For more information go to:

http://www.bullying.co.uk/

http://nationalbullyinghelpline.co.uk/

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He’s written a book I believe reflecting on his life and travel – and I think perhaps the ‘national institution’ that the Guardian call him deserves to be acknowledged. He’s caring and loves his travels and will always tell someone to take it easy when they need to – and when emotions fly he, like a mental health professional spots and can deal with discord within a group.

Not only is he a  international coach trip guide, but he seems to know how to deal with people who agree to go on a 30 day trip around Europe and vote each other off the coach.

His paternal and often maternal role; his knowledge of history and his basic worldly experience demands this man is seen and maybe talked to a lot more on television now

Ian is also currently in cooperation with M.A.D associates and are about to lauch the swanneck pen for left handed writers. For more information please visit there website www.swanneckpen.com

http://www.bourbonhanby.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=68&Itemid=112

Mavendra is one of three single royals featured in the new TCL dating series Undercover Princes and was recently interviewed by The Advocate. In the interview, the prince discusses his public coming out in 2006 and the controversy it stirred. Other gay royals, still closeted, worried that he might betray them and worked to undermine Mavendra’s reputation. They encouraged public burning of effigies and called for Mavendra’s titles to be stripped. Anti-gay sentiment ran high.

“[The other royals] wanted to break my popularity, so that’s the reason they instigated the people against me,” he told The Advocate. But Prince Mavendra didn’t blame the public. “I blame their ignorance. They have a lot of misconceptions about homosexuality, so that’s the reason they acted in this manner.”

In 1995, before he came out, Prince Mavendra became involved with campaigns to raising awareness for HIV/AIDS. He explained that in India, “[marriage] is compulsory for everyone. We have said that 85% of men, homosexual men, get married to women. So they are living a double-standard life.”

Heavy artillery fire has been rocking Homs, as Syrian troops step up an assault on the restive city.

A BBC correspondent there describes almost constant blasts, in the fiercest attack in the 11-month uprising.

US President Barack Obama said it was important to resolve the conflict without outside military intervention.

Meanwhile, Russia and China defended their veto of a UN draft resolution criticising Syria – a move that angered opponents of President Bashar al-Assad.

Later the US State Department said it had closed its embassy in Damascus and pulled out all remaining staff because of security concerns.

A committee of MPs believe that the changes proposed by Andrew Lansley‘s health reforms are obstructing efforts to make the NHS more efficient, and that the reforms fail to address how to care better for an expanding elderly population.

The highly critical report by the cross-party select committee on health, that is due to be published on Tuesday, comes as the medical establishment prepares its own summit on Thursday to discuss concerns over the health and social care bill.

The report which is the findings of a committee chaired by Stephen Dorrell, the former Conservative health secretary  will probably cause alarm in Downing Street as the committee has both a Tory and Liberal Democrat majority, and the report shows concern over the Health Secretary’s attempts to restructure the NHS in England where more power will be given to GPs are making it more difficult to deliver on a separate target of £20bn of efficiency savings by 2014-15.

The report echoes the widespread view in the medical profession that it is deeply unwise to be inflicting far-reaching structural reform on the NHS at the same time as asking it to make huge savings. The committee believes that far from finding savings by innovation and greater efficiency, a lot of hospitals are simply cutting their services, despite the Health Secretary’s assurance that this wouldn’t happen. The Committee said it has heard that the ‘innovation’ and efficiency measures have created more disruption and distraction than reform of the service delivery and saving.

The report voices frustration that Lansley’s plans fail to grasp the real challenge facing a cash-strapped NHS – that of moving more care into the community in order to provide better, more affordable and more integrated social and health services for the elderly. Members of the committee, including Dorrell, are known to be concerned at the rising cost to the NHS of caring for elderly patients, many of whom could be kept out of hospital if they were offered help to live at home or in the community. The Bill is expected to return to the House of Lords next month for it’s report stage on the 8th February.

Andy Burnham the Shadow Health Minister said: “The committee have delivered a damning verdict on Lansley’s mishandling of the NHS. It is time for David Cameron to listen to what doctors, nurses and now his own senior MPs are saying and call a halt to this reckless reorganisation.”

However more than 50 GPs from the NHS Alliance who are involved in the commissioning and controlling of the NHS budgets under the changes, have been critical of the British Medical Association’s policy of “blanket opposition” to the health and social care bill. The senior group of GPs claim that previous reforms have not gone far enough and the health service has in the past paid the price for a lack of reform.

Related articles

• Andrew Lansley accused of presiding over ‘utter shambles’ on NHS reforms (guardian.co.uk)
• Lansley tells BMA: stop spreading lies about my health reform Bill (independent.co.uk)
• NHS ‘in peril’ if health reforms fail, warn senior GPs (telegraph.co.uk)
• The pressure rises on Andrew Lansley (newstatesman.com)

Campaigners from disability groups and direct action group UK Uncut chanted and waved banners and banged drums blocking off Regent Street and the demonstration is believed to have caused traffic jams in London’s West End as fifteen people in wheelchairs chained themselves to railings and eventually were joined by hundreds of others to campaign against the Government’s Welfare Reform.

Campaigners believe that hundreds of thousands of families will lose their homes or become “imprisoned” inside them. Josie McDermott, a 32-year-old UK Uncut supporter, said: “The welfare reform bill is cruel and unnecessary”  and added “..this protest is an essential way to persuade the government to scrap its plans.”

Campaigners believe that the Government is choosing to pick on marginalised groups of people in the UK, in trying to pay back the economic UK deficit rather than focussing on the large bonuses and companies that they believe continue to avoid tax to the estimated amount of £25bn.

“It is typical bully tactics by the government to force marginalised people in society to pay for the economic downturn” one campaigner said.

A spokesperson for the Government said that they will continue to spend more than £40bn a year on disabled people, and that they are committed to supporting disabled people in the UK.

The bill will not affect households  where someone receives disability living allowance, as they will be exempt from the benefit cap the Government has pledged, and they have also said that an extra £190 million will be given to local authorities over a four year period to ensure vulnerable people are supported through the housing benefit reform to ensure that disabled people will not lose their homes.

Related articles

• National News: Welfare protesters plan occupation (coventrytelegraph.net)
• Protesters plan welfare reform demo (independent.co.uk)
• VIDEO: Protest over disability cuts (bbc.co.uk)
• PRESS RELEASE: Disabled activists and UK Uncut join to oppose ‘cruel and unnecessary ‘ welfare bill (victimsofatoscorruption.wordpress.com)

“After three years of continuous crisis conditions in global labour markets and against the prospect of a further deterioration of economic activity, there is a backlog of global unemployment of 200 million,” says the ILO in its annual report titled “Global Employment Trends 2012: Preventing a deeper jobs crisis”. Moreover, the report says more than 400 million new jobs will be needed over the next decade to absorb the estimated 40 million growth of the labour force each year.

The Global Employment Trends Report also said the world faces the additional challenge of creating decent jobs for the estimated 900 million workers living with their families below the US$ 2 a day poverty line, mostly in developing countries.

“Despite strenuous government efforts, the jobs crisis continues unabated, with one in three workers worldwide – or an estimated 1.1 billion people – either unemployed or living in poverty”, said ILO Director-General Juan Somavia. “What is needed is that job creation in the real economy must become our number one priority”.

Source: International Labour Organisation

In response to this a Iranian politician responded by renewing a threat to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, which is a oil export route vital to the global economy, and another said Tehran will cut off it’s crude shipments to the EU immediately which would greatly affect ailing European economies such as Greece, Italy, which depend heavily on Iranian oil.

All this follows after a U.S. aircraft carrier, accompanied by French and British warships, made a symbolically loaded voyage into the Gulf, defying Iranian hostility,

The expected EU sanctions are likely to prove angering to Iran in an already tense region.

It is believed by some political analysts and observers, that Iran, which denies accusations that it is seeking nuclear weapons could be in a position to make them next year.  Israel has also warned it could use force to prevent that Iran from any such development program

This row over Tehran’s plans is an increasingly pressing for world leaders, not least U.S. President Barack Obama as he is campaigning for a re-election in November. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has voiced skepticism about the chances of Iran being persuaded by non-military tactics, called the EU sanctions a “step in the right direction” but said Iran was still developing atomic weapons.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said of the new sanctions: “I want the pressure of these sanctions to result in negotiations … I want to see Iran come back to the table and either pick up all the ideas that we left on the table … last year … or to come forward with its own ideas.”

Iran has said lately that it is willing to hold talks with Western powers, though there have been mixed signals on whether conditions imposed by either side make new negotiations likely.

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Former Sen. Chris Dodd, head of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), described the postponement of SOPA and PIPA as a sign that the US government is “failing to act” in the fight against online piracy while still allowing the Internet “to be a safe haven for foreign thieves.” Meanwhile, Dodd said, American jobs are being lost and consumers are in danger of being “exposed to fraudulent and dangerous products peddled by foreign criminals.” But in an interview with the New York Times on Thursday, Dodd seemed to “raise the white flag,” acknowledging that the MPAA was “taken aback by the mass online protests against the bills” and calling for Hollywood and the tech community to “meet and hammer out their differences in a White House summit.”

Next Up: The OPEN ACT

As Don Reisinger says on CNET, both Reid and Smith remain “committed to pushing some kind of anti-piracy legislation through Congress.” Reid said in a statement:

“There is no reason that the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved. Counterfeiting and piracy cost the American economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs each year, with the movie industry alone supporting over 2.2 million jobs. We must take action to stop these illegal practices.”

Indeed, on the horizon is a related bill, the OPEN ACT, sponsored by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who have been “stalwart” critics of SOPA and PIPA. The OPEN ACT makes the International Trade Commission rather than the DOJ the enforcer for online piracy and also offers a narrower version of pirate websites. As Talking Points Memo points out, some are not sure that focusing on online piracy in particular is the right approach:

“Where we need to start is actually getting a ‘User’s Bill of Rights’ together for communication and sharing of culture,” [Tiffiniy Cheng, co-founder of Fight For the Future, an online advocacy non-profit] said. “We need to defend way people communicate online. Once we get that in place, then we can go forth from there.”

Cheng said her group is working on drafting a Internet User’s Bill of Rights at the moment.

Internet activists have claimed victory in the fight against SOPA and PIPA. But we need to focus equal scrutiny on the OPEN Act and, as Cheng says, ask if policing online piracy as these bills describe is in the best interests of all; in the best interests of keeping the internet the site of innovation, creativity and freedom of expression that we have come to know it to be.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has been asked to lead a public discussion to ask if a new scientific procedure, which could prevent women with mitochondrial disease from passing the illness to their children, should be introduced. This will be launched later this year.

Mitochondrial disease is a genetic condition that affects an individual’s mitochondria – the part of the body’s cells that produces the energy they need to function. The disease affects everyone differently, but symptoms include poor growth, loss of muscle coordination, visual and hearing problems, mental disorders, heart disease and liver disease.

The condition affects approximately one in 5,000 adults. One in 6,500 babies are born with a severe form of the disease that can lead to death in early infancy. There is no cure.

It is estimated that around 12,000 people live with a mitochondrial disease in the UK and scientists estimate that the treatment could save the lives of around ten children affected by severe forms of the disease a year.

A proposed procedure would use IVF to fertilise the egg of a woman affected by mitochondrial disease with her partner’s sperm. The genetic material of the fertilised egg that determines the characteristics of the potential child would then be transferred to the shell of an egg donated by a woman who has healthy mitochondria. This procedure would not be allowed under the current law

Source: NDS (C.O.I.)

Related articles

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In the programme Richard Wilson covered everything from automated telephone systems that allow the customer to not only listen to a voice recording but keep us listening interminably and at a call cost running into pounds – how they are not user-friendly and often confuse the elderly and vulnerable or the probably 99.9% of us who are either not so savvy with technology or quite simply don’t know or forget the option choices we are forced to press on our telephone keypads while listening to these awful machines!

He showed beautifully what most of us knew – that when we try to get cinema tickets we now can’t ask for them in person we have to try to talk to a voice recognition programme on an answer service that never works. When parking a car how trying to obtain a ticket via an automatic payment call service not only doesn’t work but is only there to save local Councils money through not having payment staff or wardens to help issuing tickets and checking meters.

And the dreaded service machine that keeps telling you ‘unexpected item in the bagging area‘ keeps telling you to ‘place item in the bagging area – please wait for assistance’! All again to save on cashier staff costs,  and cause the customer aggregation and the risk of early strokes.

As Richard Wilson himself commenting on the programme ” ..automation has become a ubiquitous part of modern life – be it at the supermarket, when booking the cinema or trying to park your car. Retailers and service providers say that these systems offer us more choice, improve service and free-up staff to focus on helping us customers in other ways. But I want to know if this is really the case.”

“Like the rest of the UK, I welcome technology that makes my life easier – I would hate to have to give up shopping online and I love being able to make bank transfers over the phone. But not all automated systems are time-savers. In fact, many of them seem to make my life considerably more difficult, costing me time and money.”

The full programme link can be seen on the right of this page on my Vodpod videos, below is an except from the programme

Related Articles:

• Last night’s viewing – Richard Wilson On Hold, BBC2; Coppers, Channel 4 (independent.co.uk)

• AutomatedCalls Launches Easy To Use Automated Calling Service (prweb.com)

Also it’s Captain Francesco Schettino is currently detained facing charges of manslaughter,  although he has denied any wrongdoing. He has not yet been formally charged, but prosecutors asked local judges to continue with his detention.

There is concern that the ship’s captain left the vessel before all the passengers had been safely rescued

A recording of a conversation allegedly between the captain and a port official – recorded shortly after the crash  of the rocks – which suggests Capt Schettino left the ship before all its passengers had escaped. In the recording, the captain appears to refuse to go back on to the ship to co-ordinate the rescue effort.

The agency, which until relatively recently banned gay people as a ‘security risk’ on the grounds of blackmail, now operates a diversity policy.

It says:

We recruit people who will directly increase the skills and experience within our organisation and make it more effective. Our members of staff increasingly come from a range of backgrounds and cultures. And an in depth knowledge and understanding of a variety of communities and languages isn’t just an advantage, it is crucial for our work.

M15 has been named for the first time in the top 100 of the Equality Index, produced annually by UK LGBT group Stonewall. The Index ranks employers, most of which are large corporations and government departments and agencies, according to how ‘gay-friendly’ they are.

In the US, the Human Rights Campaign runs a similar annual Corporate Equality Index. The FBI has welcomed gay and lesbian recruits since the ‘Buttino v. FBI’ case ended the dismissal of openly gay staff in 1993.

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/uk-spies-top-gay-employer.html#ixzz1jMIp3WiE

Sharks – the most beautiful creature – are 400 million years old ..
man 20 thousand years …

modern man … 10,000 years
the industrial revolution – only 200 years ago -

So Now I need to know how to help my planet – before I leave it.

In 2011 change swept across the Middle East and North Africa. People from all walks of life took to the streets to call for freedom and stand up for human rights, toppling brutal regimes through popular protest. But as we headed into 2012 things looked strikingly familiar: peaceful protests were once again being suppressed in Egypt while thousands languished in detention in Libya with no sign of justice. As these states continue to offer cosmetic reform, and others violently cling on to power, protestors have shown no sign of giving up. It is time for governments to commit to real change.

• Find out more and read our new report

In 2011 change swept across the Middle East and North Africa. People from all walks of life took to the streets to call for freedom and stand up for human rights, toppling brutal regimes through popular protest.

As  we head into 2012 things looked strikingly familiar: peaceful protests were once again being suppressed in Egypt while thousands languished in detention in Libya with no sign of justice. As these states continue to offer cosmetic reform, and others violently cling on to power, protestors have shown no sign of giving up. It is time for governments to commit to real change.

• Find out more and read our new report

In a speech at Policy Exchange, Universities and Science Minister David Willetts argued that Britain’s  our universities, science facilities and researchers – are the best single hope for making our way in the high-tech world of the future, creating jobs and opportunities and boosting high-tech economic growth.

He said that  “If properly nurtured they can ensure that Britain will be up there as a leading location for research in the physical and life sciences. Britain can be the preferred location for companies’ R&D.” Also adding that “We can have world-class industries using cutting-edge technologies. We can have a prosperous future with a role in the world.”

However like most of the ambitious projects the government are keen to launch the downside to this is  there will absolutely no extra Government financial support for its abitious plans, he said: “There will be no additional Government funding. This time we will be looking to private finance and perhaps sponsorship from some of the businesses that are keen to recruit more British graduates”.

Let’s hope that there is private financial investment and sponsorship – but in these financial times when  companies like Pfizer closed with 2,400 jobs in Kent last year, Unilever laying over a thousand staff in December and BAE lost 3000 jobs in early 2011 – I  wonder who will invest and where he optimistically thinks money will actually be found to ensure Universities are helped with his ambitious plans?

Video courtesy of Policy Exchange website

Her  60th Birthday coronation will actually be on the 6th February 2012 and she like Queen Victoria (who served 63 years) will be the second longest Monarch in her role in the UK’s Constitutional Monarchy.

Det Ch Insp Clive Driscoll, who was commended by the trial judge for his work on the case, told BBC News the information was currently being evaluated.

Officers from the Lawrence inquiry team will discuss the case at a meeting with senior Scotland Yard officers next week.