrying out a further sexual offence can be discounted to the extent that continuance of notification requirements is unjustified”. The case was brought by two sex offenders. The first was Angus Thompson, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, who was jailed for five years in 1996 for two indecent assaults and other offences of actual bodily harm. The other was JF, a teenager, who was sentenced to 30 months for two offences of rape of a child under 13 and other sexual offences. He was 11 at the time of the assaults. Michelle Skeer, of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said: “The reality is that the risks posed by some offenders can never be completely eliminated, but we will continue to do all in our power to keep them to a minimum and believe that the proposed review process strikes the right balance between individual rights and public safety.” The Home Office minister, James Brokenshire, said the draft order would ensure that strict rules were put in place for considering whether sex offenders who were placed on the register for life should ever be allowed to be removed. Sex offenders’ register Children Child protection Crime Theresa May Human rights Alan Travis guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Theresa May says proposals represent minimum compliance with supreme court ruling on sex offenders’ human rights A maximum of 1,200 convicted sex offenders a year will be eligible to challenge their inclusion on the sex offender register for life, under Home Office proposals likely to come into force from early next year. The decision by the home secretary, Theresa May, to give registered sex offenders a chance to be removed from the register follows a supreme court ruling that indefinite registration without any right to a review amounts to a breach of human rights. May’s decision to comply with the ruling comes despite David Cameron describing it as “completely offensive” during a Commons row over human rights legislation in February. May pledged she would do the “minimum possible” to comply with the ruling, which she said placed the “rights of sex offenders above the right of the public to be protected”. The “non-urgent” remedial order published by the Home Office proposes that sex offenders who are currently required to register with the police for life will have to wait 15 years after their release from prison to apply to be considered for removal from the register. Convicted juvenile sex offenders will have to wait eight years after their release. A sex offender who fails to get their name taken off the register would have to wait a further eight years before they can apply again. The Home Office says that there are currently 44,159 people on the sex offender register in England and Wales, of whom 23,310 are on it for life. Every sex offender sentenced to 30 months or more is currently automatically placed on the register for life. Any applications for removal from the register will be reviewed by the police with the local multi-agency public protection panel, which includes prison and probation staff. The sex offenders will have to demonstrate they have reformed and no longer pose a risk to the public. The Home Office assessment says that a maximum of 1,200 offenders will be eligible to apply each year to be taken off the register, but adds: “It is not possible to predict what proportion of those eligible … would apply for a review.” It says it is similarly not possible to predict success rates from reviews. Harry Fletcher of Napo, the probation union, said the supreme court ruling had forced May to make the concession but predicted that very few offenders would actually succeed in being removed from the register. “There will be no shortage of applications because they will want the embarrassment and stigma of being on the sex offender register removed,” he said. “I think that the number who will succeed will be very small because they have to prove they are no longer a danger to the public which will be extremely difficult.” In his supreme court ruling, Lord Phillips said there had to be circumstances in which “an appropriate tribunal could reliably conclude that the risk of an individual carrying out a further sexual offence can be discounted to the extent that continuance of notification requirements is unjustified”. The case was brought by two sex offenders. The first was Angus Thompson, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, who was jailed for five years in 1996 for two indecent assaults and other offences of actual bodily harm. The other was JF, a teenager, who was sentenced to 30 months for two offences of rape of a child under 13 and other sexual offences. He was 11 at the time of the assaults. Michelle Skeer, of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said: “The reality is that the risks posed by some offenders can never be completely eliminated, but we will continue to do all in our power to keep them to a minimum and believe that the proposed review process strikes the right balance between individual rights and public safety.” The Home Office minister, James Brokenshire, said the draft order would ensure that strict rules were put in place for considering whether sex offenders who were placed on the register for life should ever be allowed to be removed. Sex offenders’ register Children Child protection Crime Theresa May Human rights Alan Travis guardian.co.uk
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Fifteen fire engines tackle large blaze at building undergoing refurbishment in Aldwych area More than 75 firefighters are tackling a large blaze at a building in London’s West End. A spokeswoman for the London fire brigade said the roof of a 10-storey building housing a hotel and flats being refurbished on the Strand was on fire. Because the building was being refurbished it is believed to be unoccupied, she added. Pictures posted on Twitter showed thick black smoke rising above the West End skyline. The fire service was alerted just after 11am on Tuesday, and 15 fire engines are tackling the blaze. It said the cause of the fire was not known at this stage. London Haroon Siddique guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Politico’s VandeHei: ‘Not Any Single Reporter At Any Media Organization Thinks Palin Should Be President’
June 14, 2011 No Comment
People know that the MSM despises Sarah Palin.
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Primary school teacher Nigel Leat, 51, filmed the abuse involving five girls in his classroom over the course of five years A primary school teacher who filmed himself sexually abusing young girls in his classroom has been jailed indefinitely. Nigel Leat, 51, filmed the abuse involving five girls over the course of five years at Hillside First School in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset. Leat, from Bristol, admitted 36 offences, including attempted rape of a child and sexual assault on children. Bristol crown court heard details last week of how he would molest the girls in one-to-one reading sessions. The predatory paedophile sexually abused girls as young as six, filming the abuse on cameras he had put in place for the purpose. Leat could be heard in the films referring to the girls as “sweetie pie” and “darling” and asking them how much they loved him. The videos, in most of which Leat could be seen, showed girls were abused in the school’s staffroom and a resource room. In the films, which were up to 10 minutes long, Leat could be seen touching them, including when they were changing their clothes to go outside. He also wrote letters to them, asking them to perform sex acts on him. The father-of-two initially denied all the claims against him, but he confessed after police found the films on his home computer. After police arrested him on 13 December last year, they discovered about 30,500 indecent photographs and 720 indecent films in his possession. Judge Neil Ford QC gave Leat an indeterminate sentence, telling him he would have to serve at least eight and a half years before he could be considered for parole. He told Leat: “Your manipulation of the children was clever, cunning and insidious.” Crime guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Sheffield Doc/Fest: Steve James on The Interrupters: ‘When they knew I’d made Hoop Dreams it clicked I wasn’t a cop’ – video
June 14, 2011 No Comment
The Oscar-nominated director Steve James, whose new film won the Special Jury prize at this year’s Sheffield Doc/Fest, discusses how he earned the trust of gang members on the streets of Chicago Steve James Laurence Topham Elliot Smith
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Review criticises overuse of studio managers on Radio 2, and says there are opportunities for significant reduction of overheads Tim Davie rules out creating single Radio 1 and 2 controller BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2 should consider introducing a combined management structure and operations, a report into the workings of the two stations recommended on Tuesday. The review said money was being wasted on studio managers who were being used as a “comfort blanket” by presenters on some Radio 2 shows to operate basic equipment that DJs normally operate themselves. It also criticised Radio 2 for employing newsreaders who read a brief hourly news update but then did “little else until the next hour’s bulletin”. The review questioned whether Radio 1′s Newsbeat programme, which broadcasts a 15-minute bulletin twice a day – as well as hourly news updates – needed to employ 52 full-time staff, and said compliance procedures tightened up in the wake of the “Sachsgate” scandal had run out of control. The report, by former commercial radio executive John Myers, was commissioned by the BBC’s director of audio and music, Tim Davie, to investigate opportunities for cost savings across Radio 1 and Radio 2, as well as their digital sister stations, 1Xtra and BBC 6 Music. Myers praised Radio 1 and Radio 2 as at the top of their game but said there were opportunities for significant reduction of overheads. His report said that the two stations should examine “the advantages of operating under a single-tier management structure” within a single building and remove “all mirrored departments”. However, in his response to the Myers report, Davie ruled out taking any management restructure as far as appointing a single controller for the two networks . Radio 1 and 1Xtra are overseen by Andy Parfitt and based in Yalding House in central London, separate to Radio 2 and 6 Music, which are controlled by Bob Shennan and situated in nearby Weston House. Radio 1 is due to move into the corporation’s newly refurbished Broadcasting House. Myers also said some Radio 2 presenters were using other staff as a “comfort blanket” – operating the basic studio equipment that DJs typically operate themselves – and recommended that the station’s talent should be “encouraged to self-operate wherever possible”. He also said more Radio 2 DJs should broadcast live, rather than pre-record their shows, to save money. Myers said the stations’ news programmes were “expensive to run and both structurally and financially complicated”. Newsreaders on Radio 2 “do not write any of the news material themselves” and had “very little interplay with the general presenters … and do little else until the next hour’s bulletin”. Myers suggested that Radio 1′s Newsbeat, which employs 52 full-time staff in addition to its own technical and production personnel, could become the “central newsroom for all four popular music networks”. An estimated 4.5 million people hear one of Newsbeat’s 15-minute programmes at least once a week, with its hourly bulletins reaching around 10 million listeners a week. In total the station broadcasts six hours of news a week, along with monthly Newsbeat specials. The network is also developing longer-form, single issue Newsbeat programmes which have been dubbed “Panorama for young people”. They were announced by the Radio 1 controller, Andy Parfitt, last year. Radio 2 newsreaders, in addition to reading the hourly bulletin, are expected to monitor the news wires, liaise with journalists in the newsroom and are on standby for breaking stories and emergencies. Myers said the four radio stations were “well run and expertly managed”. But he added there was “limited evidence of sharing best practice or ideas” with a “huge amount of experience and professionalism that goes unshared”. “It is slightly confusing for someone from outside the BBC to understand why 6 Music is not sitting with the Radio 1 family, as there is clearly more connection musically within that team than with Radio 2,” he said. BBC Radio 1 has a budget of £37m, with £48.3m spent on Radio 2 each year. However, Myers said it was unclear how a significant proportion of this money was being spent, with less than 50% of the budget at the discretion of the station controller. The rest was spent on news, royalty payments, transmitters and other costs. Myers said the corporation’s compliance procedures were the source of the biggest complaints from staff. “I agree it is quite right for the BBC to have good, workable systems in place but a review is required if morale is to be protected and producers can continue to do what they do best,” he said. “The best way of achieving this goal is to restore much more responsibility back to the producers at the front line.” Myers, the former chief executive of Smooth Radio parent GMG Radio, part of the group that publishes MediaGuardian.co.uk, was previously commissioned by the then Labour government to write a report about commercial radio in 2009 . He is now chief executive of the cross-industry body, the Radio Academy. The remit of Myers’s latest report did not include one of the most controversial areas of BBC spending – the amount it pays talent. •
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Fortnightly bin collections are to stay in the UK, after expense of changing to weekly forces government into U-turn The government has announced weekly bin collections will not be reinstated, as part of its measures towards a zero-waste economy – a move that is a victory for green campaigners. The decision reverses a pledge by the communities and local government secretary, Eric Pickles, to bring back weekly rubbish pick-ups in the half of all councils that currently have fortnightly collections. Independent research had shown that the cost of reintroducing weekly collections would have been more than £500m over four years. The environment secretary, Caroline Spelman, launched the government’s review of how waste is dealt with a year ago , saying: “We cannot keep putting recyclable and biodegradable material into landfill. It threatens the environment and wastes what are incredibly valuable natural resources.” Bringing back weekly collections could have cut recycling rates by 5%, according to the same research, but cost was the biggest factor in ignoring calls for a return to weekly collections. The environment department suffered the biggest budget cut in the 2010 spending review. Today’s waste review, details of which are yet to be published, will aim to placate those who demanded weekly bin collections by abolishing some of the fines that people faced if they repeatedly breaks recycling rules, or put bins out on the wrong day, though it is unclear how such fines have been levied. The government has already scrapped Labour’s “pay as you throw” pilot to cut waste, which allowed councils to reward households that reduced waste and penalise those who threw away more. But Spelman is expected to endorse other ways of rewarding people to reduce their waste. Other measures in the waste review are expected to address the first part of the “reduce, reuse, recycle” slogan, by encouraging businesses such as toy makers and caterers to cut packaging and waste. Before today, environmental campaigners said the progress of the review did not look encouraging as, while the coalition had pledged to move towards a zero-waste system remained, the specific means to achieve that had appeared lacking. David Symons, director at environmental consultancy WSP Environment & Energy, said: “Although we produce 13% less waste than we did seven years ago, there’s no getting away from the fact that we have a serious problem with waste in this country. Each person in the UK still throws away over half a tonne of waste every year – most of which goes to landfill. “The waste strategy needs to focus on helping busy people cut down on the amount of waste they produce, without making their lives harder with fines and infrequent collections.” Jamie Reed, Labour’s shadow waste minister said: “The government’s policies for getting rid of rubbish are in chaos. Eric Pickles has been humiliated. It looks like the waste review will duck all the major challenges on recycling and will do nothing for the environment or our economy.” Waste Recycling Ethical and green living Green politics Local government Damian Carrington guardian.co.uk
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• CPI remains at more than twice Bank’s 2% target • ‘Core’ inflation falls to 3.3% • Majority vote to leave interest rates unchanged Cheaper travel costs compensated for dearer food to keep the annual rate of inflation in the UK steady at 4.5% last month. Figures released by the Office for National Statistics showed that the annual increase in the cost of living as measured by the consumer prices index remained at more than double the Bank of England’s 2% target. The latest data for inflation was in line with City forecasts, although Threadneedle Street expects higher domestic fuel bills to push the annual rate above 5% over the coming months. A majority of members of the Bank’s nine-strong monetary policy committee have taken the view that the factors leading to the inflation overshoot are temporary and have voted to keep interest rates at 0.5%. The figures showed that so-called “core inflation”, which strips out food and energy, fell from 3.7% to 3.3% last month. Inflation using the retail prices index yardstick, which is used as the benchmark for many pay deals, remained unchanged at 5.2% in May. Hetal Mehta, UK economist at Daiwa, said: “While there was no upside surprise on the headline CPI figure, inflation still remains well over the Bank’s target and is likely to rise even further in the next couple of months as higher commodity prices feed through. Nevertheless, the current inflationary forces are largely temporary in nature, and a marked fall in January next year is expected once the VAT increase falls out of the calculations. “As such, we still think the Bank will look through the short-term spike. And the fact that core inflation fell to 3.3% will be reassuring to the Bank, and further diminishes the prospects of a rate increase this year.” Inflation Economics Bank of England Interest rates Larry Elliott guardian.co.uk
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